So I was thinking of replacing an arm on my character and wondered what the damage was of a cyberarm...
Normal flesh and bone attack is (STR/2)S...
Normal flesh and titanium bone laced bones is (STR/2+3)P...
So what about that metal fist? Shouldn't it hurt more that bone lacing wrapped in flesh?
According to me not finding any rules on it, I think the book says it does (STR/2)S, which is quite silly if it's true...

I would say a group of full grown men having screaming arguments over a fantastic dice game is sillier.
Though I can't track down a quote, I was under the impression that a cyber-fist does Str/2 Physical damage.
I wouldn't give it any bonus higher then that as it would be stepping on the toes of cyber-razors and other such goodies.

Besides, Cyber arms are not solid block of metal, they have many other components, I can imagine the knuckle of a cyberfist being designed to emphasize quality of motor control (Which we take for granted with our Jesus-designed meat fists) and resilience over punching damage. Stop being lazy and go buy some cyberspurs.

I'd be inclined to use the (Str/2)+1P damage code of the Hardliner Gloves for a cyberlimb strike, if you felt it necessary. As Screamin Demon said, cyberarms are primarily built to be prosthetics, not weapons.

Sadly, there's no rules for titanium cyberarms

Errr, titanium is used for prosthetics.. as it is about the only metal the body doesnt instantly rejects, however titanium itself aint very hard, it's when you use it as an alloy it becomes deadly shit, however.. a Wolfram reinforced hand, ouch that would hurt

Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger.



The damage code difference needs no other justification.

Funny. I was under the impression that metal is better-than-flesh.
Maybe that come from the fact it's said in every SR book ever talking about cyberware...

All steel is metal, however all metal aint steel, personally i prefer the kind of metal that melt faces

Well, i think they left it, so they'd be able to sell ya other stuff! Don't forget there are attachments in Augmentation like the Louisville Slugger(adds Clubs damage), Evo Kali(adds Blades damage), and i do believe one adds punching damage; the Nightengale Feet of Fury add to kick damage; and most of these add +2 if im not mistaken. Raptor Legs add kick damage again as well.

Then there is Hardliner gear(extra +1).

And we won't get into Martial Arts and it's DV stacking. If anything, your cyberspurs or blades? They end up less damaging in the end compared to a open-handed fighter if both of em specialize all the way up.

THAT being said, i do recall SR3 having a rule that if you had a pair of cyberlimbs you got +1 to power as well-i forget if it went to +2, i don't have my M&M on direct hand. Houseruling this back in would be reasonable, as to get the bonus you needed 2 limbs minimum.

But really, when a guy Ars Cybernetica master with Evo Kali arms(+3 bonus total blades DV), 7 Strength(easily gotten in limbs), and Spurs(Str/2+3P) is doing 10P, and the guy next to him with Nightengale Feet of Fury, Raptor Legs and +3 DV from martial arts(and can go higher) with Strength 7 is doing 11P....yeah. There's a reason they didn't juice the damage.

in 3rd you got +1Power per FULL Cyerlimb to your unarmed damage code . . somebody with 2 arms and 2 legs got a hefty +4, so you were even with titan bones back then . .

No. All of those enhancements add to the Dice Pool, not to DV.

Someone already responded literally to this. To those who did not realize it's a quote, it's from Conan the Barbarian. When someone says something wacky like this, Google is your friend.

Here's my thinking: hardness is certainly a factor, but really what determines how hard an object strikes something is its weight and velocity. And I think that a normal cyberarm is going to be weighted similarly to a regular arm, and swing just about as fast. It's not going to be solid metal, it will have lightweight polymers and alloys and such. Otherwise it would be so heavy that someone with one cyberarm would always walk lopsided and fall over easily

I could have sworn the Raptor Legs add +2 to the kick attacks(they used to, anyway). And in the SR4 Excel Chargen; it showed 'Nightengale Feet of Fury'' as +2 power to Kick Attacks. (I do have one of the earlier versions of the excel chargen, though.)

Why not simply have the Titanium Lacing work even on the cybered limb?

The character is evenly juiced up, so no awkward weight distribution, and it only works for his Unarmed attacks anyway.

He pays 1,5 Essence for the Titanium, so its not like he saves a bunch compared to the Spur.

Raptor legs are +2 to strength, so effectively +1 to damage. However, you can't have nightengale feet of fury (which are +2 dice pool to kick attacks) and raptor legs, because raptor legs are modular, and optimized cyberlimbs can't be modular.

Ok, i gotcha. Yeah, i admit the whole modular/optimized limb sorta confused me for a bit. At first i read it that the modular were a version of optimal...but they are different. So the Feet of Fury are considered 'Optimized'', the Raptor Legs ''Modular.'' Well, it's cool.

Either way, with the Martial Arts DV increases and the like, they can easily surpass the bladed weapons-so tacking on lots of extra damage to the limbs might not be needed.


As for the bone lacing, i recall in the old rules again, you had that 'Discount'. Stuff cost less essence and less nuyen the more limbs you had...it made sense since you were, well, getting less of it, since you couldn't add the stuff to cyberlimbs. But they seemed to do away with that. I suppose it would be easy enough to add back in. I mean, why would it cost me 1.5 of my essence to lace my one remaining arm? (a little off topic, but i have been thinking about this.) (if'm im paying full essence, then i kinda want my whole body treated, but i don't think they came up with a way to add bone lacing to cyberlimbs...they are kinda already there, being made of metal, ceramics, and the like, so it would be kind of redundant.)

I would disagree. A normal cyberlimb is made to match your body.

If you have Titanium bone-lacing, you "normal" body is much more durable and heavier than the typical cyberlimb. Thus, a limb for you would be a customized bugger that lets you keep the boni from Titanium bone-lacing.

They'd simply use more and heavier metals in the cyber arm, as compared to a regular one.

This could cost more, but you sorta already paid for it.

Again, from a balance perspective I do not see this quirk being a big problem, and common sense wise it can be "handled".

Not according to Augmentation they're not. They come with standard attributes for your metatype, so actually they're made to match the average human of your metatype. If they were made to match you, at least in terms of weight and bulk, then you'd assume that they'd start with the same Body that you had when you bought the limb. But they don't.

Now, customized limbs with body and strength enhancement will almost surely be bigger and heavier. But those aren't normal, those are customized.

As I see it, the default use for cyberlimbs is to serve as cheap prosthetics. They are not designed to be weapons. As such, they are actually designed to mimic how a real limb would work as much as possible, even obvious limbs. You don't want your cyberleg to be so big and heavy by default that it makes holes in your floor. And you don't want your cyberarm to be so heavy that it collapses your baby's lungs when you're cradling it. Normal cyberlimbs exist, primarily, to replace normal meat limbs. Obviously you can cutomize them and trick them out to hell and back, making them very effective weapons, but that's not what the off the shelf models are for.

...did you really use the word 'boni'?

Anyhow, you do keep the bonus from having metal bones. Unarmed combat is something that uses all of your limbs roughly equally (granted this does depend on what fighting style you are using) but a bone-laced boxer with 1 cyberarm would receive an average of both arms to his unarmed combat damage.

And for the record Conan fucking rocks, I totally got the quote as soon as I saw it. Thats movie Conan, though. Book Conan would have twisted Thulsa's scrotum off long before he got that far into his speech.

Hehe, boni is the correct form for multiple bonuses.

And it specifically says that you use the stats for the limb which leads the attack. You only average it out for other stuff.

And to Larme, if you look at my post again, you will notice I do call the titanium weight cyber limb customized to what is "normal" for your character. So, yea, you say what I said, I do not disagree.

But the OP is looking for a customized cyber limb that specifically allows him to keep the titanium lacing bonuses. And I see no problem there, as long as we are talking customized limbs.

No, I'm not, I'm planning to replace an arm with a cyberarm, and I couldn't find the standard damage of a cyberarm, meaning it would do (STR/2)S, which would be silly...
All the other things being discussed are interesting, but my question was answered when no one knew what the damage was...

And all this time I thought the plural form of bonus was bonuses... This problem always seems to pop up in shadowrun crowds, probably because they get the idea from the plural form of focus.

http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Boni

Its lame to argue, I know, but I have two soft spots, one is my hatred for the word 'Boni'.
The other (unassociated) one is my complete lack of tolerance for the crappy theology of neopagans.

No, everyone knows what the damage is. It's that "silly" (Str/2)S, the same as a normal (non-cyberlimb) melee attack. Some folks are just bitching about it, hence the conversation. We know the answer, but now there's a mild debate going on justifying other possible answers for potential house rules.

Now that we are being silly, take a look at this informative page about English and borrowed Latin words. Plenty more examples you would not like to see common use.

Like taking the bi or shooting rhinoceron.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mplurals.html

It doesn't change the fact that boni is a correct way to pluralise bonus in Latin.

But having googled a bit, I can see that this discussion flares up all over the net in various forums. It appears to be very important stuff.

All right then, where's the page reference to the damage of cyberlimbs?

The problem is that English is a bastard language and borrows so many rules from so many different places with single words sometimes having multiple etymologies (Like Witch or Fuck) that any argument turns quickly futile. I like to stick with popular opinion and understanding. I live in Hawaii, and if you use anything to indicate plural other then some extra 's'es people look at you strangely or call you a Haole.

SR4 core book, page 149. "Unarmed combat."

The advantages a cyberlimb brings to combat are already factored in with their modifiable stats (increased STR = increased damage), the options for further customization in Augmentation (+1 die per limb is nothing to sneeze at), and the capacity for mounting additional weapons (be they shock knuckles or cyberspurs). In and of themselves, cyberlimbs don't innately change your melee damage, though. Sorry.

There's no specific reference to cyberlimbs on the melee damage/weapon chart, because there's nothing anywhere that should lead you to believe there needs to be one. Similarly, a knee does the same damage as a punch, a forearm strike does the same as a headbutt, a chop does the same as a kick, and an elbow does the same as a palm strike. They all fall under "unarmed," just like a cyberlimb.

Now, if you'd like to house rule it so they match up with some bone lacing or a hardliner glove, you knock yourself out. I can certainly see the logic behind it, and (for once) wouldn't much mind someone instituting that as a house rule (or even seeing it in a shaded "optional rule" box in an official game book). But, right now, as written, they do the default unarmed damage appropriate for the attributes of the limb (if leading with that limb, as per page 335).

I thought you were saying that the limb was automatically customized. I always try to correct statements that sound misleading when I read them, for the sake of teh newbs, esepcailly since some of them may not have Augmentation and grasp the entirety of what we're talking about.

In terms of whether you should hose rule cyberlimbs and let them buy upgrades to melee damage, I'm not so sure. Cyberlimbs are already pretty powerful. The scariest offensive character you can bring out of chargen is one with agility 10-ish cyberlimbs, which is the most direct route to those nutsy dice pools in the 20s. Combine that with strength upgrades, and you have one deadly customer. Do we really need to add the physical damage of titanium lacing, which is actually so powerful it can't be bought in chargen under normal rules? Meh...

Well, Bone Density can give the same damage code as Titanium, and that's not only available at chargen, it's legal, more Essence friendly and doesn't show up on MADs. I recall that discussion in another thread. Titanium's not all that bad; it grants a touch of armor(always nice) and is cheaper. But i wouldn't call it 'so powerful', i'd put it about equal with the bone density, in the end, once you factor in the armor and cost. (If you have money to spend? i'd say BD takes it over all the way, unless you really, really, want the 1/1 armor.)

But that being said; i can absolutely vouch that Cyberlimb characters can be insane. My one cybered elf i only bring out in one or two shots because i feel flat-out guilty playing him for long periods of time, and he's got the legs and torso of maxed out doom, basically. So really, cyberlimbs, after Augmentation, are really excellent in and of themselves.

Actually, there is...

Now, if a wooden stick does Physical damage, shouldn't something made of high-tech plastics, polymers and alloys also do physical damage?
The only reason to assume cyberlimbs do Stun is because regular limbs do Stun and the book says nothing about cyberlimb damage...
IT doesn't say cyberlimbs do (STR/2)S it says nothing... Absolutely nothing... At all...
Anyway, for easy of play we've just decided cyberlimbs do P with whatever mods you had before...
So Mr. No-ware get a cyberarm and now does (STR/2)P...
And Mr. Titanium-Laced gets a cyberarm and still does the (STR/2+3)P he did before...
Not very realistic, but seems balanced and fair...

Ok, so scratch the "so powerful," but it's still outside of chargen availability. And the important part of the argument is still standing: cyberlimbs kick ass, we don't need to house rule more upgrades for them to make them nuts. There should be a hard choice between to cyberlimb and not to cyberlimb. Cyberlims can have amazing attributes pretty cheaply and easily, as well as all kinds of gadgets. But regular cyber enhances more than just one limb and is often cheaper and more essence friendly. It's difficult to choose between them. Make cyberlimbs better, and now you've tipped the balance.

No, it doesn't. That's not a rule. That's not even close to a rule. That's pure fluff, and as cool as fluff is, it's not rules. It's, at best, house rules (which I'm not arguing).


Yes, maybe it should. However, nowhere in the rules does it say that it does.

Fact: There is no special damage code listed for cyberlimbs.

Fact: That means they use the default damage rating for an unarmed character, as that character is not using a weapon, and is, as such, by definition, unarmed.

Fact: It's a common house rule to change that, because many people feel cyberlimbs should do extra/better/different damage.

Fact: The probability of a house rule, or even the sense that a house rule makes, does not mean that the official rule has changed in any way. Cyberlimbs do the default "unarmed" damage. I'm sorry if you don't like that answer, but it is still the answer to your question.

Very true, complete fluff, no crunch...

I think you misunderstand me, I wasn't saying I was stating RAW, I was stating that apart from your second fact, namely that it says nothing on the subject, they would do default unarmed damage...
That's why we've decided cyberarms don't add to damage, if you do (STR/2+3)P before getting the arm, you do (STR/2+3)P after getting the arm, which is your default unarmed damage...
The only alteration is Stun to Physical, which is, as you say, as house a rule as a rule can get...
Which is exactly what you are saying...
So what exactly am I trying to convince you of? That you're right? Well, I would have to be since we're both saying the same thing...

A discussion where we're both right...
We need more of those...

Not to stick my nose in here fellas, but in the case of dual rightness I believe protocol is to fall back upon either who is more right, or who was more right first.

No, the protocol is to keep arguing as if there was a disagreement using a series of straw man, ad hominem, and red herring fallacies. Probably invoking Hitler around page 11 or so, and definitely calling the other person gay and impling that they have a small dick and have sex with their mother despite being gay. Hooray internet!

Pfft, you think it'll take until page 11 for Hitler to come up? What's your posts-per-page set to, like, three?

Hitler's cyberarms didn't do physical damage in unarmed combat, but they had miniguns built in, which more than makes up for it.