From:	"Mongoose; bodyguard, vigilante." <EWESSEL@****>
Subject:	The SPOILER
Date:	Tue, 6 Oct 92 16:13:00 CDT

This was posted yesterday, october 5.

] The "hero" in this story is a male human. He was born physically handicapped
] and was born without arms or legs. In addition, he was blind. No
] amount of gene or neuro-surgery has been able to correct the problem
] (remember, this was 20 years ago and the advanced techniques of today were
] not available). In turn, he was given many cybernetic implants to make up
] for his defficiencies.
]
] The cyberware he CURRENTLY has is as follows:
]
] 2 cyber arms w/
] R: Built In Pistol
] Smartgun Link
] L: Program Carriers
] Smartgun Link
] Cyberdeck
] 2 cyber legs
] Level 2 Wired Reflexes
] Cyber-eyes w/
] Thermo
] Low-Light
] Level 3 Electronic Magnification
] Video Link
] Flare Compensation
] Cyber-ears
] 300 MP memory
] Lvl 4 Datajack
] Lvl 4 Softlink
] Lvl 3 Skillwire +
] Lvl 4 Encephalon
] Lvl 4 I/O SPU
] Lvl 4 I/O MATH

Okay, since this is going to be in a story, I came up with some liberties you
could take with the rules. First, since he was born without legs and arms in
the first place, then I don't see why he would lose essence by getting cyber-
limbs. There're no nerves cut out, and no soul, meat, anything lost; just
something gained. So, no essence loss for cyberlimbs with this guy.

The eyes are not a real problem in the first place because you can only loose
so much essence on eyes.

Why would a decker want cyberears? If he is so interested in the world of
the matrix, then improved hearing would not factor into his "I gotta have it"
list.

Again, with the wired reflexes: they have no effect on his performance in
the matrix, so become extraneous. You would do much better by getting him
response increase on his deck.

Now, with the softlink and the skillwires. For that I can think of a non-
cyber method of taking care of that. This guy has to grow up his whole life
knowing that he was born without body parts that everyone else has. This
built up an inferiority complex in him, which in turn made him go out and
learn all the physical things that he could as a kid so the other kids would
have no basis to make fun of him. Then when he learned that he wanted to be
a shadowrunner, he went and learned as many skills as he could which dealt
with shadowrunning, because he knew fixers and Mr. Johnsons would get dossiers
on him if they wanted to hire him, and he wanted to make up for the big note
on his handicaps with a huge list of specialties. Then all you would have to
do is give him a few more skill points than his SKILLS priority suggests.
Maybe you could still get him a softlink or a chipjack for knowledge skills.

{BTW, a guy in my old group kind of got around the fact that a chipjack has only
one chip receptacle. What he did is he got a pocket computer with a ridiculous
amount of memory in it and downloaded all his chips into that. Using that we
figured he could run as many chips through the computer and one jack(data or
chip) as his intelligence. Then to swich, he would just have to scan a menu
on the comp and press a button or two.}

And the three hundred headware memory MP could easily be substituted by
memory on his deck, which is housed in his arm anyway, and wouldn't reduce
any essense.

Just some ideas for you, Mr. Hayden, cof cof, umm, Mr. Johnson.

The Mongoose
"It's my _opinion_, trog. Deal."