...

Unintended pun aimed at myself apparently. I have no idea why I put 6 down for that. Stupid numbers. I hate them. I truly do. So I shall now change my comment to: "I am confused by both your math and the lousy example cited in the book. The latter of which can proceed to suck my hairy white balls."

I thought I would through in my two cents. Cyberlimbs, once again, suck in Shadowrun. It didn't have to be this way at all. Although, I will say, that I've heard here, on this board, that there will be a lot more cool stuff for cyberlimbs in Augmentation. Apparently the ones in the base book are "off the shelf". Which makes me guess there will be hideously complex rules in Augmentation for creating custom cyberlimbs with higher attributes, more capacity, etc.

Still, I think they should have had the following in the base book:
-Cyberlimbs do physical rather than stun damage when punching/kicking (good house rule)
-Easy Metahuman variants (strength of 6 for orks & dwarves/8 for trolls)
-Raising attributes by up to 2 points does not require a cybertorso (just nuyen and capacity)
-Raising attributes more than 2 points require a cybertorso
-No averaging of stats - the test either uses the limb rating or the natural rating at the GM's discretion (absolutely needless suckage and record keeping).

It could have been easier. If they had just kept the rules roughly the same from third edition to fourth, while lowering the price, they would have gone a long way to making cyberlimbs cool and balanced. Which is basically the house rules I posted above.

With those rules, suddenly cyberlimbs become worth something. You get an extra damage box, physical damage with punches/kicks and average stats without a lot of essence. For more nuyen you can get either a cyberlimb with maxed stats or a bunch of gizmos.

Let's take a human buying a full arm obvious cyberlimb as an example with this system. For 17,400 they can get a full obvious cyberarm with strength, body and agility of 5 as well as armor of 4. The essence cost is 1. The kicker is that the stats are only good for melee and ranged combat.

Good, but they are hardly anything to create a combat twink around, but a nice solid bonus for a combat character or a hacker/rigger who wants a little extra punch in combat. The cheese monkey will probably go for muscle toner and muscle augmentation. The cost is higher, but the essence cost is roughly the same and the bonuses let you go above the racial maximum without dropping another 1.5 essence for the cybertorso.

It also holds up well to other cyberware options. For less cost, they could get aluminum bone lacing. For less cost and more essence, they can get Wired 1. For less money, but a boatload of essence you can get muscle replacements. All good options depending on the character.

Okay. It's fairly safe to say that the "simplified" rules in the BBB of SR4 still have a number of experienced players bickering as a result of differing interpretations and confusion. So what do we want to see in Augmentation? New limbs, more accessories, metavariant limbs, more expensive attribute enhancements that take up less capacity, cool tricks to pull off with a cybertorso/skull, skullguns, detailed yet streamlined rules for handling multiple limbs with varying levels of attributes, old favorites, crazy new shit, logical new shit, drone launchers, what? What would make cyberlimbs lose the hate and get the love, while more than likely remaining a less than optimized alternative to bioware?

Wow, machine gun posting on this thread.

Well we're going to try out one simple house rule: Cyberlimbs use your physical stats, except Reaction, as a base when you get it.

Permanent attribute improvement through other means (Karma, bioware, Muscle Replacement) requires an upgrade if the new rating is more than 2 levels higher than the original. So you have a 2 point cushion. Some tests, however, are subject to penalties at the GM's discretion. It may not work all that well after your body has gotten a lot stronger.

So early on you lose your right arm fully and get a full replacement cyberlimb. Your stats then was B3 A4 S3 and guess what? So is your Cyberlimb when you first get it.

Later on, after much adventuring, your new attributes are B4 A6 S6. Strength has increased by 3 ratings and therefore your trusty Cyberlimb is only B4 A6 S5.

This is at base without any upgrades. It may not be "logical" fully but it makes sense to our little group.



Now, to work in a disposable missile launcher for a troll's chrome arm.

Why would you want a disposable cybernetic missile launcher instead of, say, a reusable one? Would suck to have to ditch your entire arm after each shot...

Hmmmm maybe we should hold off arguing a bit. I was thinking aug would just add a bunch of toys that the limbs wouldn't have the capacity to hold.

Sounds like they may have overhauld things.

So I guess the point of this thread would be that, except for adding some reasonable stats onto someone with throwaway physical stats, cyberlimbs in SR4 before Augmentation were rubbish and, apperantly, can suck Dr. Funks balls.

Well, no not the entire arm. More like a one-shot missile instead of an actual launcher.

God only knows what I'm going to do about the exhaust... at least it'll be a mean right hook.

Okay Kryn - I think they messed up some things for the cyberlimbs in the base book, but there is no fixing that until Shadowrun 5.

Here is what would make me happy and work with the current rules.
-Variant Limbs for Metahumans
-A selection of designer limbs that have higher base attributes or extra capacity for those with more nuyen
-Some new options for installation in cyberlimbs such as:
*The magnetic hands from 2nd edition
*The cyber holster from 3rd edition
*Weapon mounts fro 3rd edition
*The retractable cyberskates
-A very simple option for those who want to do a full or partial conversion. I am thinking something along the lines of rifts where you pay a set cost in essence and nuyen and get a set of physical attributes that can only be increased by enhancement.
-A simple rules clarification/edit that you don't lose body for damage resistance tests for having cyberlimbs.


Here is what would make me less than happy.
-A complex rules fudge so that people can play cyberborgs, but have to spend half a day calculating essence costs and attributes as they buy limbs individually.
-No way for a character to get a cyberlimb with an attribute greater than 3 without buying a cyber torso.

The front part of the launcher is in one arm, the rear part in another, and the middle piece along with the ammo is in the torso. In order to fire you do kind of a Megatron style transformation/link up of the three pieces and you're now a missile launcher platform on legs with a head on top!

Uh, you mean like "take me now...you big hunk of a troll?" Cause that's the most terrifying battlecry I've ever heard of. Shudder...

To make matters even worse, you can take Titanium Bone Lacing and gain bonus damage and do physical damage.

Now, why/how could a full cyberarm ever do less than that? - Is it made from rubber?

Working in metal, all the restrictions should be taken out, if it can be built, surely it can be hooked up.

And the whole Essence thing, it symbolises the nerveends required to be "hooked" up to the machine, and how invasive this is. - But if you want increased reflexes, you have to pay Essence for this, in addition to the Essence taken for the cyberlimb.

Meh, the way I see it, something like the following needs to happen:

1. Existing Cyberlimbs are prosthetics = Junk
- They should be cheaper than cloning, peglegs and hooks should be all but free.

2. Hybridware, with bonelacing, muscle toner/replacement, is the current mainstream dominant.

3. That leaves a categori open, for the monstrous, those who take extra power over looks, Warhammer 40.000 Ork-style cyberware. Huge metallic and effective. - It just doesn't exist unless houseruled. And thats a shame in my opinion.

With the description in SR4 regarding cyberlimbs as being archaic and downright medieval it spurs a view that cyberlimbs, at least the obvious ones are dirt cheap and only used by the poor and desperate, yet they cost four montly wages for someone with a middle lifestyle – or roughtly a four year “salary� for a squatter with a street lifestyle.

And the point that cyberlimbs have become “cheaper� doesn’t really stand true when you count beginning resources.

Sure, they are cheaper by roughtly 25% but they also slashed beginning resources by the same amount so cheap they are not, unless you want them in-game.

I have a hard time seeing how research in cyberlimbs would have stopped and not included essence friendly material, lightweight construction and above all – mass production.

Unlike cloned limbs you can build thousands of different models tailored towards different metatypes daily through automated factories and only the final “fitting� would cost a little to fine-tune it to the user.

What would I like to see?

Half Essence Cost
Slash prices by 50%
Limb attributes equal to physical ones
Limb attributes X2 physical attributes require torso
Limbs do physical damage
Full cyber replacement body rules
Availability on ALL cyberlimbs below 6 (its not military hardware its spare part…)

In this particular case you won't need it.

Isn't that book supposed to drop this week?

Probably the biggest problem with Cyberlimbs is that even if they got a reasonably high strength that wouldn't actually matter because:

1. People still have guns - even genuinely deadly fists of doom doesn't really change the equation much.
   and
2. The rules for carrying are non-functional. Horses have a "strength of 8" - but having a strength of 8 doesn't actually allow you to do feats of strength equivalent to a horse - I weigh 100 kilograms, well outside of what a strength 8 horse can reasonably expect to carry on its back under the rules...

And because punching people isn't important and the carrying rules are a joke - being super strong is just sort of sad.

-Frank

well it looks like augmentations fixed my major gripe with cyberlimbs. It was a quick read but it seems now there are "custom" limbs, that the limbs in the main book are just your run of the mill off the shelf cyberlimb. Custom limbs can increase the stats to your natural maximum for 0 essence and capacity cost. But cost 1,500 nuyen per point added t a stat and +1 availability per point added.

They become absurdly difficult to get for trolls but at least you can start off limbs buffed up without gimping the cyberlimbs other features.

Also an optional rule for redlining a cyberlimb where you get X2 its stat in power, but it does the stat in DV to you every round.

I may be misreading it because I suck at focusing on and reading PDFs but it looks like some kind of fix is in.

Yep, Augmentation did a great job. My only complaint about cyberlimbs now is the Availability of customized versions. (An average Troll with Body 8, Agility 3 and Strenght 8 can get a limb with those stats, but the resulting Availability 14 means they can't have one at character creation. And that's just for average stats, not one maxed out to their racial limits.)

In all likelihood I'm just going to edit the Availability mod as a flat, one-time only +2 or so. I don't see any good reason why they should be so remarkably varied as opposed to just a little harder to find than standard "medical replacement" limbs.

On a side note, the basic limbs in SR4 are, in fact, cheaper than cloned replacements.

An attribute of 3 (+2 minimum) is labeled as "Typical." A score of 2 (+1 minimum) is "Underdeveloped." Thus your typical -- literally -- troll has Body 8, Agility 3, and Strength 8.

Main point remains: Dwarves, Orks and Trolls still get shafted with these rules in that the other two metaraces can nearly get limbs to their racial maxes without worry while they cannot. But it's a shafting easily overcome with only one minor house rule (altering the Availability of customization), as opposed to having throw down a score of homebrewed rules before Augmentation. That's quite acceptable in my opinion.

A flat Availability +2 fixes everything. Hell, you could even crank it up to +4 or +6 if you must and it'll still be fine with me. The rules already have limits on what you can do with attributes in this addition; this Availability one didn't needed to be added.

I think it's quite reasonable that a strong-as-hell cyberarm for a troll has higher availability.

Why? Because he's not strong-as-hell without it? That except for trolls (for no particular reason), they wouldn't make a replacement limb within their normal (not freaky greater than normal) tolerances and limits?

A modifier for race I could see, simply because trolls are supposed to be the rarest of the five races. But not one based on the normal limits of a limb. That's silly to me. Especially when a starting troll cannot get a limb equal to their typical, average, run-of-the-mill, in-no-way-out-of-the-ordinary scores.

Because a stronger arm needs better technology, totally unrelated to who will use it.

Troll arms are bigger

Good point. So they should have a higher price and higher avail... I'd say there is a point to the higher availability, and if you don't like it, don't use it (of course).

Higher price is covered by the troll modifier early in the gear chapter (approximately a 10-25% increase, simply for being a troll). Nothing in the book says gear for trolls is significantly more rare than it is for anyone else, however.

Except, of course, this one and only rule regarding cyberlimbs. And then only indirectly. And then to the point of not even being able to obtain one while everyone else can at their typical scores.

Think of it this way: Trolls are a relatively small fraction of the population and they are comparatively tougher and more resilient than the vast majority of the population (meaning less prone to needing prosthetics), consequently trolls needing cyberlimbs are a relatively small fraction of the market and less attractive for cybertech corps. Increasing standard cyberlimb size isn't that simple either: limb length and size, structural hardening on hinge points, and skeletal anchoring for trolls (and dwarves) are all significantly different from cyberlimbs designed metahuman norm to justify greater rarity and higher prices.

The same can pretty much be said for almost any other piece of gear a troll uses, especially bodyware and vehicles.

Note that this isn't limited solely to trolls, either. Say you're a Human and want an Ultimate Champion Optimized Cyberlimb designed specifically for unarmed combat (+1 die on Unarmed Combat tests). At character creation, you're not going to get more than Body 4, Agility 4, Strength 5 on it, or any variation thereof. Which doesn't sound very optimized to me when you can instead get a regular Customized Cyberlimb with Body 5, Agility 6, Strength 6 instead, granting extra dice on the attack, soaking more damage, and doing more damage in unarmed combat. With more Capacity to cram in stuff.

If Customization was set to a default Availability of say +4, it wouldn't be an issue at all. You could get an Customized Optimized Cyberlimb that truly was optimized, with the exchange being that a standard Customized Cyberlimb could have up to 6 more Capacity in it. That's a pretty damn balanced and sensible mechanic to me. The extra benefit being that all five metaraces could benefit equally from the same implant, as opposed to half of them getting screwed by it.

I'm already proposing a House rule for it; +4 Availability on Cyberlimbs that are customized, but each individual customization's availability rating (all those 1s) are kept hidden somewhere.

Then, when it comes time to do some further upgrading (beyond the natural max) you add all the individual ratings to the new availability rating.

This is so that it's slightly harder to get a cyberlimb customized to begin with and due to all the personalized stuff built in it becomes that much more difficult to upgrade it from there.

Extra book-keeping I know, but it "makes sense". Still, it's a relatively minor thing ain't it? I mean if it was THAT easy to get it'd be even more ubiquitous than the book makes it sound.

Doctor Funkenstein:
That troll-runners (as well as some dwarves and orks) would bust the Availability 12-limit for starting characters, when they want to bring their custom-cyberlimb up to their pushed-up physical stats, is some kind of sad/unfair/something like that, I know...

But we had to keep some things in mind, when creating those rules...

- The rules had to be quite simple!

- The BBB-limbs are health-insurance-level... they do their job as cheap replacement (for humans even quite fine... and who cares about that horde of unemployed orks and trolls? At least until its to late... *veg*)

- There are limbs of higher quality (and stats), but they are more expensive (since they use more advanced materials or constructions... whatever makes them better just requires additional ressources), harder to obtain (cyberware for the masses is easy to find... but that customized, high-tech-cutting edge thing in troll-size (since trolls are the rarest metarace) is just another thing), and well... they are much better, too...

- So they had to have a higher Availability... but how high?

A fixed number, regardless of what bonuses the limb gets? That would put an arm with stats of 4 for a trained human on the same level of "rarity" than a 10/5/10-leg for trolls... and hell, what kind of troll (a) requires such a leg, (b) loses one, and finally © could afford one? Well the market segment seems to be quite nonexisting (from a cybercorps point of view).

So we had to raise the availability with each added bonus and had chosen the lowest (IMHO) reasonable increase of +1.

Yes, that makes these kind of limbs unavailable to some starting chars. But since we had to keep the rules simple, characters could regulary obtain these limbs later in the game (Availability is not just for starting chars... ), the disadvantage seemed minor to us than the ones a fixed modifier offered, SR isn't always pony-farm and lolly-pop, and finally you always can talk to your GM, we went this way...

And well, as you already said... fixing this (if you want to... for example by giving it your mentioned fixed modifier) is a minor issue, as well as allowing it as an exemption by your GM (just like it is quite common with some weapons or vehicles).

So long,
Nyx

Here's something about the availability of cyberlimbs for orks and trolls...it's going to be higher because demand is lower. Orks and trolls have higher Bodies, making them less likely to suffer the accidental loss of a limb, and they represent a smaller percentage of the population.

Orks and trolls go around ripping the arms off of elves and humans, not the other way around.

Voluntary replacement would be more rare among orks and trolls because when you can already lift a refrigerator, undergoing expensive surgery to get even stronger isn't very practical for the average person.

And yet, I simply can't see why a troll, who can with proper augmentation reasonably expect to punch through brick walls, wouldn't go for it. A lot of orcs and trolls will identify by their strength. Bodybuilders rarely say "well, I can lift enough now, time to stop" I think MORE orcs and trolls would go in for strength augmentation than humans.

I've often been glad horses couldn't bitch about encumbrance values.

On the Neuromancer thread: Recall that the 'ugly pink soviet antique' cyberarm that the bartender had was also superhumanly strong, if rarely used. I recall crushing metal, though the memory is hazy. Don't fuck with the arm, man...

Which brings up the point: Cyberarms are machines, metal and steel and whatnot. You damn betcha they should be stronger (and incidentally, yes tougher) than 'typically human' without any real work on the part of the designer. Bigger arms (for bigger races) are stronger still.

The hard part, and by 2070 this should be negligable, is the 'agility', the fine control, which is five parts interface and two parts mechanisms, though for legs this is actually less important (see the double amputee running races with nothing more than carbon fibre spring blades).

regarding grades and essense loss: the amount of meat replaced does have something to do with it, perhaps, but it certainly isn't all of it. Why, you ask, should an arm cost more or less essence than another arm?

See it like this:

basic cyberarm: This arm is mass produced in a variety of sizes. Your surgeon picks an arm of approximately the right length and attaches it with whatever conventional interface techiques are in common use. Probably a mix of muscle 'clips' and 'nerve splicing'. It may even take some practice to learn to use right.

Alpha Grade: this cyberarm is custom fitted from a collection of mass produced parts just for you. It will closely match the old arm in length and only be slightly heavier. While conventional techniques are still used to interface they will be top notch. No crude muscle clipping (when this muscle fires this way, the arm does this), though probably still splicing interfaces to existing nerve pathways. there is little to no time invested in learning to use the new arm other than adjusting to different capabilities (higher or lower strength, etc).

Beta Grade: This cyberarm is custom made for the user from hand machined parts with very few 'off the shelf' bits. Nerve splicing is still used, but in addition there will be a 'track' of special purpose sythetic nerve (even skill wires) allowing for a more direct brain/arm interface. With a good coat of synthetic skin even the owner is likely to forget, from time to time, that they have a cyberlimb.

Delta Grade: This isn't even a cyberlimb by some standards. The internal structure is honeycombed carbon-fiber skeleton matching up to human bones, elastic polymer cartiledge and ligaments, synthetic muscles that act just like human muscles and attach to the bones in ways externally identical to human muscles. There is no nerve splicing here, nothing so crude. Instead, pathways of artificial nerve tissue replace the old nervous system, replicating and improving upon it in every way. The limb is a nearly perfect match, even in weight, for the real meat limb, and there is zero learning time, even for decidedly inhuman additions (such as spurs, gyromounts and more) as very special reflex recorders are prepaired and implanted as part of the 'limb construction'. Essentially, this is 'Human Limb Mk II'.

Quick Question, with a customized cyberarm for a troll (for sake of argument)
Per Aug pgs. 44

Looks like it, and I like that ruling.