Hey all just a quick question on Orthoskin. I'm in the process of creating a Street Sammie for our new run and I was wondering if investing in Orthoskin was worth the price tag. I don't want to go with the cheaper Dermal Plating because of essence costs but thought that the extra Armor might be good since my character is your basic heavy gunner/melee type. Naturally, if I skip Orthoskin I can save 6-12 BPs for use elsewhere (or for better cyber/bioware), etc.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

if you want cyber-armor you have two or three options, one of those options is dermal tech which costs more essence but less nuyen.
the second is orthoskin which costs less essence but more nuyen to be balanced with dermal tech
then there's a little bit of i think gen/nano or boneworks which grants a little bit of armor each . .
but aside from that, you're pretty much out of options .. either you pay more essence or more money *g*

Though I believe orthoskin is significantly less noticable than Dermal Plating.

(Augmentation also has the Dermal Sheath. Somewhere in between plating and orthoskin in terms of noticability, but a bit more powerful than either)

I'll have to take a look at Augmentation.

I understand the pros and cons of Dermal vs. Ortho, but I guess what I was trying to get at was "is the +2/+2 (max at chargen) to armor worth the cost, or would I be better off putting those points into skills, contacts, Edge, other toys, etc.?"

I realize that a lot of this likely comes down to personal tastes too. For my character, as it stands right now, Dermal Plating really isn't an option since I'm getting pretty low on remaining essence (particularly considering I may want to upgrade some stuff later).

It comes down to 2/2 armor is, in many circumstances, equivalent to having 2 more body with which to resist damage.
That's 20 BP, assuming you're two short of your soft cap.

It also doesn't count for encumbrance, so you can get it on top of your normal armor.

If you plan on your character getting hit, its probably not a bad idea. If you plan on not getting hit, well, those BPs buy 4 points of Dodge.

Well IMO Ortho is too expensive at chargen, but a good way to get in more bio during the game. However I've housruled cyber and bio essence loss to be the same, so you could replace dermal plating with ortho and use the remaining essence hole to fill with other cyber or bio. This means you can make a tough sammie off the shelf and still have alot of room for improvement. I don't like games where a starting character is 80% near his potential (and let's face it augmentation is an important aspect of a Sammie's ablities)

Ortho: The primary reason to get this are orthoskin mods from Augmentation. I´d call it "nice to have". It is very essence friendly, but at chargen it´s taking too much out ouf your ressource allowance.

Dermal Skin: Never, because of:

Dermal Sheath: This is the way to go if you want to have semi-obvious cyberware (Augmentation, too).


If you want damage resistance at chargen, consider Platelet Factories or a Trauma Damper. Or even Reaction Enhancers. Those are conditional/work a bit different, but they are cheaper for about the same level of DR.

Orthoskin can actually be gotten at rating: 3 at char-gen, as opposed to dermal plating and dermal sheath, which are both limited to rating: 2 at char-gen. Orthoskin is the best choice, since it is the hardest to detect, if you can afford it. And depending on how big the payoffs are in your game, it might even be worth waiting for - especially with the mods that you can get for it.

And that's the real question. If you will be able to buy or acquire it in-game, then it is worth it to wait - it is a huge advantage, but not essential like initiative enhancement is. If sammies tend to mostly start out with all of the cyber they will ever have, then go for the orthoskin, since skills and the like can be acquired later with Karma. The boost from orthoskin might seem puny, but what makes it huge is that it stacks with other armor. Armor and small arms fire are close to parity. Something like orthoskin can make the critical difference between getting wounded, or only taking stun damage.

Orthoskin is for chumps. I find it almost inconceivable that you wouldn't find something better to blow that kind of cash on.

It is important not to get bogged down in SR3 thinking when building SR4 characters. In SR3, armor was awesome, and two stacking points of it that didn't count towards encumbrance would make a big difference. In SR3, 2 armor = -2 TN to resist damage, which is incredible. But in SR4, 2 armor = 2 dice. 2 dice is not incredible. It is only 2/3 of one hit, statistically. That means if someone shoots you with DV 6, the difference between having the 2 extra dice and not is the difference between taking DV 6 and... also DV 6

A general principle of SR4 chargen is that 1-2 dice are never worth a high price. Sure, if you have 7 skill, you're "legendary," but if you have 6 skill you're only down 1/3 hit and you save a freakin' bundle. The only time I'd use orthoskin is on cybered out sammie with very little essence left and cash to burn. Seems likely that this would not occur during chargen, but only during gameplay. If you're going for a nice boost to damage resistance at chargen, your best bets are bone lacing, bone desnity, or dermal sheathing. Those seem to have much better cost:essence ratios that orthoskin.

Also, if you're thinking about armor, don't forget to pick up arsenal. It has form fitting body armor. It is your friend. Also, there's an armored codpiece

The extra dice are only a nice little bonus. The real advantage to orthoskin and other mods is, as I said, the fact that the modified DV of an attack, compared to the armor rating, determines whether you take physical or stun damage. An armor jacket already gives you 8 points of ballistic protection - just a few more points on top of that, and you will wind up only taking stun damage from most attacks short of full-auto weapons.

It is pricey, though. Normally, I would go for dermal sheathing, instead, but apparently this particular character is at a point where he can't afford it, Essense-wise, but has enough Nuyen for the orthoskin.

Consider this though too: Odds are you likely will not ever replace or remove your Orthoskin. The stuff is the best in its class and while it's expensive in chargen, it's also so expensive that saving up the cred for it can really take a while, especially if you end up buying up relatively inexpensive but high availability items you couldn't purchase in chargen at all like AV or APDS rounds, top end Agent programs, new fake SINs and Awakened drugs. That said, I'd look at some cheaper things like Synthacardium 3 first if you haven't already. I wouldn't worry too much though; as long as a Samurai has their bases covered with some initiative boosters and an agility augmentation, the rest of the 'ware load out is mostly details. Attention coprocessors, for example, are so cheap that they're almost always worth taking, but they're also so cheap that a lot of the time you can honestly afford to wait a run or two and easily afford them.

In the abstract orthoskin is really good for the 'walk right past security' type biosammie. It's undetectable without a fairly intrusive seach, and helps said sammie not die if someone pulls a gun on him.

On the other hand, it is expensive as hell, and sythcardium is probably better and cheaper.

Hey all, thanks for the advice. As for Dermal Sheathing, I'll just have to take a look at it when I head over to the game, since I don't have Augmentation. We were already planning on taking some time for Chargen anyway since we have a first time player starting as well.

As some of you have predicted, part of what is going on with my character is that I am trying to buy the expensive items that I might want at chargen if possible since it will take so long to save up for them and because skills are relatively cheap to upgrade with karma (and a Sammie doesn't have much else use for karma anyway). I do have muscle toner, wired reflexes, reaction enhancers, bone lacing, and the like already, so just now trying to decide whether to go for a) a little more bio/cyber, b) a few more skills, c) more edge, etc.

Orthoskin seemed like it might be attractive because of the high price tag, but that also means I won't be able to get anything else really. I'll take a look at the sheathing and some of the other toys in Arsenal/Augmentation and try to figure it out.

if you can take a little(*snickers* yeah right *g*) criticism try posting the character in questions and wait for incoming tips ^^

Doh! Of course! Well, here goes (and my apologies if this be the wrong forum)

Ork (20 BPs)
Attributes (200 BP) Bod: 8, Agi 5, Rea 4, Str 4, Cha 1, Int 5, Log 2, Wis 5
Edge 3 (20 BP)

Skills: (108)
Heavy Weaps 6 (24)
Automatics 4 (16)
Blades 3 (12)
Pilot ground 2 (
Dodge 4 (16)
Perception 4 (16)
Infiltration 4 (16)

Contacts: 14 BP

Neg Qualities +30 BP
Toughness 10 BP

Gear: 39 BP

Equals 381 BP total so far

For Cyber/Bio I have:

Cybereyes 3 .4 essence
Reaction Enhance 2 .6 Essence
Wired 2 (alpha) 2.4 Essence
Aluminum Bones 1.0 Essence
Muscle Toner 2 .2 Essence
Enhanced Artic .15

Leaving me with 1.25 essence.

Also please double check my math to make sure that I haven't miscalculated the BP costs. To get Ortho 2 of course I would have to drop the Enhanced Articulation since I would not be able to get enough otherwise.

ooh...one piece of bad news...ever since the FAQ came out...apparently Reaction Enhancers and Wired Reflexes are no longer compatible. Don't worry, it makes no sense for lots of us. (especially because they are compatible, with like, ALL other forms of cyber or bio reflex enhancement. To this day i don't know why they decided this.)

On the bright side, this saves you 20,000 nuyen and .6 essence. And you still have an 11 Initative with 2 passes, which is damned good.

You actually spent 210 on Attributes...so you need to ditch 10 of them. Body: 40 BP Agility: 40 BP Reaction: 30 BP Strength: 10 BP Charisma: 0 BP Intuition: 40 BP Logic: 10 BP Willpower: 40 BP comes to 210. So there's another 10 BP to play with!

I added up 411 BPs, with 9 left. Now, getting rid of the 10 BPs extra you spent in Attributes will come out to 401, leaving 19 BPs left, which is a nice little amount.

Otherwise, character looks good. More of a gun specialist. with some really good stealth skills as well. You *might* want to take at least an Etiquette skill though; a 1 charisma and no social skills...well, if your party has a good Face, you could get away with it.

And a little twinky hint: Pilot Ground(Wheeled) at 1(+2). You get an extra die, and unless you plan on driving a tank(or piloting tracked drones), this can save you 2. Yeah, it's cheap, it's twinky, but i rarely meet people who DON'T do this. It seems to be a 'forgivable sin'.

And someone might double check my math as well to see if i screwed anything up as well.

nvm

You are mistaken. Every attribute you posses starts with 1 at least.

[edit] Yeah, now... ignore this. The statement is still true, though

You're making a butt ugly ork sammie! Don't worry about etiqutte! That's a keebler's job. You'll only be worse at what you do if you waste points on social. Not that it would be a big deal to take etiquette 1, but you wouldn't get much out of it. Your best bet for social, IMO, is to plow whatever spare points you have into edge. Edge is a combat character's best friend, because it's what can keep you alive. But also, if you get faced with a 'do or die' social situation, you will have 0 dice from your 1 charisma -1 for defaulting. Which lets you take a lucky shot with edge!

Guard: Hey! Who the hell are you?

Butt ugly ork sammy: Duhhhh... (luck roll go!)

Guard: Oh yeah! You're that contractor. Go on in, it's the third door down.


On the matter of why reaction enhancers don't stack with anything in the core book: they wanted to make Move by Wires have a purpose. Since they're the only ware that stacks with reaction enhancers, they are hands down the 'accept no substitutes' choice for speed freaks, despite their crazy expense.

that one is something they should have let be like 3rd ed . . in 3rd Ed ini Enhancements were not compatible but reaction enhancers were compatible with everything else that improved your reaction . .

Doh! I was reading the wrong entry on the Metatype table and had the Ork starting at 4 body and 4 str.

As for Reaction Enhancers, stupid FAQ's

Thanks for the tip on Pilot!

I was also thinking of pumping Edge since that is always handy.

You might want to ditch Enhanced Articulation for a couple Reflex Recorders or Synthacardium 3. Enhanced Articulation is good because it affects around 10 skills or so but only one of them (infiltration) is a skill you've chosen to take since Physical Skills are a distinct category that does not include Combat or Vehicle Skills. Reflex Recorders, on the other hand, are a lot cheaper and can be used to emphasize what you already have while Synthacardium 3 gives enough dice to take your character from modestly athletic when defaulting to quite physically capable.

Also, Muscle Toner costs 0.2 essence per rating, so you've got a typo there one way or the other.

Of course, nobody can actually take advantage of the fully tricked out combo of MBW and RE, because it comes out to +9 Reaction.

Genetic Optimization?

Oh, no doubt. Exceptional Attribute as well. My problem is that nobody is going to design a state-of-the-art system like this that can only be fully utilized by that minute percentage of the population that not only has the potential to have amazing, superhuman Reaction, but is also at the extreme minimum of that scale at the time of implant. I mean, really!

Yeah, but each item is viable as a stand alone product as well, which is worth mentioning since owning Rating 3 Reaction Enhancers certainly is no guarantee that you can afford a Rating 3 Move-By-Wire system.

I was responding to the premise that the reason Reaction Enhancers no longer work with anything else (supposedly) is to highlight the fact that they do work in conjunction with Move-by-Wire.

What?! When did this change happen ... And where can i find the FAQ ?!

SR4 FAQ

Your character gets to stub out cigarettes on his forehead. It's worth the BPs.

-K.

that is entirely possible without ortho-skin, just some will-power and maybe quick healing abilites *g*