 Okay, the power of the doc., more ware than you can shack a stick at |
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 Sep 11 2004, 07:14 PM
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#1
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,032 Joined: 6-August 04 Member No.: 6,543  |
Well, i am looking at the rules for cyberware,and my last street Sam. He had a MBW 4 system that would not get the atout stress,and was only .05% of it's essence cost. Yes, that is he had a level 4 move by wire system in him that cost .4 essence.
this happened because on the team there were three characters that were capable of being docs,and we had a beta lab. But what basicly happened was that the main doc who was mundane had a biotech at 9,(3-5) task pool dice, 9 complementary skill dice,and a magically ative nurse. He would then take beta grade cyberware and reduce the TN to 2.Given his odds, he would beable to add something like 15 options on all the implants he installed.This would mean he would make all his cyberware better than delta. i know you can house rule this,to fix the rules... Now the scare thin is that if you give this to a mage...Who wouldn't take one magic point loss for a MBW 4? |
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Sep 11 2004, 07:22 PM
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#2
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Target Group: Members Posts: 37 Joined: 9-September 04 Member No.: 6,640 |
Till you take a bullet in the spine and find out that it damaged a crittical componant.
BAM There you are laying on the floor in a seizure and nothing but the corp baddies standing around laughing. |
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Sep 11 2004, 07:22 PM
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#3
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
I'd favor the synaptic boosted combo and a little munchware for a net total of 1 magic loss. Then immediately research a force 5 telekinetic variant of improved reflexes +4 and quicken it with a tattoo and 10 karma so that it acts as force 20 to those who would try to dispell it. This should lead to 9 initiative dice for an expected initiative of 6+9D6.
I'll have to reread the surgery rules, if they can be as abused as your example, I may never start a game with cyber or bio again. Just get the skill 10 doctor contact as a friend for life and buy it all in game. |
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Sep 11 2004, 07:29 PM
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#4
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 171 Joined: 9-September 04 Member No.: 6,641 |
True, but on the other hand, a doctor as skilled as that is as rare as hen's teeth. S/he likely commands a very high price, and is quite well sught after. If you want ridiculously excellent surgeory, you'll need to pay for, even if they are your freind. There's a whole bit about contacts doing work for you (gunsmithing) in the Canon Companion. It's a fair guide for any contacts doing b/r, smithing or sugoery work for you as well.
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Sep 11 2004, 07:44 PM
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#5
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,032 Joined: 6-August 04 Member No.: 6,543 |
Well, about the laying on the ground twitching, not likely to happen.Wearing armor that tyou can wear walking down the street my old sam had 11/7.And had a bass body of 9And yes his bones were heavely laced.Yes he was human.
An the sugery was all done in team.The doctor was part of the team, he just happened to have a police record.So the surgery cost was covered by the fact that the Doc was a PC.If he was magically active he could basically do this sort of thing rate out of the box. |
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Sep 11 2004, 07:54 PM
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#6
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
The awakened superdoctor brings up a more important consideration:
Divination based on biotech: seeing the future in scars of the past "Oh, and by the way, I was reading your future while implanting that stolen piece of ware, stay away from Renraku suits with red hair." |
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Sep 11 2004, 07:58 PM
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#7
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
I personally just assume that you cannot take the same Surgery Option twice for the same surgery/implant, which fixes that quite nicely. The rules don't actually flat-out say you can't take Essence Reduction (or similar options) more than once, but I think that was the intention anyway. Likewise, I'll just assume that Redundancy doesn't reduce the Stress taken below 1 -- again, the entry doesn't say so, but it just makes more sense that way to me. However, if you do allow people to take the Essence Reduction option repeatedly, don't limit yourself to the 3 million :nuyen: Redundant MBW-4 -- remember that you can get Dermal Sheath-3 and Titanium Bone Lacing for ~0.25 essence, for a cheap +6 Body and armor. Or why not get a full-cyber body with insane amounts of plating, weird in-built gear and massive STR/QUI for 2 essence? And remember, the megacorps are bound to have a bunch of surgeons in the Delta clinics with a lot more dice than that, so the GM can easily spring up a few 1337 ninjas on the PC group that have just about every piece of cyber and bioware in the books. [Edit]OOPS!
Strictly by the rules, then, you can use Essence Reduction twice. Not three or more times, just twice. That means you're stuck at a minimum Essence cost of 6.3 for standard-grade MBW-4. Too bad.[/Edit]
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Sep 11 2004, 08:13 PM
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#8
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,073 Joined: 23-August 04 Member No.: 6,587 |
Your friend for life is the worlds best cyber implant sergen. He gives you 20% of. That makes the price for your surgery 8,000,000 instead of the normal 10,000,000.
You could play a PC with the ability to do this but the GM should demand a dammed good reason why you run the shadows. Any corp would be able and wiling to hide your ass for that kind of skill working on there S4 units. you can by a lot of adequate doctors in the sprawl for what they would pay you. The only reason left is you hat all corps witch you can do better from your shadow clinic. Edward |
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Sep 11 2004, 08:19 PM
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#9
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
BTW, you can only take as many Positive Options as is the rating of the medical gear with which the procedure is done. A Beta-grade clinic of rating 15 costs ~5.5 million :nuyen: with an SI of 2. Hmm, pretty cheap actually.
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Sep 11 2004, 10:36 PM
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#10
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,512 Joined: 16-August 03 From: Northampton Member No.: 5,499 |
First as pointed out, you can take an option at least twice (Canon Example you ask?? Deus, Beta Grade that effectively Delta due to options) but doesn't each .05% reduction take up like 2 options??
Second, i thought that it was the Quickness and Reaction Attributes that took the strees not the implant thus you couldn't do the "no stress" thing with MBW?? |
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Sep 11 2004, 10:40 PM
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#11
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
not only that, the maximum rating of medical gear available to shadowrunners is, according to M&M page 136, 6. so you can have, at max, 6 positive options. and not only that, but herald is right--MBW causes Quickness and Reaction, not the cyberware itself, which means that the Redundancy surgery option has no effect.
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Sep 11 2004, 10:54 PM
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#12
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
Unless the GM rules that the Stress to Quickness and Reaction is to the Stress and Reaction confered to by the MBW, then perhaps there can be a case to be made for Redundancy.
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Sep 11 2004, 11:12 PM
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#13
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 171 Joined: 9-September 04 Member No.: 6,641 |
Well, true, but given that no metahuman has more than 6 essence (shapeshifters have 8, but they cannot accept cyberware) I doubt that anyone even manufactures MBW in anything but a beta or delta ware grade. |
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Sep 11 2004, 11:30 PM
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#14
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,840 Joined: 24-July 02 From: Lubbock, TX Member No.: 3,024 |
I've always just ruled that the Biotech skill a runner might possess just don't match up with the biotech doctors and surgeons practice.
I guess I kind of use the canon Biotech skill as first aid, and call it Surgury for actual chopping of the flesh. |
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Sep 12 2004, 03:13 AM
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#15
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,006 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
First off: cyberzombies. Second off: 7*.8 (MBW L4 at alpha grade)=5.6, fittable in a human. Third off: MBW levels lower than 4, which all fit in a non-CZ human at basic grade. ~J |
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Sep 12 2004, 05:29 AM
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#16
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
I'm just surprised that anyone would willingly *ask* for MBW. I always envisioned it as a bit of 'ware that only a very rich corp would ever install, and only then in someone they intended to use as a tool.
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Sep 12 2004, 06:59 AM
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#17
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
If you're playing in a game where one of your characters can afford to put 7.000.000 nuyen into a piece of ware (not to mention the cost of the betaclinic and the surgery itself), who really cares about overstress? BTW - You do realize the negative options also add up don't you?
Personally this is never ever going to crop up in my game. The availability and cost of even the MBW4 puts it way beyond anything my players will get their hands on (and there's no way they'll ever begin the game with one), and even if they salvage it "second-hand" they'd still probably find something more useful to put the money into. |
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Sep 12 2004, 07:58 AM
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#18
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 126 Joined: 11-September 04 From: French Runner Member No.: 6,652 |
Personally, I think that every piece of ware found in the books is not necessarily meant to end up in the hands of the Players. It is also an indicator of the technology level at a given time.
Some things should stay out of their reach (how sad a world would be where every desire can be satisfied). Besides all the new gadgets should not be introduced outright...wait, introduce them progressively in order for the players to get the feel of the technology curve. Obsolescence is what the cyberpunk genre is all about. In the fast-forward 21st century consumer society, everything gets outdated fast : the latest Native Trash band, the newest Yamaha sportsbike and even your bright new SOTA piece of cybergear will put you under the spotlights for that long... It gets even better when players play a role in the advance: for example the Smartlink II technology appeared in my campaign following a run on the Ares tower in the Chicago CZ, when Ares paid the players to go there and establish an uplink so as to retrieve the research data buried in their dormant host... Don' t give the books to the players as mere catalogs... |
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Sep 12 2004, 12:36 PM
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#19
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,006 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
This is Shadowrun. Think of how many runners make the choice of Achilles every month. ~J |
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Sep 12 2004, 03:45 PM
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#20
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 527 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,118 |
While everyone else has said it at one point or another, I'm going to collate all the reasons why it is likely you have overlooked a few rules in achieving this. It's no slight on you guys as players, or the GM, as the rules are pretty arcane and distributed in such a way that very fundamental control factors for one set of rules tends to be contained in an obscure paragraph of another section entirely. First and foremost, I'm referencing page 150 in Man and Machine. I assume that you are, looking at these rules, taking the Redundancy positive surgical option to attempt to allievate stress that the implant suffers. This does not achieve the effect that you believe it does, i.e. eliminating stress on the attributes of the character with the implant. It only affects the implant itself, so such stresses accumulate with their normal frequency. Secondarily, you appear to be relying on the Essence Reduction positive surgical option. In order to get a final Essence cost of 0.4 for an implant with a base Essence cost of 7.0, you are, I assume, tallying up 19 such options(at 20, theoretically, the implant only costs the absolute minimum of 0.05 Essence, since it would otherwise cost 0 Essence). Given 19 Essence Reduction options, the implant would cost 0.35 Essence, not 0.4. 7.0 x 0.05 = 0.35. That means that you are installing, I extrapolate, standard Move-By-Wire(Rating 4), in a Beta cyberclinic, with 20 positive surgical options. Both Redundancy and Essence Reduction have a Threshold modifier of +2, so the cumulative Threshold Modifier rises to +40 for the final implant. Now that I've extrapolated the likely path of positive options you took, I'll explain why that really can't happen. In order to achieve that many positive options, your doctor would have to roll 23 successes on the surgery test, and, in order to achieve the final option, would have to reach the absolute threshold TN# when treating the surgery roll as an open test. This means that there's a +40 to the TN# somewhere in there, and I doubt that even with all the best modifiers in place, the TN# is going to be something achievable even with a horribly high number of dice. Secondarily, you would need a rating 20 clinic in order to perform surgery with 20 positive surgical options. The average beta/cultured and/or nano-equipped facility has a rating of 6. Delta-clinics have a base rating of 8. This means that such a facility would have to have a rating 14 points higher than the base rating for a beta clinic, or 12 points higher than the base rating of a delta clinic. To put this another way, your clinic would need to have a rating of 2.5 times the base rating of a delta clinic, or over 3 times the base rating of a beta clinic. Thirdly, the cost of such a clinic would be....(let me get out my calculator).... Medical Facility Availability: (Rating x 2)/1 Month Cost: (Rating+6)^4 x 4000 Nuyen Street Index: 3 Since it's a beta facility, however, we apply the beta-customization modifiers to its availability and cost, making the actual formula... Beta-Grade Medical Facility Availability: (Rating x 2) + 5 / 1.5 Months Cost: (Rating+6)^4 x 4000 x 4 Nuyen Street Index: 3 We'll determine the availability, first, since it's easiest. At rating 20, the availability of such a clinic would be 45 / 1.5 Months. That's almost impossibly high. The cost, however, is truly phenomenal. At (((20+6)^4) x 4000) x 4, or ((26^4) x 4000) x 4, or (26^4) x 16000, or 456976 x 16000, your final cost is 7311616000. So that results in: Crazy-Insane-Powerful Beta-Grade Medical Facility Availability: 45 / 1.5 Months Cost: 7,311,616,000 nuyen Street Index: 3 I'm not claiming the characters involved actually got that much nuyen, only that whoever was regulating the game probably didn't account for, or read, the relevent rules sections to figure this out. As it is, we're talking about someone achieving a TN# in the 40's for both Etiquette, to acquire the clinic, and in the 30's to 40's, for Biotech, to install the implant, in order to make this possible from a statistical perspective. From a monetary perspective, even if some incredible deal was found to avoid paying street index, the cost of such a clinic is 7.3 billion nuyen. With street index, it's close to 22 billion. That's a lotta cash. My most potent character, still running despite everyone claiming I should have retired him many years and thousands of karma ago, has an obscene retirement goal that is literally a small fraction of the cost needed to buy such a clinic, let alone operate it. You could buy an island and get it raised into low-Earth orbit for that. You could name it Asteroid M, and you could demand people called you Magneto, and, with your assets, people would do it. So, yeah. I'd forgo the nearly essence-free move-by-wire, and instead declare myself king of my own orbiting island. I'd also convert a millionth of the money I saved into pennies, too, and throw them off onto unsuspecting cities by the bucket. That'd be cool. [edit] I'm a dumbass. I assumed "facility" was a clinic, rather than "shop". I'll redo my calculations: Base: Availability: (Rating +2) / 1 wk; Cost: (Rating+4)^3 x 200 nuyen; SI: 2. Beta: Availability: (Rating + 7) / 1.5 wk; Cost: (Rating+4)^3 x 800 nuyen; SI: 2. Crazy: Availability: 27/1.5 wk; Cost: 11,059,200, SI 2. Given that, it's actually... well, I won't say feasible, but less insanely unfeasible, to get one's hands on a rating 20 beta-clinic. At 11 to 22 million nuyen, and availability in the high 20's, however, it's still pretty impressively impossible to score for an individual. [/edit] |
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Sep 12 2004, 04:23 PM
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#21
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
Hey Big - if you take a look at the Mr. J's LBL, they give stats for a beta-grade shadow-clinic doc.
Which means someone, somewhere is gonna take him as a starting contact. :grinbig: But they list "Surgery" as a knowledge skill which, I imagine, compliments Biotech. Remember the basic street doc only has Biotech (Active) and Medicine (Knowledge) and he can still do things like surgery and cyber implants. -Siege |
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Sep 12 2004, 04:30 PM
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#22
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i'm not sure the listed stats of most NPCs in any SR book should be taken at face value. that seems to be where most of the errors in the books are concentrated.
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Sep 12 2004, 04:37 PM
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#23
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
I'm all for a comprehensive re-write of the medical system and what skills are needed to do which things.
Until then, the best we can manage is to make assumptions based on material presented and try to infer how the new material works in the existing framework. Which leads me to the assumption of how "surgery" works while still allowing street docs to do the things they tend to do. -Siege |
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Sep 12 2004, 04:55 PM
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#24
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Senior GM Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,406 Joined: 12-April 03 From: Redmond, WA Member No.: 4,442 |
Just a minor math nit. .4 essence is roughly 5% of 7 essence. Not .05% .05% essence cost for MBW-4 would be .0035 essence. |
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Sep 12 2004, 05:59 PM
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#25
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
As mfb was kind enough to note, I made an error in looking at the Elite Surgeon in JLBB.
"Surgery" is a specialization of Biotech and not it's own knowledge skill. Oops. -Siege |
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