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Pod Morphs: Not worth it?

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Sat, 2012-08-11 06:43
Decivre Decivre's picture
Chevre wrote:I like it,
Chevre wrote:
I like it, although the target's muse would probably be screaming bloody murder about their body being invaded, so less stealthy. If you're going that route, why not use the saboteur swarms and just take them apart from the inside? It would bypass any guardian nanoswarms they had, as those are on the outside, especially if it doesn't deploy the payload until it's inside the center of mass.
[/quote] Well, the alternative isn't too stealthy either. It doesn't take much to detect a foreign transmission coming from atop your body, which is why breadcrumb tracker nanobots only transmit when they receive the right signal. If you're transmitting, stealth ceases to be an option. Of course, the muse might not notice anything is wrong unless the character has something in their bloodstream hunting for nanotech. In which case the nanoswarm technique might be the best option for stealth, all things considered. Ooh, I just thought of an awesome idea. Imagine a shotgun-slug sized round that, when fired, sprays "pellets" that are actually impact-braced microdrones. Upon landing on a target, they search the body and scurry about, looking for the target's access jacks. Once found, they inject a payload and die, a microtransmitter that is shoved into your access jacks so deep that it requires a tool to remove. This makes sure that you have a constant wireless connection no matter what you might try. Variants might even forcibly connect with a target's skinlink, or redundantly do both to ensure vulnerability. Now [i]that[/i] would be an excellent hacker tool.
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Sat, 2012-08-11 20:02
OpsCon OpsCon's picture
Personally, I think one
Personally, I think one advantage the Pods do have over regular biomorphs (at least to Firewall) is that if you're a guy/girl that just resleeves easily, the upload to run time is a lot shorter with a Pod over a normal biomorph. And they do talk about them being grown in parts and assembled, so I'd like to see some kind of rules for faster healing due to being able to just swap out the damaged arm/leg/lung, etc.
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Sat, 2012-08-11 21:03
Chevre Chevre's picture
OpsCon wrote:And they do talk
OpsCon wrote:
And they do talk about them being grown in parts and assembled, so I'd like to see some kind of rules for faster healing due to being able to just swap out the damaged arm/leg/lung, etc.
Not a difficult rules change. Use rules as per healing vat (p.327) and declare each arm/leg/lung being replaced as one wound. If you're just missing an arm and the healer has one that matches, that's 2 hours per replacement, in and out. If you wanted to specifically give pods a boost in this area while allowing the rules to also apply to logical situations for other morphs, I propose the following: The biological components of most pods come from a fairly narrow range of genotypes, builds, and appearances, which makes sense given their intended function of cheap, easy to build bodies for lower-class (possibly indentured) workers. Any variation in appearance could be done during the final stages of assembly by adding a few more hours to production (times as per Healing Vat: Augmentation p.327). Thus, it's usually not difficult to find the necessary parts as there really aren't that many different types despite the apparent physical diversity. A replacement arm could be genetically compatible despite having a different skin tone, for instance. By contrast, "case", "synth", "reaper", etc. are broad descriptors applying to a large number of similar models from various manufacturers. In-game this could by represented by minor customization using a variation of the rules in the "Brand Name Weapons and Combined Arms" sidebar on p.326, or simply by saying that parts tend to be incompatible between manufacturers and models (like cars). A Martian synth would have a difficult time finding a compatible arm on Titan; it would be extraordinarily difficult to get parts for a Steel morph anywhere outside of Luna. It's probably cheaper and easier to just repair most of the time, but the option exists. Biomorphs also theoretically have this option, though it's unlikely you would find a compatible part just lying around unless A) you had a cloned body in storage, B) your morph came from a mass-production batch of identical bodies and you can find a donor, or C) the limb in question was very cleanly severed (monofilament sword or similar) and preserved. If you were unethical and/or desperate, I suppose you could combine B and C.
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