[Sendaz]

That brings us right back to my original point: what do you use only the hand for??!?!?

Not sure what he is using his for, but I know what Sally down at the Seamstress Union uses her's for and it's worth every nuyen.

[WellsIDidIt]

I'm not sure how using the rules from the book is "house rules."

[martinchaen]

For me, the biggest challenge with the rules for limbs is what constitutes careful coordination and not, and what actions can be performed with just a hand or foot,  a partial limb, a single full limb, and a combination of all of the above.

There is a lot left up to the GM in terms of interpretation in this regard, and by Dragon, I'll virtually slap each and everyone of you who say "but common sense!" with a copy of the Brony edition of the rulebook, because you know as well as I do that common sense ain't all that common...

In terms of Missions, I would never create a character with cyberlimbs for convention play because I'd have to bring up potential actions my character might take before every game with a different GM to get a sense for what their interpretation of the above was, or just accept what their choices were in game, whether to my character's detriment or not, in the name of "not arguing rules during a game" (i.e. fun). Limbs are cool in a home game where you can agree with a specific GM of how the rules will be handled, but for random pick-up games there's just too many unanswered questions for my tastes.

[Novocrane]

Because clearly I'm using the words "slap fight" because you dared disagree with me, and not because you decided to use the words "knee jerk" and "no productive response" to describe a post that's simply to-the-point.

To-the-point would involve a minimum of detail - you used none, so I stand by my words. Your explanation apparently showed you to be disliking an idea you had formulated rather than the one I was trying to convey, so you either need to clarify or reposition yourself if you expect me to take you seriously.

[Reaver]

I don't appreciate that you're basically calling me stupid for not being able to decipher their rules as intended when there is no official word beyond

Look, I don't know you, you are some little digital pips on a screen to me. You could be a rocket scientist for all I know, or an 11 year old kid.


But please, think about what you are saying

IF they listed every possible action that could be done with a partial limb, it would be pages long. 


Every book written is written to a certain education level. Doctor Seuss is written at the preschool level. The CEC is written in second year legalese. Every manual you read assumes you have certain basic skills or knowledge. (the CEC is useless to you, unless you are an electrician, or an engineer).

The same is true to Role Playing Games. No matter how you write the rules, there will always be something that the PCs do that is just not covered, and this is partially why you have a GM, to make the calls on these actions and to determine what happens. If the every single rule included every possible situation that that rule to be applied to, we would have a core rule book that was sold in volumes! I for one did not become a Lawyer cause I hate sitting in an office.... and I do not feel I need 32 volumes of the rulebook to cover ever single situation for every single rule. I have faith in my players and GM that common sense and rationale will carry the day.



(which could explain why I am disappointed so often)


If you just can not accept relying on common sense and good judgement, maybe PnP RPGs are too free form for you, and you should stick to the rigid systems imposed on you by a computer game? After all, we all just want you to enjoy your downtime as best as you can, and PnP isn't for everyone (especially in this day and age of electronic entertainment.)

[samoth]

It's not asking much to have a half-page table to describe what limbs, partial limbs, and hands/feet would control.  They could give general guidelines.  As it stands we quite literally only have "(such as a Strength Test when gripping something with an enhanced cyberhand)" as our grand example.  That's IT.  Unless your entire goal is to be super grip man, every other action in the game which relies nearly 100% on die rolls is up to your GMs discretion.

As someone else said, think about Missions games: if you show up with a guy with a couple partial limbs there's no telling how that GM will decide to rule for or against you, so it's probably a better idea to not even use them.  I have as much common sense as the next guy, but if I'm paying real world money for the rules to a fantasy elf game those rules had better make sense, otherwise it wasn't a good use of my money as a consumer.  I've got no problem with houseruling but you shouldn't have to do it for something so stylistically integral to the setting as cyberware.

Maybe these rules will be addressed in the augmentations book, but probably not based on Catalyst's track record of correcting issues with their system.

[WellsIDidIt]

I've never seen an issue with it at any table, home or con. Occasionally someone mimes an action to figure out what part/s of the body they use, but that's pretty much it. It's a fairly simple process.

[Reaver]

It's not asking much to have a half-page table to describe what limbs, partial limbs, and hands/feet would control.  They could give general guidelines.  As it stands we quite literally only have "(such as a Strength Test when gripping something with an enhanced cyberhand)" as our grand example.  That's IT.  Unless your entire goal is to be super grip man, every other action in the game which relies nearly 100% on die rolls is up to your GMs discretion.

As someone else said, think about Missions games: if you show up with a guy with a couple partial limbs there's no telling how that GM will decide to rule for or against you, so it's probably a better idea to not even use them.  I have as much common sense as the next guy, but if I'm paying real world money for the rules to a fantasy elf game those rules had better make sense, otherwise it wasn't a good use of my money as a consumer.  I've got no problem with houseruling but you shouldn't have to do it for something so stylistically integral to the setting as cyberware.

Maybe these rules will be addressed in the augmentations book, but probably not based on Catalyst's track record of correcting issues with their system.

Could they have? Possibly.

They COULD have done a lot of things differently, same with any other book by any other publisher out there.



But really, you can not determine if an action require MORE then just your hand or foot? REALLY?!?!

but to make you happy here is a small list for hands:


Pick your nose
Pick someone else's nose
pick up  a small item
open a door
open a window
operate a screwdriver
hold a small object
open a small container
small scale repair work
flip someone a cyber bird
pick your ear
pick someone else's ear
smoke a cigarette
hold a container to drink
sexual foreplay actions/self release 
place a small item
move or relocate a small item
give someone the "hand" to talk to


there we go, about a half page and it took me 3 minutes!

[Novocrane]

Aiming fingertip darts.
Flicking your fingertip compartment monofilament whip. (who uses a whole arm motion here?)

[samoth]

Thanks for the house rules Reaver.

I can logically determine what these limbs would do.  However, Shadowrun is not a logical game and just because I think something should be one way doesn't mean a GM agrees with me.  I don't know why you are so resistant to the creators of this game supplying rules for the crunchy stuff that makes PCs when they have dozens of tables in the main book that do exactly that.

[WellsIDidIt]

We aren't resistant to it, we're just pointing out that the book states what is needed. The game does occasionally require thought.

[martinchaen]

<znip>
but to make you happy here is a small list for hands:

*clears throat*
Devil's Advocate mode engaged.

Pick your nose

Yep, I agree with this one. Not very useful in terms of actual game play, unless your character has the Compulsive Behaviour negative quality and his chosen mania is rhinotillextomania. And even then it's a bit of a stretch...

Pick someone else's nose

Ah, remember the old adage: "You can pick your friends; you can pick your nose; but you can't pick your friends' noses." Again, not very useful in terms of game play...

pick up  a small item

Picking up an item, whether it is small or large, involves FAR more than "just a hand". Forarm, upper arm, shoulder, most of the body if one has to bend down or otherwise move around to get to the item.

open a door

Completely disagree. If you had said "Twist a door knob", or "Manipulate a door handle", then yes, but opening a door involves the whole arm and perhaps more. If you actually needed to roll for opening a door, I would not give you the benefit of a STR9 cyberhand except for where holding on to the door handle was involved. I would average your hand with the rest of your limbs, however, as per the rules. I don't believe opening a door, no matter how heavy it might be, constitutes a coordinated effort to the degree that you'd have to use your lowest stat...

open a window

See above; depending on the window (sliding mechanism up/down, or swivel in/out, years of paint having glued it shut, etc), this could involve most of your upper body, and perhaps lower body as well if you're forced to, well, force it open.

operate a screwdriver

Again, incorrect. A screwdriver very often requires a degree of lateral force to operate optimally; try screwing in a 2" wood screw into a 2x4 without leveraging ANY weight on the screwdriver. More than likely, the bit'll just slide around in the grooves. Once you lean your weight onto it using your whole arm and upper body, however...

hold a small object

I'll give you this, but only just. It would depend on HOW you're holding it. Even a $100 bill becomes impossible to hold after a very short time if your arm is stretched out to your side.

open a small container

Nope. Most containers would require TWO hands.

small scale repair work

See above; while your dexterity with one hand might be improved, soldering (for example) still requires two hands (one to hold the iron, the other to hold the solder).

flip someone a cyber bird

Agreed, but when would you ever make a player roll for flipping someone the bird? He critically glitches, and he doesn't even manage to lift his middle finger? (FINGER TOO HEAVY!)

pick your ear

See pick your nose...

pick someone else's ear

Again, see pick pick your nose (and someone else's nose).

smoke a cigarette

Once again involves the whole arm at the very least. And really, this requires a test in your games? Remind me never to play with you if it does...

hold a container to drink

See holding a small item, above. Also requires the whole arm.

sexual foreplay actions/self release 

Heh, if you claim that you can do this with just your hand you need to make some instructional videos. Why do you think a medical condition called "Tennis Elbow" exists. Let me give you a hint; it's not because nearly every single person in the world plays tennis (natch!).

place a small item

Depending on placement, could involve the whole body. I'll give you this as a partial, because I might make someone roll to gingerly place an explosive device, for instance, and I would average the stats of their cyberhand with their natural agility.

move or relocate a small item

See above, place a small item.

give someone the "hand" to talk to

And finally, once again, really? Your games must devolve into some seriously HORRIBLE amounts of dice rolling...

Disengaging Devil's Advocate mode.

All right, so what you gave us was a list of actions that most GMs, in my not so humble opinion, would never in a million years make a player roll to perform.

How about you come up with a list of just 10 actions that can be unequivocally performed with just a single hand, that you'd actually make someone roll for. I tried, but failed miserably.

Partial limbs also bring up another mathematical annoyance; how do you average limbs? If you have a single cyberhand, it's fairly straight forward. But if you have two or more partials, do you then start breaking each limb down into individual components?

It's unclear whether or not you should always factor in head and torso for the purposes of averaging, so for full limbs the GM might make you average 4, 5, or 6 limbs. If you were to break that up into sub-components (hand/foot, forearm/lower leg, upper arm/upper leg), the math starts to become problematic, as you're now looking at a potential 12, 13, or 14 entities.

This is important as the effectiveness of a cyberlimb isn't majorly affected the more units your average across. Example; AGI 3 and STR 3 character with an AGI 7 and STR 7 (keeping within maximum augmented limit for purposes of this discussion) full left cyberarm.
For the purpose of firing a machine gun from the hip (an arguably complex action but not complex enough to my mind to require "careful coordination", hence resulting in averaging stats of all limbs), a character could claim to have either:
(7+3+3+3) / 4 = 4
(7+3+3+3+3) / 5 = 3.8 (rounded up to 4)
(7+3+3+3+3+3) / 6 = 3.66...7 (again rounded up to 4)

Cool, fairly straight forward, no real difference there.

Same thing if the character only had a AGI 7 and STR 7 cyberhand:
((7+3+3+)3+3+3) / 6 = 3.66...7 (again rounded up to 4)
((7+3+3+)3+3+3+3) / 7 = 3.57 (again rounded up to 4)
((7+3+3+)3+3+3+3+3) / 8 = 3.5 (again rounded up to 4)

Add in a second cyberhand with the same stats, and you'll see the same behaviour:
((7+3+3+)+(7+3+3)+3+3) / 8 = 4
((7+3+3+)+(7+3+3)+3+3+3) / 9 = 3.88...9 (again rounded up to 4)
((7+3+3+)+(7+3+3)+3+3+3+3) / 10 = 3.8 (again rounded up to 4)

So, what has all this complexity resulted in? Mechanically, nothing. Can we all agree that this minutia adds needless complexity to an already complex game?

Immersion breaking as it is for some, averaging across more than 4 is very rarely going to get you a different result than just keeping it simple, unless you go to extremes.

In any case, my previous point still stands; we can all come up with what we as individuals think of as logical or common sense solutions to the question of "What constitutes careful coordination?", and "What actions can be performed with [insert limb here]?", but that doesn't diminish the fact that there is a lot of ambiguity around these rules. As my deconstruction of Reaver's argument show, even though it was overly dramatically done, some really petty arguments can be made, and at SRM games I wouldn't take cyberlimbs for this very reason. Ask yourself; is a rule well designed when players (even if it is just a few, I have no stats to back up my statement here) are reluctant to take items affected by said rule because the rules are vague?

[WellsIDidIt]

Here, your problem seems to be you overcomplicating things.

What is the example for using a limb's stats in the book? Leading an attack with a cyberarm. That would actually involve the legs, hips, shoulders, torso, etc. The game simplifies it for us.

[martinchaen]

WellsIDidIt
Correct, the game oversimplifies in one instance; but for all other actions it is still very much up to the GM to decide what goes.

And so we're back to the (very) circular argument of what goes. If you'll read my full post, you'll note that I'm not actually arguing this level of complexity be introduced to the game, I'm arguing that I wouldn't take cyberlimbs because of the uncertainty I as a player would be facing, mostly at SRM games where I have no idea what my GM will be thinking.

[WellsIDidIt]

So, your logic is basically that because you can ignore the example and argue that things take more, it's the game's fault? Sure, GM's can ignore the example. That's called a problem with the GM, not the game. If you're so worried that a GM is going to ignore what the book says, it's best not to play in random mission games to begin with.