Greetings everybody. I'm new here and new to SR4 and I have a few questions, as my topic states.

First question is regarding upgrades to previously installed cyberware. Let's say you purchase Rating 2 Reaction Enhancers. After a few profitable runs, you decide you'd like to have Rating 3. Can the old stuff be removed so this higher rating can be put in? This could be translated to anything. Wired Reflexes, whatever. Some things, like cybereyes, would be easy to remove and replace. However, Wired Reflexes doesn't strike me as being quite so simple. Moreover, is the old stuff destroyed when it's removed? Can you sell it?

Next, apply this same thing, but to bioware. Let's go with Synaptic Boosters just to make it messy. This is cultured bioware. It's grown into you. If you purchase Rating 1, and decide later that you want Rating 3, what do you do? You obviously don't "remove the old" and "put in the new" in this case... If you paid 80,000 for Rating 1, do you merely pay 160,000 extra to have it "grown" some more into Rating 3? Or do you just pay 240,000 and pretend like Rating 1 was never there to begin with? This can be applied to most any bioware, really. Even something like Muscle Toner or Augmentation. You initially purchase Rating 1, and later want Rating 2 or 3. What do you do?

Bioware, in general, is completely non-removeable, yes?

Thanks in advance for your help.

There currently is a derth of rules in this matter. Let's see what my Magic 8-Ball says:

House rule now, try again when Augmentation supplement book comes out

I just houserule that cyberware and bioware when removed leave an automatic essense hole. Essense is only lowered when Essense exceeeds 6 - Sum total of the bioware and cyberware enhancements. Essense once lost can never be recovered.

Aside from that just handle as best you can the effects of removing the stuff. Obviously some stuff is easier to remove than others. Obviously if the stuff replaced some vital part of you anatomy you'll need to get clonal replacements in order to live or function. But the writers can't go into the effects of removing each type of implant. Just use common sense. Removing Orthoskin will require some other skin to replace it. Remove a cybereye and you'll be blind until you get a new eye. And so on.

As for waiting for Augmentation they'd have to be pretty good to break my current simple system. If they're not I simply follow the same path I did with SR3 and cyberware.


--- Follow my own House Rules until Man and Machine came out.
--- Read the Implantation section of Man and Machine.
--- Recoiled in horror.
--- Showed the Implantation rules to my players.
--- Watch them recoil in horror.
--- Agree unanimously to pretend that section of the book doesn't exist.
--- Continue using the simple House Rules we had before.

I would probably consider augmenting things like reaction enhancers, wired reflexes, skillwires, etc... wouldn't require the removal of the old stuff, just an addition to it. As for straight removal I would have to agree with the idea of it leaving an 'essence hole' since the loss of essence comes from the effects of the surgury on the body as well as from the "missing" organs and tissues. But if you replace them with cloned replacements you should be able to get some of that essence back (Say 25% or so).
Also in my group we houseruled that if you upgrade cyberware to alpha, beta, or deltaware you get essence back equal to the difference between the grades.

Restoration of essence has been specifically denied in prior editions. I'd be surprised if it was intended to make an appearance with SR4 (although I'd also be delighted).

When I dip my toes into it, essence restoration is a pretty straight-forward house rule: An open "essence hole" turns into Essence at a rate of .1 per year. No technology or magic can enhance this rate.

I have no problem with Essence being something you can't restore in the scope of a normal campaign. I do have a conceptual problem with the idea that a broken soul / "life force" can never be repaired, even decades after a man has finally escaped the shadows.