never used cyberlimbs before, as they seemed bad, and complicated, but now the char concept I have may have one, what are the pros and cons of synthetic vs obvious?

Obvious have more enhancement slots, but they're obvious, duh. Synthetic ones are harder to spot, but you can't pack as much into them. Not sure what's the essence cost on both.

Same essence cost for both IIRC

Synthethic sucks. There's no advantage vs cyberware scanners, only against visual observation. But long sleeves and gloves will do the same.

First you look at P. 44 of augmentation: customized cyberlimbs.
This is the first step towards making cyberlimbs up to snuff with bio. Essentially allowing you to have cyberlimbs with "your natural racial maximum" as in you can have a str 6 cyberarm even if your natural str is 3, this does not count as cyberlimb enhancements and takes no capacity. Which means plenty of space for enhancement and other gizmos... Other gizmos! modular cyberlimbs are awesome, you can't bio that stuff

and oh obvious is better in every way except in a party full of chrome haters

Obvious is indeed better.

Due to availability, you can only get up to 8 points of customization though (restricted gear is not worth it hear imho). But that is plenty.

For my character "gauntlet" (wimpy human with natural strength and agility 1 but a HUGE cyberarm) i went with customize Strength+3, Agility+3, Body+2 and added in (as mods) enhanced Strength+3, enhanced Agi+3, cyberarm gyro, spur and a scanner.

Totals to Strength 9, Agility 9, Body 5 (I'm not fond of calculating averages, so Body 5 for a Body 5 character just makes things easy). So you have really awesome stats for gunning and slashing around - at a VERY cheap cost. And you also save quite a few points by not spending anything on those two attributes.
There are two drawbacks though: The first one is you are restricted to one-handed weapons (else you would need to take the average; you could of course get two arms like that also but i kind of liked it asymmetrical for this char, having one very weak and one very powerful arm, flavor reasons...). The other one is the lack of stealth (especially infiltration).

I personally said "screw it" and went without infiltration at all (one of very few characters i built without it; but lets face it, not ALL runners need to be sneak-asses) and also took the (imho) very, very cool (role-playing wise) drawback "Mysterious Mod Noise" to further stress the total lack of stealth this character has - in fact, with every move of the arm there is a piping sound and a big swirl of steam flows out of it

The big advantage of having a cyberarm is that it leaves so many points free for other things than combat (Basically, just add in Wired Reflexes 2 + Enhanced Reflexes 2 for a total Reaction of 5(9) and you are good to go.) Then, with the rest of your points, you can easily become a great face, techie (very plausible imho) or anything else you like. Even Magic users are totally possible (without the other ware then) because the arm itself is only 1 Essence!

Both core and Augmentation are pretty clear about the fact that being -visibly- chromed will attract much more attention from security personnel and condemnation from certain societal groups.

Bribe/blackmail your GM into lessening the penalty for overclocking your cyberlimbs and you are good to go, no matter what you do, generally . .
Then remember the Pain-Cut-Off and have fun.

And even without these, in SR4, Cyber-Limbs, for the first time, border on being usefull.

the char is a hacker, son of a CEO from Renraku, the CEO was cooped, his father killed, and he was injured, lost his right arm. a loyal friend of his fathers, (who, on his fathers wish, turned his dead body, which his friend shot after he requested this) took the boy (at this time about 16 or 17) away to safe haven, got him a cyber arm, and whatnot. (born rich quality was a bonus to this >:3). that man is now "Hax" best contact. the corp figures he is either dead, or not a threat. 3-4 years later, he is working the shadows to earn some money and rep, with the hope to one day repay the favor to the people that caused his fathers death. (is this a weird backstory?)

EDIT: he is a combat hacker. SMGs spec. also has a younger sister to look after

Oh, for that one, at least ONE Drone-Arm would be a-pro-pro i'd think . .
And the overclocking would be too . . .

Not that good a friend! He could have ordered you a nice pricey clone arm, cheap bugger.

Are you talking about the red lining option?

Yes, Red-Lining . . over-clocking . . same difference <.<;,

Look at pg 33 of Augmentation. You can get cosmetic cyberware to look and feel like your flesh. Heck you can even get a small heater to make it as warm as your regular flesh. The only thing it costs is money. You don't even have to lose capacity.

As I said in the "How obvious is an obvious cyberarm?" thread: When Catalyst came out with Augmentation, they made synthetic cyberlimbs worthless.

And yet, even with all that effort and money, an Obviuous Cyberlimb is still obvious. *shrug*

I would have to say that it's up to the GM, but RAW makes it possible to do exactly what I'm saying is possible... the only limitation is cost.

I would humbly suggest to keeping the "How obvious is an obvious cyberarm?" comments to the thread in question.

As to the OP's concept, seems reasonable to me. As mentioned you can pack lots of goodies in the capacity of a cyberarm, and as you say get away with lower STR and AGI attributes while still being able to slice and shoot pretty well to boot. A few more possibilities:
1) Biomoniter/Autoinjector combination
2) Internal air tank and small smuggling compartment containing gas grenades for emergencies
3) An internal commlink (esp for a hacker) enables you to smuggle your main commlink with all its illegal programmes anywhere

One word of caution about the cyberarm STR and AGI - as far as I am aware the RAW is not clear on whether the torso (your base STR and AGI) is considered to be used as well as the limb for one-handed gun or weapon use, so best to double-check with your GM what he thinks before chroming up. Gun nuts will tell you that you square and set your body before you fire (especially for guns with heavy recoil), and I can definitely see the case for using your body at the very least in close combat (fencers will tell you how important your stance and use of off-hand as a counterbalance is, for example).

from exp, shooting many weapons, I can say from a IRL perspective that shooting a pistol or SMG 1 handed really only uses your arm. the fact about squarein up is really used to keep you stable, (IE no swaying) and for the bigger guns help you hold it steady and take teh recoil. here a modifier of -1 COULD be applicable since, even one handed guns are design with the thought that you would be using both hands to steady it.

Perhaps the cyberarm is programmed to interact with a smartlink to counteract any swaying.

I think that's what cyberlimb gyromounts are for.

yes that is possible, ok so I have a pretty pimped out cyberarm with an integrated SMG and gyro mount. think this will be good? and enhanced agi total of 9, str 6 and bod 5 to match my nat, base. and a scanner system.

no, don't put the SMG INTO the Arm . . that's . . unwise at best . .

how come? o.o

edit: forgive me, never used cyberlimbs

Because it usually doesn't matter how good your fake SIN is when the stars find it.
That and there's less costly ways in form of capacity

well its only restricted.. whos to say my fake SIN that I got from a corp is not licensed for it :}

I'm gonna try and make sense of myself in the morning, for now I'm pretty sure there's a better way then installing the gun in the arm...
It doesn't really make sense to have a built in gun other then for flavour, normal guns are much handier, Worth noting is that you can't really get a CyberSMG at chargen unless the GM loosened availability, either way it makes way more sense to have a external weapon mount in that case.
and just restricted doesn't mean the cop ain't gonna scan you... you got a gun in your arm for crying out loud! Better have a rock solid license then

Now I'm gonna pass out before I say stupid stuff.

"Drop your Weapon or we will drop you!"
'I can't! it's built in!'
"Your funeral" BANG BANG.

an external gun is simply better, because it can be hidden elsewhere and modded and modified and swapped out for something else on a whim . .
and it does not take up capacity for more usefull stuff in the arm.

cant seem to find that in chummer... BUT you can get the SMG at chargen. you just have to spend a Restricted gear perk for it :3

Integrated SMGs are very ineffective for cash-on-investment, you'd be better off just grabbing a gun with electronic firing, trigger removal, and a cyber safety keyed into your cyberarm. strap it on then fire at will with mind bullets!
Considering you've got 15 base slots, a gyromount costs 4 and an SMG costs 10... yeah, there are better ways to invest those slots than an SMG. I do consider the Gyromount to be essential to a gunslinger with a cyberarm.

The SMG was inspired by trigun XD

if you really want a gun on your arm, go omni-tech . .
there are gun-mounts for cyber-limbs, even retractable and tracking ones.
And on these, you can put anything that's up to shotgun size, if i remember correctly.

I'd consider a taser cybergun for arms, if anything. That could more reasonably be argued for carrying around at all time, but still be useful to have for those "Oh Shit!" moments. If you need a larger gun in a place where you can't bring one, you really have to plan better.

I dunno, the Underbarrel Weapon Mod fixes all the problems with stock cyberguns being bad.

A lack of specific-model implanted guns is something our group lamented from the previous edition. Not having played it, I can only take them at their word, but they seem to like my workarounds.