1) they actually use your racial maximum, not your personal maximum. this is potentially important if you have a higher or lower maximum than is standard for your race. this is not explictly stated to allow you to exceed your personal maximum, but even if your personal maximum is less than your racial maximum you still benefit from cheaper bonuses that don't take up capacity, so it's still a useful benefit even under his interpretation

2) it's pretty clearly an augmentation, and doesn't explicitly allow you to ignore the augmentation cap, something which really should have been mentioned if it's intended to let you over-augment (just like the wireless reflexes and reaction enhancer combination is explicitly stated)

not saying i don't believe it's possible they intended it to work differently from what he's saying, but i am saying he's completely within reason to interpret it the way he interprets it.

1) sorry, racial max, although nothing currently allows us to raise or lower our attribute caps.

2) Yes, it's an augmentation, but you cannot possibly clear your augmented max (racial max +4) and the rules for them state they cannot benefit from any enhancement that does not take up capacity. Hence the highest any limb can go is racial max + 3 in strength or agility.

They also have their own rules for being used in tests separate from the rest of your (possibly meat) limbs.

Exceptional Attribute.

And on another note: Cyberlimbs are an augmentation, sure, but they do not take the form "Your Attribute + X", and the sole limit on augmentations is that the X in that form cannot exceed 4. Thus, bonus that don't take that form are not subject to that limit, flat out.

The deal with cyberlimbs is that they have their own Attributes. I understand Cain's philosophy of caution, but this is more than merely one of those "the rules don't say you can't..." powergamer loopholes. It is an equally valid interpretation of the rules that has support in both the text for cyberlimbs, and in the one example of a character with tricked-out cyberarms.

But even if you use Cain's interpretation, you can still have a troll with 2 Agility boosted to 6, and then have plenty of capacity for things like armor, gyromounts, and cyberweapons. So cyberlimbs remain useful (the troll tank archetype, with its pitiful Agility of 2, could certainly use a pair of them).

It also explicitly says: "but at no point can augmentations exceed the +4 bonus cap." As in, at no point can any augment cause an attribute to exceed your natural attribute (which is explicitly defined earlier as the attribute raised by karma, an attribute that a cyberlimb user still has), by more than four.

Both readings are valid, however, I find assuming that cyberlimbs are the one exception to this rule without any specific wording to that effect - like that of the wireless bonus on Reaction Enhancers/Wired Reflexes - and based solely on the fact that the bonus cyberlimbs give to attributes are not in the same exact format as the other augmentation bonuses, a pedantic interpretation that violates the spirit of the rule, and thus has a major flaw when compared to the other, just as valid, interpretation. Play however you wish at your table, but asserting that there is no other interpretation and that RAW is clear, is rather pigheaded.

Which is fine, because cyberlimbs don't do any of that - they have no interaction with your attributes, and quite specifically and importantly they do not take the form "Your Attribute+X". This isn't a matter of not being in the exact same form; the form of the augmentation cap and the form of cyberlimbs are wholly incompatible.

I said it was an equally valid interpretation of the rules, not that the RAW was clear. Both interpretations have things in the rules that support them.

I don't know - it seems to me the limited interpretation requires elements of the text that simply do not exist.

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's a mighty legalistic way of looking at things. I acknowledge that the rules aren't expressly clear, and they can be read both ways, but I don't find tricky wording to be a compelling reason to abandon the most conservative rule. The augmented max is there for a good reason, and since there isn't an explicit exception for them (like there is for Wired + Reaction Enhancers) I tend to assume there isn't one.

To be clear, there's no such thing as "augmented max" in SR5, except insofar as it's being extratextually defined.

You're being unnecessarily pedantic. There is a very clear limit on your augmented attributes:


I agree that there are two different places where the rules read two different ways, but it seems counterproductive to argue that one doesn't exist.

Sorry Glyph, it was more of a reaction to the absolutist "not subject to that limit, flat out," and you posted while I was farting around. For what it's worth, I agree with you in that cyberlimbs would remain useful.

RHat - Characters have natural attributes. Cyberlimbs are augments. Cyberlimbs also replace attributes. Thus cyberlimb attributes are augmented attributes.

One interpretation is that all augmented attributes are limited by your natural attribute plus four ratings of bonuses, therefore it applies. The other is that your bonus ratings are limited to four, and since cyberlimbs don't have bonus ratings, it doesn't apply. Both are valid, and it turns on whether or not one considers that augmentation bonus is a "thing," or a short hand reference to the overall limit. If the editing on SR was top notch and that there was multiple passes to get things right, I'd agree... but it doesn't, and there's a lot of bad writing masquerading as colloquialism within the rules.

However, in addition to the problem that that interpretation requires the lack of the mention of the limit somehow implying that the limit doesn't apply, on page 456 customization specifically say that "You can have your cyberlimb tailored and customized to your frame and musculature. " Adjusting a cyberlimb to have a max STR with a dumpstatted natural STR hardly counts as tailoring the cyberlimb to that particular frame and musculature, and if you want to be pedantic, customization is therefore limited to match the character's "frame and musculature," in addition to the natural maximum for the character. Or you could assume that it's a shorthand reference to the character's metaracial type.

The +4 augmented cap applies to Cyberlimbs, but it applies to the cyberlimb's base attribute (not the user's).

So, for a human, maximum attribute for cyberlimbs is then . . 7? I you go with the all 3's joe shmoe average?

No, because when you create a cyberlimb, you can create it with higher-than-average attributes, right out of the box (using "customization"). Then, those attributes can be further increased (using "enhancements").

It's needlessly complicated and a holdover patch from an earlier edition (I don't know why we didn't simplify it for SR5 instead of leaving it a clunky three-step process to figure out a cyberlimb's attributes, base attribute->customization->enhancement)...but that's what it is.

Maybe leaving the door open for a splat book on fancier mods and enhancements down the road

You're mixing the fluff with the crunch. That never works out well. It clearly states that you can tailor them up to your racial maximum, frame and musculature referring more to orks and trolls, who need bigger, beefier limbs.

Critias has the RAI, but the RAW is needlessly confusing, and without an errata it's just a very informed opinion.

Personally, I think the whole book needs a retuning. Finding the attribute cap is a painful process; it's not referenced in the index or ToC, but it is referred to as a rule, all over the place, without a page reference to be had. There's dozens of pages of errata that need to be put out, and even the existing errata needs errata. At this rate, I expect Shadowrun 5.5 to be coming out in a few years, which makes me even less likely to invest in a hardcover.

The weird thing about cyberlimbs is that they are great if you have low Strength/Agility, but compared to muscle replacement or augmentation/toner, they are not quite as good at the uppermost end. Enhancement only goes up to +3, compared to the +4 over your maximum that you can get with augmentation. It just seems a bit off, to me, that a completely synthetic arm is less effective than a natural one with artificial or vat-grown muscle woven into it. But at least cyberlimbs are a viable option now.

afb, but could've sworn toner and augmentation and replacement all capped out at 3 as well. as far as i can tell, the only way to access that +4 theoretical cap is by magic.

Nope, those go to 4.

Yeah that bugs me, especially for strength.

Perhaps they will add back in redlining limbs and make less of a great way to kill yourself.

Replacement or augmentation affect the whole body, you could argue that's better than just a single arm...but when going down that line of argument, cyberarm + replacement should be even more effective.

And +1 for redlining

Its been a long time since i played cyberpunk 2020, but weren't there limits to augmentation based on what frame you bought. It made sense to me at the time. Maybe it would be kind of cool if buying something like a titanium skeleton increased the max or allowed redlining with less impact to the character.

That was actually the rule in SR4. You could only get up to +3 in enhancements unless you had a cybertorso.

Cyberpunk 2020 was very similar, at least in its first 2 editions.

Going through the augmentations, there is one good spot of news for trolls. Anything that gives a dice pool bonus tends to get priced a lot higher (synthcardium, etc.), but bone or skin toughness enhancers are a lot cheaper. If you limit your initiative boosters to wired reflexes: 1, you can make a pretty decent tank at Resources: C, especially if you are willing to take some used stuff.

yes, but with anything else, you can still make a pretty good tank that is almost exactly as good, and then use the higher priority to also be something else awesome while still being a pretty good tank.

the fact that the troll's specialty is dirt cheap to buy with other resources is bad news for trolls, not good.

Yeah, it's a mixed blessing, but it's marginally better than the alternative of not having any useful options for Resources: C beyond being a ganger or an unaugmented heavy weapons platform.

Honestly, I don't think trolls being played against type will be as common in SR5. Previous versions of the game were forgiving enough that you could play against type (elven fist-fighting tank, troll fast-talking marksman) and still do okay. But SR5 hits everything with the nerf bat so heavily that you feel like making the most of your meager options, rather than exploring quirky concepts.

This is pretty much it across the board.

The first draft of the archetype was under an earlier ruleset, with resources D and Race C, because I wanted a scrappy street punk who survived by his wits and grit, staying one step ahead of The Man. I wanted to showcase how you could have a cool characetr concept that had no magic, no high tech, no decking... just flesh and blood. He was neat! Not super-powerful, no, but he had combat skill, roughneck style, surprising brains, and some quality social skills. He wasn't supposed to be a generic ganger, but a PC, which means stronger, faster, tougher, BETTER than the norm.

Art for the archetypes came in later, and when it did, our gangbuddy had a funky little cyberarm.

Well, now we have a problem.

I could ignore it and keep the archetype as it was, and people would wonder where the cyberarm was. I mean, it's right *there* in the art, right?
So, that wasn't an option.

Sending the art back for a major change isn't easy, and sometimes isn't possible at all.
But tweaking text is easy.

SO, I rewrote it, fiddling with numbers several times. I could ave given him a much higher resources, tweaked the arm up, tossed in Wired Reflexes, made him essentially a street sam in disguise, but that got away from the core concept and stomped on some toes. Going with Resources even a notch higher drenched me with Nuyen. So, I took a good look at that drekky arm he had and went, "Know what? Idea."

The concept in my head was basicly that he'd been in a gang war, did good, clobbered a bunch of dudes, then some razorboi stepped in and cut his arm off. His lads drug him back to some backalley street doc, pooled their cash together, made some promises of protection, and got their guy the only thing they could afford: A second-hand off the rack cyberarm that was a bit spastic and twitchy. It was chrome, but it was scrawny and didn't even have the right number of fingers, but, well, it's better than being called "Lefty", right?

So, now he's healed up, but he's got this POS arm, and he knows his boys are in debt to some sawbones, so, he hits the shadows. Getting that arm upgraded is probably high on his to-do list. Suddenly backstory! But it's more of a character beat than an archetype beat, so I didn't sit and explain it all. Which makes it look like an odd choice in hindsight. D'oh.

Bit of an old tangant there, but I figured I was here, so might as well talk about it for a sec.

good Story , makes Sense and is also an inspiration as a Backgroundstory for one of my own Chars-for-Lent that I give out to needy players at conventions

Thanks Wakshaani

Hough
Medicineman

Yay, the Wak came back!
Thought we'd scared you off . .

Nope! Just been doing some work on some things. Some Shadowrun, some not, plus a vacation where I spent a lot of time with teh PC off and just kinda enjoying the slow southern Spring.

BUT, that's in the rear-view mirror, so now it's time to get back on track.

This was one of the first places I knew I had to peek in at, however.

Negative Quality: Screwed Over by Priority System

Negative quality: has to match the artwork.

Too bad the wired reflexes got nixed; it would have been nice to see one of the archetypes with wired reflexes (the street samurai and the tank both have synaptic boosters)

Or go old school with it, Boosted Reflexes.

The Street Sam's not one of mine, so.

(Had I had freeform to work on it, however, I would have had a more old-school Street Sam. Human, wired reflexes, muscle augmentation and toner instead of cyberlimbs, cyber eyes... I like the classics.)

That is why they are classics - they stand the test of time.

I can see why the street samurai and the tank both went for synaptic boosters - they had two cyberarms and dermal plating/bone lacing, respectively; they couldn't afford the Essence hit of wired reflexes. It is just weird not seeing wired reflexes at all in the archetypes.

Also, I imagine if Wakshaani had worked on the street samuarai archetype, maybe it wouldn't be 200,000+ over in nuyen.

All in all, some of the archetypes are fine - functional but as usual, not optimized (nor, in my opinion, should an archetype be optimized to the extent of a PC that a player has put work into). Others, though, have serious errors, or glaring omissions that affect their ability to actually perform their purported function (covert ops, etc.).

There should be corrections on those at some point. *vague hand motions* Don't know what I'm allowed to say beyond that.

The lack of Wired at *all* is something I hadn't noticed, but now that it's mentioned, I'm all, like, "Well now that's just weird". I guess everyone assumed the Street Sam would have it and so didn't want to step on toes. Huh.

As an aside, are there any archetypes you think *should* have been in there but weren't, or ones thats houldn't be there at all? Not mechanicly (This one has error X, Y, and Z!) but thematicly. Thematically? I can never remember which is the right way to spell that. Word spoils a person, it does!

Though we should probably nudge this thread back to trolls at some point because, well, kinda the point. D'oh.

That's part of why I went out of my way to make sure Sledge had Wired Reflexes. It felt weird that no one else did, so I figured I'd give 'em to who I could (which isn't quite an archetype, but it was as close as I got to 'em).

BTW Crit, local guy's all agog at the GM screen. That thing's tres keen. Color me jealous.

It's posts like this that make me wish we had a thumbs up button or something like it

well, considering the actual capabilities of a technomancer, i think it would make sense to have a technomancer that doesn't focus on hacking at all, and actually just uses their abilities to support others. probably have it also be a face, and maybe a medic, to synergize with a desire to invest in mental attributes.

but that's just me.

(a more generic one would be to just have a good medic of some sort, though, technomancer or otherwise).

Maybe wired reflexes should be revisited, there could be a reason no one took it. Like they are no longer the cheap option so the increased essence cost is just a bad choice. Do people want to take the cyber out of cyberpunk so making wired reflexes the boosted reflexes of this edition is the intent. But 150,000 to 190,000 for rating 2 with 3 to 1 essence cost its a no brainer to never ever take wired reflexes in this edition on a min/max standpoint. You want to do it for flavor, sure, but its just a really bad buy.

The character archetypes are fairly complete. No purely tribal magician (and it would have been nice to see a mage based around ritual spellcasting, like the occult investigator is built around alchemical preparations). The mercenary archetype has been dropped because merc builds seem a bit too similar to street sammies, but I would have liked to see one with the same gritty feel of Wakshaani's sprawl ganger - a hard-bitten merc with a machine gun, an attitude, and lots of useful skills. The Bounty Hunter is a similar role, though. I would have liked to see an archetype like the Enforcer or the old Former Company Man; a shadowrunner who used to be an expediter/legbreaker for "the man", whether that be the megacorps or a syndicate.

Looking at the archetypes, troll-wise, we have a heavily augmented one (the tank), one that is tough but unaugmented and more gritty/street-level (the bounty hunter), and a more techie/cerebral one to go against type (the smuggler). I have some quibbles with them at the implementation level, but I think they show the range of trolls pretty well.


Wired reflexes: 1, especially used, is a good pick for a gutterpunk, but wired reflexes: 2 is just too close to synaptic booster: 2 in price to justify the massive Essence hit you take from it - especially since that toughness-boosting 'ware is cheap enough that even speed sammies will be tempted to tank up a bit. The main selling point of wired reflexes is being able to combine it with reaction enhancers to go over the +4 limit, but most players, at least going by this board, are lukewarm, at best, to wireless bonuses. And even if you go that route, it is probably better to do it in-game and buy it at a higher grade.

The Weapons Specialist has kinda stepped into the old Mercenary role, being essentially a vanilla human with great skills and a handful of guns. She's just a bit more subtle than he was. I do miss the former corp types dearly, however. Or mobster, in the case of the original former Company Man.

Wired 2 *is* expensive, though. It pretty much assures you a second action, and a good chance at a third, so it should be pricey, but, there should also be a fairly large cost differenctial between it and the bioware version, IMHO, to make up for the vast gulf of Essence and detectablity. Getting the balance just right is the tricky part.

I like our Troll archetypes though! As noted, you get a little of everything. Well, not so much a Troll Decker, but.

Ah, no. They're not just sample characters, they're *archetypes*. They're supposed to be examples of what typical shadowrunners are. Originally, Shadowrun didn't even have much in the way of character creation; you were supposed to start with an archetype and adapt it to your liking. The archetypes are supposed to be examples of standard shadowrunner types, not exercises in off builds.

And once again we are back to the total illogic of the price hike for SR5. Prices were perfect in SR4 for such things. Cheap Cyber with High Essence or Expensive Bio with Low Essence. Now all we have is too expensive everything, a good deal of which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. *shrug*