One of my players this past month was getting independent cybereyes installed in his gun-hand (so that he can shoot around corners without exposing himself, or simply look around). Somehow, this lead to a discussion of how many independent cybereyes you can fit in a character. The quick answer was:

Each independent pair costs 0.5 essence. If it is alpha grade, then it is 0.4 essence per pair, so you would end up with 14 pairs and a single cybereye, or a total of 31 eyes (including the 2 natural eyes).

This lead to some chuckles in the group. Then I mentioned that independent cybereyes in a cyberlimb cost only 0.2 essence. Potentially, you could end up saving essence if you installed them all in the cyberlimb.

So imagine you had a pair of alpha grade cyberlegs. Each contains 18 ECU, and can take up to 9 pairs of cybereyes. So that would be:

1.6 essence for the alpha grade cyberlegs (at the cost of 300k )
2.88 essence for 18 pairs of alpha grade independent cyberleg eyes (at the cost of 540k )
1.2 essence for 3 pairs of alpha grade independent cybereyes (at the cost of 90k )
0.3 essence for a single cybereye (at the cost of 10k ).
for a total of 45 eyes (including the 2 natural eyes) at the total cost of 940k

Note that you would get similar results with:

2.0 essence for cyberlegs (at the cost of 150k )
3.2 essence for 20 pairs of alpha grade independent cyberleg eyes (at the cost of 600k )
0.4 essence for 1 pair of alpha grade independent cybereyes (at the cost of 30k )
0.3 essence for a single cybereye (at the cost of 10k ).
for a total of 45 eyes (including the 2 natural eyes) at the total cost of 790k Much cheaper!

There's nothing in the rules that prevent people from doing this at character creation (because it is under the million nuyen resource maximum), other than the sheer stupidity of it all. *grin*

I see.

Now, fit eyes lasers in every single one of them...

And you have a lot of tiny little holes burned through your trousers!

Well, thank you for . . . that.
Thankfully, we'll never have to wonder about that again.

I for one an looking forward to the background explaining the 50 or so eyes looking out of this guys pants.

And talk about awkward on a date....

Yeah, you could never call the trouser snake the "eyeless wonder" ever again.

*ponders* Ugh...how many other tasteless jokes are there?

Actually, wouldn't you have to put some kind of link in the brain to allow the cyber eyes to work? I can't believe I'm taking this to the next level...

The essence cost for cybereyes already figures in that they are connected to the optical center of your brain.

Yes, but that is if they are in the normal place. We're talking extra eyes here - wouldn't you need extra hardware to help with the extra sensory data? Not to mention the fiberop wires going from the new eyes to the brain.

I would think you would need a dataport at the very least.

Man, that was funny. I had a player who once tried to do something similar. He wanted to make a virtual crown of eyes around his head so that no one could ever sneak up on him. Without even getting into whether it was allowed by the book, I told him flatly, "No. You'll not be making such lameness in our game. Make a real character."

Independant cybereyes are the only way to get an internal tool laser without houserules.

Crimson Jack, I think you were a little harsh on the guy considering the kinds of fun-loving stupidity that any shadowrun must entail. The reaction of NPCs should have been more than enough balance.

Well, we have apparently figured out how one could re-create the good old "Robe of Eyes" out of the 3.5 DMG.

Downside being that he'd have to be largely naked to make it work.

So it'd be a Disrobe of Eyes...
...

What?

hmmm... I can see someone wanting to install eyes all over his body, the type of psycho guy who wants to recreate his body after some demon of legend who has eyes all over their body. (yeah, yeah, there's that one character in Yu Yu Hakusha, errr, did I spell that anime show correctly?)

is there a total limit to the amount of stuff u can put in a pair of eyes? i know that theres an amount of freebies in there, but i dont know of a total cap on them either.

I suppose the eyes have it... or rather, it has the eyes?

Could you use a router to record any data the non-active eyes are "seeing" without incurring any disorientation penalties?

Nope, you have to have an opticam to record visual data of any kind. Think of it as a transducer or translator to machine language. And I would allow an independant eye with a opticam to record even if the cybereye is not transmitting to the brain (though you would need to route that data somewhere).

hyzmarca, you CAN get every vision system in a single pair. It just starts costing essence again after the first .5.

Nope, there is a 1.2 essence limit to the amount of cyber that can fit into the human eye socket. I would debate if cybereyes count toward this, or if 'free' essence counts, but there is a limit. It's in M&M

I'm pretty sure that the 1.7 you get from the 1.2 & free essence can fit everything if you also get high freq hearing aug. I'd have to double check though. Maybe not flare comp, but thats not a vision mode.

IIRC, the 'free' .5 is included in the 1.2 Essence limit.

I see there's a lot of you not taking this seriously, and just making eye jokes about it. But this isn't funny, it's visionary. Instead of seeing only the puns, we could do so much more. Let's look at it another way. What if he sailed on a ship? They he could shout "Eye, matey!"

...

What?

I see.

....

what?

Of course, if you don't limit yourself to human looking eyes, you can probably fit alot more stuff in.

I can see some characters becoming vessels for Aazhvat soon…

~J

....AND you could make those eyes all big and white, add some cheesy effects and pretend you're from a very cool anime....

Perish the thought.