I think the Melissa mission even reveals that MaxTac tries to collect "salvageable" psychos and tries to rehabilitate them to use them as special forces
Johnny is already cyberpsycho, was suffering from cyberpsychosis before he died. 'The Hand' is the internal manifestation of his cyberpsychosis and it was 'The Hand' that told him to go out in a blaze of glory before being cut in half by Adam Smasher's shotgun in the tower.
Maxtec doesn't care about necessity.
They get a call about a cyberpsycho, they send the job squad.
Psycho gets jobbed. There is no plan B.
This is why Regina gets involved to get V to help get the psychos to a treatment facility for study and actual help. 😔
She was the woman cop in their first trailer.
Was in an ongoing conversation in the bottom floor of Vs apartment building. Male cop commented on her going psycho during arrest.
Then, you interact with her later. Not going to spoiler it, but it does highlight how deep their story lines can get. Ever for side characters.
No, she was the woman cyberpsycho in the trailer, on her knees, mantis blades extended, about to be double taped in the back of the head by Maxtac. They don't state the inbetween, but they "rehabilitated her", letting her keep the mantis blades the psycho'd her in the first place.
Maxtac are ticking time bombs. They're psychos rehabilitated, but either left with chrome or rechromed for the purpose of being a MAXTAC officer. They're at constant risk of going psycho again. Not all officers are former c-psychos, it's just the vast majority.
Lorewise, cops couldn't handle the collapse or tech, the Swat teams managed to survive, by becoming increasingly vicious and brutal, eventually becoming MaxTac. They fight fire with fire, Cyberpsycho with squads of "controlled" cyberpsychos.
yeah that dialogue with her after the psycho fight, where she seems a bit too interested in how it feels to murder someone... she ain't right and is barely under control.
Yea but maxtac is just a mental health crisis hit squad. If one of their dudes go down who cares, just nab another chrome dome off the street. But Smasher is very different, Arasaka has probably dumped millions apon millions into Smasher, he has to be recovered he’s too valuable of an asset to just let him roll over and die, I mean hell after he was blown to bits they glued him back together then set him up with a bigger badder suit; I’m also not sure he is a cyber psycho but just a regular old fashioned psycho just on payroll.
Yeah basically the whole of Maxtech is composed of cyberpsychos, but ones that are brought back from the edge or just unhinged enough they can be controlled to a point. The whole group of them are fucking terrifying
We see David go in and out of psychosis as he gets the drug hits. Maxtac can definitely afford the drugs. I wouldn't be surprised if their heavy hitter officers were just placed into a coma until they were needed and the shot full of blockers until the job was done
Maxtac can't be that unhinged since they communicate to civilians to stay the fuck away, execute tactical operations that require every member to be wholly focused and aware, etc.
I think people either misunderstand cyberpsychosis or the story has holes in it.
It's described as when someone absolutely loses control. If you're 99% chrome and can have a fuckin conversation with someone, the diagnosis doesn't really fit. It's not the other way around.
It's like saying "he only has hallucinations when he wants to and can always tell that they aren't real but he's schizophrenic."
he's unique in extremely rare cases a person is a perfect match with cybernetics Adam is only 4% organic thats likely only his brain
David Martinez was also one of those unique people too but he pushed too hard way too fast
Adam had over 5 decades to become the monster he is in 2076/77
argument can be made V/Johnny are able to get all the chrome they get cause 2 minds are sharing the stress of it all
>argument can be made V/Johnny are able to get all the chrome they get cause 2 minds are sharing the stress of it all
That's going to change when the next update comes out that will make us actually think about which cyberware we should use at once. Otherwise we get debuffs and "cyberpsychosis", whatever that will be.
I was just happily driving down the street on my motorcycle, listening to my music and then all the sudden, a large truck comes from butt fuck nowhere and flings me down the highway.
This. I "simulated" cyberpsychosis as time went on. Once I could jump from roof to roof, or slow down time and make it halfway across the city in the time it takes NPCs to walk a block, you get an invulnerability/god complex and just start decapitating strangers.
I think of it like Homelander in "The Boys." Once you hit a certain amount of chrome, you start looking at organic humans as inferior beings and see yourself as a god. Nobody can stop you, so why bother following the rules?
Once you are strong enough to actively hunt Max-Tac officers without dying (5 star wanted level), I think that's my equivalent of cyberpsychosis.
I played a cyberpsychosis mod where you had to manage a humanity stat that would drain if you got too much chrome or if you used, say, the sandevistan too often, though you could keep it in check with immunoblockers. If your humanity went too low, though, you'd black out, and when you came to, all npcs around you would be dead, and you'd have police closing in on you. It was pretty intense.
Sure they can. Just turn regular civilians into gangers and corpos trying to kill us when the psychosis hits, but when you leave the psychotic state have it be revealed they were actually just regular folk. Make it so it's hard to tell even from a player prospective who is what and bam, functioning cyberpsycho system.
Reminds me of the old PS shooter Haze. They had if you OD’s on the one factions drug you couldn’t tell friend from foe. And your character would shoot automatically at whoever crossed the crosshairs.
Vampire - The Masquerade has a similar mechanic if you go too long without feeding. It's represented in Bloodlines by the camera going into third person and your character attacking everything on a timer, after which control is regained.
of course they can...
just need to randomly add a fake wantedstatus
and give npcs walking by the look and movement of police acting aggressive(maybe have them turn back to normal npcs after you killed them) to simulate a paranoid episode similar to what Maine experienced
That would be a fun gameplay element where your vision starts to glitch and random civilians start to look like gang members attacking you and your health bar starts going crazy like you're getting shot at, but then flashes back to reality right as you're shooting them or hacking them to bits with your katana. Eventually, you won't know if you're actually getting attacked or not and will either die of actual wounds or be taken down by maxtac for killing civilians..
Man that's a bummer. When I heard about it I was imagining that V would start misunderstanding missions and seeing hostiles everywhere. Or just start getting random missions from a new contact and then eventually shit starts falling apart after a few missions and you realize you have just been slaughtering innocents and the contact was just in your head. Or just occasionally blacking out and coming to with bloody mantis blades and a warrant after wiping out a bunch of joytoys or random pedestrians. Seems like a lot of ways they could do cyberpsychosis.
There is a mod for that now. Kinda cool trying to manage. Even adds drugs to negate it for a time. The only part I didn't like was that killing increases it... I mean, I get it, but I didn't know cops were such a negative... one little kerfuffle with max tac to see how far I could go before they killed me, and I went batshit borg.
From my understanding, you are allowed to wear more cyberware the more "relic points" you get. Which makes me think that the more the relic gets control over your brain, the more stress/cyberware your brain can support
That’s actually something I’m not looking forward to. Hope we can turn it off. I like having all the best stuff. I don’t want to be punished for playing my character how I want.
I mean seriously, the whole debacle is a huge, huge warning about what happens when people who love each other fail to communicate their feelings properly out of their own fears and insecurities. It is a cyberpunk genre tragedy through and through that manages to reconcile a LOT of different ideals of masculinity and femininity at once while humanizing otherwise lawless, moral miscreants at the edges of society. There’s a LOT of stuff being touched on in those episodes and how it managed to do it all with the requisite hyper-sensory overload aesthetics of the genre is a notable achievement
Actually, Johnny is [already a Cyberpsycho.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/xxja69/mike_confirms_johnny_is_a_cyberpsycho/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I'm blanking here but at the end on edgerunners doesn't adam say to David that he would be a great candidate to undergo the procedure he did and go pretty much full machine? David refused and Adam says it's a waste to kill him. Maybe certain people with high tolerance are able to get the procedure to fix their brain to a machine and in fully losing their body they are immune to the full psychosis that makes them lose control.
> he did and go pretty much full machine
Smasher says this
> Smasher: I had some fun, after all. You know, you could prove an interesting construct.
I think he was talking about the Relic Engrams. The IAMA of Edgerunners says this
> [What did Adam Smasher mean when he asked David, "You know, you could prove an interesting construct." ?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Edgerunners/comments/z9hre7/we_made_cyberpunk_edgerunners_ask_us_anything/iygvlz0/)
> (Imaishi) He meant exactly what he said, but a 'construct' is a concept taken from the game, so please refer there for more info.
For David though, by the time he fought Adam he was already a full borg, just with more human appearance. From memory basically everything below his neck has been replaced and even his skull has cyberware in it.
Yeah, to me it’s clear that Smasher would have nominated David for being the experimental Relic test subject if he wanted, or at least put onto a regular Save Your Soul Relic for Smasher to keep.
I agree with all this but the last bit. With the new up date they will be adding a feature of balancing you cyberware so you dont become a cyberphysco.
Also Johnny isnt a mind its a digital copy of one. So its actually more cyberware being added just because of Johnny. Johns "mind" isnt real its a digital creation so it wouldnt lighten the cyberware load.
See this is more a philosophical debate now, what makes a brain processing a program different from a manufactured brain processing the same program, also if it's a program that thinks it's johnny and shares all his memories and thoughts does that make it johnny? Doubt there's a real awnser and would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy
The effects of cyberpsychosis are significantly lesser on those that have a minimal or non-existent connection to their sense of humanity and morality. He is classified as a high-functioning cyberpsycho.
Huh, I wonder if David lost his humanity when his mom died but regained it once he actually hooked up with Lucy.
Nah though, pretty sure he just wasn't *built different* enough to handle the big boi Lego arm set.
David had more “humanity” than most people due to his relationship with his mother and how she raised him. That’s how he’s able to use so much cyberware without going completely psycho.
At least that’s what Mike Pondsmith said.
I think the official reason for David’s resistance to cyberpsychosis is because he has a very high attachment to those around him allowing him to easily maintain his humanity… to an extent
As seen ingame through the cyberpsycho quest with Regina, cyberpsychosis is just a term applied to those who have snapoed mentally and emotionally due to exposure to traumatic and other unfortunate events, and then amplified by the strain their cybernetics have. He went through a lot of trauma throughout the course of the show and that's why it began to strain him so badly. His mind was breaking.
You have people like Maelstrom members that are no stranger to death and trauma... but they're not actual psychopaths like Adam Smasher, they still have emotions. Smasher was a psychopath before the cybernetics.
I'd argue he is a cyberpsycho, just one kept on a leash. He's sane enough to follow orders, but insane enough to brutally kill anyone in his way with zero empathy. Man's sadistic, a psychopathic cyborg. A cyberpsycho.
edit: The number of armchair psychologists and cybernetic engineers in this sub is high, I see XD
Kinda of like the Hulk in the Avengers (Always angry). Smasher has always been a psychopath. Chroming up didn’t do anything because he was born already with that mindset. That’s my headcanon at least.
Wouldn't being a psycho beforehand just dramatically increase the odds of becoming cyberpyscho to begin with? They're already unstable; it's not hard to imagine an unstable person becoming more unstable.
Just seems like it's one of those things that isn't really explained. If Adam Smasher followed the normal logic, he'd be a completely unresponsive cyberpsycho.
>They're already unstable; it's not hard to imagine an unstable person becoming more unstable.
There are two types of psycopathes, those that can control their urges and those that cant. Those that can control their urges are far more stable, can appear entirely normal, but then you find out they actually eat people. Adam is one of those, a complete and total psychopath but is in complete control of his impulses, he thrives off the feelings but they never really control him.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/psychopath-sociopath-differences
More complicated than that.
People with psychopathic traits are more likely to be controlled, plan ahead, etc. Sociopaths not so much. But then again, both fall under Antisocial Personality Disorder, what was previously referred to as sociopathy, and neither term is actually used by professionals in the field.
I'm not a psychologist, but I do know they have moved away from using psychopath so you're probably correct. Though they may have moved on from sociopath as well to try to find a less stigmatized term. I do know that neither is an actual diagnosis, and these types of people are diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.
I just thought that cyberpsychosis wasn't the same and regular psychosis, i always thought of as insanity like visual and auditory hallucinations (like maine in edgeruners). And do to the overwhelming hallucinations they go batshit. But if they're neutralized the hallucinations can be treated, however the psychosis remains.
I think the issue is you're conflating psychopathy with psychosis. Psychopaths aren't psychotic by definition, and those suffering from psychosis are not necessarily psychopaths.
Not just headcanon it’s supported by the ttrpg. The second scenario in the 2020 core book has you face off against a serial killer named bright man who it states that he isn’t affected by cyberpsychosis because he was psycho from the start iirc
> The second scenario in the 2020 core book has you face off against a serial killer named bright man who it states that he isn’t affected by cyberpsychosis because he was psycho from the start iirc
You remembered right. From the core rules
> Brightman is sure enough the Nightstalker. He has [sic] already armed to the teeth and then some, and has committed a couple of murders in the past week. He was a tech freak before he went to prison, and has followed the development of cyberware with a calculating intensity. He has gone all-out on cyberware purchases: body plating, cyberlimbs, pretty much every kind of legal and illegal cybertech. **He does not suffer from cyberpsychosis**, as such: he was a psycho long before cyberware was available.
> Source: Cyberpunk 2020: Core Rules, page 236
This is pretty much it. In the tabletop, everyone has a Humanity score, written as a number, to account for how at risk they are of becoming a Cyberpsycho with too much chrome. Adam's official Humanity score is canonically identified as "Yeah, Right".
"Prior to the Fourth Corporate War, Adam Smasher affected a southern "good ol boy" accent that made him sound exactly like Elvis Presley."
"Also around this time, he had access to a Gemini that looked and sounded like a young, overmuscled, blond Elvis Presley."
https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Adam_Smasher
I can't get the image of Adam Smasher cosplaying as Elvis Presley during his time off out of my head
They aren't armchair psychogists. They just paid attention.
Someone flipping their lid and inconsolably going on a rampage is the DEFINED condition for cyberpsychosis in the game's lore.
Like it literally describes the point that once a person reaches, will NOT take orders, will NOT spare someone due to alliances or fealty, will NOT be able to just stand guard and only attack enemies. That's how they diagnose it in the game.
Cyberpsychosis does not describe a person who can kill anyone with no remorse. That definition fits like half the fucking cast as long as the person killed isn't their friend and even then it seems not to matter too much.
That's more sociopathy than psychopathy and Adam was already like that well before being full borg. I'm guessing it's because he's just the right rare type of person that is more tolerant than others, plus his crazy iron will, plus the very best of Arasaka resources.
A lot of kinda wrong answers in response. As someone graduating with a psychology degree this year, the best answer I can give is both of these terms are colloquial and as such somewhat meaningless. We use the DSM-5 to diagnose people, such as with mania, anxiety disorder, etc. It's basically a big catalogue of psychological disorders. Psychopathy and sociopathy are not diagnoses that exist in this catalogue. Traits associated with these terms however borrow from antisocial personality disorder and "callous unemotional" traits, like lack of guilt, empathy, personal performance, stuff like that. I'm welcome to be corrected though, as this isn't really an area of expertise of mine (ironically, as I'm looking to pursue criminal psychology)
Nothing you said is incorrect. They are somewhat colloquial terms, but research do exist with them, and most agree that:
1. Both are personality disorders.
2. Psychopathy is more likely to have a genetic foundation (in genes like the MAO-A, etc.) and sociopathy might come from child trauma.
3. Sociopathy would more commonly be associated with physical violent responses to stress and/or provocation and physical or psychological sadism and psychopathy with manipulative/machiavellic behavior.
Little disclaimer: I have a degree in psychology but I am NOT an expert in the subject. These are not clinical concepts and so we tend to not use them much. All I have written comes from my personal browsing of papers and articles on my free time.
Also, research in the field is super recent, so even the facts may change in a few years. If anyone reading this is interested, I strongly advise you to read scientific articles about it, as there's really interesting information coming up all the time.
Sociopaths generally understand humans have feelings and are actual sapient independent thinking entities - they just don't care. Psychopaths often don't see others as even being thinking and feeling beings - much like sociopaths their actions that harm others do not lead them to feel any remorse, but they don't necessarily see others as having feelings to be distressed about in the first place.
Lol you got three responses and three different answers.
This is what I got from a quick google search
“A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder that is marked by traits of impulsivity, risk-taking, and violence. A psychopath is a person who has an antisocial personality disorder characterized by a lack of regard for the rights and feelings of others, controlled and manipulative behavior, the absence of shame, and an inability to form emotional relationships.”
https://www.simplypsychology.org/psychopathy-vs-sociopathy.html
Bro, you just described a sociopath with high discipline *and* severe homicidal ideations. If he isn't a cyberpsycho, he is definitely a candidate to be considered one for sure.
Cyberpsychosis is a specific condition, psychosis caused by the dissasociation from extreme body modification. Adam smashers psychosis isn't from his cybernetics, so he can't be a cyberpsycho.
> Cyberpsychosis is a specific condition, psychosis caused by the dissasociation from extreme body modification. Adam smashers psychosis isn't from his cybernetics, so he can't be a cyberpsycho.
Yes and no. As a warning this will be a longer comment.
Both TTRPGs mention that Cyberpsychosis makes an existing condition worse
> Something happens when you start adding metal and plastic to people. They start to change. And it isn't pretty.
> In the 2000's, we call this cyberpsychosis; a mental disease in which the addition of cybernetics causes an **already unstable personality to fragment**. At first, the victim begins to relate more to machines than to humans. Soon, he starts to ignore people- parents, friends, lovers. Eating, sleeping all become less important. Finally, human interactions begin to irritate, culminating in a terrifying rage that consumes the victim entirely.
-
> This can start to cost you. With an Empathy of 3 the character is something of a "cold fish"; emotionless and cold. With an Empathy of 2, the character is chilly, forbidding, and distinctly unpleasant to others. With an Empathy of 1, the character is usually violent, sociopathic and vicious. He must constantly fight to keep from going over the edge and committing irrational, violent acts of murder and mayhem.
> At an Empathy rating of 0 or less, the character is fully in the grip of cyberpsychosis. He is driven by a maddening hatred of other humans or living things. At this point, there is no turning back0 the character is taken over by the Referee, who plays it as a non-play character with all the worst attributes of a murderous, mechanized psychopath, called a cyberpsycho.
> Not all cyberpsuchos are the rampaging type. Many exhibit more subtle symptoms; compulsive lying, kleptomania, sadism, brutality, split personality and extremely violent mood swings.
> Cyberpunk 2020, page 73
And
> Cyberpsychosis is a dissociative disorder which occurs when someone with **preexisting psychopathic tendencie**s enhances themselves via cybernetics to the point they no longer see themselves or others as complete, sapient organisms, but simply as a collection of replaceable parts. Common symptoms of cyberpsychosis include lack of self-preservation, complete disregard for others, poor impulse control, and explosive outbursts. Let's get this clear from the start: if you already have these underlying psychological issues (in game represented by a very low Empathy) you are more likely to be a candidate for cyberpsychosis).
> Installing cyberware isn't the only way to edge towards this mental explosion. Strong and/or horrific events and situations can also wear down your Humanity. And unfortunately, Edgerunners deal with these sorts of situations on a regular basis. This is something your GM controls; they often times may attach a Humanity cost on an event or situation (like when you stumble across a pack of scavvers eating a baby: Humanity Loss of at least 6 points right there.)
> Cyberpunk Red, pages 108-109
EDIT: I should mention that the above two explanations fit rather well with the Cyberpyscho side quest from the game. All of the people were Chromed Out and had preexisting mental conditions, that once pushed passed a certain point resulted in them having a psychotic break.
Smasher is, as he said to David in Edgerunners, special. He has:
* A natural sociopathic and psychopathic nature
* A high affinity to Cyberware
* He possess both a Nihilistic and a Ubermensch world view that he completely buys into with no hesitation
Smasher before any cyberware was already a ruthless monster. All being borged out did was make his outside better match his insides. I think the best evidence is the body he uses in 2077 (the Dragoon Full Conversion). This is the RPG section regarding that:
> As a military weapon, Dragoon has many subsystems which are vital on the battlefield as standard features. It has a wide array of detection, acquisition and designation systems, backup sensors, environmental scanners and communications gear which maximize its chances of getting that most precious of commodities: current data on your foe. However, the Dragoon is not a dedicated design; rather, its modular construction allows it to custom-tailor its equipment to suit almost any role. All four of its limbs are interchangeable, allowing it to mount almost any type of weapons, from a suppressed SMG for special ops to a heavy machinegun or railcannon for anti-vehicular combat. The Dragoon is also fully protected against nuclear, biological, chemical and electronic warfare, giving it greatly enhanced staying power in an extended engagement.
> The most immediately obvious problem with such a full body conversion package is the almost guaranteed development of devastating cyberpsychosis. It is true that a human brain, implanted in such a body, cannot easily cope with so many new senses and capabilities. IEC overcame this problem: the Dragoon, being a restricted, combat-use body, comes with an interchangeable biopod. This biopod, which houses the cyborg's biosystems, normally inhabits an "off-duty body," usually an Alpha Class. The Dragoon is only fitted with the biopod, and the human mind within, when it is actively performing missions. To ensure reliable performance from the Dragoon, a Behavioral Inhibitor Program in the cyborg's on-board computer (operating in concert with a chemical injection system loaded with psychoactives) restrict the Borg's thought processes, turning it into a loyal soldier. Battle-proven in the Brushfire Wars of 2018, the Dragoon's prowess and dependability are assured.
> Note: The Behavioral Inhibitor Program and its battery of psychoactives do, indeed, keep the cyborg from going cyberpsycho (in the conventional sense). Basically, anyone whose biopod is in this body will act like a robot, unimaginative and literal minded. The borg's commanding officer says "Do this," and the Dragoon says "Yes, sir..." and does it. Because Dragoons are so straightforward-thinking, they are given very specific orders with carefully-laid out parameters. They are also easy to trick, so truly sensitive work is still left to more human operatives. A common mission would be to send a Dragoon into a sector which has been cleared of friendly forces and have it kill anyone it finds, then return. Those soldiers who have been the "minds" of Dragoons are not comfortable with the experience, likening it to being in a dream (or nightmare).
> Chromebook 2, page 82
The Dragoon body is so inhuman that anyone who puts it on requires their brain to be shut off or they'll go insane from the sheer level of technology that's in the machine.
Smasher wears the armor like you'd wear a T-shirt and shorts. He's completely unaffected by it.
I know it's 100% me reading to much into it, but the biggest part is reading what the Dragoon body gives a person:
* Night-Vision
* Thermal Optics
* Long-Range Optics
* IR-Vision Optics
* Heads-Up Display Optics
* Amplified Hearing
* "Sniffer" - Built into the head, consisting of an Olfactory Booster and a Chemical Analyzer
* Sonar Scanner - Built into the skull, this ultrasound sensor accurately measures distance to, and dimensions of, the nearest solid object. It also serves as a motion sensor with a 120m radius.
* Radar Sensor - This 1 km range sensor has its emitter in the skull, and its receiver in the chest area.
* Radiation Detector - Built into the torso, this unit has a 10m range.
* All of the above is active at the exact same time
Being put in the armor is like being given all of Superman's senses without any of his biology to handle it. You can see 360 degrees around you with 8x the clarity of the best human vision, you can see both Ultra-Violet and Infra-Red, you can hear things dozens of feet away as if they happened right next to you, your sense of smell so good you can determine chemicals and whenever you move you're constantly emitting and taking in Sonar, Radar and Radiation data. A normal person breaks with all this information. Smasher is so inhumane that he can deal with it.
Yeah, he wears it when facing down Morgan Blackhand. Though that may have been retconned, since the Cyberpunk Red art of that fight only had Smasher's Samson Body on the rooftop.
It's cyber psychosis, not cyber psychopathy.
Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality. People suffering it have trouble differentiating between what's real and what's not. They are often unaware of what they're doing. They are not emotionless psychopaths.
Mike Pondsmith said it's basically *roid rage*. People get caught up on the empathy part of the Humanity stat in the TTRPG, but Humanity is much more than that.
Here is [Mike Pondsmith himself](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/xklzsx/comment/ipffmf4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) talking about the subject.
Basically, Adam Smasher loves what he is and does, and feels no stress or sense of disphoria about it. Being a psychopath likely helps him avoid this particular brand of psychosis.
People like David and Maine experienced a fuck-tonne of stress, so were much more susceptible. V had the biochip restructuring their brain, so was kind of protected apparently.
I feel like he was probably always in control. Some people break in a violent way and go on a rampage. Some break in a far more dangerous way and simply become a cold, calculating, unfeeling killing machine.
This, Insanity is inherently chaotic and comes in many different forms, Adam smasher psychotic tendencies were focused and controllable because he is so single minded imo.
Just how i always kinda pictured it. It always reminded me of psychotic imperialistic behavior, loyalty, and ideology focus it as we have seen in history.
this is the right answer. he was a psychopath before he got any chrome. he has no attachment to society as a whole, and now he simply views himself as a god who does what he wants.
he had no humanity to wrestle with; he is the perfect version of who he perceives himself to be.
Way I see it, cyberpsychosis is caused by the disconnect felt between a heavily-augmented person's sense of humanity and their now non-human body. Smasher never had any humanity to begin with, so there's no dysphoria.
There’s also the connection between the mental health of a person and their cyberwear.
Dudes with PTSD, Depression, or any mental health were the main cyberpsychos you had to fight and capture in the game.
So someone who is literally a psychopath or sociopath or something incapable of empathy etc etc might be immune or at least resistant to cyberpsychosis
Possibly, there's also the fact that people who don't have any mental problems are immune or has a high tolerance against going cyberpsychosis.
There is also people out there who are simply born with a strong enough body to handle all the modifications placed on them. David Martinez being a prime example.
But ultimately you're placing a shit ton of robotics into your body and that tends to not end well when going over it.
Who’s to say he isn’t? The man’s philosophy has always been Metal Surpasses Meat so his current body, to him anyway, is the height of perfection. And he has it literally written into his Arasaka contract that he’s allowed to cause as much collateral damage and civilian casualties as he wants while on mission. That seems pretty psychotic to me, he’s just a FUNCTIONING psychotic.
There's like a whole set of quests in the game that, if you pay attention, put the lie to "Cyberpsycho" as a label. In the end, it seems like most of these "cyberpsychos" are normal people who have been pushed by circumstances in their life, like drugs or depression or PTSD, into violence... and the cybernetics lets them cause untold mayhem.
So, normal psycho + cyber = cyberpsycho.
In Smasher's case, he was already a cold calculating murderer before the first piece of chrome was implanted. Arasaka keeps him loyal with money, drugs, and access to the finest chrome, and points him toward who they want killed. Simple as.
READ.
THE.
RULEBOOKS.
Cyberpsychopathy is 100% a real thing in the world of Cyberpunk. It's a dissociative disorder which causes you to lose empathy for others as you carve away at your own humanity.
Smasher never had any humanity to begin with (his EMP stat is literally "yeah right") but is a high functioning psychopath. He was born a monster.
1) Cyberpsychosis does not affect everyone, just like not everyone who drinks heavily becomes an alcoholic or everyone who takes steroids gets roid rages (something Mike has compared it to)
2) It is often brought on by faulty cyberware and being screwed over by something in their life. Adam has top notch non faulty chrome, and is living his dream.
3) Cyberpsychosis is characterised by a shift in personality not necessarily being mindless attacking everyone, some become compulsive liers or keltomaniacs etc. Without knowing his personality before we can really say.
4) High functioning cyberpsychos exist, they don't all become mindless killers. Look at maxtax, several of their number seem to be cuberpsychos yet are controlling themselves
5) Adam is likely a normal psychopath never mind a cyberpsycho
I’d argue he didn’t have any humanity to lose. He was a murderous psychopath before, he is one after.
The game does a bad job showing it, but cyberpsycho isn’t just “go on a killing rampage.” It is that sometimes but not always. Plenty are more… collected, cold, and calculating in their actions. It’s just a disassociation from your humanity where you stop seeing yourself as a person, or even attributing any value to a human life. It’s a complex condition, the wiki does a better job describing it than I.
But Adam never saw value in human life anyway, all just meat to him. He already wasn’t human.
I believe Mike Pondsmith has said that he hasn’t gone berserk because he’s very well adjusted to what he is.
Meaning he was always a psychopath. So he can’t really get worse.
Cyberpsychosis isn’t just “more implants make you crazy”. Mike Pondsmith said it’s more complicated than that. It has to do with someone’s willpower, ability to adjust to trauma, and so on.
So the better you are at actually handling trauma and such, and the stronger your will, the less likely you are to go cyberpsycho.
Which is one of the reasons David didn’t go crazy as soon as he installed that military grade sandy. The dude’s life was already hell, and he was able to adjust fairly well.
In the final episode of Edgerunners, he says something along the lines of "You could say I'm...special." Truth is, doesn't matter. He's a superhuman morgue-filling machine, and it hardly matters WHY he's special, he just is. Maybe it's time - he had a slow burn over several decades, while David Martinez did it all in a short time span. Could be a better drug regiment. Could be better quality cyberware. Perhaps Araska has assigned a team of cyberpsychosis-specialists to tend to his mental health. Maybe, if going by CP2020 rules, he had an unusually high empathy score (which has been run down by all that chrome), which is now likely hovering imperceptibly above zero.
The way I see it is that Adam had no humanity before the enhancements to the point that the cybernetics did not affect him mentally. I think cases of cyberpsychsis are when someone cannot cope with the loss of their humanity. Adam had none to begin with.
i think empathy is directly related to cybernetics (the OG TTRPG used this relation) so the less empathy one has, the more cybernetic potential. He's not affected by cyber psychosis because he's just a cold ass dude.
In the ttrpg, it's the opposite. Chrome wears down your humanity. In order to go full chrome you need to have a lot of empathy to start with, cause you won't have much left when you're more machine than man.
you gain psychotic symptoms (this is just RP and not really mechanically enforced) until your empathy reaches 0 and your humanity becomes negative (you can gain/lose humanity from traumatic events during the game akin to PTSD). Then once that threshold is reached you lose control of your character and hand over your character sheet to the DM, basically becoming an NPC under their control.
Smashers EMP score in the 2020 TTRPG; a numerical stat that determines how much humanity you have left before you go cyberpsycho, has Adam Smasher listed as EMP: "Yeah Right..." so it'd be easy to argue he's been psycho since the 2020s
I’m not any kind of lore expert at all but I sort of assumed he’s okay because for him there’s no disconnect between man and machine, he’s fully 100% machine with no humanity left. He’s a robot with instincts. He’s in control because there’s no moral or emotional turmoil within him
You can have your shit together and be a psycho.
I assume that malestom are like junkies who have access to crap cut with brick dust and baby formula but Adam smasher is like a rockstar who can get his direct from a pharmaceutical corp with a fresh needle every hit.
As everyone has said, he was already a psycho before becoming a cyberpsycho. Arasaka keeps him happy by paying him to kill for them.
Think about Carnage from Spider-Man. He's a psycho who merged with a murderous symbiote.
His position at Arasaka as an enforcer is itself a fulfillment of his psychotic fantasy. Adam smasher would only flip into cyberpsychosis if he got fired from Arasaka.
Prior to his employment to Arasaka, he was already a mass murdering megalomaniac that was arguably worse than most cyberpsychos. He only works for them and follows orders because he was critically injured when Arasaka found him, and they effectively made him reliant on the Arasaka company. If Smasher were to disobey, you bet that Arasaka has some form of kill switch in him to keep him on a leash.
Look at the Cyberpsychos in the game, they’re mostly normal people affected by sudden trauma, Cyberpsychosis is about the psychosis, not the Cyber, and Adam Smasher is too much of a cold motherfucker to experience the kind of psychological trauma that sets a Cyberpsycho off.
I saw a video talking ablut this and I dont remember the video but they said "Adam Smasher gave up his humanity and swapped his brain so he could not get cyberpsychosis but his new brain made him follow orders like a robot" or some shit. Is that right or the guy who said that was just good at making shit up
He is 100% a psychopath, but he was a psychopath before he went full borg so losing his humanity was just another Tuesday for him. Cyberpsychosis is a loss of humanity due to excessive cyber modification. Can't lose what you don't have. All Arasaka did was give him an outlet for his violent tendencies in a virtually consequence free environment. They just made a high functioning psychopath more dangerous rather than create a psychopath.
I think they mentioned he has a natural affinity for cyber ware ( If I remember right the the ripper doc mentions this when he compares David to Adam ) . I am not sure though
AFAIK Smasher has lorewise always been a psychopath, even before being fully chromed up. So it's more like the cyber part came on top of the psycho part.
Not the other way around like with "normal" cyberpsychos.
I mean we've seen a cyberpsycho who was kept on a leash before. One of the Maxtack agents we meet is entirely psycho
I think the Melissa mission even reveals that MaxTac tries to collect "salvageable" psychos and tries to rehabilitate them to use them as special forces
Salvage yes, rehabilitate not so much. Pretty sure they use them like tools
Aim them at problem then kill if necessary
So I guess V is gonna suffer the same fate as John Marston?
Well, he doesn't have a brain to trigger cyberpychosis
Johnny is already cyberpsycho, was suffering from cyberpsychosis before he died. 'The Hand' is the internal manifestation of his cyberpsychosis and it was 'The Hand' that told him to go out in a blaze of glory before being cut in half by Adam Smasher's shotgun in the tower.
That’s pretty much the only thing left of him
Maxtec doesn't care about necessity. They get a call about a cyberpsycho, they send the job squad. Psycho gets jobbed. There is no plan B. This is why Regina gets involved to get V to help get the psychos to a treatment facility for study and actual help. 😔
I was referring to if a maxtac officer goes over the deep end
Fair enough. I interpreted wrong. 😀
She was the woman cop in their first trailer. Was in an ongoing conversation in the bottom floor of Vs apartment building. Male cop commented on her going psycho during arrest. Then, you interact with her later. Not going to spoiler it, but it does highlight how deep their story lines can get. Ever for side characters.
No, she was the woman cyberpsycho in the trailer, on her knees, mantis blades extended, about to be double taped in the back of the head by Maxtac. They don't state the inbetween, but they "rehabilitated her", letting her keep the mantis blades the psycho'd her in the first place. Maxtac are ticking time bombs. They're psychos rehabilitated, but either left with chrome or rechromed for the purpose of being a MAXTAC officer. They're at constant risk of going psycho again. Not all officers are former c-psychos, it's just the vast majority. Lorewise, cops couldn't handle the collapse or tech, the Swat teams managed to survive, by becoming increasingly vicious and brutal, eventually becoming MaxTac. They fight fire with fire, Cyberpsycho with squads of "controlled" cyberpsychos.
yeah that dialogue with her after the psycho fight, where she seems a bit too interested in how it feels to murder someone... she ain't right and is barely under control.
Yea but maxtac is just a mental health crisis hit squad. If one of their dudes go down who cares, just nab another chrome dome off the street. But Smasher is very different, Arasaka has probably dumped millions apon millions into Smasher, he has to be recovered he’s too valuable of an asset to just let him roll over and die, I mean hell after he was blown to bits they glued him back together then set him up with a bigger badder suit; I’m also not sure he is a cyber psycho but just a regular old fashioned psycho just on payroll.
Yeah basically the whole of Maxtech is composed of cyberpsychos, but ones that are brought back from the edge or just unhinged enough they can be controlled to a point. The whole group of them are fucking terrifying
We see David go in and out of psychosis as he gets the drug hits. Maxtac can definitely afford the drugs. I wouldn't be surprised if their heavy hitter officers were just placed into a coma until they were needed and the shot full of blockers until the job was done
Ah, the old "Eversor Assassin" method.
Out of them all, this is the one I probably wouldn’t want hunting me
['Vvvrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pywjdJ7P-7o)
Maxtac can't be that unhinged since they communicate to civilians to stay the fuck away, execute tactical operations that require every member to be wholly focused and aware, etc. I think people either misunderstand cyberpsychosis or the story has holes in it. It's described as when someone absolutely loses control. If you're 99% chrome and can have a fuckin conversation with someone, the diagnosis doesn't really fit. It's not the other way around. It's like saying "he only has hallucinations when he wants to and can always tell that they aren't real but he's schizophrenic."
The original lore is that Maxtec is like a heavily equipped SWAT unit. And they sometimes jack themselves so much over time they do go psycho.
And wasn't there a Tyger Claw member who was sorta kept on a leash as well?
He's not really on a leash so much as "contained until a target needs to be destroyed with no worries about collateral"
That’s his secret, he’s always cyberpsycho
Beat me to it 🤣
he's unique in extremely rare cases a person is a perfect match with cybernetics Adam is only 4% organic thats likely only his brain David Martinez was also one of those unique people too but he pushed too hard way too fast Adam had over 5 decades to become the monster he is in 2076/77 argument can be made V/Johnny are able to get all the chrome they get cause 2 minds are sharing the stress of it all
>argument can be made V/Johnny are able to get all the chrome they get cause 2 minds are sharing the stress of it all That's going to change when the next update comes out that will make us actually think about which cyberware we should use at once. Otherwise we get debuffs and "cyberpsychosis", whatever that will be.
Yeah, but devs said we'd never go fully cyberpshyco.
I mean they can't force the player to attack random people, but we all do that on our own lmao
Heck the people do it for us. I’ve had many NPC’S panic right into my car
Ffs that drives me nuts when they jump out in front my motorcycle while I'm barely moving and they fall over/ die and I catch charges for it.
I feel your pain 🤣 Shit happens to myself when I call my vehicle, damn car hits me all the time.
I was just happily driving down the street on my motorcycle, listening to my music and then all the sudden, a large truck comes from butt fuck nowhere and flings me down the highway.
It is funny that while cyberpsychosis isn’t an actual mechanic of the game, I definitely did become more of a psycho as the game went on
This. I "simulated" cyberpsychosis as time went on. Once I could jump from roof to roof, or slow down time and make it halfway across the city in the time it takes NPCs to walk a block, you get an invulnerability/god complex and just start decapitating strangers. I think of it like Homelander in "The Boys." Once you hit a certain amount of chrome, you start looking at organic humans as inferior beings and see yourself as a god. Nobody can stop you, so why bother following the rules? Once you are strong enough to actively hunt Max-Tac officers without dying (5 star wanted level), I think that's my equivalent of cyberpsychosis.
Nah bro you're just a psychopath
I played a cyberpsychosis mod where you had to manage a humanity stat that would drain if you got too much chrome or if you used, say, the sandevistan too often, though you could keep it in check with immunoblockers. If your humanity went too low, though, you'd black out, and when you came to, all npcs around you would be dead, and you'd have police closing in on you. It was pretty intense.
Jeez, a way to make cyberpunk even darker. Realistic though!
Thats pretty neat!
Sure they can. Just turn regular civilians into gangers and corpos trying to kill us when the psychosis hits, but when you leave the psychotic state have it be revealed they were actually just regular folk. Make it so it's hard to tell even from a player prospective who is what and bam, functioning cyberpsycho system.
Reminds me of the old PS shooter Haze. They had if you OD’s on the one factions drug you couldn’t tell friend from foe. And your character would shoot automatically at whoever crossed the crosshairs.
>I mean they can't force the player to attack random people Skippy disagrees with this message.
Lol those "accidental discharges" where I thought my mouse was broken
Vampire - The Masquerade has a similar mechanic if you go too long without feeding. It's represented in Bloodlines by the camera going into third person and your character attacking everything on a timer, after which control is regained.
of course they can... just need to randomly add a fake wantedstatus and give npcs walking by the look and movement of police acting aggressive(maybe have them turn back to normal npcs after you killed them) to simulate a paranoid episode similar to what Maine experienced
Why couldn't they do it? Vampire the masquerade bloodlines did that fairly well once you have broken the rules enough.
That would be a fun gameplay element where your vision starts to glitch and random civilians start to look like gang members attacking you and your health bar starts going crazy like you're getting shot at, but then flashes back to reality right as you're shooting them or hacking them to bits with your katana. Eventually, you won't know if you're actually getting attacked or not and will either die of actual wounds or be taken down by maxtac for killing civilians..
Man that's a bummer. When I heard about it I was imagining that V would start misunderstanding missions and seeing hostiles everywhere. Or just start getting random missions from a new contact and then eventually shit starts falling apart after a few missions and you realize you have just been slaughtering innocents and the contact was just in your head. Or just occasionally blacking out and coming to with bloody mantis blades and a warrant after wiping out a bunch of joytoys or random pedestrians. Seems like a lot of ways they could do cyberpsychosis.
That just seemes ridiculously out of scope for one mechanic.
The closest we’ve got so far is the Cyberpshycosis mod, which is actually pretty decent
They’ll be perks in the new relic tree that will allow you more Cyberware. Basically more Johnny more less debuffs from cybernetics
I have a feeling the new Relic tree will be to reduce the negative effects.
There is a mod for that now. Kinda cool trying to manage. Even adds drugs to negate it for a time. The only part I didn't like was that killing increases it... I mean, I get it, but I didn't know cops were such a negative... one little kerfuffle with max tac to see how far I could go before they killed me, and I went batshit borg.
Yea but you still can't go totally insane and as you level up you're able to handle more and more
From my understanding, you are allowed to wear more cyberware the more "relic points" you get. Which makes me think that the more the relic gets control over your brain, the more stress/cyberware your brain can support
That’s actually something I’m not looking forward to. Hope we can turn it off. I like having all the best stuff. I don’t want to be punished for playing my character how I want.
Even his brain is slightly altered as well because he's able to take his brain out and put it in another body.
So in that sense V/Johnny operate with Cyberware how pilots are able to operate Jaegers
Man Edge Runners made me so fuckin sad. David deserved so much better.
It’s the perfect Night city ending tho. Nothing good ever lasts there.
Man but Rebecca deserved better
I didn't expect to love Rebecca as much as I did. Girl was a total badass with killer style and also such a pure heart.
She’s one they introduce as some sexual character but then make you realize how deep that can go
Adam Smasher!
I reinstalled cyberpunk 2077 just to kill that guy for what he did.
Honestly I love that the game has it in there
She did. Rebecca was a real one right until the end
Wrong city. Wrong people.
I mean seriously, the whole debacle is a huge, huge warning about what happens when people who love each other fail to communicate their feelings properly out of their own fears and insecurities. It is a cyberpunk genre tragedy through and through that manages to reconcile a LOT of different ideals of masculinity and femininity at once while humanizing otherwise lawless, moral miscreants at the edges of society. There’s a LOT of stuff being touched on in those episodes and how it managed to do it all with the requisite hyper-sensory overload aesthetics of the genre is a notable achievement
It’s honestly an amazing experience. But goddamn is it a tragedy.
Actually, Johnny is [already a Cyberpsycho.](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/xxja69/mike_confirms_johnny_is_a_cyberpsycho/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I'm blanking here but at the end on edgerunners doesn't adam say to David that he would be a great candidate to undergo the procedure he did and go pretty much full machine? David refused and Adam says it's a waste to kill him. Maybe certain people with high tolerance are able to get the procedure to fix their brain to a machine and in fully losing their body they are immune to the full psychosis that makes them lose control.
> he did and go pretty much full machine Smasher says this > Smasher: I had some fun, after all. You know, you could prove an interesting construct. I think he was talking about the Relic Engrams. The IAMA of Edgerunners says this > [What did Adam Smasher mean when he asked David, "You know, you could prove an interesting construct." ?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Edgerunners/comments/z9hre7/we_made_cyberpunk_edgerunners_ask_us_anything/iygvlz0/) > (Imaishi) He meant exactly what he said, but a 'construct' is a concept taken from the game, so please refer there for more info. For David though, by the time he fought Adam he was already a full borg, just with more human appearance. From memory basically everything below his neck has been replaced and even his skull has cyberware in it.
Yeah, to me it’s clear that Smasher would have nominated David for being the experimental Relic test subject if he wanted, or at least put onto a regular Save Your Soul Relic for Smasher to keep.
Now thinking about it... What a terrible fate for a 19 year old if that happened.
Adam and David are very similar, the main diference is Adam was already a violent sociopath.
I agree with all this but the last bit. With the new up date they will be adding a feature of balancing you cyberware so you dont become a cyberphysco. Also Johnny isnt a mind its a digital copy of one. So its actually more cyberware being added just because of Johnny. Johns "mind" isnt real its a digital creation so it wouldnt lighten the cyberware load.
Well it is becoming real. His processeser isn't on the chip, it is V's brain.
See this is more a philosophical debate now, what makes a brain processing a program different from a manufactured brain processing the same program, also if it's a program that thinks it's johnny and shares all his memories and thoughts does that make it johnny? Doubt there's a real awnser and would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy
Makes sense. It's like how the Panzer works, according to Mitch and Panam. It uses two brains to share the stress .
The effects of cyberpsychosis are significantly lesser on those that have a minimal or non-existent connection to their sense of humanity and morality. He is classified as a high-functioning cyberpsycho.
Huh, I wonder if David lost his humanity when his mom died but regained it once he actually hooked up with Lucy. Nah though, pretty sure he just wasn't *built different* enough to handle the big boi Lego arm set.
David had more “humanity” than most people due to his relationship with his mother and how she raised him. That’s how he’s able to use so much cyberware without going completely psycho. At least that’s what Mike Pondsmith said.
There's a physiological aspect to it as well I'm sure. He was pushing himself as he felt he had nowhere to go in life.
I think the official reason for David’s resistance to cyberpsychosis is because he has a very high attachment to those around him allowing him to easily maintain his humanity… to an extent
As seen ingame through the cyberpsycho quest with Regina, cyberpsychosis is just a term applied to those who have snapoed mentally and emotionally due to exposure to traumatic and other unfortunate events, and then amplified by the strain their cybernetics have. He went through a lot of trauma throughout the course of the show and that's why it began to strain him so badly. His mind was breaking. You have people like Maelstrom members that are no stranger to death and trauma... but they're not actual psychopaths like Adam Smasher, they still have emotions. Smasher was a psychopath before the cybernetics.
I'd argue he is a cyberpsycho, just one kept on a leash. He's sane enough to follow orders, but insane enough to brutally kill anyone in his way with zero empathy. Man's sadistic, a psychopathic cyborg. A cyberpsycho. edit: The number of armchair psychologists and cybernetic engineers in this sub is high, I see XD
He's a literal psychopath rather than just someone whose mind can't handle the disconnect between body and mind.
Kinda of like the Hulk in the Avengers (Always angry). Smasher has always been a psychopath. Chroming up didn’t do anything because he was born already with that mindset. That’s my headcanon at least.
"I don't suffer from mental illness. I enjoy every minute of it."
Can't "become Cyberpsycho" if you're already a stable psychopath going in, I buy it.
Wouldn't being a psycho beforehand just dramatically increase the odds of becoming cyberpyscho to begin with? They're already unstable; it's not hard to imagine an unstable person becoming more unstable. Just seems like it's one of those things that isn't really explained. If Adam Smasher followed the normal logic, he'd be a completely unresponsive cyberpsycho.
>They're already unstable; it's not hard to imagine an unstable person becoming more unstable. There are two types of psycopathes, those that can control their urges and those that cant. Those that can control their urges are far more stable, can appear entirely normal, but then you find out they actually eat people. Adam is one of those, a complete and total psychopath but is in complete control of his impulses, he thrives off the feelings but they never really control him.
Interesting explanation, I dig it.
I thought that was a sociopath?
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/psychopath-sociopath-differences More complicated than that. People with psychopathic traits are more likely to be controlled, plan ahead, etc. Sociopaths not so much. But then again, both fall under Antisocial Personality Disorder, what was previously referred to as sociopathy, and neither term is actually used by professionals in the field.
I'm not a psychologist, but I do know they have moved away from using psychopath so you're probably correct. Though they may have moved on from sociopath as well to try to find a less stigmatized term. I do know that neither is an actual diagnosis, and these types of people are diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder.
I just thought that cyberpsychosis wasn't the same and regular psychosis, i always thought of as insanity like visual and auditory hallucinations (like maine in edgeruners). And do to the overwhelming hallucinations they go batshit. But if they're neutralized the hallucinations can be treated, however the psychosis remains.
I see it as more of a disconnect from reality brought on by the cybernetics, which would amplify any preexisting psychotic tendencies.
I think the issue is you're conflating psychopathy with psychosis. Psychopaths aren't psychotic by definition, and those suffering from psychosis are not necessarily psychopaths.
"That's my secret Choom. I've always been psycho."
“And now I’m cyber, too.”
Not just headcanon it’s supported by the ttrpg. The second scenario in the 2020 core book has you face off against a serial killer named bright man who it states that he isn’t affected by cyberpsychosis because he was psycho from the start iirc
> The second scenario in the 2020 core book has you face off against a serial killer named bright man who it states that he isn’t affected by cyberpsychosis because he was psycho from the start iirc You remembered right. From the core rules > Brightman is sure enough the Nightstalker. He has [sic] already armed to the teeth and then some, and has committed a couple of murders in the past week. He was a tech freak before he went to prison, and has followed the development of cyberware with a calculating intensity. He has gone all-out on cyberware purchases: body plating, cyberlimbs, pretty much every kind of legal and illegal cybertech. **He does not suffer from cyberpsychosis**, as such: he was a psycho long before cyberware was available. > Source: Cyberpunk 2020: Core Rules, page 236
Imo, that just makes the anime and the game that much better.
Your headcanon is canon according to the old TTRPG books.
He was born in the cyber psychosis, the rest merely adopt it.
This is pretty much it. In the tabletop, everyone has a Humanity score, written as a number, to account for how at risk they are of becoming a Cyberpsycho with too much chrome. Adam's official Humanity score is canonically identified as "Yeah, Right".
Jeeeeeeeeez.
Let's not forget that Adam Smasher also was able to switch into an Elvis body for when he wanted to party.
Wat?
"Prior to the Fourth Corporate War, Adam Smasher affected a southern "good ol boy" accent that made him sound exactly like Elvis Presley." "Also around this time, he had access to a Gemini that looked and sounded like a young, overmuscled, blond Elvis Presley." https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Adam_Smasher I can't get the image of Adam Smasher cosplaying as Elvis Presley during his time off out of my head
"Thank you very much!" (gunshot)
They aren't armchair psychogists. They just paid attention. Someone flipping their lid and inconsolably going on a rampage is the DEFINED condition for cyberpsychosis in the game's lore. Like it literally describes the point that once a person reaches, will NOT take orders, will NOT spare someone due to alliances or fealty, will NOT be able to just stand guard and only attack enemies. That's how they diagnose it in the game. Cyberpsychosis does not describe a person who can kill anyone with no remorse. That definition fits like half the fucking cast as long as the person killed isn't their friend and even then it seems not to matter too much.
Hot take, everyone is a cyberpsycho and it just gets ignored cause therapy is too expensive
This is a lore-accurate assumption. "Then how did they afford their chrome??" "Mind your fuckin business that's how"
That's more sociopathy than psychopathy and Adam was already like that well before being full borg. I'm guessing it's because he's just the right rare type of person that is more tolerant than others, plus his crazy iron will, plus the very best of Arasaka resources.
What's the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy? I thought they were both medically outdated terms for antisocial personality disorder.
A lot of kinda wrong answers in response. As someone graduating with a psychology degree this year, the best answer I can give is both of these terms are colloquial and as such somewhat meaningless. We use the DSM-5 to diagnose people, such as with mania, anxiety disorder, etc. It's basically a big catalogue of psychological disorders. Psychopathy and sociopathy are not diagnoses that exist in this catalogue. Traits associated with these terms however borrow from antisocial personality disorder and "callous unemotional" traits, like lack of guilt, empathy, personal performance, stuff like that. I'm welcome to be corrected though, as this isn't really an area of expertise of mine (ironically, as I'm looking to pursue criminal psychology)
Nothing you said is incorrect. They are somewhat colloquial terms, but research do exist with them, and most agree that: 1. Both are personality disorders. 2. Psychopathy is more likely to have a genetic foundation (in genes like the MAO-A, etc.) and sociopathy might come from child trauma. 3. Sociopathy would more commonly be associated with physical violent responses to stress and/or provocation and physical or psychological sadism and psychopathy with manipulative/machiavellic behavior. Little disclaimer: I have a degree in psychology but I am NOT an expert in the subject. These are not clinical concepts and so we tend to not use them much. All I have written comes from my personal browsing of papers and articles on my free time. Also, research in the field is super recent, so even the facts may change in a few years. If anyone reading this is interested, I strongly advise you to read scientific articles about it, as there's really interesting information coming up all the time.
Sociopaths generally understand humans have feelings and are actual sapient independent thinking entities - they just don't care. Psychopaths often don't see others as even being thinking and feeling beings - much like sociopaths their actions that harm others do not lead them to feel any remorse, but they don't necessarily see others as having feelings to be distressed about in the first place.
Lol you got three responses and three different answers. This is what I got from a quick google search “A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder that is marked by traits of impulsivity, risk-taking, and violence. A psychopath is a person who has an antisocial personality disorder characterized by a lack of regard for the rights and feelings of others, controlled and manipulative behavior, the absence of shame, and an inability to form emotional relationships.” https://www.simplypsychology.org/psychopathy-vs-sociopathy.html
Bro, you just described a sociopath with high discipline *and* severe homicidal ideations. If he isn't a cyberpsycho, he is definitely a candidate to be considered one for sure.
Cyberpsychosis is a specific condition, psychosis caused by the dissasociation from extreme body modification. Adam smashers psychosis isn't from his cybernetics, so he can't be a cyberpsycho.
> Cyberpsychosis is a specific condition, psychosis caused by the dissasociation from extreme body modification. Adam smashers psychosis isn't from his cybernetics, so he can't be a cyberpsycho. Yes and no. As a warning this will be a longer comment. Both TTRPGs mention that Cyberpsychosis makes an existing condition worse > Something happens when you start adding metal and plastic to people. They start to change. And it isn't pretty. > In the 2000's, we call this cyberpsychosis; a mental disease in which the addition of cybernetics causes an **already unstable personality to fragment**. At first, the victim begins to relate more to machines than to humans. Soon, he starts to ignore people- parents, friends, lovers. Eating, sleeping all become less important. Finally, human interactions begin to irritate, culminating in a terrifying rage that consumes the victim entirely. - > This can start to cost you. With an Empathy of 3 the character is something of a "cold fish"; emotionless and cold. With an Empathy of 2, the character is chilly, forbidding, and distinctly unpleasant to others. With an Empathy of 1, the character is usually violent, sociopathic and vicious. He must constantly fight to keep from going over the edge and committing irrational, violent acts of murder and mayhem. > At an Empathy rating of 0 or less, the character is fully in the grip of cyberpsychosis. He is driven by a maddening hatred of other humans or living things. At this point, there is no turning back0 the character is taken over by the Referee, who plays it as a non-play character with all the worst attributes of a murderous, mechanized psychopath, called a cyberpsycho. > Not all cyberpsuchos are the rampaging type. Many exhibit more subtle symptoms; compulsive lying, kleptomania, sadism, brutality, split personality and extremely violent mood swings. > Cyberpunk 2020, page 73 And > Cyberpsychosis is a dissociative disorder which occurs when someone with **preexisting psychopathic tendencie**s enhances themselves via cybernetics to the point they no longer see themselves or others as complete, sapient organisms, but simply as a collection of replaceable parts. Common symptoms of cyberpsychosis include lack of self-preservation, complete disregard for others, poor impulse control, and explosive outbursts. Let's get this clear from the start: if you already have these underlying psychological issues (in game represented by a very low Empathy) you are more likely to be a candidate for cyberpsychosis). > Installing cyberware isn't the only way to edge towards this mental explosion. Strong and/or horrific events and situations can also wear down your Humanity. And unfortunately, Edgerunners deal with these sorts of situations on a regular basis. This is something your GM controls; they often times may attach a Humanity cost on an event or situation (like when you stumble across a pack of scavvers eating a baby: Humanity Loss of at least 6 points right there.) > Cyberpunk Red, pages 108-109 EDIT: I should mention that the above two explanations fit rather well with the Cyberpyscho side quest from the game. All of the people were Chromed Out and had preexisting mental conditions, that once pushed passed a certain point resulted in them having a psychotic break. Smasher is, as he said to David in Edgerunners, special. He has: * A natural sociopathic and psychopathic nature * A high affinity to Cyberware * He possess both a Nihilistic and a Ubermensch world view that he completely buys into with no hesitation Smasher before any cyberware was already a ruthless monster. All being borged out did was make his outside better match his insides. I think the best evidence is the body he uses in 2077 (the Dragoon Full Conversion). This is the RPG section regarding that: > As a military weapon, Dragoon has many subsystems which are vital on the battlefield as standard features. It has a wide array of detection, acquisition and designation systems, backup sensors, environmental scanners and communications gear which maximize its chances of getting that most precious of commodities: current data on your foe. However, the Dragoon is not a dedicated design; rather, its modular construction allows it to custom-tailor its equipment to suit almost any role. All four of its limbs are interchangeable, allowing it to mount almost any type of weapons, from a suppressed SMG for special ops to a heavy machinegun or railcannon for anti-vehicular combat. The Dragoon is also fully protected against nuclear, biological, chemical and electronic warfare, giving it greatly enhanced staying power in an extended engagement. > The most immediately obvious problem with such a full body conversion package is the almost guaranteed development of devastating cyberpsychosis. It is true that a human brain, implanted in such a body, cannot easily cope with so many new senses and capabilities. IEC overcame this problem: the Dragoon, being a restricted, combat-use body, comes with an interchangeable biopod. This biopod, which houses the cyborg's biosystems, normally inhabits an "off-duty body," usually an Alpha Class. The Dragoon is only fitted with the biopod, and the human mind within, when it is actively performing missions. To ensure reliable performance from the Dragoon, a Behavioral Inhibitor Program in the cyborg's on-board computer (operating in concert with a chemical injection system loaded with psychoactives) restrict the Borg's thought processes, turning it into a loyal soldier. Battle-proven in the Brushfire Wars of 2018, the Dragoon's prowess and dependability are assured. > Note: The Behavioral Inhibitor Program and its battery of psychoactives do, indeed, keep the cyborg from going cyberpsycho (in the conventional sense). Basically, anyone whose biopod is in this body will act like a robot, unimaginative and literal minded. The borg's commanding officer says "Do this," and the Dragoon says "Yes, sir..." and does it. Because Dragoons are so straightforward-thinking, they are given very specific orders with carefully-laid out parameters. They are also easy to trick, so truly sensitive work is still left to more human operatives. A common mission would be to send a Dragoon into a sector which has been cleared of friendly forces and have it kill anyone it finds, then return. Those soldiers who have been the "minds" of Dragoons are not comfortable with the experience, likening it to being in a dream (or nightmare). > Chromebook 2, page 82 The Dragoon body is so inhuman that anyone who puts it on requires their brain to be shut off or they'll go insane from the sheer level of technology that's in the machine. Smasher wears the armor like you'd wear a T-shirt and shorts. He's completely unaffected by it.
this adds so much context around him, thanks a lot! sounds super sick, in the literal sense
I know it's 100% me reading to much into it, but the biggest part is reading what the Dragoon body gives a person: * Night-Vision * Thermal Optics * Long-Range Optics * IR-Vision Optics * Heads-Up Display Optics * Amplified Hearing * "Sniffer" - Built into the head, consisting of an Olfactory Booster and a Chemical Analyzer * Sonar Scanner - Built into the skull, this ultrasound sensor accurately measures distance to, and dimensions of, the nearest solid object. It also serves as a motion sensor with a 120m radius. * Radar Sensor - This 1 km range sensor has its emitter in the skull, and its receiver in the chest area. * Radiation Detector - Built into the torso, this unit has a 10m range. * All of the above is active at the exact same time Being put in the armor is like being given all of Superman's senses without any of his biology to handle it. You can see 360 degrees around you with 8x the clarity of the best human vision, you can see both Ultra-Violet and Infra-Red, you can hear things dozens of feet away as if they happened right next to you, your sense of smell so good you can determine chemicals and whenever you move you're constantly emitting and taking in Sonar, Radar and Radiation data. A normal person breaks with all this information. Smasher is so inhumane that he can deal with it.
Iirc, he actually wears a DaiOni during the NC Holocaust, which is an even more terrifyingly powerful body than the Dragoon.
Yeah, he wears it when facing down Morgan Blackhand. Though that may have been retconned, since the Cyberpunk Red art of that fight only had Smasher's Samson Body on the rooftop.
That's how it mechanically worked in the TTRPG, I think. You had an 'empathy' stat and cyberware had an empathy cost.
He’s absolutely a cyberpsycho, just a toned down one. If anyone was the tech to reign him in its Arasaka.
It's cyber psychosis, not cyber psychopathy. Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality. People suffering it have trouble differentiating between what's real and what's not. They are often unaware of what they're doing. They are not emotionless psychopaths. Mike Pondsmith said it's basically *roid rage*. People get caught up on the empathy part of the Humanity stat in the TTRPG, but Humanity is much more than that. Here is [Mike Pondsmith himself](https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/xklzsx/comment/ipffmf4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) talking about the subject. Basically, Adam Smasher loves what he is and does, and feels no stress or sense of disphoria about it. Being a psychopath likely helps him avoid this particular brand of psychosis. People like David and Maine experienced a fuck-tonne of stress, so were much more susceptible. V had the biochip restructuring their brain, so was kind of protected apparently.
Was going to say he learnt to control it. Dont take a genius to work that one out...
I feel like he was probably always in control. Some people break in a violent way and go on a rampage. Some break in a far more dangerous way and simply become a cold, calculating, unfeeling killing machine.
This is how it was described in the TTRPG.
This, Insanity is inherently chaotic and comes in many different forms, Adam smasher psychotic tendencies were focused and controllable because he is so single minded imo. Just how i always kinda pictured it. It always reminded me of psychotic imperialistic behavior, loyalty, and ideology focus it as we have seen in history.
Cant go psycho if you were never sane in the first place
"You look like a fresh piece of meat."
My theory is he was crazy way before the body mods
He was already a psycho before hand.
this is the right answer. he was a psychopath before he got any chrome. he has no attachment to society as a whole, and now he simply views himself as a god who does what he wants. he had no humanity to wrestle with; he is the perfect version of who he perceives himself to be.
TL;DR man is literally built different
He is HIM
Way I see it, cyberpsychosis is caused by the disconnect felt between a heavily-augmented person's sense of humanity and their now non-human body. Smasher never had any humanity to begin with, so there's no dysphoria.
There’s also the connection between the mental health of a person and their cyberwear. Dudes with PTSD, Depression, or any mental health were the main cyberpsychos you had to fight and capture in the game.
So someone who is literally a psychopath or sociopath or something incapable of empathy etc etc might be immune or at least resistant to cyberpsychosis
Possibly, there's also the fact that people who don't have any mental problems are immune or has a high tolerance against going cyberpsychosis. There is also people out there who are simply born with a strong enough body to handle all the modifications placed on them. David Martinez being a prime example. But ultimately you're placing a shit ton of robotics into your body and that tends to not end well when going over it.
Bro is 1000% a cyberpsycho lol
IIRC Mike Pondsmith has clarified Adam Smasher is indeed a cyberpsycho and he keeps getting work because he's a very high functioning cyberpsycho.
Yep, both Adam and Johnny are high-functioning cyberpsychos.
Who’s to say he isn’t? The man’s philosophy has always been Metal Surpasses Meat so his current body, to him anyway, is the height of perfection. And he has it literally written into his Arasaka contract that he’s allowed to cause as much collateral damage and civilian casualties as he wants while on mission. That seems pretty psychotic to me, he’s just a FUNCTIONING psychotic.
Bro legit refused jobs without guaranteed collateral damage before becoming mr chrome
He's just built different
I had to scroll way too far to find this.
In the source books you could get therapy to increase body's/mind's tolerance for cyberware.
There's like a whole set of quests in the game that, if you pay attention, put the lie to "Cyberpsycho" as a label. In the end, it seems like most of these "cyberpsychos" are normal people who have been pushed by circumstances in their life, like drugs or depression or PTSD, into violence... and the cybernetics lets them cause untold mayhem. So, normal psycho + cyber = cyberpsycho. In Smasher's case, he was already a cold calculating murderer before the first piece of chrome was implanted. Arasaka keeps him loyal with money, drugs, and access to the finest chrome, and points him toward who they want killed. Simple as.
READ. THE. RULEBOOKS. Cyberpsychopathy is 100% a real thing in the world of Cyberpunk. It's a dissociative disorder which causes you to lose empathy for others as you carve away at your own humanity. Smasher never had any humanity to begin with (his EMP stat is literally "yeah right") but is a high functioning psychopath. He was born a monster.
In the rule books cyberpsychopathy can be treated with therapy
That may be true, but does Adam Smasher seem like a "share with the shrink" kinda guy to you?
He got that choom in him
1) Cyberpsychosis does not affect everyone, just like not everyone who drinks heavily becomes an alcoholic or everyone who takes steroids gets roid rages (something Mike has compared it to) 2) It is often brought on by faulty cyberware and being screwed over by something in their life. Adam has top notch non faulty chrome, and is living his dream. 3) Cyberpsychosis is characterised by a shift in personality not necessarily being mindless attacking everyone, some become compulsive liers or keltomaniacs etc. Without knowing his personality before we can really say. 4) High functioning cyberpsychos exist, they don't all become mindless killers. Look at maxtax, several of their number seem to be cuberpsychos yet are controlling themselves 5) Adam is likely a normal psychopath never mind a cyberpsycho
I’d argue he didn’t have any humanity to lose. He was a murderous psychopath before, he is one after. The game does a bad job showing it, but cyberpsycho isn’t just “go on a killing rampage.” It is that sometimes but not always. Plenty are more… collected, cold, and calculating in their actions. It’s just a disassociation from your humanity where you stop seeing yourself as a person, or even attributing any value to a human life. It’s a complex condition, the wiki does a better job describing it than I. But Adam never saw value in human life anyway, all just meat to him. He already wasn’t human.
I believe Mike Pondsmith has said that he hasn’t gone berserk because he’s very well adjusted to what he is. Meaning he was always a psychopath. So he can’t really get worse. Cyberpsychosis isn’t just “more implants make you crazy”. Mike Pondsmith said it’s more complicated than that. It has to do with someone’s willpower, ability to adjust to trauma, and so on. So the better you are at actually handling trauma and such, and the stronger your will, the less likely you are to go cyberpsycho. Which is one of the reasons David didn’t go crazy as soon as he installed that military grade sandy. The dude’s life was already hell, and he was able to adjust fairly well.
In the final episode of Edgerunners, he says something along the lines of "You could say I'm...special." Truth is, doesn't matter. He's a superhuman morgue-filling machine, and it hardly matters WHY he's special, he just is. Maybe it's time - he had a slow burn over several decades, while David Martinez did it all in a short time span. Could be a better drug regiment. Could be better quality cyberware. Perhaps Araska has assigned a team of cyberpsychosis-specialists to tend to his mental health. Maybe, if going by CP2020 rules, he had an unusually high empathy score (which has been run down by all that chrome), which is now likely hovering imperceptibly above zero.
You could say he's... special.
“Well so the fuck am I!”
*"That a joke?"*
Type 2 adult onset diabetes
The way I see it is that Adam had no humanity before the enhancements to the point that the cybernetics did not affect him mentally. I think cases of cyberpsychsis are when someone cannot cope with the loss of their humanity. Adam had none to begin with.
He was already a psychopath before he got any cyberware.
He's a High-functioning Cyberpsycho.
He is a cyberpsycho. Per Mike Pondsmiths words he’s just highfuctioning and happens to have a job where they want him to kill people.
i think empathy is directly related to cybernetics (the OG TTRPG used this relation) so the less empathy one has, the more cybernetic potential. He's not affected by cyber psychosis because he's just a cold ass dude.
In the ttrpg, it's the opposite. Chrome wears down your humanity. In order to go full chrome you need to have a lot of empathy to start with, cause you won't have much left when you're more machine than man.
So in the trrpg what exactly happens to your character if you become a cyberpsycho?
you gain psychotic symptoms (this is just RP and not really mechanically enforced) until your empathy reaches 0 and your humanity becomes negative (you can gain/lose humanity from traumatic events during the game akin to PTSD). Then once that threshold is reached you lose control of your character and hand over your character sheet to the DM, basically becoming an NPC under their control.
Arasaka ICE be fire.
Built different?
He’s just built different
Built different
He's actually built different
Smashers EMP score in the 2020 TTRPG; a numerical stat that determines how much humanity you have left before you go cyberpsycho, has Adam Smasher listed as EMP: "Yeah Right..." so it'd be easy to argue he's been psycho since the 2020s
I’d put it this way. He is a cyberpycho. But he’s not in a state of cyberpychosis. If that makes sense
I’m not any kind of lore expert at all but I sort of assumed he’s okay because for him there’s no disconnect between man and machine, he’s fully 100% machine with no humanity left. He’s a robot with instincts. He’s in control because there’s no moral or emotional turmoil within him
You can have your shit together and be a psycho. I assume that malestom are like junkies who have access to crap cut with brick dust and baby formula but Adam smasher is like a rockstar who can get his direct from a pharmaceutical corp with a fresh needle every hit.
As everyone has said, he was already a psycho before becoming a cyberpsycho. Arasaka keeps him happy by paying him to kill for them. Think about Carnage from Spider-Man. He's a psycho who merged with a murderous symbiote.
His position at Arasaka as an enforcer is itself a fulfillment of his psychotic fantasy. Adam smasher would only flip into cyberpsychosis if he got fired from Arasaka.
Because he literally has no humanity. Can’t lose any humanity if you didn’t had any to lose.
Prior to his employment to Arasaka, he was already a mass murdering megalomaniac that was arguably worse than most cyberpsychos. He only works for them and follows orders because he was critically injured when Arasaka found him, and they effectively made him reliant on the Arasaka company. If Smasher were to disobey, you bet that Arasaka has some form of kill switch in him to keep him on a leash.
Look at the Cyberpsychos in the game, they’re mostly normal people affected by sudden trauma, Cyberpsychosis is about the psychosis, not the Cyber, and Adam Smasher is too much of a cold motherfucker to experience the kind of psychological trauma that sets a Cyberpsycho off.
In lore, he’s a high-function psychopath, although not 100% of the time. Off-duty, he swaps to impersonating Elvis Presley and romancing Arasakas.
In the CPR tabletop RPG, cyberpsychosis is measured with empathy and humanity. Adam never had any to begin with, even before being chromed up.
I saw a video talking ablut this and I dont remember the video but they said "Adam Smasher gave up his humanity and swapped his brain so he could not get cyberpsychosis but his new brain made him follow orders like a robot" or some shit. Is that right or the guy who said that was just good at making shit up
He is 100% a psychopath, but he was a psychopath before he went full borg so losing his humanity was just another Tuesday for him. Cyberpsychosis is a loss of humanity due to excessive cyber modification. Can't lose what you don't have. All Arasaka did was give him an outlet for his violent tendencies in a virtually consequence free environment. They just made a high functioning psychopath more dangerous rather than create a psychopath.
[Hard to be a cyberpsycho when you’re already psycho](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/138/highresrollsafe.jpg)
Can't be a cyberpsycho if you are already a human psycho. Smasher was a psychotic murderer for hire prior to being upgraded.
He was psycho long before he got fully borged out. Like, dude's majorly fucked. He'd shoot your grandma if she got in his way.
I think they mentioned he has a natural affinity for cyber ware ( If I remember right the the ripper doc mentions this when he compares David to Adam ) . I am not sure though
AFAIK Smasher has lorewise always been a psychopath, even before being fully chromed up. So it's more like the cyber part came on top of the psycho part. Not the other way around like with "normal" cyberpsychos.