@muspellheimer: i really don't see where you got your interpretation on the essence hole rules. Not that i think merging cyber and bio holes together is a bad thing, but it's pretty obvious to me that you would also halve the remaining hole if the ratio changes. It adds to maths, but sr is hardly ever light on maths.

Re: gun firing rates. These are already unrealistic in sr. People always point toward experts emptying 6 shooters in less than a second and so on to justify high firing rates achievable through augmentation, forgetting that these experts are not augmented.
I find it far easier to just ignore these real life examples for the sake of playability. In my game i have been restricting firing rates for a while now. It deemphasises reaction enhancments, and promotes melee which leads to a playstyle i prefer.

Rules as Written, if you possess both Cyber & Bio augmentations, the lesser Essence cost is further reduced by 50%.

So, if you possess 3 Essence points of Cyber & 2.99 Essence points of Bio, the Bio cost is halved to 1.495, for a total loss of 4.495.

Now, if you obtain 0.02 points of Bio augmentation, the base values are now 3.0 & 3.1 - the cybernetic value is halved, bioaugmentation applies in full.

3 Essence cost is reduced to 1.5 Essence cost - what happens to the now 'regained' 1.5 Essence? It cannot be healed (barring genetic treatments - irrelevant to this), so it instead becomes an Essence Hole - available as a discount, so to speak, to any future enhancements. Because it was created by cybernetics, this 'discount' can only be applied to other cybernetics.

We now have 1.5 Essence worth of cybernetics installed, 1.5 Essence worth of cybernetic Essence Hole available, and the newly increased 3.01 Essence worth of bioaugmentation (previously 1.495, doubled because it is no longer the lesser value) - for a total Essence Loss of 6.01, killing the recipient, who previously had 1.505 available Essence, & installed a mere 0.02 Essence worth of new 'ware.

I don't think there is a hole in that circumstance. The essence cost of your cyber is reduced to 1.5 when you install the bioware. If you subsequently removed 1 essence worth of cyber and had gene treatment to heal the hole it would only increase your total essence by .5, since cyber losses were halved when bio exceeded cyber.
The math does get quite convoluted, but i don't know that this complicated sequence of surgeries is all that likely to happen in most games.

in our game we got a couple house rules:

ground vehicule and water vehicule.

now those 2 skills are way to wide. with ground vehicule you can drive, bikes, tanks, cars, carterpillars ect... same for water.

now a sail boat and a speedboat wont be the same.

so we decided to make those two skill GROUPS instead of skills.

Next come the Detective skill group:

Perception
Investigation
Search

and I personally would even put intimidation in to make it more interesting. Our game is about legwork and investigation so it made senses to have a search and investigation skill.

Finally we found armour a little too good for joe average. Sure mister shadowrunner has a 20 dice pool but joe average street thug should be capable of killing someting.... Armors are never perfect and localization slows everything down...

so when you roll body+armour, roll armour dice another colour or separately, every one lowers armor value by one to determine if the damage is lethal or stun. A glitch means that armor is completely bypassed. exemple a vest with 6 armor rolls 2 one. so if the weapons make 4+ dammage, its lethal.

I really like the detective skill group idea, I might have to steal that. I understand why Perception isn't in a skill group, but it is one of the skills I think everyone needs to take, and you're already stretching BPs, so I don't mind giving the players a little break by putting it in a group. I think adding Intimidation to the group isn't a bad thing, either, mainly b/c it's a skill that pretty much everyone tries to use at some point or another.

Bonuses are dice, penalties are Threshold increases.

Every -2 dice in a RAW description is +1 Threshold.

Wound penalties are Threshold increases rather than dice penalties.

Range Modifiers are +1 Threshold per range band past Short.

No armor stacking. PERIOD. PPP can be added but also adds to the minimum Body requirement for penalties and isn't concealable.

No bullets are AP unless specifically described as much by the ammunition description.

Whilst I'm in no position to houserule in a game, I do wonder how things would change if the soak roll first reduced physical damage to stun and then removed stun once there was no further physical, instead of just removing the damage entirely.

That way you can remove the "damage less than the value of your AV is stun" rule and make your troll soaksam vulnerable to small arms again.

One of my favorites... but PPP is also up there of course, especially the inobvious set... sans helmet, of course, nothing like wearing a helmet to make you stand out...

So, you're proposing a rule that effectively doubles all DVs, since you first have to convert them to stun, and then from stun down to nothing? That would be instant knockout for most characters from almost any weapon. Trollsams would go from "seriously harmed by narrow full burst, but not dead yet" to "why did I bother spending so many points on damage resistance?" Damage resistance is already a losing game, because you need an average of 3 dice to resist 1 DV. You're proposing, not to make the trollsam vulnerable, but to make the trollsam an idiotic choice. The only useful character under your rule would be one that focused on dodge and ignored Body, because Body literally would not matter in a system where all DVs effectively double.

Seems to be what is being implied here... Would never use it myself...

And what, exactly, happens then to the remaining 1.5 you have already lost? It is not healed, as that is only capable through expensive & long genetic treatments. It is not filled with the bioaugmentation Essence loss, because that does not work with RAW.

It then either becomes a 1.5 cybernetic Essence Hole, or permanent Essence loss - I'm inclined to go with the hole.

Why not simply use the old Essence/Bio-Index System again?
Such Problems simply do not show up with that, or am i missing something there?

What your missing is that I am attempting to explain why installing 0.01 Essence of new 'ware, with 1.5 Essence to spare, kills someone due to Essence loss in SR4 RAW (coincidentally, also why healing 0.01 Essence with genetic treatments can do the same thing), & thus why RAW is retarded.

thus me saying:"use the SR3 Bio-Index"

Ok, I think you're making a mistake with your example.



Good so far. Bio exceeds cyber, cyber is halfed, that leaves you with 1.49 Essence.



Check p.128 of Augmentation. It says that essence holes are created "when a character has an implant removed or upgraded." It says nothing about when the balance between cyber and bio does a flip-flop. According to RAW, the only time you get an essence hole is when you remove implants, so adding .2 essence in your example would not create an essence hole. It would change your cyber value to 1.5, your bio value to 3.1, and your total Essence would be 1.4. You can't claim to be applying RAW when you do something that RAW never tells you to do. The one time essence holes result is from the removal of 'ware, not from the change in flip-flops. Flip-flopping of essence totals doesn't make a lot of biological sense, but then again neither does the entire concept of Essence. It just happens. It doesn't create essence holes, because the text never says that it does. And instead of dying, nothing bad happens to you, you just lose a little bit more Essence.

RAW tells us two things:

1) Lost Essence can never be recovered (barring specific genetic treatments, or use of the Essence Drain power)

2) You cannot use Essence lost due to cybernetic installations to fund bioaugmentations.

So, in my example, your cybernetic Essence loss is reduced from 3.0 to 1.5 - leaving 1.5 unaccounted for. You do not regain this lost Essence, and it cannot be used to fund your bioaugmentation. So, what then becomes of it - Essence Hole or Essence Loss? It does not matter either way for this purpose - you now have 1.5 cybernetics, 1.5 unaccounted, & 3.01 bioaugmentation, killing the character.

Yup, you just recalculate the totals and calculate your new Essence. You never took anything out, you just added a little more bio.

And it doesn't have to make biological sense. Changes to biology impact it, but Essence itself isn't biological, it's metaphysical. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And the SR4 Essence is neither biological, nor metaphysical . . it's bad and wrong . . yes, it is badong . .

This is what I think is your flawed assumption. The only essence you lose in this situation is the .2 for your new implant. Your totals being flipped is not losing or gaining essence. You still have 3.0 of Cyber and 3.1 of bio. The flipping, where cyber becomes 1.5, is not regaining 1.5 essence, it's simply changing how your total essence is calculated. That 1.5 essence is still there, it just counts for 1/2.

At the very least, you should be able to agree that my reading of the raw is plausible. I don't need you to agree with me, but it's far from a done deal that the RAW is messed up. You are using a broken interpretation, and refusing to consider alternate interpretations, just so you can dish on the game. If it's a broken interpretation, don't use it, because you have a non-broken interpretation that would 100% solve your problem without disrupting the game in the slightest. If you prefer your interpretation to mine, then use it, but don't complain. Complaining about using your own broken interpretation is like complaining about hitting yourself in the face. You can do it if you want, but you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

Larme is right. There is nothing wrong or retarded with RAW essence.

When you flipflop essence, you dont "lose" nothing. The multiplying factor (*50%) for the lesser essence rating is just for effects of calculating the total impact on essence.

In your exemple, if the char has 3 cyber + 3 bio, then his actual bio rating IS 3. It is turned to 1.5 just for effect of calculating the final impact of implants in your body. It doesnt means anything else than that.

And if you install that 0.01 essence cyber, then its cyber essence would flip flop to 1.505, and his essence total would be 4.505, or ronded up, 4.51.

I have SR4A, and this explanation was cristal-clear to me.

Rather, what's really going on is that when you have 3 cyber and 3 bio it effects your system as if you had only 4.5 essence lost. When you gain that 0.02 cyber flip-flopping which one counds for half it's not "oh, this 1.5 essence lost is now in bioware and not cyber" (or vice versa). What's happening is that it's effecting your system as if you'd only gained 0.015 worth (do the math) of cyber. Your aura is still as fucked up as before, both systems (cyber and bio) are fucking up your system just as much, but it's not killing you. Remember, the "half the lower amount" is a mechanical effect indicating that someone who's already augmented can get a little bit more augmentation safely, provided it's a different kind.

Once again, the essence rule is not complicated.
In response to the question of where 1.5 of essence lost to cyber comes back from upon adding 0.2 essence worth of bioware, i offer a further question. Why, in this situation, does 0.2 essence of bioware cost you 1.7 essence?

What you are saying is correct, but only half of the issue.

You have 3 Essence in cybernetics, applied in full, and 3 Essence in bioaugmentation, applied at 50%, for total Essence loss of 4.5

When you receive another bioaugmentation implant, the larger value shifts, to 3 Essence in cybernetics, applied at 50%, and 3.01 Essence in bioaugmentation, applied in full.

What you are all missing is that, by RAW, you cannot use Essence previously lost to cybernetics to 'discount' bioaugmentation. In the above example, you have 1.5 Essence lost due to cybernetics, & the previous 1.5 loss is still there - it is not instantly 'healed', & it cannot, by RAW, be applied to the now increased bioaugmentation Essence loss.


The final result is 1.5 (cybernetics), 3.01 (bioaugmentation), & 1.5 (cybernetic hole - strict reading of RAW, you don't even get this, its just a flat loss), for a total of 6.01 Essence lost, & the death of the recipient.


The exact same situation can be applied in reverse when someone with sufficient Essence loss (over 3.1 each in cyber & bio) decides to take something out of their 'larger' value & heal it with genetic treatments.

Mind thowing up what you're using as the basis for your assertion? I'm pretty sure I know, but it would be good to have a common reference point.

Even so, a hole is never created. That's what you keep ignoring entirely.

If you have cyber that costs 2 Essence, and you take it out, then you have an Essence hole of 2 that cannot be "filled in" with bioware.

If you have cyber that costs 2 Essence, and you put in 1 Essence worth of bioware, you halve the bio total, and are now down 2.5 Essence.

If you have cyber that costs 2 Essence, you put in 1 Essence worth of bioware (putting you down 2.5 Essence), and you take out the cyber, you are left with 1 Essence worth of bioware and an Essence hole worth 2 Essence. Bio implanted after this can't just fill in that hole, but a month later you get a new piece of cyber that costs 2 Essence. You're down 2.5 Essence.

If you have cyber that costs 2 Essence, and you put in bio that costs 3, you flip the calculations, halving the cost of the cyber and counting the whole of the cost of the bioware, putting you down 4 Essence. No Essence hole is created in this situation.



Emphasis mine.

It's pretty clear.

Has to do with the math of halving one part, then halving the other.

3 and 2.99 (1.495) = 4.495
3 (1.500) and 3.01 = 4.510
subtract and we get 0.015

The other 0.005 is caught up in that 1.495 to 1.5 shift.