The Chrome Market ยท Chapter 5
Cyberware: The Rules
Load
Every implant has a Load, from 0 to 3.
A character's Strain Points are permanently reduced by the total Load of everything installed.
A character with Willpower 2 has 12 Strain Points. With a Smartlink (1), Cybereyes (1), a Cyberarm (1), and Wired Reflexes (2), that character has 7.
The limit. Total Load cannot exceed the character's Might plus Willpower. The body and the mind each take part of the strain, and past that point the surgery kills.
Removing an implant returns its Load after a week.
What an Implant Is
- It is not gear. It has no Encumbrance and cannot be dropped, disarmed, or left in the car.
- It is a device. It can be found by a scanner, shut down by a pulse, and, if it has a wireless link, hacked.
- It is registered. Every legal implant has a serial number on file with the clinic that fitted it. Illicit ones do not, which is most of their price.
Raising a characteristic. Three implants raise a characteristic by 1. No characteristic passes 5, and no characteristic gains more than 1 from augmentation of any kind.
A whole synthetic body is not in this book. A brain in a machine is a different kind of character, and belongs to the Universe that wants one.
Surgery
Installing an implant takes a clinic, a surgeon, and one hour for each point of Load, with a minimum of one. The surgeon makes a Medicine check against the implant's Load plus 1 as its difficulty: Easy for Load 0, Severe for Load 3.
| Result | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Success | Installed. The patient recovers for one day for each point of Load: no Strain is recovered in that time |
| Failure | Installed, and Glitchy |
| Failure with a Calamity | Not installed. The patient suffers a Critical Injury, and the implant is second-hand |
| 2 Boons | Recovery takes half as long |
Chapter 11 gives the surgeon's dice for each grade of clinic. A corporate hospital needs no check.
Glitchy
A Glitchy implant works. When its user makes a check that depends on it, the GM may spend 2 Bane, or a Calamity, to shut it down until the end of the scene.
An implant becomes Glitchy from failed surgery, a missed month of maintenance, a second-hand sale, or a Critical Injury that says so. A Hard Craft check and parts worth a tenth of its price put it right.
Pulses and Ion
A weapon with Ion X that hits a character with cyberware:
- Inflicts Strain equal to X or to the target's total Load, whichever is lower, in addition to its damage.
- May spend 2 Boons to shut down one implant of the attacker's choice for X rounds.
A Faraday Liner halves the Ion rating. An implant bought Hardened, at one and a half times its price, cannot be shut down this way.
Bioware is flesh. Ion does nothing to it.
Finding It
| The cyberware is | A person notices | A scanner finds |
|---|---|---|
| Obvious: bare cyberlimbs, a jack, lensed eyes | Always | Always |
| Covered with Synthskin, or internal | Hard Perception check | Always |
| Bioware | Never | Only a medical scan, with a Hard Medicine check |
Many places forbid some implants: weapons, links, and anything that records. A scanner arch at the door lists them.
Damage
A Critical Injury to a replaced limb or organ is repaired with Craft in place of Medicine, at the same difficulty, with parts worth a tenth of the implant's price. A cyberlimb replaces a limb that was lost, and removes the injury that took it.