I have glanced at the board and looked at one thread about the cyber limbs. I have a guy who wants to play a Street Sam and we were talking about the cyberlimbs and such. That little system that is there for the cyberlimbs i think personally is too comprehensive and it doesn't seem any better than the typical cyberware implants.

I was wondering if anyone has played characters that had cyber limbs and the perks if any to having it besides having storage compartments and cyber guns.

Well, as I understand it, cyberlimbs are only really good if you use Augmentation's rules - though they get expensive quick. You boost up the base cyberlimb stats with Augmentation's rules to the unaugmented max for your metahuman type, then you can buy up to three levels of enhancment before you have to have a cyber-torso. Not sure if you can bypass the augmented max once you have a cybertorso or not. But cyberlimbs can net you that 9 agility without costing a crapton of essence, and you can nab things like the gyrostabilizer and whatnot for lots of combat goodness. And there is also a bunch of more utility-oriented cyber-limb upgrades in the Augmentation book, plus the red-lining optional rules.

Also, having a cyberlimb bitten by a ghoul or hell-hound is bound to hurt a lot less than a meat arm. Plus, you get an extra box of physical damage track for each cyberlimb you get - making cyber-limbed street sams a good bit tougher than those with meat limbs.

Burst weapons are pretty awesome, so there's really nothing wrong with having an obvious cyberarm with a smuggling compartment, agility modification, gyromount and fingertip compartment loaded with a monofilament whip even if you're just going by the base rules. And as Scope said, cyberlimbs got a huge boost from Augmentation, so it's now easier than ever to have such a limb at least match your meat attributes. So, yeah, compartments and gyromounts are perhaps still some of the best things about cyberlimbs, but that's hardly a bad thing. It really can come in handy once you've been beaten and left for dead by a street gang and have only the pistol and credstick hidden in your cyberarm to see you back to your apartment. God, I hate my GM.

I wrote up a sample character or two when I got Augmentation that had cyberlimbs. Getting muscle toner/augmentation up to your ears is nice, but expensive. An arm with some armor, agility cranked to 3 past your natural maximum, and a smartlink makes you a passable combat character for minimal investment. Well, provided you use the cyberarm for something else, too.

I think I used it for Cybercommlink storage. That plus a minimal cybertech skill lets you hide your commlink just as well as if it was implanted in your head, while keeping hardware updates a bit less awkward.

I guess. Diminishing returns if he character ever gets the cash to upgrade to serious bioware.

Biggest advantage of cyber limbs in my book is something they left out in the earlier versions . . the ability to switch it to either being so sensible that one can read braille or to switch it so you can put your hand into a pot full of boiling water . . then through said pot and through the oven it stands on without feeling any pain . . that and the fact that they just do not tire like the rest of your meaty body does . . main problem for me allways was, that you could not actually hold your own body-weight with them, at least as a troll *g*

It can be purchased in PDF form from the Shadowrun website, just FYI. Personally, I like having the PDF as well simply for the easy searchability.

Yeah, i might just shell out for the PDF. I had a concept ive been wanting to utilize for a looong time(tech-wiz type who loves to tinker and could turn a cyberleg into a work of art after awhile) and this sounds like it gives plenty of options and gadgets to do just that with. That and just having all the other stuff in the book on top of it.

Cyberlimbs as written in the core SR4 book suggest a bunch of coolness but fail miserably to actually be cool. Augmentation is a night and day difference. Basically all of the things that you (well, I... I don't know about you menkies, only this one) had thought "why didn't they just do it this way... its still the same rules but it doesn't suck!" Well, thats what they did.

For an investment of 20 grand you can get a cyberlimb cranked out to 3 above physical maximums for race with some cyberlimb armor. This can net you an agility 9 arm for doing ranged combat, a strength 9 for cutting through men using a katana, an extra 2 armor for all damage tests, an extra box of durability... Its incredible.

For Example:

I played a cyber-samurai that was a ganger in the 504s and was double crossed with a parting gift of two Ares Pred rounds in the back while roaring down the highway at 160km/hr. The result was a horrific crash with an eighteen wheeler that left him broken and dismembered in the ditch and left for dead. He had bought a black market DocWagon biomonitor that was skwawking into the night...

Apparently the old user had quite the health plan. A cyber arm (his arm was laying in a bloody wad of tissue paper like flesh some 10 meters away), a cybertorso (his ribs were basically turned to dust on his right side) and a cyberskull (easier than trying to fuse the fractures) later he was "together" again. Needless to say, waking up from several months of coma into a body literally made out of chrome is a terrible experience and harrowing for the mind (ie massive and non-consensual essence loss). Since his last experience was of his own death (not a near-death experience... simply a death-experience) and he wakes up in this tin can, disconnected from the "real", he develops a certain death fetish while wondering if he can die, is dead, what is real and what is a dream etc. He is prone to blackouts from the brain damage, further distancing him from the real world and throwing him more into a state of lucid-dreaming. Amores Perros with a touch of sociopathy, if you will.

Basically this character is only viable using the augmentation rules. He CAN be used with the core SR4 rules... but only if you want him to suck. Instead he got 3 boxes of damage, a Body augmented to 6, 9 Agility for firing a shotgun with, 4 extra armor, 9 Strength and a spur to decapitate people with and a metal friggin skull to break heads with if he headbutts someone (to death), which was often.

Never you mind DocWagon trying to get back ~¥300,000+ in assessed fees on top of litigation...

Totally insane.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

I have to disagree somewhat. The Augmentation rules are certainly playable for once, and they;re a big improvement, but they're still not cool. I do like the redlining rules, though. If they had made custom cyberlimbs the norm, then things would have been a lot better, IMO. Also, the averaging thing is more than a bit wonky.

I have played a cyberlimb sammie in the past, before the Capacity rules, and what we discovered was that he was better as Inspector Gadget than a traditional sammie. To a certain extent, that's still true: there's no *point* in having a cyberlimb without cramming it full of toys. Everything else you can do more easily more cheaply.

It depends on how you rule things, I'd think...

Inspector Gadget is only really a problem if you kit out to be Inspector Gadget. I refuse to endorse that sort of capacity, generally, so my fate is rarely sealed. Certainly, though, it is possible to get all of the stats and bonuses from other, cheaper sources... But none of those sources give you a metal freakin arm. Also, if you extend the rules a touch (see Cyberlimb Reinforcement) it is entirely possible to start doing some sweet stuff. There is no reason that parts can not be made to have a cyberlimb emulate or otherwise reproduce basically any effect available on another body modification (much less do that task better). Last I heard metal was still metal; and metal is still stronger than most organic compounds. Also is Metal!

If you have a condition that must be met for a character - in my case "have a metal arm that can punch through a car" - then cyber limbs can be the only way to meet or exceed those limits. I don't know about you, but I am far more willing to accept a chromed out cyber-arm anchored into a cyber torso to be able to punch through a car door than just some guy with muscle replacement and bone density augments. Its less an issue of "what the rules say" and more an issue of "what I see in the movie in my head". Aesthetics are the driving force behind most gear decisions for character based role players. Stats for roll-players. To each their own.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway

See my Brick the Troll thread or my Anti-Magic Mundane thread. Both some quality use of cyberlimbs.

I just want to make sure I got this right:

Using Augmentation Rules; any cyberlimb will start out with the basic Body 3/ Strength 3/ Agility 3 and anything I purchase will be above the 3. so whatever I upgrade past the unaug max is considered an enhancement and takes up capacity and the highest is 3. (ex. Human with a cyberarm can have 9 Agility/Strength max without a cybertorso)

I was confused because i was trying to create a street sammie with cyberlimbs using an excel character generator and when assigning the stats on the cyber arms. I had to input the stats into the cyber arm. The body/agility/strength didn't have a base score so I literally had to put Body 3, Strength 3 and Agility 6, etc.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding the rules.

I haven't read the augmentation rules recently, but I think that you could only have an agility of 6 before adding a cybertorso (i.e. the base of 3, plus another 3). Perhaps augmentation has changed this so you can raise that initial base, but I think the book is pretty firm that you can only add 3 points before you gotta put a torso on.

Here's a huge thread of Q&A with the authors of Augmentation that answers some of these questions:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...hl=augmentation

Okay I've glanced the Augmentation threads and with all those posts about cyber penis implants, freaky shark skin fetishes and eyeball tails. No Offense, I just really want a yes or no. on this one.

Limbs' attributes start at 3, these may be raised to the characters unaugmented racial maximum for 1500 a point without taking up capacity. Up to 3 additional points may be added to an attribute past this without adding a cybertorso. So a human could have a limb with Body, Agility and Strength of 9.

and with aug you can buy custom cyberlimbs that start off with the natural maximum, so limbs for humans would start with all 6 in all attributes and you can still upgrade them for capacity to 9 without needing an cyber torso . . limbs have been upgraded to the best state i've ever seen them in as of yet O.o

i seem to have a tendency to do that somehow, sorry x.x

And prolly not a good idea to say "I don't have time to go over threads that already answer this but you should all waste a lot more time making your repeat answers on this thread more clear."

Pah. It must be a good idea because it managed to get old.

Searching through several somewhat large threads (including one thirty pager) is tiresome, so I figured I'd lend a hand. Plus it was only after reading one of the aforementioned threads and rereading the section in Augmentation that I realized how it worked. Originally I somehow thought the limbs could be customized up to the user's natural attribute rating. So my character was much happier after realizing his arms were faster, stronger, and tougher. Now if I could just get rid of that pesky money problem.

I know im not the only one who has asked a question that has already been answered.
I'm pretty sure I can speak for those people why we ask the same question is:

When the possible answer is layered between pages of post that are probably way off topic at that point. We just figure someone else can give us a quick answer who already knows it.

It wasn't a big deal about the confusion part and I am glad I get input. I also actually thank people for the input.

Besides, people like myself will still ask questions that might have already been answered in a 32 page topic. The sooner some people just leave these trivial issues alone.

The more positive the Feng Shui this board will be.

Ok, I guess you just didn't the part in that post where I said 'Sorry Stahlseele' and 'I appreciate everyone's input'

I'm sure every kind enough to distill the vast font of knowledge and experience gained by reading and thinking through countless readings of the books and these boards and are kind enough to answer repeated questions on the same topics are really mortified when they are told they aren't answering the question correctly and it's messing up their feng shui.

Cyberlimbs can be useful in limited cases, Augmentation makes them more useful.

Yeah, I'm a jerk for asking people to give a straight answer first and an explanation afterwards....

Yeah this is getting old anyways, but everything else considered. You guys answered my question.

Awesome,

Laters

When it comes to the customized cyberlimbs that can have base ratings above three, I personally don't have the base ratings higher than the characters own. I guess it's only fair. For example if I have a sammy with an AGI of 4, STR of 5, and BOD of 4, then I only boost the base ratings of the custom limbs to match the meat. To go higher I use the limb augmentation. It's not a rule I make, it's just a decision. FYI: I run a high powered game, so the reduction is not about limiting power so much as it is about following my interpretation of the spirit of the rules. Just my input.