Cyberware

Overview

Cyberware is installed equipment with body-location slots, a resource-cost mechanic that taxes magical and psychic classes, and a downtime install procedure with real consequences for botched surgery. Cyberware-native classes get early access and a partial cost waiver — that's their mechanical advantage, not a price discount.

It's mechanically distinct from ordinary items: installed, not worn, and permanent without surgery. Slots cap total cyberware by body location, independent of wealth. Non-magical classes (Soldier and the like) pay no resource cost; they get cyberware “free” of magical sacrifice, which is intentional and matches Rifts canon — Federation Grunts are heavily augmented, Mystics avoid the chrome.

Slot system

Cyberware occupies fixed body-location slots. These are parallel to PF2e investiture, not shared with it — a character can have 10 invested magic items and a fully chromed body. Cyberware isn't “worn,” it's installed.

Body locations

Total: 15 slots. Most items occupy a single slot in a single location. Large systems (full-limb replacement, dermal plating, neural uplink) may claim multiple slots or an entire location — the item entry specifies. If a character loses a limb or body part, any cyberware in that location is disabled until repaired or replaced.

The per-eye design lets characters install mismatched optics (left-eye targeting + right-eye sensor suite), which is good for cyberpunk-flavored characters and only mildly more complex for the catalog.

Cyberware tiers and item levels

Cyberware is itemized like magic/tech gear, with item levels and rarities:

• Low-tier (item level 3–6): basic optics, hearing filters, muscle augmenters, simple cyber-jaw.
• Mid-tier (item level 7–12): reflex boosters, dermal plating, cybernetic arms, sensor suites.
• High-tier (item level 13+): neural uplinks, full-limb replacements with weapon mounts, sensorium implants.

Item level drives price, install DC, and resource cost.

Resource cost

This is the core balance mechanic. Each installed cyberware item has a cyber cost. A character's total cyber cost is the sum of all installed items, and it's paid out of the character's native class resource — whichever pool the class uses for its magic or psi.

Cost formula

For a character of level L installing cyberware of item level N:

cyber cost = max(1, ⌈(N − L + 4) / 2⌉)

This produces a clean shape:

A level-appropriate implant always costs 2 regardless of character level. Overreaching for high-level cyberware ramps cost sharply. Old, low-tier implants on a high-level character cost almost nothing — they're not what's draining your magic.

How cyber cost is paid (class-adaptive)

The cost hits whichever resource the class natively uses:

• Slot casters (Linewalker, Mystic, Technomancer, and any Soldier/Operative subclass with slots): 1 cyber cost = 1 spell slot, player's choice at install of which slot/rank is forfeited, locked thereafter until the cyberware is removed. The slot doesn't refresh on rest — it's just gone.
• Focus casters (Psi-Knight, Mindbreaker when modeled as focus, any class with a Focus Pool): 1 cyber cost = −1 to maximum focus pool capacity (PF2e focus pool caps at 3, so 3 cyber cost zeros out the pool).
• Impulse classes (Firestarter on the Kineticist chassis): handled per-class. Default: 1 cyber cost = lose one elemental junction, gate access, or equivalent class-specific knob, defined in the class file.
• Non-magical classes (Soldier with no slots, Operative, Mechanic, etc.): no resource cost. Pay only money and slot cost. This is the Federation Grunt path.

Cap rule

Total cyber cost cannot exceed the size of the class's native resource pool. A focus caster with 3 max focus points can install at most 3 cyber cost worth of cyberware. Choppers refuse to install beyond the cap — there's nothing left to draw on. This makes the trade self-limiting without inventing an overflow penalty.

Cyberware-native classes

Full-Conversion Cyborg, Redliner, Manic, and possibly the Bountyhunter are built around cyberware. Each receives:

• A class allowance of cyberware items at level 1 (typically 2–4 starting implants) that do not count toward cyber cost.
• A cost reduction for additional cyberware installed during play — typically halved cost, or a flat −1 per item with a floor of 1.

The specific allowance and reduction are defined in each class file. This is the mechanical center of those classes; it isn't “they get cheaper cyberware” but “their body is designed for it.”

Installation and removal

Installation

• Prerequisite: a cyberdoc (NPC specialist) or appropriate facility. Wilderness or improvised installation is possible but takes worse modifiers and a worse crit-fail table.
• Action: downtime activity — typically 1 week for low-tier, 2 weeks for mid-tier, 4 weeks for high-tier.
• Skill: Crafting or Medicine, depending on the item (cybernetic limb → Medicine; targeting computer → Crafting). The item entry specifies.
• DC: item level + 15 (standard PF2e item-DC scaling). High-tier cyberdocs can lower this; back-alley docs raise it.
• Money cost: item price + 10% procedure fee.
• Resource cost: applied immediately on successful install per the formula above.

Outcomes

• Critical success: install succeeds. Time and money cost reduced by 25%.
• Success: install succeeds normally.
• Failure: install takes double the time, or a second check is required at the same DC.
• Critical failure: item is installed but with an install scar (see below). The cyberware still functions; the patient pays a lasting penalty until the scar is repaired.

Install scar table (d6)

Roll on a critical failure, or the GM picks. The scar is removable via a follow-up procedure (same DC, half the original time and money cost; on success the scar is gone; on a critical failure of the repair, roll a new scar replacing the old).

Removal

• Same procedure as installation: cyberdoc, downtime, skill check.
• DC equals item level + 17 (slightly harder than install).
• Some high-tier cyberware (neural uplinks, spinal augments) is effectively permanent — removing it risks character death or permanent ability damage. Such items carry a Permanent trait in the catalog.
• Removing cyberware restores the spell slots or focus pool capacity that were forfeited.

Cyberware and balance

• Cyberware is not strictly better than magic or psychic powers; it's a different lane.
• The class-adaptive cost ensures that a Mystic dipping into cyberware feels the loss; a Soldier doesn't, and that's fine — the Mystic gets spells in return.
• Cyberware-native classes don't have a “discount.” They have a body that absorbs implants without the magical/psychic cost. That's their class identity, not a price tag.

The catalog

This page is the subsystem framework. The actual item list — cyber-eyes, cyber-arms, dermal plating, neural uplinks, and the rest, with their item levels, prices, slots, and effects — appears in the cyberware catalog.

How cyber-limbs and dermal plating give the wearer their own Hardness, and how that interacts with the Penetrating N trait from Megadamage & Hardness, is a Full-Conversion Cyborg feature rather than a general property of cyberware — see that class.