I like how SR4A makes it possible to start out as full body prosthetic through edges and cyberware suites. I wonder whether that is still an option in SR5. I know, there are not that many books out yet, but maybe the people with the books can tell me how much money you can start with and how much the basic stuff costs.

If it is possible, I would be glad to read your comments on the idea of full body prostheses.

I've always felt that full cybergization had too few options going for it in SR4e, so I made a fan supplement, "Cyborgs Unveiled", on the topic (it's in the signature).

As for 5e, full body replacement costs at the very minimum 6.25 Essence (Full Arm, Full Leg 1; Torso 1.5; Skull 0.75), so until the qualities to reduce Essence costs are there, it's a no-go. On the other hand, it only costs 90 thousand nuyen, and maximal starting wealth is 450. So if you go with alphaware (x0.8 Essence cost, x1.2 cost multiplier), you can fit both money and Essence. The only problem is that the torso has availability 12, and the skull availability 16, further increased by 2 by being alphaware (5e starting PCs are still limited to avail 12). There;s so far no way to reach that high with starting characters - even prime runners get as high as 15.

Thanks for the information, that helps. I already know Cyborgs Unveiled, since I used it for a subversive one-shot with cyborgs.

You could get a used cyberskull- that takes -4 off the availability, at 1.25 the essence cost.

Alpha Arms x2 = 1.6
Alpha Legs x2 = 1.6
Standard Torso = 1.5
Used Skull = .9375
Total Essence Used = 5.6375

A bit cheesy, but doable.
-DrZ

You could always get the cyberskull legally.

Connect it to a fake SIN
Go to a cyberdock and get the serial number/cybernetic scan identification code removed
Ditch the fake SIN / have the person listed as dead. (You now have a "used" second hand cyberskull)

After all cybernetic limbs are supposed to be as common as soycaf.

We are the Borg. Existence as you know it is over. Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

At least until they get Bricked back into the Stone Age since they were running pretty much subspace-wifi enabled 24/7.

Yes, they have hefty firewalls and such, but sooner or later it can be breached...

unfortunately the Borg have mastered the art of repair via thinking hardware skill at the problem. just look at what they were able to do during the events of 'Q who?', where they repaired a photon torpedo hole with force of will and duct tape.

That said, that 'the best of both worlds' also demonstrated their weakness to a good decker...

I, Borg showed the vulnerability very early on when Geordi was ordered to put together a virus to be placed in Hugh to take back and infect the Collective. If Picard and the others had not had a change of heart and simply returned him with his newly found self identity this could have had some seriour impact.

Though in the long run , having a bit of Borg civil tiff with an offshoot set of Borg was worth the chance in my mind.

Would the Borg be considered Biodrones? And if so does that mean that a Borg cube is basically a gigantic Rigger Control Console?

NERDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Though I have to admit... I love the Borg...

Decking will do jack squat vs the Borg, and I'll laugh really hard when the dork with the keyboard tries to fight Borg. Hacking, on the other hand, might be viable.

@Elfenlied

Yeah, Bat'leth proved efficient. But do not forget slashing.


Anyhow: Yeah, it can doable and it can be effient, since they did not come around to fix cyberlimbs.
You just skimp on attributes, since you only have 6 attributes to use.
This makes C nearly as good as A.

It might be quite efficent for a mage/adept, who is to be played for a long time, because it enables you to use money for two attributes and get quite a lot of armor in the process. On the other hand, you do not need to use those very expensive reaction enhancements (essence wise) because you got magic to do that.
(But I guess, this will only get really good, if they add the "I reduce the essence costs for your ware" kind of perks.)

They have that already... It is called "Grades of Cyberware" and they are available at Character Gen.

No, you couldn't. Availability ratings are there for a reason.

5+ Essence of cyberware for a mage/adept? Efficient to the extreme.

That is what they meant by player for a long time I imagine, with that lone 1 Essence he could be very careful with the spells until he gets around to initiating and sloooooowwly rebuilding his mojo.

A few years down the road though it could be formidable, but hopefully gets iced long before then.

@Fatum

Cut the torso and the skull, take your left arm as alpha and you are down to 3.XX Points of Essence loss.
You still get your higher agility/strength for almost everything. (Or actually for everything, depending on how you read the so clear rules.)

You can do the math, but for a Karma 100+ Char this would pay off nicely. (If you want to play a Cybermage)

It is not really that good of an option for a sam normally, because well you do not use most mental attributs anyway and of course you need some kind of reaction enhancement to really do something. They are not that needed that much in this edition, but still...

@Sendaz

Not that likely with that much armor, anyway. Always depends on the group anyway...
But this rebuilding is never that expensive.
1 to 5 cost 70Karma. Compare that to what a troll pays to get is strength from 7 to 9... Or raising a skill from 4 to 10...
Again, not having to raise your attributes (agility+strength) from 2 to 4 goes already a long way already...

My point is, that cyberlimps are a waste for anybody who has high physicals to begin with. On the other hand they are great for people trying to skimp on attributes....

Nah, the armor doesn't matter that much. He just eats mana spells or has his massive stack of obvious cyberlimbs bricked constantly.

Only if he has the wireless enabled. Dumbest mistake he could ever make (since they actually provide no benefit for being wireless enabled).

I assume anyone going the full cyberlimbs route would at least be smart enough to wear concealing clothing. A standard (actioneer) business suit, leather gloves and a balaclava will conceal that, and it's sensible for even non-cyberlimb characters to wear something like that during criminal activities.

Yep... Can't let them identify you, after all...

Or cut everything but a single cyberarm and use an SMG; this way or another, neither case has much to do with full-body replacement the thread is about :ь

But... but... obvious cyber is a much better deal slots/cost vise!

What does concealing Obvious Cyber have to do with it being Obvious Cyber? If you cover the limbs with Clothes, they are no longer obvious, since you cannot see the limbs any longer.

Ahh, the USSR! So beloved a topic for Star Trek that they had not one, but TWO different species symbolically representing it!

(...not counting the Cardassians, who were more of a post-Soviet Russia, or maybe an ex-USSR satellite state gone berserk.)

~Umi

What kills synthetic cyberlimbs for me is that a simple touch reveals them for what they are. If they were covered in synthflesh that felt real, then I might consider them.

On the other hand, if someone goes with Raptor/Kid Stealth legs, then they might as well wear a balaclava made out of the American flag. Cause 'Murica!

What about Cybereyes & Ears ?

with NO Full Dance
Medicineman

If you go with rating 1 alpha for each, then you can still fit them in.

*Dons American flag bandanna*
Best at what I do...
In America!

Now I want to play a character based on Bandit Keith. I'll make it a Mystic Adept with Missile Mastery to throw cards from a children's cardgame as weapons, and use Summoning (with a deck as a Focus) to summon duel monsters. In America!

If I recall, his deck theme was all robots. He might work as a rigger too, with a rigger controler custom made to look like a duel disk system.

And legality ratings are there for a reason too. It's not even restricted, so a cyberskull can be purchased legally with a valid SIN (or one that appears to be valid). If you take the SINner quality, there isn't even a reason to argue about the accessibility of that item at chargen.

The SINNER quality does not affect availability limits at chargen. Full stop. As of current rules, 'Only standard gear and alphaware are available at character creation.' So a 16R availability cyberskull is right out. Hell, even the Prime Runner sidebar caps at availability 15 in chargen.

Also, again, a cyberskull is 16R, which means it is in fact a restricted item.

No. It's 16, there is no R, even if you write it in bold and repeat it. It's a legal item to possess, like any other (unmodified) cyber limbs. To buy it, you just need a SIN, or a fake SIN that checks out. This goes around the rules for availability.

There is no availability test to be made for a legal item purchased normally.

The rules do state that the maximum availability of items is 12 at chargen, but the concept of availability in the first place is for black market goods. Otherwise, there is no availability test. As per RAW, it still seems that the cyberskull could be unallowed, but it's debatable. I mean, the description for cyberlimbs doesn't help clear away my doubts:
Then I bet they can be bought off-the-shelf if you're a normal citizen with a SIN. I would argue you can then forget about availability when you do it that way.

Not getting into the "SINners can buy whatever they want" argument, I thought there was something about "Used" cyberware being available out of chargen. Yes- the same sentence!

"Only standard, alphaware, and used implants are available for purchase at character creation" pg. 451

Looking again, I apparently did misread that, and the skull is just availability 16. Sorry about that!

That said, the spirit of the rule is pretty clear to me. Characters during creation aren't buying their gear on the black market, they're picking up base gear as background items. That, combined with the character creation chapter leaving used cyberware out in its list of available grades on p. 95, inclines me to go with 12 as a limit on the base availability of gear and 'ware at creation, not a limit on the modified availability. It's a mechanic to restrict purchases at character generation, nothing more or less, just like restricting devices to rating 6 even if they're affordable and legal beyond that.

There's a lot of stuff you can pick up legally that is out of reach at chargen, after all!




Yes, and :



The book, as it often does, directly contradicts itself here. Hopefully someday we'll get actual errata on this stuff, but I'm not holding my breath.

For what it's worth, the official Missions campaign interprets the starting 12 availability cap as an absolute and does not allow black market rolls during character generation.

After play starts, sure, just not during chargen.



-k

The whole "being legal to buy renders availability irrelevant" argument is remarkably weak in supporting argumentation, I have to note. It goes directly against the RAW. And I'd argue it goes against common sense, because high availability means items difficult to obtain regardless of their legal status. There are a few real-life examples of stuff produced in limited qualities and not being easily available, despite being perfectly legal without restrictions, like, say, rare wine or art pieces.

"Hello, yes, I'm calling to see if you have any platinum bars in stock? Yes, that's right platinum bars. Or rather ingots? Specifically I'm looking for four kilogram ingots, but if all you have are the more common two point five kilogram ingots I'll take those."

"Really? No platinum at all? Huh. Well, that's okay. I'm also looking for two or three banded palm civets? No, I'm sorry, you must have misheard me, I said civets, the small asian mammals, of the Viverridae family? Yes, related to binturongs. Hah, yeah, I don't think they look like bears or cats either. That said, would you happen to... you don't? Not even one? Hrm. Oh well, nothing for it I guess."

"Oh! I bet you'll have this! I need fourteen gallons of hog's blood, please, and a solid lead box about two feet by three feet by one foot. No, no, I'm afraid frozen bacon and lead fishing weights won't do at all. That's okay, I'll just have to try somewhere else. Thanks anyway."

~Umi

On the other hand, however...

I believe it is stated in the 4E character creation text that the items which you "buy" with your purchased money in chargen don't have to be items that you have "bought". How you attained those items is entirely irrelevant, and is the subject of your character's backstory. If you want to say that the GMC Bulldog you start play with was a vehicle your character stole and cleaned of identifying marks, rather than bought, that's perfectly reasonable.

In the same vein, there's also no limitation on how long you took to acquire the item in question. If you instead want to state that your character is a mechanic and that you slowly built a working vehicle out of junkyard parts acquired over the course of several years, that works too. The point is that anything you can pay the "nuyen" for at chargen is fair game, regardless of how your character ended up getting their hands on it, and you don't have to worry about things like Availability Tests to see if you can even find one - you are instantly presumed to have found one (or built one, or stolen one, or whatever) in the past, and you get to dictate how you did so.

That said, however, the point of the 12 availability limitation is one of power balance. It's a pretty arbitrary number, to be honest, but the idea is that anything of a higher availability is something most starting Runners would not have had a reason or means to come across or to acquire - typically items of this availability are reserved for police and military forces, or for select corporate civilians.

There are exceptions, of course - which is why you can take the Restricted Gear quality, or why the GM can choose to allow higher availability items at chargen for higher power campaigns and whatnot. But as a general restriction, the 12 availability limit is intended to keep your gear to reasonable levels. Does it always work? No, clearly not. There are a bunch of items which probably should be available for one reason or another. But as a general rule it does its job, and there are other systems in place to handle the exceptions.

~Umi

I'm just glad we avoided getting stuck in a feedback loop where we quoted page numbers to each other ad infinitum and crashed dumpshock's server.

-DrZ

I agree that the availability 12 limit applies to all equipment you want to start the game with.

The skull remains a possibility if it is a used one, since this is still allowed per (part of) RAW.