Hello,
I’m starting an Infinity game soon and a question came up during character creation. What would be the point to boosting a Geist’s brawn? In looking at the pre-made geists in the gear section, the military Geist has a Brawn of 8, and I’m just wondering what I’m missing, since it doesn’t look like a Geist would ever actually use brawn.
Thanks in advance,
Ayrizale
I’d not wondered about that before. And now I’ll be spending the rest of the day, at least, musing on it.
Generally speaking, why do Geists have Physical stats?
Maybe it’ll get revised like in shadowrun. The AI there only have mental stats.
I’d surmise that they have the physical stats because those are used to generate the base target number for skills based on those stats. I’m guessing that the Military Geist has a high Brawn so that, if it’s inhabiting a hefty remote, it knows how to utilise those ‘muscles’ in close combat (and get the effective damage bonus from doing so), in the same way that it has an even higher Coordination, so that it can use weapon systems effectively. After all, they have Quantronic Jump, so can move from system to system.
So if it’s jumped into a remote, you would use the lower of either the Geist’s stat or the remote’s?
That’s my understanding of the remote rules on pp354-5 of the corebook.
When operating something as a remote, you (or your Geist) make skill checks using your skills, with the remote providing an Assist action using the remote’s inherent abilities - and a +2 complication range (or +1 if using VR mode because you don’t care what happens to your meat body).
When “jumped in”, I believe it’s the same, but without the increased complication range. Although it’s not clear whether you still get the Assist from the remote’s own LAI/expert programs.
It does specifically state on p355, that …
Physical attributes (Agility, Brawn, and Coordination) are still capped by the remote’s limitations
… which I would take to indicate that the controlling sheut/Geist’s abilities would be used for skill checks.
I’m trying to recall whether there are any expanded remote rules in any of the other books.
Which is a hideously long and wordy way of saying “Yes, I think so.” Sorry!
@Modiphius-Nathan, have I got that right? And do you still get the remote’s Assist when jumped in? Cheers!
I’d count Geists as 'VR’ing into the REM (which seems to be what the rules tell you to do): so you’d get the LAI assitance dice, but also the additional Complication range. The additional Complication range would be due to imperfect system compatibility. You could easily imagine a mouthy Nomad Chauffeur Geist complaining about having to pilot a PanO REM because of how dirty it felt dealing with the proprietary Mototronica software shudders.
GM: have your Geist make a D1 Discipline test to avoid taking Mental damage.