I don't see any sample characters with cyberlimbs in the core book.

What is this telling me about cyberlimbs and their place in SR4?

That they match the flavor text stating that they are considered crude and outdated? In SR4, cyberlimbs are the kind of thing you are likelier to see on gangers and other desperate unfortunates, rather than shadowrunners. In SR3, by contrast, two of the main book's archetypes had cyberlimbs.

That the rules for cyberlimgs are so screwed up that even the writers didn't use them?

I made a cyberlimbed pregened character for the con I'm working at in a month; I saw this picture on brouhaha's DeviantArt account, saw the cyberlimb, saw the Cross Applied Technologies patch on his clothing and immediately thought "Ex-Corp Company Man" who is now on the run from Ares and lost his arm somewhere along the way.

Because that's what I'm saving cyberlimbs for personally--not for augmentation, but for those times with a character's limb has an unfortunate encounter with a hydraulic press or perhaps a woodchipper.

I think a single cyberlimb can add character not to mention some interesting gee-gaws to a PC. Totally cybering out a character has never been a praticularly effective build though. A buddy did it once in 2nd ed after about 2 months of playing we realized we hadn't read the rules right and technically speaking he should have been dead sitting somewhere at -2 essance. Then we decided he was more fun alive so we kept the character, just didn't let him pump any more cyber into his system.

One of my favorite characters of all time ended up getting a cyberarm as a result of an in game horribly botched resistance roll. The DM and I decided that it would be cheeper and easier for the character to get a cyberlimb rather than undergo the reconstructive surgury.

By 2070 I'm not sure you would see too many people diliberatly lopping bits of their bodies off to replace them with chrome. The funky feeling essance loss alone gives you would be something most people would want to minimize, also your meat arms stay SOTA. IMO a character with cyberlimbs isn't trying to say "Look how shiny and new I am, I must be a badass." he's saying "A troll ripped my arm off and started beating me with it, the troll still lost, do you really want to start shit with me?"

the basic problem of cyberlimbs in SR is that they are not cost effective unless you need to always have some toolkit or similar handy...

but this is showing up more and more in other games to. thing is that sooner or later bioware will overtake cyber. making cyber for the most part last years tech...

bah she's not a true cyber character unless she has a pop out articulating arm with a heavy machine gun mount Heavally cybered characters can be a very effective build if they are done right, they are difficult to put together properly though.

I'm really hoping that the cyber book has some sort of "simplified" optional limb rule along the lines of the houserule that I use... the limb has stats equal to yours, you can boost strength if you pay for it, and if some other physical stat changes you've gotta spend an hour in a shop getting it tuned or take a penalty with that limb. I predict a huge number of players flocking to the "optional" rule.

The current cyberlimb rules border on the ludicrous.

/agree, although slightly less vehemently.

I'd argue it's viability...

Fun, fun, fun...

I think it shows the move of Shadowrun from cyberpunk/fantasy to transhuman/fantasy and the emphasis on magic more than technology which they have been going towards since SR1. Yeah the cyberlimb rules are "broken" but a fully cybered character can easily be viable utilizing house rules. Of course I also advocate house ruling Magic attribute limits but that's just me. I'm more cyber than fantasy.

Oh yeah, Demerzel, if I played a cybered character in your game and you subjected me to those rules then I would think that you were a magic-biased GM. I could make a fully cybered sammie who could do the same thing as a gunslinger adept but you would probably think the adept a good build but not the sammie. To each their own I guess.

I think the creators limited full conversion borgs so that they wouldn't be seen as just a Cyberpunk 2020 clone (all though in the beginning the only real difference was magic) but I think that full conversion borgs should be a viable build. It is CYBERpunk fantasy roleplaying.

I'm still wondering how you can make a character with 5 in all attributes when you can't have higher than 4 in cyberlimb enhancement due to availability of ratingX3, at chargen. Eventually perhaps you'd be able to but why would you want to, outside of a good concept for it.

You can get physical stats of 6 for cyberlimbs for a starting character, unless I'm reading my BBB wrong. Pg. 335 states that cyberlimbs start with Body, Agility and Strength of 3 and that only cybertorsos can have cyberlimb enhancements with a rating higher than 3. Therefore, if I'm reading this correctly, you can get 6 Body, 6 Agility and 6 Strength in each cyberlimb for only 9 capacity, 9 legality (R for body and strength) and 2100 for regular grade ware.

With that math a runner can get 2 regular grade cyberarms with 6 Body, 6 Agility, and 6 Strength for 34200 and still have 6 capacity (in each arm) left over for enhancements, like armor (2 pnts for 600 and 4 cap) or cyberarm gyromounts (4 cap and 6000 ).

I might be wrong about that though. To my reading the BBB gives a rating system of 1-7 for cyberlimbs, meaning that you can get a maximum rating of 10 for cyberlimbs. I'm guessing these enhancements are on top of the starting level 3 for the cyberlimbs. Is that right?

Frankly, the full cyber approach is far from an optimal one for a sammie (although pbangarth's character seems more like a skill monkey than a sammie), mainly because availability and capacity limits greatly curtail the power of cyberlimbs. Plus, a full cyborg will tend to suffer from lower initiative (not enough nuyen or Essense left), and lower physical stats (compare 5's across the board to a sammie with muscle augmentation and toner, along with dermal/bone augmentation). Not that you can't create some interesting (and possibly even playable) characters who are fully cybered, but they will lag behind sammies who use a good mix of cyberware and bioware.

The only semi-decent build that I would use with cyberlimbs would be to get a cyberarm with agility enhancement: 3 and a gyromount. And even so, it isn't worth it for a sammie. It's more something that you get for a face or hacker who is semi-combat oriented and in need of a cheap boost.

I'm surprised no-one has suggested the following solution.

Based on the reasonable assumption that mechanical limbs in 2070 can be alot stronger, mroe resiliant and faster than a natural, organic version, and based on the observation that lopping off a limb is lopping off a limb regardless of the quality of the replacement part, cyberware grade should apply to capacity rather than to essence cost.

Therefore, you can get the fast, powerful limbs that you want, with a bit of armour, too. It's just going to cost you a lot more. There are several, very simple options that a GM can use to actually implement this principle. One would be to apply the essence modifier as a divisor to the capacity. Thus an Alpha grade limb will have 20% more capacity than a standard grade limb. E.g. a concealed full arm normally has capacity 8 and could support attributes of Body 6, Strength 6, Agility 5; the alpha version can throw in a point of armour or additional two points of Agility, too (I rounded up). As a limiter, you could make the cost of attribute increases scaled by grade as well. So the above example would cost you an additional 21,000 for the extra points of agility.

And there you go - Cyberware is competitive again, it's just expensive so the general flavour of the setting will be the same. Bio still makes more sense to most people, but cyberware is restored to its position as brute force king.

An alternate system would be to rule that the base 3 attribute ratings apply to armour as well. So the additional points of armour you pay for are on top of this. I.e armour on a cyberlimb ranges from 3 to 7. Is that powerful? Yes, but not overly so. Remember the issue with healing times, concealment, cost-to-benefit ratio, loss of other options (no bone density, etc), etc. But is it realistic? Yes. Even basic metal or plastic limbs should be far more damage resistant in 2070 than the organic alternative. And that's not even starting on issues such as the lack of bleeding. Even if your cyberleg is shot to a thousand pieces beyond all repair, you're not going to bleed to death the way a simple passing bullet will cause you to when it grazes through your femoral artery.

So these are two options I would consider. I don't think either is game breaking. The first option could get a little silly with deltaware but who buys deltaware? And you can always use a different scaling system along the same principle. And the armour? It's nice, but to really get those 3 points of armour, you have to borg out like crazy and that has plenty of costs.

My thoughts.

-K.

knasser,

That ain't bad at all...

I just started a game but that will be a houserule for consideration when I run another game assuming that Augmentation doesn't do it for me.

Wow!

Despite my attempt to stave them off with an attempt at levity (clearly ineffectual), there seem to be a few hurt feelings floating around anyway. After reading several threads (adepts suck- adepts rule-sammies are better-etc.-etc.) I felt a little frustrated when I saw yet another thread about the crappy rules. So I wrote a blurb trying to show that a fully formed, functional, believable character can be created using those allegedly crappy rules. The following comment by me:

*******
My impression is that usually when someone says (PC type X) is useless, it is because he hasn't taken the time to figure out how to make (PC type X) work. [ Ouch! Ooof! OK, enough bricks and snowballs, guys!]
*******

has been taken as an insult, and my argument that a nearly fully cyber-limbed character can be a viable character has been labelled 'abuse' of the rules and 'munchkin' behaviour. My statement has also been misquoted and taken to be that "the people who want to make a character with only one arm replaced should consider that they are not trying hard enough to make the rules work."

I intended no insult to anyone. I merely argued, and continue to maintain, that a viable character can be made using the cyberlimb rules as they stand. The rules are there for us to use to make characters that are fun to play. I did make the mistake of talking in terms of the numbers, rather than taking people through my thinking process right from the start. So, if you will bear with me, please follow along and see what I intended for Sept de Neuf. Forgive me if while writing this I miss the latest entries in the thread.

I started with the desire to try using cyberlimbs, as I had never played a character like that. So why, I asked, would anyone do that to themselves? Yes, there could be a power/edge-over-the-other-guy thing as some earlier BBB suggested, but people are really attached (!) to their body parts, and wouldn't give them up lightly, particularly if they were healthy and working well.

But what if they weren't working well? What if someone, a bright kid with hopes for the future is born with a wrecked body -- I don't know, genetic accident, harmful environmental conditions, whatever. Surely 2070 has all kinds of ways to jerk a body around. Say this kid has grown up unable to do much of any kind of physical activity, confined at home, and her parents just don't have the money to fix her, even if she could be fixed. Reading and viewing fantasies and sci-fis are the only way of escape for her. (Hence the connection to Star Trek.)

Now part two of the equation. Imagine there is a corporation that seeks various ways to maximize profits and is not too concerned with moral issues. (*Gasp* Does such a thing exist in the enlightened 21st century?) To this corporation, human beings are assets, to be used profitably, and discarded when no longer profitable. This corporation, lets call it Ares, has stock of cyberlimbs available, and since sales are dropping, it decides to run some cost estimates and experiments to see if it can get some profit out of these things before they are good only for scrap.

So they seek out individuals who would be willing, at company expense, to be outfitted with cyberlimb technology and employed by the corporation for exciting work. Do you think the home-bound wrecked-bodied girl (from Quebec, because Cross is there and because I wanted it) would consider it? I do. "I could be like Seven-of-Nine!" Sure, the corporation doesn't tell her the fine print (more on that later) but she sees only the chance to be free from her limitations. Ares tests her and finds a person of strong will and intellect, able to get along with others, handle new situations and think on her ... well... feet. They see a prime subject for training as a corporate agent, and they accept her into the program.

[*numbers bit*] With this background story it is perfectly acceptable to put most of the attribute build points into the mental attributes, and rob the physical ones. Such people exist today. Look around you. I just put her into the Shadowrun universe and started from there.[]

Of course, the corporation did not tell her of the down side of such massive implantation, at least in any way that discouraged her from accepting. The corporate position is to develop a product, use it as long as it is functional, and as long as it makes a profit, there is no down side. For just over 100,000 nuyen cyberlimbs that will soon be obsolete could be implanted to make this subject a functioning agent. Whatever issues that might come up in the future, as long as she survives long enough to make back the investment, she is a successful investment.

Ares builds her better, faster and stronger (with a few extra implants), trains her in covert operations, develops her natural talents and comes up with a good agent. It uses her for some number of operations. Her training and experience would be reflected in her skills.

So why would she leave the corporation that gave her a life of relative freedom? Wouldn't she be grateful and a loyal corporate citizen? Probably, but there could be some crisis or catalytic event that changes her relationship to Ares. What if there was some kind of accident or damage to her, say on a mission, that tips the balance sheet in favour of 'decommisioning' this asset?

[*numbers bit*] This is where the Negative Qualities come in. She already had well over a hundred BPs in skills, but I wanted her to be damaged goods, so Ares would want to dump her. (Note: it was not necessary for me to give her -any- negative qualites to have a useful character.) So I gave her a few Hacking related damages (scorched, sensitive neural structure, codeblock) to represent the damage from the mission gone bad. On top of that she has SINner, because she was a good corporate citizen (missing, not criminal so not criminal SIN- OK realistically this was a Quality required by the back story) and weak immune system because the issue of disease Demerzel points out -should- be a real problem for her, because of all those implants. I put most of those extra BP into skills because neither edge nor contacts should be high for this character on the run... she burned her bridges on the way out.[]

Sept learns that Ares is going to decommission her and reclaim whatever implants it can (Hey - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!) Feeling utterly betrayed, she decides she doesn't want to lose her physical freedom, and plans her escape. The newby character ends up in Denver (SR Missions centre of operations), down on her luck, broke, barely any contacts (Yes, a fixer -and- a street doc she managed to find before she got out.) Sept de Neuf is disillusioned, hungry, alone ... and dangerous.
Now there's a fun character to play.

[*numbers bit*]

There are two major arguments I can glean from the posts as to why such a character is broken (as opposed to cheating) and both of them have to do with damage: pathogenic and physical.

Despite the fact that the game is designed to abstract things like damage, people are not happy to just let a BOD of 5 be a BOD of 5.

A) What about diseases? Sept's BOD should be 1 for resisting diseases, I am told, as the cyberlimbs have nothing to do with resisting disease. Well, neither do flesh limbs! The primary source of resistance to disease comes from the white blood cells which are made primarily in the red marrow of the flat bones (scapula, hips, skull, etc.) and to a much lesser degree in the ends of the long bones (the ones lost to cyberlimbs). One could even make an argument that the lost limbs also no longer need the attention of the blood's defence mechanism, so the white blood cells that are made could So keeping the abstract BOD of 5 and representing the loss of some resitance by giving her a weak immune system Quality seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable and fair application of the rules. I considered including pathogenic defense, but I think it is appropriately miserly of Ares to have saved that expense and instead boosted her synapses. After all, everyone knows a 'one pass wonder' is useless, right? [For Gods, sake! Do I really need to put a smiley in here??] I would rather she had the pathogenic defense, but I want her to live long and prosper.

B) What about gun shots? Sept's BOD should be 1, I am told, for healing the 'hemorrhaging liver'. Again, how does having a flesh limb help fix a hole in the liver? And again, maybe the remaining organs can heal faster because the blood and food energy and whatever can be concentrated where they are needed, rather than maintaining the other 50% of the body they once had to support.

So if argument can be made for both benefit and detriment to health systems as a result of cyberlimb implantation, why not just stick with the rules that were designed to be abstract so we could play the game and have fun?

[]

I think Sept de Neuf would be a fun character to play. Scared and lonely and looking over her shoulder, yet trained and able to meet any number of situations the shadows have to offer. And yes, she may very well die from some stupid pathogen or a gunshot. Ares built her to be expendable and they don't care. It is fully within the back story -and- the rules to play such a character.

I appreciate the folks who weighed in on all sides of this issue. It is a shame that we (myself included) sometimes allow a frustration to draw out words that show more emotion than logic.

To any I may have insulted, I apologize.

Peter

her natural body is a 1. whether or not you think that cyberlimbs should hurt her ability to withstand diseases or toxins, i don't see why they would help her ability to resist those things either (provided the disease or toxin is not dependant upon the meat version not being replaced, of course).

since body 1 is her natural body, it should be what determines how her natural body reacts to things. her natural body's ability to heal is based on that natural body of 1. her natural body's ability to resist toxins and disease is based on that natural body. just like you wouldn't give her a strength 5 bite (chargen legal i assume, so no cyberskull), you wouldn't give the meat portions in her body anything other than her natural body of 1 to resist poisons/toxins, or to recover from injuries.

I use this houserule:

Cyberlimbs: Cyberlimbs Come with rating 3 Body, Agility, and Strength as normal, but attribute increases do not cost capacity until it exceeds your body's natural unaugmented rating. If your natural rating increases during the course of the game, see your local street doc for an adjustment and you'll get that capacity back. Armor costs capacity as normal.

Works for me!

Symbiots. Going out on a limb here buy maybe consider maybe buying a body score that's not 1.

But as far as the symbiots are concerned Ares would be nuts to go through the level of surgery without some form of serious healing assistance. Probably more likely than pathogenic defense.

I can't actually find anywhere in the RAW where it says you don't use augmented body. I feel the major problem might be that stats should be averaged for all limbs including head. You can probably get away with saying you use the attributes for the arms only for shooting and the legs only for jumping, but wounds or toxins would be systemic. Therefore (5+5+5+5+5+1)/6=4.333 rounded to 4.

I wouldn't have a problem with the character (although the rules for cyberlimbs are at present somewhat inadequate, which would make GMing a pain). At least the BPs are all accounted for (unlike the troll adept I was asked to approve, which on examination used 440BPs. Whoops. Someone forgot to take into account the cost of being a troll.)

ornot, if you are suggesting that you are to use the average attribute for healing and toxin resistance tests then I should direct you to p335 the section on cyberlimb enhancements.

Um, Demerzel, you might want to think about the full effect of a blanket ruling that a natural healing Test is Body x2 +/- modifiers (1 day). Because that also means that Mages and Technomancers will have a harder time then Mundanes with natural healing.

Well that plus I'm fairly sure that if that was the intent then something about the fact that the character in the example having a harder time naturally healing would have been mentioned somewhere, if not in the example then in the rules themselves. The fact that applying modifers only comes up in the Rules section for First Aid & Medicine leads me to believe that they aren't supposed to apply to natural healing. Well that plus if I run down the entire table then most people will be facing at least a -4 to their Dice Pool from being indoors and not using a Medkit.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending pbangarth's build because I don't think it really is that viable, but I disagree that the modifiers on that table makes sense in a blanket ruling.

*Edit*

Plus the fact that most Sammies will also have a hard time with natural healing due to all of the Cyber they have.