So for the first time ever I have a player really interested in making a "unique" character. Focusing more on the roleplay and less on the munchkin, aspect which I like. She is wanting to make a street samurai style thief with a fake identity but has a real SIN in which she is a college professor (I know, excited to RP scenarios, haha). To accomplish that she wanted limbs she could hot-swap out for her shadowrunning ones.
Our entire group is a pretty by-the-book group and we enjoy it that way so when she read that modular was only for parts of the limb we all started searching for a way already somewhere to allow her idea.
What I am wondering is, what have others done? How has allowing a shoulder connection for a full arm worked out for you, if you allowed it?
In some old posts I saw where someone recommended having the Torso and Arm be modular for it to work. However, that seems like a pretty steep cost. Another suggestion was to allow the easy breakdown modification but the player was turned off by that idea.
Also, how is essence loss calculated for modular limbs? Say she starts with an alphaware grade modular cyberarm and swaps it out for a standard modular cyberlimb she has for backup only. Does she now lose that extra essence permanently?