Techno-Psychic Samurai Hack

This is a combination of ideas from The Black Hack and Techno-Psychic Samurai. And watching actual plays of Metal Gear Rising. I have not playtested anything yet, use at your own risk. This isn't done either - I need to think through cyberware and psychic powers a bit, action feat-things you may gain when you level, etc.

Vat-Grown Ronin

You are a vat-grown samurai, or a human head and partial face atop a robotic body. You do not roll for your attributes, your manufacturers tried to leave nothing to chance. Despite their best efforts, you have regained or created your own will and purpose. You are a ronin.

Attributes:

Samurai: Used for fighting and etiquette

Techno: Interface with technology, use implants if necessary, hack, etc. Used to sneak through laser tripwires or past robots or security cameras.

Psychic: Your ability to sense others chi fields, read their intent, and use esper powers. Used to sneak around organic entities.

Philosophizing: Used to debate others, try to sway them to your point of view or distract them before a dishonorable sneaky attack.

Assign: 15, 13, 11, 9 to the four stats.

You begin with 22 hit points. You have 4 hit dice for the purposes of fighting.

(Edit: optional thoughts. I want to cap stat growth at 16, after running the Rad Hack for some kids who rolled really well. Just so even at best there's a chance of failure. Or - stats and HP do not grow as you level up. You can switch any two attributes when you level up, if you can explain why it happened.)

You advance mechanically by gaining some abilities (esper, feat-things) that should be more about having different options for approaching problems, rather than just 'fight moar better.' Which happens anyway, in the sense that a 6HD enemy gets easier to solo when you advance.

You roll-under your stats to do things, just like in the Black Hack. Enemies with higher HD than you are harder to hit or debate - add the difference between their HD and yours to the roll.

All weapons and trained unarmed attacks do 1d6 damage. Some weapons or cyberfists can expend chi batteries to add +1 or +2 to the roll. This is a nod to Tenra Bansho Zero, another inspiration. Philosophizing can also do damage; see conflict, below.

Conflict

Combat and conflicts are a little different - you describe what you do and that happens. You can't describe insta-gibbing someone though, but you can describe hits, damage, and the like. You do this before you roll any dice, and what you say happens. You then roll to hit and roll damage as normal, but these things are about reducing one side's narrative control, rather than rolling to figure out what you can describe.

If your enemy runs out of HP after rolling and subtracting HP, you get to narrate how you win - knocking them out, killing them, them running off. You might have whittled them down via philosophizing, and they may become friendlier to your cause.

If the enemy still has HP, the enemy gets to do the same thing in the next round - throwing you through a wall, beating you with a sword and spraying blood around, shaking your convictions to the core with some argument. HP are a measure of whether you get to keep narrating in the conflict or not. This is an idea from Norbert over here, where he probably describes it better than I do.

todo
esper powers

cyberware

example enemies