I would like a table of mobility systems and movement speeds.

Quote:

I would like some rules to limit the number of implants that morphs that can have without penalty.

I'd prefer it if there was no such limit. One of the things that annoyed me in other game systems is the whole cybernetics eat your soul phenomena. I think that some very extreme modifications should be possible, so limits annoy me. I would rather that such problems be reduced to technical problems instead of creating some sort of weird rule system that doesn't approve of heavy morph modification. For instance, I don't think that the nanoware Respirocytes, and the bioware Enhanced Respiration are fully compatible. My grounds for this is that I think that Respirocytes occupy volume in you blood. Like wise I think that Enhanced Respiration would increase red blood cell count which would also occupy volume in the blood. Since I think that there is only so much room in the blood, one augmentation would have to give way to get the best results. Since Respirocytes gives the better ability to hold your breath, Enhanced Respiration would have to give way since its "hold your breath" feature isn't as good. Everything else about Enhanced Respiration could be kept though since it doesn't compete for with Respirocytes for anything else.

I want the dev team to either shit or get off the pot where it concerns jamming vs sleeving. Either they need to address the issue so that sleeving a body has actual advantages over merely jamming it, or they need to explain on a setting level why jamming is seemingly not very popular in comparison. It seems nearly illogical that people who don't have biochauvinist tendencies would not effectively spend their lives in infomorph form jamming every body they come across, simply for the sheer benefits it provides. I also agree with OneTrikPony regarding uplifts. There needs to be something that significantly differentiates uplifts from humans, so that they don't merely feel like "humans with animal bodies" or "furry fantasy opportunities". The same should be true for some AGI, the ones that aren't modeled after human minds. Whether it be traits, or some new personality mechanic, or something... I don't know. But it definitely needs to be something. Psi doesn't need too much work. The damage sleights need to be boosted significantly, and a few psi-gamma sleights could use some tweaking... either more or less powerful. Some seem useless (mindlink, which apparently requires everyone to hold hands in order to continue communicating telepathically), while others are near godly (implant memory can be used for both memory sharing and as a madness weapon, and subliminal is pretty much the ultimate touch weapon, even if targets get a resistance bonus). Lastly, stress can use some work. We're talking about a mechanic which either drives your character mad, or (depending on how often you face your characters against potentially maddening situations) rapidly drains their moxie. I don't know if that necessarily feels like that's how it should work. Moxie shouldn't be a tertiary form of hit points that you need to address every few weeks or months.

I don't remember what site it was but it was going under character optimization, they had a build for a character to get something like 64 mental actions per turn. There needs to be a limit on this purely because I don't want to resolve all of it.

[b]Teleoperation and Jamming[/b] The rules for how telepoeration of robots and jamming shells work need, like others have pointed out, a revision. The following issues come to mind: [list] [*] When teleoperating a shell, all commands you give the shell "count as Quick Actions" and use your stats. This seems internally inconsistent; I want the bot to shoot something. I can order it to shoot something as a Quick Action, and spend my Complex Action doing something else in my main body. However, shooting stuff is a Complex Action, so the teleoperated shell is committed to a Complex Action... but it's using my stats, so [i]I'm[/i] the one who's doing that Complex Action - which I shouldn't be able to do, because I already spent mine. This could use some explanation/clarification. [*] The rules for teleoperation currently allows a person to use their own stats when teleoperating a shell. Aptitude bonuses are are included in this, so a person sleeved in a Fury teleoperating a Case with -5 to SOM can ignore that penalty and apply their Fury's bonus. And in some cases, this makes sense. If, for example, I was sleeved into a morph with a brain structure that augments INTuition, it makes sense that I'd be able to do well on Perception checks even though the shell doesn't augment INT, since it's still [i]my[/i] brain doing the perceiving. However, if I'm sleeved in a Reaper and teleoperating a Case, why do I still get to apply the +10 REF from Reflex Boosters? Reflex Boosters boosts my [i]body's[/i] ability to react by speeding up nerve impulses to the muscles, it doesn't make my brain react any faster. Or if I'm sleeved in an octomorph, makes the Case more adept at climbing... [*] This works [i]extremely[/i] oddly when jamming is used; suddenly, when I devote [i]more[/i] mental resources to remotely controlling a shell, I use it's stats instead of my morphs - so suddenly I apply the -5 to SOM from the Case - or worse, a -5 to COG. Teleoperating a Case [i]actively makes me dumber[/i]. [/list] [b]Aptitudes[/b] The game makes no distinction between Aptitude Bonuses that come from the raw physical capabilities of the morph, (SOM, REF, COO) and the neural structures in the morph's brain that run them, which sometimes makes it hard to tell whether it should be possible to apply the Aptitude bonus to mental or mesh actions - does the Ghost have a high COO because it has high motor-fidelity and limited muscle tremors, or because it has a brain that makes it better at hand-eye-coordination; can I apply the +10 COO bonus when playing [i]Return to Castle Medal of Duty: Battlefield 0AF: Hell on Earth[/i]? A rigorous system for the difference between a neural bonus and a physical bonus would be nice. [b]Bots and AIs[/b] By the rules, vehicles and robots, when purchased, come with AIs pre-installed. Sometimes, the AI is worth more than the robot, meaning that you get a lot more than you paid for. [b]Nanomanufacturing[/b] Neat, rigid, unexploitale rules for nanomanufacturing would be nice. Things that I see as problematic with the current open-ended rules: [list] [*] You can make a fission bomb with a Coupernica Machine as long as you have the blueprints and a hacked CM. The fact that you don't have access to several kilograms of uranium or plutonium seems to not be an issue in the rules as-written. [*] A similar issue with feedstock is that there are no rules considering the size of an object when buying feedstock for your CM, meaning that the difference between building a Boeing 747 and a new iPod is handled by the GM. Feedstock has a cost, but there's no indication of how much, in volume or mass, a single purchase of feedstock represents. [*] There are paradigm-differences between what players believe CMs and Proteans should be able to do. One common view is that a CM can build anything; from biomorphs to complex meals to new CMs. Another view is that CMs are strictly limited, and can't make advanced nanotechnology, grow biomorphs, or make anything that isn't assembled from simple building blocks. A clarification, with rigorous limitations if applicable, would be useful. [/list] [b]Misc.[/b] [list] [*]Synthetic Mask can be purchased for any synthmorph. The mind boggles at what a Reaper could possibly be disguised as. [*]The Liquid Steel morph can disguise itself as any synthmorph, but cannot disguise itself as a biomorph. The morph preceding the Liquid Steel in [i]Sunward[/i] is the Masked Steel, which is a synthmorph that looks like a biomorph. Can a Liquid Steel morph disguise itself as a Masked Steel morph to look like a biomorph? [/list]

DivineWrath wrote:

Quote:

I would like some rules to limit the number of implants that morphs that can have without penalty.

I'd prefer it if there was no such limit. One of the things that annoyed me in other game systems is the whole cybernetics eat your soul phenomena. I think that some very extreme modifications should be possible, so limits annoy me. I would rather that such problems be reduced to technical problems instead of creating some sort of weird rule system that doesn't approve of heavy morph modification.

"Eat your soul" made sense in SR because it had magic and whatnot, but in EP it would suck. But I would still like to see some sort of technical problem justification that limits implants. There's no unbreakably reason why integration wouldn't become very difficult once you stack on lots of implants.

Smokeskin wrote:

"Eat your soul" made sense in SR because it had magic and whatnot, but in EP it would suck. But I would still like to see some sort of technical problem justification that limits implants. There's no unbreakably reason why integration wouldn't become very difficult once you stack on lots of implants.

Perhaps a sort of cost penalty applied based on the number and severity of implants that a person already has, so that installing new modifications becomes more and more cost-prohibitive as surgeons need to make future installations compatible with all prior ones. This would represent the surgeon having to install new repair blueprints in the patient's medichines, calibrate their newer implants to unusual blood types and nutrients needed for other implants, and all the other things that need to be done to a body that's already heavily modified. Personally, I'm fine with the way things are. It tells me just how far the EP universe has gotten with regards to biomodification. The technology is so improved that the side effects are nil and the surgery is relatively cheap, regardless of the mods that a person already has. It means that the EP world is a world of extremely vivid and culturally-accepted bio-modding, almost to a scary degree. And I like that.

I think Arenamontanus had a system for increasingly difficult modifications on his page, based on the increasing likelihood of incompatibilities between rising numbers of implants and add-ons.

how are you going to justify implant limitations on synthetic morphs?

OneTrikPony wrote:

how are you going to justify implant limitations on synthetic morphs?

They could do it like vehicle and equipment modifications in Shadowrun, where each model has a specific mod limit and you can attach mods without penalty until that point. Not that I'm advocating it. Again, I like limitless modification, and would rather they didn't alter that. Maybe as an optional rule (maybe they can make a new alternate cyberpunk campaign to expand the ruleset to another franchise... hmm?), but definitely not as the standard for Eclipse Phase.

OneTrikPony wrote:

that could be a strong mechanic but that would be adjudication not justification. I don't see any way to rationalize limitations on morph modification in the setting. We already have a hard limit on the technical capabilities of transhumans = 40 attribute, 4 spd (physical) With enough tech savy you can get to 40. That's the limit. Making that limit lower just throws the tech curve backward.

A simple justification would be that the technology hasn't progressed so far that perpetual improvement is easily achieved. Just as a car has only so much weight to be used for modification before hard limitations on the engine must be considered, transhuman bodies (both bio and synth) during the early stages of biomodification likely had surgical limits on what they could fit in without needing to sacrifice traditional performance. Obviously, EP assumes these limitations have been surpassed, but some people might want to run a campaign where those limitations haven't.

OneTrikPony wrote:

On another note; Has anyone come up with a way to decouple Physical Speed and Mental Speed. I've been working on it for a couple days now and I'm coming up short. Menton Scientists taking neurachem gear in order to boost their Mental Actions bugs me. I suspect that it's also one of the primary objections of people who support the 1 action / turn meme. I'd like to find a way to fold existing gear into a structure where Neurachem and Reflex boosters do not multiply the effects of Multitasking and Mental Speed. In one way we allready have this in effect. Infomorphs, by default, only have "mental actions" I'd really like to hear any idea along those lines. Please PM me if you feel like I'm trying to derail this thread.

One of my groups that was ran by another GM had a physical and mental speed, both capped at 4. The maximum number of actions you could have was 8, and only 4 of them could be physical. So it was possible through modification to get 8 mental actions. The big difference was that mental actions could be taken at any time you could take a physical action, and you could use as many of your mental actions as you liked in a single phase.

What Latw said, and also vehicle rules and durability. This came up discussing vehicle morphs, but I think it's plenty broken with just plain vehicles. Also, transhuman is a player guide - I'd like an expanded skills section, because it's often fiat/guesswork as to what difficulties are, or what things you can do with what skill.

It seems as though a lot of the things I like about the setting, others see as game imbalances.

CodeBreaker wrote:

Mephil wrote:

I think wounds are weird. You can potentially die without ever receiving a wound. I would much rather just make current damage = current penalty to all skills. And then say that if you take your WT in damage in one go you can potentially get knocked down / go unconscious / malfunction as per EP rules.

I could see that working within the current scope of the rules if you rounded your current damage to the closest 10, and have that apply as a penalty to all skills. However that does reduce the systems ability to model the inherent toughness of some morphs. If, instead of WT, each morph had a modifier value that they could ignore (similar to how there are implants that allow you to ignore wounds), I could see it working just fine. The Flat cannot ignore any wound modifiers, by default, but a Fury can reduce a damage caused negative modifier by 20 (-20 becomes -0). That would go towards fixing the 'Death by 1000 Cuts' issue, where if you are tortured by someone cutting you with a razor (1 damage each time), you can be near death with no negative modifiers.

I actually tried this for one game session and it worked great. It added value to armor though, and a lot of additional difficulty. Getting shot once could lose you the duel if you didn't have armor that could soak your shit. Any wound would slow you down and give you a disadvantage, taking safe aimed shots before less accurate more damaging ones were strategic decisions to get the upper hand. Damage should be a measure of how much pain you are in / how much of your system has been damaged and should be reflected as such. As it is now, damage doesn't really do shit unless you get a wound or reach your DUR limit. Even a lot of small wounds will slow you down quite a lot. Try poking the same spot 100 times, eventually it will hurt like a bitch. - Anything ignoring wounds ignored the first 10 points of penalties as usual. - WT was used to resist crashing / falling unconscious, which would probably get you killed automatically in battle. Its a measure how much of a bitch you are in combat, or having you die standing up like a boss. - A synth can easily get up to 140 DR. Still - a synth riddled with bulletholes will (while still be functioning on a cognitive basis) not be able to move enough to actually participate in combat. It will work kind of like terminator when he got his face smashed and bottom half ripped off and subsequently crushed to death by a woman and a kid. If only he didn't have that -87 in strangling bitches. I feel like a maximum of -30 penalty from wounds isn't very logical. If you're a total bad ass you can still survive after being torn to shreds, but you can't really fight worth a damn. Someone might even approach you and slap your gun out of your hand as you sit in your corner bleeding from every orifice.

From reading Pushing Ice (Alistair Reynolds, as listed in the inspiration list in the back of the core book) the CM can fab items for raw materials, but it doesnt use a fusaion engine to turn hydrogen to gold or plutonium to copper... So you still need the actual elements (or blocks of) to put into the machine and the items get created with this... I think this works well.. PC;s can download all items, but cant get the gold for the conductivity elements, or element XYZ required for blueprint 123.... At least thats how Im handlig it in my games..

Lorsa wrote:

Wouldn't it be better if it gave +speed for non-physical actions instead? That way if you merely wanted to be mentally quick you woulnd't be forced to buy what I think of as a combat enhancing augmentation (neurachem).

It's an interesting thought but how would you handle initiative? Would a character have a mental initiative and a physical initiative? Some people think that multiple initiative passes and scores are too much to handle as is? Mechanically, Mental Speed does exactly the same thing that Multitasking does; +2 complex mental actions per action phase, Except it also grants a +3 initiative modifier. So I'm not sure why someone who approves of the Multitasking gear would be underwhelmed by Mental Speed augmentation. I think it's time we realized that Neurachem and Reaction Enhancers [u]are not "combat" mods[/u]. Yes they would be incredibly useful to anyone that had them explain to me why an egghead wouldn't want to be faster? These arguments, (my own included), are no longer making any sense. Is your scientist geek character less "pure" if he has gear that gives him physical abilities in addition to making him capable of thinking twice as fast? Whence did we get the idea that the 'brain' would never want Neurachem because; "it's for combat characters"? I think we've been wrong and I think we should change our mind.

Does anyone else really, really hope that the "clarification" of speed at task actions gets regulated to an optional rule? I write adventures and I really don't want to have to put a disclaimer at the start of every adventure saying ignore [em]Transhuman[/em], the characters in this adventure were written with the core book assumptions (speed doesn't affect task actions) and like the sample characters in the core book, [em]Sunward[/em], and the NPC file, are not balanced for use with the "clarifications" in [em]Transhuman[/em]. On topic, rules issues I would like addressed: Synthmorph armor stacking (it should). Double criticals: what happens? I have been going by higher critical wins and is still a critical, but lately I have been thinking, higher number still wins but is no longer a critical works better. Full Defense: clarify whether the bonus applies before or after dividing by 2. Also Freerunning should be: Freerunning, Free Fall, or Pilot as appropriate. Disorientation: What exactly does disorientation do? (I said you can't take any other actions, including automatic actions, until you take the complex action to regain your wits). Is recovering from disorientation a mental action? (I said no)

You need to do something about Somatics. As-is, an average Ego in a Remade has only a small advantage over an average Ego in a Neotenic, and you need a very strong Morph to make any use of a high Somatics score. I think it should be almost the complete opposite: Morph strength largely determines the outcome of contests of strength, but a very high Somatics score might be able to make up for a disadvantage in raw muscle power and let you take on a common brute whose Morph just happens to be twice the size of yours. Exoskeletons just make no sense whatsoever. The wearer cannot be harmed by direct fire attacks made against the suit, but will be harmed along with the suit if caught in an area attack. The wearer of the suit can be targeted separately from the suit itself at a -30, in which case only the wearer is damaged, leaving the suit unharmed (but giving the wearer the benefit of the suit's AV). And, the main advantage of sleeving into a Morph and wearing a suit as opposed to simply installing a Cyberbrain in the suit itself, is that it gives you extra bonuses. So controlling the armoured walker indirectly increases your SOM and your REF, helping you achieve better, quicker and more precise control than if you were sleeved directly into the suit itself. Maybe this is part of a more general issue, where the system needs something like rules for the quality of control circuits? Maybe it's possible, for instance, to wire a motorbike with optimized control circuits which give a Cyberbrain mounted in it bonuses to REF? In that same vein, I always kind of wondered why people don't install Cyberbrains in robots more often? Things like the Dwarf and the Guardian Angel from the Core book seem like really attractive, comparatively cheap options, and come without stat penalties, the Lemon Trait or any risk of Stress. So why do the clanking masses use Cases, again? Finally, weak AI and sub-Alpha Forks need to be able to ignore the skill caps for some skills. Look at how quick and precise even our modern AI are at tracking, for instance. Does it really make sense that a top-of-the-line automated gun turret could have no more than a skill of 40 with its weapon system?

LatwPIAT wrote:

[b]Bots and AIs[/b] By the rules, vehicles and robots, when purchased, come with AIs pre-installed. Sometimes, the AI is worth more than the robot, meaning that you get a lot more than you paid for.

How is this any different from today when you buy a Laptop and it comes with an OS worth almost as much as the laptop itself?

Are you talking about the kind of thing that DnD 3.x or Pathfinder does (I haven't been following DnD 4.0)? They list tables for things like feats and gear, giving a brief overview of what each does. In Eclipse Phase, it might be handy to have a table for: -Morphs, list CP and credit costs, and briefly describe what each is good for. I don't know if you want to list other details like aptitude maximums, aptitude bonuses, durability, etc as such details might use up what little room that exists. -Traits. Maybe one for positive traits and another for negative traits. The list of neutral traits might becoming big enough to warrant a table for them too. List CP costs for level and briefly describe what each trait does. -Gear. Actually these might end up being multiple tables since they have their own categories. What I would like to see is credit costs and a brief overview of what they do. Different types of gear might list different details. I'm sure we could also get tables for Psychosurgery and Async Sleights. Did I forget anything?