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Resleeving, Stress, IRS statements.

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Wed, 2017-10-25 17:09

cpt.crush

Resleeving, Stress, IRS statements.

I have not seen any Resleeving rules in the published 2.0 documents. We tried using 1.4 rules, with the published 2.0 mechanics on Stress. These are basically all the rolls / transactions you have to do in this combination:

1) Roll Integration test
1.1) Take note of Integration outcome
2) Roll Alienation test
2.1) Apply stress to character sheet
3) Roll Continuity test (and possibly receive lots of more stress)
4) Roll "Willpower Stress Test" to defend against SV from 3)
5) Roll "Disorientation"
5.1) Take note of Stunned effect
5.2) Take note of triggered disorder
5.3) Take note of increased path to hardening
6) Write down new morph into character sheet ...

That are up to 10 rolls and transactions (11 if you count transcribing the morph) a player needs to do when resleeving. Five of them (1.x to 3) are related to actual resleeving, five more (4 to 5.x) are related to stress handling. In our game yesterday, one player rolled a high SV and had to go through all of them. It was painful. Up to 5 conditions (integration, stress, stun, disorder, hardening) can be applied to the character. I doubt there are many players out there that a) realistically can or want to differentiate these different effects during role play and / or b) have fun bookkeeping them. Maybe this is addressed already in some upcoming rules about that, but if not, I really think that both parts (resleeving and stress), should not consist of more than 3 transactions each unless there are very good reasons. Preferably, the whole act of resleeving should be handled in 3 transactions tops (e.g., roll dice, increase stress, determine extra outcome [e.g., role playing effect]) on top of the new morph. My argument for simplifying stress would also apply for stress from other sources, as that would be 6 transactions total (rolling for SV plus items 4 to 5.3) as well.

Fri, 2017-10-27 07:10

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Quick note.

Resleeving hasn't come up in my tests yet, but I've been considering having failure temporarily reduce pools rather than inflict SV. Current concept is that when you resleeve, you start off with all your morph pools empty. Success on the test(s) means you can use short Recharges as normal, failure means they're already 'expended'. Critical failures would reduce your pool caps or make them unavailable until you can spend time to get yourself sorted.

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In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Fri, 2017-10-27 19:24

ubik2

I suspect EP2 will still have

I suspect EP2 will still have the 3 checks (Integration, Alienation, Continuity), with each being an aptitude check (SOM, INT, WIL). Infomorphs don't have to deal with Integration unless they're jamming. I don't think Continuity is an issue unless the players died. An average player will have a 15 WIL, and a 6 Trauma Threshold, meaning the alienation failure with a subsequent WIL failure can be traumatic 1/6 times. If a failed alienation test occurs about half the time, and the WIL check to avoid the stress fails half the time, a death has a 5% chance to be traumatic. It's possible there will be a similar stress source in the continuity check, for a total of around 10% chance of trauma on each death. It's a pretty strange case where the player is actually getting hardened to alienation from this, but I suppose if they died 50 times in a row without any downtime to recover, that's what would happen. As for stun and disorientation as effects of these checks (down to a 5% chance here), I'd probably just not bother if you don't like the rolls. They don't impact the game, since the player doesn't generally need to act immediately after being resleeved. Players who want to go into that a little more are free to, if they care. It sounds like your player also had a disorder that is triggered by alienation stress. If that's the case, while the rolls may be annoying, the player has chosen to have this as an aspect of their character. Avoiding hardening from alienation trauma is something the players may need to actually care about. Typically, this will take 8 days, though you can use simulspace to do it faster. I'm not sure what the right solution is for this. The trauma system is a mirror of the damage system. There's damage, wounds, and incapacitation (stress, trauma, and disorder). I think many players are comfortable with these mechanics on the physical side, but are less comfortable with their mental mirror. In EP, the physical half is supposed to be the easy part to recover from, while the mental side is the more long term damage. Mechanically, if you get rid of some of the Integration/Alienation/Continuity tests, the value of those aptitudes goes down a lot, so your aptitude balance gets thrown off. I like that the physical character with high SOM can operate quite well in a new body right away, but he has some mental trouble related to alienation. If you make a soldier with low WIL, you're still effective in combat, but all the fighting makes you unstable, and you wash out. The infomorph with low SOM is awkward when jamming on a shell, while the infomorph pilot instead focuses on getting a high SOM so he can jump between shells freely. The artistic character with high INT has no problem with alienation, but may still be clumsy for a bit after switching shells. The other aptitudes (COG/REF/SAV) instead have a lot of important skills based on them. Edit: Updated to include the WIL check to resist stress from alienation failure. This roll does seem excessive. I'd prefer that in the case of failed alienation and continuity tests, the stress is automatic and doesn't get a WIL check to avoid.