Bioware now costs Essence? Why? Please tell me this is a misprint.

All of your non-cultured bioware will be Delta.

Yes. All Bioware comes in grades.

...for one, because the essence index cap was 9 instead of 6

For example, you could have 3 Essence worth of Cyber and still implant up to 6 BI of bio. In 4th edition you are left with only the remaining 3 Essence for bio. Furthermore if you exceeded your essence index with Bioware, the implants were only more prone to overstress. On the other hand, if you exceed your 6 Essence, the character simply dies. So for a bioware/genetech heavy character, there is no break. Once you reach 6 essence worth, that is it whereas in 3rd ed a character could go up to 9, provided she had little or no chrome (a good example was my baseball throwing sammy Tomoe who had about 8 of her EI taken up by Bioware with almost no chrome outside of a couple of retinal mods)

Bioware is also so bloody expensive as it is that I would never even consider Beta or even Alpha grade.

Cain, I agree with you on the silliness of the "1/2 rule". The old index was not really all that unwieldy to figure out.

Is that right? Skipping past the fact that essence costs have been modified and that you really can't compare ware from the two editions point for point... You would be halving one of the two, wouldn't you? So wouldn't it be closer to 4 points of one and 4 (technically 3.99) of another, halved to 2 (1.995), to fill 6 essence? So the theoretical point comparison would be 8 to 9, wouldn't it?

Dude!

How do you do those?

Yeah, thanks. I figured that was the case. I never think to use the character map thingie.

If you can't multiply decimals, you're not welcome at my table anyway.

I'm not so certain that it's the common gamer you're taking anything away from. Anybody who can't perform arithmetic on fractions or can't use a calculator probably shouldn't be gaming (the same for those who can't afford a calculator; they have better things to think about).

It does take the game away from the casual gamer, however. Although I'd say if a player has abandoned the archetypes and is either generating her own starting character or buying high-grade cyberware, she's left the realm of the casual gamer.

...ahem...?

...well I always keep Word open to do my spell checking (I've had PHP Spell break down too many times). When I want some special character like, say, the above Greek, Cyrillic, or Croatian with accents, I type it in Word first and then paste.

Um ... thanks, I think.

...пожалуйÑ?та

Why would you want to type a bunch of squares seperated by slashes?

They all look like '?'s to me.

But thanks none the less, Adarael.

That's got more to do with writing quality than actual complexity. Bioindex and the halving system aren't really more complicated;the halving system is just sillier, and claims to be simpler and more streamlined.

Where the difference lies is that SR4's writing quality is much better. Let's face it, FASA's layout and writing quality was never all that. So, we have a badly-written complex system that admitted it was a complex system, or a well-written complex system that lies and pretends it's simpler. Neither is really that much better than the other.

BTW, to repeat my question: If you have the Type O Edge, and you have more Cyber than Bio, does your essence cost get halved yet again? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Yes, just the same as if it was Delta in the first place.

Yes Cain.

Because such reductions take place on the cost that goes into the bio total.

If you buy delta bio normally, and have more cyber than bio, then the cost is halved too.

If that's you bag, I suggest looking at systems like Tri-stat Dx: where the rules only describe effects, and leave it to you to come up with the justifications for why they work. Under that system, if you can attack someone at 50' and do X points of damage, it costs you Y points to purchase, and you can call it a magic spell or a implanted gun or whatever you want to.

I converted shadowrun to tri-stat just before sr4 came out. But I prefer the multiple similar but slightly different effects. It gives flavor, like different varieties of tomato make a better sauce together.

or for that matter any superhero like game, hero, mutants&masterminds and others all use effect based systems. want to hurt someone in m&m? blast, want it to be a spell? take the magic power source, beyond that blast is blast is blast. sure you can slap some elemental effect on it, or limit its range for when you want to make someone that use fists rather then beams, but the pattern is the same every time.

hmm, didnt they release a cyberpunk game using tri-stat right before the publisher folded?

ex machina i think the title was. iirc, it got rave reviews, not because of its system but because of its settings (3 of them, describing different takes on cyberpunk iirc).

So what you are saying is you have 4 points of cyber and 3 points base (before any mods for grade and whatnot) of bio...

Well, here's what I'd say based on the the rules as written...

4 points for Cyber
0.75 points for Bio.

3 * 0.5 for Type-O / Delta Grade = 1.5

So your totals would look like so...

Cyber: 4
Bio: 1.5

Then you halve the lower value and add them together for the final Essence Cost.

This would leave you with...

Cyber: 4.0
Bio: 0.75

Total: 4.75

Remember, Type O trait allows you to treat standard Bioware as Delta Grade. Grade modifiers apply before any halving based iirc. I'm basing this on that really long thread where people were tearing apart the whole separate totals and halving thing about 2 months ago. The examples given there by Synner showed grade was applied before a given side (cyber or bio) was totalled.

Why is 4 decimal points not streamlined?

Type O makes the bioware count as delta, so starting with delta (or anything above standard) is pointless.

That's why everything should be done with fractions, instead of decimals.
So the Sleep Regulator costs 1/4 essence, out of your total of 6.
Halve it for Type O. (1/8 essence)
Halve it again for the split (1/16)
Then, if for example you need to add in something that costs 1/5, it's just 21/80, leaving you with 5 59/80, or if you prefer simple fractions 459/80! Simple! And with no cumbersome long decimals!