Huzzah! A good, old fashioned rules question thread. These I can do. How wormholes work with time travel, or if moving through one counts as going super-luminal, not so much.

Timblewith wrote:

1. When a puppet sock is put in to a smart rope system, designed for bondage fetishes, and wired to work (GM allowed it because we can't find if it wouldn't be allowed rule wise and our argument made sense) what would be the stats on said rope so that our infomorph could pilot it, and what would you use to control it.

So you would probably be using Electronic Rope from page 332 of the Core rulebook, which unfortunately doesn’t really have a statistic block to go along with it. So; It is safe to say that you can either Remote Control or Jam it, because otherwise it is a bit difficult to use. If you want, it might be easier to only allow Direct Control. So you would use all the rules on page 197 Core for doing that. As for a statistic block; Electronic Rope Movement Rate Max Velocity Armor Durability Wound Threshold Mobility System 2/8 8 2/2 50 4 Snake Cannot be implanted with a Cyberbrain. Slot it with a standard Device AI (Which I tend to say come standard with most gear anyway). Tying someone up is probably a Touch Unarmed Attack, and then breaking out of them would just be hitting them over and over again until they break (Which would not be long at all).

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2. What are the rules for infomorph combat? No really, we had our pc infomorph try to take over a plane that was controlled by a npc infomorph and he was attempting to delete said infomorph. How do you do this? We don't want to entrap them, we want them gone!

I will point you towards the general rules for Hacking. In your example, your PC Infomorph would first have to hack into the planes electronic systems, while the NPC would be actively defending against that. To delete the infomorph from the system they would probably need to get themselves an Admin account, and then they would need to run a Crashing Software test, detailed on page 260 Core. That would force the AGI to reboot (taking 3 action turns), during which time the hacker (your PC) can quite simply stop the program from running with what is probably a Hard (-30) subversion check. Once you have done that, hey presto, you have an idle Ego that you can play about with.

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3.What are you allowed to put a puppet sock on in fact....we're not quite sure what the limits are considering how electronic things are in most cases. Do you have to have cyberbrain?

Most devices you would not need to add a puppet sock. Puppet socks are made specifically for controlling Pods and Biomorphs. They essentially make those morphs electronic devices when trying to control them. Basically, you can stick them things with brains, anything else you do not really need to.

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4.How much damage does it take to remove limbs? Or just what are the rules on removal of limbs/decapitation/castration? And i do mean in both a ranged and a brute force close combat thing?

For anything that will not straight out kill the Morph, its down to the GM. Taking limbs off? If you are hit by a shot from someone and it does so much damage that the GM thinks that having a limb removed is appropriate (3 Wounds, or something like that, a lot of damage) then the limb is removed and that morph is at a large negative modifier whenever they perform an action that benefited from that limb. Castration? Erm... Do you really need rules for that? Isn't that kind of something that is controlled in the narrative? “I want to castrate this guy, and I already have him held down” “OK, he takes 2d10 damage and you castrate him, hurrah?”. Decapitation? That would normally kill a guy, so should be reserved for when the killing blow to a morph is made. EP Combat is narrative, not simulationist (Is that a word?). It is up to the GM in most occasions. HOWEVER, I am working on some hit location rules that will be put up in the homebrew section soon. My HDD crash deleted them and I haven’t rewritten them from my notes yet.

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5.If you have another morph's corpse on you, sorry the Nova crab was carrying it, and damage hits you in an appropriate area, how do you work out the damage? Does the other morph take it? Does the target take it? And what armor would apply?

Did the person damaging you roll to hit you and succeed? Then he hits you, not the corpse. Did he miss? Well then the GM might advocate that it hit the corpse instead, and in such a way that it didn’t damage you at all. If you are using the corpse as cover (gaining a modifier for it) then if he hits, he still only damages you, and ignored the corpse. If he misses, well then its more likely that he hit the corpse, but that’s down to the GM. Again, EP combat is narrative, roll with the punches.

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6. What are the rules on modifying existing morphs with other morph parts? Slitheroid Nova Crab anyone

If your GM allows it, just add a new mobility system as per the robotic implants on page 310 Core. Technically they are supposed to only be for Synthmorphs or Robots, but as a GM I sometimes like letting BioMorphs add them.

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7. Is there extra damage from using a rocket pack to boost your charge?

As in boosting towards them and whacking them over the head with a club? Or boosting towards them and straight out crashing into them? If its the first, your GM might want to give a bonus to damage, something small like +5 is appropriate. If its the latter, then you follow the rules on page 196 for Collisions. And if you are using a Rocket Pack, you are probably going to be moving at Chase Speeds, so there is going to be a fair amount of damage inflicted to you both.

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8. Grappling? How do we do this? What are these rules?

Subdual combat, page 204 Core.

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9. How difficult is it to dislodge a sticky grenade? Can you spontaniously change it from being sticky to non sticky?

Quite difficult, they use super Space Age glue. If the glue is electronically controlled (Which it could be), then yes, you could change it from sticky to non sticky. But you would first need to find the grenades signal (Which is going to be hidden), fast hack into it, subvert its onboard (very weak) AI and force it to do so. And you probably aren’t going to have enough time to do that...

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10. Tactical networks....two of us have them, can the third member of our party be brought in to it without having the software? What are their benefits if they can?

As long as the user has a direct realtime link into your VPN, and is sharing all of their data to you, then yes, they can get all the benefits of a Combat Tacnet. You only really need one per team, but my group had the hacker break the security controls and share it with everyone else, in case they were ever left by themselves and needed some support. A note; EP combat probably involves opposing hackers trying to break into each others VPNs. You might wanna try it, it can be a fun distraction for the group hacker if they are not good at the shooting stuff.

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11. What weapons work in a vacuum? Specificly seeker weapons? We're pretty sure they can but we want to make sure.

I would say Seeker weapons could, however if your GM wants to you might need specialized versions (Like you do with some Vacuum and Atmospheric beam weapons).

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12. If a character with a ghostrider module with an AGI in it has cyberware brain upgrades, do both characters benefit? E.G. Our mechanic has multitasking, our infomorph doesnt, does he benefit if he ghostrides in the mechanic?

This is down to GM fiat, however I would say that both characters can access the implants, but not both at the same time. Only one of them could get the Multitasking benefit in a single action turn. Note, action turn, not action phase.

Hi there! Granny novacrab here (Tapti Singh). I just wanted to add some additional details. For the issue relating to using other morphs as a shield, I was using a heavy combat Slitheroid as a shield against the explosion of a plasma grenade of some sort. There were actually two explosions: one of them was a seeker missile being fired at a door (we were emptying the other room of oxygen and the bad guys attempted to blast a hole in the door to get some air back), and the second explosion was a plasma grenade that was thrown into the other room to do away with said bad guys. I was no longer standing in the door, but there was some splash damage. I ended up taking half of the usual damage, but we were wondering if anyone had some more precise rules in this regard. For the dismemberment, I grappled and then ripped off the limbs and head of the previously mentioned heavy combat slitheroid. This seemed to be too easy and we were worried that we'd done something wrong (I think I just made a very effective morph for grapple combat, to be completely honest). My character was expressly trying to rip off the arms and head of the slitheroid while in a grapple, and there didn't seem to be anything in the rules to indicate what the appropriate roll/modifiers would be in this situation. I use hand/claw lasers as well as grappling, and lasers seem like an excellent tool for dismemberment. Would this be a called shot sort of situation? I think that, in general, some more detailed guidelines on grenade and explosion damage would be very much appreciated by our group. Also, I foresee my character doing additional decapitations and dismemberments and my mind would be put at ease to know that I'm adhering to the appropriate rules. Thanks very much for reading our thread and enjoy your respective games! P.S. Oh yes, and for the record my rubber booties don't squeak.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Here's a question that's been bugging me: Why is it that a ghostrider module hosting an infomorph can allow aptitude maximums of 40, while a cyberbrain (ostensibly larger) can only host 30 on a standard synthmorph? Would it be possible to figure out a mod that would allow a standard synth to achieve the posthuman limits of a Remade?

Because it imposes limits on the actualisation of that level of ability due to the limits of its hardware. If you want to improve the limits on its aptitudes, use the rules for giving morphs positive traits to give it the trait that increases the aptitude maximum by ten; you'll have taken it for your ego to increase your aptitudes past 30 to begin with in any case.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

But, see, that's the thing that bugs me. As an infomorph, I could buy a synthmorph, fit it with a ghostrider module that's hardwired into the puppetsock, and jam the synth. I can fit the synth with a simple AI, like a Muse or Kaos AI, that follows my instructions when I'm not using the body so I can sort of set it on autopilot. At that point, for all intents and purposes, I am sleeved in this morph but still enjoy Infomorph maximums (as well as the ability to transfer to new devices rapidly without fear of resleeving issues).

Note that most synthmorphs have aptitude maximums of 30+. This means that they limit you compared to infomorph existence only if a) you have the exceptional aptitude trait and b) you have pushed your trait beyond 30 and c) the synthmorph does not have the exceptional aptitude trait itself. On the other hand, most synthmorphs are giving you bonuses that the naked informorph does not get. Finally, there's some social issue at work here: being in a synth body is bad enough, being *outside*it* ... I can see it done, but generally, people will shy away from it for same reason they snub virtual spaces (even though you can get so much more luxury there for the same price as the "real world").