As the title says: Any way to get them cheaper that doesn't involve degradation or other optional rules?

Make a Run and steal them
Goddam .You're Runner, behave like one

HeyaHeyaHeyaJa
Medicineman

I like the way you think.

With an approving dance
FuelDrop

*Sigh*

At creation?

Black Market Pipeline Software

Connect them to a (fake) Legal SIN
-They will not Degrade

Skillsoft Clusters
Depending on the GM see if you can get Skillsoft Clusters (and hopefully somewhat customized) since it reduces the cost of said programs by 20% due to package pricing.

The drawbacks is that you must load all or nothing in those clusters.

Black Market Pipeline (or call it Loyal Customer Rebate Program if you use a SIN)
An additional 10%

So that's about 30% reduction.

I'd invest in the Restricted Gear or make the Skillwire linked to a SIN to make it legal gear and buy it at Rating 5.

You don't have to create the perfect char from the beginning that has every needed Gear !
If he lacks the Chips than he has to start without them

with an imperfect Dance
Medicineman

Talk to your GM, mine dislikes magicrun, so certain tech items are cheaper. We talked it out and decided on 3,000 per rating point. It fits the fluff better, and also aligns with the cost of clusters from Unwired better the 20th Anniversary.

Minor nitpick: Activesofts aren't available above rating 4... and I doubt anyone's concerned about the price of languasofts.

Cultivate a Contact that sells software and use the Negotiate rules to arrange a discount when buying them.

black market pipeline helps immensely, but isn't strictly required.

Since you can use Rating X2 points on a skillwire system then a rating 5 skillwire can handle 10 points. That's 2 rating 4 and 1 rating 2.

A rating 4 could handle max 2 rating 4. At rating 5 you could triple rating 3 which is also very useful.

So, invest in the rating 5.

Or just get your Rtg. 4 Activesofts with Pluscode 3 - now each uses only one slot ^^

Skillwires smillwires! what you want is a move-by-wire system. massive reaction enhancements, a bonus to dodge AND integrated skill wires.

Hmm...

IS there a compability issue rules wise or can you take BOTH? I cant find anything in the rules in regards to them being incompatible.

Just dont use the same skillsofts in both systems.

Skillwire 5 for a few rating 4 skills and MBW 3 for another pair of rating 4 skills and 1 skill at 2 in each system.

AS has been stated previously. Get the Pluscode 3 Option (as well as Personalized) for your Skill softs. At that point, each Rating 4 Skill soft takes 1 Slot. Now that rating 5 Skillwires can slot 10 Rating 4 Softs, each providing 5 dice to your stat combination.

Are there formal rules for this anywhere?

Yes. Its core book, even. 287 or so

Contacts, Swag section that deals with Fencing.
After that is the Favor section, which deals with the "Friendship Discount"(that's literally what it says). Negotiation+charisma vs contact's Negotiation+charisma+connection. Each hit raises/lowers the fee by 10%.

That is to say, a face with a docwagon contact can get ware really, really, really cheap if edge is involved


The black market pipeline takes this a step further: You pick an existing contact to enhance with a connection to a specific type of merchandise. You just flat out automatically get 10% off purchases, buy ALSO a +3 dice pool modifier "when negotiating to sell/fence appropriate goods through the pipeline" - which uses the aforementioned rules in the core book, so you're able to sell stuff at an even HIGHER price.

Like I said, you don't NEED the BMP quality to use the favor rules, it just helps.


Edit: Its also worth mentioning that a Black Market Pipeline for Software is a great deal for a hacker, because they can crank out code for profit, since that contact will "always buy that merchandise at a price that benefits the character. "

Cluster them in twos. They don't take any operational resources to load.

Ah, that's great! I was looking under Skills and Gear, not Contacts.

I've pretty much given up doing this at creation, so this is perfect. Thanks!

surprised no one mentioned this one: Day Job

considering the number of corps that have access to activesofts for workers, it's not too hard to con or cajole yourself into a position where you can get access to, or even need access to, company activesofts for your day to day work.

Comes with a free "Records on file" quality. Rejoice!

Rejoice, for bad things are about to happen!

SO now, you can have 20 SkillSofts on the Rating 5 Skillwires, Brilliant.

Write them yourself.

You could talk to your GM about breaking up Activesoft into subgroups based on the skill. An argument could be made that an Activesoft for Automechanics would be cheaper and easier to get than an Activesoft for Exotic Weapon - Flamethrower.

But how much would that cost (Nuyen wise) per activesoft?

Well, about 44,000 Nuyen per Active soft, using SR4A Costs. I could be a bit off, though, as I do not have the exact costs for the two Options handy right now.

You're very welcome! I do occasionally actually give actually useful advice.

Merchant Contacts plus the Luxury Hotel Trick is pretty much my new favorite combination for Odd Concept Street Sams that need rare gear to make a concept work.

What's the Luxury Hotel Trick?


Can't. Check Unwired 118.

Someone has to produce them. Therefore, you can, indeed, do so yourself, if you have access to the right skills, tech and people.

Yeah, but not according to the programming rules.

No, it is not Programming. It is a Production of Simsense information, which is vastly different.

Which is probably why you can't use them.

You could... You would just need to see what it would take. I am failry certain that Shadowbeat had a section on this very thing. It is not impossible, just outsdide of what a normal game would entail. Had a character, once, who could do this sort of thing. She was pretty interesting in play... She was also a 2nd edition character, so... *shrug*

I think that would be better handled by using the Street Costs sidebar on page 312 of SR4A. A Used activesoft that's in a Price War with the Market Flooded (Automotive Mechanics) would be at -40% base value, whereas a Law Enforcement Crackdown Dry Market (Flamethrower) autosoft is rocking at +70% of base value.


46,000 . Activesoft options are 1k per rating, and unrated options are considered Rating 3.

That's still pretty prohibitively expensive, albeit at char gen about half the cost of a rating 4 skill in BP it's a significant portion of starting nuyen. Does raise some interesting ideas for a skillwires character though.

If this is the case, then is there any limit to the number of skillwires one can install? (Other than Essence and cost, of course.)

You can only install ONE skillwire system.

The point here is that there are two DIFFERENT systems where one of them simulates the same functionality as a side effect.

As long as different skillsofts are running i see no problem.

Seriously, those prices are INSANE. I though the old SR4 prices were expensive when one tried to have fun with a 'skillrunner' but the extreme cost for having a dozen skills would require more money than you can start with.

Advanced lifestyle rules in the RC also allow for buying Hotels by the day, at 1/30th monthly price. You do have to add/factor in an Entertainment factor seperately, but you can get a 100k/mo luxury level lifestyle(30 points i believe) for around 3k. Factor in 1200Y for max bonus dice on starting wealth checks, and you can start with a decent amount of money out of the gate for about a single build point.

In before "Oh my god udoshi that's so cheezy bawww". It is. Your gm will probably slap you for trying it, but its raw.
Still, its a good trick to have up your sleeve if you have interesting concepts that won't work due to availability. Sometimes you just need an extra random 16000-32000 to make something work.

I knew it was something like that. Thanks Neraph.

So for a full ten on I need half a mil.... That's do-able. The hard part might be choosing which ten skills to rock before trying to up the library.

Oh my god, Udoshi. That's so cheezy. :3

Yeah, its pretty much the worst thing I've come up with. Try not to abuse it.

For the on-the-go runner I can see that as being very flexible (not the munchkiny part, the hotels part). A runner with several fake sins that switches coffin motel once every few days and keeps his spare gear in multiple locations in the city would be damn hard to find unless you constantly track his SIN's.

You might not even need the SINs. Per the advanced lifestyle rules, any lifestyle over 7 LPs requires a SIN; the implication is that one can find LP 7 (or lower, if you like) lifestyles that don't. So just find coffin hotels that'll set you up no questions asked.

Do Luxury hotels give out the free car too?

... Yes. Two of them, with drivers.

I don't know where you get the idea it's cheaper though - just taking the max options for everything except Entertainment is 25 LP, which is 50,000 , which is 1,667/day, which is 50,000 every 30 days. How do you make it "cheaper?"

EDIT: Oh, you're saying buy one day and use it as starting cash. Gotcha.