Upgrading Morphs 1e

# Upgrading Morphs

In most cases, when a character is seeking a morph with speciﬁc augmentations, they simply shop around the catalogs of various morph brokers until they ﬁnd what they need or something close to it. In situations where a character wants or needs to go to great lengths to get a speciﬁc mod, including hacking the morph they are currently in, use the following rules.

## Preordering Modifications

If you’re egocasting somewhere or otherwise arranging a resleeve in advance, you can usually preorder certain augmentations or enhancements if there doesn’t happen to be a morph with those customizations currently available. Most body banks and morph brokers offer this service, at least for add-ons that are legal and sanctioned. As detailed under Customized Morphs, simply add the cost of the enhancement to the morph’s base purchase or rental price.

Some enhancements (particular weapons or other combat boosts) may be illegal, in which case the character can try to acquire them through a black market morph provider (see Black Market Morphs). Others may require special permits or registration, requiring the character to deal with some legal bureaucracy.

Adding enhancements to a reserved morph takes time. Most brokers require such orders to be submitted at least ﬁve days prior to the resleeving, as well as payment in advance. These orders can sometimes be rushed to a one-day timeframe or even twelve hours, but usually at a signiﬁcant markup (+25% of the morph’s total cost). Keep in mind that some morph alterations take twelve hours or up to three days to complete.

In open economy habitats, autonomist matchmakers and body exchanges are less consumer-driven and more DIY-oriented and thus less likely to be accommodating to a character attempting to order enhancements to a morph in advance. Nevertheless, the proper application of rep network favors can produce results.

## Biomorph Bodyshop Mods

Characters looking to upgrade the biomorph they are currently inhabiting have several options. The easiest is to simply schedule with a licensed bodyshop for time in healing vat. Most augmentations take between one and twelve hours, though drastic body mods can take as long as three days. As a general rule of thumb, these enhancements should take 1 hour per cost category, double for mental/neural mods or ones that require massive alterations. This does not include the additional time it might take to scan the character’s body, conduct a full genetic proﬁle, prep for the procedure, and so on.

Any enhancements that are less-than-legal will require the services of a black market bodyshop. First the character must ﬁnd one and convince them to take their money; this requires a relevant application of g-rep, bribes, or roleplaying with established contacts. Mods from black market bodyshops will cost an extra 25% to 50%, or even as much as double if the enhancement is rare or especially dangerous. Though these illegal shops also rely on their reputations, not all of them are trustworthy or reliable, and the character may get more than what they asked for. On the other hand, they might also be able to ﬁnd some technology that is new and experimental—though there is no guarantee it will function as advertised.

## DIY Biomorph Mods

Characters with appropriate skills may look to do the job themselves. This requires a bit more preparation and calls for a number of skill tests, though gamemasters that wish to keep it simple may treat it the same as going to a bodyshop.

Like nanofabrication machines, healing vats must be programmed with blueprints of the desired augmentation. These blueprints follow the same rules as other nanofab blueprints in terms of availability and cost. These augmentation blueprints, however, must be coded with the speciﬁc genetic details of the morph to be modiﬁed. This requires a Medicine: Nanomedicine Task Action with a base timeframe of 4 hours. This assumes the morph is on hand for proﬁling and scans or that its detailed genetic record is available. It also assumes the character has access to a proper medical shop or facility with all of the relevant software tools and medical equipment; if not, the procedure will suffer from appropriate penalty modiﬁers or may not be possible. Impose a −10 modiﬁer for non-human morphs and a −20 for non-mammalian morphs. Once the healing vat is programmed with this information, the procedure largely runs itself. The vat’s AI will oversee the process and alert the appropriate medical staff of any problems or complications.

Characters that wish to undertake body mods without a healing vat are going to have a tougher time of it. While many cybernetic and nanoware systems and bioware organs can be nanofabricated separately or acquired from other bodies, the procedures for installing them are antiquated, more difﬁcult, and more dangerous. The preparation for these procedures is usually more extensive and the surgery itself can last from 1 to 8 hours. Use Medicine: Implant Surgery for for the skill test and apply appropriate modiﬁers for using ancient equipment or lacking the proper tools. Surgery of this sort inﬂicts 1d10 DV + 2 per cost level of the implant, though the gamemaster should modify this as they feel appropriate. Excellent Successes, Severe Failure, and criticals may increase or decrease this amount. Without a healing vat, healing and recovery will also take longer; follow the rules for natural healing.

## Modifying Existing Synthmorphs

Synthmorphs may be enhanced in a similar manner to biomorphs. Synthmorphs do not require a healing vat, of course. The enhancement simply needs to be nanofabricated according to the usual rules and then installed with a Hardware: Robotics Task Action. The timeframe for this task is 2 hours per cost category, modiﬁed as the gamemaster feels appropriate. Double this time for morphs with modular construction and quadruple it for shape-adjusting morphs. Most enhancement upgrades require a tool shop or facility, though if the gamemaster allows it, minor enhancements can be completed with a simple tool kit.