That would be nearly the LAST thing you'd ever want to do. Can you say pistols adept? Pistols 6 +imp pistols 6+ pistols soft 4+ enhanced articulation+ reflex recorder?? Screw edge, that's 18 dice.

Its not broken, it was just not quite cost inhibitory enough yet.

The Personalized Option doesn't even provide an additional level of Skill, just a Bonus Die.

That immediately rams into the Augmented Maximum limit, Lindt. With Pistols 6, the augmented maximum is 9. Enhanced Articulation doesn't add to Combat Skills in 4th Edition, sothat's out. I'm betting Reflex Recorder - unlike Improved Skill - also adds directly to the skill rather than the dice pool, so that'd part of the 'bumping into augmented maximum'.

Additionally, if we're talking starting PC, the Improved Pistols is limited to 4 or 5 rather than 6 due to magic loss from cyber implantation - I just can't remember if it costs over 1 essence for rating 3 or not.

So realistically, it's Pistols 6 + Improved Pistols 4-5 + Pistol Soft 3. That's only 13-14 dice. Not significantly different from Pistols 6 + Imp. Pistols 6 + Reflex Recorder at that level of dice.

First of all, the skill OR the skillsoft is used, one cannot be used to augment the other. In other words, you can only use your inherent skill of six or the skill of 4 given to you by the skillsofts. Second of all, given the rules for maximum modified skill ratings given on p. 118 SR4A, you can only modify the skill pistols 6 to a maximum of 9, or 1.5x the current skill level. To my knowledge, skillsofts cannot recieve modifiers from, say, adept abilities or reflex recorders, as they are not learned abilities. The enhanced articulation provides a dice pool modifier, so it works with both cases, I think.

So, the character you listed above can only get a max skill in pistols of 4 if using the skillsoft (5 if personalized), or a skill in pistols of 9 if using the natural skill plus augments. The extra abilities/'ware to increase the skill above nine are therefore wasted.

In conclusion, not 18 dice, but rather 5 or 10. Adding a high agility to that still grants a more than respectable dice pool though

heh, yeah, there's so many rules violations in there, that even i can see without having ever played the wretched 4th . .
and no, enhanced artwinculation does not give bonus dice to shooting things anymore
butg still, do some clever tinkering and for 50 build points and one day time in game you can have most, if not all, available skills

Pistols 6 (9) is your end result there. Improved Pistols increases the Skill, & is subject to Augmented Maximums. Reflex Recorder increases the Skill, & is subject to Augmented Maximums. Enhanced Articulation does not provide any benefit to Combat skills. And with my change, Skillwires increases the Skill, & is subject to Augmented Maximums.

Skill Augmented Maximum also happens to be current natural rating x 1.5, so to receive a full +3, you must have invested in the 6 Ranks natural.

Holy shit, so it does.

Man. I was operating under the old, pre-errata version where it just adds dice.
Craptacular. Now I have to break my players hearts.

That ruins the flavor of skillwires, though. You have to have a natural skill of 2 just to use a rating 1 'soft, not economical at all for corps to have chipped wageslaves. Maybe call it bonus dice and cap the ratings at 2 or 3. That way players get to boost their pools and corps get to pay minimum wage for skilled labor.

That's shit. No one ever would be able to take (full) advantage of skillwires rating 4.

Wouldn't a quick and easy nerf be to limit hits to the Program Rating? That might be over doing it even, but it's already an optional rule (sort of)...

Now that would totally break them.
Everyone and their grandma would get em at rating 3 to start out with lvl 9 in their favorite skills.

IDK, I like it. personally I think it works well with the setting. First off I don't see every wage-slave getting cyber. They need to bend and scrape for the privilege of becoming an indentured 'borg ... which means that it's the people with a little aptitude(stat of 3-4) who self taught themselves up to a skill of 1 or 2 (do able most everything you'd want a grunt doing). IMO this is fine. I also like it that it's the it's the people with a little skill aptitude and inititive who /could/ in theory be good at what they do who get chipped at stop advancing; very distopian.
Also I'm totally fine with ware and adept powered being required to max out a skill. Adept do get the short end of the stick on this mechanically but hey what else is new in SR4. Also in genre and one of the novels learning to work with your chips is the only way to become the best this lets that happen. Does it make skill wires even more of must have? yes, but at the same time it also keeps them from eroding character roles.

While my change certainly makes them more attractive, it is in a different way & I do not feel they are a must have. That second part, however, is exactly what the change was intended to do.

Why shouldn't every wageslave receive such cyberware?
It's way cheaper then training them for one job. It allows them to be capable of doing almost every job in case you need more manpower in other departments, needs no refresher courses, adapts to new techniques in the blink of an eye and on top of that he's completely dependant on the corporation.

I also fail to see how that ware erodes character roles.
The specialist will have a higher skill rating, probably with specialisation. He will have the higher attribute. He can get reflex recorders or use adept powers to raise his skill and/or his pool.
It's like saying a face erodes the role of the streetsam because he fires a pistol.
On top of that being versatile now comes with a hefty pricetag. Most players would likely invest that sort of cash in upgrading their wares so the jack of all trades will in the end only be mediocre at everything.

Potatoe tomatoe. Same effect.

EDIT: And for the record, Alpha-Grade r5 Skillwires cost 20,000 and only cost 0.64 Essence (and can be obtained by Restricted Gear).

10.000 nuyens per level, for something that's implanted in every wage slave? It makes little sense to me. Sure, it solves the balance problem in some way, but it goes against the "cheap and universal wageslave skillwires" flavor that I've grown to love.

I'll stick with the old prices and my "1s and 2s count towards glitches" houserule.

Not even close.

@Werewindlefr: software costs for corps are completely artificial, as someone else said earlier "Microsoft doesn't pay for each copy of office" and Ares as a whole isn't out 10k per rating per head in any real way either. I'm not really going anywhere with this just pointing out that you can have new RAW and your fluff without contradiction.

@suppenhuhn

Life is just that cheap in this setting. If you run around putting chips in peoples head you have to hold onto them for a couple years to get your money back. You might even have to think about health care and working conditions. Much easier to higher on of the hundreds of people who are over qualified for the job you want done. And training? phef that's soooo 20th century. Higher Contract someone with the skill you need already and give them a copy of "Daily Life at the Ares Plant" rating 4 knowsot because those only take trodes. No training, no ware, no investment. It takes a doctor and team hours to install one set of wires. A manager can easily vet 30 people down to 5ish highers in that time. That is why not ever wageslave has cyber, even though you are right that it would be crazy useful.


... I think you missed the point. I was saying that RAW skill wires erode character roles. And there is the thing, it's actually largely the non-primary skills that help bring a character to life. It's a hacker writing there own apps, and riggers tinkering. Or that sam who fancies himself a demo-expert, or the the medic turned face. Those other skills are going to be much more fun for all the table, and chips erode /those/ skills. Soft maxed logic, cephelon 3 skill wires and neo-cordical nanites and you're rolling 15 dice to for being a mechanic. that's more than most riggers. It's also more software than most TM, etc etc etc.

Now in my game where this combo got field it lead to people hyper specializing even more because if you didn't twink hard there was no point in trying it at all. that's bad

If you define 'character roles' by 'no-one else is alloes to do that except me', sure. Just, that's the point of Skillwires - or Tutor Sprites, or Task Spirits.

And mostly, you want to be able to truely spend Edge on those - what you can't with Skillwires.

It's also a lot more Essence and Nuyen cost than just Skillwires.

I suspect that most corps don't produce skillsoft, just as most corps have to pay for each copy (or each global license) of MS. Office.

And of course, having volume licences around that don't need activation pretty much defeats any copy protection:
SR4 copy protection makes sure that your skillsofts will only run on you skillwires.

The AAA's produce Everything. They have at least one finger in every pie.

You completely miss the point of megacorporations. They feed you, they clothe you, they house you, they sell you cyberware, they indebt you, they pay you corp script, you go to corp doctors, you pay corp taxes. They don't ever have to fire or hire anyone, because they can reprogram corp citizens for whatever job they need - that's the point of skillwires. People are born Ares, born Mitsuhama, born Shiawase. They don't contract jobs out, they don't hire the unwashed masses. They have a legion of wageslaves who can do any job they want or need, all thanks to the cyberware implanted in them, which they will never be able to pay off because you keep selling them the next great thing. And when they die, you recycle the ware. That's the point of a megacorporation, that's the point of skillwires.

5 = 5.
4 + 1 = 5.
Same thing.

@ actual discussion now: Don't forget the fluff story about the guys who broke into a mining facility, and when they were caught, the on-site rigger-ish hacker switched all the 'wired workforce's manual labor skillsofts to CQC things.

IRL we have companies that make clonal desktops for their basic grunts: buy 1 copy of a program, have it run on all connected PCs. So why not 'wires?

No. Bonus Dice are not Skill Level.

Every time an effect or another skill is limited by Skill Level, this will be especially obvious.

OMG!

4 + 1 = 5.

Saying it's 5 dice is the same as saying it's 4 + 1 dice. It's called simplification. It doesn't matter if you did 10 - 5 + 3 - 2 + 1 - 3 + 5 - 4 = 5, or 4 + 1 = 5, or just 5; at the end of the day, it's still 5.

Ah!

But (4+1, max 4) is not the same as (5+0, max 5)!

The bonus to the skill itself is capped at current natural skill rating * 1.5, so in your example (4+3) would not equal 7, it'd equal 6, whereas an actual 7 would be, you guessed it, 7.

Bonus dice on top of the skill (specialization, circumstance, etc.) are not capped.

Depends on how you think about megas. Even still you aren't going to be paying anywhere near 10k.

>If you define 'character roles' by 'no-one else is alloes to do that except me', sure.
>Just, that's the point of Skillwires - or Tutor Sprites, or Task Spirits.
In all the games i've been in where someone really leveraged skillwires it diminished a lot of other players enjoyment.

>And mostly, you want to be able to truely spend Edge on those - what you can't with Skillwires.
... no idea where you're come from with this. /I/ don't want to spend edge on first aid roles cleaning a couple boxes of damage here and there, or disabling the prox detector on grenades, or stuff like that. Also even if I, the fake edge from the expert system is mechanically better than adding edge at the start. I know people love there exploding dice but if you dice pool is less than 18 you can't expect even 1 success from exploding 6s.

>It's also a lot more Essence and Nuyen cost than just Skillwires.
It all fits in one point of essence, and you can get it out as soon as the sam gets there first major upgrade. And yes it is more than "just skill wires" but the skill wires are the essential part.

That is totally a valid way to view the corps. It may also be canonical, but SR4 doesn't have enough fluff to make that interpretation necessary by any means. I, then turn to the rest of the genre and reasonable guesses about the future (as if there was such a thing) to fill in the rest. I personally don't see the corps bothering to take care of everyone. Certainly salaried employees are in the condition you describe, but line-cooks? You would spend 10s of thousands on cybering a line cook just in case you needed them to be an electrician?

If your dice pool is 4 (total) and you have an edge of 6, would you rather add edge now (and get possible exploding 6s) or would you like to reroll failures?

now have them outfitted with wifiy access, and if you have to download into several hundreds or thousands combat software and presto, your very own instant-army. or your very own corp of technical help in case of something like an earthquake or something like that.

When humanity falls, squirrels shall inherit the earth.



Feel the wrath of my nuts!

When humanity falls, squirrels shall inherit the earth.



Feel the wrath of my nuts!

it's allright muspliheimer, they will come with the hug-me-jackets soon.

How often do you roll 4 dice? people also love to talk about penalties, but vision enhancers and stim are cheap legal and conceal/condonable.

Consider. You're sixteen, you've just hit the end of free schooling and it's time to think about the future. Take a look at your grades: it's pretty clear no corp sponsor is sending you to university. That leaves you with paying for it yourself (ten thousand a semester); technical college (ten thousand a skill set); or skillwires (six thousand is well and good)... What do you choose - hell, what can you choose?

If I'm a corp, loaning someone six thousand nuyen, who can then do any job I require at a snap of the fingers, who leases the skillsofts from me, who is required to work for me until their ware is paid off... Or, do I loan someone ten-thousand so they can be an electrician? Depends, really, can the kid who wants to be an electrician really pass technical school, and will he? If so, can he train up to the level where I can make skillsofts from him?

You are assuming that corp is facing the choice of funding skill wires or education. That is not the case. Why would the corp bare any cost or involvement in the process of acquiring a skill? Tutor softs are likely cheep or free. Let people get there own skills. I imagine the world as having a lot more people than jobs.
Further what about all the unskilled labor? Do you really chip "line-cook (r2)" rather than get a line cook?

Quoted For Truth.

I've noticed a growing disconnect between many newer players and even certain old players. They try to reconcile two notions in their head at once: that the AAA megacorps are all-powerful and crush you at a moment's notice, and have people everywhere, and that the AAA megacorporations treat their employees like permatemps or scab workers. One stems from Zaibatsu culture and the idea of the monolithic 1980s Japanacorp that is Stern Father to its employees. The other stems from the more recent idea of expendible temp employees that work contract to contract but never penetrate the corporate shell unless they become management.

These two ideas are largely incompatible. Not completely, but largely incompatible.

Put the idea that corporate employees aren't invested in by the parent company out of your head. If you are a scab worker, yes - you are not invested in. But most wage slaves are corporate citizens, and that means they very much ARE invested in. They're not investing in your work alone. They're investing in loyalty. In your children's loyalty. In your children's productivity. And in your willingness to take their shit in exchange for cheap electronics, vacations to corporate tropical resorts, a pat on the back from the boss. They invest in you because if they get rid of you, they can't control you. They want more than your business and your 'productivity' - they want to make you a meat-based machine for using their skillsofts. An interchangable cog in any machine they have a chip to skill you for.

If my character tries to tell a lie I get 2 dice; defaulting on 3 charisma. If I had Con (1) I'd have four dice. By the way, this came up.

Not every pool is double-digit.

That was just a random string of numbers that equaled 5, to make the point that no matter how you get to 5, 5 is the same. It's the beautiful thing about mathematics.

Maybe this'll help:


Changed for people who don't know how to simplify.

I'll agree that both results ARE 5 and that once that 5 is valid the 5 is a 5.
But I can show that the method to get to that 5 can occasionally be fallacious and when the steps taken to correct the fallacy the result is not 5; it's that "Augmented Maximum" thing. In this case it didn't come up, but it can.

... ok if you have 6 edge there are times where you are better off spending it at the start. Even with a hard maxed edge the tipping point on when to roll edge is around 9 dice. Skill wires give you 4 of that.

But even more broadly the idea that "you can't use edge on skill wires" is simply in correct. In fact it's only even restricted a few corner cases.

It's the other way round: There is only one way to spend Edge with Skillsofts, which is strangely worded, too.

And that one way is almost always the best way. Not universally, but if your playing to your strengths it's should be your best option in most situations

See, you're suppost to be a mage with skillwires (or know one), that way you can get the Guard power sustained on you.

EDIT: Cheaper than an Expert System.

I always thought Skillwires was the one thing that helped balance the mages and adepts.

The new 10K per active rating is ridiculous. Forty K to give one person a skill of rating 4 plus the hardware costs. That totally changes how skill softs are used in Shadowrun.

You would never get any volume when it was cheaper for another corp to code it themselves

It is software. It doesn't cost anything to produce once you made your final release.

What is to stop someone from reverse engineering you work and selling at a quarter the price. Sure you could use Proprietary hardware with loyalty circuits, but how long before some other corp was reverse engineering it and making cheap knock offs.

Also these skillwires have been around for years. First commercial Simsense is 2024. We know they had skillwires by 2050. That means the technology is over 20 years old.

And while I can see you would need the latest updates to keep up with SOTA, there really isn't that much changes year to year on how you make a nice Béarnaise sauce, punch someones lights out, drive a car, or point a pistol at someone and pull the trigger.

So I'd expect there would be a large library of open source skill softs let alone the Warz stuff.

Sure you couldn't get the highest rated skillsofts but unless the skill had a serious SOTA cure, I bet you could get level rating 2s cheap and rating 3s with out a lot of hassle.

Re-rolling failures is usually a better way of improving your number of successes, but skillwire users still suffer from not being able to negate a glitch, or to downgrade a critical glitch to a normal glitch.

Of course, as 1s are failures, too, and rerolling them reduces the chance of them becoming 1s again, it allows you to go from critical glitch to normal success.

[quote name='Muspellsheimr' date='Mar 16 2009, 11:54 PM' post='783763']
Skillwires are broken because they literally allow a single character to do everything except Magic/Resonance at very little cost.

Are the broken balance-wise (opposed to gameplay)? If you are using only the BBB, not so much. If you are using Unwired, fuck yes.

SR4A does not fix the problem - it does not even address the problem, simply make it less noticeable by 'sweeping it under the carpet', so to speak. They are still ridiculously cheap outside of character generation - you can immediately pick up 2 R4 once gameplay starts, and assuming your GM gives out balanced Nuyen/Karma rewards, you can expect another 2 immediately after your first run. And you can run 10 Rating 4 at a time, as already covered.[\quote]

Please explain... Where are you gonna get 80,000 Nuyen to purchase 2 rating 4 Activesofts immediately as game starts (after chargen), and another 80,000 Nuyen (for the second set of Activesofts) after the first game session... If that is any indication of the games that you run, well, teh rest of thje Shadowrun world should move to that fantasy realm that you are using...

I generally have the amount of money suggested in BBB after chargen (based upon lifestyle) and the average runs (for starting characters in a team of 5) net the character anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 Nuyen per run until we have become somewhat established with a reputatiuon that supports the higher end paying runs...

Not meant to be harsh but, really, you manage to acquire 80,000-160,000 Nuyen PER CHARACTER within the first run?


Crazy...

Pirated software costs 10% ingame. Makes it significantly more affordable, at a monthly cost.