a buddy and I were going over cyber possibilities, when i came upon the "magic" rope in sr4.

i know the overall strength of this stuff isn't supposed to be that high, but i was wondering how well it would work if strengthened and coiled inside of cyber arms.

what do you think the maximum reach (in feet/meters) of these would be? of course, Constrictor and Omega Red are comic book characters, and thus not limited by gaming rules, so their ability to have ten meters of carbandium coils coming out of their suit/arms is a bit much.

also, what about strength? i think they should have at least the strength of the character, regardless of the fluff on the material. but i'd like to hear your ideas.

lastly, what potential game mechanic advantages do you foresee in having these coils?

For those of us that aren't familiar with the characters, care to provide some more details?

He's talking about a prehensile, retractable cyber-tentacle in a cyberlimb.

Through in a catgirl and school children driving mechas and I'd say it's definitely good.

I'd tend to move away from using magic to power cyber. Look up a real world example (and there are some stuff on artificial muscles that could be used here.)

Wikipedia is your friend.
Omega Red and Contrictor

Heck, this would also probably apply to Doc Ock in terms of the ahem... tentacles. Oh and Scorpion too, though his is connected to his arse... yeah...

I've considered this idea before, too, but since I've never had a player go for it, or a terribly good reason to put it in an NPC, I've never nailed down stats.
In terms of lifting things I doubt they'd be all that strong, but in terms of pulling or supporting weight I think they'd be very strong. Of course, if you made them thicker they could be stronger, but how much rope can you fit in an arm, really? Maybe say str 1 for a 3-meter version, str 2 for a 2 meter, and str 3 for a 1-meter?

Right. So how much rope fits in a storage compartment?

thanks moon-hawk, jaid, and PBTHHHHT.


yeah, i am talking about myomeric rope, but it was early and my spelling was not up to scratch.

while reading the replies, i also remembered Burnout from the Dragon Heart Trilogy. He actually had something quite like this. He had something akin to what Jaid suggested, with multiple small ropes coming out from beneath his flipped back (ewwww) fingers. how strong were his?

what about costs? I don't think it'd be more essence draining, but nuyen wise?
and what if we did increase the essence cost for stronger versions? though i can't think of a really good reason to, besides game balance.

thanks for the feedback everyone.




edited for craziness

Depending on how strong you made the rope, you may want to insist that they have a cybertorso, the same way that they do for cyberlimbs with enhancements about rating 3.

i had thought of this, but how would storage in a cyber torso work?

I wasn't thinking of storing the cyber-rope in the torso, just that you would need a cyber-torso to handle the extra pull from the rope. Like you need a cyber-torso to handle cyber-limbs with better than rating 3 enhancements. Otherwise, I can see the limb with the cyber-rope being pulled off the body, or some other equally drastic result.

if you're gonna go that far, they'd need cyberlegs too... probably easier to just do like dock ock... two go to the ground for support purposes, the other two reach from the same thing to grab stuff.

speaking of which, if you aren't too worried about concealing them, they don't even have to be in cyber storage compartments... you could always just keep them in a backpack, which you harness yourself to, in the style of doctor octopus...

Just to cause trouble:

Put a Flyspy drone in a storage compartment, but tether it to ten meters of monowire. Use direct neural interface to have the Flyspy zip about slicing heads off.

nice.

Great says FOURstring the samurai... Much helps much, even with automatic monowhips

Getting normal coils of wire to work would not take much effort, and you can store many meters without problem. The controlable wire should take much more space, and I´d allow only one or two meters inside a cyberarm.

You would also need a really fast drone to work it properly. If the drone wasn't fast enough, you wouldn't be able to do serious damage to the target, if any damage.

And you would be in a real world of hurt if someone hacked your drone.