So, I'm making a Street Samurai for a fast and loose pickup game, and I wanted to go with the classic "we can rebuild him" style trope. A relatively durable B&E/Melee Combat focused Sam with a possible side of hacking.

The concept is essentially someone who was injured in an as of yet undetermined incident, and partially reconstructed. So some Cyberlimbs, maybe some new skin. Plus some less than legal extras. I initially wanted the whole suite (Legs, Arms, Torso, Skull) but everywhere I look tells me that is too impractical.


One thing that I definitely wanted, for concept, was a Move by Wire system. Because I'd like to have a backdoor installed into it, so he can be hijacked and puppeted like a marionette at a climactic moment. Of course, if I was a near full-con I wouldn't need that excuse, and it's probably easier just to take the Judas flaw. But still, rather evocative.

My main problems are money, essence, and figuring out a balance between concept and being good at my job. I wanted mostly cyberware, for sure. I more than likely need to trim down on my focuses a little. But I just don't know where to begin.

Does anyone have any advice? Anywhere I can be pointed toward?

1.) the MBW Backdoor Remote-Control does not work.
There is no such thing as a Stir-Up-Interface for MetaHumans.

2.) cyberlimbs are sub par compared to most anything else, if you don't go for specific things like Armor.
limbs are KING in terms of adding armor.

basically, as far as i can figure out, a limb only really works out, if you go for customized limbs with racial max stats(6 across the board for humans) that can then be upgraded to 9's without needing a torso and then tack on as much armor as possible and use the left over slots to do stuff you could usually not do.
the torso and head themselves are, aside from giving some mod slots and the ability to tack on armor, basically useless, and you only need the torso if you want to upgrade a limb above +3, which you usually don't want to do anyway, because that costs way too much money and more essence again.

partial limbs are a bit different, as they come with a comparably high count of slot for the low price of money and essence.
you can, for example, have a nano hive in a foot that costs more essence than the foot does usually. and all you pay is the essence for the foot, the money for the foot and the money for the hive.

redlinig limbs would be good, if you would not take damage of TWICE the ammount of the new attribute . .
So who cares if you can overclock your human arms to 18 STR if you then proceed to take 36 damage and die?

same for the pain cut-off. you don't really profit from it that much that it would actually be worth remembering.
the one box of physical damage track you get for every single FULL limb does not help either, as you usually take more stun damage due to high ammounts of armor so your stun track which is shorter anyway fills up faster and you keep over unconscious before you even get to the extra damage track boxes . . and only because you have more boxes does not mean you take the dice pool modifiers later, you can actually get higher modifiers with these boxes and still keep going, kinda, but that's useless because of the dice pool modifiers you won't be able to accomplish anything anyway . .

hiding stuff in the limbs does not work either, because of millimeter wave radar and cyberware scanners and chem snifers being frigging cheap and thus, technically, everywhere . .


the only thing really going for limbs is major style points . . but you are basically nerfing your character using them in most cases, because of the rules . .
for example, for a one handed pistol, you use the cyber arms agility. for a 2 handed weapon, even holding the pistol with both hands in a propper grip, you now use the average of the cyber and the meat arms agility.
which is usually lower than the agility of the cyberarm. same for STR for recoil compensation. and it only gets worse the more limbs are actually used for one single action.
close combat, as long as you don't go:"i'll only punch him once with my shiney metal arm" will average all limbs at least. and technically even the torso and the head too . .

Well that's kind of disappointing, honestly.

I really like the concept of someone having to be rebuild, but I have no idea how to actually do it short of trying to find the cyborg rules. Which are expensive and highly illegal.

I remember seeing a thread on here that talked about the benefits of cyborgisation vs. having cyber arms/legs/torso/etc. I can't find it, unfortunately, but there's also this: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...0&hl=cyborg

limbs, like cybermuscles and as of SR4 cyberbones, have always been sub par if you could not get them house ruled to be worth their cost.
Frank Trollman did a good job bringing them closer to usefull by making them feasible at least in some cases, but for the most part, a samurai will simply be better by going for bioware for anything aside from things that can only be done by cyber.
skimmer discs are one of the few things where cyber ware can actually do something better than magic, at least adept magic . . and they are still useless and barely used, because how often do you need to run over water?
and aside from that they only let you run faster, and because bullets and spells are still faster it does not matter quite as much usually . .

SR4 Cyborgs are Jar-Brains, basically drones with a dieing metahuman brain somewhere in there to control it. more a rigger than anyting else. also, non player chacater stuff.
robocop suffers from the SR4 combat/armor/damage system, while he would be seriously over powered in combat under SR3. but still not usefull for most anything else really.

Stahlseele is wrong. You can put MbW into a human. You cannot put it into a wimp (cloned body). Nowhere in the entire section does it say you can't put it into a metahuman.


An evil idea I once had was to buy a rating 6 loyalty 1 connection hobo... then install a bunch of used ware into him... when he dies... rip it out and stuff it in a new hobo. Then stuff the AI PC onto a drone or commlink he'd carry on him.


And yeah... partial cyberlimbs work great IMO. Few to no cases where you need to worry about their stats (unless you're stuffing your half-cyberleg into closing massive steel vault doors and doing crush tests on it). But lots of capacity for upgrades which don't need more essence. 1 free physical damage box, and you can still use bioware instead for stat enhancement... and since you're using both bio and cyber... you halve the lower cost (which means if they're roughly equal that's about an extra 50% off essence costs).

i never said you can't put an MBW into MetaHumans, as that would be stupid seeing how it was designed specifically to be put in there.
i said you can't put a backdoor in the MBW system and use it as a stir up system for metahumans. this does not work under SR4 rules.

I haven't seen Frank Trollman's stuff, and I know about cyborgs being brains in jars.

But... yeah. I mostly want this for concept. I'm just disappointed I can't do it efficiently without houseruling or outright cheating.

You have seen his stuff. Augmentation for example.
Frank basically wrote the Book on SR4 limbs, which is why they ain't as bad as they were under SR4.
But it's still not nearly enough to get limbs on par with the other stuff.
Aside from edge-cases, they simply ain't worth the time, money and essence you have to put into them.

Mea magna culpa... sorry stahlseele

Yeah just put the stirrup interface right away in the human. That's what I meant... it's only a fraction of a point of essence more and most people won't ever know the difference.


Hobo with stirrup interface is what I meant .


One of the few things Trollman did well... on the other hand his ideas for matrix were lets say controversial.

Stirrup Interface for Metahumans does not work, period. Neither with the actual Stirrup Interface meant for biodrones nor with a modified MBW.
The only way to control characters is by magic. you could try to go with the wolverine way, or the X-23 way, but as per the rules, nope, doesn't work.

Franks ideas on the matrix are well thought out and make sense in and off themselves. They are meant to replace the official SR4 Matrix rules.
If you tack EotM onto the official stuff, yeah, it gets even worse than it is now.

Then we're back in disagreement. The rules never state any such thing. The only thing mentioned in the section is once again Wimps (cloned metas) don't work in the shadowtalk. In fact the shadowtalk specifically hints that it's been used in metahumans a few times. (p142).


Unless you can cite where it forbids the use of stirrup interface... you're out on a limb that can't hold your weight Stahl.

Specifically the book defines biodrones as...
"Biodrones are biological organisms that can be controlled by a rigger, just like a mechanical drone can." Augmentation: p151

Metahumans are biological organisms same as all the rest. Stirrup interface is only Mbw with an extra 0.5 essence tacked on top for the rigger adaptation to allow remote control.


Strongly disagree... his matrix rules were a mess.

Ah!

...Well, if cyberlimbs won't work, what's a good alternative for a "rebuilt" character that captures the same sort of "more artificial than man" feel? Muscle replacement? Bonelacing? That sort of thing?

What's your goal with this, the Dr. Strangelove-style independent hand? If you're willing to fudge it, you might combine the rules about hacking cyberware from Unwired with a Mysterious Implant Quality from Runner's Companion and make the implant some kind of experimental hardwired override. Just say it works similarly to a cortex bomb's remote activation and you should be good to go.

An all-chromed character can be kind of badass. It lets you really skimp on physical attributes, it gives you ridiculous armor, it fits the genre to a T, it looks cool...the biggest problems are (a) paying for it all, and (b) still having the Essence left over for some initiative enhancements (to keep yourself dangerous in a fight). It's kind of jarring to be a tin man and then tack on some bioware for the initiative boost, but it's one way to handle things.

And as far as being hackable as a crazy backdoor feature that the GM can abuse later on? Handwavium, pure and simple. There's a few "mysterious implant" variations that might work, you can just agree on a version of Judas that fits your mental image, etc, etc; there are negative qualities out there that do what you want it to do. As a special one-off item to be a major plot hook, there are ways to make it work.

It really would be a different flavored version of Judas. Rather than a deep cover trigger it would be remote puppeteering.

I think I might be able to figure this out. Maybe. Though help is appreciated.