I'll take this as they appear in SR4a.

Olfactory booster/taste Booster:
The costs here are fine, but what the hell is with the availability rating?
24 Availability for +6 to smell or taste things? Really?

Cybereye/Ear Enhancements:
Generally overpriced in comparison to non-cyber equivalents. Most of this stuff is ubiquitous and churned out by the truckload, why does this cost so much when the eye/ear itself is so cheap?

Bone Lacing vs. Bone Density Augmentation:
Bone lacing is easily detected and highly illegal, while the bioware version is hard to spot and totally legal. This doesn't really make sense. It's sort of balanced by cost difference, but that's about it.

Muscle Replacement vs Muscle Toner/augmentation:
Replacement is essence-costly and easier to spot on a scanner. While it is about a third the price, both options are so cheap that there is almost never any question as to which you will be getting.

Cyberlimbs:
A lot of crazy problems here. I'll start with the 3 as the set normal attributes. Why would a troll EVER take one of these? I'll also mention the stacking of armor from multiple limbs. So many threads on breaking this.

Adrenaline Pump:
Dangerous, Expensive, gives bonuses more simply and MUCH more cheaply delivered by drugs and stim patches.


These can be put into a cyberlimb to negate the essence costs. They may be expensive, but are hard to steal.

As for cyberears/eyes, the modifications are my main issue, but the baseline parts are great. Image link and recording functions that cannot be removed for 500 nuyen is a pretty good deal.

No, just no.
One cyber arm with 9 Agility gives an Agility 1 character full body Agility of 2:
(5*1 + 9) / 6 =2, somethink rounds to 2

Really a sleep regulator.
Not only does pretty much every single one of my non adept character builds have it(adepts have sustenance), i would my self get one implanted in a hearth beat if i lived in the sixth world (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)
.15 essence is super cheap for that piece of awesomeness.

Encephelon v PuSHeD: PuSHeD is super cheap and very low essence. Encephelon has a high essence cost (which is good when balancing hacking adepts against mundanes) but costs way too much for such a minimal benefit. What really makes this messed up is it's cheaper (money and essence wise) to get a cyberlimb, stick a nanohive in, buy Neural Enhancering nanites at R3, and grab a Reality Amplifier Focus during gameplay than to just get Encephelon R1. I really like Encephelon in concept, because that massive essence cost is a significant barrier to the awakened, but it just doesn't do enough for the nuyen cost.

Cerebral enhancers: Maybe I'm missing something but for any hermetic mage/picking up Cerebral Enhancer R2 or R3 gives you a nice boost to your drain stat while leaving plenty of essence for other ware. That seems like too good of a trade. Especially because, much as a love 'em, they also seem way more valuable to the awakened than the mundanes, given that cerebral enhancers don't boost hacking and there's plenty of other ways to boost logic-linked skills if you need to.

Max, I think one typically divides by 5 limbs. The skull is not a limb. I could be wrong. I don't see how it'll give you a 5 either way, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It certainly doesn't affect any Agility skills using your legs. It'll give you 5 for both arms together, of course, but someone did say 'full body'.

Well, 'torso' isn't a limb either, but I can certainly see that it should be included in the full body stat calculation.

@politeman - I agree about the encephelon.

The torso is included, certainly. Like I said, 5 limbs. If it's 6, the math in the example on SR4A p343 doesn't work.

I think they just calculated (9 + 1) / 2 = 5 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

I think the skull should be excluded because it's got so little capacity that it would almost always drag down the average.

Of course, the extremely low capacity of the skull is a problem itself. Maybe a fix would be to give it inherent armor rating? While it's not terribly big, the skull is an extremely critical part of the body, so any armor on it could give disproportionate gains.

I would drop the essence cost (maybe .3-.5) and make the armor stack with any worn armor normally.

Contrary to cyberarms and -legs, skulls and torsos are shells. They have no inherent motors for movement. The user has to use his own muscle. This is why they will always lower the average.

This should not be reflected in the armor rating. Even a MilSpec Helmet has only +2/+2, as it only covers a very small portion of the body. The armor value in SR is based on both the protective quality of the material and the coverage.

@Faraday: Cyberlimb armor already stacks with other armor. Cyberlimb armor even stacks normally with other cyberlimb armor. Giving Cyberlimb users armor really isn't a problem in SR.

Was the capacity of a nanohive ever addressed in any errata or post print writer discussions? I feel I've read somewhere that the ease with which one could put such a high level mod into a low level implant was ret-coned or modified.

Or maybe it was all a dream. A sweet, munchkin crushing dream.

I suppose I should expand on that. I know armor stacks by RAW and you can have 30 or so armor standing around naked. I don't really like that state of affairs.

I tend to run with cyberlimb armor being totaled up across all limbs and divided by 5. I do not include cyberskulls, stacking them as per RAW.

No, cyberlimb averaging doesn't work like that. You average (meat body + cyberlimbs)/(1+cyberlimbs). No, this doesn't make sense. Yes, this IS what the rules say. See the example. Also cyberlimb armor doesn't average. If you're concerned about cybered characters being able to keep up with awakened characters, nerfing cyberlimbs is not the place to start.

Part of why some people think that some cyberware/non-magic characters are worse than they really are is because the things people love to nerf are typically mundane things.

"No, but I like to pretend it did, and it's cool."

I rest my case.

It's simpler to list ware that ISN'T either crap or overpriced.

Ultrasound sensor (when in a cyberlimb), Reaction Enhancers, Skillwires 1-4, Wired Reflexes 1-2, Cyberarms, Cyberlegs, Cyberhands, Cyberfeet, depending on whether "shooting someone with a one-handed weapon" is a "test directly involving those limbs" cyber lower arm, the cyberlimb enhancements, cyberarm gyromount, some of the cyberguns, Enhanced Articulation, Muscle Augmentation, Muscle Toner, Platelet Factories, Suprathyroid Gland (but why the fuck is it 20F?), Synthacardium, Tailored Pheremones, Cerebral Booster, Pain Editor, Reflex Recorder, Synaptic Booster.

I didn't go through augmentation because I'm lazy, and because this thread will quickly turn into "but all my characters have Mnemonic Enhancer because I'm a *~roleplayer~*" anyways.

Only with the rather obvious Bulk Mod you can get to 24. Even then there is not much room for other goodies. While theoretically possible I doubt you will actually see many tanks like that.
The rule and the example are true for Attributes. There are three kinds of Attributes, Physical, Mental and Special. Armor is not part of any of those groups.

Hmm. I suppose you could get them Customized, that would help a little bit. Still, on the whole cyberskulls suck, they provide far too few Capacity for the enormous amount of Essence they eat up.



You could easily decide that structurally enhancing the skull is much more effective than merely covering it with a helmet.





But that makes cyberlimb armor a ridiculously bad investment: extra Body on a cyberlimb costs half as much Capacity as Armor, but it's effects are much nicer (higher Encumbrance limit, resistance to toxins).

I think anyone with 30 points of Cyberlimb Armor could ever be naked, because they don't really have much mere mortal skin surface to be naked. Also, I think you can only go up to 22, because every limb has a limit of 4 points of Cyberlimb armor. It would also eat up a majority of all those limbs' Capacity (all, if using non-obvious limbs).

I see your point though; if you don't want that much Armor on anyone, why not reduce the maximum amount of Armor possible on each limb to 2-3?

Cyberdiabetes is pretty silly but it is actually a good thing for game balance; heavily cybered characters can get better defenses than non-cybered awakened characters because of it, and it's one of the few really major advantages they have. It's not a good idea to remove it.

Right, armor just stacks. I was referring to the people with think that it's (cyberlimbs + meat*(X-#cyberlimbs)/X rather than (cyberlimbs+meat)/(1+#cyberlimbs), where X varies from person to person.

I thought of this when I originally went with changing the cyberarmor rules. I made it cost .5 capacity and 100 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and decreased the availability to 3xrating. Also left it legal. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
Armor's biggest disadvantages within RAW are the high availability and slot costs.

That would probably fix the overall armor issue, and is a good idea.

But what about smaller armor investments? For example, buying a full cyberleg is 15k, adding 2 armor to that is a negligible nuyen cost and uses 4 capacity. That leaves you 16 capacity for whatever other enhancements you want on top having what amounts to slightly more expensive dermal plating that is entirely legal. It will even stack with dermal plating/orthoskin/etc according to RAW, as far as I know.

I don't see any problems with that. If people want to play an armored character, that's alright, within limits.

It's inconvenient when armor values among the PCs vary very much; enemies that would be a mild matchup for the Tank would vaporise another character, and that's not good. Or vice versa, reasonable opponents couldn't scratch the Tank.

But if armor values in the party aren't too divergent (damage resistance pools of 10 vs. 20, 15 vs. 25) for example, it's still manageable. It's when the differences become 9 vs. 35 that it's really a problem.

No, the avaragin very very much does work the way you claim it doesn't.
You always have 5 body parts(if we exclude the head) if you have one cyberlimb then 4 those body parts have you natural attribute.

Natural attribute only counting once and the diviner being the number of cyberlimbs + 1 would make for a totally bonger situations :
For example having natural Agility of 1 and one cyberarm with Agility 9 would result in avarage Agility of 5
But getting a second cyberarm witch also has Agility 9 would lower the characters avarage agility to 3(you round down) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Oh, it is *totally* bonkers, no question. I'm not claiming it is "realistic," just that it is (a) good for game balance and (b) how the rules work.

Let's go through this. How, EXACTLY, do you think it works? You say "you always have 5 body parts (if we exclude the head)." But you shouldn't exclude the head - the book EXPLICITLY says to average everything except partial limbs, which the head is not. And you're arguing that the torso is a "limb" but the head is not?

Can you explain how you think it works in a way that does not contradict clearly stated rules (such as that only partial limbs are excluded - so your interpretation cannot treat a cyberskull or a cybertorso differently from a cyberarm or a cyberleg) and does not make the example wrong?

Just count the torso and not the skull. It's easy. There's no reason to do something the stupid and wrong way, just because we think it might be what the book (erroneously) says.

So for the Body test, he uses the average of all these things, and we're told that this average is 4 (possibly rounded down, never up.)

Torso - 6
Left leg - 5
Left arm - 3
(generic: right arm) - 3
(generic: right leg) - 3
That gets you 3+3+3+5+6 = 20, 20/5 = 4, which fits the example.

However, if you also count the head, it becomes:
Torso - 6
Left leg - 5
Left arm - 3
(generic: right arm) - 3
(generic: right leg) - 3
(generic: head) - 3
That gets you 3+3+3+3+5+6 = 23, 23/6 = 3.83, which would be rounded down to 3, and doesn't fit the example.