Hm. That does sound like an issue, though I still think the rarity/etc. are realistic. As a purely 'don't screw over the player' concern, I do understand. Does the same thing happen to humans with high natural attribs?

Well, you can enhance your stats by 8 Points and hit the AV12 cap - a human could get a 6/6/5 limb with AV12, which is nearly top of the line. An ork is screwed by the aviability limit, a troll even more.

Cool. Hm. Given that he has to have that stat naturally, there's not much potential for abuse, yes. *shrug* Your solution seems simple enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This argument about cyberlimbs came up in my game. One of my players had played Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and was kind of enthused by the Jensen Look, but he really didn't like the thought of paying out the ass to get his Strength ratings back to where they were.

I agreed with him.


My basic way of looking at it is that cyberlimbs default to your natural stats, because nearly all of them are actually identical in terms of their performance - it's the limitations of your meat that are holding your chrome back, not the other way 'round. If your natural strength is 4, then it can be tuned up to 4 and installed properly - if your natural strength is only 2, however, then it would damn-near rip itself off of your shoulders. If you want to upgrade the arm to do Str 4, it's going to need extra anchoring and reinforcing and calibration and so forth and so on, and that will be what costs you money.

If we assume that Essence (in regards to Cyberlimbs) are the same as your Flesh then we have the following.

Head: 1
Arms: 2
Legs: 2
Torso: 1

6 Points of Flesh to represent all limbs. Torso and Skull are defined as "Shells" and dont replace your torso or head with cybernetic internal organs and cybernetic brains, they merely replace the outer layer which is ribcage and muscle or Neck/head muscles and bone. Arms and legs are literally lobbed off and discarded, replaced completely. This should make the head and torso take LESS essence, not more total.

Head: 0,5 Essence
Torso: 0,5 Essence
Limbs: 1 Essence

Not to mention the silly availability of the skull since all cyberware is defined as off the shelf cheap construction. I might up the availability a bit if you want tailored (Alpha).

And the Str 8 limb for the Dwarf?

It can make actual sense or it can make game sense.
We can't really have it both ways.

As to customized limbs being fitted to an individual, that's not really what that's about.
Think about it like a custom-built computer. You can decide the size/speed of the RAM or how many DIMMs will be used, but you're not getting a unique product. You're only buying a product, tailored to your specifications, made with higher-end components for which an average user would have little need. A surgeon might need a replacement hand capable of extremely fine movement, but a guy who works in a meat processing plant would not.

If your Essence-limb hypothesis makes predictions that don't match the game reality, that means your assumption is wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've never understood why people think the torso replaces the ribcage; is there any book mention of that someone can show me? To me, 'shell' means it's added on. I could see removing the skin, which is traumatic enough.

I'll have a look and see - one reason would be that there's just no point of having a ribcage if you have a cyber shell for it...another would be that bone lacing doesn't stack with a cybertorso, indicating that the bones are gone (at least it didn't stack in SR3, not sure how SR4 does that)

I'm not aware that bone lacing is incompatible with any cyberware; limbs don't reduce it, etc., as they did in SR3.

Even so, it'd be possible to have the cybertorso simply 'override' the still-present ribs, WRT damage.

Quick check, and it seems you are right. You can have cyberarms, cyberlegs, cybertorso and cyberskull and still benefit from Bone Density Augmentation lvl 4, apparently (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Yep. SR4: simplify, simplify.

There's not a lot of sense in the skull costing a lot of essence, but the torso likely requires significant neurological interfacing to make it function correctly, and that interface, that massive unnatural and new way of doing things is what can account for the larger essence cost. That's what I'd think anyway.

Well...

There'd probably have to be a whole slew of connections and interfacing for a skull to work properly as well, unless you keep your own lips, eyelids, etc.

Unless they replace the entire spine and several important connection with the brain we can assume that replacement with cyberskull and torso follow the same logic as limbs.

1: Bone and muscle tissue is removed and replaced with synthetic materials
2: The Spine is encased in a thin protective sheat (as it is not replaced).
3: Artificial muscles and carbon fiber "skeleton" is replacing your entire ribcage and muscles

If we go full "borg" how well does SR4 medicine functions in being able to completely remove the brain and spine from the body in order to replace an entire spine? I'm more inclined to believe that it would be easier to protect the spine. This creates even more question if someone gets a cybertorso but keeps a normal head and limbs.

I see no reason why bone and muscle would be replaced, especially for the torso. These are totally unlike limbs.

Essence costs are based mostly on game balance, with vague handwaving toward 'invasiveness' or 'holistic' or 'deviation from natural'.

Part of the essence cost is supposed to represent the body's integrety vis a vis the immune system.
Completely removing and replacing systems like the sinus which interact with the blood-brain barrier and cranial nerves which hook up to some really sensitive places all throughout the brain and brain stem would be pretty serious.

Then again, installing a math processor into your grey matter is no less effed up and invasive.

Losing skin is a major thing though. It's got a lot of barriers to keep bacteria and such out.

Alright, digging through some old books:

Looking at the art (always dubious, I know) for cyberskull/cybertorso in the old Cybertechnology book, the torso clearly shows that all the muscles are artificial and it looks like most of the bones are gone. The skull is only partially replaced by synthetic parts. But, like all SR art, this means nothing. In the text there is nothing that suggests what is replaced and not. So, moving forward to Man & Machine: Cyberware, pg. 28:

Cyberskull
"A cyberskull uses a plasteel framework to protect against fatal head shots and other brain damage. The synthetic version requires replacing some parts of the skull and reinforcing others. The obvious model involves removing the skin and hair and constructing a protective structure around the skull."

Cybertorso
"Like the cyberskull, the cybertorso is a protective covering that surrounds the chest and abdomen. Ribs and muscles are reinforced or replaced, and the entire section of the body is layered with a shell."

So, there we have the most detailed descriptions of the cyberskull and cybertorso available in the history of SR rules.

Cool, thanks for the book-work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'd just never actually seen it written. Assuming nothing's changed across editions, the cyberskull is at most partially replacing bone (mostly a shell). The torso is reinforcing *or* replacing bone and muscle (mostly a shell).

So, none of that would imply Capacity, except possibly the thin area of the shell itself (as we discussed earlier); this area is small and best suited to armor specifically.

No problem. I knew I had read something somewhere about replacing ribs - it's just a hassle digging out many of my older books since I have them stored out of easy reach.

There's also a section in Cybertechnology that states:

"Body plating can give you more protection if you want it. Ceramic and hybrid-polymer plating replaces the outer casing of your various cyber body parts[...]"

...indicating that armoring the torso and skull is just replacing the cyber with better materials.

And I have to say, the operation sounds horrible..

I dunno about that, snowRaven. All cyber armor uses Capacity, so whatever else it's doing, it's replacing the shell with *thicker* materials.

Yeah, it stills takes capacity under both rulesets - I wasn't trying to imply that it wouldn't. Just that by the original rules, armor in the case of torsos etc is replacing the original casing, rather than adding to it. "Nothing to see here but fluff, move along citizen."

Another thing to bear in mind with cyber-torsos is that its not just the ribs, it's the pelvis, shoulderblades, etc when it comes to bones to be replaced/augmented. Everything from where the shoulders connect to the neck down is part of the 'torso', though we often think of torsos as being basically from the hips up.

Replacing/augmenting the vertebrae of the spine makes sense as well (and would be a big chunk of just how invasive and difficult an augmentation it would be), but the spinal cord itself would be untouched (that's the realm of the reflex technologies) save for taking care to weave it back into a 'natural' position in/around the new spinal bones/muscle tissue.

Presumably, the tissue and bones from the neck up is covered by the cyber-skull. Since the head is rarely involved in athletic activities in any meaningful way (other than being the target of an attack), the concerns one would have for proper anchoring and material strength when it comes to, say, lifting heavy things with just a super-strength cyber-arm attached to a meat shoulder, wouldn't apply very often. I personally only factor it into the whole-body Body tests when averaging is required (which includes all damage resistance tests), not so much strength or agility tests (barring unusual circumstances).

The whole 'shell' terminology is a bit vague, honestly. Either it can mean layering cyber over your natural body (which is bizarre) or it can mean replacing your non-organ (not including skin/muscle/bone as 'organs' here) tissue and bone, which is somewhat less bizarre but a lot more radical, obviously. Not quite as radical as lopping something off and replacing the entire limb, but that's only because we don't have any vital organs in our arms or legs, just muscle tissue, bone, and various other connective/blood supply/etc bits. Plus, of course, if it was just a shell, synthetic cyber-torsos or skulls wouldn't have ANY capacity, because they'd be trying to look as naturally human-sized and proportioned as your natural bits did. And since there's no note like 'synthetic cyber-torsos cannot fit an internal air tank or other such large cyberwear', I'm assuming that's not the case.

Of course, your miles may vary. And trying to make this stuff make COMPLETE physiological sense is kind of an exercise in futility. I've just thought about this stuff too much.

Seems they really nerfed the Skull in 4th eh? O.o
Was there no room to include:"negates called shot damage bonus"?

OK, cybernetics from the company that brought you Nerf really scares me.