# Cyberware: The Rules

*The Chrome Market, Near-Future Weapons, Cyberware, and Street Tech for Exodus NDS. Source: https://exodusnds.com/sourcebooks/chrome-market/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.