Remove IPCs from being able to be converted to the cult.

The cult of Nar'sie is an extremist, fanatical organization of worshipers to the Geometer of Blood. Its numbers are handpicked to serve the destructive interests of a Dark God that wishes to unravel reality, influence the feeble minds of biologicals and break down individual consciousness to serve a greater purpose: to bring Nar'sie into the realm of the living and devastate all of existence in the current dimension. And possibly make a new one with blackjack and extra-dimensional hookers.

The cult uses life as fuel for their dark magics. Blood/vitae sacrifice is a major proponent of how their magic works. Despite not being like humans in any sense, though, Dionaea have bodily fluids that substitute for a cardiovascular system to use as a sacrifice.

Despite not having...

1.) A humanoid psyche to bend in the slightest manner

2.) Any concept of a soul or raw emotional development that a humanoid does

3.) A biology with organic fluids, organs and a visage that will make you say, "Oh, hey, that's a living organism alright"

IPCs are somehow able to manipulate the dark sacrificial blood magic of the Cult to Nar'sie. I have heard that one excuse is that their oil somehow provides a raw substitute for blood sacrifice. And another explanation, though I presume it was a joke, that "Nar'sie made malware."

I am rather dubious to these answers and I will assume that any future arguments for how the system is currently will probably not hold a whole lot of water either. I am completely unwilling to make any concession for IPCs to be cultists or influenced in a way that makes them be on the same team as a bunch of cultists that require blood sacrifice to make their magic even work. I do not believe that IPCs as cultists make a damn lick of sense in the current context and I do not think they could ever make any sense in any future context either.

There are other downsides to IPCs being in cult, and they are largely mechanical disadvantages that not only disadvantage the IPC themselves in the cult, but everyone that plays on the same team as the poor fool that thought it'd be a hilariously fun idea to roleplay as a robot with dark magical powers that require their own lack of blood or bodily fluids to even use.

IPCs cannot self-repair. they require regular maintenance for minor limb damaged applied to their chassis, and if the damage goes too far, they require surgery not unlike humanoids if the latter gets bones broken. The mechanical surgery for IPCs is arguably much more time-consuming but it's less pressing for said time as an IPC is rarely ever in a state where they're slowly crawling towards the edge of death. Even the slightest amount of damage to an IPC's legs makes them potentially useless until they're repaired. Doubly so if they have massive damage for either or both legs. This is amplified even more due to the fact that interacting with blood runes or talismans in any way inflicts a small amount of damage to the user of the rune or the talisman. You're more than likely going to have huge delays and setbacks in your cult's plans if you have an IPC cultist whining every step of the way of the damage they inflicted to themselves due to a feature oversight that even allows them to do so.

It is downright ridiculous that it is even possible to play an IPC as a cultist in terms of a mechanical limitation standpoint. The mechanics of cult heavily punish IPCs moreso than others due to the lack of self-regeneration embedded into their species mechanics. While I'm not sure if Vaurca are able to self-heal as I do recall that was a balance thing in their initial release, I'm not going to hazard applying the same standard to Vaurca because unlike robots, bugmen bleed blood. I only learned this factoid today, if you're colored shocked then you can join the club.

I'm not a fan of "remove dis" suggestions, and I am generally an advocate against 90% of them that pop up. Consider me colored inconsistent, as I also hate the idea of IPCs being wizards too. But unlike for cult, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief because it's a SS13 tradition to never take a wizard round seriously, and a robot could just as easily be given a degree of magical materializing abilities by a highly amused deity figure. I'm also not exactly that sour that I hate robot wizards anyway... not as much as I hate robot blood cultists, as if that makes any sense.

I'm not willing to suspend my disbelief in the case where the core concept of all dark magic sources from one's own living sacrifice. Want to summon an unholy blade spawned from the eldritch nethers of -- I won't finish that -- then cool, but give me a portion of your vitae and then we're set for a dark bargain. Said dark god will just as soon as laugh at a robot trying to offer their own, easily replaced oil as goods rendered in the most unholy of covenants in which greedy mortals try to barter for raw power.

I've already made bets that there will be some that insist that the status quo is fine and that it isn't worth removing an entire species from being able to play an exclusive role. But I mean, we do this for heads of staff, but I imagine I'd hear the retort that the situation is different.

Nar'sie made malware was 100% A lighthearted joke by me, it was the idea that a god of suffering and death could be behind such an evil creation.

Anyhow, I was against this at first, but the way you laid down your perspective won me over. There really is no reason that IPCs should be able to join the Cult, and I do find it great that Cult will only compromise organics while Malf will only compromise synths. It's a good contrast between the two. And it's true that IPCs are clearly not designed with the Cult gamemode in mind, they neither have blood or regeneration. It just feels like a no brainer to remove them from the possibilities.

Maybe keep sharding but even that is questionable.

Can we mention one of the most vital, on-command tools of Cult is to eliminate electrics so they can move in at close range, as well as avoid the pesky difficult-to-convert AI and borgs? And that this is a area-of-effect, essentially dicking over any IPC's in a screen's radius plus a bit more? I'm up for this change, buuuuut I think for the sake of gameplay, they should be able to be sharded, so they can be converted in some fashion.

Its magic....why are we explaining magic?

Cultists will have no choice but to kill IPC's.

It's a Lovecraftian God who's abilities and methods are beyond the understanding of men or machine.

Let IPC's have the fun.

Cultists will have no choice but to kill IPC's.

It's a Lovecraftian God who's abilities and methods are beyond the understanding of men or machine.

Let IPC's have the fun.

Of this opinion, but MODIFIED! I think we should just remove their ability to draw runes.

I see nothing wrong with having to kill IPCs. They are beings of logic, not of faith. They can be the vanguard for the organics against the cult menace.

But, still. Screw the robots, fire off EMP runes until there is nothing but smoking scrap.

FOR THE GEOMETER

Its magic....why are we explaining magic?

Why can't IPCs be vampires?

Either define what about a robot would give it the ability to access the Aether and give them access to all the magic in the game, or remove the ability to be affected by magic.

A thought: some sci-fi settings also include magic, and can include robots that use magic. Usually this requires some kind of spell focus like a crystal or runes inscribed on the chassis. I'd suggest that if magic was kept for synths, it should be with the caveat that it cannot arise naturally in a machine, and has to be imparted through use of a spell focus. That is, a robot shouldn't be able to become something magical without interference from an outside organic party.

So if you wanted to make an IPC into a vampire, wizard or cultist, you'd need to make it able to sense magic by use of a spell focus or runes on/in the robot first. Cultists could use a shard to implant it in the robot and make it magically sensitive, wizards could get something similar in their loadout, and vampires could get the ability to draw blood runes on the robot and awaken it, or something.

That would also open up the ability for a chaplain to purify the robot as well by removing the shard or runes and doing a ritual maybe.

Just my thoughts. I do agree it should make more sense with the internal logic of the game, but I don't want it wholesale removed from IPCs.

Robot wizards are excusable. The covenants and requirements to be wizardy are different from being a cultist, however. The premise that supports the latter is just plain crazy.

I propose that a successful conversion of an IPC immediately transmutes them into a !free-of-charge! construct, so that IPCs are still actually worth capturing. They need to be removed from being able to be part of the roundstart list of selected cultists so that they don't inadvertently turn into Wraiths, juggernauts, or artificiers as they spawn in. That would throw off a powerful factor of the cult and that is their initial concealment.

Thing is that this server sort of punishes stealth antags that complete their goal without a major interaction with the crew, this is understandable as we are high-rp ish. But I agree with robots on their own shouldn't be able to sense magic, let alone use it when the inherited magic is of sacrifice and blood. Perhaps make it so IPC'S are able to use their own body to create crystal like objects that help them channel their "magic". Let them sacrifice part of their upper arm to make a "crystal shaped like a see-through pen, the inside flowing with a mix of oil,metal and something softly glowing. While gazing on it you feel a soft pressure in the back of your mind, a whisper can be heard but the massage unheard."

Treating IPC more like artifice is a step in the right direction I believe, removing them seems a bit overkill, especially when Cconsidering how many of our players play this filthy machine race.

Why is this suddenly an issue. We've had so many damn rounds with cultie IPCs.

Literally, the only thing that needs to happen is the removal of the ability to use tomes, since they can't draw in blood, because no blood.

Let them keep the 'lil paper.

EDIT: Serving the almighty Nar is not the issue. It's utilizing the blood runes. They should be able to activate them, interact with them, get diggity dirty with them, but not draw them. Unless we literally just say it's motor oil transmuted into blood because the almighty Nar can definitely do that.