While perusing the sourcebook and the like and taking a look at the cyberlimbs, does anybody agree with me about how nerfed up they are?  Especially with getting more than one?  Honestly, to me, the rules are a little skewed and nerfed up.  I was curious if NS was going to have a houserule on cyberlimbs and the like like a great deal of people on other boards are harping about or if we are going to go with what is in the sourcebook?

Skewed and nerfed up!!!

What?

The beta will not have houserules is the official policy that's been quoted to me ad infinitum.

While full limbs are kinda suck, they're much the same as they were in SR3 - they give you a lot of extra body, some neat toys and hiding places, and the potential for some fairly sick attributes.  A cyberlimb is, after all, the only way to exceed the racial maximum in SR4.  While the price probably isn't worth it to most people, messing with it will only cause problems.

And partial cyberlimbs are almost obligatory for sammies now - can you say cyberarm gyromount?  While full limb people will be rare (just like they were in SR3), there will be more than enough partial replacements to make up for it.

The bottom line is that the system makes cyberlimbs sorta meh on purpose.  It wasn't an accident in SR3, and it wasn't an accident in SR4.  There is no reason to fix a result that is fully intended and realized by the system.  And rumor has it that Augmentation will have rules for full borgs that will make cyberlimbs a lot more worthwhile, anyway.

Here's an example sheet I cooked up in a matter of minutes w/ Deagann's. It's not remotely as twinky as it could be either, since I made a point of making him athletic enough to overcome the his otherwise weak physical stats and dumped points into maxing out attribute scores that could really be much better spent on skills. He also could always use obvious lower limbs to save ridiculous amounts of essence. If you don't feel like reading it, all it really says is that cyberarms at least, can rock pretty hard. They let you take an otherwise feeble human and turn him into a veritable combat monster w/ a not too shabby 6 agility while providing unmatched recoil compensation and a concealed fingertip compartment monofilament whip. He also gains a quite nifty +2 bonus to his physical damage track. Not a bad deal at all for the bps.

As for the other limbs, yeah, they're not so great, (especially for already buff metas) but that can easily be rectified through upcoming gear books. And you know what? Cyberlegs are still probably better than say, reaction enhancers. Besides, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with having a bit of incentive to hold onto your meat limbs. This may be cyberpunk, but I don't think having reason to regard prosthetics as a mixed blessing is a bad thing.

Mundane Human

Attributes
Body: 5
Agility: 1
Reaction: 5 (7)
Strength: 1
Charisma: 3
Intuition: 5
Logic: 1 (3)
Willpower: 5

Edge: 6
Initiative: 12
Essence: 1.25  

Knowledge skills: Free points.
Language: English

Positive Qualities
Ambidextrous
 
Negative Qualities
Weak Immune System
Allergy unc/mild
Addiction, mild
 
Cyberware
2xSynthetic Full Arm w/ + Agility (Rating 3) +Cyberarm Gyromount
 (total stats w/ arms, body 3, agility 6, strength 3)
1 of the limbs is loaded with an internal Fingertip Compartment containing a Monofilament Whip
Wired Reflexes 2 (Alpha)

Biowares
Cerebral Booster 2
Synthacardium 3

Active Skills
Stealth Group: 4
Athletics Group: 4 (+3 bonus to tests from Synthacardium)
Exotic Melee Weapon : 4 (Monofilament Whip)
Automatics (Submachine Guns) : 6
Perception : 4
 

 
Weapons
2x Ingram Smartgun X
20x EX-Explosive Rounds (10 shots)
6x Spare Clips
 
Armors
Armor Jacket
Chameleon Suit w/Thermal Dampening (Rating 6) Nonconductivity (Rating 6) Chemical Protection (Rating 6)
Helmet (Regular)

Vehicles
Suzuki Mirage (Racing Bike)
 
Commlinks
Commlink : Renraku Sensei
OS : Renraku Ichi
Commlink : Meta Link
OS : Renraku Ichi
Datasoft (Rating 2)
Mapsoft (Rating 2)
Knowsoft (Rating 2)
Skinlink
Subvocal Microphone
Trodes
Electronic Paper
 
Equipments
Fake Sin (Rating 4)
2x Fake Sin (Rating 1)
4x Fake License (Rating 4)
Contact Lenses
+Smartlink
1 bp worth of misc. crap free to spend

3 months low lifestyle

8 points worth of contacts.

No house rules during beta. There, I said it yet again. We'll play SR4 and see how it works before we even consider the possibilty of making any tentative resolutions in the direction of house rules.

And Cyberlimbs with armor, and whatnot, woohoo!  Plus you buy into cyberlimbs now much like mages buy into magic.  It is sorta meh right now, cause you can't go all the way, but it really makes your character much more limitless in the future.  Why, by tomorrow's karma and money you'll be wishing you had cut off your own arms and gotten metal replacements.  Now, if you only you could reach your wallet.

I'm rather Anti-House-Rule most of the time. Call me a RPG-Conservative, but I tend to see them do more harm. (Horrible, terrible harm.) Trying to improve the system than the system does on it's own.

Save but in the rare case that the game has a VERY large gap with no rule to fill it, and the publisher releases nothing?

I would prefer not making anothe rmuddled mess by changing whatever whomever pleases at the moment.

Cyberlimbs are indeed pretty shit-tastic.  I think it has roots in Shadowrun selling out to the Fantasy camp, and ignoring the Cyberpunk side of the aisle.  I suspect that Augmentation will not effectively address this.

But as I'm left with the impression that Augmentation will be released before we go Beta, the problem should be at least partially mitigated before you have to deal with it.  And if it becomes an issue, as I understand it, House-Rules haven't been completely taken off the table, once we pass Beta.

-CM

FanPro list Augmentation as a second quarter 07 release http://srrpg.com/products/upcoming_products.shtml being that the first quarter releases are still unavailable I would not expect to see it until sometime in the fall at the earliest.

Maybe *Gasp* Sawing off your own arm and replacing it with something mechanical isn't exactly the most logical idea around?

No, no, seriously. I'm confused why people want cyberlimbs to be the alpha and the omega. They're machines connected to your body, they rely on your frame. High strength cyberlimbs can't be as powerful if your own muscles and frame aren't built to support them.

Cyberlimbs aren't as efficient or compatible as your original limbs, even if you can get things installed into them, the 'whole body' ware just seems like a better option to me.

So why is it that suddenly having a cyberleg should make you a god? Anyone?

Smells of a lack of logic.

It has nothing to do with logic, it has to do with theme.  Shadowrun is lumped in as a Cyberpunk game, so people expect cyberlimbs to be awesome like they are in the Cyberpunk genre.

Problem is, Shadowrun isn't really Cyberpunk.  Dwarves, Elves, Trolls, and Orks?  Magic?  It's D&D in the future.  If you don't like it, play another game, don't try to make it something it's not.

D&D of the future yes! Fireball casting elves with machineguns. That was my impression upon seeing the gamebook cover. It reminded me of this old D&D module, the one where you play an anti-paladin with some ork soldiers that fight off WW2 German soldiers from the Eastern Front. Those flamethrowers really fried the orks.

Anti-Paladin = Shadowrunner
Orks = Gangers
WW2 German Soldiers = Corporate security/LS

I don't want cyberlimbs to be the 'alpha and the omega'.  I'd just like for them to not be useless.

I'm sorry, but that clunky, rediculously large cyberarm shouldn't be worse than muscle replacement.  Clearly, it's not a body performance issue since muscle augmentation and replacement can be used to raise an attribute above 6.  Especially since 'body' can't really be that much strain.  Really.  So, apparently, a cyberlimb enhancement of 4 or higher is so heavy that you need a cybertorso, and even having titanium laced to your bones and muscle replacement won't work.  I don't follow that logic.

Still, you'd think that once the torso was replaced the performance of the limbs would go up.  Well, it does, but you're still better off with bioware?  Sorry, not buying it. 

It also goes against game balance where the completely obvious and socially hindering route isn't as good as the less obvious route that has less drawbacks.  Including being lower in essence cost.

It's just a shame that they have all of these cool pictures of folks with cyberarms that you know suck game wise.

Ugh. No, just no.

Cyberlimbs are going to be a lot harder to balance than people here seem to think, because they lend themselves to either going full on tin man or else having nothing but a couple of handy partial mods (since as Tear has pointed out time and time again, gyromounts are worth their weight in gold). Remember they're not an augment for your meat, they're a replacement, so people can and will build their characters accordingly. BP for BP, four cyberlimbs are the cheapest way for humans to get effective stats of 6 in strength and agility as long as you leave your natural physical attributes at 1. Muscle bioware is great and all but to get you to a 6 or higher in strength and agility on a human you still need to spend a minimum of 60 bp so you can have natural attributes to boost that high to begin with. On the other hand, a boosted obvious cyberarm costs -5- bp and a point of essence, and that's with high body, a tiny bit of armor, an extra physical damage track and a Gyromount thrown in. Granted, to reliably have your high cyber-attributes count for a test, you would need to have 4 limbs, but that will grant you -4- extra physical damage track and still only costs a total of 20 bp or so for effective physical attributes equivalent to 67 points worth of muscle boosting bioware and meat attributes, and it would cost an entire 80 or more bp to exceed the capabilities of cyberlimbs, depending on if you use bioware or cyberware to do it, and in the case of muscle replacements, you'd only be saving 2 essence to do it, which depending on the build being used may not even matter that much. Really, the only thing prohibitive about multiple cyberlimbs is the social ramifications and, most of all, the admittedly hefty essence loss. Make cyberlimbs any better and people like me, NES or Tear will probably utterly break them out of sheer morbid, twinky curiousity. Their pure economy is nothing to sneeze at. You can easily near max an attribute or net an entire rating 4 skill group for that kind of bp savings.


[EDIT] I didn't mention this earlier because I had to dig my books out first to make sure I had it right (I was operating on memory and a character generator earlier), but you're allowed to use the average body score of all of your limbs when resisting physical damage as well. Which means a natural body score of 1 can easily become an augmented 4 with multiple cyberlimbs due to your 26 body dice being dividing amongst 6 "limbs" (2 arms, 2 legs, skull & torso). So that's even more potential bp savings, although I would think a called shot to the body could easily reduce you back to resisting with a single body die. Some gms may even allow you to use the rounding rule to wear armor heavier than a leather jacket without penalty on a 1 body character, since clothes can obviously cover more than just your torso and it's not exactly a task that requires careful coordination of all involved limbs.

Like it or not, the human body is an ingenious mechanical device.  It uses tiny molecular parts operating in tandem on a huge scale to yield an incredibly high degree of efficiency.  The systems that make up our bodies have been tweaked and refined over millions of years by relentless natural selection.  That said, it's not surprising that you get more bang for you buck by enhancing what you already have instead of just chopping it off.  It's much harder to build a fully functional arm from scratch than it is to improve an existing arm.