Well you could jump far/high but you would not have very much control. Unless you further invest in your cyberlegs you will have a STR, AGI and BOD of 3. More importantly any test involving the legs would either require you to use the average of all involved limbs or the minimum of your physical stats.

No, worn armor does not stack, unless there is a rule saying otherwise.

I know that there is a general consensus of the rules working like that, but I don't remember actually seeing it in the rules. There are specific rules for things stacking or not stacking with other things, but I am not aware of a general rule saying something like D&D's "bonuses of the same type do not stack".
AFAIK you can easily stack 3, 5 or 10 armor spells on the same target. A rule saying "A stacks with B" does not say "A does not stack with A".

Irion already explained it, but also from a linguistic point of view:

If the rules stated 'it is cumulative and cumulative with worn armor' we would not have this discussion. The omission of two words causes all the difference.

Read my post above. Unless there is a general rule saying something is "not cumulative with itself" it is. Bonuses generally stack unless specified otherwise.

I would expect that you'd find even LESS people here that agree with you that multiple armor spells of all things, STACK.
How much armor would Lofwyr have, considering it would certainly be corporate policy to always keep up an armor spell on him for every single SK mage?
(So your nuclear bomb causes 1000P damage? Let me just take my few thousand dice and roll half my armor on that...)


Funnily, the problem is precisely the same, the rules only say that it stacks with WORN armor.
So what about cyber armor? Does the spell scan its target and leave a number of holes based on its levels of orthoskin?

Even mystic armor only states that it stacks with WORN armor and you'd have the same rule vacuum there.


Funny, seems as i the loopholes were actually left on purpose because the developers couldn't agree on a unified approach.

How can you even write an axiomatic statement like that without giving a clear rules reference and not shoot yourself..or at least cringe?

Where does it say bonuses generally stack unless specified otherwise?
The general red line through all the rules is that bonuses very RARELY stack and even then there is often a maximum to achievable augmentations.

Customizing doesn't cost any essence. Nuyen costs were not addressed because they are insignificant in this scenario, being so low.

Also we're talking about only half limbs here, which severly reduces the number of situations where averaging or minimum rules apply (and your average mage will probably look FORWARD to those, as his customized limbs will have better stats than the remainder of his body).

@Dakka Dakka

I have to look if they did not write something like that as a general rule...
The point is, that this rule is (in general) supposed to exist even if not written down.
Does not work without it. For example getting twice muscle toner 3 would give you 6 points of agility.
You brought some examples for magic...


In general you can't write a game without this rule. (Or you will be forced to write down at every skill, spell, equipment: Does not stack with itself and/or can't be taken twice)

@Chinane

There are two possible approaches to the subject in general:
1. Known from DnD: Give every bonus a class and tell what is stacking with what.
2. Everything stacks in general and every spell(and/or spells in general) and piece of equipment(and/or in general) has a list on what it may be used with/on.

Shadowrun has neither. It is not so much that they could not agree in one or two subjects, this entire section is missing...
(At some skills you find the: Can be only taken once phrase, though.)

Normally this is not a problem. Nobody would suggest two tacnets raiting 4 give a bonus of 8.
But with cyberlegs or even spells, there is no real argument to be made on how they should work. Both approaches seem to be off in certain situation.
Take the avarage makes them kind of weak. Add up maks them extreamly strong and additional limps give additional armor. Kind of strange...

And we have here the same discussion about geneware and bioware...

Yeah, i've also been looking for a rule that (apart from common sense) says you cannot just take the same cyber-/bioware twice. I could not find it so far.

Looks like common sense is still somewhat required. I'm not sure if that is reassuring or worrying, given the amount of it some people show (or rather, don't).

That is one of the reasons why you do not screw with dragons.


You are assuming a lot. You adssume that the rules were deliberately left unclear to support your opinion. Assuming anything hte developers might have thought while writing the rules is absolutely pointless, as we have no way of confirming it.

The only place where armor does not stack is with worn armor. All other armor items/powers add armor. If one adds armor you need an explicit rule saying another one of the same type does not or that such an item/power can only be added once, if you want that item not to be cumulative.


Assuming there is a "a does no stack with A rule", how do powers like Combat Sense or mystic Armor work? Do you keep rating one and have to buy rating 2( for a cost of 2*rating 1) and so on? I doubt that is what the developers meant. So at least these two indeed stack with themselves.

@Chinane: Why are you arbitrarily ignoring part of the cost?

@Dakka Dakka
The only place where it is told it does not stack...
In every other instance it is only told to stack with worn armor.

If you go by the line "it is allowed what is written" it is to assume certain kinds of armor do not stack with each other.


They have a RAITING meaning you do not have two raiting one powers but one raiting 2 powers . The question would be: Would you allow an adept with magic 3 to have two times raiting 3 combat reflexes for a +6 to reaction tests...

The whole point of introducing ratings in the first place is, that - as a general rule - powers/cyber _without_ a rating cannot be taken multiple times.

Sorry mate, but it seems you lack a fundamental understanding of the basic rules, so it might be wise to get a general feeling for the rules before participating in discussions about the finer points.

Makes me wonder if in your group people are running around with multiple trauma dampers.

@Irion: Sure they have ratings, but there is no rule that you can give adept powers back. So first you have Combat Sense 1 (which costs 0.5 PP) then you want to get combat Sense 2 (1 PP). Since you say combat sense does not stack with itself and you cannot give combat sense back you have to buy combat sense 2, leaving you with 1.5 spent PP and +2 to certain tests. I'm sure this is not what anyone intended, but it is the logical application of a general "A does not stack with A" rule combined with the lack of a rule for giving back adept powers.

@Chinane: I never said, that I play that way. My point is that you are making assumptions that are not in the rules, to prove your point. I agree that it is nonsense to take 4 Muscle Toners rating 1 instead of Muscle toner 4, but by RAW there is nothing preventing you from doing this, unless you provide written proof.

To sum up:

-cumulative cyberlimb armor is very effective maybe too effective, but it does not create weird situations.
-averaged armor makes that form a very ineffective enhancement, especially with rounding down. You would need 1point of armor in every one of the six limbs to get one point of armor.
-only maximum armor counts creates weird situations. I armor one leg and get +4 armor, armoring the other 5 limbs as well does not provide any bonus.

The thing is, we've already been there.

Most people agree that
1) is too strong and opens loopholes for abuse,
2) too expensive but in stride with alternative augmentations towards the same goal (too weak/expensive would also be thematically correct for cyberlimb history over editions, btw)
3) awkward

In the light of a blatant rule vacuum however, any of those 3 would be a valid interpretation of the rules.
(2+3 even more so than 1, since at least there is precedence for those other than anecdotal evidence, i.e. 'XX said...')




I'm not even trying to force a point, my initial request was for someone to come up with a definitive ruling and I only outlined the _possible_ interpretations as outlined above. My personal opinion is that houseruling is required here anyway, something along the lines of what Yera suggested.

So I don't have a personal agenda here towards a specific goal other than showing that the rule in this area is not as clear as some people seem to think.

@Dakka Dakka

Well, it does. Adding a pair of limps and your armor goes up...


Well, skills do not stack neither but they are upgradeable. Twice longarms 2 does not give you longarms 4. But you may increase longarms 2 to longarms 4...

And as it stands in the rules allow you to buy levels of this power. And the levels do stack due to the description of the power.
Example:

Are you being ironic? If not, I really do not know what you mean.


True, but longarms 2 gives you longarms 2, obviously. It does not give you +2 to longarms tests. Cyberlimb armor adds armor. If there is more than a normal addition, there needs to be a rule about it.

I did not dispute that. However without a rule allowing you to give back rating 1 (and getting the power points back) all you can do is buy rating 2 and wasting the power points of rating 1.

BTW how is cyberlimb armor in the right lower leg the same as cyberlimb armor in the left leg?

Your making generalisations that aren't in the rules.
And multiple limbs with cybere armor are explicit part of the rules, where as 2 times muscle toner or orthoskin while it isn't explicitly forbidden makes no sense what so ever(how do you instal same thing a second time, the first installation is allready there taking up the place)

god damm lack of flood protection

@Mäx

This depends on the augmentation. We had this exact discussion with using genware and bioware. The only argument against it was: Boni out of the same source do not stack.

@Dakka Dakka

Nope, because you buy levels. They are not in order and the rules state that they stack, so they stack.
So you actually buy 4 levels of critical strike and the rules tell you that they stack. Since special rule overwrites general rule, they do stack. So no problem there, no matter how you rule it.
Actually I was wrong too. Since you are limited on the amounts of level you may buy. (So no matter how you decide in general terms, those powers work perfectly)

The only power which has to be upgraded is increased reflexes. And well, here you are fucked no matter which interpretation you use, since you need to get a "refund" for your prior power anyway... Unless you want to pay 2 powerpoints for each raiting, buying three times raiting 1.


Have a guy with shiva arms and add 4 points of armor in each additional arm. Now this guy is armored harder than before but still each of his limps has a raiting of 4.
Or remove one cyber arm and loose 4 points of armor...

Well if you wear a leather jacket you have 2 armor, if you put on a MilSpec helmet you are better protected than before, but each item only has 2 armor. Where is the problem?

I don't think that most People agree with that.

Hough!
Medicineman

@Dakka Dakka

What happens if you put another Milspec helmet on each shoulder? The rules for cyberarmor would say you get additional +4...

Well, pretty much everyone agrees that armor on hands and feet is bad. Barring that, people usually mean "it's not a mage so it shouldn't be that good."

Yeah, thats Imbalanced ImO too
but according to what I read in different (english & German )Forums
Quite a few people are OK with Cyberlimbs adding their Armor with worn Armor and that a Protection Pool of 20 Dice or a Soak Pool of 30 Dice is not "over the Top"

Thats why I doubt that "most People Agree that Cyberarmor is too Strong"
It reminds me Of Politicians that simply assume sth.
(hope you get the Meaning ?!)

Hough!
Medicineman

If it weren't for the rules for worn armor and encumbrance that would work.

@Medicineman
High soak pools do not come up in normal groups, because an all cybered character es nearly impossible to build.
You need around one million to make him work in order to have some spare essence for important stuff like Reaction and INI-Passes.
For which you have to pay extra...
Not to mention, that this guy is severly limited in social interactions.
He is a walking: Lets call backup sign.
But the mage with 4-8 points additional cyberarmor, might be frowned upon...


@Dakka Dakka
Depends on: Does a bonus from the same source stack?
With your interpretation it works, with mine it does not.

@UmaroVI
I guess that hits it dead centre.

You mean the one that completdly ignores half of the rules text for trangenetic animal features?
You can't get any bioware with that, that would cause a situation like this to come up.

Well, One of my Chars is All-Cybered-up
(Legs,Arms,Torso,Skull,Eyes,Ears) and yes he started very weak and I needed all the Resources and the first 50 Karma were an ordeal
but now (after ca 100 Karma) he's the Teams Tank with 20 Pts Cyberarmor, a Soakpool of ca 36 Dice and 2 IPs and quite a capable Sam
ImO its not nearly impossible but it requires some "tinkering" and Min/Maxing

HokaHey
Medicineman

So I assume you're not ever running in corp land, as according to that philosophy it must be full of robocops doing the same with beta/deltaware?

If they're okay with that, then they're not people.

These are all issues we've been annoyed about in the past: stacking Armor spells with itself, stacking drugs with themselves, stacking 'ware with themselves, etc. I sense a theme.

For a Corp it's not cost-efficient to do that.
For a single Mercenary wanting to stay alive no matter what it certainly is.

And as an aside on the Beta/Delta-Full-Replacement:
Have you SEEN Cyber-Zombies?

Corps have acces to Jarheads. I doubt a full limb replacement will be the worst of your problems, if you seriously piss them off. The other point (and that goes for jarheads as well at least for adult brains) is whether you actually find skilled people who are willing to do this. Sociopaths who shoot people for money might be more inclined to a full limb replacement.

@Yerameyahu: at least for drugs there are rules for overdosing and speedballing. So it is indeed intended to work but with added consequences.

Not necessarily. Overdosing seems to be about toxins (and they're a slap on the wrist ), and speedballing is specifically combining *different* drugs. I'm fine with speedballing, but Cram-stacking is unclear and exploitive, given the penalties. Some people even say you only suffer the crash *once*, facrissake.

I'm pretty sure that you can find different drugs that do the same thing. Then it depends on the wording. If something gives +X to Property A it stacks, if one grants rating Y of property B and the other rating Z of Property B only the highest rating applies.

For example Betel and eX taken together should give +2 Perception whereas as a speedball of Kamikaze and Nitro would only grant High Pain Tolerance 6, not 9.

Have you seen robocop?

Behave or we'll send (one of our) robocop(s) is psychologically a much better deterrent than threatening with your regular SWAT team.
Also you're saving on a lot of money for replacing and training your more vulnerable staff - which will also be treated more nicely because of the robocop threat.

And then at least a few of the corpse actually manufacture that stuff, so they can equip their robocops at cost.



Why bother with all the overhead of creating cyber zombies when your regular robocop is a walking tank?

Because robocop can be flattened by chem-tech, tasers and magic and a cyber-zombie usually can't.

I think I just said that. The issue is whether the same thing stacks with itself.

Even with speedballing, it's rules over logic; Kamikaze and Nitro probably *should* give more pain tolerance than either alone. On the other hand, should kamikaze stack with any of its component drugs? Good times. The goal is for the GM to not have to deal with eyeballing this stuff.

No
His Dayjob is Taxidriver in the Barrens or in "E"Areas (with an armored Taxi)
or Soldier of Fortune
He keeps away from A+ Areas unless absolutely necessary and has all neccessary Licences for his 'ware and a Background to keep up

???
Beta and Deltaware is usually (in my SR World) reserved for Elite and Covered Ops Teams. Cops have standard or Alphaware
SWAT-Teams might have (seldom) Betaware.
There might exist Robocop but he's rare ,extremely rare

He who dances in the Barrens
Medicineman

In other words, you still can provide neither a reason why cyber armor has to be be treated analogously to attributes, worn armor, or something else, nor can you explain why worn armor should not be treated analogously to something else -- a bit inconsequential, hm?

@Sengir
Come on, he did it for several pages now.
But yes, if you assume that trolls are able to fly, he did not. (See, can do the same)

I don't need to provide reasons for something that's not my statement, like 'x HAS TO BE y'.

I provided reasons why cyberlimb armor COULD be treated like CL attributes (via an analogy) OR like worn amor (via another analogy), given the absence of any specific guideline in RAW how to treat it.

Rules of behaviour based on analogies are the fundamental principle of our life, otherwise you could never buy 3 apples unless specifically being taught how to buy 3 apples, since you're pointedly ignoring the similarity to buying 4 apples or 3 pears and deducting from there.

Neither of my observations provided any foundation for a clearly defined relation like a>b and b>c, therefore a>c, even less a function. Therfore applying your rules of deduction is neither justified nor allowed. (FYI, the similarity is more like a>b and a>c which allows no conclusion about the relative size of b vs c)

Robocop is a tank if by robocop you mean an actual cyborg in a drone body, as those have hardened armor.
But cyber zombie while not a real tank, is much better agains mages(that most shadowrunner teams have at least 1).
And ofcource both of them are better then just some dupe with 6 cyberlimbs.

@Mäx
No, actually he is not. For the mage may attack him from the astral plane. Spirits will have 3 passes against him and so on.

The cyborg is a bit better agaisnt mages, because on the astral plane the mage might just overlook the cyborg. And on the physical plane he has to deal with an object resistance of 5+.

The Cyber-Zombie has Astral hazing, hardened armor in terms of his negative essence i think and gets higher attributes with more negtive essence.
All of them i think. Including willpower, which is used to resist magic. Which the Astral hazing makes, at least a bit, easier.

Both are intentionally better and follow special rules which efficiently prevent playing them as characters.

How good hardened armor is depends a lot on circumstances. Once i get enough DV, the fact that its hardened loses significance
while the soaking dice depend on said armor. I'm not very familiar with drones, but the maximum off the shelf in arsenal is 12 armor
and those are vehicles, so I would expect the typical anthroform to be maximum 8? Which only highlights the problem, since the full machine
can soak with only a third of our robocop's dice once something gets through.

And of course the cyber zombie can have the same armor as our robocop, since he's basically robocop + something added.
He's a ton of pain to create and control though AFAIK.

Uhm, no. You insisted that cyberlimb armor SHOULD be analogously to other stuff, unless RAW says it isn't. If we accept that reasoning, then it obviously applies the everything else. You can't claim "unevenly distributed cyberlimb armor acts like cyberlimb attributes, but unevenly distributed normal armor does not act like unevenly distributed cyberlimb attributes" without providing a reason WHY your reasoning only applies to the first case but not to the second.



Just that we are not talking about life. Firing a burst from a rifle is pretty much analogous to firing the same caliber on semi-auto, but uses different skills. Firing a mortar is nothing like firing an MG, but both use the same skill...

Shotguns and sniper rifles.

Umm the Zombie has Astral hazing, very high willpower and can be mage himself with counterspelling 6 and a force 6 shielding focus.

Tomino has 10 body and can be modded to have 20 armor, so thats 30 soak dice(hardly just a third of full conversions soak pool) and doesn't have to care at all about any damage value less then 20P.

Sounds like the problem is within the modding rules then, as the off-the-shelf probe looks pretty reasonable for a 24R drone with (due to it's bulk) limited use.
Also considering it is apparently purely cyborg.

The tomino is a mech, though, right? It shouldn't even have arms, just miniguns. No cybered metahuman should ever come close.

Coincidentally, 20 is also the maximum armor you can put on ANY vehicle.

Seems a bit strange that our robocop should be allowed to exceed that.