A house rule I've seen several times on Dumpshock lately is halving the Essence cost of cyberware to make it generally more attractive. What are the side effects? I'm down with the objective, and I'm considering adding this to my game.

Well, the first side effect that comes immediately to mind is that it is now possible to get cyberware absolutely free, Essence-wise, thanks to the additive nature of essence reduction multipliers.

The second is that obviously, you're not going to just start all cyber off at a 1/2 Essence discount, you're just going to halve the Essence cost in the book. (Sorry, it's dark o'clock and I'm awake for no explicable reason.)

The third is that you can now expect cyberware to be much, much more prolific. I know I certainly wouldn't mind playing under halved Cyberware essence costs. It might go part-way to letting mundanes compete at higher levels with magicians - sure, you may be a five-time initiate, but thanks to my abuse of literally every trick in the book, I have Wired Reflexes 3 for 0.75 Essence and all the Reaction Enhancers in the world, so I'm still going first no matter how many spirits you have on the field.

Of course, it would also make getting cyber much more attractive to magicians and technomancers who are willing to sacrifice a few points of maximal potential at their awakened uberness to meatspace survivability and blendability. Nobody - repeat, nobody, expects the guy with an obvious cyberarm to be the magician.

So grab one of those fake obvious cyberarm disguise things (can't remember where they're from ) and slap it on all your mages when they're on a run!

They are from Spy Games.

The most common house rule in this regard is the halving of cyberlimb essence costs (and cyberweapon slot costs), so that they can compete with bioware.

Not true. The halved cost is the new baselin of 100% Essence Cost. So, instead of Wired 3 costing 5 Essence, it costs 2.5 Essence, and then Your modifiers come in from there. TANSTAAFL after all.



Which I just covered under your first point.



Not necessarily a BAD thing. But wait, Your Wired 3 is costing you 0.75 Essence? Well, you obviously did not abuse every trick in the book. You CAN get Essence costs down to 0.2 of Essence cost. So at 2.5 Essence for Halved Wired 3, that results in an Essence cost of 0.5 Essence.



This, of course, is the real problem in the idea.

Perhaps making it so mundanes get the essence break, and Awakened still get to suck it?

Why? That makes no in-game sense. *shrug*

Awakened essence doesn't like bits of metal, while uawakened Essence is more accepting?

Why should the "Awakened Essence" care more than the Unawakened Essence? Essence is Essence.
That is what the Sensitive System Negative Quality is for. *shrug*

To veer completely to the right how would bio stand up against this cheap chrome?
Synaptic booster 1 is 80k and 0.5 essence
Alpha wires 1 would be 22k and 0.8 essence
The disparity seem a bit off...

It depends on which is shorter supply - money or meat.

The dilemma is when you don't get enough meat for your money, ideally you want to mee(a)t half way

Of course it seems off, you got the essence cost for alpha ware wired reflexes wrong. Using your example, it'd be 1.6 essence, not .8. (It starts at 2.0)

This thread is abolut the effects of halving the cyberware essence costs .... please read and think before you post.

I'm kind of OK with that, actually. If you want to squeeze out every last bit of Essence, you should pay a premium for doing so. Kind of a diminishing-returns thing.

Keep in mind that even Alpha wires 1 are fairly easy to spot with a cyberware scanner.

I kinda like the typical "high-essence low cost" of cyber vs "high cost low essence" bio tradeoff, particularly with the "lower value halved" complication ...

But saying that, I don't think your house rules would imbalance things too much, except that I would probably keep the essence cost for cyberparts as is (although the cost halving will still benefit such builds). Capacity already allows you to cram a heck of a lot of goodies into 1 point essence cost, and I would be careful about allowing all that capacity for half the essence ...

Other than that, could be interesting - let us know how it goes!

Well, the general consensus seems to be that the Essence cost of cyberware is so steep that the lower monetary cost isn't really worth it. It makes cyberware objectively less desirable than bioware, which causes chrome to be uncommon to a degree that isn't in keeping with cyberpunk in general or Shadowrun in particular. I liked the old system, TBH, where bioware had a Body Cost instead of Essence cost; it didn't actually subtract from your Body, but the total Body Cost of all your bioware could not exceed your Body.

I am not sure by what you mean "the concensus" is, but I have seen plenty of cyberparts (eyes, ears, cyberarms etc) used in builds on this forum. At 11K (2.2BP) or double that for alphaware, a secondary combatant can get a nice IP boost cheaply. Riggers may well get Control Rigs, hackers Attention Coprocessors, both might go MBW for the REA boost and the skillwires.

If you feel your table is neglecting cyber, sure give it a go, but I am not sure cyber is just so 2060's on every table ...

I would be careful about making ALL cyberware attractive.

Some ware are so broken (as in being BAD) that you need to 'fix' the essence cost.

In all cases it might not be the Essence that needs fixing but the COST. Cyberlimbs are crap unless you pour money into them and then they become essence hungry AND expensive.

Ware that we can reduce cost to 1/10 [but keep the essence]
-Cyberlimb [Poor mans cloned limb, should be cheaper than cloned limbs]
-Customized Cyberlimbs
-Bulk Modification
-Optimized Cyberlimbs
-Modular Cyberlimb

So creating the LIMB is basically ordering one online and is as common as litter on the street. mass produced, cheap and replaceable.

Essence cost remains the same since you have a lot of neural connections to the limb but they are now cheap enough to upgrade.

Cyber Torso Bonus
Cyber torso reduce essence cost of other limbs by 10% [Most neural connections have to go through the torso anyway]

Cyberskull
Due to the silly amount of essence a cyberskull 'shell' takes up we reduce any of the following wares essence cost by 10%:
-Headware
-Eyeware
-Earware

Move by Wire
A know technology 'similar' to Wired Reflexes but went a step further. The tech is well known so we moderate the price a bit by putting it at twice of Wired Reflexes.

Lvl1: 22 000
Lvl2: 64 000
Lvl3: 200 000

We lower both Wired and Move-By-Wire essence cost to:

Lvl1: 1,5
Lvl2: 2,5
Lvl3: 3,5

This would make some of the more extreme or badly made ware a bit more accessible but keeping the higher rating MBW away from play a bit.

You can only detect the Synaptic Booster with a bloodsample and a medical examination.

One thing that has to be considered is that cyberlimbs come with capacity. IIRC, there are certain implants that would otherwise cost Essense that can be installed within the cyberlimb. What you need to do is factor that in, for both types of cyber limbs.

One other house rule that you may want to consider is the discount (optional?) rule that IIRC was in SR3. If you wanted Dermal Armor and you had 2 cyberlimbs, you had a essense discount for your Dermal Armor, I think.

Synaptic Booster I - 80k and 0.5 essence
Wired I - 11k and 1.0 essence
Alpha Wired I - 22k and 0.8 essence

Synaptic Booster II - 160k and 1.0 essence
Wired II - 32k and 1.5 essence
Alpha Wired II - 64k and 1.2 essence

Synaptic Booster III - 240k and 1.5 essence
Wired III - 100k and 2.5 essence
Alpha Wired III - 200k and 2 essence

Muscle Toner IV & Muscle Augmentation IV - 60k and 1.6 essence
Muscle Replacement IV - 20k and 2.0 essence
Alpha Muscle Replacement IV - 40k and 1.6 essence

Compared Muscle Toner/Aug IV + Alpha Wired I. Total essence cost is 2.0 essence at a nuyen cost of 82k. Muscle Rep IV with Synaptic Booster I would be a total essence cost of 2.25 and 120k. Under normal rules it would be 2.4 essence for 82k or 3.45 essence for 120k. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, because 2.4 essence for Muscle Toner/Aug IV and Alpha Wired I seems wrong.

Well, that looks quite good. Bioware still has the advantage of being nearly impossible to detect.


1.6+1.6/2 = 2.4 - your math is correct.

Instead of Essence, it could affect their Magic/Resonance scores instead. Say a piece of cyberware costs 0.5 Essence but is treated as 1.0 for the purposes of reducing Magic/Res? It's their mojo that's being affected, which should be more sensitive to ware. Perhaps.


And as a representative of one of the groups that uses the halved Essence and nuyen costs for cyberlimbs (and some of its enhancements), it certainly makes it easier for players to chrome up. And for NPCs too...

Except the guy being constantly on edge and reacting at silly speeds?
Always boggled my mind why anyone would want wires they cant turn off

Synaptic Boosters aren't the same thing as Wired Reflexes. The nerve cells in the spinal cord are lengthened and broadened, essentially making sending signals faster.

Wired Reflexes have the downsides of nervousness and ticks. They even install adrenal boosters with WR. Not quite the same thing.

The "constantly on edge" and "shooting grandma for walking in on you" are outdated and antiquated GM screws which have no place any longer.

You're already in house rules territory... why not stick all awakened/technomancers with something akin to sensitive system to stop them from also benefiting. If your point was to help out non-awakened keep up through tech, not allow the classic techno-adept to become even more buff. Essence already is a quasi-magical attribute everyone has... depending on your ends there's no reason that magical types can't have it more susceptible than others. (things like essence drain even directly turn it into magic).

Also you can limit the stack for 'free' problems just by going with multiplying all benefits which provides reduced benefits the farther you go rather than adding them. Example... if you have 5 things which give a 10% reduction... multiplying results in... (0.9)^5==0.59049 essence reduction... rather than a 50% essence reduction. You're better off with one big reduction then than a lot of limited ones because of the commutative 'stacking penalty' which shows up.


Synaptic did have these problems of being constantly on twitch. This could cause social problems. Remember anyone under the effects of any kind of initiative enhancement has trouble getting past motion sensors because of this (magical or mundane enhancements doesn't matter). this shows up as twitchiness.

Also you're forgetting another way to detect bioware... assensing. Even if you don't have a mage on duty... it's something you can keep a bound or contracted spirit on hand to do. (yeah that potted plant is actually a concealed plant spirit assensing everything and providing counterspelling to the guards... otherwise it's just a potted plant).


That said, I normally go with bio as my default simply because of the stealth aspects, except for easily explained or dismissed things like cybereyes/ears, datajacks, legal cyberlimbs (common stuff). But some things like muscle replacement become much more palatable at half cost. Especially on top of a

That looks quite gamebreaking, bio versions are barely cheaper(if at all) on essence cost and cost more nuyen(a whole lot more in some cases)
The cheap nuyen cost of cyber is supposed to be countered by the higher essence cost, if you take that away bio becomes obsolete and thats all kinds of wrong for the setting.

If you want to make cyberware more attractive to mundanes without making the awakened too potent, perhaps you should instead lower the threshold on essence (ie -2 instead of 0) to mark where you die. An awakened individual still can't dump a lot of chrome in without have the karma to blow on initiations and raising magic.