Hobgoblin: I was answering Kyrn's question from further up the page but you're right, Gibson's Molly did work as a meat puppet in order to save up the cash for her cyber.

Aha! That's her name. Yeah, great book for rigging, skillwires, and the interactions between various echelons of street grunts, as well as what a war between truly powerful "shadow" factions would be like.

Anybody got an idea on the Blood Circuit Control System/Trauma Damper interaction?

There's also modern scientific evidence to the contrary. Um ... lemme see ... meh, I'm feeling lazy; no links for you.

Are you thinking of the three-armed chimps? (I don't have a link either)

I was just quoting the rule book but I actually agree with you guys. The human brain is remarkably adaptable and if you really had 4 cyberarms, your brain would probably eventually remap your motor and sensory cortices to accommodate. Heck, given the advanced neuroscience in Shadowrun, it would be easy for nanites to go in and just do it for you immediately.

This one goes back a couple of pages, so, the response is a bit delayed...

The answer is, of course, it depends. If Jack is a SINner and had all of his treatments done above board, then his medical records would include those modifications. As such, it'd be a fairly straightforward matter to have those modifications re-inserted into the DNA sequences used when he underwent Leonization. If, OTOH, Jack no longer has access to his medical records, then this would require a fresh set of analyses of his current DNA. If, for some reason, that couldn't be done, then yes, he'd lose them.

Mind you -- any facility capable of performing Leonization really should have the facilities necessary for this genetic analysis. The analysis would just add some time (and expenses) to the prep work before conducting the Leonization procedure.

Also, the question is somewhat moot. Leonization has been around since the 2050's. Geneware optimizations first started showing up in the '60s. It's improbable that there'd be many characters in the 2070s who deposited samples in the 20s, had those samples survive two matrix crashes, and also decided to undergo Optimization when he was in his sixties. Most folks in that age range would have opted to undergo Leonization at the same time as they had the Optimizations installed.

well that can (somewhat) be covered by the drone control being mapped onto normal senses.

i think it was rigger2 or 3 that had some neat stories about how riggers experienced being the machine.

Ugh. As written, each one stacks together to form a complete whole. Maximizing the armor on every body part leaves you with 21 points of armor (4 per limb and torso, 1 for the head as it is all that will fit).

Yes. But in this case it is because getting "1 Armor" on a cyberhand actually involves getting a crazy crap tonne more armor on that hand than does getting "1 Armor" on the whole arm. The Capacity costs for the armor are absolute, not proportional. So getting the same armor bonus from a smaller body area involves using up a higher proportion of the capacity - representing much thicker armor than getting the same +1 bonus from a larger area.

That doesn't really work at all for attribute enhancements (where the system nails you coming and going and cyberhands can't crush cans) - but for Armor in particular the system actually does what it is designed to do.

-Frank

It's Armor, not Hardened Armor, so it never gets as impressive as an actual tank. Also remember that a starting character can't get more than 10/10 armor out of the deal - which isn't actually all that exciting.

But yeah. At the high end people who are made out of titanium are supposed to be pretty hard to hurt.

-Frank

Why must you torture me so? I've got a thread discussing cyberlimb melee damage that's going to shuffle off this mortal coil with zero comments.

@Platonic Pimp, there were rules in previous editions that covered the reduction of bonuses when you mixed cyberlimbs and things like bone lacing, orthoskin, etc. Nothing in SR4 yet that covers the effects.

It's not too hard to houserule that say, 2 cyberlimbs, or a cybertorso and a cyberlimb reduce the effectiveness of orthoskin by say, half. Maybe you think three limbs or two and a torso makes more sense, that's fine too.

Ah, but those are non-obvious cyberlimbs, therefore lower capacity and less armour in the first place.

Actually, I'm grateful for Frank's comments here. I've been ruling that way, but it's not something I was ever sure was what had been intended.

If you max out the armour on the cyberlimbs, then you can get some frightening damage resistance, but it normally left you with poor stats and little essence for anything else. It was good for padding out some of the capacity if you could live with not pumping the attributes as high as you could. Now with the customised cyber rules, however... the potential for some terrifying characters is there, but looking at the effect on availability and cost, it's probably still squeaking in under the power-gamer cut-off. Something to aspire to more than to start off with. I can see customised cyberlimbs with maxed out armour being pretty popular, though.

Good. That's the way they were intended.

There needed to be a good reason for corps to pour millions of nuyen and risk valuable magical talent on a single asset. I never thought prior versions of cyberzombies were actually as bad-ass as their reputation made them out to be, so I'm pretty happy with the way cyberzombies are now walking, (sometimes) talking WMDs.

Actually no.

Having your Magic reduced to 0 via background count would only render him "unable to use any magical abilities" (p.118, Street Magic) - specifically "background modified-Magic attribute counts for all uses of magic, including dice pools and limitations on the Force of spells and spirits." (ie. it modifies your ability to use that Magic rating).

Plus being at the center of their own portable domain means they are unaffected by any lower powered background counts they walk into (interaction between background counts and stuff like Mana static will be addressed in future FAQ updates - but essentially the rule of thumb is only the higher level applies when two domains overlap).

Cyberzombies are not spirits, so neither are they disrupted - though I'd consider it if the players lured one into a full-blown Mana Void or Warp.

Those are aspected to them, and thus, don't affect them.

Other aspects are a whole other cattle of fish, AFAIS... as are shallows.

Shallows are of somne interest to them, but the Background Count is set wherever they are. So they can walk into any background count and not die.

-Frank

That would be too kind, thanks in advance.

As a sidenote - while Nano-Biomonitors claim to be better than cyber ones... what's the crunch advantage?

But how often do you *need* to sink a battleship with hand weapons?

Not often, one assumes, but the first time it comes up, you'll be glad you can.

Holy crap - I have no idea. It wasn't like that when I wrote it, and you're right that it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Essence Holes should just be generic. There's no Earthly purpose served in having them aspected to Cyber- or Bio- specifically. It makes the accounting very complicated and adds nothing to the game. I seriously don't know where that came from.

Good catch for the errata thread.

-Frank