Safe houses in SR4 Options

[Edward]

Safe houses in SR4

Looking at SR4 lifestyle rules it specifically states that you can only have one lifestyle and safe houses just count as extra expenses. But I can’t find a reference to what they would cost.

Edward

[Rotbart van Dain...]

p. 304-305

[Ravor]

Aye, but at 500Y per day they must be talking about renting someone's secure and private Safehouse, not the Upkeep of maintaning a hidden building somewhere otherwise no team could afford the Monthly bill of 15,000Y for even a single Team Safehouse, which I find very hard to believe.

Personally if I were running a game I think I'd charge something like ~half of normal Lifestyle Cost for just a semi-private building plus any extras that the Team might want, such as Security Systems, Weapons, food, ect...

[mdynna]

I just let players buy as many lifestyles as they want. What's the harm?

[Dashifen]

I usually price safehouses between 50 and 500 nuyen depending on what services are provided. A one room economy apartment in the barrens with nothing but a bed, stove, and toilet would cost less than renting a house equipped with a full rigger sensor suite, wifi inhibiting paint/wallpaper/construction matierals, with a trained paracritter guard and bound spirits :D

[Jaid]

personally, i think the designers were smoking crack when they came up with the 1 lifestyle per character rule.

honestly, what is so horribly gamebreaking about having multiple lifestyles? what is so hideously wrong with the runners *gasp* actually having a place that they use for hiding when things go bad? are they just idiots, and don't have enough brains to know that, sooner or later, they're gonna need to hide from someone?

frankly, mandatory stupidity (not having a safehouse owned and ready at all times) simply should not cost the characters anything (let alone 500 :nuyen: a day). that's called punishing the players for what you forced them to do. gee, that sounds like a great idea. while we're at it, why not make a rule that you have to take your knife (only) to a gunfight, and as a special rule just to make you feel extra welcome, first aid only works on knife wounds. gee, that sounds like a great rule too.

[Geekkake]

I would totally allow multiple lifestyles, I see absolutely nothing gamebreaking about multiple lifestyles. In fact, I regard them as almost mandatory. However, I certainly charge them for the lifestyles.

[Jaid]

[Dashifen]

If a character has multiple lifestyles, which one do you use to determine starting cash?

[Jaid]

whichever one is active.

personally, i would probably give a small discount on the other lifestyles (maybe even a big discount), like at least 10%, maybe as high as 25% (i don't think 50% unless i heard some pretty persuasive arguements... the real estate is the costly part, IMO, anyways).

so, whichever one is active, they pay full price for, and that is what their starting cash is based on. that's how i'd handle it, anyways.

if they paid full price for all of them, i'd give them the highest.

[Kremlin KOA]

I'd charge full price for all, and give them cash based on the highest

[Jaid]

i'd give the discount mainly to represent that they're not paying for food, power, water, etc while not actively living there.

but of course, YMMV.

[Cain]

I wouldn't give a discount, but that's just because in SR3, lots of people would buy a permanent squatter lifestyle as a bolt-hole. While it's a lot pricier to do that now, it still gives someone quite an advantage to have a permanent lifestyle that's unlikely to be touched.

[coolgrafix]

Coming to this conversation a little late, but was about to start a thread and decided to search first. Voila, I'm not the only one with a major case of the ass regarding safehouses in SR4. Some background..

SR3 page 46
It is possible for a character to purchase more than one lifestyle at a time, and may even be smart to do so. The additional lifestyles would represent the investment the character has made into creating and sustaining safehouses, private storage spaces and so on.

SR4 page 84
Characters can only purchase one lifestyle at a time, though they may pre-purchase it for months in advance if they like. Lifestyles only account for the character's regular daily living expenses and accommodations -- additional investments such as safehouses, private storage, garages, workshops, etc. must be bought and paid for separately.

SR4 page 261
Characters may only buy one lifestyle. This lifestyle truly reflects the runner's standard living circumstances. Additional living amenities such as hotel stays, workshops, safehouses, and so on are handled as separate costs.

SR4 page 304
Safehouse 500¥ per day

So, it's clear that the designers of both SR3 and SR4 agree on the terrible importance of safehouses and the presumption that runners/runner teams will have them. It's also clear that in SR4 they simply ask you to pay for the safehouse out of pocket as opposed to being part of a separate lifestyle, which makes sense to me especially given the argument in a post above about not really living there and consuming electricity, food, etc.

What ISN'T clear, however, is why page 304 lists safehouses -- something that everyone is assumed to have -- at 500¥ a bloody day.

If it is a typo (which I'm willing to wage) and was supposed to be 50¥ per day instead, then that would bring the safehouse cost to 1500¥/month (500¥ shy of a Low Lifestyle) and that seems perfectly reasonable.

So, instead of altering the rules to allow multiple lifestyles, is it not simpler to assume the cost was in error?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Those are service costs... if you check into a guarded underground hotel (called safehouse) to hide - presumably that includes food (and clothing).

[coolgrafix]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Indeed, that's up to the GM.

Some sample character presented in the book have the knowledge skill where to find such safehouses for rental, though.

[fool]

does the skill let you find a "safe house" or simply a safe place to lay low for a while like the character example who is hiding out from a gang and needs to make a weappon and some light (armorer skill example I think)

[James McMurray]

What's the difference?

[coolgrafix]

[James McMurray]

I seriously doubt you're checking into a hotel. Instead it represents you calling up your fixer and him setting you up with some fresh digs for a while.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

If you see it from an info-leak-PoV, calling your fixer is even worse than simply showing up at some hotel. ;)

[Big D]

I could see $500/day as emergency expenses for short-duration unprepared hiding--you'll spend a lot more finding a bolthole at the last minute, covering your tracks, making it all look legit, and running recon and planning for your next move than normal. The price should include costs for fast but extensive preparation--if you decide to risk just checking into a motel under a fake SIN and hoping that the owners don't twig to anything or sell you out, normal motel costs will work.

However, that only makes sense for unprepared hiding. That should only come into play if the prepared safehouses have all been burned (traitor in the team, somebody got captured and is an interrogation risk, deployed on short notice to a city with no prepared safehouses or time to get them, etc.).

[Aaron]

To throw my opinion into the ring as well, I'd say that a 500¥-per-night safehouse is safe. You're paying for the security, so it makes sense that it would be, indeed, a safe house. And it doesn't have to be some sort of hotel that caters to shadowrunners (that would be almost as silly as a mall that caters to shadowrunners ...). It could be the family of a distant cousin one night, and an abandoned store on gang turf another night, and a hotel suite the next night; it just averages around 500¥ for food and lodging for each one, so it's easiest to just call it 500¥ and dispense with the niggling details.

It makes sense that a safehouse would be separate from one's lifestyle. I mean, keeping a separate lifestyle as a "safehouse" rather defeats the purpose. The useful thing about a safehouse is that you've never been there before, and you'll never go back; it might not even ever be used as a safehouse again.

[James McMurray]