Complete newbie here, two simple questions.
1) What's the benefit of having an aptitude rating of 40? Trying to decide between a Remade or a Ghost, the ability to take one up to 40 (probably COG) is a neat deal.
2) I saw a morph for "Ariel" that looks wicked cool (wings and stuff), but it's not in the Core Rulebook. Which supplement is it in?
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Why Aptitude 40? And a second question.
Wed, 2016-03-16 10:44
#1
Outrageous
Why Aptitude 40? And a second question.
Wed, 2016-03-16 11:00
#2
uwtartarus
Ariel morph is either
Ariel morph is either Transhuman or Rimward (I am away from books at the moment).
Having a higher aptitude means that all of your skills involving that aptitude start higher, so it makes it cheaper to have high numbers in related skills. If the stat is frequently used as aptitude only tests (SOM and WIL for instance) than it is great to have a 40 in it, because it prevents you from failing on anything other than a 99, and affords you room for penalties. A SOM 40 character never suffers from the first few wounds, because the first test of SOM x 3 is rolled against 120, assuming the morph lacks implants to ignore wounds, or traits like pain tolerance, than the next wound is rolled against 110, still nigh auto success, and it is only on the fourth wound that the morph rolls under 90 to succeed.
Granted, if your WIL is 10, than your LUC is 20, and your TT is 4, so the first terrible shock to your mind will stack up traumas and thus penalties, so try to not specialize too hard!
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Wed, 2016-03-16 11:16
#3
Outrageous
What's weird is in the PDF I
What's weird is in the PDF I have which auto-calculates skills, only the Morph bonus adds bonuses to skills.
I have a feeling the guy running the campaign won't want us to use something not in the Core rulebook, so I guess that's out for now.
Wed, 2016-03-16 11:40
#4
uwtartarus
When you buy skills with CP,
When you buy skills with CP, all skills start with your EGO aptitudes (which maxes out at 30 iirc), so before you spend CP, your Academics (nanotechnology) is 30 if your COG is 30, then you spend 30 CP to get 60, then spend another 20 more to get 70 which makes you an Expert in Ac:Nanotech, then you sleeve in a Menton, get +10 COG and while sleeved in the Menton, your Ac:Nanotech is 80, but if you resleeve or are forked and lose that morph bonus to COG, your Ac:Nanotech resets to 70, which is your Base number.
So having higher aptitudes is better for lots and lots of skills. But if you only use REF for Fray, then you can probably save points by raising specific skills.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Wed, 2016-03-16 12:21
#5
Outrageous
They max out at 30, unless
They max out at 30, unless you pay for the "increase to 40" skill or use Remades.
Last question (for now!); does the starting number for skills using aptitude during character generation use the base aptitude or does it include your Morph?
(thanks for the help!)
Wed, 2016-03-16 12:39
#6
Leetsepeak
It does not include your
It does not include your morph bonus, no.
Wed, 2016-03-16 14:01
#7
uwtartarus
What Leetsepeak said.
What Leetsepeak said.
Treat your morph like Equipment+, and expect to change morphs a few times minimally.
I had a great moment in my biweekly game where a player was going to get trapped in a cordoned off part of a habitat, so rather than try to wait the barricade out, he just resleeved as an infomorph/eidolon onto the Mesh and left his worker pod morph behind. It was a really cool Transhuman moment.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Wed, 2016-03-16 21:11
#8
Lazarus
Outrageous wrote:They max out
It's a little trickier than that. There's a positive trait called Exceptional Aptitude that can be taken as an ego or a morph trait. If you don't take the ego version of the trait than none of your ego aptitudes can be above 30. This doesn't mean you can't have an aptitude above 30 without taking it, you just have to gain the extra points through some 'external' (as in not part of the character's ego) bonus. The most common is probably a morph bonus.
As a simple example, you have an ego with a SOM of 25. It's below 30 so everything is fine. You slot into a Remade and your SOM is now 35. Yes, it is over 30 but it isn't your ego aptitude that is over 30, it is your combined ego aptitude plus morph bonus that is over 30 so there's no problem.
Now morphs have their own aptitude maximums and that can be an issue. If you've got a 30 COG and you slot into a standard Menton your COG is still 30 because that's a menton's aptitude maximum. It doesn't matter if your base COG is 20, 30, or even 40 (because you took the Exceptional Aptitude ego trait for COG). Because the aptitude maximum for a menton is 30 the highest your COG will be is 30.
That is, unless you take the Exceptional Aptitude morph trait. That will raise the morph's aptitude maximum for one aptitude by 10 points in most cases (it does not appear that it has any effect on remades). So if your base COG is above 20 and you slot into a menton you want to get one that has the Exceptional Aptitude: COG trait to maximize the effect of the morph (you could always slot in if your COG is 25 and still benefit from a +5 to your COG and all its implants but you wouldn't make full advantage of the morph's COG bonus)
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Wed, 2016-03-16 21:38
#9
Trappedinwikipedia
As a side note, one of the
As a side note, one of the most useful aptitudes to raise is probably SOM. There are a lot more morphs which can use a high SOM than a lot of others (SOM 40 synths are not that rare), and as a raw aptitude SOM is one of the most powerful defensively, as it's used to resist some ill effects of wounds, and has a useful role against a lot of threats like poisons and nanoweapons. COG is another good option because all knowledge skills run off of it, and it's pretty easy to have more than 10 knowledge skills.
Most of your questions have already been answered, but I can try to give some advice about the Remade vs Ghost choice. The remade is a fairly inexpensive high end morph which really rewards skillful well-balanced Egos. The Ghost has some really nice built in augments, and more importantly has a +10 COO, which is good for ranged combatants, sneaky characters and safe crackers and such, it's also really rare.
Ultimately, don't worry too much about what morph you're going to use, as they often change due to damage or egocasting, and don't spend a ton on it.
Thu, 2016-03-17 16:13
#10
ShadowDragon8685
Re: Not spending heavily on
Re: Not spending heavily on morphs, first find out what your GM's policy towards morphs are.
Some GMs, such as myself, treat anything you got with chargen points/rez as "insured." IE, if you lose the morph somehow (fell into an industrial reducer, heroic last stand against the swarm, got busted and confiscated by the cops, etc) you'll wind up with something the GM cooks up of similar BP/Rez value, or possibly a selection therefrom, or possibly be told to build another morph.
Others, on the other hand, do not. In this case, the optimal solution is to choose a morph with a CP cost of zero, spend everything on your character and then begin the game by saying "Okay, now I use my Networking to find a morph which is to my liking and get it for free." Or something to that effect.
And then there's the guys who will have you go through a mission for Firewall, and then tell you that Firewall confiscated your morphs and destroyed them upon mission completion because of the risk they'd picked up something nasty. You spent 10% of your chargen points on that morph? Sucks to be you.
Don't play with those guys. Ideally, you should know how your GM will be handling morphs and the potential losses thereof beforehand.
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Thu, 2016-03-17 18:37
#11
DivineWrath
A quick recap. Aptitudes can
A quick recap. Aptitudes can normally be raised up to 30. There exists things that can allow you to exceed that limit, such as morphs or traits. Raising aptitudes will raise skills. If raising an aptitude will raise a skill beyond 60, it costs you 1 cp per skill affected. Sleeving in a morph that raises skills beyond 60 does not cost you additional cp.
Something I didn't see covered is economics. Raising an aptitude by 1 point costs 15 cp. Raising an aptitude by 5 points costs 75 cp. However, a splicer costs 10 cp but gives you +5 aptitude points (75 cp worth of aptitude bonuses), a remade costs 40 cp but gives you +35 aptitude points (525 cp worth of aptitude bonuses), a reaper costs 100 cp but gives you +25 aptitude points (375 cp worth of aptitude bonuses) (I did not count reflex booster). Augments like, Muscle Augmentation costs 5000 credits (5 cp) but yields 75 cp worth of aptitude bonuses, while Reflex Booster costs 20 k (20 cp) but yields 150 cp worth of aptitude bonuses (and a speed bonus). Suffice to say, you can get a ridiculous boost to your character if you opt to get your aptitude bonuses from equipment instead of buying it as a permanent part of your character.
If you want to play at the numbers further, the morph creation rules in Transhuman has aptitude points be worth as low as 1.5 cp each to as high as 2.125 cp each.
Thu, 2016-03-17 19:06
#12
uwtartarus
The trick to that is morph
The trick to that is morph and implants are easy to lose in some cases. So spending the extra CP on ego aptitudes could be useful in long run, maybe?
Depending on the philosophy of GM as per ShadowDragon's post.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Thu, 2016-03-17 20:04
#13
Trappedinwikipedia
As a part of the recap, some
As a part of the recap, some aptitude bonuses from morphs are worth a lot more than others. COO, WIL and INT are probably some of the best due to rarity, as it's hard to boost them with gear or similar. Though a lot of the uses for WIL can be mitigated with pretty extreme psychosurgery and/or certain uplifts. COG is nice, but drugs and parallel processor make it pretty easy to boost externally.
SOM is one of the most used base stats in my experience, and can be worth upping for that reason, but there's a lot of cheap implants (Muscle augs, artificial skeleton) which upgrade it, so it's not a huge priority in a morph.
If you're worried about losing a morph and not being able to replace it, the really optimal move is a flat or informorph with maxed out negative traits. A -30 CP morph gets you a fair amount of strength elsewhere. A good Eidolon (super-informorphs from Transhuman, if you're curious Outrageous) can be pretty good as well, as it's a lot harder to permanently lose one of those.
If you're really paranoid, upgrading aptitudes above 25 can be a mistake, as i's easy to get stuck in bad morphs which don't have high caps with an evil GM.
Thu, 2016-03-17 21:19
#14
DivineWrath
Speaking of aptitudes and
Speaking of aptitudes and Eidolons, is there any use for aptitude bonuses for things like SOM? From what I understand, there isn't exactly many skills (if any) that use those aptitudes but are applicable for a digital lifeform, and there are some barriers when trying to use aptitudes when using remote control or jamming on robots and morphs.
Fri, 2016-03-18 01:32
#15
Trappedinwikipedia
I think SOM is useful when
I think SOM is useful when jamming still, for SOM using skills and resisting wounds (I think). Besides that there isn't a lot of reason to get it high, as it's not super important defensively. COG or SAV are probably the most important infomorph/Eidolon aptitudes, but if you plan on jamming a lot some of the relevant skills will also be important.
Mon, 2016-03-21 09:45
#16
ThatWhichNeverWas
Reach out and touch someone.
SOM is also good if your Infomorph is going to be interacting with Simulspaces - that avatar body is still a body, and uses the same skills/rules as a real one.
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