And not just a one sentence mention in the cosmetic biosculpting section either. They each got magnum sized and D sized paragraphs respectively.

Quick question why would you want to limit the word count? I can tell you that as a customer, I prefer to get more words for my money. Does it really cost more to print a few more pages? (there's no way it costs more to produce a larger PDF file)

Layout, editing, some authors getting paid by the word/page (though I don't know if this applies to SR rulebooks)?... Yes, it very well might cost significantly more to produce a longer PDF.

Books have standardized pagecounts which equate to a certain production cost. Writers exceeding allocated wordcounts for assignments can lead to increased pagecounts which in turn may force overall price increases - you can't add a page or two to a book, you have to add a block of pages (16 pages usually). There are also increases to the costs of editing and layout.

We always include some flex room in assignments, but a couple of authors coming in 1000 words over their assignments because they got carried away or the material "really needed it" (not uncommon, I've done it myself more than a couple of times) can start you down that slippery road.

Formulas are good and they don't have to be too complex. As long as you know the typical wordcount for a page after layout, you can run with that.

That's a large part of how I envision it too, but through the years Shadowrun has explored various approaches with varying degrees of success. We chose to leave it hazy enough to acknowledge those other possibilities and allow for other interpretations.

Yay.

(For those who never learned about this, Wikipedia actually provides a decent reference here. Well, it's not perfect, but it's a start.)

Thus, to explain why cosmetic -whatever- costs essence: Because it modifies, in some distinct way, your 'natural self'.

Why doesn't a prosthetic <whatever> cost essence? Because it's -restoring-, to a degree, your natural self.

Remember, cybereyes give even people without naturally perfect vision just that. In SR4, you even have a recording unit in them.

Even an unmodified cyberlimb, no matter how discreet it may be, still is a variance from one's 'natural template', so to speak. After all, you can't normally turn off sensory input from your limbs.

(Note: This explains -why essence exists- and why things -cost- essence. However, it doesn't explain why X costs Y essence.)

The easy house-rule is, of course, alter it to be "If you take stun damage, Trauma Damper reduces it by 1 box to a minimum of 1". That's how other damage-reducing things work, isn't it?

Is it possible that it is meant to work this way, since they carried it over from SR3? Surely they had to have been informed of this problem in the previous version, and one would think such a mistake would have not been repeated. Maybe the trauma dampener is meant to prevent your body from being fatigued by holding your breath and treading water. It is surprising they didn't put the same note they have for platelet factories and said you have to take a minimum of 2 damage for it to negate the damage. This almost seems like it could have been deliberate.

Sure, you can make a house rule for this, but I'm also gamemaster at conventions and I hate discussions with players, when they want to exploit this. Because they don't want to have such house rules...

Also, if nobody mention it, it won't be fixed in any errata.

I agree, I go to the Gencon in INDY yearly. You really do not know what to expect going in with rules. For newcomer games it does not really matter as much. But for veteran games where you have people that have been able to form ideas on how the rules work, it can become rather troublesome.

I do not think I would call negating the fatigue with trauma dampeners an exploit. It is something fully allowable in the rules and does not really require any manipulating or twisting of them. This does not even require rules lawyering. Luckily the SR4 devs are watching this thread, so they will hopefully give us an answer.

Due to the way damage and drain works in SR4, the Trauma Damper is hardly exploitable in any way, shape, or form like it was in SR3. Not even by a mile.

SR4 doesn't have set damage ratings. There's no such thing as "Light damage" that a Trauma Damper would eat up completely, allowing you to cast a rather large selection of spells for free with zero consequence all day long. Nor can you cast the biggest, baddest spell in your arsenal at the highest force you can and walk away with it simply because the Trauma Damper would instantly move that "Deadly drain" down to a "Serious wound." That is why the Trauma Damper was crazy in SR3. Not because it lowered damage by one box, but because the mechanics involved in taking damage were borked.

All the Trauma Damper does now is remove Drain by one box. Cast a light Force spell? It might do no damage at all. It might do just one box of damage. But it might also do two or three boxes, too. You have no way to tell until the dice are actually thrown; averages are for casino owners and mathematicians and have no bearing on actual rolls in the real world.

The only reason Trauma Dampers, Platelet Factories, and... that new blood one in Augmentation... basically just provide a free hit on your Damage and Drain Resistance Tests. A nice investment for a magician since they're pretty much the only character type in SR4 who takes voluntary damage, but so what? Magicians aren't allowed to have implants and equipment that's more useful to them than others? Guess we should get rid of Reflex Recorders, then, as they don't work on Magical Skills and are thus truly unbalanced for giving mundanes too much of an advantage! Oy.

Yeah, because magic works different now, it's not broken... even if it makes you immune to drowning and you can sprint forever.

Indeed.

If you say so.

On the contrary, as illustrated by Paletet Factories and the BCCS.

No. But if you want to perceive it that way, go chasing wind-mills.

It has. It makes any kind of gradual, minimal stun damage irrelevant.

As the mechanic existed prior to the implant, it is the problem of how the implant works.
There are similiar implants that don't share the problem.

Yes. This is why I strongly suggest leaving yur move-by-wire system dependent upon physical contact with instruction sets. Sure it's convenient to wirelessly share the contents of activesofts between group members, and manually changing activesofts mid-combat is bullshit - but leaving a wireless command input available for your move-by-wire is just too dangerousif the enmies include decent hackers or technomancers.

-Frank

Except for the sentence that reads: "If the character continues to run beyond this base period, he or she begins taking 1 box of Stun damage each Combat Turn from fatigue" From SR4, 155. Thus, fatigue damage IS stun damage, and goes away.

Another note on running, is jogging stun damage is resistable, while sprinting stun damage is not.

I'd go with by RAW, you can sprint indefinately via the trauma dampener, because the 1 box of stun is subtracted from the damage taken (i.e. not resisted) by the trauma dampener. Its not like being able to run for miles on end is severely game breaking. We're not playing olympic sprinters 2070.

Though, give someone a trauma dampener, raptor legs, and cyber skates, and their base running movement goes from 25 (human) to 55. Now, with normal base movement, they're going 500meters/minute, or 30km/h(18mph). With raptor legs/skates, they're going 1100 meters/minute, or 66km/h(41mph).

In fact, perpetual sprinting is possible for any character with a total of 10 dice in body and willpower:
Fatigue Damage caps out at 6, than he must make a threshold two test with this dicepool... and he suffers from a -2 wound modifier.
So he still can buy two hit on the test and roll on... which is why it's better to swim than to tread water.

The problem of the TD that there will be never any Fatigue damage at all... granted, the rule consistency of Physical Skills is quite bad itself, but no need to make it even worse.

Shortly after Catalyst's first printing of SR4 goes to press, which I do not have a date for yet.

Will it look cooler or just be a reprint?

well, do you think the catalyst logo looks more or less cool than the current one? =P

(ie it's probably just going to be a reprint with a different logo on it, since it makes little sense to rewrite the main book over again. particularly when there's a danger of old-fashioned pitchfork and torch mobs showing up screaming for unwired )

Cover? That'd be a start. Most of the the art makes my eyes bleed.

Also I've held limited edition 3rd up next to limited edition 4th and wanted to cry because of the loss of quality.

Of course things are getting better Street Magic was very slick, Augmentation is adequate. Both are by far better than the current BB cover and interior. Could those pages get any thinner btw?