[HOE] That old cyborg discussion, WAS:Cyborgs: Damaged SRU

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> Personally, I quite like infiltrators, they're pretty funky. With the number
> of protocols still intact, Hvy. Combat are just unplayable - let's face it,
> would you want to hand a player a walking armed division. I think my main
> problem is that the are eminently munchkin-able.

Well they are a weird dichotomy:
They're insanely powerful with the guns and armor (and killing with the
hurting of the neck, laven!)
But at the same time they can't walk into any town (sure they could
probably kill the mob that attacked them, but how much Ammo & Angst would
it cost them), and the more powerful they are, the more RoE they have to
worry about.
This, of course, was intentional. Both as a balancing act and to also make
them more interesting to play.

I'm of the general mindset that infiltrators and light cans could be
playable as PCs, but that heavy cans should really be reserved for NPCs
and major villains.

---spoiler space for Bob's posse, but not Bob----






The rest of this is just me babbling about my borg back-up char. Skip it
if you're not interested, otherwise you've been warned.

The 'borg I made up was an infiltrator. Her RoE were actually kinda
interesting:
1. She has to investigate any occult/abomination reports
2. She has to help any civilian that asks for it
3. She can't spend more then two days in any one place

She also had: 4. Kill anyone that finds out you're a cyborg, but I
emancipated that one (too much inter-posse conflict if she starts killing
them all in their sleep).

All the RoE actually fit well with her background. She was part of an
infiltration unit that was sent to Banshee to root out human spies and
anouk sympathizers. She did all the horrible stuff that everyone else had
to do (and worse), bombed human settlements, killed people in their sleep,
etc.
As the war wound down the sykers all started packing up on the Unity. The
borgs were supposed to be left behind and picked up later. Well her unit
decided that they were sick of getting the shaft and they wanted to go
home. So, being a bunch of infiltrators, they all kicked in their
facemakers and mind-shields and boarded posing as civilians needing to get
home.
Everything was fine until the mess that made that caused the evacuation in
earth-orbit. The civilians had all been assigned escorts/wardens to keep
an eye on them. The infiltrators got put under a non-combat syker unit
called the Mindbenders (work those mind-shields!) well no one was caught,
until a broken beam fell on one of the infiltrators killing him and
revealing their secret (bodies aren't supposed to spark when they're cut
in half!)
Well the Mindbenders started probing big time and the jig was up. Before
anyone could stop it a fight broke out between the borgs and sykers. The
borgs were all made to be killers (to some extent) and the Mindbender's
specialties were interrogation. So the outcome was no real surprise (only
one borg was killed besides the one that started the whole thing).
The borgs all climbed into their escape pod without a word and split up
and scattered as soon as they got to earth.

So how do those RoE fit in?
Well before the war, and before she died, Sally was actually a house-wife
on a farm. She was working the fields with a large tractor when it ran
over some old fence and launched a beam right through her heart. 
Well Sally had filled out a form allowing the gov't to use her body in the
event of her death and her husband ok-ed it so they brought her back and
started training her for Agency work.
So the RoE (help civilians, kill cultists/abominations, keep on the move,
don't be discovered) are all throw-backs to her Agency days. When the pod
crashed on earth it took a lot of damage (the borgs blew the safety limits
and came in hard and fast to try and get away before too many sykers asked
too many questions).
As a result a sort of "reset" happened that restored her old RoE from her
agency days.
That's what I came up with anyway :)

Incidently, my Marshal liked the background so he let me take Veteran of
the Faraway Wars instead of Veteran of the Wasted West (with the proviso
that I re-draw anything that wouldn't hurt/effect a non-syker) so as a
result she is a peace-nik (I'm treating it as the -3 hinderance) with a
severe intolerance for authority.

 Theo McGuckin
	"Putting the Mentor back in Tormentor"