must decide B4 game tonight

should a char be able to use his task pool granted from an expert chipjack driver with chipped skills for all skillsofts, including knowsofts and activesofts.
(like it says he can in the book, Man&Machine pg 19)
or is it too unbalancing.

If it's from a level 2 Cerebral Booster giving a +1 Task Pool, then yes.

If it's from a Chipjack Expert Driver, yes to whatever soft is plugged into that Jack.

If it's from an Encephalon, no, only to Intelligence linked skills such as Eletronics, B/R, Demolitions, etc.

Sphynx

Am I to assume that you are contemplating house rules? I ask this because the rules are pretty clear (for the most part) about what the dice from the various Task Pools can be used on. I'll recap, to explain why I voted no.

Chipjack Expert Driver:
This gives a Task Pool equal to its rating, usable with the skillsoft that is in that chipjack. This is powerful enough - a character can start out with 12 dice for a wide range of skills, especially useful for skills like electronics and B/R skills. I see no reason why it would have any effect whatsoever on non-chipped skills.

Encephalon:
It boosts brain power - it not only gives a Task Pool for Intelligence-based skills (which includes technical, B/R, Knowledge, and Language), but also raises your effective Intelligence for determining the cost of raising skills, and adds dice to your Hacking Pool. I see no reason for it to improve things like shotguns, aikido, or other physical skills.

Cerebral Booster:
This is the only one where it is not explicitly stated, one way or another, which skills that the Task Pool can aid. Considering its similarity to the Encephalon, I would probably limit in the same way. A Cerebral Booster: 2 already adds one to Reaction and Combat Pool as it is. Letting players use it for combat or social skills would make it too overpowered, in my opinion.

Yes, as long as it is a chipped skill (activesoft, linguisoft, knowsoft - no datasofts) inserted into an applicable chipjack. If the XCD is assigned to a multi-slot chipjack, most GMs rule that this the task pool applies to only one of the slots and cannot be re-assigned. I personally rule that the entire chipjack has access to the pool, but only one slot at a time can use it (the 'foreground task' slot, so to speak).

I have a question when it comes to the CED, since you can load active soft skills from headware memory why is it that the CED only applies to chipped skills? i alwasy thought all teh chipjack did was read the soft into the memory that the skillwires are required to have. maybe im confused about something.

You're asking why Storage Memory isn't like Active Memory actually. Headware Mem isn't Active, and you don't have to buy it to get skillWires to work.

The chip is kind of like a CD of today and HeadWare is your PC's disk storage and SkillWires the RAM/Memory.

Basically, it's like having a good game on a CD which pauses once in awhile (or in my PC's case, OFTEN) to load something, and then they invented a CD reader which used 2 lasers to read the CD twice as fast. That's the closest analogy I can give for a CED.

Sphynx

Ahhhhhh... the light shines at last. Basically the CED lets it pick up the important info from the chip faster, and then load it as needed into the wires. Whereas with your headware memory it cant access it as fast or efficently. Even getting something like a CED for headware memory wouldnt make sence because it wouldnt know what was a Skill and what was junk in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks tons

Actually, up to GM interpretation, I know our group allows it, but you can use the interconnectivity rules to link headware mem to a chipjack with a CED in it. We just rule that if you do that, you can never ever put a chip into that slot, it's hardwired to the Router/Datajack/whatever.

Sphynx

Grrr! I hate the CED as described in Shadowrun. This was almost immediately house-ruled in my (and almost everyone else I've ever played with's) games.

My house rule is that you only get the CED pool for things that would normally give you pools.
Otherwise, every Mr Johnson you deal with will have Negotiations 8 slotted with a rating 8 CED, and negotiate you down to doing the run for free

Bit off topic, but what sorts of House Rules? We never House Ruled because it's so rare that we even see SkillSofts, more less someone willing to put that much essence (already having spent 1.2) into that vs a combat piece of ware. Admittedly we have the munchkin of all munchkin skillswire in our group now, but he had good intentions, and we all had fun helping him make the character.

Anyhows, what House Rules for the CED?

Sphynx

House rules like mine.
When I read it, my first thought was "well crap, why would anyone take anything other than the 1 million nuyen? You can get skillwire 8 before you hit availability problems, so hell, why not.
You can slot athletics 4 and stealth 4, plus your extra 4 from the CED and your extra die from enhanced articulation, and bang, instant ninja.
Run a 4 slot with 4 CEDs, and you can switch from that to Monowhip 6 and small unit tactics 2 with a free action. So now you're throwing 13 dice with your monowhip.
Meeting with the Johnson? Etiquette 6, Negotiations 6 and psychology (complementary knowledge skill) 6. Switch back and forth between the ett and neg skills as necessary, and double your pay on every run.

And all of this on a brand new character. It's ugly.

<edited out Katana, and replaced with monowhip, because your stats have nothing to do with the damage on the monowhip.>

First, limited to Rating 6 at Char Gen. However, ignoring that...

Why not? Rating 6 CED + Rating 6 SkillsWire takes up 1.90+ Essence (if you Alpha the CED and Slots), and costs 550,000+ for just the cyber (before buying softs).

You'd be better of playing an Adept with Improved skill if you wanted to 'munchkin' any of the combat stuff, that way you get to add Combat Pool (very few people put enough MP into the wires to DIMAP a rating 6 soft).

Switching back and forth is all fine and all, but there'll be times when you need the same skills together also.

We do House rule that it doesn't effect Charisma based skills, but that was a House Rule on Skillwires, not the CED.

I just don't see how it's unbalancing I guess. I can see it giving a very seemingly unfair advantage for a character going with an Electronics/Demolitions/Computers(non-decker)/BioTech kinda soft, but it's the only way to throw a number of dice in your 'specialty' that other people throw in theirs. I think htat balances, not unbalances the game.

Anyhows, maybe I'm missing something, for the costs, I'd personally never Soft a combat skill, and nearly everyone agrees that Charismas shouldn't be Softed anyhows.

Sphynx

You can specialize and be great at a couple of things as a phys-ad, but with the skill wire/CED, you can be great at anything, at 10,500 nuyen a skill.

Regarding task pool: I'm pretty sure it mentions in Rigger 3 somewhere which skills task pool can be used with. It's *most* intelligence linked skills, but not, for example, Launch Weapons.

If I but had the book I would give you a page reference, get back to me in a couple of days when my reprint arrives...

Yeah well, I use common sense in regards to skills like Launch Weapons. That skill does not get to access the Task Pool in my games.

I don't have the book with me at the moment either, but I would be interested in seeing what other Intelligence-based skills are not affected by the Task Pool.

"Activesofts replicate Active Skills such as Combat, Physical, Technical or Vehicle Skills." p. 295 SR3

Which leaves out both Magical and Social skills. Or so I've read it. I can't get my head around skillwires used for social skills...

I voted no because I thought you were talking task pools in general.

As far as the CED, it's still no. Only the chip in the slot with the CED, but it can be any skill.

Skillwires are *not* broken. The Nuyen-Factor is *extremely* high on these. I challenge anyone to provide a set of accurate numbers for a starting character that is imbalancing. Between the costs of the wires, the chips, and the availability changes from the chip mods its neigh impossible to do anything too crazy. Especially when you consider the tradeoff you make for sinking everything into your precious skillsystem. If anyone can find a broken example Ill swallow this post and respond with how to deal with it, until then its a pointless discussion.

hmm, for combat skills it only replaces the combat pool, for noncombat skills it basicly enables you to do more. and it looks like you have to have 1 pr chipjack and will not work if hte info is stored in headware memory so the essence cost will skyrocket if you want to run more then one skill with the system at hte same time. a multislot chipjack may solve this but then i would require the person to split the pool across the skills.

the real question is, when can one use dice pools, can they be used outside of combat? from what i recall there is no hard and fast yes/no answer to that question in any of the SR books. and if they can be used outside of combat, how fast do they refresh?

Skillwires R6 108 MP (324,000 )
Chipjack (A) (2,000 )
CED R6 (A) (60,000 )

Comes to about 400,000 . A skillsoft jukebox with 108MP and 10 slots is a further 21600. Chips for active skills are 10,800 each, so ten would be 108,000 . Total, that comes to 515,600 . That leaves us with Now, by voice command, you can change between 10 skills which give you 12 dice each. And you still have 4.16 essence and 484,400 left to buy wired reflexes and the like with.

The only hole in this is whether or not you can use a skillsoft jukebox with the CED. Because of the way it's described, I'd say you probably can (since all the jukebox itself does is change the chip connected to the chipjack). If that doesn't work, you can change out the chipjack for a four slot chipjack and add in three more CEDs. You can still only use one chip at a time with that setup, but it gets around the jukebox question.

Not a good example TG, with only 108 MP you'll never get to use the 'good stuff' from the skillsofts. Better example is in the character Skillz which can use quite a few dice in various skills, but isn't any better at his specialities than a combat or spell type is in their speciality.

Sphynx

I usually run the task pool something like artwinkulation. If you get a bonus to your roll via artwinkulation, then it is a physical task of some kind. Therefore, the task pool applies. I also make exceptions to this rule on a skill-by-skill basis.

Task poll from a CED, though, only applies the the chipped skill.


-- Dashifen --

Err... If the GM wants to get someone for something, he can always do it. That probably goes outside the scope of the discussion, though. Hell, how does the rigger know someone isn't carefully trapping the parts he buys? Or the decker's programs (well, there are rules for checking that out, but still)? Or the mage's spell formulae? And don't even think about the sammy going in for more cyberware. He's unconcious and having things implanted... that's where cranial bombs come from.

But it's kind of pointless to claim that these are balancing factors for the items themselves.

Bearclaw, did you add up the cost of that example? Do you know what it is? Ill tell you because I didnt see the costs listed there ... friggin huge. So huge I doubt you can start with it, or even aquire it in game for a long time. Tinkergnomes example is about the best case that can be made, but can only run one skill at a time. I really dont see how dropping half a million nuyen, to be able to chip one skill at 6+6 is broken. Youre effectivly converting 500000 nuyen into about 30 karma, and simply starting with 650000 rather than 1mil saves you almost enough bp to do the same. Yea, you get the chipjack driver, but you also spend essence so Id say its a fair enough trade. I have yet to ever cunch out a system that works (in a munchy way), and believe me Ive tried, multiple times. Its just too cost prohibitive to turn into the monster that everyone sees when they look at it.

I'll agree with the White Dwarf insofar as it's not that abusable. You have to make a character specificly to exploit the skillwires + CED system if you want to do it. You can have a 4 slot chipjack with 4 CEDs (all alpha) on a starting character. You can still only run one chip at a time. You could, at best, make a starting character who could run 2 at a time, (taking up an extra 300,000+ ). Is it broken? Well, it depends.

Where it really gets vicious is when you use it with skills which normally don't get pools. Like computer programming. With enhanced articulation, you're looking at 13 dice for computer programming rolls. To get that otherwise, you'd need programming at 10 (and a level 2 encephelon and cerbral booster).

In combat, you can only use one skill at a time, but a voice command is a free action, so you can use one chip, change and use another in the same turn. Probably, anyway.

I guess it all depends on what you're trying to do with it and what your GM thinks about you doing it.

@ Fortune and anyone else, regarding my old point about which skills Task Pool (not CED) dice can be used for: Acording to Rigger 3 revised (and the old one I think) they "may be used on Build/Repair tests, as well as any Computer or Electronics tests".

In fact, the way that's worded, I'd say it's more just reminding you that you can use it on those skills (which are useful to riggers), but it's not limited to only them. Otherwise it'd leave out things like Demolitions, Small Unit Tactics, Biotech, etc. Now, I'd agree that you can't use Task Pool on Launch Weapons, but otherwise I'd think all other active Intelligence-linked skills are fine. What does everyone else rule?

...and just for the record, I'd agree that the rules seem to allow you to use Activesofts for Social skills, but would still ban it all the same. On the other hand, Knowledge skills that might count as complimentary to natural Social skills would be okay in knowsofts.

If you want to out-negotiate your the Johnson, and you can't use skillwires, probably the best way to do it is to take Negotiation (Bargain) as high as you can. Even when it goes above your Charisma, increasing a specialisation is pretty cheap, and much more so if you have a Mnemonic Enhancer 3 (yes yes, let's leave that discussion for other threads). Then fire in cultured Tailored Pheromones 2 and you have +4 dice to add to that. Don't forget to boost your Intelligence sky high too.

Skillsofts, skillwires, and chipjacks are all legal to own and use. Aside from that, from a building perspective there's balance... it's just from a real world sense of fairness that someone who years of their life training for something isn't as good as someone with a 10k chip (and not just by a small margin, but by, literally, a factor of two). Of course, Joe probably has a medical licence and Bill doesn't. Which can be important. And there's no reason Bill couldn't use complementary knowsofts in a second chipjack or from headware memory.

I've given that example to my players, except I say that Joe is the guy they used to make the chip. It becomes even more infuriating to think that Bill is twice as good as the source of the chip.

So where did all that extra biotech information come from? It should be assumed that someone rolling 12 dice knows a great deal more about healing than someone with 6 dice, but there is no logical source for that knowledge or experience.

The CED is not really that unbalanced. It gives a Task Pool, meaning that you get those dice to use within that round, and they refresh the next round. Adepts with Improved Ability, by contrast, get the extra dice every time they use that ability, even if they attack three times in that round. Also, they get to add Combat Pool on top of that. Sure, you can do that with the CED if you get DIMAP skillsofts, but having to make a stun check every time you stop using the skillsoft is not fun. All they really do is let you save Combat Pool for dodging. Also, you are great at skills such as electronics, stealth, etc. For this, you make a significant sacrifice in Essense and Nuyen. You can still get other 'ware, don't get me wrong, but you won't be as tough as the tank sammie or as fast as the speed sammie, because you have tied up too much Essense in your skillwires.

@Fortune. Then you should feel anyone with just skillwires has an unfair advantage because they can be just as good as anyone by slotting a chip. But I never here you complaining about skillwires being broke.

Part of the reason they can be better is the knowledge is on chip. It is right there in one place. The guy that programmed it didn't do it in 3 seconds, but the info on the chip is ready quicker than that.

Think about anything you think you know well. Then think about when you use the skill you think you know well. Do you have to try to remember some parts? Do you have all formulae completely memorized? Do you look things up to make sure you are right? When you explain it to someone do you have to back up and explain a part you glossed over?

Well all that information is on that chip and easily accessable, and the CED accesses it even better.