I'll take this as they appear in SR4a.

Olfactory booster/taste Booster:
The costs here are fine, but what the hell is with the availability rating?
24 Availability for +6 to smell or taste things? Really?

Cybereye/Ear Enhancements:
Generally overpriced in comparison to non-cyber equivalents. Most of this stuff is ubiquitous and churned out by the truckload, why does this cost so much when the eye/ear itself is so cheap?

Bone Lacing vs. Bone Density Augmentation:
Bone lacing is easily detected and highly illegal, while the bioware version is hard to spot and totally legal. This doesn't really make sense. It's sort of balanced by cost difference, but that's about it.

Muscle Replacement vs Muscle Toner/augmentation:
Replacement is essence-costly and easier to spot on a scanner. While it is about a third the price, both options are so cheap that there is almost never any question as to which you will be getting.

Cyberlimbs:
A lot of crazy problems here. I'll start with the 3 as the set normal attributes. Why would a troll EVER take one of these? I'll also mention the stacking of armor from multiple limbs. So many threads on breaking this.

Adrenaline Pump:
Dangerous, Expensive, gives bonuses more simply and MUCH more cheaply delivered by drugs and stim patches.


These can be put into a cyberlimb to negate the essence costs. They may be expensive, but are hard to steal.

As for cyberears/eyes, the modifications are my main issue, but the baseline parts are great. Image link and recording functions that cannot be removed for 500 nuyen is a pretty good deal.

No, just no.
One cyber arm with 9 Agility gives an Agility 1 character full body Agility of 2:
(5*1 + 9) / 6 =2, somethink rounds to 2

Really a sleep regulator.
Not only does pretty much every single one of my non adept character builds have it(adepts have sustenance), i would my self get one implanted in a hearth beat if i lived in the sixth world
.15 essence is super cheap for that piece of awesomeness.

Encephelon v PuSHeD: PuSHeD is super cheap and very low essence. Encephelon has a high essence cost (which is good when balancing hacking adepts against mundanes) but costs way too much for such a minimal benefit. What really makes this messed up is it's cheaper (money and essence wise) to get a cyberlimb, stick a nanohive in, buy Neural Enhancering nanites at R3, and grab a Reality Amplifier Focus during gameplay than to just get Encephelon R1. I really like Encephelon in concept, because that massive essence cost is a significant barrier to the awakened, but it just doesn't do enough for the nuyen cost.

Cerebral enhancers: Maybe I'm missing something but for any hermetic mage/picking up Cerebral Enhancer R2 or R3 gives you a nice boost to your drain stat while leaving plenty of essence for other ware. That seems like too good of a trade. Especially because, much as a love 'em, they also seem way more valuable to the awakened than the mundanes, given that cerebral enhancers don't boost hacking and there's plenty of other ways to boost logic-linked skills if you need to.

Max, I think one typically divides by 5 limbs. The skull is not a limb. I could be wrong. I don't see how it'll give you a 5 either way, though. It certainly doesn't affect any Agility skills using your legs. It'll give you 5 for both arms together, of course, but someone did say 'full body'.

Well, 'torso' isn't a limb either, but I can certainly see that it should be included in the full body stat calculation.

@politeman - I agree about the encephelon.

The torso is included, certainly. Like I said, 5 limbs. If it's 6, the math in the example on SR4A p343 doesn't work.

I think they just calculated (9 + 1) / 2 = 5

I think the skull should be excluded because it's got so little capacity that it would almost always drag down the average.

Of course, the extremely low capacity of the skull is a problem itself. Maybe a fix would be to give it inherent armor rating? While it's not terribly big, the skull is an extremely critical part of the body, so any armor on it could give disproportionate gains.

I would drop the essence cost (maybe .3-.5) and make the armor stack with any worn armor normally.

Contrary to cyberarms and -legs, skulls and torsos are shells. They have no inherent motors for movement. The user has to use his own muscle. This is why they will always lower the average.

This should not be reflected in the armor rating. Even a MilSpec Helmet has only +2/+2, as it only covers a very small portion of the body. The armor value in SR is based on both the protective quality of the material and the coverage.

@Faraday: Cyberlimb armor already stacks with other armor. Cyberlimb armor even stacks normally with other cyberlimb armor. Giving Cyberlimb users armor really isn't a problem in SR.

Was the capacity of a nanohive ever addressed in any errata or post print writer discussions? I feel I've read somewhere that the ease with which one could put such a high level mod into a low level implant was ret-coned or modified.

Or maybe it was all a dream. A sweet, munchkin crushing dream.

I suppose I should expand on that. I know armor stacks by RAW and you can have 30 or so armor standing around naked. I don't really like that state of affairs.

I tend to run with cyberlimb armor being totaled up across all limbs and divided by 5. I do not include cyberskulls, stacking them as per RAW.

No, cyberlimb averaging doesn't work like that. You average (meat body + cyberlimbs)/(1+cyberlimbs). No, this doesn't make sense. Yes, this IS what the rules say. See the example. Also cyberlimb armor doesn't average. If you're concerned about cybered characters being able to keep up with awakened characters, nerfing cyberlimbs is not the place to start.

Part of why some people think that some cyberware/non-magic characters are worse than they really are is because the things people love to nerf are typically mundane things.

"No, but I like to pretend it did, and it's cool."

I rest my case.

It's simpler to list ware that ISN'T either crap or overpriced.

Ultrasound sensor (when in a cyberlimb), Reaction Enhancers, Skillwires 1-4, Wired Reflexes 1-2, Cyberarms, Cyberlegs, Cyberhands, Cyberfeet, depending on whether "shooting someone with a one-handed weapon" is a "test directly involving those limbs" cyber lower arm, the cyberlimb enhancements, cyberarm gyromount, some of the cyberguns, Enhanced Articulation, Muscle Augmentation, Muscle Toner, Platelet Factories, Suprathyroid Gland (but why the fuck is it 20F?), Synthacardium, Tailored Pheremones, Cerebral Booster, Pain Editor, Reflex Recorder, Synaptic Booster.

I didn't go through augmentation because I'm lazy, and because this thread will quickly turn into "but all my characters have Mnemonic Enhancer because I'm a *~roleplayer~*" anyways.

Only with the rather obvious Bulk Mod you can get to 24. Even then there is not much room for other goodies. While theoretically possible I doubt you will actually see many tanks like that.
The rule and the example are true for Attributes. There are three kinds of Attributes, Physical, Mental and Special. Armor is not part of any of those groups.

Hmm. I suppose you could get them Customized, that would help a little bit. Still, on the whole cyberskulls suck, they provide far too few Capacity for the enormous amount of Essence they eat up.



You could easily decide that structurally enhancing the skull is much more effective than merely covering it with a helmet.





But that makes cyberlimb armor a ridiculously bad investment: extra Body on a cyberlimb costs half as much Capacity as Armor, but it's effects are much nicer (higher Encumbrance limit, resistance to toxins).

I think anyone with 30 points of Cyberlimb Armor could ever be naked, because they don't really have much mere mortal skin surface to be naked. Also, I think you can only go up to 22, because every limb has a limit of 4 points of Cyberlimb armor. It would also eat up a majority of all those limbs' Capacity (all, if using non-obvious limbs).

I see your point though; if you don't want that much Armor on anyone, why not reduce the maximum amount of Armor possible on each limb to 2-3?

Cyberdiabetes is pretty silly but it is actually a good thing for game balance; heavily cybered characters can get better defenses than non-cybered awakened characters because of it, and it's one of the few really major advantages they have. It's not a good idea to remove it.

Right, armor just stacks. I was referring to the people with think that it's (cyberlimbs + meat*(X-#cyberlimbs)/X rather than (cyberlimbs+meat)/(1+#cyberlimbs), where X varies from person to person.

I thought of this when I originally went with changing the cyberarmor rules. I made it cost .5 capacity and 100 and decreased the availability to 3xrating. Also left it legal.
Armor's biggest disadvantages within RAW are the high availability and slot costs.

That would probably fix the overall armor issue, and is a good idea.

But what about smaller armor investments? For example, buying a full cyberleg is 15k, adding 2 armor to that is a negligible nuyen cost and uses 4 capacity. That leaves you 16 capacity for whatever other enhancements you want on top having what amounts to slightly more expensive dermal plating that is entirely legal. It will even stack with dermal plating/orthoskin/etc according to RAW, as far as I know.

I don't see any problems with that. If people want to play an armored character, that's alright, within limits.

It's inconvenient when armor values among the PCs vary very much; enemies that would be a mild matchup for the Tank would vaporise another character, and that's not good. Or vice versa, reasonable opponents couldn't scratch the Tank.

But if armor values in the party aren't too divergent (damage resistance pools of 10 vs. 20, 15 vs. 25) for example, it's still manageable. It's when the differences become 9 vs. 35 that it's really a problem.

No, the avaragin very very much does work the way you claim it doesn't.
You always have 5 body parts(if we exclude the head) if you have one cyberlimb then 4 those body parts have you natural attribute.

Natural attribute only counting once and the diviner being the number of cyberlimbs + 1 would make for a totally bonger situations :
For example having natural Agility of 1 and one cyberarm with Agility 9 would result in avarage Agility of 5
But getting a second cyberarm witch also has Agility 9 would lower the characters avarage agility to 3(you round down)

Oh, it is *totally* bonkers, no question. I'm not claiming it is "realistic," just that it is (a) good for game balance and (b) how the rules work.

Let's go through this. How, EXACTLY, do you think it works? You say "you always have 5 body parts (if we exclude the head)." But you shouldn't exclude the head - the book EXPLICITLY says to average everything except partial limbs, which the head is not. And you're arguing that the torso is a "limb" but the head is not?

Can you explain how you think it works in a way that does not contradict clearly stated rules (such as that only partial limbs are excluded - so your interpretation cannot treat a cyberskull or a cybertorso differently from a cyberarm or a cyberleg) and does not make the example wrong?

Just count the torso and not the skull. It's easy. There's no reason to do something the stupid and wrong way, just because we think it might be what the book (erroneously) says.

So for the Body test, he uses the average of all these things, and we're told that this average is 4 (possibly rounded down, never up.)

Torso - 6
Left leg - 5
Left arm - 3
(generic: right arm) - 3
(generic: right leg) - 3
That gets you 3+3+3+5+6 = 20, 20/5 = 4, which fits the example.

However, if you also count the head, it becomes:
Torso - 6
Left leg - 5
Left arm - 3
(generic: right arm) - 3
(generic: right leg) - 3
(generic: head) - 3
That gets you 3+3+3+3+5+6 = 23, 23/6 = 3.83, which would be rounded down to 3, and doesn't fit the example.

It's neither good for 'game balance nor is it how the rules work.
As Ascalaphus spelled out, how i said it works is exactly how the example in the book works.

The example could just as well be wrong. The rules are clear though you average over all limbs. Head and Torso are in the list for cyberlimbs and as such they are considered limbs for the purpose of the average.

The example could be wrong, yes. But what's wrong with 5 limbs? I think it works best. If we're going to start assuming the rules are wrong, better to err against cyberskulls. The other, more complicated, solution is to count the skull and torso together as one, yielding 5 again. Nested parentheses, yay! Also, Max, you said it was /6 (again, doesn't fit the example), so stop trying to steal my credit.

The average body score of 4 for Critical George can be derived either by the Average All Limbs but not the Head or Average All Cyberlimbs with Meat Once methods. As pointed out before, the Average All Limbs and the Average All Limbs that People Commonly Call Limbs (the arms and legs) methods give you a Body of 3.

Since SR treats cyberskulls and cybertorsos as cyberlimbs (the same rules apply & they're in the same section and list & in the same category explicitly), this means either the rule is wrong or the example is wrong. It's a sad commentary on the skill of the SR writers that I'm not sure if they can't write their rules well or they just made a mistake on the example.

The Street Samurai same character, even if we assumed that she was built half-way legally, doesn't help one way or the other. From what I can figure out, they didn't average her scores at all and the number in parentheses for Agility and Strength is just her limb's value (and the limbs are customized equal to her meat values).

What they should have done overall is just have cyberlimbs have attributes equal to your meat attributes for free. Then you can buy attribute enchancements for your limbs at a reasonable price (Rating x 2500Y for example) that give a bonus to tests that only use that limb. This removes all this averaging nonsense and makes limbs arguable for a wide variety of mundanes (pay 15000Y and 1 Essence for capacity, a damage box, and maybe 1-3 extra dice to a few tests). Then all you have to do make cyberskulls and torsos have an use.

So you agree that Critical George should have 3 body and the example is wrong?



I replaced the term “this” with cyberlimbs (because that is the name of the category). The head is definitely a limb.

Solutions:
a) Either the rules are wrong (head/torso is not a limb, but not both).

b) Example is wrong (Critical George should have a 3 Body).

c) (6 (torso) + 5 (left leg) + 3 (left arm) + 3 (meat)) / (3 (# Cyberlimbs) + 1 (meat)) = 4.25 (rounded down to 4).

Only c) is not a house rule (fulfills all rules and examples). Thus the equation must be Cyberlimbs + meat) / (1 + # Cyberlimbs). c) also makes the two words in the example “rounded down” not extraneous as rounding is actually required.

Also if people want to apply “common sense” (which I don’t), only the arms and legs should be “limbs” using the definition of a limb (check 2.a. from OED, or wikipedia). This does not make the example work using either method of calculating attributes.

Finally, how did a thread about improving cyberware get into a fight about how one interpretation of cyberlimbs are too good, and should be rendered unusable? Aren’t we supposed to discuss how to improve cyberware? This also reduces people going full body replacement (GitS style) which some people dislike. Instead you have a really awesome arm, which basically does the work for you while you grit your teeth and enjoy the dystopian scenery.

Actually c really doesn't fulfil all of the rules, if you only count the meat once, then your not using avarage of the all limbs involved.

And it's not about your interpretaion being too good, it's that your interpretation makes the cyberlimbs rules not make anykind of sense at all.

So if I understand your point correctly (and correct me if I’m wrong) c) is a subset of a) (the rules are wrong) because



Is not fulfilled by c), bringing us to the conclusion that either the rules are wrong or the example is wrong and there is no middle path. Thus you are basing your interpretation on what makes “anykind of sense”, because there is no RAW that fits both the rules and the example?

In that case, I present the argument that c) makes sense from the perspective of: It makes cyberlimbs worth using. Game balance is more important than ‘common sense’, and using a c) interpretation results in people who use full cyberlimbs, and helps to balance cyber against magic (not that they are equal, but they are more equal than in a /6 approach). A divide by six approach results full cyber limbs being very bad, but hand/foot still being used for the +8 armor at char creation. I think that c) makes sense from that view point.

I would love for there to be a RAW way to use cyberlimbs that makes the example and rules both work though, that would be preferred.

It makes a cyberlimb worth using, if you want to get 2 you get very heavily punished for it and thats why c) is a very bad interreption.

How about opening a new thread to argue how cyberlimbs work?

Several other people have laid out the entire thing.

What it does is create diminishing returns on cyberlimbs. Assuming any full limbs (ie, not hands/feet/lower arms/lower legs) are bought up to the same level, it means with 1 limb you get half the difference, 2 you get 2/3 the difference, 3 you get 3/4 the difference.

With this, you can totally make an effective character who has 2 cyberlimbs and there are some good reasons to do it - such as using 2-handed weapons. If you use some sort of houserule to nerf cyberlimbs, it makes cyberlimbs almost always a bad idea except for cutting off all your hands and feet to be better armored (and people generally nerf that too).

I like the idea that cyberlimbs are actually useful, and not something you get because you are stupid.

So you actually like a rule intereption that makes it so that you would have be a total an utter idiot to take more then 1 cyberlimb and at the same time for about half of the potential character consepts you would have to be really stupid to not take a 1 cyberlimb

No, it's not stupid to take more than one cyberlimb. Taking 2 arms (so you can use 2-handed weapons) is totally sensible. Taking a torso and a limb (so you can have enhancements over 3) is totally sensible. They get diminishing returns - but so do lots of other things. They don't make you worse.

It means that a lot of people want cyberlimbs, yes. I'm prepared to say that is a better thing than nobody wanting cyberlimbs. It's not as good a thing as cyberlimbs making some sense and ALSO being used in some way, but seriously, Shadowrun is loaded to the brim with nonsense.

Actually they do, having 1 cyberlimb can boosts all your physical by a lot(making it a no brainer for lots of character concepts) but getting a second cyberlimb thats just as good, actually slowers all of those physical attributes in very real way making you worse.

Actually there are cases where the average can go down even though both limbs are an improvement over the baseline, if you only factor meat in once.

1 meat plus 9 cyber = 5

1 meat plus 3 cyber plus 9 cyber = 4

1 2 3 9 = 3

And so on. Weighting each limb to 1/5 or 1/6 its value makes the average progressive rather than erratic.

Epicedion: it is true that it can, for sure. And that is stupid. You generally want to make sure you only get "good" cyberware.

Weighting each limb to 1/5 or 1/6 solves the problem, but less by making the average progressive than by insuring that nobody bothers with cyberlimbs.



No, this is wrong. Working under (meat+limbs)/(1+#limbs)

George has 3 body. He gets one limb with 9 body. His averaged body is 6.

He gets a second "just as good" limb with 9 body. His averaged body is 7. Note that 7>6, but not by as much as 6>3. This is diminishing returns.

Okey, there was some weird snafu in my math when writing that last post, so yes getting a second arm thats just as good does make you worse.
And while diminishing returns over a steady improvement can be a good think sometimes, i really don't see it as good in a situation like this where the first return is proportionally massive.
Using the normal rules of counting in all limbs still gives you a bonus to avarages from getting one super arm, but that bonus isn't so massive that it makes getting one cyberlimb a nobrainer almost no matter what kind of character you making.
With the RAW rules cyberlimbs can be good for many archytypes, with your rules a one is pretty much a must have.

Clearly we disagree about what RAW is. With your reading, cyberlimbs are good for people who don't care about any agility skills other than Shooting People in the Face, and for people who want to stack armor. You still don't want more than one limb, ever, and by limb I mean arm, because the averaging returns are so low that it's simply not worth it for anything other than the replacement effect. So you'll see the occasional face or hacker with one 9 agility cyberarm, and the usual cyberdiabetes, but nothing else ever - you're a complete moron to get a cyberleg under any circumstances.

And why exactly is that, the main point of cyberlimbs really isn't to boost your overall attributes.
And even if you where right about it not being worth it to get multiple cyberlimbs ever, i still thinks thats a million times better then your way that gives every single character thats main stick isn't combat 110BP:s worth of physical attributes for 6BP:s and 1 point of essence.

Just like SR rules have no real right interpretation because they're so poorly written, SR game balance has no real fulcrum because it's such a mess. I'd rather throw cybered characters whatever bone they can get, even if it does mean that a lot of characters want to have cyberlimbs.

The more I look at it, the more I think the rules were written by one person, the example with Critical George by a second person, and the Street Samurai sample character by a third person, and none of them were on speaking terms with any of the others.

Isn’t it that one point of essence that is the balancing factor? Mages and TMs may not want to give up the magic and essence for a cyber limb (it’s debatable, which is a good thing), and most street sams/hackers/faces etc will want to. That’s also a good thing.

I don’t mind if every hacker has an arm that lets them shoot people, because they still are going to only be ~80% as good as a full street sam. A street sam will probably have 5+ points of armor on a hacker/sam mix, and probably be able to scrounge up the points to have both pistols/automatics and heavy weapons, while a hacker/street sam probably has to settle for automatics. Faces can also use some cyber arm love, so they can get in on the shooting people game. Remember, the goal of the game is to involve everyone; thus you want all players to be able to shoot people. As long as a dedicated shooter is still better than a hybrid, there is no problem.

A mage might get their hands and feet cut off for the armor, but they don’t need the agility for shooting people. Most mages have combat spells for that, and they aren’t based on agility. The hands/feet thing doesn’t matter in how attributes are calculated anyway (since hands/feet are not averaged). The TM is the same way, because they probably use rigging to affect the meat world (at least I have found that is the most effective way).

That does not mean there are no cybered mage or TM builds, but the fact that non-cybered mage vs. cybered mage is a legitimate choice is a good thing.

As far as adepts go: adept are a sorry sad lot to being with. Because there are not enough good adept powers for a viable pure (magic 4+) adept, and because adept powers do not scale with magic rating at all, adepts are thrown under the bus two ways. Either they want to be a mystic adept, with enough PP for the good adept powers and casting magic for spirits and spells; Or adepts want to become lightly cybered (1 – 2 points of essence loss), which probably results in the hands/feet armor deal (called cyberdiabeties for short, after the increasing population of diabetics in the real world, and the vascular damage to feet caused by the terrible disease). If adepts want to pick up an arm of awesome instead of becoming a mystic adept, it’s nice to have that choice.

Please explain which archtypes should be using full cyberlimbs using the divide by six interpretation.

Cyberlimbs in general need to reworked. I'm happy they're useful and it now can make sense for a PC or two to get a cyberarm. On the other hand, cyberdiabetus and cyberlimb of awesome are not how I wanted it to be done. I still hold to my earlier idea of giving cyberlimbs the meat values of its owner with some mild boosts on specific tests. It's then an fairly cheap extra damage box, 1-3 extra dice to a few tests, and accessories option. It's no longer super cheap attribute booster/replacer or the pathway to high armor scores.

However while cyberlimbs were changed in the move to 4th Edition, many iconic ware from older editions weren't. Dermal Plating still gives +1 Body for damage resistance tests where that's a fair chance of half a damage level (depending on armor) in a 6-8 dice pool to .33 damage soaked in 12+ dice pool. Muscle replacement was always kindof bad. Cybereyes just became obsolete. Bone Lacing went from an expensive defensive option to a pointlessy pricey one. Datajack becomes a fluff thing you might put in your cyberleg for the lulz.

I would change how armor works on cyberlimbs to remove cyberdiabetus. LikelyI would go with something like "the armor mod on partial limbs only applies to attacks against that limb." I'll allow armor on full limbs to apply to everything. Then getting 12 armor from limbs is 63,600Y and 4 essence not 31600Y and 1 essence. Then I would make Dermal Plating give an armor bonus equal to Rating x 3 and not just Rating. Bone Lacing's armor bonus is affected the same way (current armor bonus x 3) and gives you +1-3 condition boxes. Orthoskin and bone density augmentation will need to be changed as well. Cybered characters are still just as tough if not tougher but it's now more essence heavy (discouraging magical splashes into ware or vice versa).

I would remove simrig and sim modules as they exist now. Owning a commlink gives you limited AR (basically the ability to see AROs when you hold your commlink in front of it). Image Link or Sound link would give you AR. Trodes gives you just cold VR and the benefits of a regular sim module. To get hot VR and the benefits of simrig, you need a datajack. I would also make hot VR restricted legally and non-addicting (but has all the other advantages and disadvantages of hot VR). Technomancers can get AR/cold VR/hot VR as they desire as part of being a technomancer. TacNets don't worry about sensor channels, but how big of a benefit you get is based on your level of connection (commlink, one of the links, trodes, datajack for ratings 1-4) and the number of people you have subscription channels to. Then a lot of characters will debate having a datajack for the extra tacnet die. Hackers would grab datajacks in a heartbeat. Technos would continue to hack with their not magical powers. I may also have tacnet give sort of initiative depending on the rating (like rating 4 gives you +1 to initiative or something).

Cybereyes and ears are a tad tougher. They're lacking nowadays because you can just buy goggles for what used to be cyber exclusive options. One option I like is to just make it so you can't stack vision mods from multiple devices (you can use your contacts, glasses, or goggles, not all together). I'll also make it so that vision enhancements use up the same number of capacity slots as for worn gear as cybereyes. Then I'll give cybereyes and cyberears the capacity and nuyen of their best ratings but the essence cost of their lowest values (so cybereyes is .2 essence and 1500Y for 16 slots). This way a mage or adept gets 1-2 neat vision tricks, but mundanes will tend to have everything in their eyeballs. I'm focusing on cybereyes, but cyberears will likely benefit too.

Muscles Replacement I'm not as sure. It's 1 essence and 5000Y for +1 agility and +1 strength. Going biowire gets you muscle toner + muscle augmentation for .4 essence and 15000Y per +1 agility and strength. Since strength is so minor, you can just buy Muscle Toner for .2 essence and 8000Y. Toner is just so much better it's silly. I would make Muscle Replacement cost .5 essence and 5000Y per rating. Muscle Toner I'll increase the cost to rating x 20,000Y. Muscle Augmentation can cost rating x 10000Y or as is.

You'll ultimately have to decide bioware's relationship with cyberware. Is bioware just better than its cyber counterpart? If so, it is suppose to be easy for starting PCs to get or is it something they save for (like betaware)? Are they suppose to do different things? If it's the later, you'll need to look at stuff like muscle toners, orthoskin, and bone density augmentation and figure out what they should do or remove them.

I'll also recommend some nerfing of magic, but that's a topic for another thread,

So it seems that the overall agreement is that Cyberlimbs have wiggy rules and that (as a group) we don't understand/agree on how they work.

But a bit more on the topic of 'Ware balance, how do you all feel about the comparison of the various initiative enhancers?

Cause the more I look at it, the more I feel like Synaptic Boosters are just too good. Or maybe Wires just suck. One of the two.

Boosters are expensive for a starting character, but only Wires 1-2 are actually cheap. Wires 3 are still 100k and cost 5 essence, making them completely impractical even if you can afford them. Their huge essence cost makes them only really worth it as deltaware, but then they cost a million nuyen.

Compare them to basic Synaptic boosters which give the exact same effect, at a lower availability, for only 240k and 1.5 essence. And they are harder to detect!

Move-by-wire is better enough that I dont feel like a total moron for taking them over boosters, cause that +3 to dodge and R5 skillwires are pretty nice. The extra +3 to reaction is nice too, since it saves a decent amount of BP/karma on raising reaction. But even then, you still have to pay 1.75 million for delta ware, and your still spending an extra point of essence over basic boosters.

Honestly, I'm really feeling like Wired Reflexes, and Move-by-Wire to a lesser extent, are suffering from the same problems as Muscle Replacement. It doesn't really matter that they are cheaper in money, their essence cost is so crippling compared to the bioware equivalent, that they just aren't worth it.

What do you folks think?

Given how powerful IPs are, I think the bioware should be more expensive. Making the cyberware cheaper would be pretty major power creep.

It's WR/MBW 3 that are a problem.

WR 1-2 is a lot cheaper than SB - so much cheaper that it's generally worth it for a starting character. 240kY is a LOT of cash, and 3 essence is survivable.

A big, important thing here is that Reaction Enhancers stack with WR, but do NOT stack with SB. This is a major reason to get WR 1-2 rather than SB 1-2.

The problem comes at WR 3/MBW 3. 5 Essence is too much for you to pay for anything other than winning shadowrun forever - so if you wanted WR or MBW 3, you'd need to get at least alphaware and probably beta or deltaware. But now you're paying like 200kY, so why aren't you just getting SB?

Also, the cost staging is strange. Why is your first bonus IP 2 essence, your second 1 essence, and your third 2 essence again? This is the source of the problem - the last IP is just not worth THAT much. The fix I would suggest is dropping WR/MBW 3 down to 3.75 essence.

Why would the Reaction Enhancement not stack with Synaptic Accellerator?