I totally agree with you, man.

Nope. SR3 specifically ruled that only Cyberware that improved Initiative (not just Reaction) made you twitchy. Bioware or Magical improvements did not cause this anomality.

Really? I could have -sworn- something specifically in M&M applied the same thing to bioware init enhancers.

Oh well, I allways perfered bioware for a reason

Actually, it is more difficult to keep track of SR4 Essence than it is to keep track of SR3 Essence, Bioindex, and overstress. I'm not going to go into the SR3 rules for gaining stress points through trauma due to the fact that they are horrific and cumbersome, applied to uncybered characters, and served a real function that is not being served in SR4 at all (simulating the long-term effects of debilitating injuries).

In SR3 it is one simple 2D functions and a single comparison.
In SR4 it is a conditional 3D function that depends on a single comparison and can be broken into two conditional 2D functions that depend on a single comparison and a function of those two functions in order to avoid conditional 3D calculations.

To break it down.

SR3 (x = essence cost, y = bioindex, f(x) = essence)

SR4 (x = cyber cost, y = bio cost, f(x,y) = essence)

Simplified (f(x) = loss from cyber, g(y) = loss from bio, j(f(x),g(y)) = total essence loss)

To better illustrate the issue I have made graphs of the functions.
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/8390/graphsmt5.jpg
The top graphs are for the most common conditions of the SR4 3D function (something divided by 2) and the bottom graph is for the SR3 2D function.

Other than that, it would be correct to say that SR4 and SR3 are so different that a much more complex mathematical comparison is required. One would have to take into account the value of each item in relation to the two unique dice systems, for example

Minor error here.
It is never x+y, one of them is always halved. Drop the third case, and make one of the first two cases >= or <=, as both are equivalent models.

Hereby nominates Hyzmarca for Dumpshocker of the Year award.

(Two days to go - are we still taking nominations?)

That's bullshit. In SR3 you were penalized for healing purposes by the Essence cost of cyberware, by your bio index separately, and suffered a number of other penalties as well that were based on one or both of those values, sometimes halved.

Yes, the check to see if you were in Overstress was fairly simple - but since overstress was a death sentence that noone ever went into under any circumstances I don't really care.

The point is that in SR3 you had to keep track of two values (Essence Cost, Bio Index) and sometimes you halved the BioIndex and sometimes you didn't and then you applied them as penalties to some things.

In SR4 you will halve one or the other, but then it goes into a big pile and you never have to think about it again. In short, you still have two values, and one is halved and one is not - but it only matters when updating your character. The rest of the time you just have one value to keep track of. That's simpler in every way.

Yes, it's slightly more of a pain in the ass to write it in computer code because it is contingent rather than fixed what gets halved - but this is a fucking pen and paper role playing game. I don't give a damn whether things are easy or difficult to make into computer code. It's easier to do the math by hand now and that's what matters. And perhaps even more to the point, it's incredibly easier to actually use the game system at the table once your character sheet has been made. That's huge. And good.

-Frank

Easy enough for a computer to compute .

You kids and your high-level programming languages and your maths libraries. When I was a programmer, all we had was assembly language and we had to write out every instruction separately. And we liked it!

Okay, not quite that bad, but your code would actually compile to quite a series of steps before it was fed to the processor(s). It's a bit cheeky to just write out a few inline functions and pretend this is the equivalent of what a human has to do. The human equivalent (and the true representation of how complex or not the system is), are the low-level steps the computer has to do to fulfill that function.

Of course, I suspect you know that.

So much for simplier rules... *walks away with hang'd head*

True, I have programmed in assembler many years ago, on my very own 6502 cpu .
But then was then, and now is now .

The rule is simple.

What's complicated about it?

That's... one way to represent it.

Of course, you could also represent it as a single 1d line. You know, how you just have a "Total Essence Cost" which is a single number. SR3 had Essence Cost Multipliers and Bioindex multipliers for implantation as well as for grades. SR4 has Essence cost multipliers for having Bioware and cyberware as well as for grades. It really is the same amount of multipliers, it's just that now you're only fucking around with one total (Essence) instead of three (Essence, Bio Index, Essence Index). And the grades all mean the same thing, and there's no longer any other information to keep track of besides gear, rating, and grade.

Things have been simplified and I really don't care about your 900 point graph - the fact is that it's not a graph. It's a number that acts as a dicepool penalty when people magically heal you. It used to be 2 different numbers, one of which counted down and was a target number bonus to magical healing and the other of which counted up and was a target number penalty to the same magical healing tests.

-Frank

The answer is "Yes" in any case.
Though he may die if he had more than 1.32 worth of cyber isntalled.

Holy crap are you making this more complicated than it needs to be. The "Actual Essence Cost From Bioware" is a number that you never ever need in Shadowrun. It's not like Bio Index that actually did things. No, it's just part of the calculation that generates total Essence Cost - no more or less than the Beta Grade multiplier on your Ortho-Skin.

You have four numbers:

1. Essence Cost (Cyberware)
2. Essence Cost (Bioware)
3. Total Actual Essence Cost
4. Essence Value

That's still four numbers, and here's the really cool part:

Three of them only matter when implanting new 'ware!

That's right, there's exactly one value that you need to use in your daily life. Not two, not three, just one. You can plausibly play the game without even knowing how the other three values work and simply handing your character sheet over to a friend who can perfrm the ruinous calculation of "divide by two" when your new equipment is installed.

Ta-da! Simple. You have the same number of numbers that ever matter, and the number of numbers that matter during play has been reduced substantially. It is totally sweet.

-Frank

In our group this very often used to happen at chargen. Or at least it was very rare the anyone bought cyberware during the campaign. Partly because 'ware was maxed, and party due to the cost of new 'ware.


Also, wouldn't you say that attribute caps increase the value of attribute boosting 'ware?

Not only that, but in SR4, where you use skill plus Attribute, getting, say, muscle toner: 2 means that you add two dice to a lot of skill tests. And things like wired reflexes not only increase your initiative, but give you extra dice to dodge attacks.