I'm thinking of making a troll mercenary who specialize in heavy weapons. I was interested in giving him a pair of cyber feet with extra capacity with a foot anchor in each and maybe a point of armor too.
So the question is the character has 9(13) body,4(6) agility and 8(10) strength.
To maintain these stats for his skills, recoil comp and damage resistance would it be necessary to upgrade the stats on the feet to these levels? (thus putting their availability above 12) or would you say that due to it being just his feet you wouldn't worry about it

Depends on your GM, but if you're trying specifically to get RC from the Foot Anchors, it'd be a little munchkiny to also get RC from Strength without Strength-ing the feet.

By RAW, partial limbs (feet) do not count for damage resistance (unless it's a Called Shot, maybe), and Agi/Str only count if you're specifically using that partial limb (the example is a cyberhand in a grip Strength Test).

Ok str 10 is doable as far as availability goes.
Checking the FAQ it specifically says that cyber feet grant extra damage boxes and full armor rating?

L-

I feel like most people do not give Boxes for partial limbs, especially 1/4 limbs, but that's a GM call really. Armor, yes, but still kind of a GM decision.

If you can swing it, I'd get full legs, or at least 1/2 legs. Honestly, from the description of anchors, I'm not even sure feet should be allowed ('shin and ankle bracing required'), but that's yet another GM call. Anyway, the reason I'd prefer 1/2 or full legs is more room for fun stuff (monkey feet, raptor legs, hydraulic jumping-jacks).

Maybe ,but the FAQs are faulty.
1/2 Limbs only give 1/2 Armor
so you'd need 2 Points of Armor (1 in each Foot) to get +1/+1
I'd suggest you get 2 Cyber Lower legs.You can put "more Fun" into it
maybe with restricted Gear to raise Avail to 20

with more Fun in his Dance
Medicienman

If both legs had availability above 12 wouldn't that mean restricted gear twice? That would mean having to choose between the assault cannon and the heavy machine gun.

Hardly, and clearly not RAW. RC from Strength is not specifically related to any limb (and realistically, it should not be), so you count the average attribute. Feet Strength does not count towards this average. Ruling otherwise would be pretty dickish as it forces the character to buy Strength at a high price (only Customization, not enough space for Enhancement) that he will never use in any other occasion.

If you want to house-rule so that the feet Strength matter without punishing the player for no reason, you need 2 things:
1) change the average attribute formula to account for partial limbs
2) change the Customization cost for partial limbs

With the current rules, there is no discount to Customization for partial limbs because their attributes are most often not supposed to matter, so they are not supposed to be customized in the first place. If you decide to make these values matter, it is fair to fill this gap.

Do you have any reference for that? That sounds like the SR3 rule. In SR4, it would not make sense. Armor takes the same Capacity in a foot or a leg, so it should provide the same protection. The rule I heard about that was forgotten in SR4a is that the maximum Armor rating you can get in partial limbs is lower, not that the benefits are divided.

Apparently a foot or hand can only take one armor. but in two feet thats still a total of +2 as armor.

Luckily that piece of turd rule was only in the first version of SR4A.

No, that rule apparently appeared in some internal beta version and hence made it into the changes document, however the actual 4A rulebook does not contain this rule and the FAQ clearly states that the change doc is wrong, not the rule book.


@Topic: The attributes (bearing in mind that armour is not an attribute) of partial limbs only count when specifically using that limb, and since you are not trying to hold on to a branch with your toes...

I think I made it pretty clear why my *personal* take was that it's munchkin to both use and not use the feet for RC in the same breath. Obviously it's not RAW, because RAW loves those kind of crazy matchups.