The main book says that most people can't do over 4 even if they spend edge. Can anyone do it?

YES...

Hackers
Technomancers
Riggers
Cyborgs

There you go...

Some gear/ware in Unwired can push you to five IP's in the Matrix. I've got the book out on loan to one of my players, so I can't reference the pages off hand.

You can't get 5 in meat, though, which is what I think OP meant? I'd be a little surprised by 6 matrix IPs, though… sounds like unorthodox rules combination.

There was some attempts at applying biodrone implant to metahumans and have them rig their own body...

I. . ..
I just. . .
I just wish that Longbow never finds this.

To expand on that briefly. There is 'ware and a commlink upgrade for the Rigger and Hacker that allow 5 Hot Sim passes. TM's can of course take overclocking to get to 5 VR passes.

Not too familiar with Cyborgs getting 5 passes, although I do not doubt the validity of the source.

Cyborgs, and Riggers jumped in VR. Base 1 + VR 1 + Hot Sim 1 + Simsense Accelerator 1 + Simsense Booster 1





-k

Right, that's not meat. That's Matrix.

But in control of something physical.

Thanks! I didn't really care if it was meat or not.

I'm pretty sure the book explicitly says that you may only have up to five IPs. I wasn't aware of any other limits on IPs.

Okay, now I'm re-reading the book and wondering where I saw that, because everywhere I'm looking now says 4 IPs.

It is 4 IPs, unless you are running specifically the combo I listed above. That is the only exception.




-k

There's the Mesh Reality echo for Technomancers.

Mesh Reality
Prerequisite: Multiprocessing
A technomancer who fine-tunes her understanding of multiprocessing with this echo can surrender her body to slip into a hyper-perceptive state with a Free Action. In this state, she can perceive both the real world (including augmented reality) and virtual reality simultaneously. This allows her to use her Matrix Initiative and Initiative Passes in meat space, though she cannot use more Initiative Passes on real-world actions than she usually would, based on her normal Initiative Passes. Remaining IPs must be spent on Matrix actions only. If engaged in physical combat and cybercombat simultaneously, she receives a –4 to all of her dice pools. This modifier can be reduced for cybercombat only by using the Macro echo.

That doesn't give any extra IPs. It does possibly increase their Init score (if their Matrix score is higher; it probably is).

Yeah, the...Simsense Booster, I think? explicitly says that it allows you to exceed 4 IPs.

never mind...

Found it! Core Book -> Attributes -> special attributes -> page 68: "The maximum number of Initiative Passes a character can have is 5, but most character types can only ever achieve 4."
Page 145 (Initiative Passes) basically says: "You can't have over 4 IPs. Oh, you do? My bad. As long as you didn't get any from Edge."
Kinda dumb. They should reword that.

It's 4, except for the Simsense Booster. It could indeed be written better.

I don't see how the simsense booster makes the exception.

Then again, it does say it's an "additional extra".

Maybe it's the accelerator, then. One of them allows you to exceed 4.

It's the Accelerator:


Yes, that typo with the extra closing parenthesis is in the book.




-k

There we go. Wow that's obscure.

How is that obscure?

Many books, and over 20 ways to get more IPs spread throughout them. That's the only one that circumvents the 4 IP rule. In addition, I haven't read anything about hackers/technomancers yet (skipping over those parts until something brings me to them).

And yet, there is only Two ways to get 5 IP's (Technomancer, or Hacking Ware)... But I get your point...

Hacker/Riggers CAN get 5 passes on the matrix, but they can only spend 4 of them on meat actions because they need to use at least one complex action to control the car.

Cyborgs(they use matrix init), per augmentation, are exempt from that obligatory complex action, and so are the -only- archetype that can manage 5 passes meatside.


It may be theoretically possible to get 6 passes on the matrix: Using an accelerator/booster combo already nullifies the 4-pass rule, so we don't care about that anymore: So using Edge to boost yourself to 6 for a turn should work. An Adept with Rush(war!) should be able to do a similiar trick, as rush doesn't have a no-stacking clause like most IP boosting things, but soaking 12p afterwards isn't really worth it.

If they're confident about the crash test, they *can* forgo control, of course.

I feel like Edge specifically says you can't use it to go over 4, so that's a pretty rough loophole.

I believe uncontrolled vehicles get a dice pool modifier to everything (i want to say -2), but, yeah, if you have a giant dice pool or NEED an extra action, its not that bad.

Come to think of it, for a habitual cold-sim rigger, popping over to hot mode and voluntarily giving up control is basically like turbo-mode. Twice the actions! twice the fun! +2 cancels out the -2! Oh god dumpshock, my brain.

IIRC only 4 IPs are possible in Meatspace (Its a Hardcap)
They could use the 5th pass for a matrix action though

with 4 Dances in 1 Post
Medicineman

I'm pretty sure the hardcap is 5, based on page 68 of the core book. The section dedicated to Initiative Passes on p. 145 only says that most characters are limited to 4.

This assumes the vehicle is moving.

If it's just sitting there, you can play with an extra pass as a crazy, bullet-spewing turret.

Running Wild p92 the Cheetah has two base IP. When turned into a biodrone you can get this up to 5. There might be others, I haven't done a detailed read in a while.

Well, Drone Actions are Matrix Actions, and yet, their effects occur in Meatspace. Same with Cyborgs.
So, Drone Riggers and Cyborgs actually do receive 5 Meat Actions, becuase they are controlled through the Matrix.

As for Not using an action to control the vehicel (Drone Riggers), they must make a Crash Test next pass. If they succeed, no bad results occur. Failure is a Crash.

At that point, though, it is a Drone.

Yeah, but that's just an error. Like most of Running Wild.

Heheheh... Wouldn't know. I do not have Running Wild either. Though I have glanced through it a time or two.

IIRC extra base IP:s don't stack with IP enchaments.


It maybe a little bit obscure, mostly because the mention about 5 IP:s was added in to the anniversary edition of the corebook for reasons unknown, even thought there's no real reson for it to be there, as those thinks that allow you to get the fifth pass allready have a mention about being an exception to the general rule of 4 max.

Why wouldn't they?

Because for character options that get them it says so and i though i saw somethink similar for critter, but can't find it so maybe i remembered wrong.

Agreed.

I have never seen anything from Character options stating that, because no character Metatype/Variant has more than a single pass. Maybe that is in Running Wild?

I'm pretty sure you can still combine drugs (Cram, Jazz, Kamikaze) with your existing 4 IPs if you want to make a literal speed freak. I've never seen a rule that specifically prevents this...

Except that Drugs do not take you above 4 IP.

Banshee's and few other infected options have +1IP.

Oooh, Cool. Nice to know. Of course, we do not have any infected PC's, nor are they allowed, so it will never be a problem.

Allowed in your campaign, or in general? I heard Yerameyahu say the same thing, but I still don't know where it says you can't.

*edit as of 12:57 PM

D'oh! I read that as cyberzombies and cyborgs. I was kind of rushed. Sorry.

They mean in their campaign. There's no general restriction against it, else huge chunks of RC would be pointless.

In our campaign. It is a PC playable race after all. We just do not use them. Infected become NPC's or Ghoul chow, depending upon the character involved.

Yerameyahu didn't say anything about Infected, actually.