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Alternate Grid Use

As the Grid has, and likely will, remain in sort of a Niche space and Deckers have very limited utility to even work with many of the components on the Grid. It would be nice for them to have ways to use those skills in ways which could influence the world in ways people might actually care about.

Yes. I know there are some IC ways to make things happen on the Grid. I'm not going to comment on that as it takes GM intervention and there are pretty large limits on what's allowed or not.

Here are some Combat Oriented options that might be themely and give some reasons for investing in three skills to be a decker.

Disable Cyberware - I could see this being very useful in combat. The ability to reach out and disable some/all Cyberware in an opponent. Make it temporary so it doesn't infringe on other equipment/professions.

Cyber "Grappling" - There have been in game examples of characters physically being affected by the Grid. Why not let Deckers use their skills to "Grapple" a character. It would give them some combat utility for the massive UE investment that it takes to be a decker.

Blind - Make them able to temporarily blind a character. Maybe the Decker can't beat you up, but it would let their friends do so or let them run away. Call it something like SIC overload or something like that.

Shock - The lore in any cyberpunk novel lets deckers shock other deckers. You have a SIC implant. Let us do some damage by overloading someone's SIC chip. It might make a nice combat archetype that's not just guns/fists/swords. The bonus would be armor is useless against it.

Just some thoughts to inject some life into the archetype while other changes to make the Grid more relevant in the day to day experience of characters is considered. Maybe all of these skills are slow, or have to be done before combat starts, or maybe there is cyberware they can use to make them faster/more combat useable. Lots of ways to balance things like this out.

I've always envisioned deckers as people getting into closed systems to pull data out. But that using decking in other ways is not just add important, I just remember getting excited about an the data scraping I was going to do on the grid with my first decker PC

This is why I have always wished that the first stage of grid design was to make it useful and useable by EVERYONE. Make it DESIRABLE to put data on the grid. TEMPTING. For everyone.

When you have this in place, combine it with corporate policy that favors using the grid and insists on it's use. THEN give deckers the ability to secure these things and the ability to circumvent security.

The easier it is for everyone to use the grid, the more likely it is that people will store data there. The more data on the grid, the more deckers will be in demand to try and secure it. And the more value there will be in deckers hacking the grid.

Just a thought!