Creating an AI PC works somewhat differently than creating a human player character. AIs and their armatures are created objects, and their armatures can be swapped in and out as the situation recommends. An AI PC will never possess the psionic abilities of a psychic, the unique aptitude of an expert, or the martial prowess of a warrior. Still, their toughness and versatility can give them an edge in responding to widely varying situations.
Tolerance
An AI matrix core has a limited ability to adjust to new fittings and new skills. The literary conceit of a chip inserted to instantly upload a complex skill is largely fictional, and AIs are forced to gradually hone new abilities in much the same way as any human might. They may be able to summon up endless reams of abstract information about a skill, but a human with a datapad could do that much- the key is in being able to reference and implement that data. Most AIs can no more do that without practice than an ordinary human could synthesize a quantum composite with a list of instructions and an idle factory satellite.
The ability of an AI to integrate new components is measured in points of Tolerance. An AI matrix core is built of several components which must sum to a total Tolerance cost no greater than 20. The core must then be installed into an armature, which may have a Tolerance cost of its own.
For example, a core might have 17 Tolerance points worth of components. The AI is then installed in a Nemesis armature that costs 3 Tolerance points. As the total is equal or less than 20, the AI can operate the armature. Later, the core is swapped into an Echo armature, which also has a Tolerance cost of 3. As the new total is still not greater than 20, the combination functions normally.
Components
To create an AI, a player chooses from a list of options for their
Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma attributes, attack bonuses, saving throws, skill points per level, and beginning skill packages.
The total Tolerance cost of these elements cannot exceed 20, and most players will choose to leave at least three or five points unspent to account for the armature they wish to use.
After selecting these components, the player then chooses which armature with which to start play. Each armature costs additional
Tolerance to use, and an AI that has spent all their available points will be forced into using a very limited number of options. Most starting AIs must choose between Standard, Echo, Nemesis, and Voyager armatures. Additional models are provided for the use of the GM and for eventual acquisition by suitably fortunate adventurers.
Final Touches
After choosing their core components and selecting an allowed armature, the final elements of an AI character are set. Every AI character gains 4 hit points per level, modified by their current armature’s Constitution modifier. Every AI character speaks
English, the language of their world of creation, and one additional language for every bonus point of their Intelligence modifier. AI characters start play with four hundred credits plus 1d6 x 100 more with which to buy initial equipment.
Character Advancement
AI characters gain experience points just as any other PC. This experience represents their growing ability to integrate physical experiences with their synthetic consciousness, and leads to greater flexibility, expertise, and confidence.
When an AI advances a level, it gains additional skill points based on the core option chosen during character generation- one, two, or three skill points. All skills are considered class skills for AIs, and no trainers are necessary to advance a skill provided the basic instructional materials are available.
An AI also gains hit points based on its level, varying with the type of armature it is occupying. For almost all armatures, this is 4 hit points per level, with each level modified by the armature’s Constitution score. Thus, a 5th level AI in a fully-repaired Nemesis armature with 14 Constitution has a total of 25 hit points. The more experienced the AI, the better it is at keeping an armature functioning even when it’s been blasted halfway to molten scrap.
* AIs add their armature’s Constitution modifier to the hit points gained each level.
| LEVEL | HIT POINTS* | XP |
| 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 2 | 8 | 2,005 |
| 3 | 12 | 4,010 |
| 4 | 16 | 8,020 |
| 5 | 20 | 16.040 |
| 6 | 24 | 32,080 |
| 7 | 28 | 64,160 |
| 8 | 32 | 128,320 |
| 9 | 36 | 250,640 |
| 10 | 40 | 370,000 |
| 11+ | +4/level | +125,000/level |
AI Character Abilities and Special Rules
While some armatures are capable of mimicking human qualities, AIs need not sleep, eat, drink, or breathe. They are immune to all but the most exotic diseases and poisons, can function normally in vacuum, and can safely tolerate any temperature between the extremes of a boiling or frozen world. Radiation still damages their internals, however, and they must make radiation saves as normal.
Corrosive and other exceptionally dangerous atmospheres can erode them as well.
AIs are completely immune to the Biopsionic psychic discipline, whether helpful and harmful. The other psychic disciplines function normally with them, and their minds create a sufficiently human-like metadimensional penumbra to be comprehensible to telepaths. Even the most cursory mental contact will reveal an AI’s true nature, regardless of how convincing an armature it might wear.
AI characters all have a certain expertise with computers and other technical subjects as part of their essential programming, but they are not able to exert any special control or influence over other machines beyond what their skills might suggest. If they want to communicate with a computer, they need to patch into it and make whatever Computer/Int rolls the GM finds appropriate. All AIs can innately perform the same functions that a human with access to a dataslab could manage- record-keeping, calculations, and other ordinary computing tasks at the same speed as any human user.
AI Phylacteries
An AI may leave a portion of its matrix core behind in a safe location, perhaps already installed into a serviceable armature. If the main core is destroyed, the AI’s awareness slowly sparks to life in the phylactery over 1d6 hours, remembering everything known to the main core up to the moment of its destruction. The matrix core needs time to gradually regrow before it can be split off into a new phylactery, a process of slow regeneration that requires roughly one month. An AI does not automatically know whether or not its phylactery is intact.
Damage, Healing and Repair
The destruction of an armature does not necessarily destroy the AI matrix core within it. An armature reduced to zero HP by a personal weapon leaves the core intact. Destruction by some environmental damage, gunnery weapon, or other drastic trauma allows the AI a Luck saving throw to escape core destruction. An AI without a functioning armature is effectively unconscious.
Repairing an armature requires the work of a technician with at least Tech/Postech-1 skill. An AI can always repair its own armature regardless of skill, provided it has not been reduced to zero hit points. A full maintenance cycle can repair all damage and requires 24 hours of work, divided by the tech’s Tech/Postech skill rating, at a cost of 50 credits per hit point repaired and the use of a postech toolkit. A technician can perform a field overhaul with ten minutes of work and a metatool, repairing up to half the AI’s maximum hit points at the same cost in spare parts. Only one field overhaul can be performed between each full maintenance cycle. Fifty credits worth of spare parts count as one item for encumbrance purposes, and can be bundled up to five at a time.
An armature reduced to zero hit points may be beyond repair. A technician must make a Tech/Postech skill check at a difficulty equal to 7 plus the Tolerance cost of the armature to repair it with a field overhaul or full maintenance cycle. If the tech can get the armature back to a fully-equipped workshop, he may make a second roll if the first one is unsuccessful.
AI Character Creation Steps
Choose Attribute Components
The Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma of an AI are based on the sophistication of its initial neural network. Some designers sacrificed a mind’s propensity for careful judgment or empathetic modeling for faster pattern recognition, or made other trade-offs as their purposes suggested. Others preferred a more well-rounded mind with fewer weaknesses, if also fewer strengths.
Every AI character must buy separate scores for Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. Like all core components, these purchases are permanent and cannot be altered after play has begun.
| SCORE | MODIFIER | TOLERANCE COST |
| 3 | -2 | 0 |
| 7 | -1 | 1 |
| 12 | 0 | 3 |
| 14 | +1 | 5 |
| 18 | +2 | 7 |
Choose an Attack Bonus
Every AI has a certain aptitude for combat. A complex array of spatial processing elements and aggression inhibitors can combine to produce a mind with a positive zest for combat, or conspire to result in an AI that has difficulty in drawing a bead on a living target. No matter the number of integral or carried weapons an armature may possess, they can only attack with one per round.
A player must choose the rate at which the AI’s attack bonus will increase as they rise in levels. At the slowest rate, the AI gains +1 attack bonus for every four full levels they possess, while at the fastest, they’ll gain +1 for every two levels.
| BONUS | TOLERANCE COST |
| +1 per 4 levels | 0 |
| +1 per 3 levels | 1 |
| +1 per 2 levels | 3 |
Choose Saving Throws
AI saving throws are simpler than that of humans, lacking the subtle differences in aptitude and luck that distinguish the human classes. Their saving throws are similar to those of NPCs- a base throw of 15+ to succeed at any save. This number goes down based on the AI’s level, with some cores having a more developed sense of self-preservation than others.
| PROGRESSION | TOLERANCE COST |
| -1 per 4 levels | 0 |
| -1 per 3 levels | 1 |
| -1 per 2 levels | 3 |
Choose Skill Point Progression
Some AIs are just naturally quicker on the uptake than others.
These sharper minds have an easier time absorbing new skills as they gain experience with the world. At this point, a player should choose the number of skill points their AI will gain each time it gains an experience level.
| PROGRESSION | TOLERANCE COST |
| 1/level | 0 |
| 2/level | 2 |
| 3/level | 5 |
Choose Beginning Skill Packages
Just like human characters, AIs have skill packages. All AIs get the Basic skill package as part of their essential nature. Additional skill packages can be added on by paying more Tolerance points.
| PROGRESSION | TOLERANCE COST |
| Basic only | 0 |
| Basic + 1 more | 1 |
| Basic + 2 more | 3 |
| Basic + 3 more | 5 |
AIs select skill packages much as humans do. All skills granted by a package begin at level 0. If a skill appears on two package lists, it starts at level 1. If a skill appears three or more times, an AI can choose any one other skill in place of the third and additional appearances. The same skill package cannot be selected twice, and no skill can begin play at a level higher than 1.
Basic Skills
Every AI has certain essential skills due to its basic nature and experiences. Every AI gains the following skills as a consequence of its creation process and self-defense programming.
Skills: Combat/Any, Program, Connect, Fix
Combat
The AI was a warbot at some point, dedicated to the violent disassembly of its chosen enemies. Most such AIs operated military armatures such as the Nemesis or the Bane, though a few were deep-cover assassins piloting an Echo or Eidolon.
Skills: Combat/Any chosen twice, Lead, Notice, Exert
Companion
The AI once specialized in interpersonal relations and human psychology. Some such AIs were devout hedonists seeking to experience
the glorious permutations of human passion. Others were dedicated students of the human mind, determined to understand the
mysteries of the thoughts that had given them birth.
Skills: Perform, Administer, Work, Connect, Talk, Trade, Heal
Dilettante
With all the cosmos as your playground, who is to say what knowledge is to be found? This package represents a somewhat eclectic and
undisciplined approach to developing an AI’s natural aptitudes.
Skills: Any two skills. Optionally, the AI may take any one skill at level 1.
Exploration
A vital fascination with the wide cosmos drove some AIs into lives of ceaseless voyaging and eager exploration. This fallen age has been
a mixed blessing to such minds; so much lost, yet so much has become strange and new all over again.
Skills: Connect, Know, Pilot, Notice, Fix, Heal
Infiltration
Some AIs excelled at getting into and out of places that humans were never meant to enter. Their toughness and the confidence of their phylacteries gave them a cool-handed capacity for infiltrating some of the most hostile environments and dangerous places in the galaxy. These infiltration skills represent a past spent going where others dared not tread.
Skills: Program, Notice, Talk, Pilot, Sneak, Exert
Pilot
Some AIs embodied themselves in starships, wiring in to the navigational systems and sensor arrays of vast ships of war or exploration.
The purpose-built astronautics wiring required for such intimate integration is almost unknown now, but even a simple armature can serve as a passable interface between a skyfaring mind and a ship’s control panel.
Skills: Shoot, Connect, Pilot, Fix, Know
Tech
The AI has been able to integrate advanced technical protocols into its skill set. Perhaps it was originally an administrative mind charged with overseeing the maintenance of some complex planetary system, or it could have been forced to acquire these skills simply to aid in keeping its armature functioning.
Skills: Computer, Science, Tech/Postech, Tech/Pretech, Tech/Any
Armature Hulls
All correctly-constructed armatures draw their power from the quantum fluctuations of the matrix core itself, and require no outside power source. Some are also equipped with integral tools or weapons powered by the matrix core that can be deployed as readied items at the AI’s discretion, remaining folded within the armature when not required. An AI can transfer itself from one armature to another with a metatool and two hours of work. If a second party is doing the transfer, the time required is only thirty minutes. Most armatures have automated guides that allow even the technically ignorant to install a matrix core, provided they have the right tools.
A GM is advised to allow new AI PCs to choose any armature that costs 3 Tolerance or less. These armatures can sometimes be purchased on the open market on sufficiently advanced worlds, but the pretech versions with Tolerance costs of 5 are almost never available for direct sale. Some armatures can be constructed by a single technician with access to the appropriate parts and facilities. Armatures not given a construction time are too complex to be built without the aid of dedicated factories and large numbers of trained experts.
| ARMATURE HULL TYPE | STR | DEX | CON | COST | AC | TOL. COST | NOTES |
| 7 | 7 | 7 | 500 | 11 | 0 | N/A | |
| 3 | 7 | 3 | 500 | 14 | 0 | special | |
| 12 | 12 | 12 | 5,000 | 13 | 0 | integrated equipment | |
| 12 | 12 | 12 | 5,000 | 11 | 3 | special | |
| 12 | 12 | 14 | 5,000 | 16 | 3 | special, integrated equipment | |
| 12 | 12 | 14 | 5,000 | 16 | 3 | special, integrated equipment | |
| 12 | 12 | 14 | 50,000 | 13 | 5 | special, integrated equipment | |
| 12 | 12 | 14 | 50,000 | 16 | 5 | special, integrated equipment | |
| 14 | 14 | 14 | 50,000 | 16 | 5 | special, integrated equipment | |
| 18 | 18 | 18 | 1,000,000 | 20 | 5 | special, integrated equipment |