Fixing Cyberlimbs

[saithorthepyro]

So, one thing I've seen repeated across a lot of Frank's and others talking about Cyberlimbs, is that in 4th edition they suck, and how Frank tried to fix them but SR devs wouldn't let him. A lot. Reading their entries, I very much agree with them, and am curious as to what people think is the best way to fix them? I've been considering just lowering the cost for the first ever SR 4e game I'm GMing, but I doubt that would really fix all the problems, and would appreciate some seasoned advice on possible ways to fix the problems.

If there's a thread already on this, sorry for bothering, but I wasn't able to find this in any of the homewbrew/discussion/etc. threads the Den has on Shadowrun.

[Trill]

Well, one of the things would probably be to have them start with (Attribute Minimum)+2, instead of a fixed 3.
Right now a Troll has to get two levels of Customization just to get the Limb to Strength and Body minimum. If they instead started at (5)+2=7 that would make them more valuable

[hyzmarca]

Four classes of cyberlimb. Medical, stealth, obvious, and second hand.

Medical cyberlimbs are simple replacements for lost limbs. They have the same stat values as their owner, are dirt cheap, and have minimal capacity for extras, usually just a datajack port. They can be covered with artificial skin to appear lifelike.

Stealth cyberlimbs are basically medical grade cyberlimbs modified to fit extra stuff, and are externally indistinguishable. They have the same stats as the character's but have much more capacity for than normal medical cyberlimbs.

Obvious cyberlimbs are obvious. They're made for maximun performance with no concern for aesthetics. They have the same capacity as stealth cyberlimbs but start with one stat equal to the cgharacter's augmented maximum and all other stats equal to the character's racial maximum or his current stat value, whichever is higher.

Secondhand cyberlimbs were originally attached to someone else, before the poor SOB lost it. Maybe he couldn't pay the pay the bill, maybe he ran afowl of organleggers. Whatever, his loss is your gain. Secondhand cyberlimbs were built for another person, and has stats based on that character's rather than your own. A second hand cyberlimb is always obvious. A secondhand cyberlimb meant for another race can be used, and you can exceed the racial augmented limit this way, with one caveat. You always have the choice to limit the dice contributed by the limb to your augmented maximum or to use its full value. If you use the full value, for every point that the limb exceeds your augmented max, you take two box of damage (no soak roll) for every action you perform with it, as the limb tears itself from your bones. Six or more boxes of damage taken this this way cause the limb to fully detach itself.

[Username17]

Cyberlimbs have a number of severe problems, which work out to "They are way too expensive in terms of money and Essence and no one wants them." But actually fixing them requires a lot of design work that the SR4 team was unwilling to do.

So the first question you should ask yourself is what econiche a cyberlimb is supposed to occupy: Is a cyberlimb a cheap clunky alternative to getting tweaked out with more subtle bioware? Is a cyberlimb an end state of cybernetic enhancement for those who have money to burn? Is the cyberlimb super strong or a jack-knife full of useful tools? Are we trying to support more than one of these cyberlimb concepts?

The next issue of course is that Strength is actually a shit attribute that isn't worth points. If you combined Strength and Body together into a single stat, that stat would still be significantly worse than Agility or Intuition. If a Cyberlimb just set your Strength to 12, it probably wouldn't be worth the Essence point, no matter how much or little it cost in Nuyen.

It's also important to remember that the legacy costs of the 1st edition cyberware are hot garbage. The idea that you'd spend half an Essence for a conditional point of physical stats is bluntly ridiculous, Muscle Replacement and Dermal Plating are fucking insulting and always have been. The only reason cyberware was remotely good in the original rules is that the original design team badly underestimated the value of extra actions, target number modifiers, and enhanced senses. The iconic Shadowrun street samurai package of Wired Reflexes, Smartgun Link, and Cybereyes took off because those were the cyberware options that were massively overpowered against the baseline the writers were trying to go for. We were supposed to care about Hand Razors, Cyberlimbs, and Dermal Plating and we definitely didn't because what the actual fuck?

The SR4 cyberlimb is useless because it's a callback to an SR1 cyberware option that people didn't use because it was useless back then. It's total cargo cult. Fixing it requires taking a step back and asking what kind of Street Samurai you expect to want these fucking things and what you expect that kind of Street Samurai to do with them.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Limbs . .
Could be used to some rather ridiculous effects that were basically one trick ponies in the end.
With the optional rule of being able to put a DNI and other gear in them, you could cheat yourself some more essence to play with in exchange for money for riggers and deckers for example, by simply putting the deck into a 1 essence limb instead of ending up with several points of essence spent on just that.
At least in SR3. Seeing how SR4 did away with the need for 5 points of essence needed for a rigger or decker this is simply not needed anymore.
In SR4, the main thing you could do was armor them up and try and become a tank.
Which, does not really work in SR the game of Glass Cannons . .

Basically, what you need to do is
a.) lower the price so higher grades with less essence impact become viable.
b.) find shit you can not do with other gear, especially bioware for them to do.
Like the grapple hand, that is a gimicky but fun and interesting thing.
Or the Drone Hand. Again, built in weaponry, which is a multi edged blade.
Built in gear that would cost you more essence than the limb if needed.
Make them plug and play and very modular as well, so your cyber monster can have his day off.

[Whirlwind]

The only reason cyberware was remotely good in the original rules is that the original design team badly underestimated the value of extra actions, target number modifiers, and enhanced senses. The iconic Shadowrun street samurai package of Wired Reflexes, Smartgun Link, and Cybereyes took off because those were the cyberware options that were massively overpowered against the baseline the writers were trying to go for.

-Username17

If you were still playing Shadowrun 1e, would you try and re-balance this or would you do something else, like make pretty much every combat archetype (e.g. the mercenary) have wired reflexes?

[saithorthepyro]

Fair enough on a lot of cyberware being under-powered for their cost. I'm focusing on cyberware because as a first time GM for the game I'm afraid of too many knock-on effects from making houserules, and just inexperience. I was going to change Melee to a simple instead of complex action but I'm still trying to figure out all the effects that could have.

Cyberlimbs I'd be aiming for a decent piece of cyberware focused on jack of all trades that could upgrade to top-of-the line. I'm probably going to cut essence and nyuen costs for them and use Trill's suggestion about adjusting the minimum costs. I'm trying to theorycraft some additional modules you can use for Augmentation's modular cyberlimb rules, and maybe opening some additional slots so people can put more than one on at once.

[Username17]

The only reason cyberware was remotely good in the original rules is that the original design team badly underestimated the value of extra actions, target number modifiers, and enhanced senses. The iconic Shadowrun street samurai package of Wired Reflexes, Smartgun Link, and Cybereyes took off because those were the cyberware options that were massively overpowered against the baseline the writers were trying to go for.

-Username17

If you were still playing Shadowrun 1e, would you try and re-balance this or would you do something else, like make pretty much every combat archetype (e.g. the mercenary) have wired reflexes?

The balance point everyone ended up going for was "Wired Reflexes" not "Dermal Plating." That the original intended balance point was the opposite is irrelevant. The death of the author and all that.

Importantly, Shadowrun characters kind of have to be substantially better than basic gang members and security guards, because being a member of a gang was just a thing you could do in 1st edition. The intended balance point of crap like hand razors and muscle replacement was simply not remotely acceptable.

To take a step back, I genuinely believe that Shadowrun would not be remembered if it wasn't for the fact that several of the pieces of cyberware were "broken" in the sense of being massively more powerful than cyberware was intended to be. The cyberware at the intended balance point wasn't actually compatible with a playable game.

-Username17

[saithorthepyro]

Oh yeah Hand Razors are also crap...and should probably be fixed for the game as well. A quarter of an essence for what's essentially a knife in your hand...I would have expected something like the ability to put toxin injectors or something on there

I mean, if a mid-tier Batman villain can do it without cyberware


A player probably should be able to for a quarter of an essence.

[Stahlseele]

Going Full Robocop is . . not really adviseable or even desireable in Shadowrun.
Even if you can do it, you give up too much else with it.
Cybermancy might change that, but also makes you into an NPC for obvious reasons.

JarHeads are basically just Riggers controlling a body like Kane in Robocop 2.
And not even that is worth it to try and do as a player character.
Because that thing you do? You can still do for cheaper with your original body intact.

Cyberware, chromed out bling is supposed to be the cyberpunk tres street chic.
It is a fashion statement for the most part.
Fluffwise it used to be just normal medical advancement and obvious consequences.
But Bioware came along and allowed you to do most anything it does but better.
More expensive, but also not killing you by overdoing it and also allowing more to do.
Without "losing yourself" from detachement issues.
Technically, as soon as bioware and cheap cloned limbes hit the market?
Cyberlimbs and most cyberware competing with bioware should have vanished.
Or at least had the price cut by half or even more.

Oh you can totally do the chemtech blades in your body too.
There is cyber for that as well, but as usual, bio just does it better for the most part.
This is actually a frighteningly effective built due to the general cockup of chemtech rules in shadowrun no matter what version.
They are the epitome of glass cannon, as nothing much really helps against them.
You need to seriously specialize to have a chance of resisting chem tech attacks.
And even then odds are better than 50% that you will still go down after a success.

I had fun in SR3 once building a walking weaponscache basically.
Had every single available weapon in the cybervariant in the body.
Even the stupid ones like the mouth and eye gun and the teeth.
That was basically a challenge for a GM that was fond of taking toys away.
I was not fond of that and simply decided to not allow him to do that.
Forced him to decide between being creative or allowing me an out of the game by killing off my character.

[saithorthepyro]

I mean, I do kind of want people to go full robocop if they want? I'm setting the game in Miami in 2074, so Pink Mohawk is the playstyle that is likely going to result, so I want there to be a mechanical reason to take some of the more pink mohawk style equipment and character options. So things like Cyberlimbs, unarmed adepts, hand razors, etc. Some of Frank's existing houserules deal with the adept problem pretty well at least in terms of power point prices.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, basically do a 50% price slash on cyberware that does functionally the same and thus competes with bioware.
This will mean people are more likely to actually use it, even on alpha and maybe beta grade which saves some essence and thus allows more to be used.
Remember there are customization options for cyberlimbs and sculpting of other things somewhere in there.
You can go all chrome or matte black or neon LED nonsense and fibre optic hairs and prehensile tails and raptor legs with grip hands or skimmer discs.
Honestly, the world would be poorer without this kind of stuff, but technically, this kind of stuff is the poor people solution to problems due to bioware and as of 4th gene and nano stuff.

MAKE THE FUCKING SETTING REFLECT THE AVAILABILITY AND UBIQUITY OF STUFF!
If you want the pink mohawk:
NO NON-OBVIOUS LIMBS!
Everybody and their mother has at least some cyber chic on them, be it just fancy eyes, ears, hairs or a single chromed out hand or stuff like built in roller scates!
Make your characters blend in into a crowd that tries as much as possible to stick out.
If they go with the synthskin non obvious stuff they should be more easily be identified than if they wore neon green jumpsuits with matching 0.5m fibre optic RGB LED mood hair!
AND MAKE THAT CLEAR TO THE PLAYERS AS WELL!

Nothing will change if they think they will be easy to identify and hunt with that stuff on them!

Be very careful with the chemtech stuff, there is usually a gentlemans agreement in most groups to not use it because it is cheap and useable by both sides easy and nonintrusively as well.
Make sure to read those rules. Drugs and Chems especially boosters and narcotics.

[Whipstitch]

To take a step back, I genuinely believe that Shadowrun would not be remembered if it wasn't for the fact that several of the pieces of cyberware were "broken" in the sense of being massively more powerful than cyberware was intended to be. The cyberware at the intended balance point wasn't actually compatible with a playable game.

-Username17

Yeah, as we've concurred in other threads I think game designers were sick of combat monkeys wrecking their shit and kept trying to nerf everything. Meanwhile, this was a fucking cyberpunk game, so players wanted to shoot their enemies in the face while rocking out to Front 242. Because obviously.

[saithorthepyro]

I suppose at this point I can

A). Try to improve melee combat to make Strength matter more than it normally does. Decreasing Melee attacks actions from Complex to Simple is one thing I am going to do for certain, and I'm thinking of making dual-wielding smaller weapons and especially handrazors have smaller penalties than for ranged weapons. I might also make dual-wielding pistols easier? I'm still working on that because a flat penalty might feel too small as dice pools get larger and larger, but a percentage based one might push it back into unplayable status. Increasing the amount Strength improves DV by is probably not on the table because I'm too afraid of screwing the math more than it can take.

B). Making the cost for increasing Body and Strength less than others. Decreasing prices and essence costs for anything that enhances these areas, and a lot of other cyberware that just plain isn't useful or has a smaller niche. Same goes for the adept powers mentioned in Ends of the Matrix.

C). Both, which is my favored solution. Assuming I don't accidentally break the game that way.

[Stahlseele]

SR4 has no real ways of actually increasing body through ware anymore.
They changed that from SR3, where bones, limbs and dermal all added body.
In SR4, you get bonus dice to resist certain kinds of damage.
Or more boxes on your physical condition monitor.
Depending on how hulked out you want to go, you could make attribute increase on limbs cost no essence at all anymore.
This will lead to extreme sillyness i assume. Which i, personally, approve of.

In SR3, dual wielding . . i think it was hand razors or blades? Could net you silly numbers.
At least in terms of power if not in the actual damage dealt.
What was it? First Hand Blade was STR+3l DMG. And the second added STR/2 to that. Plus its own +3 again?
With Dikote Coating you could get that to STR+(STR/2)+4+4M DMG.
So, STR10 looked at 10+5+4+4=23M DMG you had to resist.
Which is basically impossible, because even if you have 10 points of the appropriate armor against that sort of damage, you still needed to roll versus 13 to get a single success.
So add in chem tech to this and if you got your damage to stick, which seems to me to be a statistical guarantee, it would also mean at least one dose of chems injected into the enemy.
Or if you coated both sides, 2 doses. Which meant a 100% surefire knockout and depending on the compound a lethal dose.

[OgreBattle]

This seems like a "80's internet brick phone vs today's wireless tablet" kind of thing where you just have a new standard for cyberware types and body %

Like my default assumption for cyborg isn't the pantsless DC comics guy but Shirow manga where career soldiers go full cyborg with oni frames

[Username17]

Many pieces of gear hold up the question of why the player would want the item and then fail to answer it.

I mean, consider Hand Razors. They are cool looking, but so what? Leaving aside that the actual damage codes are chocolate covered bullshit, what wold it take for them to be 'good' in a game mechanical sense? Even if they were Warhammer 40K lightning claws and let you rip armored vehicles to shreds with your bare hands, so fucking what? The protagonists in Shadowrun go on most hard missions carrying actual weapons like guns and grenades, who fucking cares about a melee weapon of any efficacy?

Hand Razors have a cost in Essence and Nuyen, and obviously those costs are way too high. But in a very real sense, any price would be too high. Having a weapon you can't choose to leave in your apartment is a liability, even if it's in some sense relatively difficult to detect. Whether it does acceptable amounts of damage or not is a distant tertiary concern.

You can certainly imagine real world situations where having diamond hard cutting blades pop out of your fingers would be useful. But Shadowrunners normally get to select what goes into their pockets. The mission utility of having that versus simply having a glass cutter in your pants is an edge case. It's very much like the Monk problem in D&D. You can imagine scenarios in which the ability to punch people effectively without needing a sword might be useful - but the game scenario assumptions are that the Fighter does have a sword, so if you paid anything for that ability, that's difficult to justify.

-Username17

[phlapjackage]

I suspect hand razors are popular mostly because of Molly Millions, who was a cool character and used her hand razors to great effect in the stories.

The monk problem applies to combat spells as well as hand razors - what's the actual cost/benefit to having a "secret" weapon that's not (easily) noticeable and not (easily) able to be taken away from the character. And what's the cost difference between +1 init from cyberware vs +1 init from a spell. I'm not sure an edition of SR has ever gotten this formula right.

while rocking out to Front 242.

I heard that beat in my head as soon as I saw your link, thanks alot now I have to go listen to front by front again...

[Mord]

Didn't Molly do the hand razors thing because firearms were heavily restricted in the Sprawl? I seem to recall that Johnny Mnemonic opens with him making his own shells for a sketchy black market shotgun because it wasn't a world where you could easily get your hands on crazy military cybernetic firepower, much less carry it around openly.

[Username17]

I suspect hand razors are popular mostly because of Molly Millions, who was a cool character and used her hand razors to great effect in the stories.

But in that case, the razors are mostly to 'be a badass' with. The fact that she can kill people with them is largely irrelevant. Molly Millions has a gun. Her ability to bust out her retractable finger razors demonstrates that she can kill a fool even in circumstances when she isn't obviously armed, but isn't obviously better at killing people than just pulling out a gun and shooting people.

The purpose of Molly's hand razors is similar to a peacock's tail or a frog's inflatable belly. The fact that it exists allows her to make people think twice about fucking with her. That doesn't have direct and obvious utility within Shadowrun's system, but conceptually they should give you bonus dice on things like Etiquette Street and Intimidation.

The monk problem applies to combat spells as well as hand razors - what's the actual cost/benefit to having a "secret" weapon that's not (easily) noticeable and not (easily) able to be taken away from the character.

Manabolt has the advantage of having properties that physical weapons do not. You can shoot ghosts with it, and it goes out to line of sight and all that shit. Hand razors and cyberguns are simply literally physical weapons that you could hold in your hand rather than building them into your arm.

-Username17

[Iduno]

Four classes of cyberlimb. Medical, stealth, obvious, and second hand.

Medical cyberlimbs are simple replacements for lost limbs. They have the same stat values as their owner, are dirt cheap, and have minimal capacity for extras, usually just a datajack port. They can be covered with artificial skin to appear lifelike.

Obvious cyberlimbs are obvious. They're made for maximun performance with no concern for aesthetics. They have the same capacity as stealth cyberlimbs but start with one stat equal to the cgharacter's augmented maximum and all other stats equal to the character's racial maximum or his current stat value, whichever is higher.

I would also balance obvious as being the cheaper option, if you stay at the levels medical cyberlimbs can reach. Some people have terrible-looking limbs that make them look like a robotic killer, because they can't afford the nice ones with fake skin. It also helps build in a reasonable doubt for why the PCs have it. Plus, you're already having some cost by looking like a freak.

I suppose at this point I can

A). Try to improve melee combat to make Strength matter more than it normally does. Decreasing Melee attacks actions from Complex to Simple is one thing I am going to do for certain, and I'm thinking of making dual-wielding smaller weapons and especially handrazors have smaller penalties than for ranged weapons. I might also make dual-wielding pistols easier? I'm still working on that because a flat penalty might feel too small as dice pools get larger and larger, but a percentage based one might push it back into unplayable status. Increasing the amount Strength improves DV by is probably not on the table because I'm too afraid of screwing the math more than it can take.

B). Making the cost for increasing Body and Strength less than others. Decreasing prices and essence costs for anything that enhances these areas, and a lot of other cyberware that just plain isn't useful or has a smaller niche. Same goes for the adept powers mentioned in Ends of the Matrix.

C). Both, which is my favored solution. Assuming I don't accidentally break the game that way.

Reducing melee to simple actions and min-maxing a lot harder on the melee character made melee a reasonable choice in my group. Reducing the cost of body slightly (3/4 cost? Something similar that makes the math easy enough) and strength to half or less (it does literally nothing, other than determine melee damage) would work.


There are enough things in-game that cost extra because they're cool that they either need to quit doing that, or make "cool" a stat. It sounds like unnecessary work, but they've already got things that may or may not add/remove dice for social skills if anyone at the table remembers they exist. Codifying it would be a simplification.

[saithorthepyro]

I'm not certain on letting Hand Razors give bonus skill dice, not because I don't like the idea but mostly because I see having issues selling it to applicants. Now, I am adjusting Dual-wielding, and part of that is going to be making Hand Razors take no penalty for dual wielding them. A Cool stat would be a nice idea, or I could relate it to Street Rep I suppose.

[Whipstitch]

Manabolt has the advantage of having properties that physical weapons do not. You can shoot ghosts with it, and it goes out to line of sight and all that shit.
-Username17

Plus, Manabolt is tied to a dice pool that can be used to cast more irreplaceable stuff like Heal, Detect Life and Phantasm. It'd still be a decent spell to know even if a new edition required you to carry around a fetish in order to actually cast it properly.

[phlapjackage]

Manabolt has the advantage of having properties that physical weapons do not. You can shoot ghosts with it, and it goes out to line of sight and all that shit. Hand razors and cyberguns are simply literally physical weapons that you could hold in your hand rather than building them into your arm

Yeah, good point - I was thinking about how often combat spells are expensive (resources and drain chance), since a mage can produce a similar effect for 300nuyen (and twice a round). So the cost/benefit equation for everything (normal weapons/cyberware/spells) really needs some strong looking at and tweaking in a holistic sense. What's the utility of a knife you can buy anywhere and can pick up and put down (but can have taken away from you), vs a knife you always have on you and is concealed, but the downside is also you always have it on you and it took up other resources besides money (cyber capacity). Shit, from this angle, hand razors should be free unless they provide some other benefit (like your aforementioned bonus to Intimidation or something)

I seem to recall that Johnny Mnemonic opens with him making his own shells for a sketchy black market shotgun because it wasn't a world where you could easily get your hands on crazy military cybernetic firepower, much less carry it around openly.

IIRC it was something like JM was known as a high-tech guy, so "when people expect high-tech, go low-tech to surprise them" or something like that.

[Stahlseele]

I'm not certain on letting Hand Razors give bonus skill dice, not because I don't like the idea but mostly because I see having issues selling it to applicants. Now, I am adjusting Dual-wielding, and part of that is going to be making Hand Razors take no penalty for dual wielding them. A Cool stat would be a nice idea, or I could relate it to Street Rep I suppose.

But isn't that basically how the SR4 System works?
Stuff like Gear giving extra dice and circumstances detracting dice?