Man and Machine, SR3, had in the actual rules for it that you would eventually suffer pemanent TLE-x. While the crunch for this is conveniently missing in SR4, the condition still exists (along with Cyber Psychosis...mmmm...). I would never actually MBW on a character I actually intended to play for this very reason. Your guys with Wires are already strung out unless they turn them off. Now imagine never being able to turn it off and having more tremors, constantly, than Michael J. Fox. Your body is in a state of seizure CONSTANTLY from that ware. You don't want that, it's just bad mojo all around.

TLE exists in 4e but it's listed separately and not concretely associated with MBW. And X is correct, MBW incurred automatic stress points in 3e, not optional ones. Of course, every rule is "optional" depending on how much a GM wants to enforce. Though I think the tremors M&M described were meant to be more irritating and bothersome than debilitating like poor Michael J Fox. Think more like Tom Hank's trembling hands in Saving Private Ryan or a twitch/tremble you get every so often in your leg or something. A role playing element more than anything. Though one can only imagine how many role players are choosing to outfit a character with MBW, heh.

As to the game encouraging players to be awakened as opposed to utilizing cyber, the Stress system was hardly impetus for that. The rules for awakened characters and magic slowly but surely made it preferable to play as adepts anyway, in the apparent attempts to remove the cyber from the punk.

Nope, it's not an optinal rule, never said it was . . but we, as a group, agreed on that stuff being fucking dumb . . if you run the risk of your ware that you probably put 50% and more of your starting character ressources into were likely to fail after the first round of combat and requiring expensive cyber-surgery to run again. more expensive than you can afford usually. and while you're damaged goods, who is gonna give your sorry ass a job that pays well enough to remove the damage? Also, the stress got worse over time.

It's as if casting spells or being hit by blunt objects or projectiles or bullets made magicians lose spells or spirits and adepts powers . .

In theory it could if you took a Deadly wound.

That was a chance of straight up magic loss, so the analogue did not work as good . .

Just the Leonization treatment every so often.

they whole concept of stress was way to out there. it could make cyber-sams unplayable. I never played with in any of my games.

I can see ignoring Stress rules for the game, but ignoring them for MBW seems just kind of... munchkin.

If the side effects of MBW were too risky, there was always Wired Reflexes, Synaptic Accelerators, Boosted Reflexes, etc. The risk and upkeep of Move By Wire was the trade-off for it being so powerful.

The real killer for MBW was, under 3rd Ed, the prohibitive high price in both nuyen and essence and the fact that it is basically incompatible with most everything that lets you do the same thing for way cheaper and better . .

I think it was because they didn't expect any players to ever actually use it. It was more of a toy for GMs to utilize for NPCs. It was kinda there to show where the technology could go, but what the prices were for that level of performance, and not in nuyen. FASA did that though. They included stuff in the game few, if any, PCs would ever want to take. In fact, stuff that few, if any people would want to take. Just to show what could and would be possible in their game universe. I don't think FanPro or Catalyst realized that when they took the license over.

4e turned it into some kind of overpowered cheese by making it affordable and drawback free.

It'd be the type of stuff forced upon people against their will...

The kind of stuff you implant when your desire for revenge is bigger than your desire to live for more than six months. Remember, dystopia, desperate people!

Implanted comlink and clean metabolism are basic to gamers.

I think they're talking about the MBW

Yah, the really fun stuff ^^

Not really. Gaming hardware technology improves faster than the games. Having to get surgery to make sure you can run the latest game at standard settings? Seems like too much of a pain in the ass. One thing that the designers, and a lot of players, never really took into account regarding headware cyberdecks and implanted commlinks was how much effort there would be involved in staying with the SOTA.

Which is why i chose the datajack.
Upgrading an external computer is MUCH easier ^^

makes me think about the VR2 breadboarding rules, and the mention of the need for a large hat if one ever considered breadboarding a implant deck.

what is this breadboarding?
also, that's what cyber-limbs are there for.
build your cyberdeck in there, much more comfortable.

Or you could have the Terminatoresque easily accessage processor chip in the top of your head.

Or the cyberlimbs i just mentioned.
And i am afraid i don't get that Terminator Reference O.o
Implant Comlinks seem to me more like the kind of thing they used in the one Universal Soldier Movie with Bill Goldberg.

In game terms it allowed one or more of the components to be upgraded without having to rebuild the whole deck. That is iirc, tho.

ah i see.

I forgot to mention that it also made a former keyboard sized design into something that was only usable on a desk.

how so?
you just need a decker that's big/small and strong enough . .

Yeah where did Boosted Reflexes go in 4th???

What can i say, those where the rules. Sure, it was probably portable in the sense that a maxi-tower pc today is portable. But i suspect it needed some setup and breakdown time to be usable. Not exactly something to bring on a run

got lost in translation/transition.

probably not . .
the least portable ones i have standing around here are 70cm deep, 70cm tall and 30cm wide . .
yeah, they weight in at 25 kilo or so i think . . but i do have a strap system that lets me carry them like a backpack . .
looks retarded as hell and is fucking heavy so it's easy enough to tip me over while i am wearing that, but it works. . .
next smallest is my shuttle x-pc. fits nicely into a backpack that actually came with the computer . .
and then i have 2 15.4" laptops, those are probably the closes we have right now to the old style cyberdecks . .
and the next smaller thing is my hand held computer. Dell Streak, that is what a comlink looks like today.

Is that different than reflex enhancers?

Boosted reflexes were cheap and not upgradeable and had comparatively small essence impact.
but they also gave the least bonuses in SR3. and were incompatible with everything else.
save for the synaptic acclerators. in combination with synaptic enhancers, they were the only way to ever get to 4 ini dice. because let's face it, NOBODY got to use MBW4 in SR3.
level 1 gave simply 1 ini die and had an essence cost of 0,5.
level 2 gave simply 1 ini die and 1 point in reaction. essence cost of 1,25. but with them being so cheap, going for alpha for 1 point of essence cost was recommended.
if you were stupid enough to take them at all, seeing how you could achieve better results with level 1 at alpha and 2 levels of reaction enhancement. cost more nuyen, but even at standard grade you still lost less essence than with level 2 boosted reflexes.
At level 3 they took 2.8 Essence and gave +2 reaction and 2 ini dice.
which is quite nicely situated between wired reflexes level 1 and 2. but wired reflexes give more reaction while costing more money and more essence.
and wired reflexes had the possibility to be switched off and taken out and replaced and upgraded later on. and were compatible with rigger control.

Well, since the reaction boosters already aren't compatible with each other in SR4, I suppose they didn't really see the niche for boosted reflexes any more. If you want cheap, you get wired, if you want low essence, you get synaptic boosters, if you want high quality, you get MBW, if you just want some reaction, you get reaction enhancers.

If you want temporary, you get drugs!

Interesting. When I read this, I was sure that was wrong because, let's face it, I was positive I'd seen every munchkinware combo in the history of 2e-3e.

Shadowtech (1e), the original appearance of Synaptic Accelerator, states that the SA is incompatible with Boosted Reflexes and Wired Reflexes.
Cybertechnology (2e) states that the Synaptic Accelerator is compatible with Move By Wire, but only if installed simultaneously, and at triple cost for the SA. No change to its incompatibility with WR & BR.
Man & Machine (3e) states only that the Synaptic Accelerator is incompatible with wired reflexes and move by wire systems, contradicting Cybertechnology.

Interesting oversight in the transition between editions, or deliberate philosophical alteration? I can't imagine the latter. 290K for 2.8 Essence, 1.0 BI, for +2 Reaction, +4D6 initiative? That's almost half the cost of Wired 3 in both cash and Essence, and almost totally undetectable, lol. Heck, MBW2 is 4.5E and 500K.

Some of the guys here used to do Boosted II + Synaptic II for 5 dice, + whatever other indirect reaction enhancements they got. Well... that was very expensive, and I'm not sure whether it was worthwhile. People did weird things at that time. Another guy practically built his char around Milspec and a Gyro with HMG, and ended up basically never using it.

I think the 4 dice from Synaptic II with Boosted Reflexes I was fairly common, and more essence friendly than using direct Reaction boosters. It was a nice way to get 3 IPs most of the time. (8-10 + 4d6 was the norm for initiative, IIRC, although we had some people who used the conventional only-cyber route, too.) I don't remember anyone EVER taking Wired Reflexes, though.

I can imagine the latter, seeing how synaptic accelerators are not available in character generation and cost fucking huge ammounts of money in game. 400k to be exact.
And it's cultured Bioware, which is somewhere between beta and delta ware in SR3. And don't forget, you can NEVER EVER get rid of Boosted reflexes again. And you can't upgrade it from alpha to beta for example. And you can't upgrade it from level 1 to level2 or 3 either. And you can never ever be a Rigger with them installed. And you can not switch them off either, the way you can switch off wired reflexes. And they don't give as much reaction as wired reflexes either. And wired reflexes can be stepped between ther levels, if you don't want the complete twitch all the time, just a nice bit of boost all the time and sometimes being faster than a cat on speed.

Wait, what? How?
Boosted 3 gives 2 Ini Dice and Synaptic Accellerator Level 2 gives 2 Ini Dice.
Where did that 5th die come from?

That is the one you already have.

*blink blink*
DUUH! yeah, i'm not yet fully awake i'm afraid . . also, i seem to be sick <.<;,

Well... somehow even our MOST restrictive GM always allowed cultured ware at chargen, IF you supplied him with a suitable story. (And hey, it's not that hard.) Never betaware, but cultured bio was fine.

And seeing (as I wrote in another thread) that we often played SR as a downhill game, i.e. you start out with that MASS of cool ware, and NEVER get to upgrade it or buy anything other than a bigger gun and a maybe a house, it made sense to blow your starting million on this stuff, because you would NEVER ever get that amount of cash again. It turned out that that wasn't the case for all games - we sometimes made some money, and some chars even retired with millions. (Which then sprouted a strictly non-canon off-shoot game I GMed where one of the characters, a neo-cowboy at that, bought a 20th century destroyer or frigate or some such and the team went pirating on holiday in the south china sea. They even had a mechanical bull thingy, rodeo machine on the foredeck of the ship, right in front of the main gun housing (which was empty, anyway) That was a pretty fun game.)

But I digress....

*shrugs*
wish my GM's would let me get some of the nicer stuff . .
but under the rules, it just does not really work.
you have to really work it to manage this.
basically, boosted reflexes are reflex boosters for the poor.
they are the worst form of initiative enhancement you could get.
but they had the potential to let you surpass everything else due to the combination with syn acc.

Um, according to what? SynAcc2 was Availability 6 and only cost 200K. I did the math for you, right out of the book. There's no mention in the SR3 rulebook or in M&M about the restriction against cultured bioware for starting characters. The combo you described was perfectly legal for any starting character.

I mean, it's totally munchkin, and I can't imagine why the rules would change in SR3 aside from an oversight. Sure you lose the stepability of WR, but very few people ever took WR3. It was 5 Essence and absurdly expensive. With your combo a player was doubling the Initiative dice of WR2 at a lower essence cost and only sacrificing 2 points of Reaction. With average dice rolls, you were still beating WR2's initiative by 3 points. Not a lot, but munchkins love being munchkins and there are plenty of other Reaction increasing cyber and bio that would be compatible. You could technically pop in Level 3 Reaction Enhancers and Enhanced Articulation for a total of +9 Reaction with 4 dice at chargen and still skate in at just over half the starting resources for a million nuyen samurai and only be at Essence 2.3.


Ahah. Found your reference. All my SR3 books are 1st printing FASA era stuff. The part about Cultured Bioware not being recommended for starting characters didn't come around until the errata FanPro released following their 4th printing books in 2003. I can see now why we're not on the same page. You're from a later era of Shadowrun players.

Furthermore, you forgot to factor in the Street index of 2.
Meaning the Price of 200k is doubled when in game.

If FASA didn't print it.. it's not really shadowrun

Soo . . SR4 is NOT shadowrun?

I didn't forget anything. Street Index doesn't factor at character creation. Your best practice would be to not try and think for me. I'm way better at it than you.

Well, that's debatable, heh.

Lets see
The links to Earthdawn completely ignored/severed
The NAN failing
Bigger focus on Transhumanism and Corporations/mundane aspects of the world.
Unified bland yet overly powerful magic system.
Rigger/Hacker differentiation removed

I'm gonna go with.. it's shadowrunish.

I KNOW that it does NOT apply at Char-Gen.
And we had just established that cultured bioware is not available at Char-Gen either.
Hence the need to factor in Street Index, due to it only being available after Char-Gen, when Street Index applies. In Game.
And yes, wether or not SR4 is still SR is, indeed, very much debateable in my eyes . .

You should really stop being so snippy. The only thing we established was that only FanPro's 4th printing books contained the reference to cultured bioware not being available at character generation. Which means pretty much every player who bought 1st - 3rd printing books never even saw that rule. And even then it was just a suggestion. And considering that restriction disappeared in 4th Edition in 2005, then it really only existed for 2 years of SR3s development, lol. If that two year window was where you popped in, I guess that was your reality. Some of us played 3rd Edition when there were still 19s at the beginning of years.

Regardless of any of that, all of my math was still calculated for character gen, so nothing was "forgotten".

Some of us Played Shadowrun when there was a 198 in front of the year

I want to say we got our first copy of Shadowrun in either 89 or 90. Not entirely sure. It wasn't even mine and we were still in grade school. I did, however own the issue of Dragon Magazine where they reviewed Shadowrun. Most amusing part about that is that I only ever owned one issue of that magazine and it was that one because it was a gift. It might still be floating around somewhere. If I find it I'll scan the review.