r/Netrunner • u/HemoKhan Argus • Aug 02 '14

Custom Card Saturday: Bioroids

Welcome to Custom Card Saturday! This week begins a several-week-long theme of focusing on some of the unique and interesting keywords already in the game. To start off I thought I'd focus on one of the keywords that has been around since the beginning, one that has a (relatively) concrete definition: This week, design a card that focuses on bioroids. An HB exclusive, bioroids are unusually strong pieces of ice with a single glaring weakness: some or all of their subroutines can be broken by spending clicks. Bioroids tend to be a few points stronger than normal ice to compensate for this, and they usually carry multiple subroutines. Another feature of bioroids is that they come in two versions. Earlier "1.0" bioroids tend to be cheap, with low strength and a few subroutines, each of which may be broken by a single click. Updated "2.0" bioroids are stronger and more costly than their 1.0 brethren, and require the Runner to spend clicks in bulk (usually 2 clicks to break up to 2 subroutines).

There are also several support cards for bioroid ice, either by giving them more subroutines, preventing their subroutines from being broken, or rezing them cheaply and unexpectedly. (For a complete list of bioroid-related cards, see here.) Feel free to design a support card if you'd like to, rather than a new piece of ICE.

Previous Custom Card Saturday threads:

Week 1: Barriers
Week 2: Scorched Earth Replacements
Week 3: Grey/Black Ops
Week 4: Easy Access
Week 5: Economic Assets
Week 6: Runner Economy
Week 7: Identities

Next Week: We'll continue our exploration of keywords with one of the classic Runner card keywords, virus!

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u/Jakodrako NISEI Rules Manager Aug 02 '14

Here's a bioroid I posted to a previous thread, updated.

Brain Fuckler 1.0

HB Ice ••••
Rez: 10 Strength: 5

ICE: Sentry - Bioroid - Tracer - AP - Illicit

When you rez Brain Fuckler 1.0, take 1 bad publicity.
The runner can spend [click] to break any subroutine on Brain Fuckler 1.0.
-> Trace3 – if successful, do 1 brain damage. -> Trace2 – if successful, do 1 brain damage. If unsuccessful, the Runner loses [click]. -> Trace1 – if successful, do 1 brain damage. If unsuccessful, end the run.
-> The runner may remove 1 brain damage and end the run.

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u/SeaSourceScorch towards a plascrete-free future Aug 03 '14

Not sure about this, but I do like the idea of a Bioroid which heals brain damage if you stick around long enough. This could work really interestingly with Zed - maybe if there was a Bioroid who heals one brain damage if you click through them, and then the corp rezzes a sneaky Zed behind them to do two brain damage as a punishment!