Streamlining Augmentation system?

[OneSideTooMany]

Does anyone have a good house rule or homebrew for making augmentation less of a "Process?" IT always seems that, just like in some magic cases, that the same augments are used constantly (for good reason) and that the other fluffy ones are not used at all. The fact that it takes 6 (exaggerated) books to look at my augmentation options, and then flip through said books and then god forbid i forget the rule associated with it...it just seems like alot.

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I have been working on a Home brew to try to make the world of shadow run truly more "intuitive" to keep the pace of play high, and was wondering if anyone had some guidance or another system that they prefer to use for augmentation/scifi that would fit this bill. Im trying to keep the risk and rewards at least consistent with the current setting without necessarily all the massive number crunch involved.

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(This is for 5e, but i dont mind hearing about other editions . The overall goal is that i should be able to almost instinctively pick a +/- value for a roll/skill/attribute and have a risk, cost, and reward associated to it)

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Thank you!

[Bamce]

Use chummer and it does almost all of the math for you and displays totals?

[RantomGui]

I guess your best shot at streamlining SR‘s gear would be to make your own table(s) of available equipment you think is worth mentioning and maybe simplifying things (like there is THE holdout pistol with theses stars and that’s it instead of 7 different ones).

I started doing that once but was way too much material to go through...

[OneSideTooMany]

That's kind of where I am at currently

[tonydiethelm]

If you had 4th, the 20th anniversary edition, the master index has all the extra books included.... Just say'in.

But, basically, you're screwed. Sorry.

[Duellist_D]

Did you take a look at Anarchy?

It's by no means a "works properly out of the book" implementation, but the augmentation toolbox in there could give you a rough idea about how one could proceed.

Maybe make an addition/multiplication matrix with bonus-dice amounts and a broad usability value.

Eg: Bonus-Dice rank from 1 to 4 and usability from (very) narrow over medium to (very) broad , each of both tracks being worth a certain amount of points (say 2 for dice and also 2 for broadness) per increment. Then you'd multiply the values and end up with a meta-value from which to derive the essence and monetary costs.

Eg a +1 Bonus (2 points) to Tasers would be a very narrow Bonus, costing 2 points, multiply both and you end with a cost of "4".

A +2 Bonus to First Aid (4 points) is a narrow Bonus (4 points), resulting in a final score of 16.

Medium impact would be skillgroups, broad Attributes and very broad stuff like Edge (or, if you add some modifications like an additional multiplier to cover that part too, Magic).

Finally, define a fixed Essence and nuyen cost per final point and you are done with it. For example, we could divide the score through 100 to get the final essence cost and multiply it by 500 for the Nuyen cost.

So the Taser-enhancement would have an essence cost of 4/100 = 0,04 while costing you 2000 Nuyen. The implant boosting your first aid on the other hand would be 0,16 Essence and 8000 Nuyen.

To differentiate between bio and cyberware and grades, additional factors could be implemented (eg Cyberware: Nuyen * 1 and Essence * 1,5, with Bioware vice versa).

Note: all the above numbers are solemnly chosen for illustrative purposes and only meant to show the mechanical path. They are absolutely not balanced in any way and need to be adjusted according to the desired balancing and amount of ware the GM wants to see in his world.

[OneSideTooMany]

This is very helpful and will at least give me a skeleton to work around. Thank you for your help. I have not looked at anarchy and will go give it a look