Okay okay, stop me if you heard this one, I've been skimming through 'Augmentation' and I came up with a dozer of an idea. Modify the pneumatic spreader built in to your cyber arm to be able to 'spread' a pull 20 bow. Sure it would take a complex action, but then next turn its a 22p arrow flyin atcha!! I know there would be a few minor technical difficulties, but nothing that couldn't be worked around with a little ingenuity.

Just thought I'd put that one out there before your players do

much easier(if painfull) to just redline a pair of STR15 Arms to STR30 once to get a really deep hole and just make do with 15P Arrows the rest of the time . .

Are you crazy, man!?
Redlining a strength 15 implant!?
Did you see Ghost in the Shell?
Thats what 30 fucking stun damage will do to you!

The hydraulic spreader may take a complex action, but f you buy the arm alpha you still have enough room for serious wired reflexes. Hell, make a physad and just tank the single magic point.
22P is worth it, I think. Quickdraw an arrow and boost your reflexts to get 1-2 arrows in every combat phase.

Or just make a troll, and do it without any stupid fancyness, make him an adept for even more stupidity!

I'm afraid a spreader wouldn't be able to fire a bow accurately, anyway. For anyone who's ever done archery, you know that much of the shot's accuracy is determined by the release. You have to hold the string right, and then let it go without plucking it with your fingers. You can use a mechanical release, but the idea is the same - a clean, all-at-once release. I don't think a pneumatic spreader could do that. If you tried to pull it sideways out of the bow, you'd torque the string and send the arrow flying who knows where. And I doubt it could close fast enough -- wouldn't it, in fact, close about as fast as it opens? Maybe faster, but the string would definitely run into it.

Also, how would you even get the spreader in there in the first place? The string needs to be pulled back evenly from its central point, orindarily by having your fingers or your mechanical release attach above and below the arrow. If you had a big ol' spreader, you couldn't spread from the center without knocking the arrow off its nock. If you put the spreader above or below the arrow, it wouldn't fly straight.

of course i saw . . but if you're in a place to use a hydraulic spreader as a last effort weapon, you're in the same place to redline *g*

i think i can see a way to modify a spreader to do so (involving some attachments on either end so the spreader iself isnt inside the bow proper). but at that point one have basically turned it into a hydraulically powered crossbow...

Have the spreader be 2 shafts, with "fingers" between them that seal shut. They hold the bowstring till it's fully extended, then on command, the fingers snap open, releasing the string between the two shafts. No interference, no friction, walla, instant cyberbow. Figure it takes at least a simple action to reset and grab the string again.

heh, now that i think about it, didnt the mythbusters build something like this for the robin hood myth?

so with that spreader with 2 fingers on the one spreader arm you basically now have one cyber-arm holding the bow and another arm with two fingers pulling the string . . why?

This is just the mechanism internal to the arm itself. Not an extra cyberlimb. I used "fingers' because I didn't know another way to describe the internal grabby-string-thing.

From top down, the mechanism would be kinda like ths:

yes, but in effect you'Re back at 2 arms holding the bow and the string with one arm releasing the string . . aside from the STR being 20 in one cyber-arm and needing the torso and the STR being 15 in TWO cyber-Arms and needing the cybertorso, there's not much difference anymore, is there?

I'm confused, or else my diagram sucks (ASCII ain't exactly the best medium). I'm figuring this mechanism is completely internal to a single cyberarm. You hold your arm out, deploy the bow arms, activate the pull, and then let it go. Your other arm only gets involved when nocking an arrow, though you could have 5ish shots internal to the cyberarm too if you wanted to go that route.... I'll have to physically draw the thing I think.

So, can you explain to me why this contraption should be considered a 'bow' and not a 'crossbow'?

yes draw it
but i do understand your ascii, and i know perfectly well, what you're going on about . .
but if you have one arm splitting into two handles, where one has the bow attached and one is using some hook to hold the string and they go apart . . that is basically again 2 arms that go apart, one holding the bow and one holding the string . . ok, so you have that in ONE ARM . . but that Arm is only good for that ONE THING . . so why not go the more effectice AND EASIER way of just using two normal arms to do that?

I can't honestly give you a reason, excepting that the bow arms would be vertical instead of horizontal.


Never said it wouldn't be easier. I thought the discussion was how it'd work and the feasibility of it. I must have been misinformed on this.

And I'm not saying the arm splits off into two seperate arms to deal with a standard bow action. That'd remove the point of it being *internal* to the arm.

Deployment of bow:
*Bow arms fold up and down into position from the top and bottom of the arm (Assuming fist is held as a bow would be held), unfolding as needed if the customer took the long or short bow option.
*Internal to the arm (same place you'd have a hydrolic jack, cybergun, whatever, no deformation to the arm itself excepting the bow arms being deployed), a set of pistons with a locked grip on the bow string push towards the elbow (and past, if needed. Bow arm would have to be locked and horizontal obviously to make this work)
*On command, the clamps/valves/"fingers" whatever you want to call them, spring to lie flat against the pistons. Instant release of the bowstring and launch of the arrow. Pistons reset within a second or two at most.

That's how I see it working. There's none of this funky transforming arm as it splits off into multiple pieces. Only things that are noticible to external viewers are the bow arms during deployment, and the drawing of the string. Everything else is internal to the arm.

And yes, it's FAR easier to just draw the damned thing yourself. This is for that nutball who doesn't care, or who really wants to fire two bows at the same time.

At that point, you're modifying the ware so much it's house-ruled gear. Per RAW, the spreader wouldn't work that way. Could you custom build a custom bow shooting rig and incorporate it into a cyberarm? Sure. But it would be a custom bow shooting rig. It wouldn't be a hydraulic spreader from Augmentation.




I think they built just a stand with a release, they attached the bow to the stand, hand-drew the bow and just set the string into the mechanical release.

Depends on how the spreader is designed and functions. Hell, it might just be two pistons with a platform between them. If that's the case, having the platform seperate to let something through wouldn't be much of a modification. I'll admit ignorance here, as I've not read up on this piece of 'ware.

Yeah really. I mean, you could make a pneumatic crossbow -- or really there's no reason you couldn't make a mechanically operated crossbow that's the equivalent of a trollbow.

I would call it a bow and not a crossbow because it follows the rules for the bow, simply applying the hydraulic strength of the weapon attachment to draw back the string. I know that with a couple moderate rolls of cyberlimb modifications and the addition of a specialized spartgun (Smartdart?) you could overcome all of the obsticals mentioned in the design. The benefits to the build to an adept troll is that it is much cheaper, costs a single point of essence (Magic) and drops a 22P shot instead of the maxed out 17P that the ping-pong tiddly of troll archers is capable of.

More damage for less investment.

And it doesn't have to be on a troll. You could slap this sucker on a squidgy squat or an elf adept. And combo together the murfiest ninja ever.

Now the way that I as a GM would put a stop on this was already recomended in a prior post.

Enforce the standard 'Max rating' rule on bows. Nothing higher then 6 out of chargen.

Now what would be nice is to build in some magnetics or high-speed wheels within an arm instead of a standard cybergun, and have it fire aerodynamic metal shafts about 6" in length. Penetrating power well past a bow, but shy of a gun. Due to the sheer mass though, you might just be seeing it drive through armor plating with little problem.

with magnetics, you'd pretty much build a rail-/coil-gun into the arm though . .
but i was thinking about something similar once, just have the bow-arms fld up from one arm(left) and use the right arm to draw the string and you still have the left hand free for other things, because the bow is built into the lower-arm part . . but then i saw the fold-up-bow in arsenal and said:"meh, fuggit, it's easier and cheaper this way"

Yeah, I figured the same on magnetics, and dropped it figuring they *just* made a man portable version, so making it cyberarm capable didn't seem appropriate. Nothing stopping high speed wheels from slinging a bolt though. Would be really low range or really bad accuracy at long ranges I'd suspect....