So, my street-level cyborg ork has been incredibly successful as a build. His armor-plated cyberlimbs have made him the defacto tank, and Lightning Reflexes and Karma hording have gotten him up to a Reaction of 8. He is using Longarms and Grenades, and frankly tearing up the opposition.

The problem is, the tank gets shot a lot, and I've been KO'd three separate times. Between that, and his backstory of cyberware that causes him pain, I think I can justify his investing in a Pain Editor as being in character. I think I'll have his habitual use of NoPaint and repeated hits from Narcojet trigger an overdose and put him in a hospital to start this side story.

The question I have for you, oh Dumpshock, is how many hoops should he have to jump through to get one installed? My book lists it as Forbidden technology, so he won't be able to get it at the mall, and it is Cultured Bioware, so he will need to have a lab grow it for him and hire a brain surgeon to install it. My GM will allow this to happen between sessions if I have a good explanation, and I want this to be more interesting then just having the nuyen.

So, how does a neo-anarchist cyborg get his hands on military-grade bioware? To be clear, I'm less interested in rules interpretations then I am in interesting story ideas. No wrong answers, though, and any advice is appreciated.

Might want to start with Phantom limb pain from the cyberlimbs. OR the low grade dermal plating he had put in by a street dock causing nerve damage that makes it so painful to walk around that you need a pain editor. Maybe a new Orkbamma plan to give needed very expensive medical care to the sinless.

Well, that's what Street Docs and Shadow Clinics are for, right?

If you have no appropriate contacts (where did he get his current ware?), then the first step would obviously be to find someone who does.

Augmentation p. 14 and 127 have interesting information about illegal medical services (and what is needed to get cultured bioware grown and installed).

Bye
Thanee

It *does* surprise me that something with as many legitimate medical applications as a Pain Editor is illegal. Anyone who has watched a friend or family member deal with chronic pain would be shocked that they can't get something like this. I can only assume that the Corps have too many fingers in narcotics to make permanent painkillers legal. ...although if anyone has any other ideas why?

There's a difference between... whatever the implant that basically gives you Pain Resistance is, and a pain editor. The argument I can see here is that the one would have legitimate applications in treating chronic pain, whereas a pain editor was "designed from the ground up for combat applications and super-soldiers," as I imagine someone would put it. Management of chronic pain is also something that, in theory, could be accomplished via an autoinjector and a supply of narcotics (similar to but much more streamlined than today's Patient-Controlled Analgesic systems), or a nanotech solution seeking out the source of the pain. Assuming that the Sixth World cares much about providing chronic pain management for those impaired by it... seems a little too caring for me.

There's plenty of reasons why Pain Editors would be BAD for you, even in the management of chronic pain. The Pain Editor is an "all or nothing" system... if it's on, you don't get pain signals. Pain is useful... little pains tell you when you've bumped into something, when a surface is hot, if you're bleeding, if the thing you just picked up is sharp on the other side, that something just hit your eye and you should blink. Managing chronic pain would be best addressed by something which provides a Pain Tolerance (be that narcotics, an implant, whatever) which still lets important, acute signals through (like when you step on a nail). Patients with CIP (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain) don't feel pain... and rarely live through their 20s.

I would normally say either ask your fixer to find an elite shadow clinic or steal a MASH truck plus appropriate skillsofts, but both of those probably don't fit a street-level campaign. Your best bet is building up some contacts and favours at a public hospital. They are the most accessible medical providers with the ability to grow and implant cultured bioware. If you can convince a couple of the right people in a just-scraping-by public hospital (like a surgeon and somebody in admin) that you're fighting the good fight and worth helping out, they'll hook you up and fudge the books in exchange for a donation that gets more treatments to SINless kids. Or you could find some sleazier types in exchange for the hard nuyen they need to keep up the payments on the Westwind.

If you're keen, this is a chance for you to run a side-game for a little while...

Your team does the necessary research, and learns that they need to go to Hong Kong to get the work done. While there, obviously your PC can't be in play, but maybe part of the arrangement is that the rest of the team, joined by someone familiar with the ground there, are to do a run or three to help defray the costs. Your current GM gets to be the local talent, and you get to be the GM for a few sessions.

Actually, yes.

While the core book provides availability and legality on items, the fact of the matter is that the Sixth World is a -very- politically fragmented place with different laws, legalities and restrictions everywhere you go. Sometimes, due to extraterritoriality, that place is just around a block.

The point I'm trying to make is: What may be illegal in renraku japan may be handled differently in a UCAS Ares facility, or just across the border to a neighboring country.
California hotsims are a good example of this. Accepted in one area, borderline illegal in another.

If you stop using the book as an end-all-be-all of 'this gear is this hard to get', then options open up for going to certain areas to get access to types of gear and wares they're known for.

Your point about medical applications of a pain editor is a good one. It may very well HAVE good medical applications, and a hospital may very well be willing to install one in a patient, provided the patient had a really pressing need for one. A chronic condition, untreatable pain, insurance that could cover it - you know, the usual sorts of hoops to jump through that would make it O.K for a wealthy citizen to have a forbidden piece of gear.
Remember, this is shadowrun - Why, exactly, aren't you paying a hacker to make you an appointment(with a cover story) to get you a nice piece of illegal gear installed all nice, tidy, and legal-like?
Or blackmailing a clinic manager to grow one for you - with plans to take the grown implant elsewhere for installation?
Or even just shopping across corporate borders to find a place where getting a pain editor is significantly more legal than 'the rules' would have you believe?
Heck, give your local mercenary groups a call, tell them you're thinking of signing up and see if they can recommend some doctors/clinics to get augmented at. Even better, if they do it in house, offer to make a deal with them.
Pick up a good Docwagon contract, make buddies with the manager if you can, always pay on time. Dogwagon's rumored to have a few under-the-table betaclinics around, and they don't care who they're providing services to - just that their clients have the cred.

Hope thats enough to get you started.

The Damage Compensators, according to fluff, don't actually nullify the sensation of pain, they just block its interference with regular nervous function. And, in game and IRL, Narcotics are addictive by their very action. Every last one of them. They are a terrible method of treatment for chronic pain. By the first month they go from mickey-mouse opiates like buprenorphine to heavy stuff like dilaudid in order to see any effect, and then month two sees them on fentanyl just to treat that same pain. I see this shit happen.

Something like the Pain Editor that just shuts off the sensation of pain while allowing touch sensation like pressure through, that would be like a miracle for people with chronic pain. Just flip it on at night and actually sleep for the first time in months or years. There is no way that people wouldn't be clamoring for this if there were still medical need for it. The only real explanation is that nano medicine has eliminated chronic pain forever, so that military applications were the only ones left.

Fair warning, as this post will likely show, I do not know that much about medicine.

Most clonal organs are type-o or something which makes them pretty much universal. Cultured bioware is grown from the intended patient to minimize the risks of rejection which are exacerbated by modifying the nervous system. Would a type-o augmentation be able to be infused with the intended recipients tissues in order to be cultured? That way it wouldn't have to have been previously grown from them but just customized later. If that were possible then it could significantly reduce the problems of getting ahold of a piece of cultured bioware. You could have a compatible contact or team hacker arrange for an accidental overshipment to a local medical facility. You make a deal with the facility, or a relevant person, that if they customize and install your implant then they can keep the rest of the shipment that fell of the back of the truck without having a paper trail. That way everybody wins. You just deduct the nuyen price as "business costs" for arranging the deal. Who knows, it might even generate some plot hooks for later use.