The thing is, its a fake limb, it has nothing to do with the body, it is a piece of machinery that you install after having the piece of meat removed. Why should it be limited to to what your natural body/agil/str rating is? Why is a char with a low agility making there arms better twinkery? It doubt it affects there infiltration skill unless they are crawling and even then your average it out.

Also your idea for a rule for whole body test has been covered by the creators already. Re-read the section on cyberlimbs in the core book, I'm to lazy to provide a page number but its in the gear section there some italiscized print and shouldn't be to hard to find. The extent of the rule is if your using the limb alone you use the limbs modified value, shooting a gun with a high agil limb, hitting someone with a strong one etc...if your doing something like infiltration you add the limbs and round or use the base score depending if the limbs involved.

My suggestions were with the caveat that "...if I were running a campaign..." which of course I am not.

So it's just so much more smoke then can blow up their...

Anyway, I'm not one for house rulings either.  At least not in general until something within the system is found to be truly broke. And even then I'm a minimalist.  You do realize that even the developers of this game, who no, are not perfect, stated that their system is meant to be tweaked to whatever play style suits the group the best.  So we're all entitled to our opinions. 

We'll see how beta runs.

Quite simply, in my opinion, it's an abuse of a mechanic and is an error on the part of the developers.

I read the book.  I know.  My suggestion was that the rule be applied at all times, meaning you would always use an averaged attribute score.

As for why a particular cyberlimb should be proportional to the character's natural attributes (IMHO) - let's not go the route of trying to bring real world physiology or physics into this.  Oh, okay, maybe I will... Shooting a firearm, just like throwing a punch, in real life involves MUCH more than just your firing hand or your singular closed fist.  Pulling a trigger and hitting what you aim at is all about body position, proper grip, trigger pull, breathing, proper sight alignment, etc. etc.  Landing that perfect hook involves throwing your whole body into it from the hips, etc. etc.  We could go round and round about real world physiology and physics, so let's not, because that's just stupid when we're talking about a paper and dice game.

Yet, it still rankles me that this is so blatantly in violation of what would make logical sense, seeing as how a cyberlimb isn't its own separate autonomous entity beholden to no mere meat body that it might happen to be attached to.  Hmm...

I don't see how its an abuse its an expensive piece of cyberware financially and essence wise that conveys a bonus when you dump more money into it. Thats pretty much half the ware in the game.

I for one think the creators of the game came up for a solution to where you bring in real world physics and throwing a punch or shooting a gun and the skills involved. Its the skills section of the book, it governs all the stuff like lining up the sights and twisting your hips when you throw a punch. That doesn't mean the arm throwing the punch isn't three times as quick as a normal humans arm (if you consider agility with speed) and strong as juiced up ork. Doesn't mean the hand holding the gun isn't robotic, therefore not prone the failings of a meat limb, and tied directly into the smartlink in your head which in itself is a type of targetting computer.

The build I came up with the arms alone take up 1/3rd of your essence and basically gives a bonus to combat skills and thats really is it, even when you round it for infiltration and the like if applicable it doesn't help enough to even net 1 extra succes I don't believe. It also takes up over 1/5th (66000+) of your starting gear bps. I don't see how thats twinky or unbalance its right in line with a guy getting muscle toner and muscle replacement 3 as far as cash costs. The only real differance is you can do it out of CG while you can only get toner or replacement 2, and it ignores the base stats which makes since, considering your replacing an arm with a piece of machinery.

D&D 3.5 is a lot stupider and more nonsensical than SR4...so how come people are attacking SR4's rules so vehemently?

Just about anyone who's been paying attention for the last few decades knows D&D can be as silly as hell. It's self-evident. I mean, the game gave us modrons! Modrons for god's sake! So arguing about its mechanics seeming unrealistic or items/classes being unbalanced is the sort of thing that quickly results in threads filled with lolcats and lagomorphs with pancakes atop their heads. Meanwhile, Shadowrun bears the heavy burden of dealing with things we may be personally familiar with (like tear gas) and then does seemingly crazy things with them (like letting tear gas quickly overflow into physical damage). Besides, if we don't call the devs on their bullshit every once in a while we may very well just end up with Dungeons & Dunkelzahn instead of the game we know and love. Criticism can be beneficial.

I was trying to think of something more to add but this has pretty much reached beating a dead horse phase so...I like pizza and think I may have some for lunch.


That will be all.

Everything about Shadorwun's theme IS Dungeons and Dunkelzahn. It's just the rules and the style that really make it different.

I mean, at the end of the day, you still end up ubertwinking your Elven mage and fighting a band of Orks who want to kill you and take your shit.

That's sort of answering your own question though, isn't it? Shadowrun players don't want to be playing D&D or else they'd be off playing D&D. The ruleset and it's various quirks are a huge part of what defines the setting and as such people will debate new additions that threaten the status quo vigorously. That's why the Hand Of God rule is often such a fiercely debated topic; permanent death coupled with a high mortality rate relative to heroic fantasy games is something of a sacred cow in many SR circles.

Repeatedly beats a dead horse about the head and neck with a wooden baseball bat, while screaming obscenities in an irish accent. 

If you're going to bother with the accent you really ought to use a shillelagh. No sense in doing things halfway.

Hmmm very valid point, I'm currently watching baseball and hence the baseball bat sprang to mind.

Cricket, you should be watching cricket.