Has anyone seen Nanite Cream?

Don't get me wrong, any piece of equipment that is broadly overused should be scrutinized.

But it is really and forever gone? Will characters now look the same every day? Will they look like their character image at least sometimes? Yes? plz

Note that NO nanties of any kind are in the SR5 core book.

They'll likely show up in a splatbook at a later date.

Well, the word nanite is mentioned once. But that might be a mistake.

It would be a shame to have a return of the nanite cream. It completely devalues all the other neat tricks to change your appearance.

I like chocolate nanite cream, but the vanilla always tastes funny to me.

~Umi

The Sweet Cream is quite nice, but you are right, the vanilla tastes funny

And if you go past its expiry date you got Soured Nanite Cream

Given the events of Storm Front, it seems like ALL nanotech is going away due to Bad Things. For example, it appears that all nano-fabricated weapons kinda stopped being a cohesive thing - "melted to slag" is the exact reference used, with the context suggesting it is a thing the weapons did rather than a thing that was done to them.

I wanted some working rules for Nanotech SO BADLY!!! Augmentation was a start, but all the Nanites were incredibly expensive and the Wild Card Nanoprototpye positive quality absolutely limited.

I think someone decided nanotech was somehow damaging to elements of the setting that they wanted to highlight in SR5.

I'm actually okay with this. Nanotech surgery robots and whatnot are okay, but common-use or god-forbid weaponized nanotech in any form is a pretty deep rabbit hole.

I'm not going to weigh in on whether or not I think the premise itself is valid, but if it is, the action following from it is absolutely the right course.

Aha, that was in Kalashnikov's descrition. And it makes about as much sense as a boring machine going haywire on a plant causing everything ever produced using it to dissolve into slag.

I am not a huge fan of nanoware, frankly, but the way they got rid of it is as ungraceful as it comes.

The fully nano-fabricated guns went to slag presumably due to the nanites revolting. In the case of partial-nanofab, the gun would cease functioning but not completely go to slag.

Basically, it looks to me like nanotech the world over hasn't simply gone haywire, but actually become aggressive. I'd say all signs point to Dissonance, really, which also means that logical technological explanations need not apply. And I'm absolutely certain it's too early for the past-tense with regard to the method of its removal.

Nano-produced items do not consist of nanomachines, much less perpetually active nanomachines.
"Turned to slag" used past tense.

They are not SUPPOSED to contain nanomachines post production, it appears maybe there were.

Well, I do understand you wouldn't want to put things under your facial skin that are prone to rebellion.

I don't care, if they made a cheesy plot line to get rid of unwanted stuff. Usually don't read that stuff anyway, and certainly not before the rules.

So I am making a no more Nanite cream dance *chakka* *chakka*

Thanks for the info!

In the Shadowrun lore, nanites are used heavily during cybersurgery. Not being able to use nanites makes a lot of things... complicated.

What was the problem with nanites anyway?

I imagine it could be a game balance issue, the potential is staggering what they could do and maybe the devs just want a bit more time to tweak them into line as recent story hints may have sorted of painted themselves into a corner and now they have to decide how to proceed forward while still maintaining that balance.

Also while individual nanites are just coded machines, working enmass may be providing the potential for a collective mentality or at least to affect them as such.

*Shoots the unhackable (because wireless disabled) cybersam with a capsule round*
*Hacker nanites enable the sam's wireless*
*Decker hacks the shit out of him*

You know, just as an example.

There were other things that were wonky too, like the nanites that increased your Logic...unless you were under stress (so any archetype that used logic would be considered "under stress" when they needed those dice).

There was literally only three or four nanite types that you would actually ever want:

Cutter nanties (inflict physical damage on people)
Hacker nanites (to enable wireless on devices)
Anti-tox nanites (which were of limited use, but could counter injected toxins)
Nanite hunter nanites (because how else would you defend yourself from cutter nanites?)

Every other use of nanites were pretty much "Nanoforge" to build yourself illegal shit for cheap.

Draco, you forgot the topic-name-giving nanite cream
The nanite tag
Nanite surgery
That thing where nanites changed your bio-scan
...

Not all SR is about killing people or avoid being killed (not for all characters anyway)

Touche.



I meant more regular nanites. The kind you keep in your body. I wanted a nanite hive so bad, but I could never find a single nanite swarm that was actually useful, must let justifying the 0.75 essence it took to implant the sucker (though I would have done a full 1 essence to have a nano-tattoo if I could just find a valid reason to have the hive in the first place).

Check out the Cyberpunk 3.x stuff for ideas of what they were doing with nanotech. Some of that was scary.

The action economy of this is extremely inefficient. If you can shoot the sam with a capsule round, you can shoot him with a grenade or assault cannon round.

Okay, fine, you need one more success with the assault cannon round. Doesn't exactly justify throwing away a big chunk of cyberpunk flavor.

Basically, I don't see what's wrong with the concept of nanite. If the implementation is broken, fix the implementation.

I suspect that they will revisit it.

Or they did, and couldn't find an implementation that was workable.

There was nothing inherently wrong with nanite technology. The devs just do not like it, for whatever reason (or want to take it in a different direction). *shrug*
There were many things I liked about the technology. And yes, there could be horrible in-world abuse as a result of the technology. Tit for Tat. Just like most other technology out there, there are good and bad applications.

I just hope they keep being consistant and don't bring back the old stuff via a source book without some major changes.

I really don't like having to update the play world on major, widely used issue, just because a new source got into my players hands.

It's just that at this scale of change, it's better to reboot the whole thing in my estimation. If they remove nanotech in this fashion, it's extremely awkward and clumsy.

If you remember, without a nanohive nanite colonies degrade, so even if there had been, there wouldn't have been any left rather soon.

Augmentation had bunches of nanogear in the category "playthings I'm buying when I'm rich".
Plus, Surtr Surtr Surtr. And blue goo, accordingly.

Which, as I recall, is due to the body's immune response.

Nah, just due to natural degradation, discharge, and a body being a hostile environment. Well, open air is a more hostile environment still.

You mean like the 150 ¥ spray-on TV? Or the counter-biometric nanoware which across the board is cheaper and easier available than its cyber equivalents? And the rules you are looking for are simple: It does whatver you can image, costs a pittance, and is easier available than NERPS. Sickness, pollution, starvation? No problem, everything can be solved by nanites everybody can buy.

It's not just that the idea of nanoscale spider bots floating through your bloodstream is exceedingly silly from a scientific POV. The stated capabilities of these things should by all rights cause the biggest upheaval since the neolithic revolution and create a brave new world without hunger, sickness, or starvation. So if nanotech indeed gets the Melding Plague treatment, it would be the best thing to happen to the setting in a loooong time.

The corps control nanotech, revolution is over, everyone can go home. Just like the fact that information can now be reproduced for free in next to any amount of copies has only made copyright laws stricter.

No, they sell it. To everyone, for next to nothing.

They sell the end product, the nanofaxes are controlled extremely tightly (see p.115 Augmentation).

I wasn't talking about nanofaxes, the unbeatable DRM is a cheap cop-out but at least acknowledges the problem. That cannot be said of pretty much everything else in the "nano" category.

Everything else other than the means of production is not creating a revolution that's ending world hunger and scarcity society.
Actually, the nanoware applications in the book are rather minor. Some of them are pretty impressive, but still, it's all small-scale.

Nanites can be reprogrammed, and constructors even for complex electronics (see Implant Medics, Nano Spy, and especially Speak Up) are apparently no big deal since they are sold freely for cheap. Whatever you want, there is some magic (well, actually magic still follows some rules...) nanoware for it.