I didn't feel like digging through 500 threads so thought I'd just post a thought here. If it's already been mentioned just disregard.

Reading through the changes document for SR4A I noticed diagnostics sprite power has been made a teamwork test. Why not do the same with the Emotitoy bonus it seems like a reasonable fix for people not liking the straight bonus.

Not bad.

Personally, my only real objections to the emotioys are:

1) No runner or contact would actually bring these to a meet. "Nice limited edition Squigglepuff Cherry you've got there, Mr., erm, Bonegrinder. My 6 year old daughter has been looking for one of those for months."

2) The bonus was too high for too little money.

-paws

Come on, you know the big, tough Shadowrunners would love to have the cute, pink thing hanging around their neck.

Actually, I can see a Black Market Dealer wanting to Hijack a Transport full of these just before the Christmas Rush in order to sell at a substancial increase in price...

I can see that. Especially if emotitoys rank anything like Cabbage Patch or Elmo in the 2070's.

When I was an Armorer I had a Furby in my arms room sitting next to the rack of 50cals. I don't see why a cybered troll runner with a cute little plush toy would look odd...erm.

Brings up in my mind the immageof a troll mercenary asleep holding tight his teddy bear and his SMG.

There are innumerable house rules for emotitoys, from outright bans to limiting when the dice pool can apply and so on. I don't actually have a problem with runners having them with them, regardless how lame they look. I just don't like the way they work by RAW, nor do I like the fact that it's cheaper to buy a whole one, rather than just the software.

Not a lot of point getting into it all again.

No reason you couldn't remove the sensor from the furry and put it in some more menacing Knick knack.

Or get the "Action Figure" equivilent to it. I mean, what Johnson is going to comment about a "Captain Capitalism" figurine? After all, he works for the betterment of all Megacorporations!

I like my emotitoys to look like Voight-Kampf machines.

-Chrysalis

In Neo-Tokyo they might.

My rigger has an emotoy that a spider like thing its modded to included a shit load of software to help him out. Autosoft for software and a few knowledge skills plus sensors as well as a mook agent with a persona fix to make a drone pet for him.

I don't get the cute jokes . There funny and all but you can get em customed however you want. A little T-100 or a miniature secretary to go along with meets I think it's cool as hell.

I still don't understand how everybody seems to read the emotitoy entry in Arsenal in a way that makes the toy give a character bonus dice, becouse it doesnt say that.
It's the toy that has the software and can use it, there is no mention of the owner getting the benefit of the empathy software the toy has.

In my opinion emotitoys shouldn't be usable to recive bonusses to social tests, they are just ridicolous, and how are they supposed to tell you what the result of the analisis is?

You could just wireless receive the results from the empathy software... right?

It could be done but I don't think that the toy's system has the option of being employed as a periferal node, it would probably require to patch the system; and even so if I were Mr. Johnson and my potential employes came to the meeting with one of those I wouldn't think great things about them, not to mention that anyone knowing about emphaty software is going to know about emotitoys, making the presence of the plush quite explicit about its use (making Johnson much less inclined to give in to any request of the runners and effectively negating the advantage).

Could you copy the software out of the thingy and stick in a headware system?

The software should be modified to add an interface understandable by the user (you cant feed the user binary sequences that it would feed to a node), but yes it can be done, what I do not like is the idea of a formal meeting in which everyone has a furby on his/hers shoulder, running emphaty soft is a thing, going around with a plush isn't exactly ....... cyberpunk?

it's more punk than cyber.
i still believe that was put in to see who would really go along with furby just for more bonus dice . .

SR4A did limit them to a certain extent, it provides that you cannot have more bonus dice to social skills than your skill + attribute. So at least a troll with 1 charisma 1 Influence won't be throwing 8 dice for every social test.

You guys just never got enough toys when you were children. LOL. Another thing to i don't understand why anyone but the face actualy sits down with the johnson. Having them in the area for back up is great but i would never have my Meat shield or rigger who have no skills for social and are prone to too many farts @ the dinner table there face to face.

Face meets with Johnson.
Johnson offers 50,000.
Face agrees, gets paid half.
Face pockets some.
Face goes to party.
Face says, "He's paying us 30 grand. Paid Half up front."
Party goes "Ok. You couldn't possibly be lying."

I don't know about you but, I would never run with someone i couldn't trust standing behind me with an assault riffle let alone 10 grand. If your having a proper meet, your hacker should have audio as well as video established though exploits. Your Sam should be mingling @ the bar and the rigger patched through to the feed in the ride. The reason for having a face is so the whole team doesn't have to expose themselves, and to represent the team and assure the Johnson that he is not hiring anti social axe murders for a data steal. If the Face happened to have say a pendant that looked like a mechanical scorpion thats tail and eyes twitched every now and then I don't think it would be such a weird thing compared to satanist albino weapons expert with puff the magic dragon burping smoke knocking over the Johnson drinks.

Then we can agree: most if not all of the party shows up but only the face sits down with the Johnson.

There's also the fact that Mr. Johnson might want to meet with the whole party to know that he's getting quality for his dollar.

Last thing he needs is some subcontracter Face agreeing to get quality Shadowrunners, then paying the Halloweeners some Novacoke he got out of the dead Pimp's SUV he just stole to go do the job, and pocket the cash for himself.

That's usually one of the signs you're dealing with a Professional Mr. Johnson, BTW. Or one of the Lower-End ones that's really out of their depth and think it goes like they saw on the 'Trid. Or a Professional trying to pass himself off as a Lower-End in order to pay less.

Wheels within wheels within wheels...

And sometimes he just wants to know who he is screwing so that he can cover all of his bases...

Well... Yeah.

The 'Run ain't over until the Johnson has screwed you.

Amen Brother

Hey everybody has problems with the toys, but what about the Empathy software by itself? Do people have a lot of problems with just the software?

Hell yes. It doesn't matter if the dice are coming from your commlink or Mr. Flibble; the fact is that you've got 6 cheap bonus dice. Mr. Flibble just makes it cheaper and more absurd. It's needless dice pool inflation.

And even the sensor software is still comparatively cheap. I don't like the +6 bonus, which seems completely out of whack with all other social bonuses. Tailored pheromones, glamour, and kinesics all give 3 dice - half of the bonus you can get from empathy software. Also, I simply can't see how it could work in real time. I could see it analyzing facial expressions from a vid feed, but not giving you a +6 bonus while you are trying to negotiate with someone.

And it doesn't make much (if any) sense that it give a bonus to all the social tests, it should apply only to sense motives; I would also have it being a completely separate roll, the character rolls his own test, while the comlink rolls Senso Rating + Emphaty Software and reportes the result to the character who choses if trusting the software or his/hers own instinct

There are a lot of ways to tweak empathy software. It could function as a bonus to a Judge Intentions check, and knowing someone's intentions could provide a more modest bonus to another social test. It could also function as a teamwork bonus on social skills, since it's effectively someone looking over your shoulder and giving you advice on social situations. It could negate negative modifiers to social skills up to its rating. I think what they did in SR4A was fix it in the only way they could without reprinting Arsenal -- place a limit on total bonus dice to social skills. I would prefer to see it fixed in Arsenal, but who knows if that's going to happen. Maybe the highly skilled causing-a-scene artists could bring the issue to Catalyst's attention and see if they're interested in fixing it, since they already went ahead and fixed almost everything people didn't like in SR4A...

Best tweak for such dice inflators is to ask the player of the groups face if he prefers rolling 12 dice versus 3 or 18 versus 9 in normal game situations.
Takes care of such hilarious must haves.

Does take care of the sillyness of the toy.

Though my character right now should probably get one...social test of (at best) 5 dice in Negotiation. 2 for all others.

Not counting intimidation, that pool is....5 with a specialization in physical.

I did like that a character of mine bought a silver asp. Not only is it an emotitoy, it also looks like a necklace and can bite.

Although it would be amusing on having a Mr. Peabody emotitoy.

-Chrysalis

An emotitoy that can be worn around the neck and can bite? What is it? A sneack shaped drone?

A silver asp? Yep, sounds like a snake to me.

-paws

Yes an asp is a snake. The idea is to have the snake emotitoy around the neck like a choker. I call it an asp magnet.

After reading about it, I kinda got the impression that the toys were situational at best. Negotiation, not really. To many tricks to decieve the programming. Also, how do you dirct it to the johnson and not the runner next to you. Thirdly the Johnsonson may not appriciate the toy.

The toys seem to be a little goofy, but we have had no real problems with the software itself...
Not many of our guys use it... and for those that do, well, it provides, on average, a couple more successes, and only for those in-Person meets, not a whole lot of good for Virtual Meets, which a good number of ours are...... Big Deal

Interesting application of an Emotitoy