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Idea so crazy, it just might work. Character creation question

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Fri, 2018-02-23 12:19

TheBurn

Idea so crazy, it just might work. Character creation question

After a series of indirectly receiving tips and personal epiphanies, I decided to rewrite all my characters for superior performance. One of my characters is an infolife hacker. Computer skills purchased by infolives are half off, social skills are twice as expensive. You would expect to see superior COG and less SAV, but I was thinking about the opposite aproach. Broke: COG 30+30=60 SAV 5+55=60 15+110=125 points used Woke: COG 5+55=60 SAV 30+30=60 27.5+60=87.5 points used As you can see, less total points are used if I invest in the SAV aptitude rather than COG. This, however, feels unnatural to me (and seeing as I am a transhumanist, that's saying something). Will having low COG have unforeseen consequences, especially in hacking?

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Picture of Fire taken under CC0 license. (That's the correct syntax, right?)

Sat, 2018-02-24 04:33

CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture

In hacking it's all about

In hacking it's all about that Infosec. The problem is rather in roleplaying 5 COG character. You would be basically playing a idiot-savant. I have no idea how to marry that with 30 SAV. Maybe an avatar so cute it borders on basilisk hack ;-). It is strange that although raising apptitudes is very costly being an infolife makes it preferable for SAV. Your maths checks out. Or it would, if we were not taking about COGNITION. THE superstat. If you're making a highly specialised idiot-savant then you are minmaxing correctly. If you want to cover more ground with generalist type of character, you have to realise that COG has more than 10 linked skills. Therefore buying the skills separately would cost you 1,5-1,8 times more. With infolife discount you break about even. Not counting all the COGx3, COG+SAV+INT etc. rolls Strangely when applying this approach to SAV it works for infolife. Because buying 8-10 SAV skills (counting networking) would cost you 1,6-2,0 times the cost of SAV. Sooo if you are making social engineering generalist infolife hacker then your local optimum is to raise SAV and COG as high as you expect your morphs will allow you to utilise. X-)

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Sat, 2018-02-24 10:47

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

Dory from Finding Nemo. The Cyberpunk variant.

Yeah, you're very much a savant. It works as long as you're just sticking to the skills but you're going to have issues getting new ones.... and frankly if I was your GM I would feel [i]obligated[/i] to make that COG score an issue - generally through distractability, simple mistakes and an inability to predict the consequences of your actions. SAV might feel wierd, but what you have is a character who's very good at noticing innaccuracies in arguments and physiological indicators, and for the same reason is excelent at formulating arguments; you're a program made to convince people of things. You could extend this to justify your Hacker skills - you're just as good (if not better) at convincing computer systems as Egos.

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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?

Sat, 2018-02-24 11:30

TheBurn

Specialism

I definitely consider myself a specialist. I would compensate for my weaknesses using my strengths rather than improve my weaknesses; however, SAV skills are useful in hacking:

deception(!)
pursuaion
impersonation
protocol(?)

And of course, networking isn't something I'm entirely willing to skimp out on. It may; on the other hand, be benificial to have this character do its job as a hacker and let a more specialized SAV character do [i]its[/i] job as a social engineer. If my character can't rely on a separate social engineer [i]and[/i] if I can't find a different way to save CP, then I am ok with giving my character an alternative form of Savant Syndrome.

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Picture of Fire taken under CC0 license. (That's the correct syntax, right?)

Sat, 2018-02-24 18:02

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

One of the reasons I don't

One of the reasons I don't like the Infolife background because it encourages people to make broken builds. The character build highlighted in this thread is one such example.

Sat, 2018-02-24 22:56

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

and further tack on you can

and further tack on you can always purchase skill softs to fill in gaps