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Multiple multiple personalities?

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Sun, 2011-02-27 17:34
#1
DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture
Multiple multiple personalities?
One transhuman character concept I came up with a while ago seems to translate fairly well into EP - but I'm a still little fuzzy on EP's mechanics. Simply, it's an AGI with four or five fairly separate subminds, each with a particular personality and nearly full sapience individually. I /think/ that EP's mechanics for the Multiple Personalities augmentation are a close match for the idea... but it would require MP to be taken three or four times. Can that be done, or should I be looking at some other way to build this?
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Mon, 2011-02-28 06:19
crizh crizh's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
Yes. The implant does not have any proscription on it's benefits stacking, however the main mechanical benefit is moot. Even three or four extra Complex 'Mental' Actions per 'turn' are no match for Multitasking or Mental Speed combined with high Speed. I've been playing a character like this for a while and I mostly just wing the game effects. Her primary shtick is having four Egos that she can swap between as needed.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 10:04
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
Is there a thread about Multitasking, by the way? It doesn't make sense to me. The crunch is '+1 mental action', but the fluff is very explicitly 'create a whole secondary infomorph PC'. An extra PC can do a hell of a lot more than one extra mental action, I feel like.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 11:44
root root's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
root@Multiple multiple personalities [hr]
Yerameyahu wrote:
Is there a thread about Multitasking, by the way? It doesn't make sense to me. The crunch is '+1 mental action', but the fluff is very explicitly 'create a whole secondary infomorph PC'. An extra PC can do a hell of a lot more than one extra mental action, I feel like.
I read that as a mental bandwidth issue. There is another copy of the person, but they only have access to so much of the brain's processing software. Think of it like doubling your RAM and the size of your storage memory. The doubling in the RAM doesn't allow your computer to act twice as fast, just somewhat faster.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 11:57
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
Possibly, but that's very unsatisfying in the context of the setting. With ectos, mesh inserts, Ghostrider modules, etc., it's very hard to believe that *this* limitation is insuperable, especially for a more expensive custom morph augmentation specifically designed to accommodate the second full ego. My working theory is that it's an intentional feature. The system is deliberately designed so that one ego is always 'in front', while the other(s?) are "subsumed" and spectating. Another distinction between MP and a ghostrider is that MPs share an apparently close partnership, transparent thought processes, etc.; maybe this explains some of their difference in function.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 12:26
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
Yerameyahu wrote:
Is there a thread about Multitasking, by the way? It doesn't make sense to me. The crunch is '+1 mental action', but the fluff is very explicitly 'create a whole secondary infomorph PC'. An extra PC can do a hell of a lot more than one extra mental action, I feel like.
Like what? The +1 Complex Action seems to be taking for granted that the alternate Ego is always willing to follow orders, but other than giving you that extra action, what else should they be able to do? The only other thing I can think of that would be even close to obvious would maybe be giving a bonus to teamwork checks or something. That extra Complex Action you are getting is the Ego in the background spending the Complex Action it would normally be able to take, to help you out. It obviously has to be stuck with only mental/mesh because it doesn't have a body, and it only gets it once every Turn, not Phase, because it doesn't get access to any of your Speed implants/psi.
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Mon, 2011-02-28 12:59
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
For one thing, it has its own full set of skills, Moxie, and rez. That +1 action is for the *front* ego, not the extra one (by RAW). In addition, you could reasonably expect implants and psi to be shared (in some situations), because the fluff says it's a special partitioned brain. It's just odd to me as I try to reconcile what seem to be arbitrary limitations. The crunch is '+1 mental action, ability to swap characters', but the fluff and the setting have a few WTFs with that for me.
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Wed, 2011-03-02 22:14
DataPacRat DataPacRat's picture
Re: Multiple multiple personalities?
crizh wrote:
Yes. The implant does not have any proscription on it's benefits stacking, however the main mechanical benefit is moot. Even three or four extra Complex 'Mental' Actions per 'turn' are no match for Multitasking or Mental Speed combined with high Speed. I've been playing a character like this for a while and I mostly just wing the game effects. Her primary shtick is having four Egos that she can swap between as needed.
I'm currently trying to build the DPR courier-forks' preferred cyberbrains as consisting of a human-derived ego (the DPR proper) with four specialist AIs tagging along - one to handle social networking; one to be the paranoid survivalist cyber-defender; one to deal with libraries and research; and one focused on the physical body. I'm still fairly inexperienced in the EP system - would anyone care to offer suggestions on skills, suggested hardware, or other rule-based (rather than flufftext-based) notes?
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Thank you for your time,
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