In the old game my characters always tended to come from Aysle, Nile Empire, or.... Tharkold. My Tharkold characters tended to be Human Mutants, with minimal cyber, and a preference for pain weapons. I would generally get my cyber value down to absolute minimums very quickly and not really have to worry about it. Of course our group dice cheat started playing a Technodemon, as soon as the Cosm was released. But, then again, he liked to take whatever character concept I came up with and Munchkin it to the max.
TORG demonstrated to me just how bad my dice rolling is. While playing an Elven Monk, in an adventure in Nippon Tech, we were ambushed in a garage by a bunch of guards with automatic weapons. Everyone else dove for cover. Having a shield, and a truly ungodly dodge number, I went full defence. Disconnected (augmented DEX). Still didn't get hit. After that I proceeded to roll 7 more ones but with full defence and shield, combined with occasional use of Possibilities/Hero Cards, came out completely unscathed. Finished the encounter still disconnected but the rest of the party had cleaned up the guards, while they were all pretty much concentrating on me.
GM ruled that, after that, my shield was two fist sized pieces of wood, held together by a strap.