House Rules:
Modified Shadowrun Rules

Variations on Combat

Knockback/Knockdown If the character's Body attribute exceeds the target number of the test, consider it an automatic success.

Armor Degradation
Every time a character's armor absorbs a Serious wound, reduce the ballistic armor value by 1. Every time the character's armor absorbs a Deadly wound, reduce the ballistic armor value by 2.

To "absorb" the damage means that the original value of the attack was Serious or Deadly and it was staged down. If the character stages the damage down to zero, reduce the armor value anyway. If the character achieves successes in excess of "zero," then it is gamemaster's discretion as to whether or not the armor is degraded.

EXAMPLE: Tom takes a Serious wound. He rolls his 4 Body dice and six dice from his Combat Pool. He rolls 7 successes, enough to reduce the damage to zero, plus an "extra" success. The GM decides to reduce the armor value by 1 anyway, though he would have eliminated the loss had Tom rolled one more success.

New armor plates can be purchased for 1/3 of the cost of the original piece.

EXAMPLE: A lined coat has an armor value of (4/2) and costs 700¥. After a few fire fights, the armor value has gone to zero. So, the owner of the coat goes out to buy new plates for 230¥ (about 1/3 of the coat's original cost). Availability and Street Index of the plates are the same as the armor item.

Condition Monitors
Disregard Initiative Modifiers.

Variations on Magic

The Magic Pool
The Magic Pool is determined by the average of your Magic Attribute and the Sorcery skill. So...

EXAMPLE: A mage with a Magic Attribute of 5 (the Essence loss from his cyberarm knocked it down) and a Sorcery skill of 6 has a Magic pool of (5+6/2=5) five.

Spells
Spells are no longer dependent upon "the Force at which they were learned." It costs 5 Force points during character creation and 10 Karma points afterward in order to bond the Principle Formula of that spell. Afterward it may be cast at any Force, appropriately plugging that number into the Drain Code, Damage Code, etc., whatever.

A magician is a conduit for magical energy. He is a valve that channels different amounts of energy according to how much he is willing to tap at one time. A mage who knows the Principle Formula may then tap that spell for a shred of its worth or all the power in Astral space.

Spellcasting
All spellcasting die rolls are performed using Sorcery skill dice or the Spellcasting concentration or an appropriate specialization. Target numbers are equal to the Force at which the spell is cast. Drain follows, with the Drain Target equal to the number the spell's Drain Code prescribes, plugging the appropriately tapped Force into its place in the Code in order to determine Drain. Otherwise, Sorcery/Spellcasting dice function as Force dice would have under standard Shadowrun (2nd Edition) rules.

Tissue Sample Viability for Ritual Magic
Preferably, the body tissue being used as a material link will be somewhat "fresh." Tissue is considered viable for a number of days equal to the Essence of the target. The ritual sorcerer(s) can get a -2 modifier if they are using the sample within a number of hours equal to the target's Essence after it is first separated from the body. Anything past the first cycle of days incurs a +2 modifier per cycle of days past that.

EXAMPLE: A man with an Essence of 5 bleeds on the carpet. An ambitious mage quickly snatches up a drop of it. If he uses it within the next 5 hours, he gets a -2 modifier. Unfortunately, he waits two weeks (14 days) before deciding to cast the spell, then casts it two days later incurring a +4 modifier (he's into the third cycle of days).

Variations on the Matrix & Decking

Bandwidth
Icon Bandwidth
Icon Bandwidth is fluid and fluctuates as the deck operates. The size of the Icon Bandwidth is equal to the ratings of all operating programs (persona and utility).

I/O Bandwidth
I/O Bandwidth is considered dormant until activated at the moment of the data transfer. It is used for all data uploads and downloads. This includes dumping viruses into systems, as well as transferring the contents of datastores. It adds its size to the size of the actual bandwidth when determining the Trace Modifier for the duration of its activity. I/O Bandwidth may not exceed a deck's I/O rating.

Trace Modifier
Equal to -(actual bandwidth/base bandwidth).
Actual bandwidth is equal to the Icon Bandwith + I/O Bandwidth.
The base bandwidth is determined by the jackpoint.

Notes on the Bandwidth Rules
Icon Bandwidth is considered to be able to handle all the key portions of all persona and utility programs the cyberdeck is running. Therefore, all the decker has to worry about is fitting all of his programs in Active Memory, the actual Icon Bandwidth adjusts itself according to the ratings of those programs.

I/O Bandwidth is only taken into account when uploading and downloading. Programs are considered to be handled within the cyberdeck's internal capacities.