I've always assumed that delta clinics had supersophisticated nanoforges and scanning-tunneling microscopes and other diagnostic and construction equipment costing millions of nuyen, but I've been re-reading Augmentation and I was surprised to discover that delta grade cyberware mostly comes down to personal care (p.127). As far I can tell, all you need to make your own Delta grade cyberware is a Medical shop and a Cybertechnology shop (costing 10000 and 5000 nuyen respectively) (p. 127). Add a Cloning shop (5000 nuyen) and you can make clones too (p. 126). Only bioware, genetech, and nanoware require a Medical Facility (200000 nuyen) (p. 122, 127, 129).

As for the personal care, all you need is some skillwires or a Task spirit. The main problem is surpassing the delta diagnostics threshold to create the surgical/implantation plan, all that requires is time (p.125).

There aren't any rules for finding deltaware components, but I would think deltaware would require equivalently expensive components. Maybe they don't, maybe it all comes down to custom surgical implantaion plans.

Even assuming that delta grade components are required, once you've beat the availability threshold for those, you've got 50% off all your deltaware for cheap without the hassle and favormongering to schedule an appointment with a delta clinic.

Did I miss something?

In the RAW, you use half the cost of item, in this case delta cyberware, which normally costs 10 x the normal cost of the regular item, so now you are ONLY paying 5 times the costs of the item.

Talk about eating up some resources.

If you were going this route, would just use normal cyberware but at half cost. As for availability, it does not matter due to you are making your own.

Advantage is that you can have some availability greater than 12 cyberware.

Hmm, I can see some problems, technical rather than bovine bombardment.

I see no problem with someone owning their tiny private Delta clinic that has no staff, team of surgeons or other help. As a character concept of being a private owner (who knows, perhaps fired due to mysterious circumstances from that Shiawaze clinic) it sounds like fun.

The drawbacks are several.

Space
Where will you have it, im sure it would require at least a safehouse to house all of it.

Surgery
Most surgeries will require a staff of trained staff, nurses and other doctors so you will not be able to perform surgery on yourself. Hire a staff of at least two. 1 Surgeon and 1 Nurse. I assume 5K per employee

Security
Hire people to guard it

Contacts
A good fixer or even a specialized cyberware dealer. Perhaps a Cyberdoc as a contact, and working at your clinic.

Alternative Employees
Drone staff to complement yourself and an anthroform drone that you can rig so that you can perform surgery on yourself.

You do realize that a delta grade clinic as you've described it doesn't actually possess any implants to implant?

Whether you buy parts and spend (lots of precious) time to make/grow/modify your own implants or you buy high-end implants from the manufacturer and customize them to the user that's where you start forking out the real money. Now figure in top salaries for skilled surgeons and cybertechnicians and the overhead starts adding up.

Synner, if the owner is a mage (or has a friendly mage on the staff)... have him initiate and whip up a few ally task spirits (works very well if said mage is medically inclined too)... They can work 24/7, have skill levels above and beyond what a mere mortal can achieve, and best of all, they are cheap past the initial cost.

Don't be such a troll, man.

He does have a point. While force should always come first when budgeting karma for an ally, if you're blowing all that karma (and risking 2-4 edge), you had better not make it a unitasker. If you're going for high-force allies, you want to lay down even more insane amounts of karma so that they're not just your cyberdoc, but your personal hacker, face, and Harlequin-level caster.

Also, if not from a task tradition, remember that you have to blow karma and training time to learn how to at least dabble in a skill in order to write it into the formula.

Oh, and don't forget the lab in the back of your delta clinic so that your ally can make you a few million in orichalcum each year...

Frank, they **ARE** cheap... past the initial cost. Yeah, they are expensive up front. That's not a small amount of karma. But once you have the high force ally, they don't cost anything else beyond that to keep. I mean sure, you have to treat the allies appropriately else they'll rebel.

But in terms of resources, after the initial outlay of karma, they cost very little in resources to maintain (No mandatory Karma either). That is what I was getting at.

But honestly, a few Force 10 Allies with medical skills (biotech, cyberware implantation, surgery, etc) and you won't hurt for medical staff. They won't get tired. They can do some pretty sick things. They will also have Skill level 10, something that a mortal can't achieve easily if at all (since skills cap at 6, specializations just give +2 Dice). The mental stats that go with those skills won't be higher than 7 for mortals yet the spirit will have 10s.

That's a 5 dice difference. Make those allies spellcasters as well and give them some good healing / health spells to assist with the medical care and you are set for workers.

It gets even worse if you opt for even more powerful allies using the low power ones as springboards to reach higher power ones. Once you are up high enough in ally power, then you just start making more of the same high power using the previous ones to help you get there safely.

For fun, I'd have the troll gun bunny slot some medical accounting / billing softs so they can enforce collections.

Do I see a single runner ever doing this? Maybe after several years of gameplay. But I see this as somewhat feasible for a group of runners to invest in and make happen. Perhaps even a magical group?

Big D, you are certainly right. Can't forget the enchanter spirit either.

Hell, that enchanting spirit could very well fund most / all of the equipment purchases. Though of the force required, may as well ensure it can help with the cyberdoc stuff too.

Of course, no one has stopped to mention that doing this would require GM approval. Can any of you honestly say you'd let this happen in your games?

Though I should point out that SR2 & SR3 had an additional cost to allies beyond Karma... 1 point of Magic from the Mage.

SR4 doesn't have this cost. I have to wonder why.

Yes, but that's Frank's point! If you're going to sink the karma into a high-force ally, cyberdoc is penny-ante stuff compared to what else you can use the spirit for. Sure, go ahead and give it all the medical skills--especially first aid, which it will need to save your sorry hide from near death after the binding. Set up your own private delta clinic, if you want (just remember that you still have to get delta ware from somewhere, and I don't think even uberallies can make them by hand with no tools or supplies).

Just remember that once you have your uberally, cyberdoc is something you'll have it do on the side, not as its main job, unless you're somehow demented or otherwise psychologically driven to fulfill that need with no consideration for anything else.

A high-force ally under RAW is basically a cross between Chuck Norris, Harlequin, and Buckaroo Banzai. Having it play Hawkeye Pierce and nothing else is a waste that no sane person would ever commit.

Why create an expensive Ally spirit when an unbound Task spirit is free? Just keep re-conjuring the same spirit until the surgical plan and implant assembly is complete, then one last service for the actual surgery.

Ally spirits aren't cheap. To say they are cheap "after the initial investment" is akin to saying that once you've bought the NFL team you no longer have to buy tickets for a luxury box. It may be true, but it's also hard to call the scenario "affordable" by any stretch of the imagination. And whether or not a GM would allow the runners to create a homebrew Delta clinic ran by Uber Ally Task Spirits should be second to a far more important question: Should the GM let the Magician use Edge burning and other assorted tricks to create a couple of Force 10 Uber Ally Task Spirits to begin with? Once you've hit that plateau worrying that the Samurai might some day be filled with nothing but 100% Deltaware seems kind of silly.

Well, there isn't anything in the rules saying you need a certain skill level in order to assemble delta grade components into the delta grade implant or to plan the implant surgery. IIRC, it's just 10 hits to assemble the components into the final implant and 24 hits to plan the surgery. That can be done with rating 1 skill (it just takes a super long time). Skillwires would be enough for that.

Now assuming a house rule (which I think would be smart) that says you need skill rating 6 in Medicine and Cybertechnology in order to assemble delta grade components into the delta grade implant, you would still only need an unbound force 6 Task spirit. That's easy to do for even a starter character and it's completely free.

Get a life, boy.

In SR4, luck is called Edge.

Actually, I was saying that you should use an unbound Task spirit. Non-Awakened solutions are for animals.

y'know, if the insects had been smarter, they woulda infiltrated wimp production facilities rather than preaching to the poor and disenchanted to do the Body Snatcher thing. They coulda skimmed all the warm, metahuman-looking bodies they needed off the top with a little creative accounting. We could have been invaded from within without K-E or anyone else ever noticing.

Good thing that they weren't smart (and started operations while SR3 was in effect ).

The face in my current campaign is a med school drop-out (SIN got wiped out in Crash 2.0) and he's bought a Medical Shop for his starting gear. Medical skill group at 3 and Logic 7 means that she rolls 10 dice for all this.

Delta's definitely in that group's future.

The sad thing is, I got that ref immediately.

Too bad OOTS and EW are only updating about once a week, these days. OOTS I can understand, but I haven't heard of EW staff having health issues or anything.

Laser....weapon....focus?

Laser Weapon Foci?!?!

Do tell my good friend. Do tell.

It's not my toy, I just have regular claw gloves thingie weapon focus.

I'll let Frank or the nutjob who developed it explain. We've never actually tested the prototype, it'd take a ton of karma to bind and I don't know about him but i'm happy with the six foci I have already. He just wanted to see if it could be done.

I just know it took forever to enchant, a ton of radicals, and an unholy alliance with Ares.
It's something to do with the uninterrupted beam that makes it possible.
You can do ranged combat in astral space with it from what I hear and blast unmanifested spirits I think.

I still cry when I think of the deal he made. He basically turned over full rights to the plans in exchange for the parts and development funds. I think it's part of some master plan to piss me off.

What exactly is the Reach of a laser beam for the purpose of calculating bonding cost?