Is it just me or is the capacity of an obvious cyberskull waaaay too low (Capacity 4)? I mean a torso is 10, with all the headware, I would have thought 8 for a head is not unreasonable. Especially given the social penalties would be significantly higher... I would have put 4 for one with a synthetic skin or something?

- J.

Take into consideration what you have to leave in the Cyberskull. Important things, like the brain.

If anything, that's just an argument that the torso cap is too high. It's only a shell. (But it has lots of surface area, so I guess they can fit a few things in there.)

More if you get it done in the CAS, where potbellied versions are found.

Ouch. Burn.

- J.

"Hold muh beer and watch this, gunna use muh belly bomb!"

Its based around common sense and size/area, not any actual cost-to-benefit number crunch.

Still, you can use the extra capacity mod from augmentation on it to represent miniaturization and stuff. You can fit a LOT of junk in people's head via Essence. If you're getting a skull, chances are you don't really care about a few more availability.

A cyberskull really needs to give an essence discount on things like Cybereyes/ears/headware that would normally go in the same place as the skull you're replacing.

There's more to it. Even gear which should use a headslot doesn't. Things like attention co-processors and what not. I recognise you're meddling with the brain, I just think there should be some perks to go with the Darth Vader look.

- J.

Like Intimidation bonuses?

Considering the cost of cyberlimbs and the horrendous availability and essence cost of a cyber(shell) for your head I would indeed allow a discount for things that would normally fit inside your head.

Anything not taking up a 'slot' would gain a 10% discount if fitted in a body part it was designed for.

It is a shell, but there's a fair amount of room available inside the shell - most things in there can be squished around; displaced--even somewhay compressed. you can also build the shell slightly larger than the original body to create more space, and you can remove a lot of pesky bones and muscles that you won't need anymore.

Compare people who tight-lace corsets and the amount of internal space they compress...of course, drastic things like that should infer penalties to fatigue tests, etc...

There should be rules for overstuffing cybertorsos/cyberskulls

If there were more benefits, more crazy people would *do* it. Hehe.

Seriously, snowRaven, I don't want my organs compressed.

As part powergamer ive never seen any use for Cyber replacement.
Way to hard to get and way to costly.
Even your noncybered/nonadept ork gets better Ability's.
And if youre a little powered up theres no way in hell u can get a usefull Cyber replacement.

One time i lost the right arm of my Troll Merc. (yeah i was stupid enough fight barehanded against a Monowhip user ^^)
After that my GM and i thought it would be fitting for him to get a fast cyber replacement so that he is back in action in under a week.
Yeah after Calculating the price for it i simple bought the bio regrowth arm cause with the money one arm would have cost me i could have retired the soldier on Luxus lifestyle...

Also we worked out some simple rules and reduced the cost to 1/10th

But yeah even so nobody takes that shit, so maybe u want to sit down with your GM and discuss this while having a bud (or a real beer

I used to just allow players to get a matching cyberlimb with the same strength as their other unaugmented limbs at no additional cost or availability hike.

That alone made them a lot more attractive.

PS: I love chrome. Shame I'm playing a shaman with Sensitive System.

- J.

There is the hidden synthetic cyberskull hanging out in the tables in the back of Augmentation. It's avail 16, 15000Y, and has Capacity 2. Still not great, but at least harder for people to tell you have a terminator face. You could also make a cyberware suite of cyberskull, eyes, and ears. You'll save 10% off essence and price.

Honestly, I would just remove the cyberskull as a cyberlimb* and just make it "Skull Replacement." It would be discrete replacement of one's skull, eyes and ears with artificial equivalents. Keep it at the same price and essence cost, but instead of capacity it gives free rating 4 cybereyes, rating 4 cyberears, and 2 points of B/I armor. That's an okay deal for 10000Y and .75 essence.

*- Mainly because cyberskulls can cause weirdness in limb averaging. I would also be fine just making it a partial limb as well.

I did the same with cyber limbs. Made them a lot more attractive and my players opted for mundanes more often because of it. As such, I rarely had more than one or two characters at the table with a Magic attribute >0

Yes, the rules for "ware" in cyberparts is not really consistant. They would have need to say, which has to go where.

Second of all the capacity for torso and head is just too low as is the capacity for "synthetic" cyberlimbs.

Funny, I was thinking they were just right. You are forced to be choosy with what you get currently; increase the capacity, and you no longer have the need to be choosy because you can fit everything you want.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Do not know about which you are talking, so I awnser for head and torso:
The problem is, that you get slots in arms and legs much cheaper.

The other option would be to make the "tasty" stuff like nonohive, torso only...

That's because arms and legs aren't shells.

Exactly...

I agree with both Tymeaus and Yerameyahu!

High five!

Now, there have indeed been threads about 'making cyber more appealing', and you should feel free to do what you want at your table. I'm not sure that making them vastly cheaper and more effective is the smart move, and it's not like their primary (fluff) purpose is to house gadgets. If you want Capacity… just don't get a Skull. Really, no one should ever get the skull.

What if I want a skul gun?

Get one.

It'll just take up essence instead of capacity if it's big.

I wouldn't want to fire it if it's anything with significant recoil though. Heck, if I had one, I wouldn't want to fire it, period...

The magician watched in disbelief as the new street sam pulled out a pipe cleaner and shoved it deep into his ear. "Wha...what..what ARE you doing?" The sam pulled the now-blackened thing from his ear and looked at it. "Huh? Oh, this?" He smiled. "You have to clean your guns regularily if you don't want them to fail on you."

Remember to activate your oral gun's safety before making out with your SO.

Yep, trolls get the short end of the cyber replacement stick due to their high BOD and STR. AFAIK older editions had the (optional?) rule that troll-sized cyber started with BOD and STR 8, maybe that rule should be reinstated...

And they should also cost more, because you're getting a bigger, stronger, tougher arm. … Which is how the current rules work out, more or less.

With customized limbs it does work out that way, and for "game balance" it does make sense. But it still seems weird that an arm customized for an average troll is as expensive and hard to get as one for an amazing human.

The problem is always the same: What to do?
You could make the rules more complex... You could just make everything stonger.. But everything will have drawbacks...

See, I just don't agree, maine75man. I think trolls are big and weird, and that prices for big weird cyberware aren't controlled for 'fairness' by the ADA or anything. A t-shirt in XXL *does* cost more than one in M, a huge air passenger *does* have to buy two seats, an adult dose of medicine is larger than a child's, and so on.

I made some rules for SR3 to balance the extremes of cyberlimbs.

Essentially each physical attribute you wanted to have would cost you. This meant that a fully replaced cyberbody character could have NATURAL attributes of 1 and basically buy any attributes they wanted.

Reaction would still be your natural attribute since it would be your reaction time and less of a physical attribute.

I think i made it around 500Y per attribute. So BOD,STR,AGI at 3 would be 9 point Cyberlimb at 4500Y.

Max attributes was the max for your race and everything above that cost 1 ECU to install per attribute. Also, sicne cyberlimbs was the poor mans gear all availability to limbs was about 4.

The kicker was also that there was a -1 dicepool for attacker using chemical weapons for each limb you had but you only used your natural body for resisting drugs.

BOD 1 samurai fell quickly to narcoject snipers regardless of their tank build with BOD 10 metal frame.

"Big" is not exactly a point which drives the price up, quite the contrary.

But if you want big while still wanting strong and decently fast, it *does* cost premium.

It certainly can be (see my RL examples), Sengir, but I wasn't saying you're paying for a bigger cyberlimb. You're getting a bigger cyberlimb, but paying for the *stats*. You're getting 'better' and 'more', so you pay for it. Companies and technology don't care if something is 'relatively' better for the individual, they just care what they're selling you in absolute terms.

The simpliest path is rules handwavium - limb values default to the unaugmented values of the host. That is the fairest and cleanest way to go.

- J.

Cleanest, maybe, but I would not say that it is fair. *shrug*

Ditto. It's trading game balance and simplicity for 'realism' and utility. It just depends on which tradeoff you prefer.

I prefer role playing to boardgames, personally.
It gets frustrating when they introduce a technology then fail to take it to it's logical conclusion in effect on the setting. Instead of futuristic compelling and cool you get klugey rules for a setting that is already quaint and anachronistic. (but not in a good way)

The cyber skull's capacity is too low. The torso is even worse. While the cyber skull is not, (and was never meant to be) calculated in limb stat averaging, the torso must be. And while it is good to have restrictions on gear so that you can't get everything you want out of the box the real problem is that it's impossible to make a torso 'match' up with the stats of the limbs attached to it and end up with physical stats that aren't totally eclipsed by much less expensive and available bioware. The restiction to 3 levels of limb enhancment without a torso combined with the torso's low capacity make it a miserable choice when your character concept demands lots of chrome.

The reason anyone want's more capacity in a cyber skull is for armor. If it's possible to put 4 points of armor on a cyber arm without adding bulk it should be possible in on a skull, (and a torso)

I know what you're getting at, but I think we may have differing ideas on fairness on this point.

- J.

… Which version is the non-RPG in this metaphor?

Neither should have any capacity, cuz they're shells. Yes, counting torsos as limbs ruins everything; that's a terrible rule. That doesn't change the previous point, though. At most, you could have some kind of special rule for armoring the shell (as simple as 'X Capacity, can only be used for armor'). Cyber armor is its own mess, though.

Cyber is supposed to be passé in 2070.

Bunch of Crap... No Offense. What did they not take to its logical conclusion? The Logical Conclusion of Full Borg Conversions is an actual Cyborg, which they have. They are called JarHeads.

And You can make an effective character with a Full Borg Conversion and High Physical Stats (I know, because I have done it). You just have to be willing to give up some of your other options to do so (like, say, armor). You cannot have your cake and eat it too. I think the system for limbs works well in that regard. You have a lot of options, but you are FORCED to make some hard decisions. You cannot have it all.

And since a Skull and a Torso are only Shells, they have less space. That makes perfect sense. They do NOT need more space.

And no, the reason people want more space in their Skull and Torso is to put more things in, because most people already have their Armor implanted into the Limbs. They want their cake and the ability to eat it too. Fact is, most people are not happy that they are forced to choose between what they put in that capacity. They want it all. I think forcing them to choose is a good thing.

Yeah, probably.
I think a Troll should have to pay to be a Troll, and he should have to pay to be a Full-Borg Conversion Troll. It is only fair.

Well, that's what happens when you're a Trog, the whole world is out to get you.

Mr. Humey can never let a trog catch a break, after all.

It just makes sense: the troll's cyberarm is stronger, etc. The price of a cyberarm is (that is, should be) based on its absolute stats, not relative to the person it happens to be attached to. A strong human's matching arm isn't cheaper than the same arm on a weak human.

Anything else would be the 'game-ness' intruding on the 'reality' of SR. (Which might be desirable, because it's a roleplaying *game*.)

If you want that route, I do like the rationalization Sengir implied: an ork or troll arm is larger, so they can use larger (cheaper?) components, which brings the price back into *relative* parity. This also explains why they get the same Capacity. (Personally, I think they should pay more, and get more capacity… but armor would have to be bigger to cover the larger surface area.)

Look, I could wear it if it was cost alone. But upping Availability is the killer. There is nothing about game balance on that one.

- J.

Yep; this is exactly the thing that make me say "board gamer" vs role gamer. As a board gamer it's ok to rationalize that you've got so much armor on your feet that you're not worried about having armor around your BRAIN but hey; "no offense" right?

What is this issue with having cake? A guy with a cyberlimb gets no Cake. The Cake is a fucking lie.
Not only does he have to pay out the anus for a piece of gear that can't match the bonus available from bioware at chargen availability but he's got to pay for that limb in addition to bioware for his meat body. He's got to match the stats of his meat body (enhanced by bioware) or having that limb will drag his average stats down. And once you've done that where do you find the capacity to put all those awesome extras?

And how do you go to the cyborg as the logical conclusion of cyberware? The cyborg is a drone with a tiny rigger cocoon. The guy with a alloy and carbonfiber arm is dealing with the fact that his arm does +0P unarmed damage while the guy with bone density can do +4P.

Get chromed, Be a pussy, Yay!

Now I want cake.

EDIT: Cybernetic cake.

This is what I'm talking about. Ontop of the availability issues. But to be fair, cyber does give you extra boxes on the condition monitor and the ability to automatically turn off pain. That is pretty darn cool. Of course there is no real mechanic on how it works so it's largely fluff subject to GM interpretation....

- J.

A cyberskull has 6 slots if you bulk mod it.

If you're going to have a chrome head, it might as well be a giant chrome head.