cost of shadowruns, query of standard market prices in SR4 Options

[djinni]

have you made up a list of the average price of a shadowrun?
Wet work is 20,000
Extractions = 7,500
Data steals are 5,000
for example....
just a little something for the johnsons to start the negotiations with?
do you add expenses or include it in the price?
I'm putting on e together but I can't find a starting point for the market of the shadowruns.

[Backgammon]

It totally depends on each GM/group. You can't really put down a universal job price list. MrJLBB and SR3Comp had price lists, but I don't know a single person who didn't go "WTF?" when reading them.

So, really, people can argue one way or another what they think each job is worth, but in the end there is no right answer, it entirely depends on the group.

[Demerzel]

There are some DSFers who will go into long calculus regarding the pay per day of boosting random cars off the side of the street and then use that to argue for a minimum on a Shadowrunners income, but try not to let that influence your payouts. One run a group may net 300k :nuyen: in milspec hardware on another they may be trying to save an orphanage to impress that hot blonde.

Key is don't set yourself up with a menu. A run is not a datasteal with a side of extraction and extra sabotage sprinkled on top. It's a complex dynamic of needs and desires and situation.

[Butterblume]

Wetwork is much easier than an extraction...

[eidolon]

[djinni]

[Demerzel]

There really is no right answer. The thing is your players fortuned are in your hands. You can start with whatever you like, then as you watch your players advancement from month to month you can have windfalls/pitfalls that will rebalance it. It's a lot eaiser to give more later than to take stuff away however, so I generally start lean and fatten the budgets as we go along depending on what I'm seeing my group need.

My current game I've accidentally impoverished my group because they made a couple big mistakes that should have left them dead, but I instead only cost them their lifestyles and a lot of their back up gear. But I can get them back into the black as fast or as slow as I want, I just have to make sure I don't make them feel frustrated.

[Charon]

Low paying run that follows standard karma distribution will skew the game in favor of the magically active.

The cyber/gear reliant PCs will become jack of all trade by learning new skills while the magically active will have trouble buying new foci but overall the PCs who use magic will be the only ones who see a significant increase in their "power level", so to speak.

If I'm a player, my first question when choosing a PC would be what kind of pay scale he is thinking of. I like roleplaying as much as the next guy but if the GM says he feel a standard run pays 10k for the team, forget about playing a street samurai.

For a team of four, that's 2,500 nuyen each.

Let's say it was a hit ; you want to get rid of the murder weapon? That's the logical thing to do, right? But it better not have been a sniper rifle, because it's worth twice as much as your share! Even if you just used a damn heavy pistol it'll knock you down 20%.

Whatever you do, do NOT lose one of your drone. Right there your profit is gone. And should you crash your vehicle... Damn, your screwed. You might have to file for bankruptcy!

Your hacker commlink has been blown up? Crap. How many missions before you can get another top notch one (without even factoring in the programs that you thankfully have back up of)? Even with SR4 super cheap commlink you've just knocked yourself down several missions.

And when is the lifestyle due?

---

Oh, and if your background is that you are a runner who slowly worked his way up the food chain from street rat to ganger to small time street muscle to respected runner, then you can forget about anything cyber related.

I know it's a cyberpunk classic but with those kind of pay, the only way to justify even as little as 50K of cyber is to have recently defected from the army, corp, yakuza etc.

---

So there you have it. There's nothing wrong with low pay. If I'm playing this campaign, I just won't play the rigger/hacker/street samurai. I probably even won't play someone who likes guns! Faceman or Magicians are my best pick.

---

Typical pay (right from the start) for a campaign that do not consider the possibility of the street samurai one day having beta Wired reflex to be a grave sin ;

IMO, 10k/runner for very typical run, with occasional peak at 25k and low at 5k.

This should slowly increase with their street cred. After 12 missions I would say I'm 20-25% over that though it's not like I break out an Excel sheet to keep track of it.

If you feel you've given too much money too fast, organize a session of free work (Easy ; a family member is in trouble, an enemy has tracked them down and it's a battle to the finish etc.)

It's actually quite cool for a player to dig in his pocket and favor bank to overcome that kind of challenge. Recently, my PCs tracked down a Johnson working for Brackhaven that screwed them over and spent over 25k of their cash reserve to finance a little operation to kidnap him, cross the border and deliver him gift wrapped to the Ancients (they didn't ask and were pleasantly surprised since they had been screwed too in the same run). And the players were happy to do it. That kind of mission would have been positively impossible if I starved my runners for cash.

[Butterblume]

The GM can always funnel more money to the players by stuff they can take on the run, like data, equipment or even a piece of art.

[fool]

I like mixing it up. My players last mission they were supposed to be paid 3k :nuyen: /pc. But they forgot to get anything up front, and wound up being completely fragged over when it turned out they were completely set up.
The next run will probably be as a favor for the person who got their fat out of the fire.

[lorechaser]

[eidolon]

Yet again a thread makes it apparent that I don't run a "standard" game. :)

[lorechaser]

[Demerzel]

[eidolon]

Usually, I agree with both of you. However, much as I loathe to admit it, sometimes sheer number of commonalities do seem to create a "basic" game. It's much less so for SR than it is for D&D, of course, but if you look, you can find it here too. :)

[Wakshaani]

{ersoanlly, I'm starting to think that there should maybe be soem sort of guideline set up, with mission grades, rather than what teh mission entails.

Use teh standard 1-6, with 1 being "Milk runs for Wannabes", 6 for "Sneak into Lofwyr's den and take a scale off his chest", and everything else in between. I'd even make a benchmark ... Take teh rating of teh run times three and that's the skill level you need in your primary area to knwo that you're suited fro it.

IE, if yoru Faceman has a Charisma 5 and Influence Group 4, he's ready for Grade 3 Missions. He can lower if he wants to slum it, up one if he's ready to gamble, or stay where he is and make a steady income.

Since you have 6 levels of run, and 6 levels of income, you could match them up, but you'll be short changing a bit for milk runs (What do you mean "You do it for free?!"), but, you can at least get a *rough* guideline for where you should be. From there, you just have to decide how much they shoudl make a month. Twice their Lifestyle? Three times? 10% over teh bare minimum? Drop in a few times where it gets different (Windfall, woo!) just to reward the poor tech-heavy guys and you're golden.

For my group, who run at 320 and have 6-8 in their primary skills, they average about 2500 a month from runs. A different group brings in 6-10K a run, but are 400 point builds with skills in the 8-10 range, even higher for the combat monkies.

There's gonna be levels, you just have to figure out where they should be.

[Konsaki]

One thing you have to remember is Time=Money for the most part.
Milk runs are fast, low paying and genrally low risk.
High end runs can take weeks or months to plan out, high paying due to the scope of it (Johnson wants Ares to suffer billions in losses) and are high risk.

So yeah, you get paid more for the high end runs, but you could do alot more of the low end ones for less risk. It all depends on what the GM wants the Johnson to offer and the players dont have to accept if they dont want to.

[Fortune]

[Konsaki]

[Demerzel]

It really bothers me that there wasn't a touch version of Orgy included in SM. Were they too afraid of naming a spell Hand Job?

[Konsaki]

ROFL!!! I almost choked on my food when I read that. Nice one.

[Demerzel]

Who is it who was working on those spell cards with images?

[Ranneko]

[FrankTrollman]

[PlatonicPimp]

Now , about a physical version of the spell.....

"Bob, Did your car just..... "
"I don't want to talk about it, Jeb."

"Rita, what did the coffee maker just DO?"

I'm sure we've all given thought to quickening it as well, or at least getting a sustaining focus for it.