A new Face character has purchased:

- Cyber Eye with camera, eye recording unit, image link etc
- Empathy Software Rating 6: Running on his Commlink

From AR:60 - Empathy software is designed for use with standard video/trideo cameras, carefully analyzing the behavioral patterns of the subject to ascertain mood, interest, and so on. Empathy software can be used to make a Judge Intentions Test (see p. 139, SR4A) for emotional status using its rating as the dice
pool. It does not detect falsehoods; that’s the realm of lie detection software. Empathy software can be discreetly used in real time during negotiations or social interactions, adding its rating as a dice pool bonus to the character’s Social skill tests

So he runs the software on his comm, and Seriously? For all social skill tests he gets a +6 DP for 1,200? Im guessing thats just a little vague, and should be interpreted as:

- You ONLY get the bonus when making a Judge Intentions test for emotional status.

If so, why does it say that at the end, it can be used to add to a characters Social Skill Tests?

By RAW it works on ALL social skill tests.
Solution would be to cap the rating of emotisoft or capping dice pool bonuses by houserule, if you feel uncompfortably with this.
Dice pool cap ideas and rules are found in this thread for instance.

Yeah, I read that as having two functions:

1 - You can make a Judge Intentions test with (Rating) dice.

2 - You add (Rating) to the dice pool for Social Skill tests.

Broken? Quite possibly...

Yes, empasofts, and more specifically emotitoys are munchkinish in the extreme. If you don't want to outright ban them from your game, learn the social modifiers table backwards and forwards and apply it liberally, have hacker support for your johnsons, or just have johnsons that meet in the matrix and skip face-to-face meets entirely except for trusted friends.

It's not munchkin per se, it's just an imbalanced item. It totally makes sense for anyone to use it, the bonus is just much too big. There are many proposed fixes for Empathy Software; my favorite just uses the rules from the Lie Detection stuff (as above: roll Rating for Judge Intentions).

I'm not a fan of 'generic' dice pool bonuses in general, so this is a particularly good example case for using *specific* contextual, or task-centric, bonuses.

Yep empathy software does not exist in our game. Its too good ... +6 social dice for $1200. What were they smoking?

Its only 1200 if the face allready has a rating 6 commlink, witch isn't that common.

Empathy software is amazing useful compared to the price. Absolutely everyone who used any social skill for a living would have the same empathy software. So fine, everyone who can afford it and has any use has it. In the end, all it does is sink a few nuyen, and lessen the chance of a critical glitch.

One 'easy'solution:

It's cheap and easily available, so...everyone has it, and unless you want to fall behind, get it. Since everyone has it, no one gets a bonus unless the other side doesn't have it for some reason...

Or since it's software like any other program, you can just optimize it to fit on a rating 4 commlink, which is much cheaper and well within the budget for the average non-hacker.

Nope, none of the program option can be applied to sensor software's.
They all specifically list what program types they work with.

Also it's not 1200 ever, a rating 6 sensor soft cost 3k

This does not work. Sorry, no dice, but program options don't work like that.

Yes, your face IS going to have to shell out for a 20 grand commlink.

Or, you could buy Rating 4 Empathy software which is still damn good.




-k

I guess if you think that it isn't technically simsense software, then that ruling works. Still have the problem of emotitoys to deal with, which don't require an expensive PDA to use.

Well, it ISN'T Technically Simsense Software... it is SENSOR Software. I would have thought that that was obvious.
Emotitoys are really easy. Ban 'em.

Yes, sensor software works like that. Yes, it's brokenly good. You should just ban it.

No, you can't easily run rating 6 empathy software without coughing up a lot of money. You can easily enough run rating 4-5 though, and everyone can and should under the standard rules for it.

Probably deepweed.

The way it should have worked is that it gets 6 dice to roll to "help" the person in their roll.
IE do it like it's a Teamwork Test. You can find it on pg 65 of SR4A.
That's how most of the sensor software should work. Have it roll any successes add to the players dice pool with the ability to detect things the sensor software might be able to detect that the character can't.

I usually go for the Rating 3, it is fairly inexpensive, and the Typical Comlink my Characters purchase can run it. Sensors to support it (unless I have Cybereyes) cost a bit more, but not prohibitively so.

Teamwork Tests are the way to go, as well, as it gives a benefit, but not a great one, considering the expense.

Deepweed UmaroVI?

You like that, you're gonna love Emotitoys.

*facepalm*

I have a TM that has the SimRig CF. He has all of his senses being filtered by the various sensor software packages in Arsenal and results for facial rec, lie detector, weapons, voice rec, etc all relayed to ar for him.
So if he doesn't directly remember meeting someone, face rec or voice rec will catch it and remind him. Now having those pieces of software turned into a CF would just be over kill.

Why, it would not change the dynamic at all, except he would no longer need to run them on his Comlink. It does not change his DP dynamic at all.

A TM can easily get a much higher rating Empathy CF than anyone can get as a regular program.

Yeah, Technomancer need that little bit of extra love I think...

...with threading...
UmadbroVI?!

In my eyes, emotitoys are just that... toys.

So, they blink in pretty colors, they make sounds, they say loudly, what they learned, and they look silly. They are not SUBTLE in any way. Their use is completely obvious.

Good luck bringing something like that to a professional negotiation.


Using it as a Teamwork Test is a good house rule for Empathy Software. Roll the dice and every hit scored gives you an extra die for the actual Social Test.

Bye
Thanee

and Assist Operation. A starting technomancer can get rating 12 empathy software without much difficulty or risk.

None of that's necessarily supported by the RAW, Thanee. As far as we know from the books, they're configured to sit quietly and feed their info back, and that people *do* use them in the shadows.

http://i51.tinypic.com/a0xrfc.jpg

That is all.




-k

Actually there's absolutely nothing in RAW that says the owner of an emotitoy gets the benefit that empath software provides, after all the bonus is for the user of the soft in this case the drone.

No, that's just silly. You're running the software on the drone; plenty of precedent for that.

Isn't rating 6 3000 , not 1200?

That is why I said "In my eyes ...".




Exactly!

Bye
Thanee

Agreed, I think I will use it that way.

As for price, yes i might be wrong, but not a big difference in my opinion.