So, I'm trying to confirm something.

I have a nanohive and a ton of Knowledge and Language skills at 1.

The Learning Stimulus nanoware reduces Karma costs by it's rating for improving those types of skills.

If I spend 12,000¥ on LS rating 3 nanoware, does that mean I really get to boost all those skills to 3 for zero Karma cost?

That seems wrong somehow, way too cheap for just a small nuyen expenditure.

If it's true, why the heck do we not see damn near everyone with the cash go take tons of very basic knowledge classes and then get those skills boosted to professional levels via this nanoware?



-karma

It is cheap, but a) it only applies to Knowledge and Language skills, which aren't as essential as Active Skills and b) to benefit from it you have to invest some BP/Karma to get the appropriate skill at least at rating 1 and c)with a sim module (which most characters have anyway) and Know/Lingua Softs you can get the same effect without any Karma expenditure up to rating 5 and if you use the cracking rules of Unwired even the increased price in SR4A is very cheap.

What I wonder about though.. SR4 mentions Complex Forms are improved like knowledges. Does that mean...?

I think by RAW you get them for free, however a GM may want to limit you to having to pay at least one karma a level.

I dropped 24 Karma that way, but I still saved three times that much.

You have to buy the first level anyway, to get any cost reduction. I don't see why this particular piece of equipment needs to be rebalanced.

Contrary to Active Softs AFAIK Know and Language Softs have no drawbacks compared to "real" skills.

No, just because they share the same cost doesn't mean that they are the same. It's just like saying that Attributes (before SR4A) are the same as Skill Groups.

I know that, but the way they're described, it does make some sense; Knowledges are.. well, learned stuff that happens mostly in the brain. Complex Forms are "mental algorithms". Something that boosts learning could plausibly help with that.

It looks like a big exploit; probably not intended that way. But would it be bad? You do need a nanohive to keep the nanites around, so you're sacrificing some Resonance to get it. It's expensive, so you shift some of the TM advancement from karma to nuyen. As it is, they're the single most karma-focused character.

It would go wrong if you just took a shot of NAN, learnt CFs as fast as you could (with some help from Sprites, pretty doable), and then let the nanites degrade. It's only the Hive that costs Essence. This would be an expensive Nuyen-to-Karma trick though.

I suppose it's not as bad as at first glance.

Still, if you did a scattershot of 1 and 2 rating of a ton of Knowledge/Language skills at character creation, there's probably little reason NOT to pick up the nanoware at some point early on.

I was really more thinking of the effects on the game world than on PCs. I.E. if it's that cheap and easy why don't we see a huge percentage of the population doing this. Like most NPCs the players might run into having even obscure knowledges and languages mostly at rating 3 or even 4, instead of the standard 1 or 2 the average shmoe might possess.


-karma

Don't think to hard on it. The tripling of the price Active Softs should also reduce the number of unskilled Wageslaves with Skillwires, but this is part of the setting. I wouldn't want to change it. What's very likely IMHO is that a lot of people have several Know and Language Softs on their Commlink.

Using just the nanites without the Hive may even be part of a highclass prep school.

Well, nanoware is still pretty new. Most people aren't very blase about mental augmentations either (Renraku Arcology scare, AIPS scare, Technomancer scare, Crash 2.0 scare, AI scare.....)

Nanoware isn't just new, it's the bleeding edge of new.
As to why you wouldn't want to have LS NAN, I can think of two good reasons, 1) you'd have to drop the +3 to Intuition or Logic linked skills provided by the ridiculously awesome Limbic and Neocortical NAN since you can only run 2 Neural Amplifier types at once, and 2) There are so many awesome nanites that trump LS, since they can't be replicated with softs.

OH MAN NANO 4 EVS.

Thing is, you'd technically only have to have the LS nanoware in-system during the skill improvement.

So, load up the learning nanoware while you're hitting the books, otherwise use the Limbic/Neocortical stuff.

Best of both worlds, at least by the rules.



-np

True, but nanohives are 10k a rating and 5 availability per rating and cost an extra .25 essence per rating. It already costs a ton just to get the hive, then you have to spend a good chunk of nuyen on the bots themselves. It doesn't take long for the cost to get fairly prohibitive to have extra nanites floating around not really doing anything for you.

Yeah, I suppose.

Though, oddly, a nanohive in a cyberlimb does not have an essence cost, despite an integral part of the system being alterations to the kidneys and other organs.

But that's more an oddity of the cyberlimb capacity rules, I think.


-np

Yeah, I've always disliked the way that worked out. Paid with essence nanohives are exceedingly prohibitive. Paid with capacity Nanohives are no problem at all.

Yeah, you just have to pay an arm and a leg! ZING! Just kidding...

We've always had some sort of house rule for this ware, much like the Mnemonic Enhancer before it, that the minimum paid Karma cost was 1. It's still extraordinarily cheap, but it's not much of an exploit.

Heh, more like a hand or a foot.

Technically you can legally fit a Nano-hive into any drone with a full mechanical arm.

A drone with Nano-infectors(Learning Stimulus) would be fantastic in any sort of Academic environment....