[metapsionic]

Hi everyone,

I'm completely new at SR, we'll be starting a game in the next few weeks. I was wondering what was stopping me from doing the following:

Get a character with 1 or 2 agility. Replace her right arm with a custom arm with body 3, agility 11, strength 3. Just to lay it on thick, add a rating 3 Agility Cyber Enhancement, because apparently I can. Give her a pistol.

Suddenly my klutz of a character is super deadly with her pistol. Is this legal?

Thanks a lot :-)

[UmaroVI]

Almost legal. You cannot customize an arm higher than your natural attribute maximum - so 6 for a human, or 7 for an elf. You also can't Enhance higher than your augmented maximum. But having a cyberarm customized to 6 agility, then enhanced another 3 to 9 is entirely legit.

[metapsionic]

I must have missed that part. My cyber-crazy friend will be sorely disappointed. Mind giving me a page reference on the custom arm limit thing?

And about the enhancement part: the augmented maximum is half of the natural maximum, right? Then why do cyberlimb enhancements go up to 7 high? Is there someone out there with an max natural attribute of 14, allowing for an extra enhancement of 7?

[metapsionic]

Side-note: this would also mean that without the Exceptional Quality to boost an attribute to 7, a human with cyber-limbs has no use for a cyber-torso, since his enhancements can't go above 3 either way.

[CanRay]

Why would you boost your own arm?  You already own it, no reason to steal it from yourself.

...

What?

[metapsionic]

CanRay, that pun just earned you negative karma  *glares* 

[CanRay]

I have not yet begun to pun!

[baronspam]

I must have missed that part. My cyber-crazy friend will be sorely disappointed. Mind giving me a page reference on the custom arm limit thing?

And about the enhancement part: the augmented maximum is half of the natural maximum, right? Then why do cyberlimb enhancements go up to 7 high? Is there someone out there with an max natural attribute of 14, allowing for an extra enhancement of 7?

At least on the core metatypes the highest natural stats are 10 on a troll on strenght and body.  I beleive highest natural agillity is 7 on an elf.  That is before a number of qualities are added which could give you another point or two.  Therre is also genetic optimization.  Without digging out some books I don't know how many of these can stack. 

Even if everything stacks I don't think there is anyway to get an agility to 14.

Cyberlimb enhancements go up to 7 because they start with a 3 and you can use enhancements instead of customization if you desire, provided you don't exceed your augmented maxium.  Customization is expensive and adds to limb availablity.  Enhancement is less expensive but takes capacity in the limb, leaving less room for gadgets, armor, etc.  In most cases a mix of the two approaches probably works best.  In fact, in the original SR4 rulebook there wasn't customization rules, just enhancements, the customization rules came out in the Augmentation book.  I would have to look to see if SR4A included the customization rules, or if those are still only in the Augmentation book.

The high agility cyberarm, which I like to called the one armed wonder build, has its uses.   Its great for pistol shooters and other one handed weapons.  Many of the heavier weapons in the game take two hands, however. I personally would require anthing but pistols, machine pistols, and select melee weapons to be used two handed.  Yes you can point and fire a smg with one hand, but its a craptastics shooting stance that way, and I figure the penalties for such bad form roughly equal the dice you loose for averaging the two limbs together.  Other GMs may handle things their own way.

[Critias]

And about the enhancement part: the augmented maximum is half of the natural maximum, right?

The augmented maximum is one and a half the natural maximum. 

[metapsionic]

So Baron, you're saying I could get a basic 3/3/3 arm, and assuming I don't care about capacity, I could load it with +6 agility enhancement (because my natural metatype maximum is 6 and my augmented natural maximum is is 9)? Such an arm would be incredibly cheaper, at the cost of not having any fancy toys in it. I would have thought the cyber-enhancements would be capped by the attributes of the arm itself, just like someone with 2 STR can't get a muscle replacement rating 3, because his augmented maximum is 1.5 X 2 = 3.

Note: +6 agility enhancement blows the availability cap at chargen, so this is just a hypothetical situation now.

Edit: my bad Critias, that's what I meant

[FastJack]

First off:

Standard limbs: These prosthetics are basic off-the-shelf models. All standard cyberlimbs come with Body, Strength, and Agility attributes of 3. These values can only be augmented by cyberlimb enhancements. On standard cyberlimbs, a cybertorso is required to have cyberlimb enhancements with a rating higher than 3.

Emphasis mine.

So, with a Standard cyberarm, you can only go up to 6 max unless you get a Cybertorso as well.

However, a Customized cyberarm can start with an Agility of 6, raising the Availability to 7 and the cost to 19,500¥. You can then add the Enchancement on top of that, so a Rating 3 brings you up to Agility 9 for a 9R Availability and an extra cost of 750¥.

Please do note, however that anytime the Enhancement goes above 3, then you're required to get the Cybertorso. It's just that with a customized limb, you're not regulated to start at a base of 3.

[CanRay]

Yeah, it's that whole, "Great, your arm can lift a car, too bad the rest of you isn't built to do the same thing."

[baronspam]

So Baron, you're saying I could get a basic 3/3/3 arm, and assuming I don't care about capacity, I could load it with +6 agility enhancement (because my natural metatype maximum is 6 and my augmented natural maximum is is 9)? Such an arm would be incredibly cheaper, at the cost of not having any fancy toys in it. I would have thought the cyber-enhancements would be capped by the attributes of the arm itself, just like someone with 2 STR can't get a muscle replacement rating 3, because his augmented maximum is 1.5 X 2 = 3.

Note: +6 agility enhancement blows the availability cap at chargen, so this is just a hypothetical situation now.

Edit: my bad Critias, that's what I meant

Grabbed my SR4A to make sure I have the right into.  Here is a quote.

Standard limbs: These prosthetics are basic off-the-shelf models.
All standard cyberlimbs come with Body, Strength, and Agility attributes
of 3. These values can only be augmented by cyberlimb enhancements.
On standard cyberlimbs, a cybertorso is required to have
cyberlimb enhancements with a rating higher than 3

So you can use enhancements only, but if you want an enhancement rating higher than 3 you need a cybertorso as well.  That means stats of up to 6 using enhancements only without the torso.

If you want higher stats you need to (a) buy a cybertorso as well.  This is an option if you are wanting alot of armor, but its starting to turn into an essence sink at this point. or (b) customize the cyberarm first, and then add the enhancements to raise the stat from there.  Another quote.

However, each attribute point raised above 3 increases the
limb’s Availability by 1 point and adds 1,500¥ to the cost—though
it does not take up any Capacity. Increases above the natural attribute
maximum and up to the augmented maximum must be handled as cyberlimb
enhancements, with the standard Capacity and nuyen costs

The optimum approach depends on what you want to do.  Highly customized cyberllimbs are expensive and can have availablity issues, especially on metatypes with high stat like orks and trolls.  But cybertorsos are 1.5 essence and already have a high availability, so they are hard to customize.  In general cybertorso really only make sense if you are building someone with multiple limb replacements, or just trying to pack a crapload of armor onto someone.  If you are just wanting the arm for a one-armed-wonder, and you aren't trying to get up to troll level strength and body, then a customized limb with some extra enchancements is the way to go. 

[Critias]

Edit: my bad Critias, that's what I meant

NP, just making sure there wasn't some hideous rules misunderstanding (due to one or two missing words) that had you thinking augmentations worked differently than they do, or anything like that.   

[metapsionic]

First of all, I'd like to thank all you regular posters for helping me getting everything straight. I'm the rules lawyer of the group, and I make it a point of pride to understand how everything work. I could manage with D&D 3.5, but SR is...wow. Lots of stuff.

Second, for those that have the time, I'd like to run through some examples, just to make sure I got everything right. By the way, I'm currently reading the 20th Anniversary SR4 Core book, if that matters.

Meet Joe Average. All attributes are a 2. Joe has the backing of a AAA's CEO, so money and availability are not important.

1) Joe wants to be stronger and more agile. He looks for Muscle Replacement cyberware. Sadly, since his attributes are 2, his enhanced maximum is 3, so he can only equip a rating 1 MR. Not satisfied, he moves on. He starts looking at Cyberlimbs

2) Joe looks at standard cyberlimbs. He could get 2 arms at 3/3/3. He could use the arm's capacity to install enhancements, but because he has no cyber-torso, he can only go up to 6/6/6. He could lift a car in theory, but in practice his mundane torso would never support the output his arms are capable of.

3) Joe could splurge more essence for a cybertorso. With an off-the-shelf torso and arms at 3/3/3, he can go crazy with enhancements. With 15 capacity in each arm, he buys 1 point of body, and 7 points of agility and strength for each arm. Now his arms have 4 body, 10 str and 10 agi. But they're full to capacity, so no fancy gadgets or cyber-guns can fit in there.

4) Rather than go for a cyber-torso, Joe could order custom-made arms. Nuyen is burning a hole through his bank account, after all. He'd love to spend millions on these parts, but sadly, humans have a natural maximum attribute of 6, which is where he'll have to stop. He orders both arms with 6/6/6, but without a cybertorso, he can only enhance them to 9/9/9. Still, not bad!

5) Combining all of the above, Joe could get a torso, 2 arms at 6/6/6, and boost them like in scenario 3. He would now be the proud owner of 2 arms with Body 7, Strength 13 and Agility 13. Now watch me juggle those cars!

Did I do anything wrong in the above scenarios?

Thanks a bunch :-)