I'd love somebody who knows SR history to explain to me why cyberlimbs just aren't worth the essence and cash. Sure, you can pack cool stuff into them and they make you a little tougher, but where's the scary level of damage you can inflict on somebody with a mechanical hand?

I realize this isn't Cyberpunk - but come on, why the hate for the limbs?

SR4 cyberlimbs are a lot nicer than in previous editions. Just for an example, until Cybertechnology came out in 2nd edition, all cyberlimbs started out at the same base strength - which sucked ass if you happened to be troll! The sheer cost for a cyberlimb was astronomical compared to the cost of buying an organic limb replacement (used or cloned), and the main benefit was to pack in all the fun little toys: cyberguns, retractable blades, a cyberdeck, a tactical computer, increased speed and strength, magnetic cyberlimb system, swappable cyberhands, etc.

Part of the reason is that Shadowrun-style cyberlimbs are fairly high-end when compared to the crappy prosthetics of today. They have tactile sensation, dexterity, human strength, durability, and are fairly low maintenece.

I know what you mean Antimuppet. A cyberarm in the latter half of the 21st century should be able to shatter bones easily with just a squeeze.

one limit on limbs--and, believe me, i'm not defending SR3's or even SR4's limbs--is that they're usually hooked up to flesh and bone. sure, the limb itself is capable of lifting a subcompact car, but the meat it's attached to can't support that weight.

that said, cyberlimbs are teh suxx. i like these much better.

The actual metallic bones don't do the damage, it's the muscles.

As for crushing a normal arm with your cyber arm, the only thing that makes that logical is cyber-MUSCLES and they (used to) add anywhere from +1 to +4 to str and quick.

I, however, agree that in a world of AI's, mind controlled cars and trucks and computers which are mounted directly onto someone's brain... they are very expensive.

Or if you're a cyberzombie, and willing to spend zillions of to get... whatever the maximum is (rating 10?) Strength/Quickness enhancments stuck in all of your limbs.

Even so, it's nothing you can't do with Muscle Augmentation and Muscle Toner, for less essence/bio index, and less money, and to wind up looking less obvious.

Yeah well, when you're a cyberzombie, money doesn't tend to matter much.

The fact that annoyed me most at SR1-3 cyberlimbs was their high price. Imo cyberlimbs have a huge market; they're not only useful to a specialized cutsomer group like smartlinks. So many people in the world suffer from a lost leg or arm and would likely pay some nuyen to get a replace. But 100,000 for a basic model?

The new prices of SR4 make much more sense to me. Finally you don't have to sell your house just to get an improved cyberarm.

If you're knowingly wastefull on chump change, it adds up to real money pretty quick. And, especially once you start increasing the grade and amount of 'ware (like you would when making a cyberzombie), it comes closer and closer to breaking that "chump change" limit, anyways.

When you know you're going to go to all the trouble and expense of making a cyberzombie, why would a successfull corp knowingly be so horribly inefficient about it? You don't get to be a successfull corp by doing stuff half-assed. Just because you can be wastefull doesn't mean you want to be. It's all about the bottom line.

It's the principle of it. Yes, you have to spend money to make money. But that doesn't mean you have to throw the stuff away on stupid crap like it's going out of style. It's all a matter of profit/loss, to the mega's -- just because their ideas of profit and loss are huge compared to ours doesn't mean they can ignore that.

And it's not like ARES MACROTECHNOLOGY, the monolithic entity posessing a hive-mind, is gonna say "Let's make a cyberzombie today!" You've got some manager somewhere, of some division, trying to pull some impressive shit, out to get some shit done to get his boss's attention, who's got to stay under budget in the meantime. He's not gonna look and go "Ares can afford it," and just decided to cram some soldier full of worthless crap that costs twice as much as efficient gear.

I stand by it: corp or not, when it comes to raw attribute increases, cyberlimbs just aren't worth it. If you're really after a few cyberlimb-specific tricks (like having a swiss army knife instead of a left arm), they just don't work except for style points (and corps, especially, don't care about those when they're funding soem combat monster).

Of course, the questions no one asks are:
1) Could metahumans properly control easily-snap-someone's neck strength?
2) Would the Powers-What-Is allow every Jane Citizen to hacker her arms off, put on some beefy cyberlimbs and go around snapping people's necks as the whim takes her?
3) Would someone with superhuman cyberarm strength try to do something stupid (like, say, trying to lift their car) and end up ripping their arms off?

The neck (or well other body parts) snapping is what I'm talkin' bout. It's not so much "Can I pick that car up" (although that would rock to see). It's about grabbing somebody with a seven function force-feedback manipulator cased in grubby pink plastic and causing no end of havoc.

Ah, it's good you appreciate the classics, friend artiste.

From a setting/story standpoint, this is a reasonable explanation as to why uberchromearms don't exist. Every street punk who thinks hes somebody will buy them, then try to pick up a ford americar and rip apart the torso the arms are attached to. 300 Class action Lawsuits later, the corps stop producing arms that could in anyway do this, and add a disclaimer etched over the forearm NOT MEANT FOR INDUSTRIAL LOADS. DO NOT LIFT CARS!

As to why much more powerful limbs aren't available on the black market, well, that a different call.

The only other advantage to cyberlimbs is they are the only other way to add to your body score after maxing bonelacing and Dermal Plating/Sheathing.

post deleted due to massive error

You're right.
That's what I get for trying to do math while being disnumeric.

I seriously don't see the guy with super-strength replacement arms tearing them out of his torso trying to lift a car unless he has super-strength replacement legs to go with it. Even if he does, he needs a stronger back (cyber-torso anybody). The muscles in his legs and back will give out long before he tears his arms off in most cases...but that would be damn funny.

It's not the strength in his arms that will seperate them from his body. His arms are really just holding onto the car and nothing else if his legs can't support the weight. Pushing up with the legs is the motion that will do the seperation.

That would be the smart way to do it, yes.

Someone who rips their arm off obviously isn't too smart. He's probably grab the pole in between the front and rear windows and doors, and then make a lifting motion.

Body straightens up, cars stay on the ground, arms stay with the car.

It's too bad I don't have my Ghost in the Shell manga here, there was a great little aside picture about this very problem (cyber arm can lift 120 kilos, meat shoulder reaches limit at 60).

What I'm trying to say, is that unless the body is physically unable to, the body will move downwards first rather than the car lift up. Usually when lifting heavy loads with your arms (not reccommended), this is accomplished by making the legs and back rigid enough to support the load. The legs and back need to have the force to tear the arms out of their sockets, not the arms themselves. So a guy with a cyber torso and two replacement legs but with meat arms would be in trouble.

Now if a guy tries to attach one arm to something solid and pull with the other, then you have a problem. Picture that pair of jeans between the two horses on the your levis tab.

As far as the strenth of cyberlimbs I think it's important to note that in SR cyberlimbs are intended as quickly accessible replacement limbs; they require quite extraordinary facilities to manufacture, and are designed as replacements, not upgrades. The baseline cyberlimb goes to Tim, Company Clerk when he's in a car accident; the widely available ones are designed for average people. Average people would prefer not crushing their relatives and family pets.

As many crazy transhumanist cybermonkeys there are, they are a rather neglidable market for a Megacorp. The only legal cyberlimbs designed for combat would probably simply be upgraded versions of commercial ones that are given to athletes and military persons at great expense.

As a Shadowrunner, there are really only 3 reasons to get a cyberlimb:
1) your limb was blown off and you don't have weeks to wait around for a new one to be grown or found.
2) your limb was blown off and you figure you figure that a few extra electronic gizmos could only help
3)you are a crazy transhumanist cybermonkey

All that being said, I think they are a tad overcost. In my games, I drastically reduce the cost of a lot of cyberwar during gameplay (I still use book prices during character creation for simplicity), esp stolen ware. While Tim, Company Clerk might have a fat insurance policy that is willing to dole out 100,000 to replace his arm, I don't think the average blackmarketeer would expect that kind of return on stolen property.

Tim's got a 50/50 chance of getting a used arm, too, if its temporary.

That's be great if there was a cyberarm out that that's been passed around more often than ... Well, I'll let you finish that one.

"Check it out guys, this new arm of mine always relaxes into a kung-fu grip for some reason."

Top 10 reasons why no insurance company would pay for Tim the office clerk to get a cyberarm.

10 - Cyberarms are never medically necessary except when under the influance of wierd plot-devices.
9 - Clonal relacements are cheaper
8 - Office Clerk isn't exactly a time sensitive job. Tim doesn't need a new limb instantly. He'd probably be on leave untill he fully recovered anyway.
7 - If Tim is a magician then he will suffer from magic loss. He probably isn't but better safe than sued.
6 - Essence loss reduces overall health and wellness, increasing the probability of costly illness of injury.
5 - Essence loss makes medical treatment more difficult increasing the costs to the insurance company the next time Tim does get sick.
4 - If the cyberlimb is temperory two surgeries will be required. Two surgeries cost more than one surgery does.
3 - More surgeries mean more risk of dying on the table. In the world of megacorps Tim's health insurer is probably Tim's life insurer, as well.
2 - He might break it.
1 - Three words. Horrific masturbation accident. Possessing a cyberlimb greatly increases Tim's chance of becoming another masturbation accident statistic, further increasing the costs to the insurance company.

So, with all of the bad - why is there very little good in getting a limb? What happened back in 88-89 that the original writers didn't put as much awesome in to cyberlimbs as they did into magic?

What surgery rules? I noticed some weird blank pages towards the back, but no surgery rules…

~J

Oh, I must have been hallucinating. I kept having nightmares when I opened the book of seeing the most batshit crazy rules, even compared to the vehicle construction rules in Rigger 3, where installing a datajack took weeks and you could die getting an arm replaced.

Depends on what you mean by "batshit crazy". If you mean "probably pretty realistic, all things considered" you're right. If you mean "pretty much not at all fun and thus with no place in a game", you're also right.

~J

Mostly the latter. I appreciate the complexity... to a point. It was a cool idea that you could get a datajack as easily as getting a pair of glasses nowadays, but yeah. It is hard to read and really take seriously for some reason.

Back in the 80's, the cost probably seemed reasonable. A pair of cyberlegs and an arm plus an eye or an ear cost $6,000,000, at least according to The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. However, Steve Austin never ripped his own arm off lifting cars; it took an anthroform sasquatch to do that.

Oh, and let's not forget the prices for somputers back then.

At least vinyls had been cheaper...

About the only cyberlimbs I ever considered were Cyberfeet and that was only to get the built in retractable rollerblades. Ended up getting confuused on the whole implant base attribute vs. character attribute thing. Turned out better for her just to go to REI & pick up a pair of Fusion S-6000s and deal with putting them on & taking them off the old fashioned way.

Weeks for a Datajack? Possible death for a Cyberlimb?
That's insane. In the latter half of the 21st century there is no way that's believable unless your installing them with a do-it-yourself kit at home

D-I-Y Datajack.