I'm having trouble grasping at an idea. The game features hackers and hacking prominently, but there are no rules for starvation, dehydration, and exhaustion anywhere in the core book. This is something I feel is very important to a game featuring hacking and/or long periods of computer use; I know many people who only eat when reminded that the sickness and strange feeling they have in their stomach is from the fact that they haven't eaten in two days.

It's real important: we've got a hacker and a technomancer, and neither of them move very much.

On a related note: why are there no skills that help govern finding/creating materials for foci, such as weapon foci and so forth, or for gathering materials for ritual casting, lodges, and so forth? Somebody had to make them, but who?

Darkness is right about Enchanting. It will be covered in the upcoming Street Magic.

As for starvation and deckers that are jacked in for extended periods, canon fluff has mentioned that intravenous feeding would be both feasable and, if not common, then at least not unknown.

On item #1 a Biomonitor feed should keep them up-to-date if their body chemistry is saying they are running low on water, glucose, etc.

P.S. For those that like to stay under a really long time they could hoop themselves up to IVs and other gear to get them through a several hour VR session. Likely isn't the most healthy thing, but it'll get them by doing so occationally.

As part of the "out of the basements, into the sprawl" credo, I think the VR rules have been streamlined enough to avoid more than a couple of hours on line, no? It seems unlikely that a SR4 hacker could go more than 24 hours on line, barring extreme failure at extended tests. Beyond that time frame, fatigue would set in, but surely not before.

A Sleep Regulator is a Matrix-addicted hacker's best friend.

given that you can basicly access the matrix from your local McSoy burger place without much problem in SR4 i would expect that food and similar isnt a problem. sleep on the other hand is.

i have gone 48 hours without sleep, one time. and if its up to me, never again. its not fun at all...

question, can a hacker go from vr to ar and back without breaking off an attack on a node?

I'm not just talkin' about VR, though (sure, the Technomancer stays passed out on the floor for hours, but that's her perogative). For example, I know some people who spend way too much time tinkering with mechanics, playing videogames, drawing, or just staring at the screen for extended periods of time, and it's something that is bound to come up frequently, I mean, I doubt you're going to IV when you're working on a motorcycle (plus, we've had several cross continent trips where on one, our team's wandered in the desert for four days without food or survival skills).

Yeah. Biomonitor. Great. Now, when does it trigger to let you know when you need to eat or sleep? If you ignore it, what happens?

Dice penalty? Stun damage that doesn't heal until you eat? Does your squeedlyspooch shrivel into uselessness?

Starvation is so damn unlikely to happen... Matrix is at near thought speed, so being online non-stop for like... 18h+ straight is just never gonna happen consistently, hence non rules.

I don't have my books, but you can look into the Suvivalism skill table. It probably mentions what happens when you fail, which means when you don't eat (it covers more than just eating, but you can use that as a basis).

Aside from that, applying Stun damage seems like the most logical thing to do.

i also would suggest stun damage that doesn't heal until they remedy the situation.

as has been said, it's not likely to come up for matrix stuff anymore, but that doesn't mean you'll never need the rules...