Lurker's SR5 Review, Started to Really Digest the Book, Here are thoughts Options

[Aaron]

The power of c&p? Obviously, this is important to people on more than one webforum, and not everyone here is active on the other three where you posted it. You can also post a link.

It's not in a format I can copy and paste without complications. Otherwise I'd have done so already.

Okay, obviously you cannot do this with internal cyberware then. Thanks. What are surgery costs in SR5, and are there rules for reparative surgery; surgery to un-brick cyberware?

I think it will eventually be made clear that cyberware has one or more external ports for maintenance.

Ah, so it's a damage track solution. Does intermediate bricking damage (say, 5 boxes) give a DP penalty, like physical and stun damage?

No.

[Irion]

I think you're missing the point - the guy with 1/1/4/1 attributes would have a limb with 1/1/4/1 as well since it is custom tailored to him.

Why is that hard to flesh into a rule? Just take what I wrote and C&P it into the book - that's how they did most of 5E anyway I'm sure if past editions are any indication.

You got me wrong.

I said: YOUR RULE does NOT make Cyberlimbs BETTER or MORE USEFULL. If you planned on them, they were darn usefull in SR4, because you DID not need to buy attribute points. With your ruling, this would be gone. For the record I think this would be a good thing, because the offical ruling in SR 4.01 was a wheel of cheese.

The problem was with the prior edition. There was no connection between the natural attribute and the augmented attribute. Now there is a connection.
In SR 4 cyberlimbs would have been the ONLY augmentation of which their bonus corresponed with the natural attribute.

SR5 introduces the karma paid natural attribut as an limitation. (I think you could go further but maybe they did, we will read it)

Now, I have to admit the ruling would make perfect sense. The natural attribut is the base on which every augmentation depends. So why not also the attributes of a cyberarm.

[binarywraith]

Let's also look at what Bricking does...

You Brick my wired Reflexes... essentially my central nervous system... it sparks and explodes and crackles and pops (Bricking pg 228).

Rendering my character at best a Quadrapalegic (because uh I dunno.. my central nervous system stopped working per the definition of Bricking?) until such a time as a surgeon can open me up so a technician can replace parts. And if said technician manages a critical Glitch... you might as well bury my character.

You want to go one worse, imagine someone does this to your encephalon.

Sorry, guy, we just turned you into a vegetable. Roll a new character, maybe a mage this time!

[Wakshaani]

Well the assumption before was it was a trained meidcal skill, not something you poked at with a screwdriver. So yeah I suspect most street sams either did not have the skill or had it at a low level. Now under this new model I can see a lot of Sams doing it, but I think logic probably isn't high on their stat preference list and working on yourself probably has penalties so it is probably a good idea to get someone else to do it.

I'm personally of the notion that combat characters should know how to do basic care and feeding of their gear. A gunbunny should have some Armorer, a Rigger should have (at least one!) mechanic, and, yeah, every Street Sam should have some Cybertechnology. Not loads, but 4 dice and a tool kit for basic work, plus a street doc for the heavy lifting. 4-6 dice is plenty for this kind of thing, depending on how bad your wound penalties get (Or off-hand, for when your cyber-arm goes 'frazzle' and you have to fix it with one hand and a mouth.)

Ah-ha, NOW we've got our explanation of why the Sprawl Ganger has 13 boxes of Physical instead of the calculated 12.

Yay! That can be talked about now! (Yes, that's why he had +1 physical damage track.)

Cyberlimbs should be attributes = to your current natural attributes when you buy it, with the option of a minimal payment to increase the limb's ratings if you should spend karma to improve your natural attributes. You should be able to buy additional attribute points up to your racial max as you currently can, and attributes that exceed racial max with an additional capacity cost also as you currently can.

There is zero practical reason a Troll should have the same base arm as a dwarf; limbs should always be "custom" balanced to their owner. Additionally, to clear up any confusion, every piece of cyberware should clearly list whether it can be installed in a limb.

There, I fixed it in about 2 minutes of typing and less than 200 words, and now limbs are much more useful.

Yeah, but now you have a few questions to deal with.
1) What price difference is there for, say, a Troll arm instead of a human arm?
2) Can my human buy an Ork arm? How about a Troll arm?
3) If I yank the arm off a dead Ork and get it attached, why is that different than buying one myself?
4) If the attributes reduce to my level, why? What's the in-game reason?
5) Similarly, if my Troll rips the arm off an Elf and attatches it and teh attributes move to match his, what's the reasoning for that?

Either the attributes change to match the metatype, which needs a big explaination, or they stay the same, at which point people will want to buy Elf, Ork, or Troll arms for the boosted attributes. If you charge a different price for those limbs... congrats! You're using the cyberlimb system that's been in use for a while.

As for practical reasons, there're a few. Demand for one ... Trolls are about 1% of the population, Humans are about 70%, give or take. Trolls are also less likely to lose their arms or to need an upgraded one to keep up with the Joneses ... they *are* the Joneses. When there are a hundred Human arms needed for every Troll arm (a conservative estimate), you'll be paying a premium based on the flipside of a baseline economy of scale, tweaked further by lighter supply always giving a higher price for point of sale.

There's also racism, natch. Most cyber's made by Japanacorps, who aren't exactly known for their metahuman-friendly policies and don't mind gouging.

"Well, that's why I have a street doc!"

He's getting the parts from somewhere and "Artisan Cyber" is going to be more expensive than factory-produced stuff dropping off a line in most cases. Sure, you're not paying for a big name brand, R&D, and so forth, but parts ain't cheap and quality-assurance isn't at the top of the line. (A good RP hook for having Used Cyberware, however! You have a guy who custom-builds it all. Saves a bundle, but there're a few bugs to work out.)

Of course, there's also the raw power consideration. A Strength 6 arm lifts more than a Strength 3 one, so needs stronger servos, better joint structures, stronger anchoring, larger power thingy, and so on. It *should* cost more, just like a bigger engine in a car costs more than a smaller one.

So, ultimately, you wind up with a situatin where cyberlimbs are best reflected by having a baseline attribute, which can then be modified. Makes limbs for metatypes more expensive, sure, but it also snuffs out the "I have a pair of Troll arms tee hee" dodge for Humans. It's mechanically fair (Everyone pays the same money and essence for the same boosts), but grinds metatypes a bit, who have a perfectly valid thing to grumble about.

(See also, the Sprawl Ganger Ork stuck with a crappy cyberlimb.)

There's probably way more to talk about this, but, I don't want to drag Lurker's thread into the mud-wrestling pit, so, if anyone would like to start a new Cyberlimbs spinoff thread, I'd be more than happy to chat about things there. They're kind of a big thing for a cyberpunk game, so getting them right is a lil' important.

[hermit]

I think it will eventually be made clear that cyberware has one or more external ports for maintenance.

So bricking is less hardware damage and more firmware freeze?

Not comparable, since in one case you only loose mony and in the other case you loose Karma and money.

Cyberware is paid for in Money and Essence. Essence is a finite, hard-capped ressource and can't be bought back (mostly). Low Essence penalises your Limits.
Foci are paid for in Money and Good Karma. Good Karma is a replentishing ressource with no hard cap. Low Good Karma penalises you in no way.

I fail to see how mages pay more dearly for their foci.

[BishopMcQ]

To touch on the Foci question. SR5 has an entire page devoted to turning off and permanently destroying a focus. (SR5, p 307) There's also the dispelling angle for unraveling spells that are sustained.

Re: Bricking -- For complete immunity to Bricking, you can "Turn it off" as a Free Action, buy non-wireless, or buy regular and disable the wireless through a Hardware test. Shadowrun has never (IMO) been about a one-man armada. You have a team, and your team works together. The reason that the street sam put up with the pre-pubescent otaku punk (SR3) or knowingly worked with a cyberterrorist (SR4) is because he specialized in killing people, not moving electrons around a computer screen.

To answer the how long does it take question--to brick a device, you need to fill its Matrix damage meter. It's offline and powered down until it can be repaired. If the tech makes a critical glitch on the repair, it's permanently a bricked device.

[binarywraith]

To answer the how long does it take question--to brick a device, you need to fill its Matrix damage meter. It's offline and powered down until it can be repaired. If the tech makes a critical glitch on the repair, it's permanently a bricked device.

Since I don't have a book, I'll ask you. Is there at least a sidebar for what happens when this occurs with headware like an encephalon, or nervous system mods like move by wire or wired reflexes?

[Irion]

@hermit
When you loose your ware you get your essence back or an essence hole for new ware. So please do not take me for that stupid.

@Wakshaani

Yeah, but now you have a few questions to deal with.
1) What price difference is there for, say, a Troll arm instead of a human arm?
2) Can my human buy an Ork arm? How about a Troll arm?
3) If I yank the arm off a dead Ork and get it attached, why is that different than buying one myself?
4) If the attributes reduce to my level, why? What's the in-game reason?
5) Similarly, if my Troll rips the arm off an Elf and attatches it and teh attributes move to match his, what's the reasoning for that?

He awnsered them.
1) None
2) The attributes of the arm are your natural ones. So yeah you can do that, it would just look silly and do nothing from a mechanical point of few.
A troll arm on an strength 2 human would have strength 2.
3) Beacuse! Alright: Because it can not run on full efficience because your body is not used to it. You need to spend Karma getting used to..
4)Because your body can't handle it. Jesus most of the bioware in the book would kill you and not make you stronger in the real world. Thats like bitching about how radiation is handled in fallout games.
5) Alright: So you get the lower ones. Now satisfied?

I mean honstly, every time you get shot you would probably loose attribute points in the real life and would need to train to get back to the level you were before. Severe injuries would nerly put you on square one. But thats not fun for most people.

So honestly I do not see the problem since in the new rules the natural attribute is used to determin the maximum. Why can't it be used to determin the attributes of your cyberarm?

[cryptoknight]

@cryptoknight

Not comparable, since in one case you only loose mony and in the other case you loose Karma and money.
Not to mention that one thing is a one time risk and the other would be there every run multible times.

I don't have anything against those "hook your stuff up to the matrix rule" in general. It is a good idea from a gamist point of few, but the rewards should match the risks.
It is probably better to tune the risks down, than to give "I am a GOD" like rewards but it can't be high risk low reward or even high risk you need to take to keep up with no-risks approaches...

It is comparable, as my mundane sacrificed essence to install that stuff. Meaning that I accept that magical healing will be less effectual with me, so that I could get this stuff installed.

To a mundane, money = karma. And Cyberware is supposed to be at least a semi-equalizer to the uber magi. Since there exists a small chance that I can my stuff hacked, bricked, and then the guy operating on my now-quadriplegic self could critically glitch while trying to fix it, then mages should live in the same land of risk with the gear that they use.

[BishopMcQ]

Binary--There's no sidebar, but my understanding is the device stops functioning. Wired Reflexes, you would stop getting the bonuses. If someone wants to say that you are paralyzed because your Wired Reflexes have been bricked, they are talking out of the wrong orifice.

[cryptoknight]

I think it will eventually be made clear that cyberware has one or more external ports for maintenance.
.

For Wired Reflexes? If it bricks, the whole system is shorted out and smoking burned plastic and bits per the description of bricking. You're talking about the same level of medical institution that it takes to install the stuff in the first place in order to fix it. The description of Bricking is such that pieces and parts have to be fixed... you can't fix them by accessing a small data port for diagnostics, you can't even get diagnostics from them, once they are bricked.

[hermit]

When you loose your ware you get your essence back or an essence hole for new ware. So please do not take me for that stupid.

Read the rules about essence holes in SR4, Limits in SR5, and the forum rules about offensive posting, thanks.

[cryptoknight]

Since I don't have a book, I'll ask you. Is there at least a sidebar for what happens when this occurs with headware like an encephalon, or nervous system mods like move by wire or wired reflexes?

It's obvious nobody thought of that... they thought of bricked cyber-arms, which are relatively easily accessible, not nervous system replacements.

[BishopMcQ]

Crypto--My understanding, unless you are reading from a different page, is that it takes 1 hour, a toolbox and a Hardware test to fix Matrix damage. There are even mechanics to speed that up as necessary. Getting into the nitty gritty of this device is implanted without any access points and that one isn't seems to be arguing for the sake of argument.

Please show me the page number that you are referring to. I'm on p 228

[hermit]

they thought of bricked cyber-arms, which are relatively easily accessible, not nervous system replacements.

I really hope they gave a little more thought about that, but ... well. I'll see on Jul 11 or whenever Bills graces us with the Matrix preview, I guess.

Getting into the nitty gritty of this device is implanted without any access points and that one isn't seems to be arguing for the sake of argument.

No, plausibility. Saying whether something is readily accessible or located inside someone's body doesn't matter sounds a bit strange, really. Or do you really believe that whether the encephalon is in someone's brain or on a desk, that doesn't matter a thing when you go at it with soldering iron, wire clipper and exchanging chips and components?

[Irion]

Read the rules about essence holes in SR4, Limits in SR5, and the forum rules about offensive posting, thanks.

So you tell me, if I had 4.0 points of essence in SR 4 and replaced my muscle augmentation 3 with an muscle augmentation 4, I would be down to 3.2 Essence because I "lost" the essence by removing it.

If you replace your broken cyberware you will have EXACTLY the same amount of Essence as you had before. If you replace your broken focus you will have not exactly the same amount of Karma as you had before.
Do you disagree with that statement or not.

[hermit]

If you replace your broken cyberware you will have EXACTLY the same amount of Essence as you had before. If you replace your broken focus you will have not exactly the same amount of Karma as you had before.
Do you disagree with that statement or not.

You are comparing a currency ressource with a hard-capped ressource. Do you even understand the difference? And you just ignore the impact of Essence on Limits. You seem to be unable to understand that. That's a pity, because then, arguing with you is impossible.

[BishopMcQ]

Hermit -- Unless your monthly visit to the cyberdoc includes full sedation and brain surgery, it seems reasonable to say that there is an access port. Then again, if your table wants maintenance of cyber to be harder, more power to you. There were rules for implantation complications and healing grievous wounds in previous cyber books, they will probably come out again to provide more realism for the tables that want it.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Again going by SR4 rules: Ever heared of triangulation? You can pinpoint the physical location of a wireless device. So if 12347A85A1362845 is a cyberlimb and located where your opponent's arm is, it is what to hack when you want to devicehack his cyberarm. That's how it worked in SR4, anyway. Unless you used skinlink, like every player.

Triangulation was only good to a point within a 50 Meters Radius (so that you could not pinpoint to within less than a meter, like we can do today). That is a lot of space... How many devices can fit in that space?

[hermit]

Triangulation was only good to a point within a 50 Meters Radius (so that you could not pinpoint to within less than a meter, like we can do today). That is a lot of space... How many devices can fit in that space?

Matrix perception allows you to positively identify a device and what it does. I offered a possible explanation for this. It may have been a bad explanation, but that doesn't change what Matrix perception in SR4 does.

Unless your monthly visit to the cyberdoc includes full sedation and brain surgery, it seems reasonable to say that there is an access port. Then again, if your table wants maintenance of cyber to be harder, more power to you.

Does Update Thursday require your computer to have parts exchanged?

If bricking was wrecking the firmware, a port would be sufficient. If bricking - as the wording says - is hardware damage, you need full sedation and brain surgery, because the hardware is in the brain.

Edit: I guess I will just wait until I have the actual rules to have something more definite to say on this matter. Thanks for the answers so far, BishopMQ.

[cryptoknight]

Crypto--My understanding, unless you are reading from a different page, is that it takes 1 hour, a toolbox and a Hardware test to fix Matrix damage. There are even mechanics to speed that up as necessary. Getting into the nitty gritty of this device is implanted without any access points and that one isn't seems to be arguing for the sake of argument.

Please show me the page number that you are referring to. I'm on p 228

Where I'm at is... What exactly do you perform the hardware test upon? Without a Surgical theatre, you can't get at the parts to do the repair work. For a Cyber-arm or leg, etc... I get it... you open some access panels, and replace some melted wires or whatnot.

But Wired Reflexes? Brain Augmentations? I just take my handy dandy pliers and do central nervous system repair or brain work while I'm sitting there with bricked stuff?

Do you realize how implausible that sounds?

[Aaron]

For Wired Reflexes? If it bricks, the whole system is shorted out and smoking burned plastic and bits per the description of bricking. You're talking about the same level of medical institution that it takes to install the stuff in the first place in order to fix it. The description of Bricking is such that pieces and parts have to be fixed... you can't fix them by accessing a small data port for diagnostics, you can't even get diagnostics from them, once they are bricked.

No, I am not talking about the same level of medical institution that it takes to install the stuff in the first place. You're talking about that. Ever had a CPU burn out? It can be a bit sparky and melty, depending on how it fails. Doesn't fry the hard drive. Or the keyboard. Anyway, we've had lots of practice, just in the 2010's, with endoscopic surgery.

But if you'd like physical damage to be included in the bricking of cyberware, I can add it to the wish list for future source books and see what the team that puts that source book together thinks. I don't think most of 'em would like it, though. I wouldn't, at least.

[Irion]

You are comparing a currency ressource with a hard-capped ressource. Do you even understand the difference? And you just ignore the impact of Essence on Limits. You seem to be unable to understand that. That's a pity, because then, arguing with you is impossible.

Because it is not relevant. Or did you not have this limitation while your cyberware was active? Well, I guessed so.

By your logic it is only fair, because you know people can also banish the spell I have cast as a mage and if the drain left me with a box of damage I might have gotten a dicepool modifier because of that.

Thats totally uninteresting!
The question is: What resources do you loose if you want to go back to the status you had before.

Is it money, Karma or just time and how much of it.

That you are fucked up when it happens does not really matter. If you get shot, it is the same deal. And I guess nobody would argue that the existance of firearms breaks shadowrun.
The point is it is considered bad sportsmenship to steal players their resources. This holds espacially true for meta-resources like Karma.

Nobody has a problem when a character is out, because he got shot. But if the GM says, after your team brought you to a street doch: "Alright, you squadmate safed you, but because you were hurt bad you loose 2 points of agility!" That would be considered to be not very nice of the GM, I guess.

Matrix perception allows you to positively identify a device and what it does.

So now you know that SJLKHEF2943 is a cyberarm and it does cyberarm stuff. But who tells you it is the correct one. And from where do you know for what you will be looking in the first place...

[cryptoknight]

No, I am not talking about the same level of medical institution that it takes to install the stuff in the first place. You're talking about that. Ever had a CPU burn out? It can be a bit sparky and melty, depending on how it fails. Doesn't fry the hard drive. Or the keyboard. Anyway, we've had lots of practice, just in the 2010's, with endoscopic surgery.

But if you'd like physical damage to be included in the bricking of cyberware, I can add it to the wish list for future source books and see what the team that puts that source book together thinks. I don't think most of 'em would like it, though. I wouldn't, at least.

And when my CPU burns out, I have to open the case (body of said character), remove the parts (surgery to get at them), clean off any melted thermal paste, and then replace a component, and then close up the case.

We're back to surgical theatre in order to get to the parts to fix them.

[hermit]

But if you'd like physical damage to be included in the bricking of cyberware, I can add it to the wish list for future source books and see what the team that puts that source book together thinks.

Passive aggressiveness is rarely helpful, and this is not one of this instances.

The question is: What resources do you loose if you want to go back to the status you had before.

Essence loss is permanent attribute loss that impacts your character forever. You pay this as part of the price for cyberware. Karma, though, is in-game currecny, just like Nuyen. It is earned metaphysically in-game, but in metagame view, it is currency just like Nuyen. Hence, Karma loss is equal to Nuyen loss, not to permanent attribute damage. Last response on this.