It's been thirteen years since they introduced it. Maybe it got smaller, okay?
Mages can summon on the fly, deckers lost their name, tasers and water cannons stopped working against spirits, astral grounding still doesn't work, and maybe, just maybe, the gyromount got a little smaller.

Edited for vitriol.

I promised myself I'd avoid debating endlessly on these forums like I used to, so I'm just going to do the whole "agree to disagree" bit.

Done and done.

And my biggest problem with cyberlimbs in SR4: Dirk Montgomery's arm is probably no longer canon. This is a problem. With the canon.

Actually I don't know that cyberarm enthusiests should be looking forward to augmentation. (except maybe for the full body cyborg stuff)

They may add some cool new toys. But traditionally these books also introduce nasty rules about how your cyberware starts breaking all over the place when you get shot. Bio guy just needs to get a spell cast on him or lie down for a couple days. Cyberarm guy will need to blow his whole paycheck on replacement parts. Also I think they tend to overlook the fact that if a shot hits the cyberarm and damages that it doesn't make much sense for it to also still be doing regular meat type damage to the character. Biofeedback I guess.

What I do hope for, against hope, are metavarient limbs. (You'd think EVO/Yamatetsu would make something like that). These would be limbs that essentially have the meta modifiers applied to them, and can only be used on the appropriate metatype otherwise this don't match up or whatever. Though again if they still suck it doesn't really matter I suppose.

Anyway in my opinion the fact that synthetically grown muscle replacements let you go straight to str 9 without a cybertorso or anything indicates that arms should be able to do the same. At str 9 you really aren't suffering from the GiTS problem of having too strong of an arm either. You aren't lifting tons here, you're looking at being 3 times as strong as weak people and less than twice as strong as a toned str5 person.


Also, since we're airing arm issues. If you have enhanced body or strength you need a permit for it. Now you have to do the same thing for bioware technically. But it's harder to detect so it comes up less often. All you need to do with an arm is lift something that looks to heavy for a str3 person to heft and LS may want a word.

Also on that note cyberarm gyromounts are forbidden.

On the gyro forearm the thing holds 5 (unless you go obvious), so you can fit in a cap 4 gyromount. However as firing a gun is a whole arm thing the GM will likely use either the "average the upper and lower arm ratings and round down" or "use the worst" rule.

For less money and less essence you could instead get muscle toner 2. Which gives you two dice you could use to call a shot for +2 damage or just roll more die. Giving you more options and helping with more weapons. This would also enhance all sorts of other tests.

EDIT again: I really need to post faster with how fast posts are coming here.

My biggest problem with cyberlimbs, and this has already been mentioned, has to do with the apparent availability of cloned limbs (the complaint, therefore, isn't directly about cyberlimbs themselves.) If cyberlimbs aren't going to be super-duper awesome compared to meat limbs, they could at the very least be essential for recovering from lost limbs. In other words, cyberlimbs wouldn't serve as nifty toys for brand new shadowrunners; they'd function as replacement parts that keep veteran runners going (like replacement parts on an old car.)

Cyberlimbs could play a social role similar to battle scars; when a big guy walks into the bar with a cyber arm and leg, for example, everybody else in the bar would be thinking, "That dude must have been through some ugly fights."

EDIT: What exactly are the rules for cloned limbs? I can't find them in the SR4 book.

^ There aren't any in this edition yet, as far as I can tell. Which is why they are a superior choice. Cheaper, too, if you use the prices from previous editions for the cloned limbs vs. the modern prices for cyberlimbs.

There aren't rules for now. But in SR 3, it was mentioned in the recovering rules of the rulebook how long it took to clone your lost limbs and other body parts and how much it cost. And in the end, you had the same value as you had normally.

I guess the rules for cloning and advanced recovering rules will of course be included in Augmentations.

Just so I can keep a running tally, here, and, please, feel free to add to/correct this as we go along:

1) Cyberlimbs don't have Metatype Variation.

2) They aren't as powerful as muscle augmentations (Cyber or bio).

3) They aren't cool enough to balance inferior stats.

4) They make no sense, since clone limbs often have better stats, are cheaper, and don't hit your Essence.



What've I missed?

Actually, cyberlimbs are only inferior stat-wise for combat junkies. For characters who don't have Physical Attributes above 6, they're actually quite good. Though in this case they really only provide storage and reduced/negated Essence losses for things you have implanted in them.

5) They have their own rules that complicate gameplay (you must keep track of their own stats that deviate from the rest).

6) Something we all hope to never come up: Stress rules. We don't know if and how they might be in SR 4, but another set of rules dealing with cyberware in this manner is just another big deterrant to the coolness of cyberlimbs.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more appealing I find the concept of a cyberarm. Here's why:

1) integral gyromount: the idea that I have weights and balances and pullies within my metal husk of an arm is infinitely appealing to me. Additionally, I find the concept of a gyromount (the big harness thing) too silly/embarassing to actually use in a campaign, much less one where subtlety is required. It's 3 more RC- I love it!
2) It allows you to place stats in other places: Now, I will admit that while I min/max a fair amount, some of the dice totals I've been hearing about made my eyes go as big as saucers (12 dice? 15 dice? For a 400 BP character? Really?). With that in mind, I've mostly made my guys have three 3s and three 4s in his statblock (I usually play humans). Now, if I wanted to make a guy really good with a pistol, he could *also* be really charismatic, because I could put a 3 in agility, and with my super-cyber arm that has a 6 agility he shoots like an ace, while leaving room for me to put more points in mental stats, which makes more sense for me anyways (despite my best efforts, most characters I've played have ended up being me, but more badass; and since I'd like to think Im a relatively smart guy I've never been able to 'dumb down' my character's actions when I (the player) got a good idea).
3) if I ever lose a limb, I'm getting a metal replacement asap.

I'm surprised I even bothered numbering those; run-ons and stream of consciousness are apparently my M.O.

If you're doing a running tally of the bad points, I suppose I should do a list of the good points for balance.

1. Only way a human is going to get an attribute of 10.

2. Only way you're going to get 17 boxes on your condition monitor.

3. If you don't care about getting your attributes super high, they make a more BP effective way of boosting your attributes. For example making a hacker who has a secondary samurai status.

4. Some handy gadgets such as gyro-mounts ("flame on!") and hydraulic jacks.

5. GM "freebies", such as pulling the magical medallion out of the fire without a willpower roll.

6. Physical damage on unarmed strikes (sensible house rule).

Also, on the bad list, Wakshaani, you missed off massive essence hit and inability to improve stats through karma.

5. The bizarre and unfortunate body interaction.

Typically the steps of cyberarm creation are.
a. decide on arm grade
b. Add gear up to capacity limited by Availibility and lack of a cybertorso
c. Show character sheet to GM
d. Be informed that their effective body for resisting damage went from 6 to 4.

The extra box does mitigate this somewhat but still....



6. Increased profile.

While most other mods can mix in society unless magically detected, even a synthetic cyberlimb will get noticed by a standard lone star grunt all to often (they need 3 hits on 6 die) and will usually be noticed by a Lt. (need 3 hits on 8 die). And anyone touching it automatically knows it's cyber. Since you probably have illegal stuff in it this could get bad.

Fortunitly this last part isn't so bad in SR4. Since limbs are cheaper you don't have the problem where you go past secuity dressed as a janitor or painter....who just happens to have 200,000+ nuyen of hardware. Also I don't think SR4 has the mechanic where people noticing your cyberware results in social interaction penalties.

Personally I am of the opinion that a player wanting to go all Rose McGowan on me an wants a Cyberarm gyromount machine gun leg, then they can go for it.

While the 7 of 9 thing is cool you'll have burned most of your essence, even if you went alpha, and your stats are still pretty soft due to capacity/availibility limits.

Still I do think that's the only place for cyberlimbs really. If you have a char whose stats would otherwise be total rubbish.

To clarify the above character probably had arm stats like bod 5 str 5 agi 7, and if they wanted to put any toys in the arm (say a gyromount or armor) those numbers would have to drop. Since the stats started, presumably, at 1 that's a solid increase.

However if the stats started a little higher bioware and the like would take the numbers higher and you could throw in some wired/synaptic accel, some reaction boosts, maybe some orthoskin and a pile of other toys.

Oh and @pbangarth can't humans use the quality to up their str to 10? Also due to rounding str 10 and str 9 are almost the same.

As for the 17 boxes on the condition monitor I think that's right. However a troll could go for 16 boxes. And they'd be rolling a LOT more dice when attacked unless it's a manabolt or something.

Also without a house rule a little bone lacing will give you physical damage punches with bonuses. So I wouldn't mention that.

Points 3, 4, and 5 are the good ones.

What I can't wrap my head around is how the guy with bone lacing is more dangerous in a brawl than the guy with a FREAKING METAL ARM. But that's an old debate overall.

So muscle augmentation and toner and bone lacing seem to be more efficient all around than cyberlimbs. This breaks my heart, because I've always been a fan of them in SR.

But the belief that cyberlimbs are out of style makes sense, because as they stand right now, they're more cost-intensive and essence unfriendly to get up to a level that makes them worthwhile to the average runner.

I've never seen the mechanics explained regarding the level of touch a cyberlimb can relay. Orthoskin gave you a penalty to touch-based perception tests (I can't tell if they're real or not!) but cyberlimbs didn't, so we could infer that a cyberlimb allowed you to 'feel' roughly equivalent to a meat limb. So there wasn't any issue with Joe Samurai lopping off a limb for a replacement that was worse than the natural one.

Now the only reason to get a cyberlimb is that Samurai Bob gets his arm blown off (how, I don't know) and needs to get back to full strength ASAP. Problem is Bob's a new gen Sammy, so he had bone lacing and muscle aug/toner... which a cloned limb doesn't have. So in that case, throwing a cyberlimb on would make sense, even if he's losing some effectiveness, with strength, body, and agility mods in play he's still ahead of his orginal meat arm. But as soon s he can get his cloned arm 'up to speed' why would he stay with the cyberlimb?

I used to consider one cyberarm part of my 'required gear for an effective street Samurai character' list, but that's fallen off now because as they stand, they're great for roleplay, but don't work as well as they used to.

I do think that SR4 has a pretty serious problem in that the game mechanics and the 'flavor' of the setting seem to be at odds with one another. The flavor of the game seems like a shadowrunner group should have a fair amount of diversity, a fair amount of cyberware, and some cyberlimbs on at least two members of the party. The street samurai is supposed to be the king of the hill when the guns come out.

The reality of an actual game is very different. Adepts are the kings of...well, everything. I've seen social adepts, hacking adepts, street-sam-alike adepts...they have powers that are useful to damn near everyone, and the quality is only 5 points. Cyberlimbs are a terrible deal for anyone who wants to be good at...well...anything, really. Muscle replacement is a much more effective way to boost a street samurai's physical stats. Cyberlimbs seem more useful now as kind of a gimmick for 'style over substance' types, or faces who want a hidden gun.

And frankly with the quality of cyberware scanners these days, you're better off just hiding a holdout pistol in your jacket.

I hope that Augmentation rebalances things a bit, because as it is, SR4 is looking more and more like a game about magicians and adepts blasting the crap out of those poor slobs too stupid to spend 5-15BP on being awakened.

Ok I'm going to totally avoid the adept bit, that's been done elsewhere.

A face could still get a cyberweapon mounted in their arm directly. Also since the weapon would take up so much capacity the arm would otherwise be rubbish.

Also if sammie bob needs a cyberarm you may have a trainwreck dealing with the essence rules. He may not be able to mount it in the first place, and you'd have to houserule that you get essence back when you remove the limb.

One other thing that makes cyberlimbs good, but is contentious, is armour. The reason for it being contentious is that the closest reading of RAW suggests that you don't average the armour rating, but that each armour point is an armour point. In support of this, is that the wording implies it and that there is precedent in the full armour helmet, which obviously only protects a small portion of the body yet provides +2/+2. I know that there are both people here who play it as all cumulative and those that play it as something you average. I think people tend toward cumulative, though.

Played as cumulative, you can build very damage resistant characters. I don't thin many people would create such a build as armour takes up double capacity and it would leave them with very crappy stats. Somewhere in the middle of things though, can be quite effective.

That sample character has multiple limbs. The original subject was a single limb on a character who presumably had 6's across the board and didn't upgrade his single cyberlimb, setting it at 3 across the board. That would make all three of the Physical Attributes [(3+6+6+6+6+6)/6=5.5] equal to 5.

Frankly I might houserule it to work the way you describe Funk. But as the example shows (and my math got double checked by DR) they don't do it that way.

So if you take someone with no cyberlimbs/torsos/skulls who has a body of 6, pretty easy with bone augments around, and you put a cyberarm with bod 3 on them the math is

(6+3)/2=4.5 rounded down is 4

If they added another cyberlimb with bod 6 then it would be (6+6+3)/3=5


The math works similarily for other things as well. So if the GM ruled that your gymnastics move was full body they might average and round down agi. Or they could choose to use the lowest value (such as if you were lifting something). That's left up to the GM, and is typically where partial limbs get into trouble.

This is also how I believe RAW would treat armor. I.e if you have orthoskin 3 and no armor on an arm you have (3+0)/2=1.5 rounded to 1 armor if you are shot.


Now switching to an obvious cyberarm does get you the capacity to do much more stuff. But that's a new can of worms I've actually never had to deal with. For one any display of strength over 3 could flag you as someone with a special combat permit or something on their arm. Also how obvious is the armor and gyromounts on an obvious arm? Certainly it's an attention draw, which most runners tend to avoid, which is why I've never ever seen it done, in any edition.

In truth if you really wanted to have a cyberarm character I would attempt to see if your GM is willing to be leinient with the "unless covered by clothing" thing". Hoping that they don't realize the amount of volume such an arm must take up. I guess you could have flavor text that your guy is a big guy with big arms.

I'm still confused about where you're coming up with these numbers.

The examples listed are pretty specific. The first one has the character using only his limb for the Agility roll, meaning he has an Agility of 3 since no other limbs matter. The next example is him running down a corridor, using only his legs. Thus it's an average of his meat leg and his cyber leg [(meat+cyber)/2].

The last example is the important one. It has him being shot and specifies that he uses the average of his Body attributes. His meat body has a Body of 3. His cybernetic torso is 6, cyberarm is 3, and cyberleg is 5. That means the average is meat head (6) + torso (6) + cyberarm (3) + meat arm (3) + cyberleg (5) + meat leg (3) = 26, averaged amongst all six limbs for 4.33 and rounded down to 4. Which is what the example cites as well.

How does that negate what I've been saying? There's a total of six limbs as far as these rules are concerned, and all six take part in full-body situations such as being shot at. So if you do only have one limb with no mods and a natural Body of 6, it's only dropping your Body to 5.

How did you get that his meat head is 6? (There is a pun in there but I'll avoid it )