Yeah--I'd ad though that the availability of armor above a 3 gets pretty darn scarce and is not available at character generation. Furthermore it takes up alot of capacity. So the GM would be able to limit that via you PC is not approved remove the Armor 10 cyber torso please. That being said I'm always the fan of the older editions way of adding up all the armor and dividing by 6. Either that or I am going to roll 2D6 to determine hit location.


Sad thing is, I did use RAW against the PC's once....it was admittedly silly.

If you do that the nuyen and capasity cost of it has to come way down as well as the max rating go up, otherwise just do your players a favor and remove cyber armor from to game instead of nerfing it to oblivion. With the divide by 6 rule you need two cyber limbs with 3 armor in both to get 1 point of armor.

Well, yes. Obviously, it'd a be complete rejigger. Nothing wrong with that, though: all the attributes average, so that *would* help deal with some of the confusion.

I doubt it would stop anyone whining about the balance, though. Personally, I just eyeball the character and say, 'no, munchkin, try again'.

I saw the title of the post, and I thought he was going to compare Dermal Sheathing to Orthoskin

and RAW =/= RAI

See the 4->4A errata that says it was supposed to be changed:

The cost is already pretty low, but yes the ratings and availability would definately have to change to make it work more like 3E. Something like Ratings = 1-12 at availability = rating*2 and capacity = rating. That would allow for someone to take 3 times as much armor as they currently can, but then its divided by 6, so then end up with only half as much. It also now takes more capacity per effective point, making partial limbs less worthwhile.

Iirc older versions also had ballistic and impact armor purchased seperatelty so alternatively you could just use the current rules and make it count only as ballistic or impact; you could buy both, but it would take twice the money and twice the capacity.

What if they get a full body replacement? (although if you're going full body replacemetn, just talk your GM into letting you be a cyborg in an ottomo.

60k 4.25 essence.
Currently I max out at 22/22
With your idea, I could get 10/10 overall.
12/12 per arm, leg, 10/10 torso, 4/4 skull (with no capacity for anything except in the arms and legs

and for some reason that didn't make it into the final book:

Actually 90k 6.25 essence, which is why you don't see it very often



Well if the idea is to limit the crazy stacking of armor, then it did its job. You can still wear armor over it, brining your 10/10 into the twenties.

I really would like to see more than one type of armor available as cyber, one designed to be light and be augmented with worn armor and then a bulkier version that counts as worn armor. That way you could have your single limb slightly tougher character, or your full body conversion walking tank who doesn't need to wear any additional armor. I guess if you have a full body conversion you could just boly military armor onto yourself or something and say its built in.

Thats what I said, did I phrase it wrong? I was pointing that out as possible RAI, clearly its not RAW.

@Fauxknight - typically you use /= to mean "does not equal". =/= would mean "equals does not equal".

i stand corrected then.

Thats not the part I was referring to, though I see I could have been clearer regarding the fact that the particular rule quoted did not in fact make it into the 4A book. The reason I used =/= was simply to follow suite on the post I was responding to.

Strangely the rule is still in the official errata which as a 4->4A errata makes it still official for 4A in the case of anyone using a regular 4th ed book. After all if someone with just a regular 4th ed book wanted to play in a 4A game they would use the alternate errata version of the rule as RAW.

Yes, I just said playing 4th ed converted to 4A is the exact same game as 4A, but the rules are different...if that makes sense.

I fear there is quite a backlog of errata and such for SR, thanks to the CGL economic issues that sprung up and the number of people that quit.

@hobgoblin - Yeah, but there are countless fan boys and part-time writers that would love to help out.

If i remember correctly that changes document is mostly worthless, as there are a lot of changes not listed in it and then there are some changes that aren't true in it like the cyberlimb armor one.
I'm just clad that rule never made it into the actual book as its totally bollocks, its makes you pay douple the capasity for same result and that capasity gomes of from much smaller cap.
Armoring partial limbs means they install much thicker armor into it per rating point when compared to full limp.

iirc, the changes document was supposed to be a interim document.

Possibly, but it never got updated, and its in the errata section, even though its not really an errata document.

I assure you, I have shot guns before. Not everyone that disagrees with you "hasn't read the book" or "hasn't fired a gun" before.

While it's certainly true that more than your hand goes into firing a weapon, there's no disputing that your hands are an important piece of that process. Just like much more than the wheels on your car are involved in a high speed turn or a sudden stop, your tires are still the only part of your car that touches the road. There are times in this life when the weakest link in a chain really does matter. While more than your hands are involved in shooting, it's perfectly reasonable for the attribute specifically associated with your hand or arm to be involved -- averaged in, if not outright taking precedent -- in the process of firing a firearm. Especially a handgun.

You can have the keenest eyesight, the most balanced stance in the world, the most accurate little match-grade .22 handgun, the steadiest arms, the best ammo, and everything else you can think of might be perfect -- but if your hands are shaking, or you jerk the trigger instead of squeeze it, or if you were to somehow try to hold the gun so that your ring finger or pinky was on the trigger, etc, etc, your accuracy is going to suffer. Hell, how many shooters have you trained who've shot consistently low and to the right because they had too much of their finger on the trigger, instead of just the ball of their fingertip? The little things count, and count a lot. Just go shooting on a really cold day, and right before each shot, plunge your bare hands into a bucket of ice water, give them a few seconds to really numb up, and then try to manipulate a firearm smoothly. The rest of your body might be warm, cozy, and ready to go, but I assure you, you won't be shooting nearly as well as you would with your hands working right, too.

There are times in a game, as in real life, when the lowest common denominator -- the ability of your hands to work smoothly, or the tires on the road -- should act as a limiter to the overall effectiveness of an action. The most finely tuned Indy car in the world isn't going to go very fast, or brake very well, with bicycle tires on it, is it? No matter how powerful the engine, how skilled the driver, or anything else. The same holds true with a (meta)human body. Everything else might be absolutely perfect about a shooter, but if all his fingers are broken (or if he's got a clumsy, cheap, Agility 3 cyberhand compared to his Agility 9 awesome self) he's going to "lose his touch" some.

I didn't know cyber hands could tremble, you know, being metal and all....j/k. I get your point about the weakest link in the chain of a process bringing everything else down, but seriously, your hand is the least important part of the process, especially with automatics weapons. Idk, just RL experience for me. Again, this is an "Say your GM how he thinks it should be applied mechanically in the game" question since the rules aren't very clear and there are no good examples.

Also, your quote I placed above, describes not the agility or posture (physically related things) but training which would fall under the skill itself, not the attribute which defines it. So you're describing someone who has pistols 1, not pistols 6.

And to you point, it would surprise you how many people don't actually read the books. I believe they call it skimming. And that's what most people do.

Edit - Crap, editting it again. By your definition of how this all works out, instead of pumping armor in the cyber hand, players at your table could take cyberhands with custom agility 3, and agility enhancement 4 for a solid 10 dice just because their hand is very agile. And that's not broken either for .25 essence and like 10k.

.

I think thats a good way to end it.

Yeah, I misread something. I don't really feel like arguing about something nobody actually said.

Nope, Agility 10 hand doesn't much help with shooting if the rest of you has only Agility 3.

Not by Critias's logic, the hand is the most important part.

It is a errata between SR4 and SR4A, but it never got completed because CGL hit a financial bump and so had to prioritize getting new products out there over getting the free services up to speed. Yes, it sucks for us in the community as we do not have a fly on the office wall so we know what is coming. And as of late i think CGL have prioritized battletech and new IP over shadowrun. I would say that the loss of chutulhutech and eclipse phase may have hurt CGL the most as they where both rising stars in the market, and earning them money they could channel into the other games.

I also fear that with the new forum over at shadowrun4.com it is less likely that our discussions here will be seen. This in comparison to when we had AH, Adam and Synner (among others) all responding to various threads.

I keep looking for the part where he said the hand was the most important part, and yet it's not there.

To summarize, everything is perfect except your hands and you are utter fail at shooting fire arms. Does that highlight it enough for you Whip? And IMHO he's describing an untrained shooter with a quivering hand and ill placed fingers on the trigger. That would have nothing to do with agility (manual dexterity) and more to do with training.

See. This is why I spec partial cyberlimbs to match the meat

Please do so. All of you.

EDIT: I took some snark out of the opening of my post, even though I felt it was deserved, and I'll just say that I think you're reading a lot into my post that I never said. I said that accuracy will suffer if anything is done wrong, and that's just a basic rule of marksmanship. You're either operating at 100%, or you're not. I didn't say you'd be "utter fail," I said "accuracy will suffer." I also certainly never said the hand was the most important part. If you want to disagree with what I'm saying, that's fine. You certainly won't be the first. Just kindly disagree with what I'm saying, don't say things for me.

I used real-world shooting examples -- that, yes, are more related to training than anything else -- simply as methods of trying to talk about reality. You're the one that kept bringing up real-life shooting experience as the only qualification that let someone engage in this conversation, and since I don't know anyone with an Agility 3 cyberhand, I was trying to make analogies towards real-life situations that can cause accuracy to suffer, even if everything else is done right. They seemed to make sense to me as ways to point out that yes hands matter when you shoot, but you obviously seem to have read something else into them, or taken some sort of offense, or whatever.

In marksmanship, as in everything else, you're only operating at peak efficiency if everything's working right. Someone with proper grip technique who's trying to shoot on the run suffers some in accuracy. Someone with great stance and grip but poor eyesight isn't as accurate. Someone with keen eyes, proper stance, fantastic grip, but a bad gun isn't going to do as well. It takes every part operating just right for anything to work as well as it can -- that's a simple fact. You might not miss outright because of it, but you won't hit as often, or as fast, or as well.

So at what point would you say it's appropriate for a cyberhand to start applying some sort of penalty to someone with an otherwise high Agility, who's trying to fire a weapon? Take a totally awesome (and cliched) elven hitman type, with racial bonuses and cool augmentations and an Agility score of 9. Give that guy an Agility 3 hand and he's still totally kosher in your book, that's fine, we've established your opinion there. What about an Agility 2 cyberhand? Agility 1? A real-world prosthetic hand, with a hook he can manipulate a little bit? At what rate does that Agility 9 super-cool elf hitman have to start using anything other than his full Agility, when he's trying to fire a weapon?

How much does their ability to fine-manipulate an object have to go down, before you think it's appropriate for it to start affecting their combat-usefulness where the Agility attribute, specifically using that hand, is concerned? When you consider that the game has already established some sort of precedence for this sort of thing, given that you use a cyberlimb's attributes when you're leading an attack with that limb, or that you take a penalty even just for using your off-hand (to account for it being more awkward and less ideal for combat than your dominant hand)...where do you draw the line?

I've established that I think the Agility of the hand should at least be averaged in, as a way of "weakest link" affecting someone's ability to be awesome at some physical tasks, because I, personally, think that you need to be "firing on all cylinders," having everything working together properly, to achieve maximum efficiency. You disagree, and that's fine, I've given up on changing your mind -- just so we're clear there -- but I'm curious about where your threshold would be.

EDIT: Dammit. Just saw the last posts, including Grinder's. So, uhh, nevermind, I guess? Or PM me with your answer, or something? I dunno. I'm just genuinely curious about at what point you'd be okay with someone having to suffer a little bit for blatantly choosing to give themselves a limb that's so obviously inferior to their own natural abilities.