ProfessorCirno Counter-question: why would anyone take a synthetic cyberarm? I simply choose to apply the concealment modifier of synthetic limbs for when you go up against scanners; to my mind, either limb is hard to spot for the naked eye, but synthetics are harder to spot with MAD and cyberware scanners.
This actually does answer my question! Indeed, funny enough, you've boosted synthetic cyberarms
way more then I think anyone else here has - I can see this working out great for a game, and gives a rather serious advantage to synthetic cyberbitties (that may or may not equate to the bonuses you can get to an obvious cyberarm filled to the brim with bonuses, which is exactly what you want!) Heck, this might be better then my solution.
Cirno, I also disagree, in principle, with your point about the narrative approach. I do agree that in most cases it's not necessary to involve the numbers and you can deal with it narratively, but it's important to have ways to deal with situations where you need to hide otherwise obvious limbs (infiltration is the classic example) and, this being a rule founded on dice, there should be some mechanical way of dealing with that.
There is. Like I said, you would use Disguise to hide an obvious cyberarm by my reckoning. I meant more that any potential "consequences" would be more narrative. Now, this would eventually translate to dice - in the troll example I use below, it meant the elf could give advice to the others but the gang leader in question simply wouldn't accept anything he said, so he turned to leadership for the others (giving them an AR power point presentation as they walked in, of course!), while I lowered the threshold for the troll boxer PC. He had an easier time convincing the gang leader to a mutually beneficial arrangement to get them to focus more on a specific corp in their turf, but any of the other non-elf characters could've jumped in and done it instead - it just might've been a bit harder for them. But the
starting point was narrative - the troll's bigotry, and what actual arguments the PCs used. I tend to play it a bit fast and loose with thresholds depending on how stuff is described and what sort of game I'm trying to encourage.
One more thing... Having cybernetic is not immediately threatening! Thinking to that whole "murderarms" thing... Even most players I've seen don't fill their arms with guns and explosives, usually just armor and agility augmentations. And while that does make them more deadly, the arm itself isn't some death machine. At base, cybernetic arms, obvious or otherwise, have average human stats, and both Synthetic and Obvious are heavily customizable.
Using an obvious one actually says the exact opposite about having "gone out of your way to get something serious". They are cheaper and not any harder to acquire than synthetics, so unless you've got visible machine guns sticking out of the damn things, you look, at worst, poor.
Right, but that's generally my point. If you take Obvious Cyberlimbs, you're either dangerous, a fanatic, or one of
the poors. All three likely shine a poor light on you depending on what you're doing.
Regardless, I don't think any of this is actually an issue. Your Street Samurai is going to have difficulty going to a formal dinner no matter what his arms look like; everyone expects the deck jockey to be a non-conformist punk from all his time on the matrix; only the Face should be terribly concerned about having hard to conceal physical features, and no Face is ever going to bother with a cyberlimb.[/color]
Ah, I believe in the school of thought that the GM should try to challenge characters outside of their niches, though obviously far less then challenging them as a full team. To give the example: Going into the Ork Underground, then a
little bit deeper, to parley with a rather infamous Troll gang leader. A particularly racist Troll that is entirely uninterested in what the elven face has to say...but is far more willing to listen to the troll boxer (who doesn't have a lot in the way of talking skills, but has enough for this to turn the tables).
I'm rather adamant on this with players - I want characters that at the very least can dabble in other areas. If you have Charisma 1 and no talking skills, don't assume the Face will always be able to jump in on your behalf. If you're a sammy, some Hardware can go a long way. In 9/10 cases the Face can handle talking to people. That last case though...
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Mind you, all this is diving rather fast and hard into House Rules (though I'm of the opinion that this game sorta needs those by default!). By STRICT RAW, it's...well, it ain't said. Obvious cyberlimbs have to be covered in clothing, synthetic ones are easier to "hide." However you interpret that is by individual game, I reckon.