<div class="floatright">(http://www.deviantart.com/download/328990652/space_orca_by_bovec-d5fvet8.png)</div><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=163921.msg7739819#msg7739819">Quote from: ReijiTabibito on 17-02-2013, 22:16:22</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">EBP, I understand your point...but that's not <em>really</em> an equivalence choice.  Certain skills in EP are ones that you will <em>absolutely</em> use, such as Interfacing or Networking.  The corebook flat out tells the reader <strong><em>you are stupid</em></strong> if you don't acquire Networking and a couple of other skills.  And even if you're not a hacker, and don't need Infosec, you need Interfacing to interact with most anything electronic, which is practically everything in this setting.<br/><br/>A second body, on the other hand, is not so necessary.  As long as you're smart and play it right, you can theoretically go a whole game without needing to resurrect.  Hell, the game heavily encourages you <em>not</em> to, even though the technology is available and abundant.<br/><br/>I don't mean to be rude, if I come off that way, but it just seems like to me this is a problem that the EP boys haven't addressed.<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>On the contrary, they addressed it EXPLICITLY by forcing you to use CP for alternate morphs. You have to choose between having a skillful character or a super-equipped character. If you do some reading into the forums where EP gamemastering is discussed with input from the designers, you will discover that certain things are eminently discouraged BY THE RULES AS WRITTEN for<strong><em>REASONS</em></strong>. In many cases they are discouraged rather than flat-out disallowed, or suggestions are given for 'how to deal with them'. That's to give gamemasters flex and room to breathe, and allow players to do interesting things that won't become gamebreaking too quickly.<br/><br/>The short list includes:<br/><br/>Letting players burn lots of their starting resources on multiple morphs.<br/>Letting players create multiple alpha/beta forks and treat them as 'extra actions/ability to be in more than one place at one time' for lengthy periods (short term, fine. Long term, make an NPC of that fork! Otherwise you effectively have one player who gets to be multiple places at the same time or gets bonus mesh actions for free...Things like having an alpha fork running in an ecto so you can get four mesh actions (alpha fork as infomorph) while still doing all your normal physical actions are explicitly discussed.)<br/>Letting players start out with so much influence that the entire Solar System owes them favors, everywhere they go.<br/>Letting players create characters with multiple personality/egos in such a way that it prevents any other character in the party from having their moment to shine (the infamous 1-personality = superhacker, 2-personality = ninja, 3-personality = ultimate face).<br/><br/>Many of these (lots of bodies, egos, actions, etc.) are meant to prevent one character from dominating play in a group. If you're in a solo adventure and you're playing superman, that's fine. But when five other people are sitting around waiting for you to take your sixteen actions in two jacked-up super-Speed overclocked bodies with two alpha forks in ghostriders running mesh interference, so that once you're done each of them can fire one or two shots or make one or two hacking attempts, it stops being fun for the others.<br/><br/>"Plays well with others."<em>is </em>something to think about in character creation.<br/><br/>(And yeah, that's coming from the lady with the psychotic space whale. Seriously. He'll be fun. You'll enjoy having him around. Just keep plenty of small fish handy and be sure to grip them only between the tip of your finger and thumb, and be ready to let go quickly.)<br/><br/>Also, for the record, your MUSE can handle most Interfacing for you. If you're going to do anything unusual or weird, that's when you need skill tests. You don't need skill for the EP equivalent of pushing the 'Start' button on the photocopier. Trying to use one to make a believable false ID, on the other hand...