Cyberlimbs in SR3

"This is it. It’s the end of the line for me. But not for you. Fast is what you do best, ain’t it? Just keep running."

I fucking love Shadowrun. I've played 3e extensively and 5e a short amount. Both are good games, but it's become increasingly clear to me that both have their own mess of problems. 5e fixes some but breaks others, and I got to thinking about what things it got right. This time, I'm talking about cyberlimbs and presenting house rules to lift them out of the gutter hell of "flavor" purchases. 

In 3e, cyberlimbs are a niche purchase. They have their gimmicks, like Kid Stealth legs, hydraulic jacks, or the cyberarm gyromount. They're also prohibitively expensive due to a variety of factors(that I'll go over later) and Cyberskulls in specific are virtually worthless. Its "best use" is to protect your headware from stress, but even that is laughably pointless: It isn't as though headware is harder to repair or more prone to damage than anything else. 

5e simplifies limbs and adds options as well as adding a large variety of limb gadgets. Those are the easy part: I've already adapted several of those and it wouldn't be hard to adapt more. 5e also accidentally turns cyberlimbs into a dominant strategy, but I promise that fact is irrelevant to our discussion today. 

Simplification is on the menu to make limbs easier to use, less math-crunchy, and easier to justify purchasing. SR3 designs with realism in mind but as you'll find out, some of the issues with cyberlimbs already don't make any fucking sense. 

Ability Scores. This is the major financial albatross around your neck if you're buying cyberlimbs. They start at STR and QCK of 4 and must be bought up and balanced with your natural ability scores, or else you take penalties. What's worse is that raising these scores gets harder and more expensive after three points, which can easily push you into taking a lot of extra essence and nuyen penalties. Let me go over a simple, basic example. Keep in mind this is all STANDARD grade 'ware. Alphaware will be even higher.

>--<

A character with a QCK of 4 and two cyberlegs has paid 150k nuyen and 2 essence. This is our baseline for a "fair" price: they're expensive, but do come with baked-in benefits in addition to being a framework upon which to hang extras. 

The same character with a QCK of 7 pays 330k nuyen and 2 essence. They get no additional benefit other than simply being able to actually use their QCK of 7 when running. 

If they have a QCK of 8, they're paying 420k and 2.6 essence. Again, there is no additional benefit. 

>--<

Blowing money just to match the stats you've already got quickly gets fucking ridiculous. The character in question might have cyberlegs primarily for hydraulic jacks, and ironically might consider just installing those in his meat legs for 2 essence and a mere 25k nuyen. He loses out on the ECU of the legs and the 2 points of body, but he gets to start with hydraulic jacks without having to refinance his fucking home. 

My suggestion: Remove limb stat balancing. Cyberlimbs should reflect your stats naturally, like a lower limb already does. Additional stat boosts beyond that can be handled by the system in their normal way: they can still cost the same and still apply to tests "using primarily that limb", just like the book says. 

Edit: Another way to handle stat boosts would be to allow someone with 3 or more cyberlimbs to buy stat boosts for a flat nuyen and ECU cost and allow them to affect stats normally like muscle replacement or muscle augmentation/toner. This would allow a cybernetic character a "replacement" for those pieces of 'ware, which they are not able to use. Be careful allowing this with two limbs, however: it would mean the character can benefit from muscle aug/toner as well as this boost. 

ECU. So, the values for ECU are okay. I think arms should have a bit more and legs should have a bit less, but that's a nitpick. Synthetic cyberlimbs also feel as though they're punished too harshly in this aspect. Our main issue is the fact that you lose ECU for higher grade limbs "because the implants are more streamlined and ergonomic and therefore smaller and have less space available."

This does not and has never made sense to me. The most charitable explanation I have is that standard grade limbs are much larger than a limb ought to be(which is reflected in a few pieces of artwork in the book) and the limb gets progressively smaller until a Delta limb is exactly the size a limb ought to be. This whole interpretation rapidly falls apart because a synthetic cyberlimb, which is intended to appear normal, has a concealability of 8 at standard grade. If it's already basically the size of a normal limb, what's happening as it goes up in grade? Premium, more ergonomic parts sure don't sound like they'd be larger then standard ones.

I also want to point out here that SR5 lets you buy additional ECU via an option called Bulk Modification. You can get up to 6 more ECU for the torso or 4 more for a limb, for example. I think porting this wholesale would be fine so long as we remind players of the "cyberware and social interaction" rules. I always suggest going soft on these to begin with but it's not my fault if you look like a Sherman tank.

My suggestion: remove the loss of ECU for higher grade limbs. Asking the player to balance ECU considerations with their essence is pointless bookkeeping. Making a sammy is crunchy enough. Consider adding Bulk Modification to your games. 

Limb Extras and Gadgets. Part of the problem with limbs is a lack of standardized gadgets and limb extras. That's not a huge problem considering the rules allow you to use your own ingenuity. However, porting some stuff from 5e or coming up with your own is a good idea. I particularly like the idea of a limb holding a tool or biotech kit, it feels like exactly something someone would do with their cyberlimb. Synthlinks for musicians and better rules for modular connectors are perfect stuff. 

I also want to point out the concept of limb DNI. In SR3, you have to pay for direct neural interfacing for any limb gadgets, as in it's not controlled directly by your brain until you do. This rule is extremely poorly conveyed and practically vestigial. Trying to follow it closely raises more questions than it solves: sure, I'd have to plug into my cyberdeck even though it's in my arm, but what's the difference between a DNI cybergun and a non-DNI one? What about cyber-implant weaponry? Would lack of DNI imply that I'm pulling blades out of my hand like I'm opening a utility knife? This rule only makes sense to me for things that you want to put on your headware network. Even then, "DNI Adaptation" isn't the same as a router and RAW, you have to do both. To put a finer point on it: this only makes sense to me for cyberdecks and electronic devices. Even then, this is just yet another tax. Your brain is already controlling the limb and cyber-implant weaponry is already described as something like a new muscle in other areas of the book. I see no reason why ANY gadget would be different. 

My Suggestion: Remove "DNI Adaptation" and just assume limb gadgets are DNI by default. Adapt some gadgets, either from 5e or your own ideas. Or just wait for me to do it.

Concealability. Man, this pisses me off. I barely talk about Synthetic cyberlimbs because they get hit with huge penalties on top of all of the downsides they share with obvious limbs. They have half the ECU of their counterparts, but also have to worry about their concealability going down. What's worse is that basically, everything you'd think to put in the fucking thing lowers concealability. The only reason you'd have a synthetic limb is to sneak your capabilities and gadgets past a MAD, and your conceal rating is the thing you're using to get PAST that MAD, so it creates this awful situation where you already lost half your ECU and you feel like you can't even fill what's left for fear of impacting your limb's usefulness. 

My suggestion. Remove. Entirely. 

Cyberskulls. I just wanted to make a note here because there's basically no fixing this piece of 'ware. It's not too expensive, the essence cost isn't too out of line... it just doesn't really do anything. Fluffing its ECU would be okay, a measly 2 ECU isn't much. However, even then I'm just not sure of how many pieces of equipment could go in your HEAD. It already fits a cybersquirt, can you do that? I say yes, but a lot of reasonable people I know would laugh. It's the world's best protection against a head shot, but if there's a sniper and you've got an obvious cyberskull, they're going to know. In addition to its lack of benefits, it comes with enormous social penalties which are intended to stack on top of the normal cyberware and social interactions penalties. I dunno I just don't think an obvious cyberskull would cause such a severe reaction, especially considering what media exposure must be like by 2065. 

My Suggestion: go soft on the social penalties. Cutting the base essence cost from 0.75 to 0.50 might be warranted. Consider eliminating it from "counting" as a limb for purposes of 'ware benefit reduction.

I love cyberlimbs.  I like the cool aesthetic, the self-expression in their design, and having a lot of extras, gadgets and answers. I find a reason to fit them into a lot of builds. They're just frustrating to work with: I want characters with varied options and I feel like paying a premium for that is counter-intuitive. After all, the "power" options are cheaper and less impactful on essence. If I wanted to build the overall most effective murder machine I could, they wouldn't have any cyberlimbs, I can promise you that.