[Xenon]

If i were a developer I would apply the following 5 rules on cyberlimbs:
1) Cyberlimbs start at your metatype minimum rating (agility 2 for elves, strength 3 for trolls and orks and strength 5 for trolls. 1 for the rest)
2) Cyberlimbs can be customized up to your natural, non-augmented, rating (possible even post installment; in case your natural rating increase?).
3) Cyberlimbs can be enhanced 3 (or maybe even 4?) points on-top of it's customized rating.
4) Cyber-feet and -hands does not benefit from armor enhancements at all.
5) Partial limbs only benefit from half of enhanced armor rating.




@martinchaen
What are you talking about?

ProfessorCirno basically said:
- Remove the option to customize cyberarms entirely...
- Let cyberlimbs instead start at your natural rating (even if under rating 3 or if you have a strength of 10).
- Increase cyberlimb attribute enhancements from max +3 to max +4

[martinchaen]

Oooh, then I disagree with his assessment entirely :-)

Yep, something like what you describe is what I'd go for, Xenon. Then again, I play a heavily augmented street Sam (four limbs out of chargen, 400k invested) with the current rules, and it works all right most of the time.

[RHat]

I find that if the limb has the same limitations as you have through other means, said other means will always more more attractive.  But if your attributes are too low, your limits will be quite terrible, which helps balance things out.  In the case of Strength especially, you get only a small portion of the benefit.

[Novocrane]

I'd remove customisation and the artificial set of attributes from the purchasing process of cyberlimbs entirely. Cyberlimb attributes are your natural attributes at the time of purchase. Enhancements act as normal. When your natural attributes change, cyberlimb attributes don't - customisation comes in here as a cost to bring their natural attributes up to current.

Then they can be priced on capacity and appearance.

[ProfessorCirno]

I'd remove customisation and the artificial set of attributes from the purchasing process of cyberlimbs entirely. Cyberlimb attributes are your natural attributes at the time of purchase. Enhancements act as normal. When your natural attributes change, cyberlimb attributes don't - customisation comes in here as a cost to bring their natural attributes up to current.

Then they can be priced on capacity and appearance.

That was actually what I was trying to say hahaha.  When you buy a cyberlimb, your stats are your cyberlimb stats.  From there you can add enhancements.  The end!  Oh, wait, give cyberlimbs more space since the big draw of a cyberimb should be the cool gadgets.  But still; cyberlimb base stats = your base stats, enhancements and gadgets only.

[MadBear]

That's really close to how I would to it. My idea is to start limbs out at STR, AGL, and Armor 3, and then you pay to Customize them up to your current (augmented)Attribute. Enhancements add on after that, with a cap of +4. STR6(9), then you Customize up to 9, and can Enhance an additional 4. Yes, that allows for higher upper end results, IF you've already paid for additional augmentation like Muscle Replacement.
I think Armor should also be a Customization, to account for Troll dermal plating and Bone Lacing and such, so there is a limiting factor with cost.
A cybernetic limb should not be a discreet piece of equipment slapped onto your body, it should be customized to function at the same level as the rest of your body, to work with your body instead of on its own; and if that's Agl 5, Str 5(7) and Armor 2, then that's the level the limb should be built to function at.

[Michael Chandra]

So on one hand you're taking away cyberlimbs as a proper alternative for weak characters, and on the other side you're screwing over Adepts and force all Street Sams to take Cyberlimbs. And that is bollocks. It should be an alternative, with upsides and downsides, over augmentating through other means. Not a stick for everyone who doesn't replace both their arms.

[ZeConster]

I'd remove customisation and the artificial set of attributes from the purchasing process of cyberlimbs entirely. Cyberlimb attributes are your natural attributes at the time of purchase. Enhancements act as normal. When your natural attributes change, cyberlimb attributes don't - customisation comes in here as a cost to bring their natural attributes up to current.

Then they can be priced on capacity and appearance.

That sounds like a horrible idea.

[ProfessorCirno]

So on one hand you're taking away cyberlimbs as a proper alternative for weak characters, and on the other side you're screwing over Adepts and force all Street Sams to take Cyberlimbs. And that is bollocks. It should be an alternative, with upsides and downsides, over augmentating through other means. Not a stick for everyone who doesn't replace both their arms.

How do you figure?

A cyberarm with +4 to a stat (much less two stats) would cost FAR less in both nuyen and essence then it's equivalent bioware, yes.  It also applies to only one limb.  Two cyberarms would be more expensive in essence but still less expensive in nuyen.  Going for all our limbs, the cyberarms become more expensive in both.

"Weak" characters would still get more bang for their buck with a single cyberarm.  Sammies would have to decide between slightly better essence, higher limits, and overall better stats, or I admit a very heavy discount on nuyen, more armor, more life boxes, and potential for ~*~gadgets~*~.  I suppose the return is "do you use this stat for more then just gunplay?" 

I can see the unbalance for characters who care only for their arms, though.  Would you find the balance between the two better if the cyberarms were still limited to +3 but still started on your base stats?  My general goal is to give sammies a reason to grab cyberarms beyond "because they completely dumped their stats."  Cyberlimbs as it stands now are essentially only for characters who dumped agility and strength.  Mind you this is also assuming all prices remain the same.

[RHat]

So are we pretending there's any character who takes cyberlimbs for the "gadgets"?

[WellsIDidIt]

Only Inspector, but he's a bumbling idiot after all.

[martinchaen]

I took cyberlimbs for the Hydraulic Jacks (until I realized that unlike the limit for running which is increased by 1 per rating, the dice pool bonus is just a flat 1 according to RAW), concealed weapons (one silenced machine pistol in the left hand, one spur and one shock hand as the righ), the smuggling compartments (two large ones in each leg) and the armor (none at chargen, adding a rating here and there as cash flows).

So while stats were certainly part of the equation, I paid 400k for my four cyberlimbs because it fit the story of my character (1), to be more effective at certain things such as combat (2), and for utilitarian purposes (or gadgets, as you call them; very difficult to detect weapons due to having 6+ pieces of standard or alpha grade cyberware, ability to smuggle large amounts of illegal items or hide important items on one's body (which again would be hard to detect due to the massive amounts of cyberware), and good old plain rule of cool).

[ProfessorCirno]

So are we pretending there's any character who takes cyberlimbs for the "gadgets"?

I'm of the belief that every mechanical choice should have a mechanical reason behind it tied to the fluff.

So I Look at cyberarms.  What makes cyberarms stand out, mechanically.

1) They can have more armor
2) The can raise your stats above both max and their basic line
3) There's always a bunch of different "utility" functions you can instal into them.
4) They independently raise one limb

Then we look at it's bioware counterpart

1) It can raise stats above max farther then chrome
2) It costs less essence
3) It applies to the whole body, including limits

So the big mechanical "Hey, pick me!" things about cyberware are numbers 1 and 3.

Now, we want cyberlimbs to be something that FIGHT characters want.  Currently cyberlimbs have a rather notable problem for FIGHT characters - they start at attribute 3, while your character might have way more then that; in other words, the limb actually weakens your character.  Furthermore, it is relatively easy to get Used Muscle Toner 3 to apply to your whole body, rather then a single arm at +3 Agility.  Most FIGHT characters are going to want to use a two handed weapon - be it rifle or melee - and thus will need a minimum of two cyberlimbs, which would cost them 2 full points of essence - not a small amount.

We also want to minimize the "death arm" that people have been calling cheese for the sake of this argument.  The "death arm" occurs because it is relatively easy to get one cyberarm and max it out, especially if your normal physical stats are rather weak.

So we want cyberlimbs to be more attractive.  The two ways to do that are to minimize it's problems and build up it's strengths.  As mentioned, one of the issues with cyberlimbs is that they start BELOW where your stats would already be at, so having cyberlimbs start at your base stats rather then at 3 would make them better for FIGHT guys.  This would also make the "death arm" less attractive - but still useful - for the weaker, non-FIGHT characters.  Next would be to build off the strengths.  Cyberlimbs are already really good at armor.  If you want more armor, cyberlimbs are fantastic at it, to the point of the dumb and cheesy Super Foot.  So that point is fairly well maximized.  That leaves the utility applications - the stuff bioware cannot do (again, the goal is to distinguish chrome from bio).

Thus my emphasis on the utility stuff.  The reason people never grab the utility stuff is that they fill their limbs up on the "important" things - agility, strength, armor, and a gyromount.  I would put forth that increasing cyberlimb capacity would allow that utility stuff to be used more, as it is currently mostly ignored.  Think of it this way: in SR5, the number of knowledge skills characters get was cut down harshly.  This was to try to push players to spend more karma on knowledge skills.  Has that happened?  Or do players simply shrug and go with less?  Likewise, how often do players give up armor and the gyromount for a detachable hand?

[Novocrane]

That sounds like a horrible idea.

Not only a reply of little use, but also one that encourages no productive response. Did you have anything in mind beyond the knee jerk?

[ZeConster]

That sounds like a horrible idea.

Not only a reply of little use, but also one that encourages no productive response. Did you have anything in mind beyond the knee jerk?

Hey, if the shoe fits. I just didn't feel like going through the whole "the designers deliberately made cyberlimbs not subject to the +4 augmentation limit so that they could be stronger than a +4 - making them +0, not to mention the fact that by RAW, their values wouldn't be augmented by 'ware, adept powers, drugs and magic the way the rest of the body is, means your cyberlimb would be weaker than the rest of you, which means that even if you put a fancy weapon in there, you'll probably have fewer dice on attacking with it than if you were to just use the weapon normally. So all in all, that sounds like a horrible idea." thing again. You know, on account of it being totally obvious to anyone whose response to cyberlimb cheese isn't kneejerkingly taking a nerf hammer to cyberlimbs as a whole, rather than putting in a reasonable houserule that prevents the cheese while keeping the designer intent intact. Plus I wasn't in a particularly good mood at the time, and it was either post something that got the message across well enough or add an angry rant explaining just how horrible and ridiculous I thought your idea was. Which I could've told you if you'd just asked me rather than getting into a public slap-fight because someone called your idea bad.