You're in favor of an undocumented penalty in one case, and against an undocumented penalty in a different case. This is only evidence that you don't like the first case, not evidence that the undocumented penalty is in any way valid, much less your stated opinion of it being somehow required by the rules.

I think it has more to do with the Hollywood film effect. Just because a terminal explodes in front of the Hollywood Hacker, doesn't mean the Hacker dies. It just looks cool. And just because your head commlink just exploded doesn't mean your now brain dead, but it does mean you can't use that ware anymore. In the case of a bricked device, it is merely a cinematic way to display that you will not be using that piece of tech.

Shadowrun has always leaned more on the Hollywood side of reality. Why should bricking be any different?

OK, DeathStrobe, Wired Reflexes doesn't replace your nervous system, but the mechanical description of bricking (What the Devs WANT TO HAPPEN) shows that when a piece of gear gets bricked it throws off sparks and MELTS!

The melting point of plastic is about 100 to 130 C. Now you know water boils at 100 C, so you now have something that is as hot as boiling water NEXT TO YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM! I'm sorry, unless you're a mutant from Marvel comics who has some super power to prevent that from harming you, then you are dead.

And what 'ware are you asserting that would even be the case with? Certainly not wired reflexes, which exist in addition to your nervous system...

Because of the way they describe the Bricking Effect. I have no issues with your Cyberdeck exploding in a spray of melted bits and whatnot. BUT WHEN THOSE MELTED BITS COMPRISE YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM or 'ware within your SKULL, well, then I take issue with it.

And you get me wrong again Epicedion... it is not what I want (I am in fact arguing against that)... I am parroting back EXACTLY what the DEVELOPERS WANT to happen. As DESCRIBED IN THEIR OWN WORDS. If you want to take exception, take it up with them. See, the world works one way. And the only way to see the world is through the lens of the Fluff (and not the mechanics)... And the FLUFF says that if your Cyberware is bricked, well, they you are screwed six ways from Sunday. There is no other way to interpret what they wrote but in the worst light. Your Hardware MELTS, SHORTS OUT, OR OUTRIGHT EXPLODES. Having that happen in your body is lethal to the point of ludicrousness. And you telling me that mechanically it has no effect is just as ludicrous.

As I pointed out earlier. Being in the initial blast radius of a Thor Shot has no effect. The fluff tells you that you die (and everything else is vaporized), but absolutely no mechanics are presented. It is descriptive only. Other wise some enterprising player would point to the damage mechanics and say they could survive it through some questionable shenanigans. I see the same thing here.

You mean the Wired Reflexes that are Mapped along your nervous system, in parallel, augmenting the signals travelling along those paths, and which MELTS due to the heat and fire caused by the bricking. Tell me how you plan to survive that. How do you plan on actually doing anything with your nervous system now a literal cinder? Not to mention the Well Done steak that is now most of your insides?

Or maybe you are talking about the Cranial Cyberdeck that melts your Brain when it bricks... Or the Cybereyes, for that matter, which likely do the same thing. ANY Cyber will be ludicrously lethal when bricked, with the possible exception of limbs, which I contend will still be pretty damned damaging to the body. And let us not even speak about a bricked Air Tank in your body cavity... Tell me how you plan to survive an internal explosion at 2000 psi.

Just pointing out that it isn't happening to your CNS, just in proximity to it. In any case, that bit of fluff has no connection to the rules and should never have been written, and it's existence does not influence mechanics.

Actually what it says is: "Smoke, sparks, pops, bangs, sizzles, nasty smells, and occasionally even small fires are common features of a device in the process of becoming a brick."

Turning this into "explodes violently and spews shrapnel and hot metal throughout the inside of your body" is quite the stretch. You're reading it in the worst light because you want to.



So death isn't a mechanic? Interesting.



The description of Wired Reflexes doesn't mention anything about that. It does mention "adrenaline stimulators" and "neural boosters," whatever those are. You could easily say that the actual vulnerable part of the system is the controller -- the Reflex Trigger. At any rate, you're implying that the damage somehow makes wires explode, which is silly.



Because you say so, contrary to any rules on the matter. Because no cyberware is designed to fail in a non-fatal way. Again, because you say so.



And now you're saying that matrix damage can not only make wires explode, it can make steel or titanium alloy spontaneously rupture. You know, instead of destroying the tiny controller chip. Because that makes sense.

Man, common sense apparently suggests that everything with a wireless receiver is capable of blasting holes through everything and melting to the center of the earth. Amazing!

I agree it should never have been written. I do not agree that it should not have a say in what happens when an item is bricked, since what was written was EXACTLY what was intended to happen when an item is bricked. Its very existence informs the mechanics. And some things do not need mechanics. The effect of melting and burning Cyberware is one of them, since it WILL kill the person so afflicted.

Read your own Quote... Small fires are COMMON. Not never, not rarely, note even once in a while, but COMMON.



So, you tell me what happens when an oxygen tank burns. I bet you say that it explodes. One of the biggest reasons you are not supposed to put compressed containers into a fire. Sounds like "Violently Explodes" to me. *shrug*




Death is a descriptive. Nothing More.




You should read it again... Important Parts highlighted.



Neural Boosters throughout the body. What happens when all your Neural Boosters, throughout your body and tied into your CNS, all of a sudden combust? Oh wait... Death.




No, not because I say so, because the DEVELOPERS SAY SO. Again, read what they wrote...



So, regardless of how they were designed, devices that are bricked NEVER Fail in a non-spectacular way. So, no, cyberware does not fail non-spectacularly, PER THE DEVELOPERS OWN WORDS.



And again your statements are ludicrous. Never did I say such things. What I did say is that when hardware in your body burns, you burn along with it. NEVER will it be non-damaging, as you contend. Simple Common Sense.

So is "smells bad." How do you decide if the cyberware violently explodes, or just smells bad? Oh wait, there's no mechanic for it.



Yes, if you throw it into a blast furnace. Not if a chip that turns it on and off shorts out.



"Your character.. dies."
"But death is only a descriptive, so I'm going to keep doing stuff!"



And we're back to every bit of every piece of cyberware being made out of C4.. because you say so.



You know what they don't say? That bricked cyberware explodes in your body and turns you into a fine paste.



How many of those words say that cyberware explodes and kills you? None? Hmm.



Except there's no hint of a system to determine how much damage or any side-effects, which must mean you're overreacting.

How many of those words say that cyberware reaches temperatures high enough to cook you alive? All of them? Hmm.

Face it, you haven't got a leg to stand on. A chip in your head melts, your brain broils in its own fluids, you die. A-B-C.

100% agree. Your device ceases to function and you know that it has.

There are no rules besides essence holes to account for destroyed or removed cyberware. For example, if we take the nervous system fluff completely literally then you probably couldn't replace standard wired reflexed with delta-ware wired reflexes because the sections that are removed are probably of different size to the sections removed by the deltaware equivalent.

Why does a deltaware cyberarm cost less essence than a standardware cyberarm? It still replaces your whole arm! Then again, if I really wanted to I can justify it a multitude of ways. The point is that fluff is fluff, it just gives guideance for the roleplaying side of the game. That's why using realism to debate most points is mostly pointless.

First, it doesn't get to change the mechanics, PERIOD. Second, that is what happens when SOME items are bricked. Not when ALL times are bricked. What makes you so certain that 'ware fails in that manner? Any reasonable design for something like Wired Reflexes would include something to protect the user in case of catastrophic failure, similar in principle to a surge protector or to the shear pin on a boat motor - a part that needs to be replaced before you can use the item again, but that prevents a far, far, far more serious failure. It might smell like burnt silicon (which is not a good smell, let me tell you), you might feel the pop or hear the bang (and it would certainly be UNCOMFORTABLE) and so on, but more catastrophic failure like a freaking fire has been prevented. Hell, depending on how the failure occurs, this might be localized to a specific site that is near the skin, allowing for easy access and repair without requiring full surgery. Likely in the same place as a physical on/off switch and possible a physical wireless toggle might be.

Laughable... Would not a Cyberdeck also employ such a surge protection device? Again, the Mechanics you are so proud of do not synch with the Fluff. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. When all else fails, the Fluff is more true to the world than the mechanics are, and indicate what the world actually looks like. And where, pray tell, is this physical wireless switch located? And WHY is it near the skin? Looks to me like you are inventing things of your own, things that even the Fluff does not describe. You cannot have your cake and eat it too... Either the fluff is meaningless and should be ignored, or it informs the way the world works and should be paramount. It cannot be both.

As someone asked earlier... Do you argue from a Simulationist or a Gamist perspective? One is Fluff and the Other is Mechanics. You cannot tell me that having burning bits of electronics in your body cavity is a non-damaging effect. That is so completely ludicrous a position that I assume that even you do not believe it.

So, it comes down to how you read the book. On one hand, it burns, sparks, pops, smells funny and whatnot (per the developers description), and there is absolutely no effect whatsoever other than that. Or it has the listed descriptive effects, and has a commensurate deleterious effect on the structure to which it is attached. For most hardware, this is of very little consequence. For Cyberware, however, this deleterious effect causes harm to the organism to which it is attached. In many cases, this effect would result in death or serious bodily harm.

Are... are you trolling, now? You must be trolling. Your point flies squarely in the face of the given description, which states (as if it hasn't been quoted enough that we all know it by heart):
It doesn't say, "some devices," or "a few devices," or anything else along those lines. It says, "devices;" implicitly, all devices. What makes us so certain that 'ware fails in this manner? The book says so. It says so explicitly: Your postulation of reasonable design features shows you have a good handle on basic design philosophy... and is flatly contradicted by the book: All devices, when bricked, fail in the manner described, precluding the existence of any of those perfectly reasonable precautions. Once again, bricking cyberware relies on the assumption that the Sixth World is populated exclusively by people who are stupid and bad at their jobs, which in turn directly contradicts 20+ years of prior characterization.

This does not make sense. There is no rationalization you can apply which will cause it to make sense.

As a House Rule, we changed the fluff. We removed the popping, smoking and burning and replaced it with a firmware damage. This falls in line with the mechanical description and also explains why it doesn't cost money in replacement parts to repair. You have to correct or rebuild the damaged firmware (thus using Hardware rather than Software skill, though software skill would be more appropriate we didn't want to change the mechanics of the game in this respect).

A cyberdeck might just have that (any time the combination of likelihood of such failure and severity of such failure is high enough, such a thing should be there). Fluff does not create mechanics, PERIOD. Physical switches were a thing in SR4, and they would HAVE to be near the skin because you're supposed to hit them with your damn hand.

In any case, I'm disappointed that you can't see the false dichotomy you're presenting. It's not "either fluff is meaningless or it informs the way the world works" - simply put, fluff informs the way the world works but it does not have primacy over mechanics, and thus where they conflict mechanics take precedent (and a mistake has been made).

In any case, I'm telling you that burning bits of electronics may happen for things outside of the body, but it doesn't happen for things inside the body.

And no, it doesn't come down to how you read the book - it comes down to reading a passage to say something it doesn't. That passage says that those things are possible, not that they are what happens in all cases. Why MUST 'ware be a case where things like burning happen?

No one is suggesting it is only ware, its just that a bricked gun that sizzles can be dropped as a basic necessity, the passage in question says that it ALWAYS fails spectacularly, I expect guns to sizzle & crackle, minor explosions here & there depending on what is bricked. I guess it depends on what a Spectacular fail is to each person.

Yeah that's how I will run it if my group goes the 5th ed route. I was listening to the critical glitch pod cast on the matrix the other day and they were talking about hacking cyberware. Pretty much from what I understand as they explain it its the Decker going in and messing with the firmware/OS of the system and turning off the bonuses so it doesn't know how to properly operate. As this has been thrown around I think it comes down to poor wording and such, they could of left out the small fires and sparks bit.

But to be clear, what it doesn't say is that all of those things happen all of the time. That the more problematic things don't happen for ware is reasonable to say, and in the fact that there are no rules for such things points to that as well.

with no concrete rules there is NO WAY to to determine what happens, just that ANY & ALL devices that get bricked, fail spectacularly, this is ultimately GM Fiat. No one is wrong, no one is right, hence why I said upthread that until the writer or a proxy for that writer tells us their intent it is more or less pointless to argue or discuss it, everyone should do what they want, whatever makes their game run best for their table. I just personally think with such a glaring contradiction someone should come & Dispel this problem (even an unofficial, official errata by the writer would be nice)

Fair, but I'll just say that intentionally resolving a grey area in a way you think is terrible makes absolutely no sense.

I just wanted to pick up on this post because it has been quoted as 'small fires are common', where as in context it actually says smoke, sparks, pops, bangs, sizzles and nasty smells are common, while small fires are occasional. The quote should be read as "These effects (Smoke, sparks, pops, bangs, sizzles, nasty smells, and occasionally even small fires) are common features of a device in the process of becoming a brick."


Also, common sense has been mentioned a lot in this thread, but not a lot has been applied. As someone who works in IT I have seen more than my fair share of bricked devices. Laptops, desktops, projectors, phones. I have a bunch in my office right now. In all my life I've only ever seen one device that had the risk of a small fire, and that was when the power controller on a motherboard broke and cooked the GPU. THAT smoked, smelled and would have started to burn if we hadn't switched it off. Most bricked computers just plain don't turn on anymore, or don't put out a picture. Projectors (devices that run hot, and require a lot of cooling) almost always start to smell but are designed to turn off if they overheat. I'd imagine internal cyberware doesn't run hot, as their isn't a lot of cooling available.

Needless to say, no device I have worked with has ever exploded.

Thanks for putting a bit of reason back into this thread.

I'm definitely NOT happy with the bricking rules and personally would prefer the default outcome a number of fuses needing replacement (which could even be an incentive to learn cybertechnology in order to self repair in the field) and RARELY serious hardware damage (basically for stuff where a surge protection is not reasonable, be it due to cost or miniaturization requirements). The 'spectacular effect' for my wired reflexes shutting down could be a blinky system alert in my image link, similar to what my car does when it demands i take it to maintenance.

The life threatening consequences projected here are IMO way too far reaching, EVEN for the poor implementation in RAW. Unless of course, the piece of 'ware being bricked is specifically keeping you alive, for example a pacemaker.

EDIT:
Regardless of the question if bricking could be salvaged into a workable rule, I still maintain that the vast majority of wireless bonuses/requirements are absolute crap, especially for cyberware.

You're being a very selective literalist.

Those -are- the mechanics. That is literally every single word written about bricking in SR5. 'Preventing a more catastrophic failure' is purely against the express intent of the written rules, which state that all such failures -are- catastrophic.

In short, it's a terribly written bit of rule, but those are the rules as written.

False. The rules are silent on the subject, and the rules state that all failures are spectacular, which is not remotely the same as catastrophic. See: They don't say fires happen in all cases, but that they are part of a list that covers most cases.

That bit of fluff should not exist, but it doesn't mean that you're suddenly taking damage when no rules for such a thing occurring, and for that matter that isn't even the only possibility the fluff creates, because the "spectacular failure" can happen in other ways.

As I indicated earlier, this entire issue is a debate between the importance of the fluff vs. the rules. The way the Bricking crap has been written in the official texts, the fluff description lists a variety of common forms of catastrophic failure that result from the given mechanical item falling victim to "Bricking". As described, no level of regular logical thought on the matter should be able to conclude that it shouldn't most likely be AT LEAST VERY uncomfortable to someone, if they happen inside of that individual's body. Having any serious level of Voltage and Amps run rampant throughout your body is neither healthy nor comfortable in the real world. Try holding your hand inside a flame, or dip any part of your body in molten plastic and tell me that it isn't going to cause you any form of damage, and then imagine that this shit is happening INSIDE your body, or even your brain, and tell me that your regular common sense doesn't tell you that something like that happening inside your body will not cause at least severe discomfort, and that death couldn't be at least a possible consequence.

In terms of the rules, however, there are no descriptions of what happens at the Game Mechanical level to a victim of Bricking. Or rather, there is, but the thing is that the consequences of potentially having i.e. a commlink inside your brain cease to function, and give off sparks, leak electricity into your brain, along with smoke from overheated components and melted plastic, simply doesn't make sense on any level of common sense, as all it will take to fix this damage, is a couple of hours with a "mechanic", who won't even need to crack open your skull to get direct access to the blown fuses and whatever other damage has happened to the ruined 'ware. Also, as the mechanical rules go, having molten plastic run around inside your body/brain apparently isn't harmful or even unpleasant enough to cause any level of distraction in the mechanical sense.

Now, I'm willing to accept that we can come up with a variety of alternative descriptions that will make the fluff and the mechanics line up. But as the official rules are written for the moment, this simply isn't the case.

And so we are back to the fluff vs. mechanics argument. Having played a variety of roleplaying and tabletop games since around 1989, I'll put my head on the block and claim that:
A) Many players care more about having the fluff and the rules line up, than the designers/writers.
B) Game balance is less important than being able to make the product sell.
C) In terms of the game, the described mechanical rules trumphs the describing fluff. Especially if you argue based on the RAW point of view.

As much as I generally respect people on these boards, I have to say that based on RAW, it's pretty damned difficult argue that Bricking causes damage to a character, even if I too agree that based on the fluff description, Bricking implanted electronics should at least impose some level of negative modifiers to the character (and not just cause the elimination of the bonusses from the bricked gear), and in some cases they should cause a fatality. But as much as I hate to say it, the mechanical rules do not support that interpretation, and thus we are left with the current idiotic situation where the fluff describes truely catastrophic damage that typically reduce electrical equipment to non-functional pieces of hard to repair crap, and the mechanical rules that say that all you really need after having something bricked, is to "visit someone with a screwdriver" for some light repairwork...even if the bricked gear is located inside your body and really should require something comparable with open heart surgery. Now until we either get the writer and rule designer to show up on the board and clarrify what they actually intended when they wrote this stuff, we are stuck with dealing with the mechanical rules, and curse, bitch, whine, and moan about the fluff descriptions, which don't line up with the mechanics on any level. To some of us this is no big deal. To others of us, this is a god damned clusterf*ck that detracts severely from the enjoyment of the game.

/Kyrel

A thought just occured to me. If the "Bricked" state happens once the gear has taken matrix damage equal to or beyond it's matrix "damage boxes", why not, as a house rule, simply let "overflow" damage done to the gear cause physical boxes of damage on a person with the gear implanted. Thus if your gear has 4 boxes of matrix damage left, and it takes 6 boxes worth of damage, the thing is bricked, and the character takes 6-4=2 boxes worth of physical damage due to whatever form the described "spectacular" damage to the equipment takes.

Oh, it would certainly be noticed no matter what. The point of argument here, though, is that the passage to which you refer does not in any way state or imply that all of those things happen in all circumstances. Ergo, it is logical to infer that only some of those things happen in any given circumstance. It is not unreasonable to suggest that in the circumstance that the bricked item is an implant, the things that would potentially damage a person do not happen due to designed failure paths being in place to prevent that.



Because a bricked device should not directly damage the user. A bricked vehicle might, or bricking something in the presence of a gas leak might, but otherwise no.

Frankly, bricking isn't the sort of risk I'd like to see in the first place, but the system I'd prefer is a lot more complicated to balance.

This is really one of those things that can be debated ad nauseam, right up until the designers tells us what the "truth" is. Arguably you are right RHat. What can be argued to suggest other wise, is that every example the writers/designers have given, would likely be pretty damned bad, if they happened inside someone's body. Also, it is, as I recall, specified that the failure always is "spectacular" in some way. My interpretation of that word would normally mean that you get some form of more or less visually impressive effect. Having an internal fuse burn out, having a few LED's shut down, and/or having a failure notice show up in your AR window, or as a text message on your Commlink, would not exactly be "spectacular".



"Because a bricked device shouldn't damage the user" is your oppinion. It's quite valid, but it's your subjective oppinion, even if RAW the designers apparently agreed with your view on that issue (even if the fluff writers possibly didn't).

As such I'm not opposed to the theoretical posibility of hacking someone's cyberware, but for me the ability for security conscious professionals to avoid that kind of hazard, is a key issue. That, and a decent correlation between the fluff and the game mechanics. If the fluff specifies that a device that is bricked "blow up" in some sort of potentially dangerous manner, I'll want that potential consequence to be present within the rules. But that's my oppinion.

/Kyrel

I agree that Bricking is poorly done and not what I would like. I am curious, though. What would you LIKE to see? Complicated makes no never mind to me.

In short, my ideal system is one where the options after compromising a device are listed after its wireless bonus, allowing for a more nuanced system overall (such that rather than simply destroying someone's eyes, you instead can explicitly send false images and the like, or if you get into their wires you can cause them to zig when they should have zagged so to speak - but given strict and defined mechanical weight), which would then allow for the severity of the effect to be modulated right alongside the strength of the bonus; this would make it rather easy to have a system where your wireless bonuses are worth it because in designing it you simply have to consider whether players will find Bonus X to be worth risking a hacker getting access to Actions A, B, and C. Wireless bonuses that are actually worth the risk and an interesting system that gives the hacker cool things to do, all at once - and it lets the hacker actually be subtle about it if he wants.

Interesting... though wouldn't just throwing a few Marks on a device give you the access to screw with it in interesting ways? Which works now, from the way I read it.
And yes, I would like to see actual Wireless Bonuses that mattered.

What I think is kind of humorous about all this is that my gut feeling is that the spectacular failure rule was probably simply written because whoever wrote it decided that if ware fails the user should know, as opposed to the GM being like, "Oh, this guys wired reflexes failed, but he doesn't know till he moves slowly in the next firefight, ha ha ha."

And then they never thought it through to the extent that it has been argued here.

And see that is the weird part, certainly this should have come up in the playtesting with the various groups during development.

Yet the impression one gets from the few comments handed down is they don't see it as an issue, or even a possible issue with one going into long detail of how it all worked, only to have to retract and backtrack when they realized that what they thought the system was wasn't what the final cut was.

Perhaps they simply invoked the TJ Fallacy and the playgroups just never brought up or were exposed to situations where this would have been relevant/noticeable.

>>I just realised that T.J. and not RHat posed the question my comment below is answering, and which I initially thought was meant for me *LOL* Now I know I'm getting tired<<


What would I like to see RHat >>should have read T.J.<<? Good question really, because I'm sort of divided on the issue. On the one hand, I don't mind that a skilled hacker might have the possibility to spoof/hack a piece of cyberware, if the victim haven't made sure to take steps to prevent it. But on the other hand, being able to screw up potentially lifecritical systems implanted into someone's body from affar. Especially if said equipment really shouldn't have ANY need at all of being accessible at a distance, rubs me the wrong way.

I can see the possibilities that could be in allowing a hacker to shut down a pair of cybereyes or take over a limb, or something to that effect. but I can also see a couple of challenges with such possibilities, depending on exactly how you implement those options. Things can quickly get either very fiddly on the game mechanical level, or it will end up being left very much up to the GM to decide what will be possible to get away with or not. Both paths present it's own set of challenges and criticism. Though it might make perfect sense, for a hacker to be able to utterly cripple a street sam with significant amounts of chrome, another question in this regard is also whether it is fun to be on the receiving end of, as a player. It might sound cool on paper when a hacker takes over the body of a street sam and turn him aginst his colleagues, but just as it isn't much fun to have your character be on the receiving end of a mind control spell, would it really be fun to have a security spider shut down the effects of ½mil. worth of 'ware, or take over your character and have him/her start blasting away at your fellow PC's? That I'm not so convinced of.

Then you have the issue of believability, which I find somewhat important. Though I'd like the cinematic effect of Bricking that's been described in the fluff of 5th ed., if I was watching a movie, I have to ask the question of whether I really believe that it should be possible to cause this level of damage to a given piece of gear, simply by hacking it. You could say that if you remove various software safeguards and the like, why shouldn't a particular piece of gear be able to destroy itself in a spectacular manner? The reason, IMO, is design. If you are designing a piece of gear that is going to be implanted into someone's body, I can't really envision that you will design it so that a simple software hack will be able to cause it to destroy itself. Safeguards etc. won't simply be a matter of software settings and coding, it will also be a matter of circuit design, fuses, over voltage protection, over temperature protection, short circuit protection etc. There will be safeguards and back-up systems, especially on systems where you could have potentially fatal consequences of a failure. And in a world where stuff can be hacked in a matter of seconds, regardless of which level of security you've tried to install, the importance of hardware security design that can't be bypassed or turned off, without physically getting your hand on the thing, will be even more important.

I know it might sound like a double standard, seen in light of my earlier criticism, but based on this view, if you want hackable 'ware, 5th ed. actually does it OK with it's mechanical effects, even if it screws up on the coordination of the fluff and mechanics. Effectively you get the option of turning some stuff off, or leaving it on. The gear isn't damaged as such, but it might require a hard reset or something, but it's an easy fix once you are out of combat. But again. If your character has spend ½mil. on various types of 'ware, will it really be any fun to have these abilities taken away at the drop of a hat? Would it be any more fun than it would be to take away a mage's ability to use magic, or a hacker's ability to hack anything and access the matrix at all?

In some situations it might make sense to allow a competent hacker to download diagnostics data or something, or he might be able to hack into the video feed from the sam's cybereyes, or his audio feed from the cyberears. But where do you draw the line?

If I'm going to conclude something on the above, I'll say that I wouldn't be complaining if it was possible for a competent hacker to hack cyberware, if the owner hadn't made sure to take steps to protect himself from such an act. In this respect I actually believe that 4a hit it OK. I'd probably leave the exact options on what you could do, if you managed to hack the cyberware, fairly open, allowing for player creativity and GM moderation. I'd make sure to include some examples of what could be done, in order to provide a decent picture of the "power level" of what a hacker could creadibly get away with. I'd probably want the options to be more of a short term/spoof level temporary effect, rather than causing real damage to the gear, and I'd probably also want to prevent actual sustained "remote control" of gear and thereby the owner. Dropping your gun or throwing off your aim or something is OK, but becoming a puppet is problematic for the same reason that Control Actions/Mind etc. is.

If it should be decided that it should be possible to get 'ware to fail in the spectacular manner described in 5th ed., then I'd insist on having such damage cause potentially severe damage to the owner of the 'ware. And I'd probably still insist that the fluff description be changed a bit, so as to not make it sound so clear to regular common sense, that having various forms of 'ware fail in a spectacular manner, would obviously be fatal.
Hope that makes some sense, I'm getting tired.

/Kyrel

The great thing about fluff (unfortunately not in this case) is that it is subjective. Unless it says cyberware causes "X physical damage based on essence cost" when bricked then you're just making up whatever the effect is.

You should draw the conclusion then that if you're interpretting it a certain way and that makes you belief that the bricking rules are to harsh, then perhaps you are interpretting the fluff incorrectly.

I'd also still like to know why a deltaware cyberarm taking only 0.5 essence instead of the usual 1 doesn't destroy the fabric of the universe?

Only insofar as you can convince your GM an existing Matrix Action covers it, which really does limit your options at the best of times (using existing Matrix Actions, I don't see what you're gonna do to wires) - and when I approach tabletop games, I take a certain design philosophy that holds that you take as much of that load as possible off the GM; it's not his job to fill the holes in your system, he's just the poor bastard who gets stuck doing it if it needs done.

In any case, giving WR something like a Sensor-based bonus to defense tests that is determined based on the sensors you have access to, possibly capped by the Data Processing of the node it's routing through (essentially using powerful and advanced predictive algorithms to process reflexive action based on more than what you can yourself perceive). IF someone was using this wireless bonus, a hacker would than be able to force a corrupted signal through to create some specific effect upon the person with the wires (such as forcing them out of cover, imposing a penalty upon all tests for a Combat turn, an effect similar to the Accident power...). At that point, you could even start to give some items more than one wireless bonus, with each one opening up different options for the hacker.

The complication entailed here is that to figure out what you can do with the device you just found, either the GM has to have those actions listed in his notes or you have to look it up. Of course, you could have a super-set of actions that covered for various types of wireless bonuses, such as a Corrupt Signal action that could apply to any Signal wireless bonus (basically, any bonus that is based on a specific signal from Points A through Y to Point Z) to make things a little simpler.

SR playtesting has always been weak. When it was done at all. It usually wasn't done at all.

We don't actually know, of course, because nowhere in the book do the writers actually talk about bricking cyberware.

The section under bricking reads as if it is specifically applying to handheld devices such as commlinks and guns. So do the repair rules, as it is absurd to assume that implanted cybernetics, many of which have components that are not accessible without cybersurgery, are fixable with a simple toolkit and an hour of fiddling.

Yeah, one gets the impression that the developers didn't think about the possibility of remotely attacking cyberware, even though they made cyberware wireless by default.

Have you read the first SR5 Missons adventure?

I actually figured that new cyber has external panels you can access to fiddle around with their insides.

Like Data from Star Trek
http://star-trek-world.info/stw/galerie/3/4/Data_brain01.jpg

This way it makes the repairs quick and easy without having to go under the knife every time your headdeck explodes.

This doesn't prove much except that some schmoes who are writing content can have varying opinions, just like players.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that take place in the CZ, where you're pretty much never going to be able to get your bonuses due to Noise anyways? Under that circumstance, there is literally no reason to have wireless going.

Last I checked, Noise really only affects Matrix actions and tests. Not the wireless bonuses themselves.

Unless if I'm mis-remembering...

Noise in excess of DR denies wireless bonuses.

Personally, I would have made it EASIER to 'brick', or hijack, or otherwise mess with equipment (as in a complex action to pull it off), but have the equipment recover automatically in a few passes as it reboots and restores from backup. If the afflicted user wants his gear back online faster, he can spent actions to do so.



-k