Some of you might think its silly, but i've created a character that has 4 arms due to surge. I've submitted my questions to the shadowrun guys already to see what they think. but basically the rules say nothing about peopel with more than 2 arms...

Granted a troll with 2 arms is scary enough, with 4 arms, he's a monster. So it is a -5 flaw, mostly for social reasons.

Well since there are no rules for exactly what having 4 arms would do, me and my friends came up with some stuff here and there... concerning melee weapons mostly as well as martial arts and so forth. I would think subduing people with 4 arms would be a sinch… though it might be awkward to do other things. I think there should be some advantages to having the extra set of arms, such as added dice to martial arts attacks and stuff. Though wielding 2 melee weapons is hard enough, I’m sure 4 would basically be impossible. But I do think it should give some sort of bonus, though I’m not sure what.

What I would like to know is what do you guys think the game effects of having a troll with 4 arms would be? Concerning use of certain physical skills, athletics, climbing, melee combat, unarmed combat, ect. That is, apart from the social issues of being a mega-freak who’s scary as hell...

I realize that the arms would most likely jsut get in the way, and make things harder.... but try to throw a little realizsm out the window for the sake of fun.

Thanks!

If the arms are useful it's an Edge (like the tail) and if they are useless it's a flaw (like the tail). +2 to all active skill base target numbers when using all four arms.

Edge, +10: Goro.

~J

Get enough cyberblades on that and it's Edge 10: Shrike.

trolls can one-hand rifles and shotguns right? BP system get goro and ambidexterity. plenty of recoil mods on the weapons and you're a mobile weapons platform, 2 shotguns and 2 rifles, i'd hope that everyone would run away!

Ambidexterity 16?

~J

sweet baby jesus. cyberspur power of (STR*2.5).

OOh! Wafer-thin elf-ham!

Think of the number of flaws you'd have to take with that though to make up for 26 Edge points. Yeesh.

eh.. one way to handle it would be use a varation of the off hand weapon skills in CC i'd prob handle it as such. and im assuming that the arms are upper/lower and not coming off his back or somthing or one behind the other.. but since surge if fairly new in the world of shadowrun. it would be impossible for the charecter to be born with 4 arms.. unless the runners like 2 years old... so in order to use the arms i would require them to learn say pistols a second time.. at a higher karma cost to account for the extra effort to work with the arms. as well as increase the training time..

Don't forget cumulative 'off hand' penalties. (Dammit, I cannot find my SR3 and we have sold out in the shop)

Is there not a penalty to both hands when using off-hand? (or is that AD&D?)

Let us say it was +1 / +2...

Right main - +3 (+1 x 3 arms)
Left main - +4 (+2 for the other two off-hands and +2 for being off-hand)
Right spare - +6 (+2 for the off-hands, +4 of compound off-hand penalties)
Left spare - +8 (+2 off-hands, +6 compound off-hand penalties)

Another thing u need to consider is Cyber Arms. Say the troll had his real arms replaced with full cyber arms.. now i cant remember but i think i read a optional rule in the book that had somthing to do with charecters getting use to new implants. how ever it could just be my imagination and my love of screwing with my players. but considering that this troll has been use to cyber arms for several years. and now he has the cyber arms and 2 natural, or semi natural, in my opinion i would have to factor that in.. and then u have to decide what to do if the troll decides he wants to turn the new arms in to cyber arms.. with could play hell with a gm's mind trying to debate on the essence cost of these new extra arms..

Well: SR applies a +2 penalty to both weapons when shooting them simultaniously. Luckily that's not applied to cyberspur combat, but there would be some larger penalty for shooting 4 ranged weapons simultaniously.

You could think of it in other ways too, like +2 for each extra hand beyond the first (+6 to all). That would be nasty to cancel with ambidexterity, requiring a 48 point edge (2 points to cancel each +1). I think +2 to all attacks would be fine, requiring 16 point ambidexterity to cancel it all out. 12 pts would allow you to use 4 melee weapons. effectively...

As for balancing it: Chronic Ostiocusps, Dual natured, Borrowed Time (incoming orbital cow strike), Phobia of Magic (Severe, Common).

to heck with ranged combat. i'm talking about 12 melee dice before cp, TN 3, 27S base damage before you even look at Str enhancements.

4 arms... 4 hands... 4 FA weapons that a troll can handle... 4*appropritate skill + Suppression rules...

You could make them all shotguns for the choke effect. Or you could use tracer (or incendiary) rounds to aid your shootin'. Add an enhance aim spell and it becomes even more silly.

But using it my way ignores all those pesky modifiers that pop up when you shoot 4 weapons at the same time.

indeed. heck, you don't even need the skill, if you go by the book--just a high Qui.

It can already be done although it is only an extra cyberarm...

So a high strength troll with 3 LMGs can literally give very effective cover fire even without the Heavy Weapons skill. Heck, a normal high strength troll can already do that well.

*sigh* if you people want someone with maximum firepower just do the following design.

Cybertorso+arms+legs= 5,5E and -400000,00

Squeeze in one retractable tracking mount in each arm and torso, then you add two tracking mounts in each leg (that's six total)

Add two cyberholsters (one to each leg) and add DNI to everything so you will loose another 0,2E

Add a smartlink -0,25E

Total essence cost: 5,95

Now you link all those guns to your primary gun and add a laser designator to it. All guns connected through such a network should fire at the target that the main weapon is aiming for.

That's a total of 6-8 SMG's that you could pop out and go FA with.

No, I do not want to calculate possible recoil for that.

Activate syberskates and you are going to make a quick exit with that recoil.

*blatantly ignores L.D*

what you need is to get all the joints in each of the arms replaced so the troll is supremely double jointed. Then give him vibrating monokatanas of Doom ™. And wired reflexes.

Bam. Insta-comabt-Cuisinart.

wow this started quite a discussion!

anyway all this cyberware stuff is kinds irrelevant seeing as my 4 armed troll is an adept!

its cool though
anyway with it being a -5 flaw....

the GM said at the time it was a flaw and an edge, but decided for social reasons that it was more of a flaw than an edge , since everyone would be freaking out al lthe time. (basically he saw it as a +5 edge, but a -10 flaw.... at the same time, they cancel eachother out, another friend of mine just said it has to be one or the other, but not both.... honestly, i tihnk it can have its pros and its cons, it can be useful as well as annoying, such as the social factor, as well as the fact that i'd automatically get "distinctive style" since i'd be pretty freakin easy to track... being unique and all.)

my troll adept with 4 arms actually utilized 4 katanas.

later i thought about it and figured... 4 katanas would be almost impossible to wield effectively in combat. so i thought i'd come here and ask what people thought.

I'm actually remaking this character for various reasons... wanted to get the 4 arms thing right, as far as the rules went and for other reasons.

i agree with my previous GM that its a flaw as well as an edge, but that the flaw outweighed the edge, giving the negative number. but it seems you guys think that the 4 arms are quite an edge.... hmmm

with all this talk of cyberware and full auto stuff.... wow you've really gotten far off the topic.... basically this has turned into a "how uber can a troll be with 4 arms" discussion. belive me i know it can be uber (rolled 14 net successes when chopping up some street trash ganger, turned him into dog food.)

anyway, all this discussion is cool even if its all off-topic.

lemme just throw a few questions into the mix:
If i where to engage someone in melee combat with weapons,what do you think having 2 more weapons would do? Add more dice? Would it even be possible to attack with 4 melee weapons? The rules say that only certain weapons can be used as primary and secondary weapons, you get 1 big weapon and one small weapon basically; so how would it work with 4 arms? 2 big weapons & 2 small weapons (seems most logical to me). but then if i'm using 2 of 2 different weapons, what dice do i roll?!?

as far as martial arts goes, i think this would definately be possible, though i'd probobly have to have trained since the day i got the arms in my own custom style to have it work at all... my character is a samurai so this is pretty feasable. probobly more so than the melee weapons. anyway, what would this effect? would i just get more dice to roll? lowered target numbers? damage bonuses?

as far as things like climbing go... would i get bonuses here or no? someone told me that climbing with 4 arms would probobly just get in the way.

(BTW in my groups house rules, you can't just get cyberlimbs, you can only get them if someone blew your arms off or somthing, because most people would never get thier real, working arms chopped off unless they HAD to. But thats just our rules...)

anyway thanks for all the cool feedback! even though alot of it is just specualtion, its still cool.