Optimizing character wealth at chargen Options

[Shaikujin]

I was recently trying to squeeze as much money out of chargen. Have already factored in the 30k from debt, but it wasn't enough and I needed a bit more. Probably a well known thing, but I didn't see it posted before, so I thought I'd make a post on a couple of ways to optimize starting nuyen.

Here's a table of what each lifestyle costs, and the starting nuyen each can give you:

CODE

Lifestyle Cost Starting nuyen Max Max if we add the bonus from leftover chargen nuyen
Street Free 1d6 x 10 60 90
Squatter 500¥ 2d6 x 20 240 360
Low 2,000¥ 3d6 x 50 900 1350
Middle 5,000¥ 4d6 x 100 2400 3600
High 10,000¥ 4d6 x 500 12000 18000
Luxury 100,000¥ 4d6 x 1000 24000 36000

From the table above, if you look at the Max column, there are only 2 lifestyles that can potentially give you more nuyen than you put in - "Street" and "High". Of the 2, the "High" lifestyle is definitely more profitable. How do we add even more?

Also, note that every 100 nuyen that you have leftover from chargen gives you a +1 to the dice roll. The maximum dice you can get is equal to 3 times the number of dice rolled. ie 1d6 means you can get +3 the the dice roll, 2d6 means +6, 3d6 means +9, 4 d6 means +12.

Note that this is the only cap. If you roll the maximum 24 on your 4d6, you can still add an additional +12 on top of it. The maximum starting nuyen after factoring this bonus is represented by the last column. For the High lifestyle, setting aside that 1,200 nuyen during chargen will give you guaranteed returns of 6000 nuyen.

Even if you roll all "ones", the worst you can do is to get 8,000 at startup (the 2k you get from rolling 4 ones, plus the 6k). This makes the "High" lifestyle a better choice than the others if you can select it.



The next trick is that a lot of things are cheaper if bought in the blackmarket after chargen. Shadownrunners fence stuff at the base 30% of price. This is meant to limit the cash reserves of players. But it is not necessarily a bad thing and can be turned into an advantage as well. Why? Because this rule would apply to ALL NPC runners/smugglers/pirates/thieves that are fencing their stuff too.

Then there is a -20% modifier to make it cheaper if the items are stolen. Unless the NPC runners are selling something that they have manufactured themselves, chances are, the stuff they are fencing are stolen.

It's a matter of legwork and availability tests (think eBay in 2070) to cut out the middleman and simply find other Shadowrunners selling stuff they have stolen. It may not even be secondhand.



3rd trick, this one might be vetoed by your GM, but it is RAW. Now, you can't bring unspent nuyen in chargen into the game. But technically, you can buy certified credsticks for 25 nuyen, then put in your remaining 250,000 nuyen into the credstick (minus lifestyle, the 1.2 k reserve, a cheap commlink and perhaps a fake SIN etc).

Eg for a solid commlink, after chargen, upgrade it yourself at 50% of the cost. On top of that, buy stolen components at 10% the cost. Meaning you can get your 6/6/6/6 commlink at 5% of the normal costs. Load up with rating 4 freeware (from Unwired) and you have a pretty decent hacker setup for next to nothing.



Voila, you can now potetially turn that 250,000 nuyen into 2,500,000 worth of gear. Not all this will fly with your GMs, so YMMV.

Thoughts anyone? Any other tricks you'd care to share?