Genetic engineering in a somewhat transhuman setting could well include animals with vastly modified capacities (or something like a human imbued with some abilities much similar to what an animal might have). In the case of animals raised to sentience, that would be uplifts. Genmods (Genetic modifications) are the other side - humans enhance to have capabilities that are improvements over normal human levels of performance.

I've been thinking about how to balance such entities so as to make them playable characters.

In the enhancements column, such changed invididuals might have:

- ability to deal with higher/lower atmospheric pressures and/or partial pressures of breathing gases

- ability to handle higher/lower gravities (including zero-G)

- better senses - sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, kinesthetic sense, others

- better physical attributes - strength, endurance, agility, speed, memory, etc

- other abilities - pheremone emission, body alterations (claws, teeth, wings, you name it)

In the limitations category, we could have:

- weaknesses in one or two areas mentioned above

- intolerance and prejudice, limitations on advancement

- shorter life spans

- perhaps subject to certain degenerations or diseases, or don't heal as fast

- if their path to maturity is shorter, perhaps they get fewer background skills

- if they mature sooner, aging may arrive sooner and more harshly

- need specialized medical compared to bog standard homo sapiens sapiens

The same sorts of logic might apply to cybermods. They give, but perhaps there are prejudices or they overclock parts of your neural system and/or impact your psychological wellbeing. They may also open you up to viruses and so on that your fleshware would never have had on its own. It is possible that the cost of most cybermods means the people likely to have them are some military careers and some operative careers. Otherwise, only the very rich and their mods may be more about looks or their enjoyment than anything that really adds to their basic capacities.

Any other thoughts on advantages or disadvantages for genmods, uplifts or cybermoded characters?

I think as with most things, the details would need to be experimented with. That said, any interesting options I haven't thought of could be good to look at, so if anyone has additional ideas, I'm glad to hear them.

TomB