Full Version: Is wired reflexes and other 'ware too cheap?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing in SR4 says that you get penalties for firing guns with your off hand unless you're firing two at the same time and nothing at all says you get penalities for weilding a sword with an off hand.
Read pg. 148, Off-Hand Weapon on the Melee Modifiers Table. -2 dice for off-hand use. I personally think Ambidextrous is the best 5 BP you can spend for an un-Awakened character. So versatile.
I don't really consider WR to be old-tech. I always thought that the purpose of cyberpunk was the appearance of cyberware. Chunks of cold hard metal grafted onto your soft fleshy meatsac. Bioware just gets to ridiculous, besides Augmentation will probably bring in the old rules from M&M about how too much bioware makes your body all crazy. You get weaker to diseases and stuff too. I never even consider Synaptic Boosters for any of my characters because of the cost. Essence never even came to mind. Who cares about metal detectors if you can just sneak in as a janitor anyways.
My reason for not every single being in my campaign have WR2 or better: style. Yeah, yeah, cop-out or whatever but I mean if all I did all day was sit in my nice massaging office chair, hook my brain up to a commlink/deck/tortoise then what the hell would I need extra IP passes for? So I can make more pages faster? I still have to stay my whole 9 hour shift. If anything I would probably have standard NPCs carting around pistols (maybe a Colt America L36), sporting armored clothes and the only implants would probably be datajacks, cyber-eyes and prolly some dermal armor or something.
I don't really consider WR to be old-tech. I always thought that the purpose of cyberpunk was the appearance of cyberware. Chunks of cold hard metal grafted onto your soft fleshy meatsac. Bioware just gets to ridiculous, besides Augmentation will probably bring in the old rules from M&M about how too much bioware makes your body all crazy. You get weaker to diseases and stuff too. I never even consider Synaptic Boosters for any of my characters because of the cost. Essence never even came to mind. Who cares about metal detectors if you can just sneak in as a janitor anyways.
My reason for not every single being in my campaign have WR2 or better: style. Yeah, yeah, cop-out or whatever but I mean if all I did all day was sit in my nice massaging office chair, hook my brain up to a commlink/deck/tortoise then what the hell would I need extra IP passes for? So I can make more pages faster? I still have to stay my whole 9 hour shift. If anything I would probably have standard NPCs carting around pistols (maybe a Colt America L36), sporting armored clothes and the only implants would probably be datajacks, cyber-eyes and prolly some dermal armor or something.
"Don't worry guy, I know your MAD shows I've got wired reflexes, bone lacing, and dermal plating, but I'm just a janitor. You can trust me."
| QUOTE (James McMurray @ Aug 13 2006, 08:47 AM) |
| "Don't worry guy, I know your MAD shows I've got wired reflexes, bone lacing, and dermal plating, but I'm just a janitor. You can trust me." |
With WR 1 the janitor can swab twice in one combat turn. This means that he can mop twice the area per unit of time compared to an unwired janitor. This means that you only have to employ him for half as much time as a an unwired janitor. If you're paying him by the hour, that's a good thing. If he's salaried, it is still a good thing.
Yeah, but his demand in the sanitation engineering field skyrockets thatnks to the WR, meaning he charges you more.
Having WR riped out of your body because you choose to terminate your employment contract is bad. However it does open up a new dimension to runs for slightly down-scale paying corporate extractions. 
"We're kidnapping a what?"
with the talk of janitors, i am reminded of Roger Wilco, from space quest 
really, it all depends if you want your janitors to deal with that devil rat problem as well, or if you want to hire a profesional exterminator.
heh, i can see it now, 2 orcs and a troll with TONS of cyber, backed up by a combat mage. "hello, you called pest control? dont wory, the LMG is for those pesky devil rats". bonus points if they make more money than shadowrunners heh but then with bug spirits its always high risk. probably a subsidary of ares in there somewhere.
really, it all depends if you want your janitors to deal with that devil rat problem as well, or if you want to hire a profesional exterminator.
heh, i can see it now, 2 orcs and a troll with TONS of cyber, backed up by a combat mage. "hello, you called pest control? dont wory, the LMG is for those pesky devil rats". bonus points if they make more money than shadowrunners heh
but then with bug spirits its always high risk. probably a subsidary of ares in there somewhere.
Janitors and service people have their own special entrances that are usually very lightly guarded if guarded at all. As a business owner you want the people who clean your place to have an effect on the cleanliness but not be seen. Having your janitors/bug people/construction workers walk in through the heavily guarded front entrance looks bad on you with your clients. That's why they come in from a back or side door with only a passcard as security.
Hmmm. Ok. I don't see why back and side doors wouldn't be well protected (at least have a sec gaurd who is supposed to be watching that camera, and a MAD setup. But if it fits into your campaign well then go for it.
| QUOTE (WhiskeyMac @ Aug 14 2006, 02:00 AM) |
| Janitors and service people have their own special entrances that are usually very lightly guarded if guarded at all. As a business owner you want the people who clean your place to have an effect on the cleanliness but not be seen. Having your janitors/bug people/construction workers walk in through the heavily guarded front entrance looks bad on you with your clients. That's why they come in from a back or side door with only a passcard as security. |
At which point every two-bits shadowrunner, clever gang members or petty thief can enter by that lightly guarded doors with little fuss by just lifting one of these cards.
What you say makes sense in RL but not much in SR where crime is so high, where a whole class of criminal for hire has evolved along with a market large enough to insure your competitors can access their services.
I would expect instead that at the very least there would be :
- A pass card...
- ...linked to a biometric ID (probably just fingerprint for most places, these are pretty cheap)
- A camera.
- The use of the card would create a signal for the guard on duty at the front desk who would then peek at the security feed to see who is there and also look at the schedule before buzzing in the crew if everything checks out. Otherwise he can challenge them over the interphone for clarifications.
These measures are not that hard to circumvent if you have a good hacker, good planning and perhaps also access to good disguises (Mage with illusion or fancy MI style disguise). But they do make access through the back door roughly as tough as through the front door.
Most importantly, it suffice to keep the riff-raff out, which a simple pass card wouldn't in the context of SR. I figure security in SR should always be at least good enough to keep to riff-raff out, even in a modest business, or else the losses due to criminal activities would be too significant and the insurance premiums alone would put you out of business.
Also, if deficient or nearly absent security is the norm for most businesses, as in RL, then there is little incentive for the runner economy to develop as it did. The crime scene would then look pretty much like our own.
The good thing with janitors is that they mostly have keys & passkeys to most areas of a complex, at least low-security. This means they know the layout of a place and can get in and out rather easily.
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