The thing that's driving me nuts is that people are taking YOU seriously, even though you're obviously messing with them. It's not about me, it's about feeling buried under an avalanche of people beating their faces against a horse so dead it's not even there.

I am being serious. Its how the rules are worded.

Unless otherwise noted, I assume people are serious, no matter how stupid they act. Too often people pull the >"I was not serious" excuse to save face.

So we're back to buying a smartlink using the BBB, not taking up any capacity, then later I deck it out with Arsenal Mods.

Like I said, I'll conceed that you can buy an internal smartlink attached at chargen. You can't get anything else. Anything else has to follow the modification rules in arsenal. As soon as you go to use arsenal for your arsenal mods, the internal smartlink takes up its capacity. It replaces the one in the BBB, you don't get one for no slots.

No, it doesn't. You can always choose to use the one in the BBB or Arsenal. Nowhere does it state one replaces te other.

In arsenal it states just that.

No. It states the opposite.

Ok..let us ignore the Troll, er..Tarantula..it is obvious he is not a GM but one of thos e[eopel mwho lives to argue with GMs and get bodily thrown out of their groups(that is what *I* would do if he came over to my place when I was running a game and tried to force his interpretation on me like he is here). My interpretation of rules has always been: if the rules specifically do not forbid something(give me a page reference where it specifically,e xplicitly forbids you to have weapons and armour modified at chargen,please? or where it expressly and explicitly forbids you from having them made by a contact. It must say "At no point should a GM ever allow this at character creation" or some similar statement), then it is allowed. That is how sane people, not ego-maniacal control freaks, read things. Tarantula is obviously, if he is a GM, the type of GM that Cain goes on his long, personal tirades about..maybe we should lock the two of them in a room and watch the fun?

Now, let us get BACK to the original topic:

Armour modification on vehicles, I would say, stacks on top of their existing armour. As in, what they start with is not a modification. It is what you add on top of that that has the cap of rating 6. So, yes, you can take a bulldog step van at chargen, provided you have the resources to buy it.

You're right and your wrong, what they start with is not a modification, but the modification does not stack on top of existing armor, it replaces it so yes you can start with bulldog step van but you cann't modify any vehicles armor to higher then 6, if you decide that the rating limit aplies to the armor modification.

No, it doesn't. Arsenal, 153, "Smartgun System: This modification is the internal version of the smartgun system (pp. 311–312, SR4)."


Who said I argue with GMs? I merely argue RAW on these forums. I'm not trying to force my interpretation on you. I'm not holding you down and threatening you if you don't follow it. So, if the rules don't forbid something, its allowed? I can buy a tank for 1Â¥ because the rules don't say I can't? Fully functioning? With awesome weapons? Nifty!

As far as armor mods on vehicles, it explicitly doesn't stack with existing armor.

Just because you can't buy common sense at char gen doesn't mean you are not allowed to use it.

Isn't common sense a positive quality? Or maybe I'm thinking Vamps...

You know, you are allowed to ignore people who are spewing total bullshit. There's no need to feed his troll on this issue anymore...

I was just providing an example of why the "allowed unless prohibited" model of viewing has horribly large holes in it.

You're even allowed to ignore them if they're not! Oh wait, troll, RAWR! GNASH GNASH!

Yes, it does.

It then goes on to describe how weapon modifications and accessories interact with each other.

Yeah, those would be the ones with listings under accessories. Ex. Safe Target Systems, Slings, Underbarrel Bola Launchers, Underbarrel Flamethrowers, Foregrips, and Underbarrel Weights.

Smartlinks are available as an accessory, if they are external. Internal smartlinks become modifications as soon as you use arsenal.

It goes on to say that accessories are the ones that don't require mechanical knowledge to install. While modifications follow the modification rules. Accessories are what you'd pick up from the store and put on at home.

It says anything available as an accessory is still available as an accessory post Arsenal.

(Sorry for the necromancy, going to be away from non-work internet access off an on for a week. )

You get to play however you want. It is plausible to say that the internal smartlink mod from Arsenal replaces the one from the BBB. You don't have to play it that way. Nobody cares if you do it the other way. The RAW is not explicit. The end.

Quote it for me Cabral?

I read the first two pages of this argument and then skipped to the end, because it was just back and forth with the same crap, so forgive me if I rehash anything.

1) The RAW are more like guidelines than actual rules. Don't forget Rule #0: It's your game. If the GM wants to let people take Availability 20 gear at chargen, or declare that a Great Dragon is a character's uncle, or replace the Damage Track with Hit Points, or if he decides Orks have green skin, then it's part of the rules from that point forward.

Changes don't have to be documented in the Big Black Book Of Officially Sanctioned House Rules in order for them to be used; it's treason to disagree with the GM, citizen.

2) Nuyen costs for gear represent the weapon's value in game balance terms. 90% of the time, your runner didn't happen to walk into Weapons World and buy a standard gun, then modify it later. It's far more likely that he got the weapon off somebody he killed, out of a place he's robbed, or bought it on the black market. In any of these cases it could already be modified, and the character never had anything to do with the costs of having the mods installed. It's possible, fluff wise, that he never spent a dime on any of his equipment, preferring to loot victims of his own violent crimes. Again, I stress: nuyen costs represent a weapon's value in game-balance terms. NOT necessarily what your character payed for it.

Character generation already takes upwards of 4 hours to complete for a single player. I would have to be -insane- to make it more difficult by applying modification skill rolls at that point, or demanding labor charges.

Look at it this way: if you were in-game, and your player went to three different possible places to price out a weapon and his desired mods, would you follow RAW and give him the same price out of the rulebook for each place? I certainly wouldn't.

One might be the list price at a fixed market; one might be exhorbitantly more nuyen, a Floating market's own weapon smith offering to hand-modify it to your specifications. One might be half the price or less, stolen off the steaming corpse of the previous user and still sporting blood spatter, sold from a heap of orphaned guns in some Novacoke-addict's trunk. A quick test fire to show it's still working properly, and you bet your ass I'd be buying the cheaper one.

At chargen, you'd pay the regular list price because that's what it's worth for game balance. The reason you have to condense your leftover nuyen down to a smaller amount once you're finished chargen is because you didn't actually HAVE ALL THAT MONEY. You just have gear that's worth that much money.

However, 3) the rules do say, on p. 148 of Arsenal, under the heading "Terminology", referring to the weapon mod charts; "Cost: the cost for acquiring the necessary materials." - so the book does not cover the cost of the modification, and that makes me assume it is not -intended- to be available at chargen. Personally I'd just let my players get away with it, as long as the availability wasn't overly high.

Personally, I think not providing rules for availability at chargen was a mistake. And not even providing rules for how much NPCs might charge for the mods was a bigger mistake. Not as in typo, but as in they really should have and it was a bad idea not to. They spend all this space on mods, then it's like "good luck developing your own system how to get them if you're not a mechanic with facility access. Don't fuck it up!" I'm normally just fine with GM discretion, but that hole is just too big IMO.

Right. Thats all my point was. All the talk about "in my game" and such is irrelevant to me, and no, I wouldn't run a personal home game that strictly either.

SO contacts i don't have any more count as BP costs
That's it all my chars will be amnesiacs from now on, backgrounds are just way too expensive now