So I've read the core 5th ed book and the errata 100 times and I still don't know how much trolls should pay for augmentation.
I've heard arguments all over the place on either side. So can someone break down the racial costs thing once and for all?
Were there modding costs for vehicles and equipment that I didn't see?

The 50% increased cost was meant to be for lifecycle and external gear that has to be handled or put on like clothing.
AS WORDED it is for ware as well, as per RAW. If that did not make it into the Errata somehow . .

Original: “Trolls receive Thermographic Vision, +1 Reach, and Dermal Armor, but they also receive the disadvantage of having to pay an additional fifty percent for gear because everything—including cyberware and bioware—must be specially modified to meet their massive physical requirements.”

Errata: “Trolls receive Thermographic Vision, +1 Reach, and Dermal Armor, but they also have the disadvantage of having their Lifestyle costs doubled to reflect the costs of adapting everything they use—especially their gear, including
cyberware or bioware—to meet their massive physical requirements.”

They used to have to pay more for stuff now it is just double lifestyle.

OK, no, that wording is very ambigious . .
Gear/Ware NEVER fell under Lifestyle-Cost . .

From my understanding this was something that was brought up almost immediately when the book first came out, and the intention of the errata is that they simply pay double lifestyle. That's it.

None of their other items are more money. ONLY their lifestyle costs.

Lifestyle is for the Fluff-Parts. Food, Gas, Rent, etc.
Nothing else.
They should have scrapped the mentioning of gear and ware completely.
SR3 had +% based on metatype for dorf and Troll, what's wrong with that?

Trolls eat more, need larger residences (and furniture) etc so a lifestyle cost increase does make sense.

Better that way. Easier to keep track off (no arguings about what should cost more and what not) and makes more sense.

I mean, when you buy some XXXL clothes it's usually not the raw material that you pay additionnally but an increased price due to the size of the market.

When you buy your cyberware, it's the technology you pay, not the extra metal for the size of your cybered arm.

ps: I'll use that for SR3, it's a good move tbh.

Wait. this is the text of the actual errata? Seriouslyß

Yes.

Afraid so,

Makes you feel nostalgic for just 50% increase eh?

So the errata needs errata already?

*sigh* It would seem so.

It may be somewhat poorly written, but to me the intent is pretty clear: Trolls don't have more expensive gear directly, the costs of adapting their gear is folded into their lifestyle.

Could have been worse...

They could have just said NO cyberware was made in Troll or dwarf sizes, so if a troll or dwarf wanted a cyber limb he had to use a human scaled one.

So dwarves could get a height boost while trolls would look enemic.


Maybe, but how does that reflect when you have the characters on the lower end of the lifestyle scale and the budget for this type of lifestyle wouldn't even cover the added costs associated with the cyber/bio that the lifestyle is supposed to cover?

Or maybe they want dwarves and trolls staying to the lower end lifestyles. Again the IE conspiracy tries to keep 'em down!

I'm not really seeing the a) confusion or b) problem.

In 5e, trolls pay the normal costs for all gear. For lifestyle, they pay:

Streets - Free
Squatter - 1,000
Low - 4,000
Middle - 10,000
High - 20,000
Luxury - 200,000

In 3e, it was a 25% increase in costs to all gear. That makes it, if you enforce it to the letter of the law, prohibitively expensive for many types of gear - especially cyber and bioware.

In 5e, it makes it less of a burden on a PC - especially up to and including Middle Lifestyle, while more of a burden on those in High and Luxury.

Remember that in 3e, it was not uncommon to start with several hundred thousand nuyen worth of cyber/bioware. A troll who purchased 300,000 worth of gear would have to pay an additional 75,000. (for those with Tech A - they have 1 million to spend, and for trolls that would mean basically a 250,000 penalty.)

What they basically did was go away from having extra calculations on every bit of gear, and lump it all into the lifestyle. Is it good move? That's debatable. It certainly is a simpler move - which is what I am assuming they were going for.

For those who believe that trolls are nerfed in 5e, it certainly makes them have a lot more money to be able to spend, unless they are living Luxury Lifestyles - and let's be honest, I've been playing Shadowrun for 25 years, and I can count on one hand the number of characters who have maintained a Luxury Lifestyle for any real period of time - it isn't something that comes up too much.

It is extremely poor written. Either cyber and bioware should have increased costs for trolls, then say so directly and don't try to add that to lifestyle costs. But it fits the subpar quality of SR5....

Trolls in SR3 pay 20% more for clothing and Gear and Lifestyle, but not Cyber/Bio-Ware.
Dorfs in SR3 pay 10% more for clothing and Gear and Lifestyle, but not Cyber/Bio-Ware.
Or something like that, i don't remember the actual numbers but it was something like that.
And, most importantly:
THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO STUFF BOUGHT IN CHARACTER GENERATION!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not to muddy the waters, here, but I'd actually think that Trolls wouldn't have to spend extra for high end living. Most High-end and Luxury services are customized for the user, anyway, so having to accomodate a Troll or a Dwarf client wouldn't be that big of a deal (10% markup at most). I imagine that the lower lifestyles would suffer the most, as housing, clothing and food for those markes are produced on assembly lines and targeted at the average human.

Me neither. Trolls pay double the normal lifestyle cost, which subsumes any costs they'd have to pay due to being bigger, heavier, hungrier, et cetera. What is ambiguous about that?

Come on, this isn't hard. The above has been slightly adjusted to note what the lifestyle increase represents. Their gear and cyber do cost more, but for ease of use, it is simply absorbed into their increased lifestyle.

Sure, it doesn't make much sense for a Troll with a Street lifestyle to essentially not pay a premium, but it's an abstraction, so it isn't perfect.

Wait, when did we get an actual Errata? I thought we just had the quick and dirty Missions Errata?

CGL released a 3-4 page Errata document about two weeks ago. You can get it for free from the usual suspects. It's not much (a lot fo the major issues already being covered by the Missions Errata), but it's a start.

SR3 - page 272:

RACIAL MODIFICATIONS
Some gear just isn’t built for a troll to use, or even a dwarf
or an ork, for that matter. Most gear comes in meta-friendly
variants, but it tends to be more costly and difficult to find.
When buying gear that needs modification for a dwarf-sized
person, up the price 10 percent. For troll-modified gear,
increase the price 25 percent.
These pricing adjustments also apply to vehicles described
in this section, which are also available in metahuman-adjusted
versions. Most of these reinforce the seating and/or adjust
the size of the manual controls, and are also available for
humans, orks or elves with disabilities. When driving a vehicle
not adjusted as necessary, a character receives a +3 modifier to
all Driving Tests.


This says "gear". It doesn't say "except cyberware". I agree that it seems punitive to make them pay for it, but again - a strict reading of the rules is that you pay 25% more for troll modified gear. Personally, we didn't make them pay it for cyber/bioware - but that was a house rule, and not RAW.

SR3 - page 60

ASSIGNING RESOURCES
The last category, Resources, provides your character with
the starting cash to gear up for street-level warfare. As with all
the other categories, the higher the priority assigned to
Resources, the more nuyen a character has available, from a
scant 5,000 nuyen at Priority E to a whopping 1,000,000 nuyen
for Priority A. Players use this money to purchase their characters’
starting gear, including cyberware, weapons, contacts, foci
and magical items, cyberdecks, vehicles and plenty of other
toys. Most equipment is described in the Street Gear section,
beginning on p. 270. You can purchase gear in any order you
wish. When purchasing gear during character creation, do not
apply the Street Index multiplier (see p. 273) to the cost.
Starting characters must have the money to cover the full cost
of an item (no credit for you yet, chummer—you gotta prove
yourself on the street first!). All gear is also subject to gamemaster
approval. Just because you can purchase something doesn’t
mean you should be allowed to get it at the start of the game.
Finally, no piece of gear purchased at character creation can
have a rating higher than 6 or an Availability higher than 8. (For
more information on Availability, see Street Gear, p. 272.)
As a pointer, don’t forget to buy ammo and clips for your
guns. Nothing is more embarrassing than hitting that first fire
fight with empty weapons!
Each character MUST buy a lifestyle (see Lifestyle, p. 62) at
character creation. Certain other things, such as contacts (see
Contacts, p. 61) can only be purchased at character creation.
Special rules apply when purchasing magical gear and cyberware
(see Magical Gear, below and Cyberware, p. 61).
Players need not spend starting resources down to the last
nuyen. For suggestions on what to do with leftover money, see
Finishing Touches, p. 62.

It specifically says you do not have to pay for street index. Please show me where it says you do not have to pay for racial modification in char gen.

A piece of cyberware that's Troll-sized mostly just has more metal/plastic in it, it doesn't have 50% more of the expensive bits - circuitry, amortized manufacturing costs (labour, R&D, capital investment), and so on. It's pretty much the same for just about any piece of gear - the expensive parts are not the handle/casing. And arguably bioware as well - is the expensive part really the price per pound of the meat they're sticking into you, or is it the way it's grown and all the development costs behind it? It's certainly plausible that you'd only need a bigger vat and more raw protein to make Troll-sized muscle toner instead of Human-sized.

Lifestyle, Gear and Augmentation are all different things. The errata only confuses the issue further.
If they're not paying extra for it, why even mention bioware, cyberware or gear? What's so hard about saying "troll Lifestyle costs more"?
I don't think anyone has a problem with trolls paying more for pants. It's just terribly written, which is apparently a theme in this edition.

It really doesn't. The specific reason for the lifestyle increase is listed: "to reflect the costs of adapting everything they use—especially their gear, including cyberware or bioware—to meet their massive physical requirements."

No matter which way you parse that, the cost of modifying any and all gear (easily encompassed by the term "everything") is subsumed by the increased lifestyle cost.

The theory was to try and make bookkeeping a little easier, as I recall.

So effectively a troll on the streets ultimately pays less for cyber and gear than the same troll living in a middle lifestyle, since the gear costs aren't modified but lifestyle's supposed to cover the size difference for stuff like cyber and clothing.

Maybe less bookkeeping, but to me it's also less sense.

A troll on the streets also pays less for food and suffers no ill effects (neither does a character with high lifestyle become overweight). Lifestyle costs have always been heavily abstracted, and reliant on the fact that players actually want a better life (in other words, play their characters).

I like the rule, it's simple, effective, and the resulting lower lifestyles for trolls reinforce the inequality in the setting.

Yeah, but it doesn't really make sense with the first half of the lifestyles as what they are paying doesn't really add toward that supposed premium in any case, and really this is where most of the players will be starting in before they get some runs and cash under the belt.

Life styles
Streets - Free
Squatter - 500
Low -2000

But it is an abstraction, just seems like they would have separated the two...

Enforce a hospitalization lifestyle for cyber/bio surgery and recovery and it will take care of the cost differential.

I'm seriously not seeing the reason for all the fuss over this. If you don't like the Lifestyle ruling then ignore it and instead use the 50% extra on gear rule, or use the SR3 rulings as they translate perfectly well too. If the abstraction confuses you an instead you want to use the case by case stuff, do so. You can event port in the SOTA expenses rules from previous editions if you want to, if anything thy actually make more sense with some of the themes expressed in SR5 than they did in SR3. You can even apply the Stress and Cyber Maintenence rules and costs too, getting as detailed as you like. The option exists if you want it (and maybe they'll show up in later sourcebooks). But for some folks that flat lifestyle cost mod makes the game simpler and more playable.

Me? I use the SR3 mod numbers (but not for Cyber) because that's what I've always run to and I also like a little bit more book keeping when it comes to my Runner's resources, but I certainly don't mind the SR5 RAW for it.

This specific errata was put in place because it said two different things at different places in the rule texts. In one, it says that all gear including cyber costs 50% more. In another, it states lifestyle increases 100%. That's where the original confusion was, and this errata was specifically to state that the lifestyle doubling rule was the correct one, with the 50% increase being from a previous draft.

Sources: Jason Hardy (from an email), Steven "Bull" Ratkovich (Facebook post), and the official errata document.

I dont think it was a mistake, there are too many changes. Its clearly something that was changed at the last minute. Look at the section that got chopped on page 93:

costs (trolls have a 50 percent gear and Lifestyle cost
increase, dwarfs have a 10 percent increase in gear
costs), the player may choose to increase the cost for
each item picked up at that time to help them track
how much they’ve spent and how much nuyen they
have left. Alternately, they may choose to purchase all
the gear at the base cost, arrive at a subtotal, and then
add in the appropriate cost modifier (10 or 50 percent)
to get the final total.

This was very specific that there was a cost for both gear and lifestyle, and if different from trolls to dwarves. That got chopped as well as the table earlier. I think it was a last minute look and realizing that +50% cost for trolls, combined with the high metatype priority and low cash amounts for low resource priority combine to make a Troll street sam a thing of the past. Not something they want to do with an iconic archetype.

Not sure I like the fix, since now there is basically no cost to get gear refitted to a troll, but its clearly not just a typo being fixed.

Abstraction seems to be a difficult concept.

Me personally, I would have like them to roll licences into lifestyle as well. All this micro-management bores me and 1/2 the time people just ignore it anyway.

A more cynical response I must make.

This change is in response to the following issue:

"OMG my troll technomancer has to take priority A for race AND pay 50% more for wired reflexes 3!#$^? WTF?!"

Rolling Licenses into SIN would make more sense, and I agree that they should likely be combined with Something (whether that is Lifestyle, SINs or something else)...

Especially when you consider that if you got a SIN and use those licensed items in any sort of criminal activity that can be tracked back to you, you can expect to pretty much lose the current lifestyle as you are either now A) Incarcerated or B) On the run so no longer able to stay at that fancy condo you invested in.

Indeed...

The issue with rolling it into lifestyle is people who want to have multiple fake SINs set up.

Rolling it into sin is probably better.

Just whatever it takes to remove the need to buy 10 licences for each of my 5 SINS.

maybe introduce a 'Fake' Lifestyle then for a nominal fraction of the cost as an add on, representing the costs of maintaining the Fake Sin (falsified tax records, 'home address' that leads to a n apartment complex, any appropriate licenses, a shady bank that keeps a mock account complete with 'monthly' expenses making it all seem you are really there, etc) as an ongoing thing.

So you may have your Low SINless 'Real' Lifestyle and a 'Fake' Middle lifestyle citing that you are a security consultant for Rywfol Emwolb Security Ltd, based in Wales, and have a license for that sidearm and cyberware as part of your job.

I agree... Set it up as an Aspect of a SIN. Would work so much better in my opinion.

Also an awesome Idea... I typically DO that ANYWAY, already, but I would LOVE a discount for such a thing. Especially now with the increased costs associated with a SIN.