[Reaver]

But would it?

Generally, ware stops working under a shapechange spell because the physical body has morphed into something else and the ware just can't function in the new body.

But nanites? Mircoscopic machines affected by shapechange? I'm not so sure, yes a nanite hive stops working, but animals have been infected and carriers of CFD, so I am less sure of shapechange stopoing or even slowing down a CFD infection...

[MDMann]

Since the process of rewriting a personality involves recording it however briefly, you could retrieve a personality from the eternal library via a submersion.  You'd then need a way to upload it back into a host that had been cured somehow. Nanites perhaps? N other a cure but a treatment perhaps.

[Novocrane]

But nanites? Mircoscopic machines affected by shapechange?

I'd say 'yes'. My guess is you're conceptualising nanites as a kind of invading force - which isn't untrue, but they're also a hard/soft nanoware system like any other, and those (along with any other nanoscale natural entities) are considered part of the body.

In any case;

Soft nanites are officially affected by chemicals and can be destroyed entirely by pumping the subject with the right chemicals. Hard nanites are not, and can forcibly excrete toxins / chemicals from the subject.

Electricity stuns hard nanites temporarily - long enough to kill soft nanites with chemicals.

Blood Filtering and other combined medical procedures will halve nanite volume.

Nanoplasmosis will jam hard nanites and eat soft nanites, but that doesn't significantly improve the situation from using chemicals and electrocution as presented in 5e.

It could also be argued that the nutrition spell also feeds the nanites due to the symbotic relationship between the nanites and the host body.

The spell itself is fairly explicit.

This spell prevents starvation and dehydration
One hit is enough to satisfy the target for a few hours, with extra hits increasing the quality of the delivered nutrients

One could argue that soft nanites within the body could be fed by the nutrition spell, but hard nanites?

Hard nanomachines are artificial constructs, nano-scale drones made from diamondoid composites, with almost frictionless bodies and internal power supplies.

I wouldn't agree they can be satiated the same way. Which leaves them a viable target for pseudo-starving a target out of CFD infection. Or at least to the point where they can (worst case) indefinitely survive in a living hell of electroshock containment without being rewritten.

[RowanTheFox]

It could also be argued that the nutrition spell also feeds the nanites due to the symbotic relationship between the nanites and the host body.




There is a cure for CFD.

Fire.
Lots of it. Applied directly to source of infection.
Keep application going until fine white ash is produced.

(Course, this cure sucks if you're infected mind you)

I'm not setting FastJack on fire.

Why not???

He's old, dry, and krusty! He'd go up like a match!

A: It's FastJack. B: In my fanon, he's currently sitting in a nutrivat owned by Aztechnology. So he's actually old, withered, and soggy.

[Sendaz]

This makes me wonder...  From a metagame perspective, will CFD be "cured" in the manner a disease would be, "solved" like a problem, or "stopped" like a malevolent force?  Will there be a big climax?  Or is it more a matter of time...

One of the transhuman style cures I always saw happening was let people figure out how to program their own nanites and basically you infect yourself with.. well.. you.

Now you have a nanite based system working to keep you as you and can fight off other nanite infections, even potentially reversing minor damage caused as it basically has your script written into it and works to bring you back to that baseline.  Your own personal nanohive would update itself, cross checking and double checking any updates/upgrades to make sure it isn't going off track.

Worries about infecting others is minimal if everyone has their own set and you could put in further limits.

Course the 6th world version of anti-vaxxers who insist on staying nanite free do tend get shafted, but hey...them's the brakes.

[Mirikon]

That'll work great, for all of thirty seconds until someone gets the idea to hack the 'you' nanites and make you the 'you' they want you to be. Self-reinforcing mind control, without even needing to be a mage, or have big, expensive PAB units!

Can you imagine the market for 'designer girlfriends', without the risks of personafix addiction?

[firebug]

Yeah, gotta admit that sounds like it'd just be hacked and overwritten by the infecting AI and their own swarm of nanites, and basically just speed up the process of you getting overwritten.

[Ghost Rigger]

Opened thread expecting some sort of disintegration ray, was disappointed.

[Sendaz]

Yep, but that was because SR has basically painted itself into a corner with it.

In play Cryptoanalysis trumps any cryptography.  No matter what level of coding you used, all you needed was a single extended test based around a CT and you were in.
Now there were gaming reasons for this, the classic go get pizza scenario tends to occur otherwise, but the end result is there are few real ways to secure your tech from being permanently usurped.

But that is why the master nanohive for these should be an offline design and the nanites built to be non-reprogrammable.  They can only do the task they were built with and the hive makes new ones to fit new tasks.  By itself it should be able to maintain a high enough pool to fend off initial attempts by outside nanites and not let them get a foothold to start with.

But that doesn't work out so well because CFD is the miracle hacker... could hack/hijack both hard and soft nanites, even those built to be non-reprogrammable, infecting equipment and people alike, PLUS it seemed to shrug off several treatments that normally should have worked against them, won't even go into that rant. 
Again this was done for game reasons, otherwise players would have yawned and debugged themselves and loved ones with minimal effort.


But at the end of the day, in their attempt to create a new boogeyman they created a September Monster which has quickly become a take it or leave it option to the game that many tables just ignore because it just doesn't mesh well with their campaigns.

The funniest part is they sort of have been down this path before with Ghouls, what with the contact infection vector, which created the possibility of someone just grinding a ghoul or two and feeding it into a city's water supply or Stuffer shack snack rack to infect a city.  They eventually changed that infection vector, but really what did they think was going to happen with CFD?

But on a lighter note, if you want a more humorous view of something similar, check out High Aztech by Ernest Hogan.  Where they create a religion virus (can substitute soft nanites here basically and passable by skin contact) that reprograms the victim to believe in a particular diety or set of dieties, even having hallucinations about interacting with them.  Originally designed to infect the local populace with a passion for the traditional Aztec pantheon, it quickly gets messy as every major religion unleashes their own version.  But the twist here is rather than one set of deities overriding the other, the brain of the victim starts to intergrate the multiple gods together so now you have Buddha hanging out with Quetzalcoatl partying with Loki inside their head, making for some humorous insights.

[Adamo1618]

Personally, I prefer turning the patient into another form through the shape change spell to halt the infection (since its still technically bio- and cyberware which are rendered inert during the spell) or use Turn to Goo to pick out the hard nanites.

Hmm. Now there's an idea. Not the Turn to Goo followed by physically picking millions of microscopic nanites out of the goo, that's just silly.

Do you even magnet, son?

[Jack_Spade]

Personally I'd just use "Shape Nanites" to render them inert and clump them together, pull them out like a wire and make sure the goo is within a healing ritual circle and hit with a super heal spell to undo any damage left. Supercharge the immune system with prophylaxis and for good measure add the nano plasmosis.

At least that's how I resolved the problem in my games 

[Novocrane]

Most spells are terrible at targeting nanites for two reasons. First, they are too small to be seen individually or create a connection to them directly. Second, they are highly processed, and magic and tech do not blend well. Spells cast on a head case targeting the nanites, have their Drain increased by +2 at a minimum and may not work at all. Be creative, and make it tough—this virus is not fair.

IOW, you fiat'd CFD away rather than actually solve it or deal with it?

[Mirikon]

Personally, I prefer turning the patient into another form through the shape change spell to halt the infection (since its still technically bio- and cyberware which are rendered inert during the spell) or use Turn to Goo to pick out the hard nanites.

Hmm. Now there's an idea. Not the Turn to Goo followed by physically picking millions of microscopic nanites out of the goo, that's just silly.

Do you even magnet, son?

IIRC, hard nanites are not made from ferrous metals, but rather things like silicon and other such elements, that the body doesn't naturally try to break down and use, like it would iron, or react badly to. So magnets would do drek all to it. Well, not quite. Standing next to a VERY powerful electromagnet could probably scramble the nanites, but at that point the fleshy body they're in would also be suffering some severe effects.

[Reaver]

I have to agree. CFD is a plot device. There is no real cure for it until the Devs say there is... and I doubt its going to be soon.

There has been a lit speculation as to 'why' CFD was brought in, ranging from an excuse to remove nanotech from the game to trying to create a 'technological boogieman' to threaten players with...

I don't know the real reason, and don't really care. For me, CFD is fringe plot point that doesn't get a lot of attention other then as a device to excuse random changes in personality among villians...

[Ghost Rigger]

I've heard that it was conceived as an excuse to justify why everything, especially augmentations, is more expensive now. Seems like a lot of work for something that could be explained by inflation.