Decker attack abilities
Two distinct ideas

This was posted in another topic that I feel is a decent suggestion that is now buried in various branches of discussion so I would like to post it again as a stand alone idea:

That thing where staff can make your room shoot electricity out of the sockets at you or your SIC chip being able to cause some kind of shocking damage I think would be a reasonable fit here.

You could balance it by only able to make the room able to do that with requiring a scan, big grid heat, and a room designated to have such ability.

You could balance a SIC chip frying to if the person is in signal or not, maybe even disabling their chip only in the area with signal in addition to damage.

Not the grand short circuit quick hack but it could be a start to see how it goes!

Edit: I meant in a room full of people to target only one persons SIC chip to be zapped with some electrical damage and temporary blackout, leaving everyone else untouched. Thought I should clarify that better.

(Edited by Mindhunter at 9:37 am on 7/17/2026)

(Edited by Mindhunter at 9:57 am on 7/17/2026)

Yeah, I like this idea. I'll mention again my idea from the other thread, though, because I think it fits and also deserves looking at:

Deckers should be able to buy a "deck" from tech stores (or black market sellers) that is, mechanically, just an ordinary weapon like a katana or knife or sledgehammer or whatever else, except it scales off decking stats/skills and deals electrical/EMP damage.

To protect against this, people could hire deckers to provide them with ICE, with higher levels of ICE acting as tougher armor. I'm sort of torn on the "dodge" skill coming into play, as dodging something like this doesn't really make sense, but at the same time it would be overpowered if you just couldn't dodge it at all. Hopefully we can come up with some kind of IC reasoning behind being able to "dodge" it, or a fancy way to dress up the dodge. Who knows.

My idea :

A decker ability that drastically increases the chances of you escaping/fleeing once combat is intiated, by temporarily stunning your opponent.

Effect scales with how much processing space the attacker has, with the most effective being against attackers with lots of chrome (minimal processor space left) , and it not working at all if they don't have any chrome. Not any physical damage.

Granted, perhaps have a cooldown of this as well, i'm not quite sure how deckers could active this in combat, but maybe as an exstension of gridsight and being connected to a term they can type some kind of command to intiate this? Or have it automatically proc when you attempt to flee.

Well I was hoping this thread wouldn't go back to that thread in terms of the direction of the discussion. I am just suggesting two things here, not melee or contagion stuff. :p

Also; this was not my idea and now I forget who posted it, but a program that accelerates the aggravating factors that cause PDS in a room to trigger VIOLENT outbreaks would be so fun.