I keep feeling like I'm being a wet blanket here, but...Forknapper's paradise!<br/><br/>Remember, any untrimmed fork of yours can be interrogated to learn everything you knew when it was made. That means a sensible Firewall agent is going to trim the hell out of their Forks (probably down to Delta), because you can't guarantee the person you are giving it to won't get captured. MUSEs are backed up into the cortical stack along with the character's memory, so anything the stack will survive, your fork, if it's acting as a MUSE, will also survive.<br/><br/>That could be bad if someone else retrieves the stack.<br/><br/>Informorphs riding as ghostriders don't have access to a stack.<br/><br/>And anyone with any Psi probably doesn't want a fork of themselves wandering around outside their control. Plus a psi-endowed fork is going to go NUTS as an informorph in pretty short order due to the penalties asynchs receive for not being 'meat'.<br/><br/>Advantages of having a Beta fork as a MUSE: It can basically take one network action/turn while you're doing your thing. That means your fork-MUSE can have higher than 40 research/other networking skills (MUSEs generally have only 40).<br/><br/>Disadvantage: Note that Alpha forks have to go through Alienation and Continuity tests (at -40 or more against INTx3 and WILx3...Even with a 30 in both those stats, odds are not in your favor!) when you boot them up. They can stress out. They can go bugfuck locked in the back of your skull. Also, less likely with a Beta fork than an Alpha fork, but if it starts thinking differently enough from you (and it will be just as busy as you would be all those times you aren't giving it instructions...Consider having a MUSE that uses up your bandwidth downloading porn and pursuing other hobbies you'd take up if you had no body of your own, because that's how the fork will feel!) you can run into issues of 'Whose body is it, anyway?'<br/><br/>Not to mention if a customs scan realizes you're running an Alpha fork as a MUSE, they make take exception. Most habs in the Inner System have pretty strict laws about the citizenship and lifespan of forks...And Alphas are verboten.<br/><br/>After seeing some of the things I've seen happen in games, I'd really advise trimming down to severe-amnesia Betas or Delta whenever possible. Among other things, the GM is completely free to start NPCing Alphas once they've existed for a short while doing their own thing. I'm also not sure that it's reasonable to treat 'swapping forks' as 'you act in two places at once'. Generally, a user will have active demands on their MUSE constantly, and otherwise that MUSE is 'along for the ride'. More often than not, in combat, it's providing a teamwork bonus on things other players can't actively assist with, or it's doing things like looking up blueprints of the building, trying to get schematics on the enemy morph or weapon so you can hack it with your mental/net actions if you have more of those than physical actions, etc.<br/><br/>Another, more fluff/roleplaying disadvantage is this: Your MUSE has been your companion since childhood, knows your ins and outs, knows your mental quibbles, and knows when and how to gently apply psychotherapy (notice that all MUSEs have those skills?). If you replace your MUSE with an Alpha fork, you're replacing it with something that has the same blind spots you do, is in severe denial about your mental state, and honestly, if you listened to your own inner voice when it told you there was a problem, you wouldn't need a MUSE in the first place...So why would you pay any more attention to a fork of yourself? ;D<br/><br/>Another thing to bear in mind is that an infomorph or a Fork (Alpha or no) that is sleeved into a Ghostrider module or in your cortical stack acting as a MUSE, rather than being 'on the net', loses that Speed 3 unless additional processors (Multitasking, etc.) are available to generate extra mental/net actions in the morph (and the morph's user isn't using them). So making a pair of Alpha forks of yourself, sleeving one as your MUSE and another into a Ghostrider Module is not going to suddenly generate 6 free Mental/Network actions. I've had one GM discuss permitting it if you had the Parallel Processor augmentation installed into the morph, but note that it reads "Users must possess the mental speed augmentation to use this implant." so each User (fork) would need a purchased MS augmentation for that to work, and everybody involved would have a reduced trauma threshold. It's an interesting idea, though, and possibly one of the few ways an Infomorph can pick up +5 COG since it hasn't a morph of its own with real stats to sleeve into.<br/><br/>But seriously, one of the worst nightmare scenarios I've ever seen involved a party of characters...Facing themselves, but better equipped, because they'd been forknapped. Sure, the forks didn't know what the PCs had been up to for the last two weeks, but skillwise, etc.? Identical. And of course the GM was playing them as smart, cunning and tricky as the players did.<br/><br/>I've also seen alpha forks go rogue, wander off, get caught doing something, character is suddenly wanted. Character says 'Whoa, whoa, officer, I wasn't on Luna at that time and I can prove it. It was an alpha fork.' Officer says 'Really? That's a crime, too. And you're responsible for anything your illegal fork does.'<br/><br/>That was an unhappy wake-up call for that player. XD<br/><br/><hr/><br/>re: Menton, maximums, etc. Remember that gear like augmentations CAN go over your morph's aptitude maximum. A lot of players will buy a morph with a high "X" and put enough points in "X" to carry it to the morph's aptitude max, thus enabling them to put those points into other aptitudes that the morph does NOT have bonuses in...And creating a more evenly-balanced character in that morph. If you lose the morph and can't get another like it, this may cause issues, but the most common aptitudes used in this fashion are also common across a wide variety of morphs (and many morphs have some flexible 'aptitude of choice' bonuses).