Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: ZeroSum on <10-13-19/1043:58>
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Simple question: If I buy a Delta grade Cyberarm, do I also have to pay for Delta grade cyberlimb accessories?
Follow-up non-rules question: is it just me or does it seem like cyberlimb attributes starting at 2 and having to spend capacity on enhancements make cyberlimbs fairly non-competitive for high-attribute characters?
A character with Agility 6 would have to spend 20k per limb to increase Agility from base 2 to 6, taking up 4 capacity. A synthetic arm only has 8 capacity total, which means that if you wanted to increase agility up to your augmented maximum you would spend another 20k and all of the capacity of the limb. For obvious limbs, this would represent more than half of the total capacity of 15 for an arm.
I guess customized cyberlimbs are not a thing in 6th Edition (yet)
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Follow-up non-rules question: is it just me or does it seem like cyberlimb attributes starting at 2 and having to spend capacity on enhancements make cyberlimbs fairly non-competitive for high-attribute characters?
No, definitely not just you. I much preferred the SR5 approach (where increasing STR/AGI to the racial maximum was cheap and took no capacity, and only above that did it get spendy.) I don’t think cyberlimbs needed nerfing like that.
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No, definitely not just you. I much preferred the SR5 approach (where increasing STR/AGI to the racial maximum was cheap and took no capacity, and only above that did it get spendy.) I don’t think cyberlimbs needed nerfing like that.
In fact, while I'm on this subject...
I've been pondering lately houseruling cyberlimbs to be more powerful, not less. I don't much like how you can burn 7-8 points of Essence (before alpha/beta/delta mods) getting four limbs plus torso and head and be rewarded by a mere handful extra boxes of physical track. It feels underwhelming, and thematically off that someone who is quite literally 80-90% metal isn't more resilient than that. Not to mention recovering from damage taken should be a matter of being repaired rather than being healed, and I wouldn't mind a mechanic that reflects that.
Not quite sure how to handle it mechanically, but my dream goal would be that samurai could be split into one of two equally viable archetypes - speed demons loaded up with reflex mods, and tank demons loaded up with cyberlimbs. (Essence cost precluding anyone other than cyberzombies doing both.)
In 5e this is tricky because the already-substantial soak pools don't leave a lot of room to make cyberlimbs even tougher. You could make them give hardened armour, maybe, but you'd have to be careful. 6e would be more amenable to this idea -- you could just add dice to the soak roll.
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[...] 6e would be more amenable to this idea -- you could just add dice to the soak roll.
I like that. Something like "For each rating of Armor your Defense Rating and Damage Resistance dice pools are increased by 1".
Alternatively, Hardened Armor already confers two major benefits; it's Rating are automatic hits on damage resistance, while modified DV less than AV is just discarded.
From a min/max perspective, it looks like the most armor you can gain is ... Unlimited? You can basically add armor for the entire capacity of a limb. OK, so that would need to be curtailed or limited somehow. Otherwise you could end up with AV 60 or some craziness.
Didn't 4th have a provision that each full limb could take a maximum of 3 ratings of Armor Value? Include Torso in that and max AV would be 15. Even that is too high, as you'd automatically soak 7 hits making you impervious to fragmentation grenades and rockets. So Hardened Armor might be too powerful, unless you do Rating / 2 as hardened or something.
I like having the option of going ultrafast or ultratough as a street samurai. I feel like there isn't really an option currently that makes you super tough, but you can be tweaked out to the gills on speed. I'm all for more options, though this is probably better discussed in the House Rule thread now that I think about it.
So... My original question still stands regarding cyberlimb accessories and limb grade. I have no idea what the RAW is here.
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though this is probably better discussed in the House Rule thread now that I think about it.
Yeah, you're right -- sorry for OT :D
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Simple question: If I buy a Delta grade Cyberarm, do I also have to pay for Delta grade cyberlimb accessories?
Book doesn't say.
But this was the case in SR5, it is plausible that it will be for SR6 as well.
is it just me or does it seem like cyberlimb ... fairly non-competitive for high-attribute characters?
It is not just you.
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is it just me or does it seem like cyberlimb ... fairly non-competitive for high-attribute characters?
It is not just you.
Just my opinion: but seems like works as intended. In a meta sense, if you already have high stats but want the toolkit from a cyber limb: then you're having to balance that against even higher still dice pools. If you have high stats and you want even higher still, then you'll go with Muscle Replacement/Augmentation/Toner rather than a cyberlimb. Cyberlimbs' niche seems to be for people with LOW stats: they're an available alternative to Muscle Rep/Aug/Toner.
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Just my opinion: but seems like works as intended. In a meta sense, if you already have high stats but want the toolkit from a cyber limb: then you're having to balance that against even higher still dice pools. If you have high stats and you want even higher still, then you'll go with Muscle Replacement/Augmentation/Toner rather than a cyberlimb. Cyberlimbs' niche seems to be for people with LOW stats: they're an available alternative to Muscle Rep/Aug/Toner.
Even in case of characters with low stats, I'm not sure the mechanics agree with you.
A character with Agility 2 and Strength 2 can get a single, obvious arm with Agility 3 for 20k. It will only affect actions taken with that one arm. OR, he can get Muscle Replacement R1 for 30k, and get Agility AND Strength +1 that will always be active.
This is the problem with cyberlimbs; they are too expensive for what they do when compared with other pieces of ware, and the math does not scale any better once you go higher at all. You cannot even, by RAW, get a cyberarm with Agility 10 if your base agility is 2 because, and I quote, "maximum augmented increase of 4 is in place" for attribute increase accessories.
Objectively, cyberlimbs are present in the setting but their implementation in SR6 means no runner would ever take them unless they had to. That's not necessarily a bad thing; lots of things exist primarily for NPCs (take a GMC Banshee, for example). The biggest issue is just that cyberlimbs are objectively sub-optimal choices, so unless you're specifically not playing the numbers game and strictly focus on role playing over roll playing, there are very few reasons to ever take a cyberlimb.
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unless you're specifically not playing the numbers game and strictly focus on role playing over roll playing, there are very few reasons to ever take a cyberlimb.
I'd argue that even role playing, there's few reasons to take them. In-game characters are surely aware of the rules, in the sense that they are the reality they live in. If cyberlimbs are underwheming mechanically for us, it logically means they're shitty in-universe as well, and players and characters should both prefer to avoid them. Assuming you need a new limb, why not get a cloned bio one (for 0 Essence cost if we follow 5e) and then bone lacing / muscle toner it?
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is it just me or does it seem like cyberlimb ... fairly non-competitive for high-attribute characters?
It is not just you.
Just my opinion: but seems like works as intended. In a meta sense, if you already have high stats but want the toolkit from a cyber limb: then you're having to balance that against even higher still dice pools. If you have high stats and you want even higher still, then you'll go with Muscle Replacement/Augmentation/Toner rather than a cyberlimb. Cyberlimbs' niche seems to be for people with LOW stats: they're an available alternative to Muscle Rep/Aug/Toner.
This is how I view it with RAW. I still think the cost is to high though. I admit this comes more from a story, atmosphere driven mindset than a mindset aiming towards more realism.
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Ive always disagreed with how cyber limbs replace your natural attributes in the first place.
I mean, its not like if you replace your natural eyes or ears with cyberversions, that you suddenly have intuition 2 on sight and listen checks. With the option of upgrading your intuition stat for sight and listening to your natural stat, and maybe even beyond.
Regarding the grade stuff for items in cyber limbs, I presume by RAW that yes the rest should have the same grade and cost multipier.
But for stuff like implanted links and decks, the commlink itself and the deck doesnt come in grades. So you cant get a 50% discount on your 400k deck... at least that was the general consensus in 5th (I think).
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I think part of the problem stems from Shadowrun’s present day design team trying to serve two masters simultaneously... and as a result, failing each of them.
On the one hand, Shadowrun’s current designers want to stay as true to earlier editions as they can. After thirty years, the game’s universe has become a fully fleshed out reality of its own and they want to respect that. But the earliest days of Shadowrun were based not on “the future” but on what people in the Seventies and Eighties thought “the future” would be. Remember, in William Gibson’s Neuromancer — which is an obvious inspiration for Shadowrun’s first and second editions — there are no cellphones, there are no drones, and “three megabytes of hot RAM” is a valuable black market commodity. In the Eighties’ vision of the future, cybernetic limbs are slow, ponderous, and bulky... Unless you spend amounts of money on them that would make a megacorp blush.
This vision of the future gave us Robocop.
On the other hand, Shadowrun’s later design teams want to move the universe’s timeline forward and show technological change. Which is great, because it allows them to show the vision of the future as seen from the 1990s and 2000s... This is a vision of the future that takes inspiration from the present. It’s a future with ubiquitous cellphones, internet connectivity built into everything, wireless networks, drones, and augmented reality. Cybernetics in this version of the future are sleek, sexy, and if “obvious” then they look like something from an Apple Store. If “synthetic” then they look like Tricia Helfer...
This is the future that gave us Ghost in the Shell.
Shadowrun 6th Edition is trying to do both of these at once: Murphy and Motoko. As a result, it fails to do either one well.
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Simple question: If I buy a Delta grade Cyberarm, do I also have to pay for Delta grade cyberlimb accessories?
Book doesn't say.
But this was the case in SR5, it is plausible that it will be for SR6 as well.
Uhm?
All accessories and add-ons must be
of the same grade as the implant to which they
are added.
As for Cyberlimb pricing: Cyberlimbs always cost a lot to raise high, but the Availability and Capacity spiking like crazy I strongly disagree with. But yes, limbs should be expensive when their attributes are skyhigh, as far as I'm concerned.
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Hah, missed that overly obvious part. Thanks, MC.
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Haha. Me too. Even though it was actually also listed in the most obvious of locations. So it do works the same way as it did in SR5 (which mean I at least wasn't totally wrong).
Thanks for the SR6 source MC.
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Cyberlimbs are complicated.
I've gone back and forth. The Cyberarm of Awesome annoyed me in 4th Edition but didn't bother me in 5th Edition. I respect that 6th Edition is trying to introduce some caps so that Sir Derps-a-Lot the Decker - who doesn't have the coordination to pick his nose successfully - doesn't turn into a surgical assassin when he picks up a pistol simply because he has an Agility 9 cyberarm.
A lot of this comes down to opportunity cost. In 6E you can have an arm that's maxed out in Strength and Agility, but at the cost of not being able to fit in other toys like armor and cyberspurs. (Of course, Strength barely matters anymore if you're playing by the rules as written, so leaving the cyberlimb at Strength 2 barely impedes you and frees up capacity for other things. But I houserule extensively so this is cold comfort for me.) As such, it boils down to personal tastes about how much a limb should be able to do, which in turn leads to questions about what's fun vs. what's realistic and what your preferences are on that spectrum, or even a debate about what qualifies as 'realistic' in a futuristic cyberpunk setting with heavy fantasy elements, which is why I said cyberlimbs are complicated.
That said, i would agree that 6E has gone too far, especially in comparison to other viable options. I have a four-cyberlimb sammy in 5E that I couldn't make work in 6E, so off he goes to the retirement home to be replaced by Mr. Used Muscle Replacement 4.
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Cyberlimbs give extra health though. Seems like that could be super useful in a game where armor no longer reduces physical damage to stun and you have to roll pure body to resist damage.
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On Topic:
maybe you can help me clarifying:
Cyberhand obvious, Character Agility 6:
The basic cyberhands starts with physical attributes 2. So when I shoot with this basic hand I use agility 2? Or do I use agility 8 (6 from char und 2 from hand?)
No I increase attributes. I put 4 points of agility into that hand. "Cyberlimbs can be used to add to either Agility, Armor, or Strength of the user". Same Example, different options, which agility counts for shooting (or other things done with that hand):
A) Agility 10 (6 from char and 4 from increased attribute)
B) Agility 6 (2 from hand basic and 4 from increased attribute)
C) Agility 12 (6 from char, 2 from base hand, 4 from increased attribute)
well C feels already wrong.
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B)
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Okay, why?
"Cyberlimbs can be used to add to either Agility, Armor, or Strength of the user"
RAW it adds to the attribute of the user, not the limb.
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SR6W CRB pg 288:
Attributes for limbs may vary, but dice pools
are always built from the lowest attribute of all
the limbs unless the test solely involves that singular
location (gamemaster’s discretion). Various
enhancements, which can be purchased along with
the limb, allow certain skills to be used with a
heightened attribute.
Also: keep in mind there's such a thing as an Augmented Maximum. If your natural Agility is 6, the highest you can push a cyberlimb is 10.
the rest of the text of the quote you selected:
Cyberlimbs can be used to add to either Agility,
Armor, or Strength of the user. The maximum
augmented increase of 4 is in place here, so don’t
buy an attribute increase that would increase one
of your attributes higher than 4, as it would be a
waste.
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Maybe your last quote of the rulebook confused me, being not a native English speaker (or writer).
The maximum augmented increase of 4 is in place here,..
period. no need to discuss this further.
But then the sentence continues. So I could buy a further increase but it would be a waste. Why am I able to do so? Would this be a waste on that limb or overall? Is there a mechanic ongoing that I did miss?
That confuses me a lot, maybe mostly language wise.
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Well if you have a 2[8] limb and you have 3 yourself, you're capped at 3[7]. But if you buy an extra Agility later, you won't have to purchase a cyberlimb upgrade to get the full benefit.
If it were a modular cyberlimb, you could even switch out limbs. And you won't have to ever worry about their max being higher than you can use, since it simply means you're not getting all of their stat as bonus.
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maybe you can help me clarifying:
Cyberhand obvious, Character Agility 6:
The basic cyberhands starts with physical attributes 2. So when I shoot with this basic hand I use agility 2?
Yes.
Or do I use agility 8 (6 from char und 2 from hand?)
No, this is never how it works.
If you cut off your arm and put on a cybernetic arm then your cybernetic arm is not affected (positively or negatively) no matter what attribute your natural arm used have.
I put 4 points of agility into that hand. "Cyberlimbs can be used to add to either Agility, Armor, or Strength of the user". Same Example, different options, which agility counts for shooting (or other things done with that hand):
Now your natural agility is agility 6 and your hand is agility 6 which mean you will always use agility 6, no matter how many limbs that are involved in the test.
But then the sentence continues.
If you have Agility 6 but have a right obvious arm with agility 17 (base 2 + 15 capacity worth of agility augmentation) then you can still only benefit from agility 10 (since agility 6 + max augmented of 4 = 10).
You can still have an arm with agility 17, just that you can't utilize the last 7 points (yet). Right now they are wasted. But let us assume that you are an elf (which have a max agility rating of 7) and you spend 35 karma to raise your agility rating from 6 to 7. Now you would get to utilize agility 11 of your cyberarm (7+4=11).
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Finally I got it. The max. augmented depends only on Runners natural attributes. Not the bas attribute of the limb.
BUT...
so max. Agility for a cyberhand is 6. (base 2, capacity of 4 for +4 Agility).
So the ultimate high end AAA executive cyber limb Deltaware worth the lifetime salary of 1000 wageslaves could never be as dexterous as a gifted human (exceptional attribute quality).
That does not feel very cyberpunkish to me. Cyberlimbs should at last potentially be better than human flesh.
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That's a quirk of the capacity pricing of attribute increases and the capacity limitations of partial cyberlimbs.
Full replacements don't have that problem. To the same extent, anyway.
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BUT...
so max. Agility for a cyberhand is 6. (base 2, capacity of 4 for +4 Agility).
So the ultimate high end AAA executive cyber limb Deltaware worth the lifetime salary of 1000 wageslaves could never be as dexterous as a gifted human (exceptional attribute quality).
That does not feel very cyberpunkish to me. Cyberlimbs should at last potentially be better than human flesh.
Thats how they work RAW. You should go look in the houserules thread, there are a couple of nifty tweaks there. Personally I think having the base cyberlimb =base unaugmented attribute is cool.
Would also make it possible for the troll to have a synthetic hand above str 4!
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A full arm have more capacity and thus can fit more attribute enhancement...
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So the ultimate high end AAA executive cyber limb Deltaware worth the lifetime salary of 1000 wageslaves could never be as dexterous as a gifted human (exceptional attribute quality).
Those sort of cyberlimbs aren’t in the core rulebook. One of the key concepts of the genre is that there is always something better available to someone with more money.
The global-elites (and their hired help) have all sorts of things that the typical shadowrunner (and especially starting level newbies) should only have heard about on trideo shows or as urban legend. Things like laser pistols, off-world habitats, life-extending gene therapies, teleportation magic, orbital satellite rail guns, and real beef.
The design specs or the protype (or the scientist that designed it) should serve as the MacGuffin for a shadowrun... or an entire campaign.
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A full arm have more capacity and thus can fit more attribute enhancement...
Thats true, but still its weird that a troll cant have a synthetic arm at maximum racial stats, when humans can.
I mean a strong troll arm (say 1 from racial max =8) should have atleast as much capacity left as a strong human arm (say 1 from racial max =5). Yet the troll arm only has 2 capacity left for synthetic arms, while the human arm would have 5.
I mean the troll arm is physically larger, the diameter of the arm is naturally bigger than the human arm. Putting in some larger pistons shouldnt take up % more capacity than human sized pistons in human sized arms.
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What used to be weird was the strength 1 and agility 1 decker with an agility 9 cyberarm we used to have in previous edition. Cyberlimb rules in this edition are far from perfect, but at least they are better than the previous edition.
Beyond that there are (or will be) various suggestions on how to fix them in the house rule thread.