Jaochai

Re: Help / fun project I'm asking for your opinion. In my world, characters become stronger through "shares." Shares are exactly equivalent to character points in the HERO system, with one caveat - they are not earned through experience, per se, but are given as promotion (and stripped as demotion) by the agency that controls the characters. Thus, a character may begin with 200 shares, recieve a promotion that bumps him up to 250 shares, and then make a colossal failure that removes him to 180 shares. These shares can be 'liquidated' so to speak between adventures - a character may build himself a body worth 200 points, for example, and then later send it back to be recycled and replaced with another body worth 200 points, or more if he's been promoted and has more shares. The characters themselves are a sort of naked consciousness - even skills are purchased with shares. Here is my question: What steps should I take, within the system, to accurately reflect the fact that the characters are robots? And what stats or attributes, if any, should be constant to the character regardless of how many shares they have at the present time?

So, here's the deal - I'm currently designing my own game setting, a sort of homebrew thing. The setting could theoretically work with any point-based system (if I ever publish a PDF or, um Gottens willen, a book, it'll have guidlines for multiple systems), but HERO is what I know best and I plan to playtest it in HERO. What I need help with is that rules design has never been my strong suit. What I want is some character templates. In the game itself, players play as AIs who exist in a sort of statless universe, and they use "shares" to create physical bodies to manipulate the physical world. I think you see where I'm going with this. For one thing, what elements (stats) would be wholly inside their physical bodies, and what parts would transcend them? Stuff like strength, dexterity, and the like would obviously be physical-only, but what about intelligence or ego? What aspects would simply be part of naked consciousness, especially in a world with no supernatural elements and thus no ego-attacks? Also, what I need is templates - sample bodies for starting characters that can be picked up and used or edited slightly. Some of them should be obvious but others should be covert and not obviously anything but human. I was thinking that 150 points would be a good starting point. Any input will be appreciated!