Need Help - Kinda Fast too, The Cash or the Box Options

[hyzmarca]

[PlatonicPimp]

However, I must disagree with the assessment that cataligye is obscure and useless to a normal mage. It's one of my favorite spells. Granted, it wasn't quite used right above (The mage would have had to write shit down first). But an accurate and complete assessment of the contents of a room? Priceless. Especially if the mage doesn't wirte it down, but dumps it to file via DNI. Cast spell, write file at speed of thought, drop spell, use search function to see if what you want is there. Quickest way to search an area EVAR.

[LinaInverse]

[Kagetenshi]

[LinaInverse]

[Kagetenshi]

[PlatonicPimp]

DNI is direct Neural link, in terms of cyber/computers. Acheivable thorugh a trodeset if you aren't willing to lose any magic for the datajack. (In SR3, I never made a mage who didn't drop a point for the functionality of a little cyber. But then again, I could Geas. In SR4, well, Now trodes work as well so there is little need.)

Useless in most situations a runner would encounter? How about " Break into Corp A, find item B, return to Jouhson C?" How about searching a dude for contraband? How about scanning the breifcase with your payment to make sure you don't get a result of 'Bomb" or "RFID tag"? What happens if you see a little girl in a room, but when you catalogue for contents little girl doesn't show up but "Honkin big toxic spirit" does? At the very least, you can use it to know what to steal out of the armory.

And if you play a pirate campaign, dear lord, the usefulness. I'd never take it over stunbolt, but I'd take it over levitate any day.

[blakkie]

[ShadowDragon8685]

About the Thesis: I know little of the magic of the shadows. In that case, revise my estimate upwards. By attaching at least one zero to it. As well as the convoy across the outback.

[Kagetenshi]

I'd take Levitate over Stunbolt any day, personally.

That said, your last use doesn't work—Catalogue, per the description, won't name anything you wouldn't recognize on sight. A strict canon approach (*waves at Toturi*) might result in the little girl showing up as "Unknown", but my personal approach (and that of most GMs) would be to list anything as what the mage would list it as were said mage looking at it.

~J

[LinaInverse]

[LinaInverse]

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

[PlatonicPimp]

Searching for contrababnd with catalogue has teh great advantage over a physical search. For one, it takes less time. Two, you don't have to touch the person. They don't even have to know. Three, no matter the concealability of whatever they have, it catches it.

I'm sure you have spells that you prefer. We all have our own styles. I like having lots of utility spells and few obvious ones. Others might like having all the bright and flashy spells or a combat spell for every occasion. Just don't knock catalogue. It's awesomeness knows no bounds.

[pragma]

As one of Kagetenshi's players who abus .... uses catalogue regularly I feel comforatable saying that its massively useful. The most used Single point of karma on that character.

Leviathan, given that the tray is worth a solid 250 K and you're apparently outgunned at the moment, I would just make off with that. Don't know how many are on your team right now but that's much better than standard pay.

Altheas, speaking from experience: giving players money isn't game breaking, its fun. SR Comp is horribly underpriced and characters get sick of 5 K runs pretty quickly. I'd shy away from dropping high force stacked foci on the characters every other encounter, but -- unless I'm horribly mistaken -- shelling out a little more cash won't hurt things.

[Teulisch]

I agree with those saying the gm is screwing the players, and being too tight with money.

the best way to look at it, may be to think of it as a crime movie, like Oceans 11. they get an idea for a BIG payoff, and make it work. Having somebody else pop up to steal your spotlight by GM fiat is just wrong.

If i were in a game like that, i suspect i would focus less on runs, and more on B&E to steal thing i can sell to a fence contact. and possibly slap the GM upside the head.

the real problem with not giving the PCs enough money, is then you dont have the option of having runs that dont pay, but focus on 'doing the right thing'.

[Fortune]

I have to chime in on the Catalog spell as well. It, along with other decent 'Force 1 spells' like Makeover, Oxygenate, Physical Camouflage, Trid Entertainment, and Healthy Glow are all extremely useful, and normally find a place in my (SR3) casters' spell lists. All 6 can be learned quite easily, and only cost 6 Karma in total.

Others like Fashion and Fix are also almost always present, albeit at a higher Force.

[Enigma]

I had a massive problem with looting in earlier games, which I also attribute to too much fantasy-type games ("I loot the bodies" "you find a dagger and ten silver pieces" is a tough mentality to break).

I actually found that it was often a function of how attached players were to the characters. Whilst this sounds weird, I found that when a player had put hours of effort into a background and was really happy with a character, they tended to play that character as being stylish within their own definition. This often led to me being able to indicate looting was not on by simply having NPCs watch the player rifle through a security-guard's underwear for loose change with a subtly raised eyebrow and a mild sneer of contempt.

Where the character was really a "look, I can get 20+3D6 initiative as a starting character" or "I can roll fifteen dice for damage resistance without pool" type of character concept, they would loot because, basically it made economic sense.

However, looting is what happens if you pay characters too little. I find a good benchmark is 10K per runner per run. It goes up as the threat rises, or as the player's rep increases, or as the length of run increases. It goes down if it's a dodgy little run.

I think you're being harsh on Karma too. I generally award 7 or 8 karma per character per run, but I am over-generous with karma and place a lot of demands on the players in terms of developing skills. Be especially careful with being stingy on Karma, because that leads both to the Dark Side, and also to players running cardboard cut out characters, which is almost as bad as the Dark Side. If a player doesn't have any incentive not to change characters whenever the mood takes him, then you will get a lot of characters with a high turnover rate, who are transperently flimsy attempts at characterisation. Might as well go and play a computer game.

[Crusher Bob]

Nah, better to make the 1,000,000 Y man who spent almost all his money on gear the other pcs will find useful, get yourself a nice terminal illness and then decrale the rest of the characters your bosom buddies and next of kin.

"So cancer man, why do you have a truck full of guns, un-implanted cyberware, and unbound foci?"

Cancer man: <wheeze> "My long lost relatives. I leave every thing to you." <dies>

The runnders should be making enough to get a high lifestyle, plus costs to cover any expendable gear, plus put away money for retirement and/or upgrades. This means a minimum of maybe 25K a month while running the shadows. If the runs don't offer enough money, go back to stealing cars.

[Slacker]

[Kagetenshi]

[Leviathan]

Well, I do have one resource left open to me..

"Now then, how much is say, this mage next to me, and that chopper behind me, and those guards, worth to you? More than this little box methinks"

*Remove coat*

"Now, as you can see I'm carrying 7kilos of plastic explosives, all wired to this remote detonator..."

[Altheas]

Okay, hopefully this spoiler function works. This whole post is verbose, but bear with me.

Leviathans (and other rare sea creatures) stay out.

[ Spoiler ]

This mine they'd just hit was run by Cross, an experimental place in the art of mining under these rare conditions. Wuxing has suspected it's true purpose for some time. One of the PCs (a Wujen with a Lv2 Wuxing contact) had been requested to do some unobtrusive snooping around the place. He reports that they found squat, when soon after Leviathan came back and reported Oricalcum mine.

Wuxing had a pretty good idea that the place was important for a few reasons
1 - it was on the convergence point of two manalines.
2 - the level of security around the place (multiple wards and the like)
3 - the number of mages that their deckers had learned were deployed there, with specialties in parageology and the like.

In short, Wuxing was preparing to make their move on the place. The PCs wander in, launch their own attack, without any one offering any currency, the only assistance being a local aboriginal tribe who provided several spirits as backup.

During the initial part of the raid, the Cross mages detected the spirits hindering their actions (using confusion power) and brought the site up to a passive alert, alerting their home base. Wuxing who were also monitoring the site, noticed, and prepared to make their move.

Fast-forward a few hours of gaming, the building we were in was being closed up for the night. We had three options
1 - Postpone the run, which is impractical since we have exams in 1 week, and afterwards some of us head home.
2 - Try and find a building/place to finish off the run, impractical since we lacked a convenient place to continue, and several of us had to catch public transport home.
3 - Introduce a Deus Ex Machina to finish the run there and then. This was the option I chose, to move the timetable of Wuxing's attack forward. My original plan was for the PCs to finish their job, and Wuxing to move in a short while after they left and take control of the site. Since they wanted to take control of the site, a mage with catalogue would be invaluable, to take inventory of what prisoners carried, what was in stores and the like.

From the whole campaign point of view, it affects nothing, Wuxing will still move in and take control of the site from Cross. For the PCs, Wuxing's offer is perfectly legitimate, in part due to the fact the astral mage knows and is on good terms with the Wujen in the party. In game, Leviathan has attempted to place arguments to persuade Wuxing to part with some of the goods, none of them more persuasive than 'you don't need all this good stuff' which is hardly the line of reasoning I believe a corp would accept.

If he had argued 'giving this stuff to us will allow you to argue you were protecting Cross's interests by rescuing them from the evil Shadowrunners', they would have been much more generous with the goods. In short, as far as Wuxing is concerned, they are offering plenty to compensate for the party's well meaning, but ultimately irrelevant actions.

Up until this run, which has involved several previous stages involving solely Leviathan, each run has taken four hours or so. They have been given a fair amount of legwork already done for them. (location of the target, approximate security and the like as relevant) In short, the need for legwork has been kept to a minimum due to the time constraints surrounding the game. The threat associated with these runs has also been considerably reduced, with in most instances all the injuries being inflicted upon their opposition.

I have tried to drum into them 'be professional'. I am confused to hear that doing so doesn't mean attempt to get the best price possible. If this impression has been given, I'm incredibly confused as to how it occured, since this is the first that this belief has been brought to my attention. Pay, or a portion of has not been asked for up front, even through several of the PCs, including the face/mage have played Shadowrun for far longer than me.

[Lucifer]

Personally, if I was the GM I'd have the contents of the box be something very, very hot. An extremely valuable item that Wuxing (and Cross, and possibly others) are going to be willing to pay dearly for... and more importantly, going to be willing to make you pay dearly for having.

You'd be subjected to assassination attempts, betrayals by low-level contacts (how much do you trust that Level 1 Fence you want to take it to?), kidnappings of any dependents or maybe higher level contacts, maybe some smear campaigns to try and ruin your rep, cyberterrorism (got a fake SIN? Now you've got a registered sex offender's fake SIN!), and maybe some good old fashioned destruction of property in the process (a safehouse here, a vehicle there...).

But, if you had the brains and balls to weather the storm, I'd make the contents of the safe worth at least a million for your trouble, maybe more (depending on how much shit I put you through). A million goes a long way when half of your team is too dead to take a cut, too!

So, basically what I'm saying is the tray is safe but modest and the box is risky but has a huge potential payoff. Really, nothing you didn't know before you asked. So the question is: do you feel lucky, punk?