the recent martial arts thread made me go back into RAW and double check the rules for Bone Lacing cyberware and Bone Density Augmentation bioware. niether of thier descriptions seem to be exclusive to one another. so the question that i have is, can the two systems be combined?

muscle aug and muscle toner specifically state that you can't combine it with muscle replacement. orthoskin, smart skin, dermal plating and sheathing all state that they can't be combined. but not lacing and density.

thoughts?

Personally, I don't see why one couldn't lace dense bones. If it were up to me, I'd say that only the highest melee damage value applied, though.

According to the latest FAQ (I think) you can't stack them. However, since I can't find any logic as to why not I allow the to be stacked; although I use the old rule for DV of laced bones as stun or physical at 1/2 power. For example, titanium lacing with bone density 4 and a str of 8 would give a DV of 10S or 5P.

i'd rule for them to be stackable only if you haven't gotten the bonelace first . . so either put both in on char-gen or you put in density and get lacing later on . . as soon as you've gotten lacing, no more density for you . .
we did the same in SR3 with bone lace and flex hands cyberware . . you can switch out the laced bones in your hands, but you can't lace the plastic bones of flex-hands . .

I would probably just have the highest bonus count when it comes to unarmed DV. My train of thought is that while the bones would indeed be tougher with both; im not sure how much harder they would hit.

I do use the regular rules(Str/2+X P, or S if you choose, of course). So someone with 7 Strength would do 7P/S with Titanium Bone Lacing or Bone Density 4.

Though I think it would be cool to let them stack for damage resistance bonuses, if they really want to get them both. Again, the bones ARE still stronger with stacking.

You could install both, but they should not stack. The advantage of lacing something is greater if the base material is weak.

That's a good point! If you take bones that are as hard as titanium, and lace them with titanium, whoopee...

Fair point.

yeah, fair point, but bones will NEVER be as hard as any Metal . . plastics, ok, that i probably would agree on, maybe even kevlar . . but with Ceramics it's over again O.o

Titanium doesn't make bones as hard as titanium, it just reinforces them with titanium, giving them a hardness somewhere between bone and titanium. If the bones were already that strong in the first place, adding titanium won't help. How's that?

I can see that. I mean, taking, say, an aluminum bat and wrapping aluminum around it probably won't do much.

Now, FILLING the bat with aluminum(the bats are usually hollow, aren't they?) would help.

But since filling one's bones with titanium might be problematic unless they invented titanium bone marrow..then yeah, perhaps just the highest bonus would count.

Hmm....although, once again, someone with Density 4 who gets bone lacing later i think COULD maybe make them harder to break, simply because the metal inside would be harder to break. I dunno if this would count for a damage soak bonus, but i mean, perhaps it might be harder to break a titanium laced dense bone than a normal one, if someone, like, grabbed the bone and tried to snap it.

...Tooth enamel's already like a 5 on Moh's scale, so it's not like a body is entirely incapable of creating very tough mineralized structures. Besides, what makes for strength and durability by one measure can often result in weakness in other area, which makes things very tough to judge, especially when you add in that just like nearly everything else in the body, bones are a composite. Osseous tissue is brittle yet collagen is very elastic, and bones have low tensile strength yet a high compressive strength. It's really less about "this material is harder than that one" and more about "this material is better equipped to handle this particular type of force/stress than that one," and then picking the material that suits your needs. I really think it's entirely an issue of what the GM's most comfortable with, since we really are talking about pseudoscience here and it's really rather hard to make any sort of estimate as to what would happen unless we know what kind of forces we're trying to resist in any given case and what method is being used to resist them. For what it's worth, the book says that bonelacing increases tensile strength while bone density mentions things like strengthening ligaments, so perhaps it could be justified by saying that the lacing adds to hardness while the bone density somehow provides some measure of "spring" to allow them to still bend but not break.

What about the defensive bonuses?

Titanium Bone Lacing
+3 to Body for damage resistance
+1 to Ballistic armor
+1 to Impact armor

Bone Density Augmentation 4
+4 to Body for damage resistace

So combined they'd be:
+7 to Body for damage resistance
+1 to Ballistic armor
+1 to Impact armor

Tack on Othoskin 3 then it'd be:
+7 to Body for damage resistance
+4 to Ballistic armor
+4 to Impact armor

Is that correct?

or dermal sheath for
+7 damage resistance
+4 ballistic
+5 impact

hm, guess your guy must be rather strong, cause with both bonelacing and bone density.. you would probably collapse under your own weight..

I would rule that they stack but for a given bonus, only the higher modifier is kept.
Taking the same example as IQ Zero,

Titanium Bone Lacing + Bone Density augmentation 4:
+4 to Body for damage resistance
+1 to Ballistic armor
+1 to Impact armor

Otherwise it gets crazy/munchkiny and we'll have some players with bone so thick they can't even lean...

Probably get a lot of "Bone Head" and "You're really dense" jokes, too.

Here is my suggestion, if you choose not to use the FAQ ruling, on stacking them. This is purely from a balance point of view.

A: Bone Density must be first (though it is okay to have Bone Lacing removed, then implant Bone Density, then re-implant Bone Lacing if you are rich enough).

B:If the Body bonus to damage resistance tests from Bone Lacing is equal to or less than the bonus from Bone Density then there is a total bonus of Bone Density Bonus + 1.

C: if the Body bonus to damage resistance tests from Bone Lacing is greater than the bonus from Bone Density then there is a total bonus of Bone Density Bonus + 2.

D: Any Ballistic and/or Impact bonuses are added as is.

E: Essence is spent as normal, remembering that the lower essence loss type is always halved, making the essence loss inherantly balanced.

For example: Let's say Naga, the ork street tough, gets Bone Density Augmentation 2, making his Body score Body:7(9) and lowering his Essence from 6 to 5.4. Later he gets Aluminum Bone Lacing Bone Lacing implanted. This would give an unaugmented person a bonus to his Body for damage resistance tests of +2 and an additional 1 point of Impact Armour. On Naga, however, it adds only +1 to his Body, raising it from Body:7(9) to Body: 7(10) with an additional +1 impact armour. In addition, he has to lose 1 full point of Essence, which would ordinarily lower his Essence to 4.4. The essence loss from his Bone Density, however, is Biowear, while his Bone Lacing implant is cyberwear, so the lower of the two types of essence losses is halved, so his new Essence score becomes 4.7. Now, later still, Naga gets quite a windfall. He uses it to remove his old Aluminum Bone Lacing, which lowers him to a mere Body:7(9) again and leaving an "Essence hole" of 1. Then he adds in shiny new Titanium bone lacing! His new Body attribute would become Body:7(11) with an additional point of both Ballistic and Impact armour. His new Essence score would drop to 4.2

How does that look, folks?

one question . . how does one remove bone-works?

Well, depends on how much of a budget you have.

If you have the cash, you just have the nanites swim in there, and start returning the bone back to it's originality, or get them to strip off the aluminum and replace it with titanium, like residing a house, only a lot more complicated. (If you go this route, might I suggest that the doctor suggest that you do not look into the toilet bowl after a movement, as it might freak you out.).

If you have less cash, well then, there's opening up the flesh, and going at it with Bone Saws.

Nanites, they solve everything.

ah, yes, right . . i tend to forget about nanotics, because they were not ready in SR3 . .