As far as I can tell there are no rules in SR4 for losing a limb after recieving an exceptionally ugly wound.
I always liked the possibility of losing a limb in combat for 2 reasons:
1) Increasing the need for Cyberlimbs, especially for people on a budget.
2) Increasing the potential threat of a fight itself.
Has anyone made up any houserules for this topic? If so please share.

I house ruled the following.

Any single survivable wound that causes eight or more boxes of physical damage in one hit represents a Critical Wound. Such wounds heal differently than normal physical injuries. Critical wounds require hospitalization, or at the very least an individual trained in Medicine with a proper Medical facility. The term of this hospitalization is determined by an Extended Body Test with a threshold equal to the number of boxes in the wound and an interval of 1 day. After which, the person may be released from the hospital and the damage may begin to heal. Damage from critical wounds heals only following release from the hospital, but follows the normal rules for healing. Critical wounds may also carry penalties to physical attributes, skills, negative flaws, malfunctioning cyberware, etc. depending on the type of wound (i.e. a leg wound may impact Agility or Reaction). These penalties are considered permanent until removed via karma. This time represents the amount of time necessary to regain mobility, flexibility, etc. in the wounded area of the body. Thus, while the physical damage may heal, residual secondary damage may hamper the character for a much longer amount of time.

Granted, I haven't seem an 8 box physical wound yet, so I might reduce that amount if it seems warranted. I didn't make a mechanic for what exactly the critical wound is, but I figured I'd just leave it up to the situation of the moment.

@Dashifen
I like the way you thought up that system. I also like the part where the ability loss isnt permanent like dropping your max, just your current.

That was the nice part, too. My players and I worked together on it to find something we agreed on. They were a little stuck on the potential attribute loss until I explained to them that it would accurately represent the time spent doing physical therapy or other forms of recuperative therapy.

I worked out something abit more complicated (due to a player acctually wanting to have cyber stress and loss of limbs). Now, when they roll their resistance test, they roll body(or what ever physical attribute) in the our red dice, and armor (including bonus due to magic and cyber) in black dice. If they get a critical glitch on the body test, then there is a chance to hurt a body part. I then roll a d6, on the score of 1&2, it affects a physical attribute, on 3&4, effects cyberware, and 5&6, bio ware. We figured a souped up sammie has more to break then a average guy. If they critical glitch on on black dice (armor) then it takes some armor they have down a point. This shows that armor takes damage and needs to be replaced. It seems complicated but this glitches almost never come up. Its a little crazy but makes it feel abit more dangerous to go in combat.

For making cyberlimbs "cheap" and accessible for the common man as a viable alternative to cloned limbs I would say that cloned limbs have X3 price of cyberlimbs and takes Availability Weeks to attain since they must be grown.

I would make cloned limes affordable but give them a high availability, and use the growth times in man and machine until something comes out for SR4 the procedure becomes this

Go threw the normal acquiring goods procedures when you make the availability threshold you pay a portion of the cost and somebody starts growing your limb. This could take up to 2 months (if I recall the rules correctly) during this time if you pis off the people growing the limb, or the fixer that put you in contact with them, or anybody that knows there doing it for you they somehow get proof of your death and flush your account.

Edward

Do cloned organs and limbs cost essence? Also, if you have an essence of 6 and loss an arm, do you still have an essance of 6.

right on!

Just a note i loved the ideas in this thread.

Consider them stolen.

Ty Dashifen and Cang!

Great templates for the limb loss, I still recommend a meeting between GM and Players before rules like this get introduced into play, and every playgroup may have their own preferences/tolerances for such.

The stress rules for cyber/bio in (man & machine?) were really complicated in my opinion, requiring even more micromanagement of charsheets than I felt was appropriate for a flowing game.

Also, I could see something along the lines of 'if you take more dmg in one hit than Body+1 (+2 whatever) you could lose a limb. ' So lower body type creatures would be more likely to get seriously injured while something with the Body of the Hulk would take what would be considered a grevious wound and not lose their limb.

I use limb loss and other such nastyness as the effect of Glitches on soak rolls(I think this sort of thing is implied by the rules but not explicitly said). Limb immobilised or heavy bleeding on a glitch, limb blown off for a crit glitch.

You've never seen 8+ boxes of physical? I'm beginning to wonder if my group is doing something wrong. With being a troll and having bone density bioware, I'm punching for S/2+3 (12/2=6+3=9) 9 physical. Once you factor in net successes....yeah body and armor resists down to under 9 sometimes, but I've hit for over 10 physical.

Not to mention what happens when Somebody gets a called shot in the knee from a shotgun. Ouch. I had a player catch 8p to the knee once.

On this subject, my group has a really neat house rule. We got this 12 sided die with body parts printed on it (Left foot, head, right arm, chest, ect.) usually what we do is when NPCs attack PCs, they roll that die when called shot is not included. The result is where the charecter takes the damage.

Vasili, where would one get such a body part die? That might be the coolest thing for gaming since Plato.(He gave us the perfect solids that are our dice, d4s, 6, 8, 12, and 20.)

Bang: http://www.rpgshop.com/product_info.php?pr...oducts_id=36953

Thats amazing!