I can see the low price of wired 1 and 2 maybe apealing to some folks, but what's the point of wired 3 in the new edition? Its only marginally less expensive than the bioware that has the same effect, but the bioware has a hugely lower essence cost. Wired 3 has avaialability 20, vs 18 for level 3 synaptic accelerators, so neither is avaialble to starting characters. Bioware would be easier to conceal from scans and such.

To recap, the bioware is just as effective (moreso if you consider the space it leaves for other implants / magic), eaiser on the body, AND easier to buy, AND easier to get past security.

So, does anybody have a use for wired 3 these days? The only one I can see is maybe if you want to have an "old school" samurai who got wired a long time ago, before the "new generation" of bioware came along. Which is cool, but that's a HUGE premium (in essence, and cash if you try to get it anywhere near as essence friendly as the bioware) to pay for a flavor piece.

consider this- bioware reflexes 3 will always be 1.5 essence.

but if i get deltaware (50%), and have more bioware than cyberware (easy to do), then that 5 essence becomes 1.25e. so there are some cases where it is a good thing, but they are few and far between.

the other consideration, is you can turn wired reflexes OFF.

Might make a difference later if they add back the Stress factor for bioware.

Seriously though, I never gave any of my sam's Wired-3. It was never essence friendly, and I didn't like the thought of them being all jittery. 'sides, I got better uses for all that essence loss.

Tuelish- eh? Why is having more bioware going to reduce the essence cost of your cyber? I'm not entirely familiar with the rules yet. If having loads of bioware drops the essence cost of basic wired 3 to 2.5, I can maybe see it being worth it... nah, 1.5 for 40g more is still better.

ronin3338- I did play a sr2 (with bits of 3) character with wired 3, and he was pretty effecitve, in part because he also had some cheap (but effective) bioware to make him even faster, and a bit tougher- besides just being dang hard to hit.
But I'm not saying I want to play such a character in SR4. My point was, wired 3 used to be disticntive and offered some useful edge you couldn't otherwise get. I'm not saying it was the best use of thier essence, but now its both not avaialable to starting characters, and the things that match it are cheaper and have fewer drawbacks. So why's it still in the book?
IMO, turning wired refles off isn't much of an advantage compared to synaptic accelerators, because there doesn't seem to be any drawback to having the bioware active all the time. {Nor is there any drawback to magical reflex enhancement, but that's a seperate issue...}

You can get Essence the cost of Synaptic Boosters 3 down to .3 essence with Deltaware and more cyber than bio. This costs Two Million and Four Hundred Thousand Nuyen for the deltagrading. With Beta you can get it down to .5 essence and Nine Hundred and Sixty Thousand Nuyen.

The thing about Wired Reflexes is that it is nuyen cheap but essence expensive. It costs less than half of what Boosted 3 costs at any grade.

In 2XS, the proto-synaptic accellerator technology could be turned off. I'm sure the actual synaptic accelerators could be, too.

That stuff wasn't "proto synaptic accelerators". It was Kamazazi in a BTL chip.

notice the wording on page 306.

'with the exception of cultured bioware'- it an exception to the standard alpha/beta/delta. how exactly is unclear at this time.

Cutting the cost of basic Wired 3 down to 2.5 requires 5.1 points of bioware. Unless you have a good cybermancer it ain't gonna fly.

Actually, what it says is that the pricies given for cultured bioware aren't for the standard grade. What that means is really up in the air. I say that it means that the cultured bioware prices listed are for Delta Grade.

Ah, the undead horse rears it's beaten head.
To make it simple: that reverse implication is wrong - cultured bioware can be graded like any other ware:

My god... 3 initiative passes for .75 essence, .375 if you have a cyberarm.

He means extra IPs.

Keep in mind that Deltaware may be costy in SR4, but isn't restricted by higher Availability... and there are more than a dozen Delta Clinics in 2064 already.

Uh, where?

Guess it was too easy for me or i'm just too stupid after a long day. Anyway, thanks for explaining it

Is there a point to the 'half essence rule', other than to make things more complex? Sure it lets you cram ~8 esence of stuff into you.

At delta grade, this will come close to letting you carm all the cyberwear and bioware in the main book into your body.

Do you think those ordeals and groups will decrease the amount of karma needed to initiate and increase magic, or just initiate?

I'm hoping that ordeals come back and that groups do something other than lower Karma costs. I've seen players generate a shadowrunner group which for lack of a better name was called "The No Homers Club (we're allowed to have one)". The Karmic benefits were just too good to pass up and it got more than a little silly.

Groups should do something else. Anything else. I'd like hem to be treated more as a contact.

-Frank

I don't know. I might at some point say "good job, have 500 karma." I can see two situations where it might happen (the first more likely than the second).

1) I'm about to seriously ramp up the power level of the campaign. They've been running the shadows for a few years now, learning more and more about the 6th world. Then on a run gone bad they unleash a beastie from Hell (in a world where Hell = Earthdawn). It wuold require something big ingame, and a huge amount of work, but I might do it one day, especially if I were feeling Babylon-5ian and wanted to start up the Shadow War, but without the Vorlons around.

2) Copious sexual favors from comely female players. The only woman I've gamed with in years is my wife (and her less frequently now that the kids are around and she's gone back to finish her degree), so it's pretty doubtful that'll happen (not that she isn't comely, we just don't buy and sell sexual favors from one another).

--

I agree that groups should either not lower karma costs, or have much harder rules than in previous editions. A mage and an adept in the team means you're looking at an initiation group.

Hey all. First post here, just picked up SR4.

I noticed that the Synaptic Booster 3 has an easier availability than Wired 3. I would think that 20 year old tech (wired reflexes) would be easier to come by than the latest bioware that has to be "tailor made" specifically for an individual.

My solution? All cultured bioware has an tougher availability. Thus, for my game I have houseruled that all cultured bioware starts with +50% availability.

Therefore:
Synaptic Booster 1 is availability 9
Synaptic Booster 2 is availability 18
Synaptic Booster 3 is availability 27

Outrageously difficult to come by? Yes, for the higher levels, but the lower levels are still reasonable. However, you'll need to get a LOT of hits over a LONG time to get Synaptic Booster 3 tailored and made for you. It's the sort of search that will take place over the course of an entire campaign, which for me, cultured bioware should be.

As a side note, I also increased the availability difficulty for Betaware (+50%) and Deltaware (+100%). Just 'cause.

If think it is designed this way, so you can get synaptic boosters 2 at chargen. If you just make the availability for cultured bioware harder, a lot of other good stuff can't be bought at chargen either.

I would suggest, just make synaptic boosters 3 harder to get .

Though it seems a little off too. By the 2070s, bioware isn't the as much the 'new unknown' as it was when it rolled out in 2052. I guess I'm a little surprised cyber hasn't gone to the 'ghost in the shell' kinda levels of more ready full body prosthetic swaps and the like.

one word: magic...

a full body swap would require something like cybermancy to pull of, and would leave the person with negative essence (at best)...

or you could just use alphaware. you know, being a slightly cheaper solution than cybermancy.

2 cyberarms, 2 cyberlegs, cybertorso, and cyberskull iirc add up to 6.5 essence. alphaware drops that to 5.2 essence. the only current ingame limitation on that is that healing magic works less well on you, iirc (though older books indicate you start losing touch with the world and such).

it's still kinda expensive though.

not to mention currently a horrible, horrible option, since it means you can only ever take cyberware that has a capacity, and can never again take anything that uses essence.

(of course, most GMs seem to be allowing implantations and even bioware into the torso and skull areas, which strictly speaking is not allowed by the rules, but IMO makes about a million times more sense).

like i said, the interpretation that you can put essence-consuming cyberware as well as bioware into the torso and skull is probably not only one of the most common modifications, but also a very logical one. that does not change the fact that, strictly speaking, it is a modification to the rules (which i fully support. there's a reason i still enjoy PnP over CRPGs)

in fact, i can't even justify it from a balance perspective, as the cost of getting all cybered up with alphaware cyber-replacements is so horribly expensive. if i'm not mistaken, it would cost around 180,000 to buy 2 obvious alphaware cyberarms, 2 obvious alphaware cyberlegs, 1 obvious alphaware cybertorso, and 1 obvious alphaware cyberskull. plus the stat boosts (which are actually quite cheap... once you've bought the limb itself, that is), and any accessories. not to mention the cyberskull is too high availability to even have at chargen using normal rules.

hmm, im left wondering what the point of a cyberlimb body stat...

that is unless i use the avarage of the natural body stat and the limb stats (makes it kinda dangerus to get a unenhanced limb) when doing body rolls for stuff like damage resistance (from outside sources, toxins is a diffrent story).

hmm, if i go fully cyberd, can i no longer take a internal simrig? it does not have a capasity listing

edit:

if anything, the cyberlimbs are just as messed up as they was in SR3. just discoverd that the text covering cyberlimb enhancments allready talks about bioware and cyberware having no effect so what, if any, is the point of that bit of text about bioware and cyberlimbs?

im starting to think that its a badly messed up bit thats realy supposed to explain the capacity ratings. it would be so much simpler to say that any cyberware with a capacity rating can be installed into a cyberlimb without a essence cost, and that bioware cant have a capacity rating...