Synaptic Boosters I
Reaction enhancers
Muscle Toner 2
Muscle Augmentation 2
Neo-EPO
SynthCardium II
Synthroid Gland
Articulated Joints

That's a Parkour/Thief/Gymnastics Champion's bioware

I hear what you are saying Karoline, it is a bit of a beefy package, my justification for the synaptic boosters ha already been covered by another though so I woul like to know if you have any suggestions for fixes other than it's increased (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) cost? I am planning on making a sort of "Summer catalog" file for my players next time I run a gam and one of the blurbs is that Evo (the makers of the suite) use this to augment some of their security assets. Yes they also offer parkour training as prt of the company physical finess policy. Happy, healthy drones are more likely to go to the limit for your bottom line.

I agree with Karoline, as I said earlier: this is obviously a gunbunny suite masquerading as something non-criminal. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Nothing *wrong* with that, because it's very appropriate for companies to lie about the true purpose of their goods (automatic weapons for 'deer hunting'?).

It does make sense that you'd want Strength, that you wouldn't necessarily need 3-4 IPs, that you certainly wouldn't need any non-IP initiative boosts (walls don't sneak up on you, sabs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ), etc.

Have you ever done parkour?

Walls do actually sneak up on your sometimes.
You jump over a wall, you couldn't see over, to realize there's more crap there you need to maneuver around.
I think that reaction enhancers are actually very parkour like.

From a crunch perspective, you don't roll Initiative against the walls, so it doesn't matter how high your Initiative is. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I guess you *could* require surprise tests, but AFAIK that's not RAW.

The real point here is that you're just building ninjas and *calling* it 'Parkour'. You could also build a suite called (verbosely) 'Hobbyist Sharpshooter Who Shoots Rifle Targets As Sport Only', and make it even more gunbunny-ish. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) The 'intended purpose' is just marketing, what matters is what violent criminal activity it helps.

Well have you seen District 13?
Parkour /is/ Ninja (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Whenever the player in question used parkour as the "prey" in a chase I did, in fact, make him roll random surprise tests. It's also been pointed out how exactly extra IP help in that sport, being able to compress more actions into the same time frame gives you more options in terms of movement and tricks, one version of these suites I tossed included orthoskin to help deal with some of the nasty spills you can take just fractionally misjudging distance, another had spider silk glands to provide another point from with you could move, both where discarded for various reasons. I'm not going to say the compromises I made where perfect but they struck the right balance for my game goup which is an admittadly strange mix of mohawk and mirrorshades. Maybe I was trying to offer incentive to my players to go lower magic without realizing it. most of them could do a fair impression of the sorcelator.

I have never used cyber suites, mostly because I am new to this edition of shadowrun and have not played for any length of time for 11 years. So yeah I will say that all my NPC/PC builds are built with specific role in mind, and I want to make him as role oriented as I can. Does this mean that I’m mini/maxi player, yeah maybe? If I am going to build something I want him to be able to survive and thrive in his chosen environment, but more important to me is his back story, providing any potential GM with allot of angles to tie my PC into his campaign, and playability...he has to make sense to my limited understanding of the universe. Yeah I make allot of nonsense build NPC's, they will never see play unless it is an angle the GM wants to take the game, but it allows me to learn the rules and figure out what works and what does not.

That being said, Cyber suites seem like a great opportunity for the Corps to target a large audience of what they would consider a money sink. Shadowrunners!

It is like one guy in the finance budget department is looking over the numbers and see’s this large chunk of change that he is privileged to know is the shadow budget. Now how does a corp recoup this money, well by setting up a shadow clinic and providing their wares? Now for shipping they would want to have a Bulk shipment that is packaged all the same to cut costs, and so they pull up a massive Data search that provide impute from the street Doc's, hospital Doc's, and what ware they have found on the bodies that they have caught and killed on their own turf. Using this information the set up a detailed Cyber suite that are shipped out to their clinics in all the large cities across the world...Now they may or may not try to do something shady with that ware. But they should figure that shadow folk are a paranoid bunch so let’s say they leave it alone no bugs no tracking equipment.

Also there is the angle that PC’s could be in debt to these clinics, set up some of your own house rules such as:
A) If you want to take cyber suite in the game then you must have one to two contacts in order to provide this service. (maybe a corp rep, and the street doc in question)

B) Make all money spent on cyber suite come from the form of debt. Use whatever BP resources that they wish to spend on the ware wrapped up in the in debt quality. This makes the In debt quality have a larger and realistic impact on the game. And if the % of interest is set right then the PC may never see the light of day, always bound to that company. Now I am not suggesting that this amount is set at 10% like the rest of the quality. Maybe have them take the quality at the usual 5-30 BP standard rate. Then add that the Ware is will cost X amount each month with low or no interest.

C) They can only go to one source to get proper maintenance for the ware. By having such a inter twinned cyber package they may depend on each other in ways that is not normal for regular cyberware, thus making proper repairs done at the source of the surgery.

Now they know what works for the shadow community they can design a better set for their company man/woman to keep the edge on their side. They now make their money back from hiring expendable resources to raid the competition and they have a source of information that allows them to keep their operatives at a higher cyberware standard.

I wanted to say I have no issue with how anyone runs there games....because it is your gaming experience the way you run it is right. It should be fun for you, regardless of if it is an escape from this reality, or how your picture your future to be. I hope I can hear more of these games while I add to the community and I hope you will take my stupid questions/concepts with a grain of salt.

Take care runners.

That's what I'm saying, sabs. Ninjas are killing machines, parkour is ninja, ergo, a Parkour Suite is a killing machine suite in disguise. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Sixgun_Sage, that's IP, not Initiative. I was saying to sabs that I don't think Reaction Boosters are necessary (unless a 'wall surprise' house rule is in effect). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Personally, my 'parkour' suite would have hydraulic jumping jacks and monkey feet and climbing claws; fun cyber things (like that spider silk idea), not just generic uber-ninja. Hehe.

I do think this topic of Power Gaming VS Role Playing is important to discuss. (What i like to Call Roll play vs Role Play) But I do feel there is nothing preventing you from doing both, particularly within the context of Shadowrun. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. There is nothing wrong with optimization as long your concept fits that optimization. Shadowrun is essentially about the best of the best criminals; people who are willing to go well outside the "law" to do what they do. The conversation between players and gm(s) should establish the gm's vision of the game, and players should take the steps necessary to fulfill their role, and that include getting together and setting the envelop. This should be done clearly and systematic terms. So This much Soak, this many passes, this Much damage dealing. Pushing Envelops endangers the party and the game. Players who don't have the system chops should be assisted by players who do, and that advice should go the other way in fleshing out character background etc. But this is so rarely done in groups, its really amazing to me, see so many games fail because these step are not taken.

Hey now if we are going to make comments and/or say things like in "my parkour suite" then you must atleast make it and post it, its only fair!

Except, I wouldn't make a Suite. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Like I said. Maybe I should rephrase: 'my parkour character'? Except I'd call it, 'my cyberninja'.

I just meant that the fun thing about augmentation is the weird stuff (jumping jacks, monkey feet), not the generic stuff ('oh, I'm stronger'). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I realize that bioware tends to be a little more subtle, but there aren't even rules for bioware suites, right?

I hope I'm not really criticizing anyone, either. It's not like you can't necessarily have a gunbunny suite: look at the Kshatriya, clearly for combat. I just take seriously the limitations of a pretty major bonus (90% cost and Essence).

Which I increased the nuyen cost for my suite becaue of the benefits it offers. Don't get me wrong, in alot of ways I agree with you, but I didn't want to go too far in making a pure athletics/ mobility thing that is going to eat up alot of one of my players essence. So I found ways to shoehorn some useful stuff in.

I did notice that. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Give that higher grade 'ware offers a similar Essence reduction for a massive cost boost, it's only fair. Call it the price of getting a pre-mass-production version of a Suite, or something.

UNLESS you buy it at an above delta cost for the extar discount on essance and the custom made cyber. I can see some places offering bespoke delta suites for an additional cost. Just remember take you adapsin first.

As long as your rephrasing thats fine. I love the chicken legs. Or cyber morter knees, totally fantastic.

The Shadow clinic that made Kshatriya failed (If you read the fluff it is explain that this set does come form a shadow clinic). Its really that simple. It looks ok on paper. But honestly you lose any ground you would otherwise have gained when suited it by adding in what most sams would have done another way. Further given that it's legality is 15F its really pointless, starting characters are the only ones who would have been motivated to take it as sort of basic package to build from but they can't do it. So it become necessary to invent your own. (Which is fine by me.)

Well, theoretically you could use Restricted Gear on the suite (which is one more reason to be *really* careful about allow custom versions). The Kshatriya is pretty lame, we can agree, so there's not too much danger there.

I'm sure this has been asked and answered before: what're the rule for 'breaking' the suite (a là breaking a Skill Group)? Can you upgrade anything later? Remove anything later? If you do, does the whole suite benefit vanish, or just the changed parts?

And yet, I've never seen anyone take the suite.

I've glanced over them a few times in the making of various characters, but they always seem sub-optimal for me.

Like the cyberlogician would be kinda cool for a hacker character, but the extra two datajacks are pointless, and the commlink is going to have to get replaced, and the attention coproccessor is fairly 'meh' and the data lock is serious "I want to not remember portions of my life why?" So some of it like the encephalon and math SPU is cool, but it just doesn't add up that well.

For the SWAT thing? Why didn't they just make it full cybereyes instead of just some modifications that cost more essence? And how often do you really use plastic lacing? Some maybe, but it is fairly situational.

The point is that all of these are designed for more 'mainstream' use, and each has things that are sub-optimal, or extra things that aren't really needed, and so on.

Back to the gunbunny parkour package. It has nothing that a runner wouldn't generally take, and it has none of it at lower levels than a runner would like to take. It also has plenty of stuff that doesn't really help. RAW, extra IP provide no bonus at all, and even out of RAW, they provide a somewhat small bonus compared to strength/agility, and yet the extra IP are featured more prominently than actual boosts to what the suite is supposed to be about. You're also talking about marketing a suite that even at the lower levels costs over 200k nuyen to a sport that is largely popular because of the fact that you can do it with basically no monetary input, and all the bonuses at that level don't even help with the sport.

And the 'wall surprise' is bull. People doing Parkour don't just randomly jump over walls with no clue what is on the other side.

If you want to make it less munchkiny I suggest making synthacardium and enhanced articulation the first things that come up, along with low level muscle enhancement, then at the highest level it gives rating 1 synaptic boosters. Remember, you've made a suite that at the most basic level costs about 4+ years of Joe Average's salary.

Karoline, that's the whole point. We're talking about *custom* suites. The ones in the book suck, but custom ones would be every inch of munchkin-optimized options… plus 10%/10% off. I agree with some of your practical concerns about the parkour suggestions, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

How many man hours do you think it would take someone to make a custom suite? It's not like their building all the cyber from scratch, from what the book says their just optimizing the way each system interacts. So how much effort do you think that would realistically take?

It is true you could take a quality to do this starting, and if you are willing to devout quality points to this then you should gain some kind of return on that investment. The presented ones are all generally fail. Now i do agree that, a corp will try and plug in a couple more things then is necessary to this kind of sale. So its the duty of the Player and the GM, to give a little and take a little. Packages shouldn't be "prefect" for but they also shouldn't be walking waste of cash and essence. So compromise! Rating 1 Reflex enhancer instead of 2, a Biomonitor built in instead of in your armor, but in exchange for things like that there should be the piece of gear that are optimal, Move-by-Wire instead of Wired Reflexes, 2 spurs, 1 fixed 1 firing spur.

WyldKnight: Enough effort. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

"[…] several major corporations have poured considerable research and development into making existing products less invasive and more competitive with parallel technologies" and "The local cyberdocs—tapping into the sprawls’ cutting edge R&D and medical research centers—lived up to their reputations by engineering one of the few marketable cyberware suites not developed in megacorporate labs."

Right, sorry, what I was trying to point out with that was that the 10%/10% discount is offset in the example suites by having extraneous and sub-optimal options. A custom suite wouldn't have this, and so would basically just be a free 10%/10% discount for thinking of a creative name (or two or three) for all the ware that you want.

It's darn near impossible to say really. The fact that it costs less is counter-intuitive, because the cost is based on the cost of the actual devices itself, so if work went into it, and the basic devices are still the same, then they should cost more. Even if they developed a system where they needed a few less parts, that would be offset by the fact that they would have to be custom produced parts as opposed to mass produced things like cybereyes.

So, given that the suites defy all laws of economics, it's impossible to tell how much work goes into them, because the process obviously involves an injection of handwavium into each design. Now, I could totally understand a suite that gives you, say a 10% essence discount for double cost (Similar to, but cumulative with graded ware), and explain it by the fact that you are paying to have someone work out how to put the stuff together better so that various systems don't interfere with each other quite as much, and you can possibly get rid of redundant equipment (Run the cybereyes and cyberears to a single processor instead of two separate ones).

I do assume that making a suite is serious business, hours of complex surgery(s), days or weeks of recovery. Deeply complex interaction between a cyber system, other cyber or bio systems, the body, other complicating factories (IE Drugs, BTL addiction, Magic, other injuries). However i don't accept the premise that marketing to the Shadow isn't a profitable business. Thats contradictory, and just silly game wise. The cost thing is understandable every business i have run into will give you a discount the more you buy.

Yes, why market to billions of potential consumers when you can market to several thousand? That works if you can make a few million dollars profit off each individual without much R&D, like yachts and such, but not when you can make maybe a few thousand extra after spending millions on R&D.

Oh, and if you compare it to drugs, it costs several million dollars, and several years of testing, and only one in every several actually make it to market.