Okay, here's the situation: I have a character with lousy attributes but powerful cyberlimbs. For a whole-body test you use the average of all limbs involved (6: 2 arms, 2 legs, torso, head)

So my question is do i use that average for determining limits or do I run off my basic attributes. I can see it going either way, but it gets a bit ridiculous when you have a character with 6 strength 9 cyberlimbs who's basing their physical limit on their piddly natural strength of 2.

My understanding from the official forums - take that for what it is worth - is that cyber limbs do not affect your limits.

thought not.
just confirming.

That is, last I heard, the official word, yes. Limits are based on stats and directly-modified stats, not "replaced" stats from cyberlimbs.

I disagree, personally, but that's just me.

Ah, so MagicRun is another step closer to being reality! /sarcasm

This deserves two wacko and a mad face:

obviously.
Frank did his best to make Limbs an actually viable Choice in SR4, and so of course they went and nerfed them again . .

Frankly, that is one ruling that is not really supported by the rules. When going by RAW, a character with cyberlimbs should have multiple limits, based of the task in question.

At the extreme, a character with six cyber limbs of equal strength basically has no "natural strength" anymore because there is virtually no task that relies on his natural muscles anymore.

Keep in mind that neither the Torso nor the Head are technically limbs.
This does not make the matter any easier.

Yeah. Like I said, I don't agree with this particular ruling, myself.

That's an odd ruling, and one that doesn't make any sense.

You can see the intent of trying to stop munchkin behaviour, but no, it doesn't make sense when you try and interpret it in terms of the game world.
Unfortunately SR5 has significantly more of that than SR4; I personally find it highly immersion-breaking.

I also think dealing with munchkin behaviour - if necessary at all - is the job of the GM, not the rules, because the main problem I have with munchkin behaviour is that it, too, is immersion-breaking. Moving the immersion-breaking from the player (who you can beat with a phonebook as needed) to the rules (which often takes a lot more thought and effort to change) is a very poor tradeoff, IMO.

For me, I do the following:

1) They affect limits (so punching with cyberarm you would use the full value, while climbing you'd have to average in your natural strength as well)
2) Customization allows you to raise your Agility and/or Strength in the limb to whatever your actual stat is. THEN you can do augmentation. I do this for two reasons.
a) It makes far more sense to me that "customization" means customized to you, and not your metatype - after all, why can make an arm for a dwarf, which is the same size as the one for a human (basically) and yet make it give an increase of 5 points, while a human's arm can only be increased 3? I read that the point of customization is to make it so that the limb is in balance with the rest of your body - so if you have a 5 strength, you can make it so that the limb is also a 5 strength.

To make up for the fact that you natural stats can go up in time, I allow players to add levels of customization after they buy the limb to avoid them having to buy a whole new limb once they've spent some karma.

Once you've customized, you can then augment - so a human with a natural strength of 5 could customize his limb to 5, and then augment to 8.

b) To avoid the Agility 1 --> 9 ridiculousness - which I think is bizarre.

I haven't had any problems so far - but of course these are not the "official" rulings.

I like this.