Hello I am new to Shadowrun and i want to make a character with his original arms replaced by cyber limbs and then equiped with a secondary set (4 armed fighter). My GM is not real keen on if this could work or how to make it happen. Does anyone have any ideas or a possible book on where it is explained? Thanks

Well, if you have Runners Companion The Human Metavarient species "Nartaki" on p.71 comes with an extra set of arms.

I'd suggest that if he lets you do it, then follow the same rules as the Nartaki quality 'Shiva Arms,' you just have to pay for the privilege out of Nuyen and Essence rather than BP's.

good question, and one not easily answered

in runner's companion, you got the multi-armed human variant nartaki, pg 71
possible the person changed/ surged, lost the arms in a bad accident.....yeah reaching....oh, bad pun
shiva arms, pg 115

augmentation--in the cyber section there is a 3rd arm attached to the back

i have thought of this myself, based off of Stryker from Cyberforce

You can't easily attach an extra set of limbs to a being and expect them to just work. In fact, there are a number of situations where animals and people have extra natural limbs and those just plain don't work. You need to solve some tricky attachment issues (and the corresponding skeletal rearrangement) before you can begin affixing additional limbs to people (ribs are insufficient as atachment points) and they need working neural connections to the right bits of the brain (which also needs to be built for dealing with the additional limbs).

In short, it's infeasible to get additional limbs from pure Cyber or Bioware. Take SURGE or a Metavariant like the rest of us, then replace those arms with Cyberarms.

yea, what he said, although, with a cyber torso (made for nartaki) and a skillsoft/skillwires to operate them? maybe?

Edit: I would imagine skills using those limbs would be capped at 4 or something , but this is outside of RAW

Without getting into if its -actually- possible...


Yea, you can do it. Take the shiva armed surge attribute, or take the metavarient. Then just add cyberarms. Your done. The problem is though that you have to have ambidexterity for the second set. Whenever you want to attack with all four arms you have to split it four different ways, and if you want to attack again that round, you have to split it -eight- different ways. So at that point its not even worth it. Its just cool factor.


But yes, its possible!

Um....no, the second atack is the same dice pool as the first minus uncompensated recoil, which can be pretty severe if you firing four guns.

You only have to split your Pool by four
the same like you have to split it twice with two Arms !
unless You're really dedicated and Min/Maxing you will have a very small Pool (sth. around 3-5 Dice per Pool) when you're Shooting with 4 Pistols/SMG,Can't get a Smartlink/Laserpointer Bonus.
It's very usefull for getting rid of Gangs though
Oh,and by the way you should read the Arsenal for its Two-handed Fighting Rules

He who dances like Shiva
Medicineman

Do not do it, it would cost a ton, and be worthless and laughable and pathetic.

Here's the low-down on the system: in other systems, you tend to get a bonus for having more weapons, so two weapons is better than one, and four weapons are better than two. This is NOT the case in Shadowrun 4th edition. In SR4, if you attack with multiple weapons at once, you must split your dice pool. So, you could theoretically attack 4 people at once, or attack one person 4 times, but you'd never hit. If you had 20 dice to attack, which is a lot, and you spit it by 4, you'd have 5 dice for each attack, which is not even enough enough to successfully hit an average security guard with close combat training.

There are only a few sensible reasons to dual-first (or quad fist) in Shadowrun. One is versatility. If you're ambidextrous, you could hold a stun weapon in one hand, and a kill weapon in the other hand, so you wouldn't need to switch weapons when you want to go from stun to kill or vice versa. You could also hold a melee weapon in one hand and a ranged weapon in the other hand, so that if you're shooting your gun but get attacked in melee combat, you can defend and fight back with no penalty at all. Also, you can use the Two Weapon Style martial arts maneuver from Arsenal, which allows you to perform a full defense with one hand without sacrificing a complex action like you normally would.

Unfortunately, none of these reasons give you any reason to have 4 arms instead of two. Wielding four different weapons is complete overkill when it comes to versatility -- there's no situation where two isn't enough and you have a compelling need to switch between 4 different modes of attack at will. Providing improved melee defense is also not served by having more than 2 arms.

Then there's the issue with whether it's allowed... IMO, you can't add more limbs to yourself than you started with. They are cyber replacement limbs, they hook onto where your meat limb is supposed to be. A normal metahuman just doesn't have anywhere to appropriately anchor a second pair of arms. Now, you could be a Natarki or a Changeling with extra arms, but that would just be a big boondoggle, because once again there's no benefit to having extra arms. Again, none of the usual justifications require more than 2 arms, and even if you were an epic fighter with 20+ dice, splitting your attacks 4 ways would render you useless.

Not only are there no advantages, there are serious disadvantages. You'd be a lot more recognizable, because multi-armed people are rare. You might get a penalty to social situations for being a freak. Your gear would have to be custom-fitted to support your extra arms. And resources wise, if you made all four arms into cyberarms, you'd be pissing away 4 whole points of essence and a rather large chunk of cash on absolutely nothing.

If you care at all about having an effective character who is useful to the team, you should abandon this concept and banish it from your thoughts. If all you care about is looking cool though, and you don't mind if your team considers you a waste of space (and will probably use you as bait hoping that they won't have to share their payout with you), then knock yourself out.

Well, I could see it working one way, and one way only, but you couldn't use cyber arms.

As you may recall, you take a -1 dice pool modifier for defending against a previous attack. What this would require is for you to have more initiative passes than your opponent. Note that the last attack you use would put them at -3 DP just for having 4 attacks. If you had one pass after theirs, it would up to -7, two more at -11 and three more at -15. This puts the chance of defensive critical glitches pretty high.

Also, if the initial attack was a charge, you would get a +2 modifier, and since that is a modifier, it is applied after the dice pool is split. Combined with a specialization, you would get a +4 modifier.

So to review, if you were to have a 6 in the blades skill, which would be necessary, and a 6 in agility (by natural or unnatural means) coupled with a specialization, that would leave you at a four separate +7 attacks with continually adding penalty modifiers.

That said, it's up to you to get a high enough level of initiative passes to make this worthwhile. Good luck with that.

If you had to split your dice pool equally, then the 4 armed tactics is not quite useful. But if you could split the dice pool and allocate 1 dice to the 3 preceding attacks each, and then have the rest of the dice pool on the attack that you want count, it is workable idea.

I wonder if making multiple attacks by splitting your dice pool gives a cumulative penalty to the enemy's defense? It's true that the penalty is per attack, and they do defend against each attack one at a time. However, it's equally true that all of the attacks are simultaneous, making your split dicepool attacks non-successive. The exact wording is "defender has defended against previous attacks since last action." If all four happen at once, which of them are previous? I don't think the devs were thinking of that possibility when they wrote the defense table, so it's not clear what the RAI would be...

Regardless, your own post shows what a ridiculous idea it is. You have to spend a bunch of points to be able to do this, rely on a somewhat shaky interpretation of RAW, and all it does is lower the enemy's defense pool, at the expense of two whole combat rounds, AND only if you have more IPs than them. There are a jillion smarter things to do to someone in combat. I appreciate that you're just throwing out an idea, but it mostly just reinforces what a horrible idea multi-armed characters are from a tactical standpoint.




It seems to me that the most common meaning of "split" is split into equal parts. That's not the only thing it could mean, but it's definitely what I think of when I read "split dice pool." Also, I don't think simultaneous attacks should actually reduce defense pool because they aren't "previous," they happen at the same time, so it wouldn't be effective even if you could split unevenly. Then again, it would be a pretty small, crappy, pathetic bonus to get from having multiple arms, which as it stands is pretty much 100% worthless. I suppose if you think that simultaneous attacks are "previous" to each other, AND you think that you can allocate 1 die to the first three attacks, what you're left with is some reason to have four arms, but still a pretty crappy one. It would make you a little bit scary in melee, but this is a game where most people carry guns and engaging in melee is reckless at best, and suicidal at worst.

Well, I'm just postulating a method for making this character work. I mean, it's not great, but I can't think of another way to make it worthwhile, especially in a melee format. I am a fan of dual wielding pistols, but quadra wielding is a difficult concept to make feasible.

Now, I do believe that four armed characters are cool looking. Don't know why. I used to play around with using them in that other game, but usually just stuck to magic users.

Perhaps a second thought on the question is, if the attacks are simultaneous, they can you defend against more than one?

Perhaps you could also throw edge into that last attack. A -3 penalty combined with a -1 from reach applied should cut their dice pool down, and combined with edge could be lethal.

As far as uneven splitting is concerned, that would be a terrible idea due to the critical glitch probability increasing exponentially at low dice pools.

Or 4 full-auto weapons (SMG+) doing Suppressive Fire.

That aside, the essence cost of full-cyber-arming your Nartaki is going to kill you. Literally. And elsewhere (I forget, prolly Runner's Companion) said that cyberdocs couldn't figure out how Nartaki's arms were functional.

@Larne
I Think you're a little subjective on 4 Armed Fighting
The Rules only tell you to split the Pool.It doesn't necceseraly have to be even
one favorite Tactic of my Daisho wielding Samurai ist to attack with 1/3 Pool first with his Wakizashi,than follow-up with his Katana and 2/3 of The Pool
a Four-armed Attack doesn't necessarily have to be simultaniously, it can also be 4 attacks,one after the other.
So the Defender has to subtract 1 Die after each Defense
I mean, the example in the Arsenal is against a Dual fighter ,why not apply the Rules to a four armed fighter ?
You're right when it comes to 4-armed Shooting.The Pool is very,very Low
The best Combo ImO(I'm playing a "Nartaki-Elf" Ki-Ad by the Way)is using 2 MPs and one Assault Rifle. Pool has to be split by 3(thats 4 or 6 Dice for Each Attack)and Tracer Ammo helps a little
(as I mentioned earlier.Its good for mowing down Mooks)
Your also right about his Distinctiveness,part of my Gaming is to keep it a Secret.
But that makes him so interesting,this and his Versatility in Fights(Streetname is One-Man-Army )
I also understand any GM who doesnt want this Kind of Char because of his Unusuality.

with a four-armed Dance
Medicineman

That would only be useful for ranged attacks, where the defender suffers penalties if they have dodged previous attacks. It wouldn't be terribly useful for close combat (where the whole point is usually to take out more than one inferior opponent at once). Also, that tactic raises the odds of a critical glitch significantly.

Actually, in close combat, you can split your dice pool four ways if you don't have four arms - having an extra set of arms apparently doesn't give you much of an advantage.

The real advantage is being able to multitask - have a ranged weapon in one hand and a melee weapon in the other hand while climbing with the remaining two hands, or wielding a polearm with two arms and an LMG with the other two arms.

Dual wielding sniper rifles or machine guns is the true purpose of having four arms for ranged combat

Of course you can. Splitting your pool is a disadvantage, not an automatic 'haw haw you die.' The timing only matters for whether any of the attacks count as "previous" attacks. Nothing in the game says that the timing matters for defense, just that attacks must be "previous" attacks to stack defense penalties. It seems ok to give multi-armed people some teeny tiny advantage, but I don't think the RAW strictly does.



Good point, attacking with just one die is a 1/6 chance of critical glitching. You'd be waving those other arms around so recklessly that you'd be liable to cut off another arm, or put out your eye, or something equally hilarious

The RAW is quite clear.

Ok, even if you're right, the 4 armed weirdo is still a terrible idea. You could apply a -3 penalty to the enemy's defense. It would be even more when they have fewer IPs, but someone with low IPs is likely to be a worthless grunt anyway, you would neither need nor want to spend multiple passes killing them. The point is, -3 to defense is not very likely to matter, since melee defense is skill + attribute. If you attack with skill + attribute / 4 (or however you divide it, it's still at least -3, probably more), against the enemy's skill + attribute, even your last attack is unlikely to hit, especially if they Full Defense. Compare this to a two weapon fighter that doesn't suck -- he uses Two Weapon Style to full defense and deflect every one of your four attacks, and then kills you with one full dicepool hit instead of wasting his time splitting dice. The fact is, even if you do have 4 arms, you'll do a lot better just making one attack with your full pool. Taking -3 off the enemy's defense is absolutely pointless because you lose at minimum 3 dice from your own pool to make that happen. The 4 armed melee character is crap after crap after crap, and three craps don't make an ice cream sundae

With four arms i can do the same dual wielding Nodachis, you can't argue that isn't an advantage.
Nowhere does it say that you have to use onehanded weapons with those four arms.

So you could use jodan and waki at the same time. Nice.

I just got a picture in my head: This freak points his 4 Ingram SuperMach 100s at the door and triggers a hellstorm of 96 (!) bullets supressive fire. He'll never have to worry about actually aiming.

Actually, no. The maneuver states clearly that both weapons must have a Reach of 0 or 1.

Damn, then i have to setlle for dualwielding vibro blades two handed for +1 to DV.
Actually now that i looked it up, thats actually better damage that a Nodachi.

You're still overlooking the fact that dual wielding is pretty much a boondoggle in the first place. It gives very few bonuses. Your +1 DV vibroblades would be a lot more effective one at a time since you wouldn't have to split your dice. And it's still a crapload of points to spend for just +1 DV. Better to spend those points on increasing strength or skill.

Well you ofcource need the two weapon style manauver, with out it more then one melee weapon is of no use.
And i now it's not that good, but i was just pointing out a small advantage of having four arms in melee combat.
I still thing that best think with four arms is dualwielding twohanded ranged weapons, supressive fire from two HMG's should keep the enemies heads down.
And if you cyber those hands up you can get +8 armor at chargen, not that i think it's a good idea to get four cyber arms in chargen

One reason I could see for a Nartaki(since it is more likely to get through any GM then creation Grievous like extra arms) is: two arms are holding riot shields, the other two are using the weapons.

Sorry but you can Dual Wield only Reach 0 or 1 Weapons

HokaHey
Medicineman

That count for whips too?

I should think so, yes. Two Weapon Style specifies that in order to use 2 weapons, each weapon must have Reach 0 or 1. There are no stated exceptions that I know of.

Yes ,unless the Whips are Reach 1 you can use only one at a Time ( You've seen Underworld too often )

With a Whipdance
Medicineman

ok, someone get me four shortened monowhips.
i can deal with the loss of reach. and as a troll you still have enough reach.

Hey, if you're making a changeling anyways, no reason not to get elongated limbs, too, to add another point of reach to that troll.

But four shortened monowhips still doesn't give you an appreciable advantage over two shortened monowhips... the only advantage of an extra pair of arms is to give you +1 DV for weapons that can be wielded one-handed, that are being wielded two-handed.

The main advantage of additional limbs isn't getting more attacks.

It's being able to install more cyberlimbs to turn your character into a walking tank.
See, every cyberlimb adds one box to your physical condition monitor.
On top of that, cyberlimb armor is, at least according to some dev's statements here on DS, thought to be cumulative.

Which means that additional limbs quickly add up to absolutely insane amounts of armor- as long as you either turn yourself into a cyberzombie, get some decent deltaware, have Biocompatibility or Adapsin or -preferrably- all of the above.

Binky would come to mind.

"Stacking in full" still is the intended way to handle cyberlimb armor?
Man, I'd really hoped that the official rules for that would have started to lead to less ridiculous results by now.
Good thing no PC of ours actually has any cyberlimbs...

Because after all is said and done, they are still not worth it, even if they are now a more viable choice than ever before.