Well, taking a second thought on the SR4 cyberware/bioware augmentation rules, I realize that from an OOC point of view, the game is finally evolving away from its hard-core '80s "chrome" cyberpunk aesthetic and embracing some of the '90s postcyberpunk/transhumanist "genetic engineering" one, and from an IC POV, it seems like the setting shows a healthy technological evolution drive that mirrors RL advances. I mean the fact that traditional chrome cyberware appears posed to soon go the way of the dodo and the horse-buggy: even now in the 2070s, bioware is already more essence-friendly, can do almost everything cyberware does (except senseware and datajacks), has (likely) less maintenance requirements with self-repair abilities, and is much more subtle (no likelihood of being spotted by cyberware detectors). The only residual advantage of cyberware is price. Moreover, most of the functions where cyberware cannot be substituted by biological augmentations, can generally be substituted by external miniaturized gadgets (e.g. contact lenses, earbuds, electrodes), if one does not bother with the remote possibility of being stripped of.

This to mean that even now, I see cyberware as a definitely obsolete, residual technology that characters should be moved to use only by entry-level budget and artificial availability limitations (in the case that one even bothers to heed the character creation 'ware availiability thresholds; I don't. Budget limits are more than enough for game balance concerns). It's not something that I expect successful corporate operatives and runners to have or keep in the long term. Apart from money, I cannot see any IC reason why a character should choose or keep cyberware over bioware, when the biological alternative is available. The days of chrome cyberlimbs are numbered...

Consequences for the game setting: apart from aesthetic ones: much less people wearing obvious cyberware in the streets, which makes for a less alienating social environment, which might not be a bad thing, as it lets the game setting keep pace with source fiction, it makes augmented people much more subtle: in the 2070s, if a normal-looking person suddenly shows superhuman strength or speed, is he an adept or augmented with bioware ? Moreover, in all likelihood, bioware is much less burdensome to the psyche, so 'ware alienation is less of a personal and social concern. Last but not leats, bioware is less burdensome to essence and less socially alienating, so it is more likely that people other than combat, infiltration, or matrix specialists may be interested in having it. More likelihood of hybridization between magic and bioware, for one thing.

If by 'chrome' you mean nano-generated materials blurring the line between living and dead matter, you should consider again.

I think what they mean is like the Deus Ex theme. In the original, you are playing one of the first to have non-obvious enhancements. You have two fellow agents of the old school, with clunky, highly-visible metal.

What I see is that chrome will become the new vinyl. The 'purists' and veterans will stick with the metal-look, while it becomes easier to hide your enhancements. To take a current situation; look at punk. Old-school punk is safety-pins and mohawks. New punk is baggy trousers and ties. (wtf? When did ties become punk?) And, in the same vein, it is considered that the harder it is to hide your body-modifications (like shaved hair, piercings, tatoos) the more hardcore you are.

So a professional at the subtle end of the spectrum (infiltrator, face) will look almost like a Johnson but have 'ware up the wazoo. On the other hand, a career-heavy (street samurai, meat-shield, some deckers) will look more like the T-1000 from terminator...

1. Good post.

2. There's still a certain amount of intimidation factor to be had with Chrome. The high end opponents will likely know to be more afraid of the guy that looks completely normal, but mid to low opponents are going to be more afraid of the guy that gleams.

3. Keep in mind that in SR4, there's a suggestion that Cyber and Bio affect you differently, since you only take 1/2 the essence for the lower bit. I can see there being a set of things that get routinely shuffled to cyber (Eyes/Ears, Spurs, limbs, etc), and the rest being bio. But the smartest sams are going to find the optimal balance of 3.8 bioware and 3.6 cyberware, or whatever it works out to for them. I like this - it frees you up to get your abilities from bioware, and your gizmos from cyber. You can get synaptic boosters and muscle toner, then throw in spurs and a cybergun, without sacrificing so much....

Obviously Bioware is better and will be used by most professional characters.
Exceptions are the Control Rig and the Reaction Enhancers, which make it quite attractive for a Rigger/Sam to still get Cyberware.

Keep in mind the economics of augmentation as well as the physical impact.

Pretend you're Megacorp Executive X, who needs to decide how to spend the security funds for your modest but incredibly secure compound in the middle of God Only Knows. Because you're researching The Next Big Thing here in God Only Knows, the probability of a shadowrunner hit is approaching 100%.

You have a group of dedicated and trained security personnel ready to put their lives on the line for your bottom line. How do you augment them?

1) Drugs?
2) Bioware?
3) Cyberware?

Drugs are a very neat and cheap option, however have considerable overhead. You need a constant supply of combat drugs and face your security detail going batshit insane in short order. Despite rumors to the contrary, you can't just "take it right before combat." Shadowrunners don't send RSVPs.

Bioware? Nice. It's what the shadowrunners are going to have, and your head of security (on loan to you after a five year stint as a colonel in Desert Wars) came with some already in place. You really can't beat it for efficiency, but, you know, we did have to cut back Undefined All-Inclusive Winter Holiday bonuses.

Cyberware, ahh, my dear friend cyberware. You can't fit as much into a metahuman body -- they told you why once, but the explanation involved more technobabble and terms like "holistic integrity" than you like. Damnit, you got a MBA to avoid hearing stuff like that! Anyway, you were never planning to stuff them with augmentations anyway, just one or two little things here and there to be competitive. So in the end its cheaper, if you ignore all that fruity holistic integrity stuff, plus those always-recording cybereyes are great for when they come by to ask for a raise!

Prize does matter, especially if you don't plan on playing the char often.
I created a char for a campaign, whom I consider to be very professional, who has about 4,8 points worth of cyber and 2,2 worth of bioware.

The 50BP cap for equipment is a real cap real fast...

I would like to see more reasonable rules for cyberlimbs, torso and skull. Bioware is all well and good, but surely there is something to be said for a body that is inherently bullet-resistant and which we can guess probably doesn't get tired.

I believe in previous SR resources it has been stipulated that cyberware is powered by your body's own energy. This drain can result in the same amount of fatigue as seen in unaugmented humanoids, and depending on the efficiency of the transfer, could result in faster fatiguing.

By canon, it can. The max armor rating of a cybertorso's armor is 3/5 (round down) = 0. The max rating of dermal plating and orthoskin is 3.

It may be silly but it is in the bible.

Indeed; criticizable as it may be, the maximum armor rating a cyberlimb may have is 4, whereas the maximum rating of Orthoskin is 3, or 4 for Dermal Plating + Titanium Bone Lacing. Obviously, if one sticks to the rules, armor cyberlimb is not the optimal choice for personal defense augmentation.

In the description of bioware though it states that keeping a good balance with all the augmented and unaugmented systems is tricky. That's why I think that bioware is going to have some interesting elements added to it's maintenance in Augmentation. Probably a port over of the reduced resistance to pathogens as well as some of the other stuff from M&M.

I'm kind of on the fence about the bioware/cyberware/geneware/nanoware debate. Chrome and shiny is the ultimate cyberpunk, which is Shadowrun's bread and butter. But those other wares make much more sense in the long run. I'm just wondering which edition is going to introduce bioroids and cyborg bodies

And a quick side note: Bone density shouldn't help stop bullets except when they are already in you. Orthoskin should but it would have to be like kevlar and an inch thick or something. That's outrageous.

On the corp sec front, the guy who runs security for the facility isn't necessarily the guy who equips the guards with cyber. I could easily see them being outfitted in training or thereabouts. Alternately a different person could easily deal with this if someone was given cyber after training, maybe based on rank or performance.

Indeed, cyber is not restricted to the theoretically natural.

Cyber is the only thing that can hide a gun in your arm, or allow you to record and playback everything you see.

And the only thing in the SR4 BBB that would allow the replacement of a limb, don't know if previous editions had bio replacements for limbs but for now it's only cyber.

You do realize they would have to grow a whole BODY for you right? Just growing a limb isn't that easy. If you lose it more than 2 times in the growth period you have to wait for a whole new BODY to be grown so you can harvest that one arm. That would definitely increase the price a little.

You never know. If she turns out to be an assassin trying to get you vulnerable, then your laser might come in handy.

That or for mentally scarring Sex Ed classes ...

The recent German releases (München Noir and the extended Hamburg chapter of Runner Havens) talk about the newest addition to the range of underground scenes: Cyber-Fetishism - sophisticated, decorated, finely-tuned and very obvious cyberware as a fashion-statement. It's not about effective but about kewl (and sexy, for the Cyber-Fetishists)! An extension of todays body modifications like tattoos, piercings, brandings, etc.

(The leader of Germany's CF-scene, a former runner called "Alien Queen", is described as having Kid Stealth cyberlegs, artificial tail, black full-body dermal sheathing, artificial horns, fiberglas hair and generally looking like some kind of half-woman/half-monster chimera.)

Thanks for pointing out the limb replacement thing. I can still see reasons to go cyber though.

If you lose a limb you could well be out of action for as long as it takes to grow a replacement bio limb, wyhereas an off the shelf cyber limb could be attached fairly fast. Not just in terms of runners, many people may not afford the loss of wages or psychological impact of walking around with only one arm for a period of time.

And the intimate stuff is mostly just scary. Given the cosmetic surgery available today I dread to think what horrors await, and I'm in the category of not even being fond of women having boob jobs.

One thing that they state in the BBB is that cyberlimbs are cheap and easily available which makes a statement that cloned limbs would be both harder to get (Higher availability, time to clone) and more expensive than cyberlimbs (that are almost as expensive as in SR3 percentage vice compared to the starting resources.)

So for that to be true a cloned limb would cost more (X2 perhaps) and have a higher availability than cyber (more than cyberskull perhaps) and take a certain amount of time.

This was a good topic. My 2 cents.

I forsee the obvious cyberlimb thing being what separates the Professional Runners from the Wannabees

The more subtle Runners, your Infiltration types, combat hackers, etc., are only going to go for internal based cyber. Headware and such. To minimize detection and not raise ire, supplanting the rest with bio. My goal as a Runner would be to be as inconspicuous as possible. Heck I want people to underestimate me. Even though natural looking cyberlimbs are a better option, nothing beats having a bio-jacked up body to get past those detectors and cameras and surprise folks. Until they figure out how to start looking for Bio-enhancements of course (IIRC).

Joe-Bum-Runnabe on the street is going to be stuck cybering up the old way. Either for cost or intimidation purposes.

Johnsons are then going to judge you even more based off of appearance.

I do think cyber is more for fashion in some cases too as some have already said.

The thing is, though... I would like cyber to have a niche, and not just the "it's cheaper, and can do some stuff bio can't" one.

SR has never embraced some of the cybernetic monstrosities that we could come up with. Cyborgs (all limbs, torso, head, ears, eyes, etc) are createable with alpha or beta grade ware, but the rules that exist governing the statistics for replacements hinder this being desireable to the point that it's not worth it. Cybertechnology gave us a variety of weapons mounts, but there almost seemed to be no point to them. The Kid Stealth legs are one of the few good, solid examples of a piece of replacement ware specifically designed to do something better than the thing it replaced. Hydraulic Jacks and Balance Tails are others.

What if I want to take a cyborg, and not even bother trying to hide the fact that he's armored? Should I simply use the worn armor rules, despite the fact that the armor I'm talking about is literally bolted to his body?

I'm fine with the idea that you can make bioware that outperforms cyberware. I just don't think that cyberware should only be the poor cousin to bio. There's some really outlandish things we could do if the game were to get inventive with ware, or step outside the "keep the chrome looking like the original body as much as you can" niche. It sounds like some of the German Runner Havens info talks about this, but more as a fetish than anything else. Hopefully, Augmentation takes a more serious approach to cyberware, and gives it a good, solid basis for it's continued existence.

totally agree.. the thing CP2020 did best was get creative with cyber.

I so hope for the impact of Dr. Halberstam had on the MCT Otomo project.

Would you mind refreshing my memory on that?

Dr. Halberstam was a consultant for the MCT Wetware project - which put biological brains into drones. (CD)
The MCT Otmo is a humanoid full synthflesh drone barely indistinguishable from a human. (SF)

In d20 Cyberscape, they include craziness like quadrupedial bodies and built in jetpacks. I think going that far out is a definite style thing. But if you go there, you're def. not going to do it with Bioware.

Now, vat grown wings.... I'd be all over that.

I'm not sure that humans are built light enough to support actual flight with reasonably-sized wings. Stylistically, wings ought to be easy enough to do (though they might require some cyber too... think the "semi-autonomous balance tail," which was chipped to move on its own.

Now, if you start getting into major bio-sculpting and 'ware (think bone density reduction combined with some sort of ultralight lacing to maintain strength, major muscle streamlining/wiriness, removal of body fat, and the replacement of some organs with more efficient, smaller (or at least lighter) equivalents), you might be able to get reasonably-sized effective wings onto a human without crippling them or forcing them to get a cybertorso.

And you could always depart significantly from nature, and make the wings capable of folding up a few times in the process of being tucked away...

Blatant cyberware is also part of an image, and where jobs involving violence are concerned image is 50% of it. Plus the ability to have your (cyber)arm blown off and still keep fighting instead of bleeding to death and dying from shock right there is incredible.
Cyberware will always be a desirable option - and it's not even expensive