QUOTE (Lionesque @ Apr 27 2022, 08:56 PM)
Why, and not least, HOW, would a character with an INT of 1 come up with the cash, the idea, and the desire and ability to have a Pain Editor installed?
If this was more asking for an in-character rationalisation, I suppose it's the same question as "would anyone living in the racist, terrorist capital of dystopia justifiably require long-term pain management?" and I suspect the answer to that is, yes. For sure, augmentation is way out of the budget of most civilians as per AH:
QUOTE (Ancient History @ Apr 16 2005, 06:51 PM)
Your average person won't have a lot of cyberware.
That sounds like a profound statement of the blindingly obvious, but consider it for a moment. For an average household, a piece of completely legal cyberware can consume most of the yearly budget, even on an installment plan.
however we can easily imagine that the school coach who privately celebrates The Night Of Rage conveniently can't find a helmet for a trog on the ice hockey team, the school gets sued for negligence, and the payout covers a Pain Editor. Or how about, parents get frustrated with their kid asking about justice and wanting to protest about poverty and inequality so they absolutely insist that the kid go out on National Youth Terrorism Acceptance Night (31st October) and roam the streets with a bunch of strangers all concealed in masks, vandalising other people's property, emotionally blackmailing them with "trick or treat" that unless they get rewarded for their threats, they will perform acts of terrorism designed to inure them against questioning the acts of terrorism they see their government performing on the world stage. It's not unheard of for property owners to defend their assets against such trespassing antagonists with whatever dissuasion seems necessary this year, and inevitably the criminals get injured. "But they're innocent children just having a bit of harmless fun, just like when our tanks steamroll over civilians near oil fields or when we decimate sacred forests to build a factory it's all just a bit of harmless fun!" and so on and so on, the parents protest on so-called "social media" and start up an online campaign ranting at people who defend their property against juvenile delinquents and the donations flood in and sponsorship funds a Pain Editor.
When thinking about such things, one must always start from Premise Zero which is that everybody is mad. From that point, you can usually reason in any direction and discover that the ludicrous scenarios you just dreamt up have striking resemblance to some report in the news or some trope in fiction.
QUOTE (Cochise @ Apr 30 2022, 02:46 PM)
... for as long as the implant is active and there's no RAW way of deactivating it besides an implant removal.
That was my concern! Although I do like Kren's suggestion of them thrashing around in a seizure until some random spasm fires the reflex that deactivates the implant. Perhaps set this a base time of Essence hours, divided by number of successes on a Karma Pool test against some TN (4 maybe).
QUOTE (Cochise @ Apr 30 2022, 02:46 PM)
The first RAW precedence (the "Decrease Attribute" spells) would indicate that upon lowering one of the "mental" attributes to zero
A salient difference I believe in this case though is that bioware results in a natural, unaugmented attribute rating (M&M.77) (of zero, in this case). Similarly, "Note that the Attribute increases a physical adept receives [...] are treated as natural, not augmented, ratings." (SR3.41)
In contrast, "Care must be taken to distinguish between natural, unmodified Attribute Ratings and those augmented by cyberware and magic." (SR3.41) "Any changes to these Attributes from spells or cyberware will result in ratings known as augmented Attributes. Augmented Attribute Ratings are noted in parentheses after the natural Attribute Rating." (SR3.56) so I believe that the Increase/Decrease Attribute spells would cause an
augmented attribute rating of zero. There may not be a huge functional difference between (bioware and Adept powers giving unaugmented ratings) and (spells or cyberware giving augmented ratings) but it seems to me that the augmentated ratings are sort of one step further away from the natural state (like the benefits conferred by a drug) whereas unaugmented ratings are more integral.
I hadn't even considered the ghoul case. Good one! I had thought the character might effectively become just a cactus capable of acting as an organ donor that would never regain sapience (the beasties in Critters list Int of higher than that) but yes, a ghoul does set something of a precedent. So if we Cultured a Pain Editor to match the physiology of a ghoul with Cha 0 and Int 1, we could end up with two mental attributes at natural, unaugmented ratings of zero.
QUOTE (Cochise @ Apr 30 2022, 02:46 PM)
Personally I would rule that in this particular situation the implant user should go into a form of "insane" berserk mode since pain is no longer a concern and with INT of 0 there's no real consideration for self-preservation in terms of potential self-harm but at the same time the basic "will to survive" (that happens to be increased by the implant) being at the forefront of whatever is going on in their mind => I'd have them literally attack their environment and fight till until they die or somebody finds a way to restrain them (and possibly find a way to deactivate the implant).
That seems apt, and quite viable for Kren's concept NPC. Were this a piece of cyberware impeding their Intelligence, jamming into their datajack might give you a chance of shutting it off. Likewise, if it were a spell, pushing them through a ward or into your buddy's shamanic lodge should dislodge it. But as bioware... it's pretty tricky to defeat.
QUOTE (Cochise @ Apr 30 2022, 02:46 PM)
Ignoring further special cases where a character still might have dice for perception tests form other sources: automatically failing perception tests is only a drawback on situations that actually require a perception test.
I imagine activating the implant being like tunnel vision that takes up 1/Int of the radius of your visual field. It's just that when you only start with Intelligence 1, that "tunnel vision" occupies all of your visual field and you're "seeing red" in your feral haze. If fog and mist and smoke and dim light impose enough potential for perception modifiers that a Perception test can be called for, a Perception test could be called for for someone experiencing such a state.
You're rampaging! Make a Perception check to run through the door, or to claw your opponent, or make it down the steps without falling, or to recognise that you've been tearing laps around this same room for the past five minutes. The TN is only 2 and you just need 1 success. Hmm... you don't notice, and you keep going...