So a while after making a bow adept practice character for 5e, I realized that particular build probably wouldn't be allowed due to the Rating limit at chargen (which would mean you'd need to save up 3-4k at chargen and use them afterwards to obtain an Availability 10 or 12R bow and Availability 10 Arrows), but just to make sure, I decided to doublecheck the rules. What I found, however, was pretty confusing.
How 4th edition had it:
no piece of gear purchased at character creation can have a rating higher than 6 or an Availability higher than 12
How 5th edition has it (emphasis mine):
at normal character creation, characters are restricted to a maximum Availability rating of 12 and a device rating of 6.
GEAR RATINGS
Every item described in this chapter includes a set of statistics. Every item has a cost along with an Availability Rating, and most non-weapon, non-armor items, except those that simply confer an ability or don’t, have an overall Rating, usually between 1 and 6. Often a gear’s Cost and Availability are functions of its Rating.
Devices
A device in the Matrix is any wireless device in the real world. Toasters, power tools, vehicles, firearms, fire hydrants, street lights, ear phones, sales and inventory tags, doors and locks, commlinks, pet collars, office equipment, snow blowers, thermostats, drones ... if it’s big enough for a microchip, it’s big enough to house enough computing power to be a device. And if it’s a device, it’s in the Matrix.
Devices have a smaller-than-person-sized icon in the Matrix. They also have three ratings: a Device Rating and two of the Matrix attributes, Data Processing and Firewall. For most devices, the Matrix attributes are the same as the Device Rating.
device ratings
Type rating examples
Simple 1 General appliances, public terminals, entertainment systems
Average 2 Standard personal electronics, basic cyberware, vehicles, drones, weapons, residential security devices
Smart 3 Security vehicles, alphaware, corporate security devices
Advanced 4 High-end devices, betaware, military vehicles, and mil-spec security devices
Cutting Edge 5 Deltaware, credsticks, black-ops vehicles and security devices
Bleeding Edge 6 Billion-nuyen experimental devices, space craft
Every item being wireless means that nearly every item has a device rating. Unless otherwise specified in an item’s description, the general Device Rating can be found on the Device Ratings table.
Bows have ratings that indicate the minimum Strength you need to use that weapon. When attacking with a bow, a character whose Strength is less than the Strength minimum suffers a –3 dice pool modifier per point below the minimum; this penalty reflects the difficulty they have in pulling the bow and nocking an arrow. The weapon’s Rating is also used to determine its range and damage (maximum Rating is 10).
If I'm reading all this correctly, it means that the Rating from Bows isn't a Device Rating (since it isn't about how sophisticated the bow is, only about how strong the material is), which would mean that you're not restricted to Rating 6 bows at chargen. The archetypes seem to support this theory (one has a Rating 7 bow, another a Rating 8 bow), as does the fact that Gear Ratings and Device Ratings are in seperate sections.
Am I right about this? And if so, are there any other items that have Ratings that aren't Device Ratings, and therefore not bound by the chargen limit of 6 (like explosives, perhaps)? Or did they just phrase themselves poorly, and is this another thing the archetypes got wrong, like Critical Strike and Enhanced Accuracy levels (which were nerfed after the archetypes were written up) and fake SINs (the Gunslinger Adept has Rating 5 fake SINs and fake licenses, even though those would have Availability 15, which only Prime Runners would be allowed to have)?
