In campaigns where the GM allows it, a player can choose to make a VI as a player character. They do this by spending their free focus pick on one of the origins listed below. These origin foci have only one level, and normally can only be taken during character creation.
In exceptional cases, a human PC transformed into a full-conversion cyborg might be allowed to take it later.
Special VI Rules
All VI PCs have the same attributes, hit points, abilities, and character classes as humans do, but normal VIs cannot be Psychics nor take the Partial Psychic class option for Adventurers. They are created the same way as any other human PC and start out at first level.
While they may have been built to be a particular type of bot, they use their own statistics, and not those for their type. VIs that are not wearing armor normally have Armor Class 10, just as humans do.
VIs need neither sleep, eat, nor drink, requiring one Type B cell per week of operation away from readily-available current. They are immune to vacuum but suffer degradation from radiation as humans do. They cannot be poisoned or diseased by normal forms of toxin. They can be reprogrammed, altering or erasing their personality and behavioral limits, but such mental remodeling takes at least an undisturbed month to execute by someone with at least Program-1 skill. Most VIs will fight to their destruction to avoid such a fate.
VIs can be healed with spare parts and the work of someone with Fix-0 skill. VIs can always repair themselves, even without the requisite skill. Each unit of spare parts heals lost hit points equal to the VI’s character level and takes fifteen minutes to apply. VIs cannot normally be affected by biopsionic healing effects.
VIs reduced to zero hit points but not entirely smashed are incapacitated and Badly Damaged. Removing this quality requires 24 hours of work by a technician and at least one unit of spare parts, after which damage can be repaired as normal. As a field expedient, a tech can jury-rig a Badly Damaged VI in the field, healing it with spare parts at the normal rate and speed. If such a bot is reduced to zero hit points again while Badly Damaged, however, it must make a Physical save or be permanently destroyed.
VIs are intimately connected to their specific hardware, and cannot be transplanted into new forms. Cosmetic alterations can be made, however, and equipment can be grafted into the VI’s chassis. Such built-in equipment costs twice as much as a stand-alone component and takes a week to properly integrate into the VI’s system. A VI can have a total number of encumbrance points worth of additional gear grafted onto it equal to half its Constitution score, rounded down. Such gear may require its own separate power source or ammunition supply. VIs cannot make use of cyberware.
Android
You were built as an android, a robot indistinguish-able from a human without a medical-grade inspection. Most androids are “companion” bots, though other VIs with roles that involve significant human interaction may also be built as androids. Minor scuffs and cuts don’t reveal your robotic nature, but if reduced to zero hit points, your unnatural innards are obvious.
Level 1: Gain a bonus skill related to your intended func-tion. You have all the usual traits and abilities of a VI robot.
VI Worker Bot
You were built for industrial or technical labor, where a human face was an unnecessary luxury. Most such VI bots are humanoid, if only to more conveniently manipulate human-scale devices, but their inhuman nature is obvious.
Level 1: Gain a bonus skill related to your intended function. Choose an attribute associated with your work and gain a +1 bonus to its modifier, up to a maximum of +2. You have all the usual traits and abilities of a VI robot.
VI Vehicle Bot
Some VIs were instantiated in actual vehicles rather than conventional humanoid bodies. Most were purely synthetic in origins, but some sectors retain the techniques for brain transplants into non-human bodies. Some polities have been known to conduct full-body cyberneticization of soldiers into tanks, warships, attack helicopters, and other military vehicles. As a vehicle, you are usually equipped with manipulator arms that can be used on adjacent objects. You may operate the individual elements of your vehicle as if they were your own limbs, attacking once per round with a mounted weapon of your choice.
Level 1: Gain Pilot as a bonus skill. Pick a vehicle acceptable to the GM, usually a drone, hoverbike or gravcar. You become that vehicle. You retain your usual attributes but gain the vehicle’s Armor score. You are Armor Class 10, modified by your Dexterity score. A tech can improve your Armor Class by aftermarket modifications, adding up to three times their Fix skill to your Armor Class at a cost of 1,000 credits per point of improvement.
You use the vehicle’s hit points until your own normally-rolled hit point score exceeds that number. Many VI vehicles purchase a drone or humanoid robot body to carry on board and employ for remote operation in areas unsuitable for a vehicle; you can pilot a single surrogate body in lieu of your own Main Action, provided there’s no ECM to jam the control transmissions.