Correct. Running silent just means you have to be looked for, and no longer automatically pop up when within 100m.



Also correct.



Bad idea. Cheap device = crap attributes. When the local matrix security does a sweep and notices 30 new hidden icons, and randomly selects a Stealth Tag, he'll be able to easily run Trace User to locate you and your whole team.



Depends on what's silent, I'd guess. In some places running with your commlink silent is illegal. I imagine that running your pistol silent without a permit to carry it concealed is illegal.

Note that a lot of laws exist as secondary offenses to increase the severity of an actual crime. So you may not get hassled for running silent some days, but if you knock over a liquor store with all your gear running silent, it probably makes things worse.

Yes, but you can counter this easily by having everyone know the op plan and not need to chatter about it. The only prudence you can really exercise when it comes to wireless is turning it off.

In ShadowRun, corporations hire criminals to undermine their rivals. Going out and bricking all the new iPhones would be pretty disastrous for 2075 Apple.


People jailbreak devices now. As said, shadowrunners are criminals who want security and have access to the skills to do that sort of thing, they aren't about to stop doing it.

Otherwise you make some good, if overstated, points.


Low end goods will exsist aslong as exploited lower classes do.

Mostly, it's hard because there's no point. What's the point in having electronics in a glorified stick? RFID in a disposable paper hat? What about all those folks living on the edge of civilization who can't even get Matrix access and make do with old tech because it works and it's something they already have? While the corporate masses might be willing to trade security for perceived convenience (like the RFID wallets currently in use), those who make their living evading notice are not going to take those risks if they have more than two functioning brain cells to rub together. Tech that ends up on the black market is going to get scrubbed; not only for the benefit of the buyer, but also so it doesn't get tracked back to the seller and his sources.



What's the point of having the system use a wireless link? It is faster, more secure, and more sensible to use a direct neural connection for many systems, especially anything that needs to implanted anyways like smartgun links, wired reflexes, VCRs, chipjacks and connected skillwire implants, cybereyes and implanted subsystems, etc.



Mind control requires touch, and a monowhip requires close proximity. I know if I had cyberlegs, I would not consider some random schmuck turning my legs off inconsequential, even if it was some pathetic griefer script kiddie. Especially if it was in the middle of a job. The "hissy fit" isn't "at the idea of a decker being able do something as effective as mages or combat monsters." The complaint is that deckers are being shoehorned into a role which is not appropriate. Deckers have always been powerful in Shadowrun, just not in direct physical combat. Should mouse and rat shamans be given über combat abilities to make them combat effective too?



Ah yes. The "lie back and think of England" rationale.



At which point, Mr. Toaster becomes such a pain that it's easier to live without toast.



Because someone knocking over a liquor store is going to be so concerned about those laws. If only someone had thought to make theft illegal, liquor stores everywhere would be safer.

So Trace Icon can find the physical location of a device, so if I got a bag of rats, glued stuff to them, and set them loose, on the otherside of the compound, that'd work, right?

I'm more wondering if noticing a silent running icon immediately triggers an alarm or if it would illicit more a 'better check, just in case' type reaction.

Yes for causing a distraction, but if you were wanting a silent in and out job, having a mob of mystery icons suddenly pop up may also trigger an alarm from the spider who might think they were under attack.


Again depends on location and situation. A silent icon coming down a hallway may warrant a further check, one popping up in the ultra-secure R&D section warrants an alert.

Sorry but this is preposterous. You can't continue to pull the logic card in ways that fly in the face of your own reasoning.

We're talking about people who go an armed missions where there is a chance they will be captured, tortured or even killed. There is nothing you can do to avoid this risk (sure, good intelligence can minimize it a bit) but to simply not go on the run.

Here's yet another example: Have you ever purchased anything online with a credit card? If you answer yes than you are an idiot, but only as much of an idiot as 80% of the rest of the population. The other 20% either can't afford credit cards or lock themselves in towers out of an irrational fear of germs. The reason is that information is not that secure, either the site might be hacked, have no encryption or you may inadvertently have some kind malware that can report your information to nefarious sorts. The reality is that the shear mass of transactions that occur on the web mean that you just have to be unlucky to be frauded. We all either consciously or unwittingly take this risk.

It's clear that the setting implies that at the end of a risk assessment there will be times where having your wireless on should be worth the risk. The problem is that the rules don't provide the right mechanism/bonuses for this to be the case. I'm happy to admit as much.

Relevant parts bolded. The risk/reward calculation on this is so far skewed that there is no rational reason to use wireless. Period, end of story.

Precisely. Even this mystical 20% figure (and I never have seen an explanation as to where they got that number) is unacceptably high when "bricking" is a euphemism for "dying in agony, screaming and flopping around on the ground, while your cyberware cooks you from the inside."

Because the electronics are cheap as free, and because there's some benefit to be had by either the user, the manufacturer/seller, or the government.

We shove electronics into things already because it's cheap and provides a benefit. A $5 box of cold medicine at the local drugstore has an RFID tag in it to prevent theft. Now imagine the technology is 70 years further along -- that tag could provide links back to the manufacturer and local medical professionals to let them know if there's a sudden spike in cold medicine purchases, so they could adjust their efforts. It could provide an update to let the customer know if it went out of date, or if there were a recall on that specific batch, all automatically. A digestible tag in each individual pill could link up to an application on your commlink to provide biomonitor feedback to yourself and your doctor to warn you if there's some concern.

A tag on your soda can could send you an update to let you know when it reached optimum temperature for drinking -- and don't tell me this is stupid, because they're doing it with temperature-sensitive color coding on beer cans right now.

A temperature-sensitive RFID tag in your soy turkey loaf could ping you when it's done, or send a signal to automatically shut down your oven (and start the microwave for the sides, and turn on the wine chiller, and pause playback on the trid).

So why? Because it's cheap and because they can, and because Stick - Now With New and Improved Tactical Grip Assessment sells slightly better than just plain Stick.



This is where the system goes It's All Made Up, and the answer is Reasons. Maybe it's practicality, maybe it's bandwidth. Maybe it's cost. Maybe it's rejection risk. Maybe it's a lot of things. But it's how it works here.



Mind control spells require LOS, not Touch.



There are no more script kiddies. Reliably hacking someone's gear requires expensive equipment, high Logic, and professional training. You're playing the "evil deckers lurk everywhere and are just waiting for me to go online so they can brick my stuff" card. It doesn't work that way, and there's no reason to expect it to work that way unless you bought into SR4's stupid sensibilities of everyone being the equivalent of a magical hacker genius with a $20 investment and a copy of Hacking for Dummies.



What makes you think that this makes deckers powerful in direct physical combat? Turning someone's wired reflexes off isn't the same as shooting them -- an Ork with a machine gun and one fewer initiative die is still a threat. Turning off someone's eyes or gun in the middle of a firefight is probably a drag, but probably slightly less so than the sniper popping heads for 15 damage every pass.



If that's how you want to do it, live without toast. But Shadowrun has always been about trying desperately not to fall behind the curve, because behind the curve is a meat grinder.



Do you not understand how laws work? Wrap your brain around this one: owning a bulletproof vest is legal. Wearing your bulletproof vest is legal. Wearing your bulletproof vest while committing a violent felony is itself an additional felony.

What's the damage code for that? Oh right, there isn't one. You don't have an argument. Period, end of story.

This has been one of the biggest issues about Wireless. The Fluff & the rules are not on even footing. Some people believe that the Fluff is meaningless & that everyone should ignore it. Others believe that in a game as Fluff intensive as Shadowrun the Fluff is damn important to what a piece of gear does. I personally believe that the rules should reflect the Fluff.

It's odd how criminals don't seem obey laws. Maybe we should make breaking the law illegal, surely then they would stop...

You know what happens when your credit card number gets stolen? You call your bank and they cancel the charge, cancel your card and send you a new card. People use credit cards on the internet because it's essentially at zero risk to them, the risk is all on the merchant and bank side.

So no, that's a terrible analogy.

Dolanar hit the nail on the head here. In the way that Bricking is described in the fluff, there is absolutely NO WAY on this planet, universe, or multiverse, that a piece of electronic equipment that's build into sensitive parts of your body, NOT cause at least extreme pain and discomfort, and more likely potential fatal systemic damage to your body and brain, when it blows up in the way described. If your eyes start throwing sparks, leaking molten plastic, and giving off smoke, that WILL be mildly put uncomfortable to you, and leave you unable to see. Having your nervous system replacement, which is distributed throughout your entire body, suddenly act in the way that's described as the consequenses of being "Bricked", there is no way that this will not have potentially fatal consequences for a person. Suddenly having one or more of your limbs and/or vital organs shut down and spit component parts in your face, while you are engaged in a life or death firefight with people trying to kill you, WILL end up being, mildly put, EXTREMELY detrimental to your continued existance.

Though I'll conceed that people generally speaking are willing to accept some level of risk to get access to a given set of benefits, that kind of evaluation ALWAYS comes down to a subjective estimate of the risk and reward. But at the end of the day, there has to be a balance between the perceived risk of the bad consequences happening, and the value of the attained benefit. For the average person, the risk of having your credit card hacked and your account emptied, if you use it to pay for something online, is perceived as being small enough to accept it. Even though having your bank account emptied can have severe negative consequences. However, there is a difference between the consequence of "loosing some/all of your money, if a hacker picks you out from a crowd of millions of people world wide" and "potentially having (parts of) your body shut down during critical moments of performing your already potentially fatal job" is fairly significant. Especially when you know that the odds of becoming the target of a hacker, who can shut down vital parts of your anatomy is a LOT more substantial, than the odds of being picked out by a hacker that's choosing between millions of potential victims. If the perceived risk of being the victim of a hacking attack, that can kill you is easily in the range of i.e. 35+%, then this is a risk a professional individual with any sort of brains, will do whatever he or she can, in order to eliminate. Especially if there's an easy fix.

Here's what I believe is the core of this argument though. The RULES of the game do not create the situation that the FLUFF describes in vivid details. No, according to the rules, having your eyes blow up doesn't mean that you suddenly can't see anything, no rather it means that you just can't use any of the possible extra build-in features that your eyeware might include. Having your limbs blow up and cease working doesn't mean that you can't use them like regular limbs. And having various forms of wires distributed throughout your body melt, throw sparks, and cause electricity to leak into sensitive parts of your anatomy doesn't do any damage to you, and can, in fact, be fixed by a local mechanic with a hammer and a screwdriver (Ok, the hammer and screwdriver thing is probably an overstatement, but you get my point I trust).

As Dolanar points out, the consistancy between the fluff and the rules are in this respect completely and utterly out of sync with each other. To some people, this kind of discrepency doesn't matter, only the rules. To people like me, this is a SERIOUS cock-up by the developers. ESPECIALLY in a game where the setting descriptions are so prevalent and integrated a part of the game, as they are in Shadowrun.

In this case, the designers have decided that they wanted hackers to be able to criple cyberware by hacking it, but rather than allowing hackers to be able to kill and utterly cripple players outright (something that would probably very quickly have resulted in players no longer using cyberware at all), they decided to tone it down, and reduce the descriped catastrophic damage caused to the gear when bricked, to only be a limited and easily fixed de-buff of the character, which makes absolutely no form of sense within the context of the described effect of "Bricking".

From my perspective making this change to cyberware was not necessary, and does not contribute positively to the game in my perspective. Rather it feels like a crappy implementation of an idea, or a rushed or miscommunicated job between the people behind the writing of the fluff, and the people who made the rules. Or alternatively the designers decided that they would make a game that mainly caters to the kind of player who doesn't really care about fluff/rule consistancy.

/Kyrel

Funny, I bought my Motorola Atrix phone, rooted it, and then REPLACED THE OS! I'm running a version of Android WITHOUT the spyware crap that was put into the standard version of android that comes from the Wireless carriers.

If I can do that in 2012 with commonly available tools that I got off the Internet, then why can't a hacker who's forgotten more about hacking, than the common Joe will ever learn, can't do the same thing?

And yet these same megacorporations would sell their grandparents to save 0.001 per widget in manufacturing costs because it makes them money in the long run. I'll even allow that RFID tags go from passive devices that respond when interrogated to active transmitters powered by *plot*. It still doesn't make sense to stick electronics in everything.



And it still is a contradiction of the previous editions of the game.



My mistake. I had mind probe stuck in my head for some reason.



So in 207x, all software is perfect? There are no vulnerabilities whatsoever that could ever be used to gain access to or harm a device via its software and a few simple tricks? That's real science fiction.



What makes deckers powerful in direct physical combat is the ability to shut a target's body down. Even if you don't follow the given description of bricking, merely turning off a leg would affect mobility; eyes the ability to perceive and function in a sight-oriented world; wired reflexes are a major part of the owners central nervous system- think that won't have any meaningful effect?



I agree, and if you choose to put your cyberware and equipment on the Matrix for all to see (stealth mode or not), you have just given that meat grinder the advantage.



And therefore no one ever commits felonies while wearing bulletproof vests, because they were okay with having black market weapons, assaulting folks, committing armed robbery, and jaywalking, but the thought of that extra charge for wearing a bulletproof vest while in commission of a felony made the bad guys give up in despair.

That's the thing. The simplest answer I can come up with here is that the writers simply didn't think about bricking cyberware. They had a neat idea about 'hey, what if Deckers could wreck someone's commlink!', and stuck it in, but then never considered the full ramifications of this in a setting where they've just mandated that cyberware be wirelessly accessible.

In either case, the rules as written are so vague on the topic that it's essentially GM fiat.

Going by the fluff, as I as a GM tend to do when a question of what a rule actually intends comes up, this shit should obviously cripple someone when applied to their cyberware. The examples in the text mention stuff like shut down vibroswords still being okay to club people with, or shut down rotor drones coming down in autorotation, both of which indicate to me that bricking something is intended to make it nonfunctional.

A cyberlimb that is nonfunctional is just a block of metal dragging on the body. A cybereye that is nonfunctional is a really expensive glass eye. A nervous system replacement that is nonfunctional... well, hopefully it doesn't paralyze your autonomic functions so you just suffocate lying in the street from being unable to tell your lungs to breath or heart to beat.

One major thing is that the new Wireless Rules are intended to make Matrix Cowboys more attractive to play.

I contend that in this, they have failed spectacularly.

Even assuming a target is stupid enough to leave his wireless butt exposed for anyone to take advantage of, the process of hacking in and grabbing control still takes too many steps.

So far in the couple of dozen games I've been in or seen run, I have seen someone attempt to hack an opponent's gear exactly ONCE. And immediately afterwards he declared he'd never bother with that again, because it was too much trouble for the payoff.

Way, way back when there were discussions here on how the "next version of Shadowrun" should work, before anyone outside of the Devs were aware that it was in fact being worked in, we went over making Deckers feel more useful. I contended that if hackers/deckers/technomancers were to have a more active combat role, any "cyber" attack they were going to execute HAD to be as simple in game mechanics as shooting a gun or casting a spell.

Anything more would meant the players wouldn't bother. There would better more efficient uses of their actions.


-k

Kind of makes you wonder if the best solution all along would just been to have a simplified rule set for runs that aren't focused on matrix stuff, but reserve an "advanced" rule set a la SR2 for a session or campaign that takes place primarily in the matrix and where the special aspects of the systems in question are part of the setting.

Even if it did work, with these bricking rules it just adds 'Geek the Decker' to the old standby 'Geek the Mage' in the list of Things Sally Street Sam Does First, and Deckers don't have any of the Mage's defensive options.

I agree that's how I'd like it to work too. With Matrix Attacks working more like spells. But at the same time, the outcry over people fearing the all mighty decker as it is now would be even more exasperated if it went that way. I think the Matrix has been this minidungeon system that has been so separated from the rest of the game for so long that people are just rejecting any paradigm shift to make the Matrix more than something you can just handwave away and ignore.

Frankly, the systems do need to overlap more. The Matrix needs to be more than just a babysitting plot device or a key to the locked door. People can complain about logical consistency or whatever, when we're in a setting about dragons, the Native Americans taking back America, and corporations being recognized as pseudo-nations; wireless bonuses is the straw the broke your camel-of-disbelief's back?

With the rules allowing some brute-force mid-combat crowd-control via gear hacking on the part of deckers, people seem to think that this is what deckers should be doing.

The actuality is that the rules allow for these actions because the system for attacking gear is now the same as the system for attacking anything in the Matrix. What this does is open the door for all the other stuff -- spoofing comms, editing sensors, getting security to chase digital ghosts, tracking people real-time. All sorts of subtle stuff.

Example: want to know where a security team is? Hack on the Fly three marks on one of the members and run a Trace User. Botch the roll and the jig is up, Matrix attack detected -- time to change plans.

Once you're talking about an enemy that knows what and where you are, bricking their gear isn't usually the best option. Once you successfully brick one thing, and everyone knows that Matrix security is compromised, you can expect everyone to use their free actions to take their critical systems down. So it's pretty much a one-shot deal. "Security teams one and two, move in on the targets -- they've got a hacker with them that flipped off Johnson's cybereyes, so put everything into protected mode until we can shut him down."

Until then, the benefit of online vision enhancements and smartlinks and so on outweighs the risk, because spotting an infiltrator before he shoots you or getting a hit instead of a miss is the most immediate thing that will save your ass.

Further, any security protocol is going to have an expected casualty rate, and a Matrix attack is just another factor -- just because mages and snipers can wreak havoc with a clear line of sight from long distances doesn't mean that security patrols are never going to go into the open field at the back of the complex. In Shadowrun, warm bodies make for cheap threat detection.



This is very important.

I was reading the matrix section and just noticed a couple things that Ive never seen mentioned in any of the discussions on wireless and bricking.

If the hardware test to repair a bricked piece of gear is glitched, then your gear suffers from oermanent glitches and problems, GM discretion.

If the test is CRITICALLY glitched, then its bricked for good.

Man, that would suck if your wires or cyberarm got permanently bricked.

It would also suck to be hit by an errant comet as well but shit happens. Critical glitches are virtually impossible for anyone rolling more than about 4 dice and that's even before application of edge.

I remember the days (in shadowrun) when being shot once could put you in hospital for months and require you to get cyber-replacements. It was perfectly acceptable then.

What, you mean a couple days ago? You should check out the new Missions run, there's a sniper in the third run for the season who can do just that with SR5 rules.

Something notable for this discussion as well. In the first adventure of the new set... every NPC explicitly has their wireless shut off on everything.


Even the writers know that what got published isn't workable.

To be honest, I would be more ok if Decker's were able to put 3 marks on someone's Cyberarm & then take it over much like a Rigger would control a Drone. I think it would allow the Decker to mess with a group more readily much like a mage could mind control, Imagine if you will.

Runner Team is sneaking quietly through the Ares compound making good time, the Troll heavy is up front carrying an Assault Rifle. The Facility Spider is doing a securtiy sweep & notices some unusual icons in the complex, so he runs silent & goes to check them out. The Spider arrives at the matrix location & the Team Decker misses him.
The Spider decides to be sneaky & does a Hack on the fly to put 3 marks on the Troll's Cyberarm. He succeeds. Now, the Spider can take an action to force the Troll's arm to do something, be it smack the troll in the face, or swing him around to fire off a short burst at his team. After this happens the Team Decker knows something is wrong & begins to deal with the Spider, but not before the whole facility is alerted & the Spider is laughing all the way back to his Nest.

This was intended to be mostly cinematic, I did not use any dice rolls, but simply showing an example of something I would be more ok with than just making something useless.

Which is why SMART people do not possess wireless enabled credit cards. Simple fix to the problem.

Why? I don't suffer any consequences for never having wireless access 24/7/365. What makes that an unthinkable insanity?

There does not need to be a damage code. The effects are so self evident that I am amazed you need a dissertation on anatomy and the effects on such when the described effects of bricking are applied. Equally ludicrous are the later descriptions on how such damage is fixed.

If by dissertation you mean the bare minimum mechanical notation that makes damage relevant. This isn't a "we can't have a code for everything" situation like crash landing on the sun. It's a built-in, expected action. If it doesn't come attached with a damage code in addition to its described effects, it doesn't do damage.

Please show me the bare minimum mechanical effect of being within 200 meters of a Thor shot impact. It is ALL FLUFF. There are effects that just do not need mechanical reinforcement.

And that, right there, is the disconnect that destroys verisimilitude in SR5. The descriptions of the effect do not match up to the mechanics. POOR Game Design at its most obvious. I don't need mechanical effects to tell you that your nervous system shuts down and you die when your Move-By-Wires are bricked, resulting in your nervous system burning and sparking, charring all the meat around it, and carbonizing your Neural pathways. That is the expected outcome from the effect described. Too bad, so sad, make a new character. If they wanted something different, then they either should describe it differently, or provide mechanics for the effect described.

And before you say that that is being a Bad GM, please remember that it isnt. The Crash wiped out Multiple Millions of databases, and yet, it is descriptive. We take it as fact. There was no mechanic for it. There was no mechanical resolution if you want to play in that era. It just happens. By the same token, Bricking has defined results. Even Thor Shots are more Descriptive than mechanical. Their effects are fact, per the fluff. To assume that they really did not mean what they wrote is ludicrous beyond compare. So, we must take it as fact. Have you ever considered that there should be no mechanical effect for what they describe (Much like there is no mechanical effect for what happens to anything within 200 meters of a Thor Shot... it just vaportizes everything in its initial radius, no saves, no rolls, no hope)? As such, per the actual rules (or fluff if you perfer) any person putting Cyberware on the Matrix is at risk of bricking, which is likely to kill them outright.

Thor Shots don't have a mechanic. Bricking does. One of the things that doesn't come with the bricking mechanic is damage. Therefore, bricking causes no damage. QED.

Wrong... Thor Shots DO have a Mechanical Effect beyond 200 meters. Within that radius, however, the effect is purely descriptive. Bricking has a a defined effect both in Fluff and mechanically on hardware. You cannot choose to ignore one for the other.

Bricking causes no damage. You'll need to find a page reference that says otherwise.

The description says otherwise.

Actually, strictly by the rules Bricking is caused by Matrix Damage, & the sparking & such is likely caused by an incorrect shutdown process or whatever other method is used to disable the device, so the order of operation is as such: Unmodified Cybergear > Cybergear takes Matrix Damage > Cybergear becomes Bricked & the fluff effects happen as a result of the cyber damage the item has taken.

No, the description says that it throws sparks or smokes or seizes up and stops working. It says nothing about causing damage to anyone or anything in, on, or around it. You might as well be saying that bricked guns explode and take your hand off. You have no mechanical basis for saying that cyberware necessarily causes damage when bricked, and the only plausible reason you'd ever think this is because you're looking for reasons to hate it more.

Thor shots do have a mechanical effect inside 200 metres. That effect is to destroy everything. That is the mechanic, not merely descriptive. Brivking, however, has no mechanic for csusing damage.

personally IMO if you ignore one portion of the fluff then you're looking to make something look better than it actually is, the most reasonable thing we can say right now is until the writer (or a proxy for him) comes onto the boards & says something to the extent of "Oops, I f'd up" or"No, my description is meant to have a mechanical effect, talk to the rule writer" no one in these 2 camps will agree on this point.

This is very true indeed...

The point here is that extra deleterious effects have to be spelled out. Otherwise, you should have to expect worse-than-listed effects of everything. Like a gunshot wound for less-than-incapacitating damage perforating the digestive tract, causing the victim to go into shock and later die of sepsis. Or the swing of a broom handle shattering a kneecap and making it so the character can no longer walk.

Bricked devices "fail spectacularly" but don't cause any extra damage. Whether it's sparks shooting out of your eyes, or lightning coursing over your skin from wired reflexes shorting out, or your implanted commlink smoking and singing your hair and dribbling melting plastic out of your ear, these things don't cause mechanical effects beyond just being bricked. Those effects would necessarily have to be spelled out to be included in a game.

And I disagree with you on that premise. Some things are just common sense, and fire shooting from your eyes because your Cybereyes just got bricked, resulting in it blinding you, and possibly killing you, is one of them (at a minimum, you will need new eyes). Brick someone's Wired Reflexes and that is death, plain and simple.

If your cyberware starts emitting smoke and sparks glaringly, especially eyes, you should suffer from Visibility and Glare Environmental Modifier as defined on page 175.

Then otherwise minor gunshots should potentially sever arteries or puncture lungs, short falls should twist ankles hampering movement, and eating all that soy junk food should have a random chance of causing a character to have a heart attack. It's just common sense.



Well if your cybereyes are bricked, you're not too worried about visibility modifiers.

But wired reflexes isn't a replacement of your nervous system. Its a bunch of wires overlaying your nerves that just so happen to also transmit data faster to boot. You can actually turn off your wired reflexes and a character doesn't just immediately die. You just want bricking ware to be so incredibly powerful and game breaking to help reinforce your dislike of the mechanic, but there is nothing to support that it is that way. Personally, I'd prefer it to work that way, because that sounds really cool. But currently the mechanics don't support your interpretation.

Fluff does not get to create new mechanics. Thr fluff on bricking should not say what it says (as it presently creates a false implication),
but that does not in any way change the bricking mechanics.

Except that you are wrong here because both you and I can cite chapter and verse where that would not apply.
Please talk to any 1st year Medical Student, though, and have them describe to you, in detail, what the outcome would be if your nervous system were to suddenly combust. I can guarantee you that it would not be pretty, and you would not survive it.

Gamist versus Simulationist, anyone?


-k

Fluff vs. Mecahnics...
If the Mechanics were never intended to simulate the Fluff, then the Fluff should never have been written the way it was. *shrug*

Again, it falls back on the Developers and the Haphazard way the book was put together.