[welldressedgent]

Sure you’re king of the empty parking lot; but they could suck in cramped spaces. Like anywhere indoors. Just look at the Food Fight! scenario… how often do you see 4m of clearance? Even outdoors, there’s parked vehicles to one side of the walk and buildings on the other, plus fire hydrants, street lights, garbage cans etc.

How strict should GMs be about this?

Maybe wait until he’s penetrated the ghoul den: “Sorry there’s no clearance for your weapon. Roll initiative!”

[Rooks]

The hell you meleeing ghouls for?

[Jack_Spade]

No reason to assume that you have to use the full length all the time.
If you as a GM don't want monowhips in your game, just tell your players...

[Marcus Gideon]

Core pg 186, Reach

When one melee fighter has a reach advantage over his opponent, compare the Reach of the two opponents and calculate the difference; this difference in Reach is applied as a modifier to the defender's dice pool, whether positive (defender has longer Reach) or negative (attacker has longer Reach). Reach does not make you better at hitting someone but it definitely makes it harder, or easier, to defend.

Nowhere in there does it talk about required clearance to operate the weapon effectively. It just says that it's harder to defend against a weapon that can reach the target from further away.

Monowhips aren't flailed around quite like you'd expect someone to fight with whips

[Reaver]

Weakness?

How about the glitch/crit glitch rules for this weapon! Sure its cool, sure its neat.... until you glitch (and you WILL! It's just a matter of time). Yea you can leave it 'wireless on' to avoid those rules, but now you've left you weapon open to hacking! .... At best you're unarmed by the hacker, at worst you're UNarmed by the hacker

It's a melee weapon in a gunfight world....

Try to use it grappled. I dare you

Once you pull it out, no hiding the damage afterwards, or not being noticed! (Problem with any Forbidden weapon.... always think of the NC eyewitnesses)

Yea..... not the best weapon by far.

[adzling]

The whips have a recoiling mechanism that allows you to set it via DNI (thought).
Still a penalty for trying to engage someone who's inside your reach would be reasonable, but then you'd have to figure it out for all weapons....

Hmm....

[MijRai]

Yeah, there's no need to use the entire length of the whip in a fight (all it says is that it can extend to two meters); just spool out a half-meter or so and you're golden for more confined spaces.  For a good inspiration for such moves, go watch some of the videos of Bruce Lee doing demonstrations with nunchucks.  It isn't a perfect comparison, but look at how close he can keep it to his body without much trouble until he needs to strike out.  With the right training and moves (and knowing how to handle the counterweight at the tip) it shouldn't be too hard for someone dedicated to it.  Not to mention with Wireless, you could probably spool and unspool the monowire mid-fight, thus extending and shortening your length as necessary for the conditions. 

That said, I would count the Reach as lower when using shortened spool. 

[Marcus Gideon]

If you outright declared that you were locking the length at some distance, then yes that would reduce the Reach rating. However, if you were relying on DNI to adjust the length on the fly (as the weapon is meant to be used) then the Reach would be normal. If the situation arises where you can hit a target 2 meters away, you just lash out and hit them. Then it retracts.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

HA!  Monofilament whips.  Those things're funny; you can easily get killed by your own weapon, there's no way to increase the damage, they're both wildly expensive and insanely illegal, and they require you to dump karma into a skill you can't use with anything else.

Let any player who wants to pick them up go for it.  And then hey - painted target on their foreheads!!

[MijRai]

12P -8AP generally doesn't need to be increased, in all honesty.  You could consider anything where that doesn't suffice to be a good example of 'over your head' and a sign to get out of there.  And provided you keep a point of Edge on hand to reduce a critical glitch, there's no chance of it killing you (and once you're skilled it is slim enough anyways). 

The skill cost and legality are the only big issues, in my mind.  And if you invest in a Monofilament Whips skill, you sort of deserve the chance to use the thing.  It's niche. 

[Coyote]

The skill cost and legality are the only big issues, in my mind.  And if you invest in a Monofilament Whips skill, you sort of deserve the chance to use the thing.  It's niche.

The perfect niche for a monofilament whip is my Technomancer-samurai with a cyberarm with Agility 10, and two Task Sprites set to support the whip: 1 with Diagnose to add dice, and the other with Stabilize to prevent glitches. NOW it's a safe weapon, and given that a Technomancer has no points to spare for physical attributes, it turns an Agility 2/Strength 1 character into an 18 attack dice with 12P/-8AP damage melee monster.

Yes, it's niche. But it's really good within its niche. And as has been said, if you bust it out, civilians kinda notice... but if you're busting it out, you're probably looking to leave dismembered corpses on the ground anyhow, and that's slightly more illegal than monowhip possession. And with its Concealability modifier, it's pretty safe to carry around.

[Adamo1618]

It's also golden for a Face. Get a Fingertip Compartment (its low avail makes high grades possible, meaning you can smuggle it anywhere) and good Agility, dump Strength. Always armed, just remember to keep a spare edge! I imagine that Deckers/Riggers can use this to some extent too.

[welldressedgent]

So this only applies to non-cybered PCs? Good to know.

-g

[Rooks]

Also finger tip compartment or even skill wires house rule expert system and cyber arm for 10 agi

[Duellist_D]

Damage is high enough that you don't need to bother increasing it (try reaching the same Code with other melee weapons), you really have to try hard to kill yourself with this between Wifi and Edge and its a super concealable Weapon.
Getting a useful Dicepool for it (12+) is also not really hard to do and requires little specialized investment.

I think the one reason this thing isn't widely used is mostly the big "makes GMs super salty" sign attached to it.

Still, I'd really like to play an Akimbo Monowhip Streetsam Edgemaster with "revels in Murder", "Superhuman psychosis" and "Finishing Move" one day, just for the funs.
The build is pretty straightforward and easy.