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Old 03-11-2018, 10:33 PM   #1
scc
 
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Default [DF] Cyberware Questions

Cyberware in DF does sound a bit strange, if you assume that the character is a Banestorm victim it's not that unreasonable, and DF already has a lot of wierd stuff in it.

So I'm planing on making my cyberware more or less a Power, with it having Temporary Limitations (Does that even make sense?) on the Abilities of Electrical (-20%) and Unhealing (Total)(-30%).

1. So in Unhealing actually a limitation on any implants? Sure they won't heal on their own, but most healing in DF is magical/clerical which I believe would actually fix any damaged implants.

1a. How do implants heal? Is any damage they suffer just added to your total damage or does it need to be healed separately?

2. When a character is hit with electrical attacks how do I determine if any implants are damaged? And how much punishment can an implant take?

3. Absolute Direction has a Requires Signal (-20%) limitation, how much would an Inertial limitation be worth?

4. My idea is that in cases where you replace an existing body part, you take the Disadvantage that removes that body part and then the Not version of the Disadvantage with the cost modifier, for example Blindness [-50] and Not Blind (Cyberware, -50%) [25], and probably something to represent the increased toughness of the replacement (It's made of metal) like Nictitating Membrane. Given that these have to be taken together, should I make them a Meta-Trait?

4a. Optional add-ons, like Accessory (Video Display) for my cyber-eyes example above, need to be linked with the package their added to, does anyone have any idea on how to do this?
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Old 03-12-2018, 12:02 AM   #2
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

For inspiration, take a look at pyramid's first issue which has the article Necromantic Tools. I believe it has rules for undead arm replacements. The second thing I would suggest to look at is DF6: 40 Artifacts. It is more of a toolkit for legendary artifacts. So you could get ideas to make something like a bronze arm, of racial origin, within the Mad Gear King's tomb or an arch-wizard's clay prosthetic arm, of magical/material origin, that has switchable body part. Other than that I would think Powers is better than using Ultra-Tech for DF games for making prosthetic body parts in a dungeon fantasy game.

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
1. So in Unhealing actually a limitation on any implants? Sure they won't heal on their own, but most healing in DF is magical/clerical which I believe would actually fix any damaged implants.
If magical, I would say heals only within mana zones. If mechanical, see an artificer, artificer priest, or dwarven blacksmith.

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4a. Optional add-ons, like Accessory (Video Display) for my cyber-eyes example above, need to be linked with the package their added to, does anyone have any idea on how to do this?
I wouldn't do upgrades, but if you are, check out Dungeon Fantasy Video Gaming form Pyramid #3/72. It has video game-like power ups that might work for a magical prosthetic.
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Old 03-12-2018, 12:58 PM   #3
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

Subbed because I'm always interested in a kinda-sorta He-Man sci-fi fantasy vibe in DF. I plan on using electro lasers and having robotical automaton soldiers, for example. There will, of course, have to be a villain with a cyborg eye and arm.
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Old 03-12-2018, 12:58 PM   #4
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
1. So in Unhealing actually a limitation on any implants? Sure they won't heal on their own, but most healing in DF is magical/clerical which I believe would actually fix any damaged implants.
Unhealing does not prevent magical healing. It solely is about natural healing - a cyber-arm that doesn't have something like nanotech healing stuff is definitely Unhealing.
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Old 03-12-2018, 02:36 PM   #5
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
Cyberware in DF does sound a bit strange, if you assume that the character is a Banestorm victim it's not that unreasonable, and DF already has a lot of wierd stuff in it.

So I'm planing on making my cyberware more or less a Power, with it having Temporary Limitations (Does that even make sense?) on the Abilities of Electrical (-20%) and Unhealing (Total)(-30%).

1. So in Unhealing actually a limitation on any implants? Sure they won't heal on their own, but most healing in DF is magical/clerical which I believe would actually fix any damaged implants.
No, you'd need magical repair not healing for inorganic implants.
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Old 03-12-2018, 02:50 PM   #6
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

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Originally Posted by scc View Post
So I'm planing on making my cyberware more or less a Power, with it having Temporary Limitations (Does that even make sense?) on the Abilities of Electrical (-20%) and Unhealing (Total)(-30%).
That's pretty much exactly how Ultra-Tech and other sources of cybernetics have done it, so yeah, that makes sense. Ultra-Tech also puts Maintenance as a temporary disadvantage at some level on most cyberware, but you may want to avoid that, since a time-displaced person probably won't have the resources to maintain their own 'ware, resulting in a very-quickly-useless character.

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Originally Posted by scc
1. So in Unhealing actually a limitation on any implants? Sure they won't heal on their own, but most healing in DF is magical/clerical which I believe would actually fix any damaged implants.
I would say it is a limitation, yes. DF templates include traits like Rapid and Very Rapid Healing, which suggests to me that "natural" healing is expected to happen. And my own experience with DF bears that out, at least somewhat. The cleric gets tapped out on FP, or has just used all their healing spells on someone several times in a day, and just can't heal all the HP damage, and then natural healing kicks in. Or the cleric gets taken out!

However, I think it is reasonable to say that cybernetics can be healed with magic, but it takes different magic. Make up a Making and Breaking College spell that works like the various healing spells, but only works on machines, for example. This approach, though, means you will have to track damage to the character's regular body and cybernetic parts differently, which can get annoying. Bear that in mind.

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Originally Posted by scc
1a. How do implants heal? Is any damage they suffer just added to your total damage or does it need to be healed separately?
You'd need to track it separately. It all comes off the character's HP total, but you need to note if it was damage to their meat, or their metal. For example, say someone has 15 hp, and a bionic arm. If someone attacks their torso and does 6 HP, you just mark off 6 HP. However, if someone hits the arm, you'll need to mark off 6 HP from their total and note that it was 6 HP done to a cybernetic part. You probably don't need to track each part individually, fortunately.

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Originally Posted by scc
2. When a character is hit with electrical attacks how do I determine if any implants are damaged? And how much punishment can an implant take?
Implants don't have separate HP pools from the main character. If someone targets the hit location the implant is in, any damage done to the main character is the damage done to the implant. Implants will generally have the HP of the associated part, so, for example, a hit that does enough damage to cripple the character's arm will disable their bionic arm. For implants in locations not subject to crippling (artificial vital organs, for example), or those that take up less than the full body part (a bionic forearm, for instance), I'd set a number on 1d that needs to be rolled to hit the bionic part, when hitting the general hit location (so that bionic forearm might need to roll 1-3 on 1d to be struck when hitting the arm). For bionics in locations without crippling, I'd use the number needed to hit them to determine their HP threshold: 1 on 1d is 1/10th HP, 1-2 is 1/5th, 1-3 is 1/4th, and 1-4 is 1/3rd, and 1-5 is 1/2 HP. For locations with crippling, reduce the crippling threshold by one or more steps (steps are 1/2 HP - 1/3rd HP - 1/4th HP - 1/5th HP - 1/10th HP): 1 on 1d is 4 steps, 1-2 is 3 steps, 1-3 is 2 steps, and 1-4 is 1 step. 1-5 just uses the standard crippling threshold.

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Originally Posted by scc
3. Absolute Direction has a Requires Signal (-20%) limitation, how much would an Inertial limitation be worth?
Depends on what exactly you picture it doing. Could you give more details?

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Originally Posted by scc
4. My idea is that in cases where you replace an existing body part, you take the Disadvantage that removes that body part and then the Not version of the Disadvantage with the cost modifier, for example Blindness [-50] and Not Blind (Cyberware, -50%) [25], and probably something to represent the increased toughness of the replacement (It's made of metal) like Nictitating Membrane. Given that these have to be taken together, should I make them a Meta-Trait?
4a. Optional add-ons, like Accessory (Video Display) for my cyber-eyes example above, need to be linked with the package their added to, does anyone have any idea on how to do this?
The standard way to do this is to take the relevant Disadvantage for the missing body part, but apply a Mitigator to it to represent the cybernetics. Ultra-Tech suggests -70%, but that's for cybernetics that require maintenance, so if they're just Electrical and Unhealing, use -60% instead.

You should put the benefits of any cybernetic replacements into a meta-trait with the disadvantage. This includes both any benefit they directly provide (e.g., Nictating Membrane for a cybernetic eye), and any advantages they supply generally (for instance, that Accessory (video display) perk.
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Old 03-12-2018, 04:51 PM   #7
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

Power-Ups: Limitations gives a variation of Temporary Disadvantage called TD (Shutdown), which is essentially "the ability stops working as if affected by" the disad, which seems to just be an official statement of "this is how we intended it to work when we wrote Ultra-Tech".
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Old 03-12-2018, 11:08 PM   #8
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
No, you'd need magical repair not healing for inorganic implants.
Well apart from the fact that these are purely technological artefacts

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
That's pretty much exactly how Ultra-Tech and other sources of cybernetics have done it, so yeah, that makes sense. Ultra-Tech also puts Maintenance as a temporary disadvantage at some level on most cyberware, but you may want to avoid that, since a time-displaced person probably won't have the resources to maintain their own 'ware, resulting in a very-quickly-useless character.
Ultra-Tech doesn't handle things uniformly, not all abilities get the limitation.


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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
I would say it is a limitation, yes. DF templates include traits like Rapid and Very Rapid Healing, which suggests to me that "natural" healing is expected to happen. And my own experience with DF bears that out, at least somewhat. The cleric gets tapped out on FP, or has just used all their healing spells on someone several times in a day, and just can't heal all the HP damage, and then natural healing kicks in. Or the cleric gets taken out!
These advantages don't help that much, allowing you to heal 2HP at best. In fact the effect of Rapid Healing to avoid crippling injuries is probably more useful and I think it would effect cyberware

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
However, I think it is reasonable to say that cybernetics can be healed with magic, but it takes different magic. Make up a Making and Breaking College spell that works like the various healing spells, but only works on machines, for example. This approach, though, means you will have to track damage to the character's regular body and cybernetic parts differently, which can get annoying. Bear that in mind.
Not really a good option as anyone with cyberware is probably from another timeline, one without magic.

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
You'd need to track it separately. It all comes off the character's HP total, but you need to note if it was damage to their meat, or their metal. For example, say someone has 15 hp, and a bionic arm. If someone attacks their torso and does 6 HP, you just mark off 6 HP. However, if someone hits the arm, you'll need to mark off 6 HP from their total and note that it was 6 HP done to a cybernetic part. You probably don't need to track each part individually, fortunately.
If damage done to cyberware must be tracked separately like that then it shouldn't come of the character's total HP

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
Depends on what exactly you picture it doing. Could you give more details?
Inertial guidance is a compass or other direction determining device connected to an accelerator, using that information it can determine hor far you've moved and in what direction, sort the reverse of orienteering. It allows you to know where you are without consalting any outside reference points.

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
The standard way to do this is to take the relevant Disadvantage for the missing body part, but apply a Mitigator to it to represent the cybernetics. Ultra-Tech suggests -70%, but that's for cybernetics that require maintenance, so if they're just Electrical and Unhealing, use -60% instead.

You should put the benefits of any cybernetic replacements into a meta-trait with the disadvantage. This includes both any benefit they directly provide (e.g., Nictating Membrane for a cybernetic eye), and any advantages they supply generally (for instance, that Accessory (video display) perk.
Ultra-Tech does it this was and it's noted for problem doing it, notably in this case as maintenance is NOT going to be available (Think Banestrom victim) the Mitigator Ultra-Tech applies doesn't work, and Electrical and Unhealing aren't available for Disadvantage Limitations
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Old 03-13-2018, 12:26 AM   #9
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Default Re: [DF] Cyberware Questions

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These advantages don't help that much, allowing you to heal 2HP at best.
Well, there's also an argument to be made that Very Rapid Healing should also double HP recovery from magic and other effects. But that doesn't really have a bearing on the current situation. Nonetheless, Dungeon Fantasy does include them, so I'd say the default assumption is that they are useful.

However, if you assume that non-magical healing is not relevant, then you should definitely make at least a different spell to heal cybernetics, rather than allowing the standard healing spells to work, because otherwise, as you first suggested, Unhealing wouldn't be a significant limitation.

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Originally Posted by scc
In fact the effect of Rapid Healing to avoid crippling injuries is probably more useful and I think it would effect cyberware
Well, if you want to treat them as separate HP pools, I would think it wouldn't.

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Originally Posted by scc
Not really a good option as anyone with cyberware is probably from another timeline, one without magic.
You would have to introduce spells like Repair and Rebuild from Magic, but I don't see why, if they exist, they wouldn't work on cybernetics. Unless the cyberware is built from some kind of anti-magic material, or material from another timeline is somehow inherently anti-magical. But I don't think that's a default assumption. The spells would have problems with the cyberware being effectively much higher TL than almost anyone casting them, for sure.

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Originally Posted by scc
If damage done to cyberware must be tracked separately like that then it shouldn't come of the character's total HP
If you want to track the character's HP separately from their 'ware, you can do it that way. However, if you do it that way, I'd suggest that, if a character has large parts of their body replaced with cybernetics, they should have reduced "core" HP, to represent having less meat to absorb damage.

I don't think it's that difficult to track damage to cybernetics in its own pool, though. Just make sure you know which hit locations have cyber in them, and keep track of which HP have been done to those areas and are thus unhealing.

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Originally Posted by scc
It allows you to know where you are without consalting any outside reference points.
It sounds less limited than Requires Signal. I'd say the only point it's going to be significantly limited, compared to unmodified Absolute Direction, is if you get transported to another place without crossing the intervening space (e.g., teleportation). That could actually be a thing in a DF game, so it's a bit of a limitation, but not a big one. I'd put it at -10%.

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Originally Posted by scc
Ultra-Tech does it this was and it's noted for problem doing it, notably in this case as maintenance is NOT going to be available (Think Banestrom victim) the Mitigator Ultra-Tech applies doesn't work, and Electrical and Unhealing aren't available for Disadvantage Limitations
The Mitigator includes all three of Electrical, Unhealing, and Maintenance. See Ultra-Tech, p. 207. If you want it to include only Electrical and Unhealing, not Maintenance, that's a -80% Mitigator instead, as Kromm explains here.
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