Are there any rules that limit how much you can augment a stat other that the augmented stat maximums:

consider the following:

Mr: Slowpoke (Reaction 2) hops down to a clinic and gets reaction enhancers (4) and synaptic accelerators (3), giving him 7 additional points in reaction. This brings his reaction up to the augmented maximum of 9.

It seems a bit odd that he is now as fast as Mr. Lightning Reflexes (Reaction 6) who got the exact same set of ware.

Does a house rule of: "augmented stat maximum is the current stat +3" sound more reasonable? This means that natural ability always plays a part in how augmented you can be. Admittedly, this makes combining reaction enhancers and initative enhancers pretty useless, and makes the lvl 4 reaction enhancers, muscle toner, etc useless...

On the plus side, it more quickly caps out the str and bod of trolls, and the agl and cha of elves.

No such canon limit exists, thank Dog.

If I remember well, there is a cap on your maximum attribute rating, depending on your current rating. Let me explain, the maximum is attribute * 1.5. Which means 9. But if your Joe average has only 2 in an attribute, he cannot go above 3 (2*1.5) using cyber or whatever...
I would like a confirmation on that, as I read SR4 a few weeks ago now, and as I am at my workplace...

That's for skills, attributes don't have that.

Mr. Lightning Reflexes apparently is a bit on the daft side since he got unnessasary surgery.

Note: There are situations where that extra 'ware can come into effect. If Mr. Lightning was hit with a Decrease [Reflexes] spell he would still maintain Reflexes( 9) for the first 4 points that the spell took away.

The fact that attribute caps and skill caps work differently but cosmetically similiar boggled me & mine for a while too. Both them still cap at 150% of "normal," it's just that they're allowed to get there via different means.

For Chevalier:

Attributes are capped at 150% of your (racial) maximum. This means that a human can't ever get a Str of over 9 (unless he buys Exceptional Attribute, raising that cap by one to a 10). Now, he could get that 9 a few ways: He could have a natural Str of 5 and then go out and buy Muscle Aug 4. He could have a natural Str of 1 and buy 8 levels of Improved Attribute (costing 11 Magic). He could have a natural Str of 6 and have a mage buff his Str by 3 points.

In any and all cases, his Str just can never go over his maximum racial limit. The trick is that any portion of that Str can be natural and any portion can be augmented.

Skills are likewise capped at 150%... but 150% of your current rating, not of the skill rating maximum (which is 6, or 7 if you have the Aptitude quality in that skill). So if you have a 2 skill then you can benefit from its corresponding Reflex Recorder, bringing it up to a 3. If you have a 6 skill then you can use the Improved Ability power to bump it up 3 points to a 9.

So the trick here is that you can't have an augmented skill bonus higher than 50% of your current natural skill rating.

~~~~~

Someone correct me if I'm misremembering or misrepresenting.

Ah; was worried that my examples were incorrect.

The augmented skill cap really should just be +3 over natural rating. The current rules where an adept cannot get more skill bonus than their natural rating and cannot benefit from more than half of that is incomprehensible. We all know the ultimate maximum is supposed to be, but all the intermediate maximums are contradicted all over the book. A nice, linear bonus maximum of +3 over natural rating is comprehensible at all levels and no longer does wonky things.

Edit: I mean, if Analyze Device isn't supposed to be limited to +3, what is it limited to? It specifically works at all if you don't even have a natural skill rating.

-Frank

My guess on the adept thing is that while his magic can give him +6 to his maxed-out Basketweaving, he'd only ever be throwing 9 dice. The 3 point surplus would protect him against some sort of "skill debuff," if one ever happened, but the rest of the time they'd just take up space.

I'm not saying it's useful, I'm just saying it's my best guess.