Amanda Feilding: Performed trepanning on herself (drilling a small hole in the skull).
Deborah Sampson: Removed a musket ball from her leg with a pen knife and a sewing needle.
Sampson Parker: Cut off his own arm (deliberately) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te9SdSpFD48
Douglas Goodale: Amputated Right Arm (again, deliberately).
Aron Ralston: Again, right arm. More youtube goodness http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2XLoQ1xYB0
Ramírez Pérez (the winner): Caesarean Section. On herself.

So yeah, someone with a skill on 1 actually can perform surgery, and given the fun toys a rating 6 medkit should have they out to do a better job than these guys.

How good should a rating 6 medkit be? In the past 10 years we went from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310 to backberrys, droids, and iPhones. If Docwagon isn't making some good medkits available on the market, then their competitors certainly would be.

Wow. You're equating someone cutting off their own arm with a coronary bypass. Nice.

I said surgery, not barely-controlled self-mutilation. Do you honestly mean to tell me any of those people are going to do if someone needs a gallbladder removed? All of those were fairly nominal cut-and-stitch operations (well, three of them were just cut, but there you have it).

But did they manage those things because they had amazing equipment or because they weren't that hard to do? Heck, maybe they just burnt a point of edge.

That's an unfair comparison. You need to compare the barely skilled guy with ultra equipment with a world class engineer with very basic tools. My money is on the skilled guy, because amazing tools don't do you much good if you don't know how the drek to use them, and even amazing tools can only help you so much if you just don't know what you're doing in the first place.

For example, if you look under your hood, and have a really good toolkit, but don't know what the heck you're doing, then you're going to see a bunch of parts of an engine, and other things that may or may not be related to the engine. A regular mechanic is going to be able to look under the hood, pull out the X with his bare hands, clean it on his jeans, put it back in and the car will run.

See how the tools really didn't help all that much?

If it's that far in the future and I'm too Wanted to go to docwagon (do it myself) but I have a medkit (6) I'm going to use it's version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECmwbwIrBI8

At rating 6, it should be able to track my vitals and tell me if I'm doing it right. (Built in sonogram seems the cheapest and most portable way). Doesn't look that hard to me and we have 63 years to come up with better tools to do it with. To them, the tools we have today will look like what WWII surgery tools look like to us.

You're not going to do it yourself - you're going to go to a street doc and let them do it.

All the tutorial software in the world is only going to give you a frownie-face when your hand shakes and you sever an artery. A first aid kit is best used for minor injury - stitching at best. You get shot, you stuff a tampon in the hole and get your keister to someone with more training than you to pull it out.

Actually, having a skill of 1, my plan was to plug the car's computer into the shop's diagnostic machine. That's what my mechanic does. Then he goes and looks up parts on the computer. I'm thinking in 70 years they'll have figured out to hook the diagnostic computer to the parts computer and added a couple 3-d displays breakaway displays to show what you have, how it should look, and how to remove the bad stuff and replace it with good stuff.

In all honesty, if it take 10 years to get that far from here I'll be disappointed.

In 23 years we've gone from the Apple II to the iPhone. If a medkit 6 looks like a first aid kit I get at wal-mart today, then the future has a lot of explaining to do. We have Dragons running companies and we're still using band aids?

Having a skill of 3, I find that more than a little insulting. You honestly think that's all he does?

What's the fuel injection system look like? Where's the oil filter? What's a CV joint? Where are the rods? Where's your wiring harness, or the jack points to raise the car without crushing something important?

You plug your computer into the diagnostic machine. Where do the leads go? When it tells you to replace the o2 sensor, what are you going to pull off? What's it look like, where's it situated? When it tells you there's a vacuum leak, what part are you going to pull to fix it? What if it tells you that you've got a bad main gasket? How're you going to split the cases? What's the proper procedure? How are you going to know if you're even following it right when the computer tells you?

Maintenance is never just 'plugging it into the computer and ordering parts', omae. I thank you not to mention it as such again.

And, if the Test requires a toolkit, and you use a Facility, you might indeed get *maybe* a +4 bonus. But, for B/R, there's not +6 toolkit (esp. that you can pirate, run in your commlink, and apply to all tests in a whole field).

Good thing I have incompetent (mechanics group). I take it to a shop, I give them money, they give me a fixed car. That's all I need to know.

Maintenance today or Maintenance in 2070?

In 1982 my car didn't even have a computer. All this stuff was easy to do by hand because we didn't try to cram an engine into a lunchbox and didn't stick computers under the car seats.

But in the past 30 years cars changed. They changed a lot. And shops that had never seen a computer in 1980 needed them just to work on new cars in 2010. Fast forward 60 years.

You ask me where are all these parts? Well, I put on my goggles, look at the engine, and the HUD (Head's up display) walks me through the process, even telling me where in the tool kit the tool I need is and each tool has their own little digital sensors to make sure everything's working fine. Sure, if I have the skills I get the job done quickly (more successes per interval means less intervals needed), but hey, with a 2070 shop guiding me, I can get the job done.

On my Droid, right now, I have a level, a metal detector, and a GPS system that boggles me. I can look up rules during a session because all the PDFs for Shadowrun take up an insignificant portion of the sim card (which is smaller than my thumbnail). I can point the camera at a barcode and the dang thing will look up the item, tell me where I can buy it, and for how much. On the drive back last weekend, we drove into a town I didn't know and Google Places brought me up a list of all the restaurants, what direction they were, how far away they were, and used the navigation software to take us to a chinese buffet.

If, in 60 years, it can't use my goggles and earbuds to look at the VIN, figure out what type of engine it is, wirelessly connect to the engine's diagnostic computer, and walk me through repairs, I will be sorely disappointed.

Volkswagens didn't. Buicks sure as hell did. Well, not the computer part.



Which leaves me with the question of why I would have a 2070-era repair shop just to fix my own car.

Because the shop makes it faster. In game terms, it gives more successes per interval.

You miss my point.

Why would I, Joe Shadowrunner, who has a car but doesn't know how to work on it, spend tens of thousands of nuyen in order to have a shop to fix said car when I can either buy(or steal) a new car or get someone else who has the training to repair it for cheaper(or free)?

Why would I, Joe Sarariaman, who is in the same situation, buy a box van to hold the toolkit to fix my Jackrabbit?

And toolkits for non-medical skill checks aren't even the focus here. You remember Demolition Man?

Remember the cop that consulted his commlink for advice on how to deal with a perp? Remember how bad he was at it?

That was a rank 1 at Intimidation with a rating 4-6 software suite assisting.

It's like saying anyone with a lie detector can detect lies when the software can easily be fooled. Technology can't replace the need for training. It can augment, but only to a point.

My Sasha runs her rating 3 sensor software set on her clustered together headware package that consist of:
Attention coprocessor 3
Math SPU
Pair of alphaware datajacks
Cyber eyes and ears

I missed where someone said you had to have it. If you want to take your car to a shop or your body to Docwagon, feel free. I can't find anywhere where someone says you can't or even that you shouldn't.

As far as I can see, this discussion has been about what's available and what's required to actually use it (which gets complicated, at least to me, when discussing level 5 or 6 software). In short, I've been trying to find all the rules involved in building a character with Empathy Software > 4 and get them in one location in my mind.

From there, the thread has inexplicably gone into people attempting to houserule/ban various pieces of gear because they feel that it needs houseruling/banning for one reason or another. Personally, I'm loathe to houserule the rules when (as can be seen by this thread) I'm still trying to find and learn the rules. I have this odd notion that I should actually learn the game before trying to rewrite it.

Hey, I just saw someone decry the medkit giving someone with rudimentary training better dicepools than a world-class surgeon without the medkit, so I made a suggestion. You were the one who got my hackles up with this nonsense that a toolkit makes a master-class mechanic.

Spellcheckers have pretty much done away with proofreaders. Sure, grammar has gone done the tubes, but the tools have replaced people with skills. Do we need skilled typists when we have software that converts audio to text?

Technology changes some professions (auto mechanics using computers) and obsoletes others. (Does anyone even need studio musicians anymore?). In a world of skillwires, do corporations really need skills? It's shadowrun. No one is hiring you because you're the only person with the skill for the job. They're hiring you because you're expendable and won't be missed, at least in any way that they care about.

Well, if that's how you feel about it, limit the number of bonus dice you can add to a skill test by the existing rating the character has in that skill. Maybe max bonus dice equal to existing skill rating, or skill rating x1.5, or whatever.

It's not an unreasonable house rule.



-karma

But a Medical drone with Medical Autosoft, and a pilot program, is completely different than a really good toolkit.

The Rating 6 medical Kit specifically says it has an autodrone to help with things.

Heck, I'm in construction management. There's an entire class of folks in the industry, Estimators, who if they're smart are worried about the technology a lot of companies are implementing.

Estimators take a building design, break it down, and estimate based on known pricing factors for operations and materials how much it will cost to build that structure. This is in turn used by the accountants to figure out budgeting. A good estimator will help make sure a project stays profitable. A bad one can cause it to go bankrupt.

Previously, this was a manual job, because there was no consolidated database of prices for all this sort of stuff. Computers don't handle having to pull data from uncategorized sources all that well - but a human can know that for X material, it's best to call companies A. B. and C for prices.

Additionally, architects don't do stuff like keep track of how many square feet of drywall or galvanized siding or steel they put into their designs - that's not their job. You'll often see an interior wall drawn with a basic notation of "standard 4 inch drywall" and little else. So the estimator literally sits there and measures every single piece of material in a design, and figures out exactly what goes in a "standard 4 inch drywall" panel. Quite often using a ruler and calculator. You'd be surprised how low tech the industry can be.

Except these days, they ARE putting together databases of pricing estimates for differing materials and procedures. And many architects are using "smart" design software that automatically keeps track of materials in a design, to where you can click on a building part and it will pop up a list of data including dimensions, weights, structural data, and more. You can draw a "standard 4 inch drywall" interior wall just as a line on the blueprint, and the software will automatically figure out everything that is supposed to go into that wall, including extra for joins and odd shapes.

Link the smart software with the pricing database and eventually you'll be able to click a button, and the system will spit out an insanely accurate estimate.

The industry will eventually switch to one of two things: either they'll just reduce the number of estimators they employ, since the new systems will let one guy do the work of an entire team, or they'll just fold the estimator duties into other positions, perhaps accounting or scheduling, and not employ any actual Estimators at all.

So that guy who spend 30 years in the profession getting a Skill Rating of 6, that can glance over a blueprint for half an hour and give a rough estimate? Just got eclipsed by some Skill Rating 1 kid that can push a button.



-karma

Show me a paper with a spellchecker that replaced a proofreader and I'll show you one so rife with errors it doesn't deserve the name of newspaper. If STT software was any good, there wouldn't be a market for medical and legal transcriptionists. As papers still employ spellcheckers, writers still employ proofreaders, and hospitals/courtrooms still employ transcriptionists, I find it quite clear that fantasy is intruding on reality.

Only if they had an 11 charisma in order for that skill 1 negotiator to benefit from rating 6 software (or toolkit)

11? They'd only need 5. Max DP is Stat + Skill * 2.

So 5 + 1 * 2 = 12

Since you mention it, Max, I still don't think you can cluster your headware like that. But I digress.

That's not what he says.

Anyways, any of you guys know how to operate a defibrillator machine? They're fairly complex. However, nowadays there's the AED, which is so simple a trained monkey could use it. All you do is apply pads and push a button. And the machine won't let you push the button unless conditions are right, so expect the next generation to auto-apply shocks. Automatic medical drones are a reality, in 2010.

That's totally true; however, that's an instance of the AED rolling a DP of its rating *alone*. Stat + Skill + 6 is far more. Some of the sensor software works just like the AED (I think Lie Detection does, for example?).

Nope, you don't have it stratight at all... so let me help you out a bit... I HAVE NOT CHANGED THE RULES FOR EMPATHY SOFTARE... There... Hopefully you get that... all I have done is disallowed a piece of equipment (Emotitoys, in case you missed it)... so No House Rules for the Software at all...

And no, It does not break the game. I have YET to see a game broken by someone having Empathy Software Rated at 6... Most of the player's characters cannot use that rating in our game, so it does them absolutely no good (When you have only 5 Dice, you only get +5 for the Empathy Software)... I thought that you understood that principle...

Bonuses for Social Skills are capped at Skill + Attribute, so you can only ever really double your base pool (assuming you can acquire enough Dice, and you will generally get more bang for your buck with Street Cred in most cases)... Yes, if you have 10 dice to throw, then you can conceivably reach 20 Dice... Big Deal... am I going to penalize the Street Sam for throwing that many dice? Absolutely not... Lets see, we are talking about a +6 here... Hmmm, Smartlink and a rating 4 Tacnet... Ooops, no, that is TOO POWERFUL, THAT WILL BREAK MY GAME... Really?

Again, maybe my games are a little less powered than yours, which may be why you think that +6 is powerful... most individuals in our game who actually have Empathy Software, have it at a Rating 3. So, only +3 Dice... Average Net Hits of +1... Not overpowering at all... Even the Street Sam (Or My Hacker) with a Smartlink ands Tacnet Rating 4 are still only throwing 18 Dice for our Smartguns... maybe that is why I do not see such a problem with the equipment...

Emotitoys *are* Empathy Software. Literally, embodied. Changing them is changing the rules for Empathy Software.

5 dice is only slightly less bad than 6. It's not about 6 being a magic number.

Smartlink and Tacnet 4 *are* a big deal, so it's good that you're comparing them. This is smartlink + TacNet 4 without the sensors, the smartlink, the huge group of players and drones, etc. Without any of the hoops or costs or situational applications.

That is exactly what I said...

No they are Hardware that employ the Empathy Software package... and that is all... they just come packaged together, and that is why they are disallowed at our table, they are too inexpensive for wht they do. There are already ways to use the Empathy software as they are meant to be used, so removing an insane piece of hardware is not a problem for the Empathy Software as a Whole...

No it is not changing the software, it is available seperate from the Emotitoy... Disallowing the emotitoy just affects the Emotitoy, not the software... to use the Empathy software YOU MUST HAVE SENSORS, assuming that your Emotitoy has been removed. You must also have Hardware that CAN RUN THE SOFTWARE at the rating you want to run it at, so for the +6, you need a System 6 and Response 6 to do so... There are many Costs to implement that... 8000 Nuyen for the Response Chip, 3000 for the System Chip, and 3000 for the Software... Minimum, not counting the Sensor system to actually ustilize the Empathy Soft... so that is 14,000 Nuyen... lets look at the cost of a Rating 4 Tacnet and Smartlink... Hmmmm 12000 for the Tacnet 4, and a Smartlink (lets be generous) costs 1000 Nuyen (Honestly, most firearms come in under that)... so 13,000 Nuyen... You will need to provide Drones/Sensors for both systems to utilize the ir full potential...

Interestingly... I see fairly large costs there... for both systems... not so cost free is it?

Yes, relatively cost-free.

As I already explained, you'll already have that commlink, and that's all you need, because any camera will do. It's a pittance, certainly nothing compared to an entire TacNet-worth of drones and sensors. And, again, you'd need players or drones in play, in position, all with the gear and software, and following the various restrictions. Empathy software is cheap, easy, and has no such restrictions. Plus, since you seem to want to count 'everything', you forgot about the guns themselves. So. 14k (most of which is general costs) versus, oh, a smartgun, 5 drones (which must be big enough to provide 8 sensor channels), 48 sensors, 1 (or 6) copies of 12k software? I gave *you* the commlinks for free, because my point is that you can't even count them for me.

Becouse you guys keep bringing this up, no their not(unless you talkling house rules) Social modifiers are, those can be found in the table on BBB page 131.

Except to make it unavailable in Emotitoy format. Which is also a house rule.

Oh, and declaring it to be a Social Modifier, which it isn't. Another house rule.

Need I continue?

Piling on the house rules doesn't mean the canon rules aren't broken.

Cain your being needlessly obtuse, the Emotoys exist seperate and freestanding from the Empathy software, and you know this.

No, they don't. They're as closely related as anything can be in Shadowrun.

Recap: +6 to any social roll, not capped, for either no money (Emotitoy) or almost no money (Empathy Software). An unqualified bonus unmatched by anything in the game, except the themselves-controversial medkit. Not matched by tools (need Facility-grade 'tools' for just science, forensics, etc.), not matched by Smartlink *with* TacNet 4 (need 48 sensor channels and 5 more people/drones), not matched by Kinesics (anymore, requires Adept and PP), not matched by geneware or nano (cost, essence, nowhere near +6), etc. etc.

...that the bonus is too high in relation to the skill ratings.

Bye
Thanee

Personally it is less an issue of +6 dice is really super amazing, and more the fact that it is so cheap and available, that there is no reason that everyone who ever thinks they might ever have to interact with another living being should have a maxed out emotitoy. This means that they really provide nothing to the game except to drain a tiny amount of nuyen, and punish horridly anyone who forgot to buy one, or doesn't want to walk around with a toy that is better at social interactions than they are.

As for the software itself, separate from the emotitoy, then it does become an issue of the 4-6 bonus dice. A rating 4 commlink is fairly average for most people, and a rating 6 is going to be a goal for a hacker anyway, so the cost of upgrading shouldn't be factored in. Now, at the cost of a good commlink and the software, Empathy software becomes something that only those that feel they are going to have important social interactions would have, such as Runners, Js, Fixers, and higher up criminals/corpers. This means it is often moot, but can provide a nice bonus against stooges. It is still a fairly cheap set of bonus dice compared to other options, but that simply means the GM can negate it easily by giving an opponent the software when they want things to be more challenging.

Still, I'm a fan of it working as a teamwork test to keep it more in line with the other (more expensive) bonuses and so that it doesn't become such a huge gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.

@TJ While didn't house rule Empathy Software itself, you did house rule something heavily related to it, which is similar. That would be like saying that external smartguns are no longer available and saying you haven't changed smartlinks at all.

I'd be okay with it if Empathy Software only went up to Rating 3.
And cost 4K/Rating and required a ratingx2 system to run on.

Then, for 12k, and access to a Response 6/System 6 commlink, you could get +3
It's still amazingly good.

But then I introduce nano-makeup, that's specifically built to do subtle FUBARing of your facial expressions.
Giving someone who is using empathy or facial recognition software negative modifiers based on rating of the makeup.

So.... what's the firewall/defenses on an Emotitoy? (2 for being an Entertainment system?) It just strikes me as a wonderful opportunity for someone to take over a vital piece of undefended equipment that the runners trusting and depending on. Draw out the start of negotiations until your side owns the emotitoys and play that team like a fiddle.

Treated this way, the big difference is that the empathy software is a lot more secure.

Hmmm. Looking into it, adding a firewall means the processor limit is reached, and since that would reduce the response, it would be easy to rule that the empathy software can't run with a firewall. Upgrading the response to run a firewall would involve putting in a new system that could actually run the empathy software (aka, costs the same as the comlink upgrades).

Firewall and System do not count as programs against the processor limit.

but the firewall would be 2. And it's not running any IC, or anything. It's so easy to hack, even a troll sam could do it.

Unless of course the person using it has half a brain and slaves it to their commlink. Then you have to hack the commlink first.

Yeah. I really need to start drinking caffeine again. Rating 6 software at a rating 3 price running on a rating 2 processor. Ouch.

The only loophole I see is "a limited ability to sense emotions and react appropriately, based on their purpose". The purpose seems reasonably defined (it's a toy). It would be nice if they went into the limitations a bit more. (Only works on Morale tests would be appropriate and really take the wind out of it's sails).

Oh well, since I'm going the expensive route anyway, I'm not gonna worry about it.

Yeah, its a shame that 'limited ability' seems to mean 'would smack around Dr. Lightman (Lie To Me) in face reading'

Why not go the simple way.
Let it do exactly what it should do. Give the player information about the emotion of the person in Front of him.
So the software rolls rating(*2) against Willpower+negotiation(or an other fitting social skill).
If the software wins, the owner knows the emotional state of the opserved Person.

I mean it is just stupid to give a static dicepoolbonus for that.
If somebody is throwing the furniture at me I know he is pissed at me. Some unicorn telling me so does not help a bit.

On the other hand there may be Situations, were this Information is beyond any dicepool, because it opens an other door.

The more I read it the more I agree with the idea that Empathy software is subject to the Social Modifiers cap.

SR4A p 61, Dice Pool Modifiers, says that changes to the original pool is considered a Modifier in game mechanic terms.

Social Modifiers, SR4A p130, are any changes to the original social skill test. The table given is a list of examples but is not exhaustive and states this. Not once in the section for social modifiers does it state that bonuses from empathy software, or any other source other then listed, do not apply to this limit.

Empathy Software, AR p60, says it adds its rating as a bonus to the character's social skill tests. A bonus is a modifier and the test in question is a social one.

In fact, we can easily take the listed modifier of "Character lacks background knowledge of situation: -2" as a guideline for empathy software. Empathy software is providing information in a real time manner. Why would a lack of such information apply to those limits (albeit negatively) but a bonus to them does not? I can't come up with any good justifications for not applying the cap to it, either by rules or common sense.




As far as emotoys go: If I recall correctly I told my players they could use them, but the toy's software was not designed to interface with anything else. Unless they wanted the toy to try to hug the annoyed Mr.Johnson they would need to reprogram it as per Software programming rules found in Unwired. With a month interval and 2x the rating as the threshold not too many seemed thrilled by the idea.

If it's not, it should be. I'm not *too* worried about the strict RAW, because we all know it *is* a Social modifier.

Removing access (or controlling access if you like) is not a RULE... The RULES have not changed, so how can it be a house rule? DO YOU allow anyone who wants a MIG-67 to just buy one, or do you control them? All I am doing is controlling access to a piece of equipment that I think is stupid... that hardly qualifies as a rule in my book, but your book may be different... so, whatever...

Social Modifiers... are anything that adds to the Dice Pool (in this case the Empathy Software), but it is still not game breaking in my book... the typical +3 dice that I see being used generates an average +1 net hit... if that is broken, then just wow... you must have a difficult time controlling yoru game if +1 net hit breaks your game... I do not see Empathy Software as Broken... for me, that is case closed...

Yeah, still seeing no actual rules changes there... Have a pleasant evening...

Um, removing/controlling access is undoubtedly a house rule. You 'house rule' that it's not available. What's so dirty about the word 'house rule'?

If 1 net hit *isn't* a problem, why don't you just give one free to all character actions?

Okay... it changes nothing, because the opposition would also receive that +1 net hit... it changes absolutely nothing...

DO you control what your characters receive in a game? That is not a House Rule, it's logistics... I say what is available based upon the parameters of the game. That is not actually changing any RULES at all... the RULES have not been altered in any way, shape or form... therefore it cannot be a House Rule... That is all I am saying... If I came to you and told you I wanted a SuperCarrier with 5 Wings of Attack Fighters for my Character, You would undoubtably hit me over the head with the Anniversary Edition (or maybe something heavier) and tell me to get lost (once I woke up from the concussion).... That is not a House Rule, it is a control that you place upon the game as a GM.