I’ve been flipping though some of my books lately and reading up on the body mods in particular. First I read though Augmentation for 4E then Chrome Flesh for 5E.

Now I know ‘Time has passed” but I saw something that made me stop in my tracks and double check. Namely as the thread topic indicates, the cost for “The most common Cyber in the world”

Your basic Cybereyes

Augmentation
Cybereyes Basic system
Rating 1: 500
Rating 2: 750
Rating 3: 1000
Rating 4: 1500

Not too bad.

But then I was checking out Chromed Flesh and found....

Cybereyes Basic system
Rating 1: 4,000
Rating 2: 6,000
Rating 3: 10,000
Rating 4: 14,000

Now I know some prices go up and down a little bit but that’s a hella jump. From 500 for a standard off the shelf set in 4E to four GRAND in 5E?, why did the price of cyber eyes, repeatedly listed to be the most common in the world go up by a factor of 8 to 10 times the cost between the two editions?

Where in the ‘addons’ Didn’t change nearly as much
Low light went up by 50% but not 800%
Flare mop went from 750 to 1000

Isn’t this tech supposed to be “MORE” common and therefore mass produced and cheaper? But the increase in the basic eye just knocks your socks off.

Is this a Type-O? Or is there justification for 800% to 1000% Mark ups?


Also a question. I could swear I read some where that Cybereyes were so common that you could go get your meat ones ripped out on your lunch break and get new cybereyes put in, and be back at your desk by the end of your lunch break, but I can’t find it in the book. Anyone know which book it’s in and the page? I’ve looked and looked and can’t find it.

i believe the official semiexplanation is that nanobots all kinda got unreliable, so all kinds of stuff just had crazy changes in cost.

Let me translate Catalyst Speak for everyone: "We had to make Shadowrun more Grimderp and therefore had to really screw with the prices of gear."

So just use the old prices as it makes no sense for products already on the market to inflate by 800% to 1000%, While the "Higher tech" Addons only go up a fraction of that?

Or don't bother and break out your 4E stuff instead of buying into 5E. It's a wash, to be honest.

As I've said before, the new edition has so many changes and ret-cons that it is better to consider it a roughly similar but alternate universe to previous editions, and make new characters.

Correct
Especially Ini-Enhancing 'ware and Skillwires are (up to 10 x) more expensive than in 4A Ed
Simply because ....(Whim of the developer who want to make a difference to 4the ed....similar to Trump who wants to make a difference to Obama ? )
I have no Idea why exactly

with a shouldershruggin' Dance
Medicineman

I was going to say it's because they were trying to relive the glory days of SR1 through 3 which were obviously the bestest ever days but then I looked up the prices for cyber eyes from those editions. 5000¥ in every edition until SR4. Then the dip for SR4 and the stupid rise in SR5.
The higher price in editions 1 though 3 could be justified by the fact characters could start with 1,000,000¥ so 5000¥ for some eyes wasn't too big a deal. SR4 cut the starting cash dramatically so prices of gear needed to fall as well.
Then in rolls SR5 with crazy high prices but without the corresponding increase in starting cash. As seems the case with many things in SR5, they didn't look at the whole situation when making choices on what to change and how.

The one thing I do like about SR 5 is that Positive and Negative qualities are not on a multiple of 5 Karma (I always use the Karma Build system). Some Positive qualities are overpriced at 10 Karma, but too cheap at 5 Karma. This way things can be properly priced.

As for the Matrix and "Wireless Bonuses"... yeah, those are a complete wash.

Well, of course they had to. Otherwise it'd help break their "Everything Has Its Cost" theme they were aiming for.

There are actually a few things I really like about SR5, this being one of them. Without intending to go on a tangent, there are a number of good ideas incorporated that I elaborated on elsewhere. Even the wireless bonuses could have been good, if they weren't used so hamfisted.

The one thing I absolutely despise though is the stupid need to frontload cyberware and other high-priced gear (like e.g. decks) again, because there is no realistic chance to add or upgrade a major system for a cybered character after creation, at least if you follow the completely useless suggestions for payment.
This creates a conundrum. Either ignore the payment suggestions and have runners earn millions to keep an actually fulfilling curve of progression, or ... use the suggestions and just accept, that mundane characters are way shafted in their overall progression, and should they manage to lose some of that gear, just make a new character.

Yes, I freely admit, that some gear is underpriced in SR4 - especially commlinks - but this is easier to fix than just recreating wide swathes of the SR5 equipment books, or have egregiously exaggerated money rewards.

Personally I like the cyber in cyberpunk too much to make the samurai archetype obsolete by such fundamental design decisions.
But that's something that each table has to decide for themselves, and I'm sure there are other acceptable solutions and prorizations.

Anyone got a heads up on the second part of my question?

"Also a question. I could swear I read some where that Cybereyes were so common that you could go get your meat ones ripped out on your lunch break and get new cybereyes put in, and be back at your desk by the end of your lunch break, but I can’t find it in the book. Anyone know which book it’s in and the page? I’ve looked and looked and can’t find it."

Found it. Page 70 of SR4A: "While some cyberware is so common that it can be implanted during lunch break at a corner bodyshop and is no longer remarkable to the general public (especially cybereyes and datajacks)..."



Agree that some commlink prices were just plain cheap. It should be like Agents. The first three levels are cheap and then afterwords... let's just say you better have a healthy checking account balance.



Trust me about liking cyber... I put cyber in almost ALL of the characters I write up. I mean even the once combat medic mage I was putting together had two points of cyber/bioware. I even put cyber in any technomancers that I stat up (Thank You Chummer!)

Can't have those pesky mundanes have enough toys to compete with the awakened obviously . .

This is indeed your best bet. Mine some bits of 5e for use in a 4e campaign. Actually running 5e? No thanks.

The more I read the new stuff, the more that's the exact conclusion I'm coming to. Data-mine some of the 5E stuff for use but stick with 4E

It's what I did for a time when I ran what I called a SR4.5a campaign.

That's blindingly obvious when they got rid of the half Essence cost for the type of 'ware you have less of discount.

yeah, i suppose i could've made that more clear.

i don't know about completely going with 4e on everything... some stuff really did have problems, after all, and while i certainly don't think 5e did a great job of fixing them (and in some cases instead of fixing anything it made things so much worse), i can't argue that there weren't problems in need of fixing.

There were indeed problems with 4th. I don't think anyone would disagree there. 5th wasn't the solution we were looking for, for many, if not most of those issues though. So you just do what it seems many of us did. Grab the best bits from 5th that fix the issues you have the most problems with and roll them into 4th and keep running your newly improved 4.5 SR game.

Anyone have a list of their issues someplace and what they've pulled in from 5e (another topic probably)?

Off the top of my head:

• Low cost of commlinks and related hacking material - It's basically very easy for everyone to have their own automated pocket hacker
  SR5 overshot here in the other direction, beggaring deckers should they ever manage to have their deck demolished (or God forbid, decide to buy a new one)
• Low rate of drain, as well as overcasting issues. Basically, overcasting is encouraged.
  Drain is higher in SR5, but still manageable, IIRC. Good fix here, IMO.
• Lack of options for physical adepts - Bioware implants are in some very important cases better to take than investing the power points. Compare e.g. muscle toner and synaptic boosters.
  SR5 went a step in the right direction with magic tattoos containing powers.

I'm sure, there are other issues, and there's a number of interesting options in SR5 that are unrelated to real problems.

Mind you, I haven't really houseruled my SR4, since I'm playing very rules light and with players who aren't optimization obsessed most of the time, so these issues usually don't come up.