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Resources Trait, Resleeving, and Multiple Morphs

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Sat, 2018-04-28 16:31

Fable

Resources Trait, Resleeving, and Multiple Morphs

Hello all, I'm a completely new player to Eclipse Phase, trying to learn the way the rules work based on the second edition playtest material and TVTropes alone. The one big confusion I've had is with the Resources trait and how it interacts with resleeving. Let's say that I'm playing as an AGI Infomorph with Resources 4, when the GM decides we have 6 morph points to work with. With some wrangling and the GM's permission, I get a Portable Server to live in and an Operator Morph, an Agent Morph, a 0-point Pod (as my 'first' body, since I might occasionally need to get my hands physical with some Jamming), and 2 points on traits for the Op and Agent. I plan on having myself and my fork live in the two infomorphs for teamworking purposes. My party member, the melee, takes Resources 2 and an unmodified Fury. So far, so good. After about a week of adventures, the Fury dies. Sad. Judging by the June 8, 2017 Acquiring Gear and Morphs document, it's time to resleeve with one less MP than before. However, unlike in character generation (?*), Resources now applies to morph points. So now she's in an upgraded Fury model (good for her), and I still have my starting morphs and no more, despite a higher Resources. I'm a little miffed, but it's okay. *Nov 16 2017 Character Generation Playtest Document mentions that it provides a bonus to acquiring morphs, but does not mention whether or not this is applied at chargen. Then, after a few more sessions, my fork got my favorite Agent morph killed in mesh combat. I'm now down to an Operator morph and its one trait (MP 3), while the Fury actually got stronger from her death. I can still play my character, so post-death/destruction resleeving doesn't occur, but after both of us died once, she's sitting pretty at 7MP with R2 and I'm at 3MP with R4. If my Agent dies, I'm down to 0 MP and can't Death/Destruction Resleeve because I've still got a terrible Pod body lying around in storage. ...Something seems slightly wonky here. I'm not sure which parts of the rules I'm misreading, or which are glitches, but it seems like having backup bodies at chargen causes death to be a bigger disadvantage than having a single body to fail and get you a new one. How/When can I stock on Infomorph 'bodies'? How many am I limited to? If someone has a stock of different bodies lying around, what are general guidelines on how/when/if to let them restock? Not sure if there is an answer or guidelines in the 1e book or if this is just something that needs to get added sometime in 2e, but I'm scratching my head in confusion right now.

Sun, 2018-04-29 00:28

o11o1

Resources applies during

Resources applies during character generation, and generally after Gen, assuming the politics involved allow you to bring your personal wealth to bear without blowing any cover you might be trying to maintain. Also, if you take multiple morphs at gen, none of them can have negative qualities to reduce the cost. The 0-cost Infomorphs are actually free to instantiate, they're stock software for anything able to run an infomorph in the first place.

—

A slight smell of ions....

Sun, 2018-04-29 00:58

Fable

Responses

o11o1 wrote:
Resources applies during character generation, and generally after Gen, assuming the politics involved allow you to bring your personal wealth to bear without blowing any cover you might be trying to maintain.

This is good to know! Making that clear in the rules text for new players would be good, I think.

o11o1 wrote:
Also, if you take multiple morphs at gen, none of them can have negative qualities to reduce the cost.

The rules are good about outlining this. Not so much about what happens if you have multiple morphs and one of them dies.

o11o1 wrote:
The 0-cost Infomorphs are actually free to instantiate, they're stock software for anything able to run an infomorph in the first place.

Yep, but the 2-cost infomorphs aren't, and they're the ones that have built-in pools that make forking into them an attractive proposition.

Tue, 2018-05-01 23:55

ubik2

Fable wrote:After about a

Fable wrote:
After about a week of adventures, the Fury dies. Sad. Judging by the June 8, 2017 Acquiring Gear and Morphs document, it's time to resleeve with one less MP than before.

The -1 penalty per death is for resleeving during a mission. You'll often egocast/resleeve at the start of a mission, in which case the GM sets a MP base for what's available there. If you're farcasting to some prison colony, maybe you only have 4 MP available instead. However, since you have Resources 4, you're able to bribe the warden there to give you access to some better stuff, and you end up with 4+4 MP. Your teammate with Resources 2 can't bribe the warden, so she bribes a guard instead, and gets 4+2 MP worth of morph.

Fable wrote:
*Nov 16 2017 Character Generation Playtest Document mentions that it provides a bonus to acquiring morphs, but does not mention whether or not this is applied at chargen.

I would apply it at chargen, but the rules could use more clarity there. Regardless, you should plan out what you'll have available based on 6+Resources, so you don't have to look through books when the GM starts a scenario where you start off egocasting/resleeving (and tells you that you've got 6 MP base available). The MP limit lets the GM restrict how much power you can bring to bear, which is good for a scenario, but it does have some problems with a campaign. They give the example of giving players 10 MP for a scenario, at which point players can sleeve into Reapers and go to town. It would be messy if the player then tried to take that into a lower powered scenario.

Thu, 2018-05-03 03:40

Xagroth

ubik2 wrote:

ubik2 wrote:
I would apply it at chargen, but the rules could use more clarity there. Regardless, you should plan out what you'll have available based on 6+Resources, so you don't have to look through books when the GM starts a scenario where you start off egocasting/resleeving (and tells you that you've got 6 MP base available).

That would make all PC's creation process start with Resources 4, since that would help having all the toys one would want and all the morphs one would need. The problem I see with Resources is how optimized and overpowered it is compared with Rep... Sure you can use Resources to supplement Rep, but there are several reps, and you also need Networking (unless that has changed on 2nd edition, I don't remember atm), plus Rep is much more fluid than Resources (and can be improved without spending XP). Personally, I granted a Rep bonus equal to the Networking skill (without SAV mods, just the pure skill) to the relevant Rep (and no point expenditure to improve rep, at creation), and made some bleed-over between Rep skills (so Firewall rep could get benefits from having other rep skills when dealing with parts of Firewall that tend to work with those, for example).

ubik2 wrote:
The MP limit lets the GM restrict how much power you can bring to bear, which is good for a scenario, but it does have some problems with a campaign. They give the example of giving players 10 MP for a scenario, at which point players can sleeve into Reapers and go to town. It would be messy if the player then tried to take that into a lower powered scenario.

"No morph available" is a good answer, unless the players start with a spaceship and had enough time to bring it there, with the reaper morphs in the cargo bay. In which case you start with the fun games of transponder falsification, smuggling, and missions more "apt" for their "talents".

Fri, 2018-05-04 23:47

ubik2

Xagroth wrote:That would make

Xagroth wrote:
That would make all PC's creation process start with Resources 4, since that would help having all the toys one would want and all the morphs one would need.

Yep. This came up in the forums shortly after the rules were released. It's mechanically better than reputation, and you don't have to use favors. Using pools to refresh favors makes reputation almost as good, though. In case you're not aware, you can also use reputation favors to increase the available MP.

Mon, 2018-05-07 05:14

Xagroth

ubik2 wrote:Xagroth wrote:.

ubik2][quote=Xagroth wrote:
. In case you're not aware, you can also use reputation favors to increase the available MP.

Yes, but that is not as problematic because a) Resources seems to work almost universally (unless the GM "acts like a tyrant blocking access to a part of the sheet you payed for", thus making Resources a waste of points, which is an even worst proposition), b) it's a cheaper inversion for a bigger impact, c) it's simpler than controlling all the reputations AND Networking skills... In short, Resources is a fast and easy solution to a lot of problems that would require either a bigger budget from the creation points reserve or a longer chain of actions.

Thu, 2018-05-10 17:53

RobBoyle

ubik2 covered most of the

ubik2 covered most of the bases, but just to reiterate a few things: * You get Resources added to your MP during character creation. * Infomorphs don't get destroyed in the same way as physical morphs. If your infomorph gets shut down in mesh combat, you can reboot it. You don't need to get a new one, unless your infomorph was somehow actually erased. * networking skill is gone, you just use the Rep score now.

—

Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Fri, 2018-05-11 03:15

Xagroth

RobBoyle wrote:

RobBoyle wrote:
* networking skill is gone, you just use the Rep score now.

This one is gold, frankly. Reduces the bloat and makes it more understandable for players (not that "they ow me a lot of favors but I have no idea about how or who to ask when I want one" is hard to explain, but...).

Fri, 2018-05-11 03:15

#10

Xagroth

RobBoyle wrote:

RobBoyle wrote:
* networking skill is gone, you just use the Rep score now.