How much Nuyen can a runner make without running Options

[lorechaser]

Divorcing this question from the current "Emperor Tippy might be crazy" thread:

How much Nuyen can a runner make when they aren't running?

Take a 400 BP PC, who has 5 attribute, 5 skill, and another 4 dice in assorted other abilities - say 14 dice.

And then take a 400 BP PC who is specialized in something - 6/5, +2 spec, +2 mentor spirit/ware/whatever, +2 circumstances, + 2 misc - say 19 dice.

What can they do? The suggestion is that they could easily clear 10k nuyen a month doing mundane stuff. How reasonable is that? Could they clear 100k?

I mean, an auto mechanic with 5 log + 5 repair, specialized in "automobiles" can probably pull in a couple hundred nuyen an hour, I'd think. 20 hours a week is 2k nuyen, or 8k a month. And that's without pushing too hard.

Anyone with strong Rules Fu wanna take a crack at this question?

[_Pax._]

None of that matters.

First, take SINner, a legal sin, for -5BP

Then, take Day Job, all the way to the max, for -15BP

Now, get Fame, at the Global level, for +20BP.

...

For 0BP, with no skills whatsoever ... you have just given that character a monthly income of 50,000 nuyen, for 30 hours of work per week.

[bannockburn]

Well, I'd make an armourer for DS. He'd be rich beyond your wildest dreams (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Joke aside: I personally don't see the point. If I make a character for a role playing game, I don't want to play Shadowrun: The Iron Chef! or Shadowrun: The Super Mechanic. In other words: My characters don't make money during their downtime. We do the job, we get paid, to paraphrase a famous space cowboy. Sometimes we take goodies with us to make a little on the side. Optimizing a character for maximizing his downtime income seems ... just weird to me.
Personally, I think that even the Dayjob quality seriously gimps a character.

Sometimes, I play one on one with some of my players though. I tailor the jobs they get to their skills. They'll still be an adventure and it's not something just done with a few dice rolls.
For example, I just offered a mage the job to make a focus. The customer wanted a manipulation spell focus, with 5 units of radical iron and 1 unit of orichalcum worked in, in form of a wyvern skin leather glove. This focus would be worth 100k nuyen. Now, I've let her decide on how exactly she'd want to build this focus, and the talismonger connection offered her 75k for the final product.
The character in question is more of a 'runner of inconvenience' instead of a heartless bastard. A bookworm with a taste for adventure, if you will.
The player wasn't too familiar with the focus creation and talismongering rules, so I explained to her what she could do.
As the character is a vegetarian, she balked at the thought of going out and hunting a wyvern. She paid for the leather (3k)
Getting the rest of the stuff though would prove to be more adventurous. She decided to get it all by herself, because she liked the challenge (although her bottom line would have looked rather slim in the end.)
She accepted that it would take a lot longer of course, and so she set out.
One of her connections owed her a favour. An outdoorswoman! Great, she was hired (and paid 5k in the end). Together they bought camping equipment for 6k, rented a jeep for 500 per week, got a license and set out into the wilds of the Yukon territory. Big fun, describing all the stuff. She washed gold, gathered cinnabar (for the mercury) found iron ore and so on. On the way they battled with falling into the river (no fun at 2° water temperature), sickness, cold, sore feet, a greater wolverine (holy crap, those are KILLERS), an enraged spirit and finally, food scarcity. It took her three weeks alone to get all the materials, but she'll make a lot more profit and it will be the first time for the character to actually create orichalcum.

This was all done with her 'off-skills' and created a unique opportunity for the player to learn those rules and the character to broaden her horizon.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, if you are earning your income from non-running endeavors, then you are not really a Shadowrunner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Emperor Tippy]

14 Dice allows you to buy 3 hits.

A high lifestyle (costs 10K per month) can be hacked with an extended test (1 day) with a Threshold of 48. That is 16 days to hack it and turns out a value of 10,000 nuyen (or 625 nuyen per day invested).

19 Dice allows you to buy 4 hits. A luxury lifestyle (costs 100K per month) can be hacked with an extended test (1 day) with a Threshold of 100. That is 25 days to hack it and turns out a value of 100,000 nuyen (or 4,000 nuyen per day invested).

That's the hacker and technomancer (and maybe the rigger as well).

Mage's can turn raw reagents into radical regents at a rate of 3 (or 4) per day. Exact value depends on what reagents you decide to use and how many days you feel like investing.

Faces depend a lot more on roleplaying than pure mechanics but can easily pull in the money by conning people (your face can sell insurance and make a ton of money that way as he get's a percentage of the insurance contract).

Combat characters are where it get's somewhat difficult and depends more on secondary skills. Cage matches and undergound fighting rights tend to work if you do unarmed combat; bet on yourself and you should win against most of your competition.

[lorechaser]

Well, if you are earning your income from non-running endeavors, then you are not really a Shadowrunner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sure. But say you're getting a piece of 'ware custom crafted, or a new drone made, or your meat shield is laid up in bed for two weeks. What can you do to fill the downtime for profit? Make Ex-Ex rounds? Train a newbie runner? Win a game show?

This came up in another thread as basically a threshold - what can your runner make with null sheen? Because, logically, if you can make X with basically no risk, risking your life for less than X isn't necessarily the best idea. It gives an idea for the low end of risk/reward.

It's also a bit of theory craft.

[lorechaser]

14 Dice allows you to buy 3 hits.

A high lifestyle (costs 10K per month) can be hacked with an extended test (1 day) with a Threshold of 48. That is 16 days to hack it and turns out a value of 10,000 nuyen (or 625 nuyen per day invested).

19 Dice allows you to buy 4 hits. A luxury lifestyle (costs 100K per month) can be hacked with an extended test (1 day) with a Threshold of 100. That is 25 days to hack it and turns out a value of 100,000 nuyen (or 4,000 nuyen per day invested).

That's the hacker and technomancer (and maybe the rigger as well).

Indeed - that's the kind of data I'm trying to get. That implies that a runner with 19 dice in hacking should expect to make 4k a day on runs (or have alternative compensation) for things that are as risky as extended hacking tests. 14 dice should expect about 625. I know there's concerns with buying hits, and with losing dice. Anyone have issues with those numbers?

And, yes, there are tons of reasons to run besides money. But there *is* the money - it's opportunity costs. And while I don't expect an Ork street sam to pull out a spreadsheet and announce that he's not going to kill that troll because the ammo cost is greater than the potential value of his loot, it would be nice if he knew, approximately, what to ask for in income.

Also, it makes a nice "I don't get out of bed for less than X - I could make more than that setting up dead UCAS soldiers as pensioners" sort of RP comments.

[Emperor Tippy]

There is drug dealing as well. Have skillwires and an R5 Chemistry soft or the chemistry skill?

For a 200,000 nuyen investment you can get a chemistry microfac. If you buy hits from your 14 dice it will take you 6 hours to make 50 doses of pretty much any synthetic drug and raw materials cost 1/10th of the street value. 50 doses of Psyche has a street value of 10,000 nuyen. Even fencing it for 30% of street value net's you 2K for 6 hours work. It would take 100 production runs to pay off your microfac, or at 2 per day 50 days. After that it's essentially a license to print money and clears you 120K per month (enough to live a luxury life style). Note that this is fencing the drugs for 30% of street price, party face and the right contacts can easily get that significantly higher.

Mage's making refined gold regents can clear upwards of 900,000 nuyen per month.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

For a 200,000 nuyen investment you can get a chemistry microfac. If you buy hits from your 14 dice it will take you 6 hours to make 50 doses of pretty much any synthetic drug and raw materials cost 1/10th of the street value. 50 doses of Psyche has a street value of 10,000 nuyen. Even fencing it for 30% of street value net's you 2K for 6 hours work. It would take 100 production runs to pay off your microfac, or at 2 per day 50 days. After that it's essentially a license to print money and clears you 60K per month (enough to live a luxury life style). Note that this is fencing the drugs for 30% of street price, party face and the right contacts can easily get that significantly higher.

Ummmmm... Luxury is 100,000 Nuyen/Month, so no, it does not allow you to have a Luxury Lifestyle, even then.

[Emperor Tippy]

Ummmmm... Luxury is 100,000 Nuyen/Month, so no, it does not allow you to have a Luxury Lifestyle, even then.

I edited my post and missed that bit, I had forgotten to deduct the cost of the raw materials and flubbed my numbers. You actually make 120,000 per month (4k per day). With 19 dice it's 180,000 per month.

And if you make Loco instead then you can increase both of those numbers by 1.5 times (so 180,000 for 14 dice and 270,000 for 19 dice). If you GM will let you create Oxygenated Fluorocarbons then you can make 180,000 for 6 (or 4) hours work; or 1.8 million nuyen per month with 14 dice.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I edited my post and missed that bit, I had forgotten to deduct the cost of the raw materials and flubbed my numbers. You actually make 120,000 per month (4k per day). With 19 dice it's 180,000 per month.

And if you make Loco instead then you can increase both of those numbers by 1.5 times (so 180,000 for 14 dice and 270,000 for 19 dice). If you GM will let you create Oxygenated Fluorocarbons then you can make 180,000 for 6 (or 4) hours work; or 1.8 million nuyen per month with 14 dice.

And again, this is not Chemist the Labworker... *shrug*

[tsuyoshikentsu]

I don't want to play Shadowrun: The Iron Chef!

You might not, but this game? This game I want to play.

"The challenger has just begun grilling his marinated steak--and he's finally managed to geek the Iron Chef's mage as well!"

[Emperor Tippy]

And again, this is not Chemist the Labworker... *shrug*

Are you a hacker or any other character with decent logic (4)? Can you afford a rating 4 chemistry active soft? That's 8 dice.

Invest 200,000 in a chemistry microfac and 8 hours of work will turn out 50 doses of Oxygenated Fluorocarbons (street price 100,000 nuyen). Raw materials cost 10%, so that's 90,000. Fence for 30% and you have cleared 30,000 in profit for 8 hours of work. That's enough to pay off your microfac in 7 days. From then on if you have 8 hours free you can turn out 30K nuyen. For a few days investment per month you can live in luxury.

It's not like you have to build your character around this, you can deal drugs and still run. It's just a way to make money whenever you need some quick cash and don't feel like the risks of a run.

It goes back to my basic disagreement with much of these boards; you don't run for nuyen. You run for any number of reasons but unless you are running to make billions of nuyen, money is not your motivation.

That being the case, it doesn't much matter if the character has no money or a ton of money. If they want delta grade ware then they better have the contacts with a black delta clinic to get it. If they want military grade gear then they better have the contacts with a fixer or arms dealer to get it. And they should always remember the downsides; nuyen isn't enough to ensure that your purchases are clean and don't have hidden surprises.

[lorechaser]

I'm not really suggesting that this is what your characters do all the time.

But even prime runners don't spend 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year running.

You have downtime between meets, downtime between runs, downtime while you wait for the mage to finish his Initiation quest, downtime while the hacker writes new programs, downtime while the street sam heals up from his Wired Reflexes upgrade, downtime while the warehouse district gets put out, so that you can go back in after burning half of it down, etc.

Some of the time you'll be doing recon, training, etc. But some of the time, you've got free time. And honestly, while it's not necessarily fun to play Shadowrun: the Spreadsheet, even the most hardened runners isn't going to want to be infiltrating a corp arcology every single day, even if there are enough jobs that you could.

And again, I'm not necessarily suggesting that this is what your runner does every day. But it's nice to have a base line of what *you* make playing Iron Chef. Even if you have great reasons not to, and would never consider "punching a clock" it's interesting, I think, to know what you *could* be making. We do these calculations when deciding, say, whether to buy attributes at chargen or after the first run, or when deciding whether it's better to increase your attribute, or buy a skill group and break it up, or just get a skillsoft.

Also also, say you are making and selling drugs - that's a fair chunk of opportunity for runs, recon, contacts, interactions, rumors, and what have you. You could honestly build a whole campaign around a group of runners that have a side business making and selling Jazz, or Bliss, or what have you. Running Bad? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[lorechaser]

You might not, but this game? This game I want to play.

"The challenger has just begun grilling his marinated steak--and he's finally managed to geek the Iron Chef's mage as well!"

Today's theme ingredient...."EX EX AMMO!" "Ooooooooh."

"Iron Chef Ghost Who Walks has decided to layer a flamethrower, a machine gun, and a grenade launcher for this challenge. It's a traditional recipe made famous by Iron Chef Ripley."

"Ooooh! It looks like he's accidentally ignited the White Phosphorus. That's going to need a Shaman!"

[FuelDrop]

A few members of my group run to sustain their work-free lifestyles for the most part. After a run they tend to spend the next week or so partying and otherwise living the high life, then doing another run to sustain their lifestyle and for the kicks.
Could they make more money spending their off time working? Yes they could. Do they? Hell no! They're risking their lives for a few nights a week so they can spend the rest of their time having fun and living life to the full.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Are you a hacker or any other character with decent logic (4)? Can you afford a rating 4 chemistry active soft? That's 8 dice.

Invest 200,000 in a chemistry microfac and 8 hours of work will turn out 50 doses of Oxygenated Fluorocarbons (street price 100,000 nuyen). Raw materials cost 10%, so that's 90,000. Fence for 30% and you have cleared 30,000 in profit for 8 hours of work. That's enough to pay off your microfac in 7 days. From then on if you have 8 hours free you can turn out 30K nuyen. For a few days investment per month you can live in luxury.

It's not like you have to build your character around this, you can deal drugs and still run. It's just a way to make money whenever you need some quick cash and don't feel like the risks of a run.

It goes back to my basic disagreement with much of these boards; you don't run for nuyen. You run for any number of reasons but unless you are running to make billions of nuyen, money is not your motivation.

That being the case, it doesn't much matter if the character has no money or a ton of money. If they want delta grade ware then they better have the contacts with a black delta clinic to get it. If they want military grade gear then they better have the contacts with a fixer or arms dealer to get it. And they should always remember the downsides; nuyen isn't enough to ensure that your purchases are clean and don't have hidden surprises.

Again, this is not what the character (or me as a player) is intertested in, even if he has the skills. He is a Shadowrunner, not a Lab Technician. If you cannot understand that, then I do not know what else to say to you.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I'm not really suggesting that this is what your characters do all the time.

But even prime runners don't spend 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year running.

You have downtime between meets, downtime between runs, downtime while you wait for the mage to finish his Initiation quest, downtime while the hacker writes new programs, downtime while the street sam heals up from his Wired Reflexes upgrade, downtime while the warehouse district gets put out, so that you can go back in after burning half of it down, etc.

Some of the time you'll be doing recon, training, etc. But some of the time, you've got free time. And honestly, while it's not necessarily fun to play Shadowrun: the Spreadsheet, even the most hardened runners isn't going to want to be infiltrating a corp arcology every single day, even if there are enough jobs that you could.

And again, I'm not necessarily suggesting that this is what your runner does every day. But it's nice to have a base line of what *you* make playing Iron Chef. Even if you have great reasons not to, and would never consider "punching a clock" it's interesting, I think, to know what you *could* be making. We do these calculations when deciding, say, whether to buy attributes at chargen or after the first run, or when deciding whether it's better to increase your attribute, or buy a skill group and break it up, or just get a skillsoft.

Also also, say you are making and selling drugs - that's a fair chunk of opportunity for runs, recon, contacts, interactions, rumors, and what have you. You could honestly build a whole campaign around a group of runners that have a side business making and selling Jazz, or Bliss, or what have you. Running Bad? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

You know, some runners really prefer their time off for pursuing/doing things that they enjoy, rather than working. Like hanging with their friends, going to the clubs and hanging out, tinkering with their cool rides, or whatever. There is absolutely no reason to have to have a sideline making more money. Again, if You can make more money not running and pursuing other endeavors, why would you ever run? Personally, My character enjoys the Running, and the money is not all that bad. He works a few days a week, at most, and has all the remaining time to do whatever he pleases. My Character is not Clarence the Drug Chemist, he is a Shadowrunner.

[lorechaser]

You know, some runners really prefer their time off for pursuing/doing things that they enjoy, rather than working. Like hanging with their friends, going to the clubs and hanging out, tinkering with their cool rides, or whatever. There is absolutely no reason to have to have a sideline making more money. Again, if You can make more money not running and pursuing other endeavors, why would you ever run? Personally, My character enjoys the Running, and the money is not all that bad. He works a few days a week, at most, and has all the remaining time to do whatever he pleases. My Character is not Clarence the Drug Chemist, he is a Shadowrunner.

Certainly.

But, presumably, some don't. It's perfectly fine to say "I don't build runners who would enjoy this." But saying "No runners would enjoy this" or "No runner would do this" is a bit of a stretch, innit?

Some might also enjoy the challenge of making drugs and selling drugs, or testing their skills, or whatever. Plus, you can only hang out with your friends for so long before you start get tired of them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Or some might have flaws like "In Debt: 20,000 Nuyen" that means that, while other runners are partying after the run, they're muttering to themselves "Must be nice to be able to take a break, but *some* of us have bills to pay." Or they have dependants. Or an addiction to money. Or they use nuyen as a personal score keeping method. Or they just have a Cha of 1, and flat out don't like people. Or they're 10k short of upgrading their power focus, and really don't want to wait until after the next run to do it. Or any other of a hundred reasons.

I'm not suggesting that runners should retire from running and take up creating Jazz. I'm absolutely not saying "Your characters need to stop running and start doing this." But it's interesting (to me) and nice to know how much they could make brewing up Jazz for a couple weeks, both as a way to fill downtime, and as a comparison for "I can make 5k nuyen rolling drunks downtown - you're gonna need to offer me a little more to make this worth my while."

Consider this a version of the Day Job quality, if you'd like. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Again, this is not what the character (or me as a player) is intertested in, even if he has the skills. He is a Shadowrunner, not a Lab Technician. If you cannot understand that, then I do not know what else to say to you.

Again - some characters, and players, might be interested in this. That's why I asked the question - *I* am interested in this, at least.

Plus, most Hackers I've seen played seem to spend an inordinate amount of time upgrading their gear, writing new programs, and the like. They *are* Code Monkeys a fair bit of the time, just not for a Corp. What if the team hacker spent a week writing a new Attack 5 program, and then decided he wanted to sell it to a few other people? Does he suddenly stop being a Runner? I'm gonna content that he doesn't....

But once again, to try to steer this back - if you can't conceive of any way your runners would ever work on something that wasn't either a party or a run, then this thread probably won't be of interest to you. But if you are thinking about that, or you just enjoy playing around with the ruleset to see how they would model certain activities, then perhaps chime in!

[_Pax._]

Personally, I think that even the Dayjob quality seriously gimps a character.

I disagree; I think Day Job really does a good job of modelling "and off-camera, your much less exciting job(s) occupy X amount of your time, and provide Y income towards your bottom line".

Maybe your rigger also drives (perhaps remotely) a taxi or two "between real jobs". Or maybe you have a rigger who also operates a garage. A samurai type, who owns and operates a gun shop, also doing Armorer work on the side. Or hell, any character who's a Rocker type, and whose band is actually good enough to even get PAID for their (probably local) gigs.

[Udoshi]

19 Dice allows you to buy 4 hits. A luxury lifestyle (costs 100K per month) can be hacked with an extended test (1 day) with a Threshold of 100. That is 25 days to hack it and turns out a value of 100,000 nuyen (or 4,000 nuyen per day invested).

Someone's forgetting about the 'extended test -1' rule
also that you can only upgrade a lifestyle by a level through hacking

[blaze2050]

I think it depends on how often jobs for the whole team come up. If the GM has months of downtime between jobs, than most shadowrunners will have to do something to pay their lifestyle and their player might think about what else their character could do.

Besides being satisfied with working for some days per month in shadowrunning missions and enjoying their free time between jobs instead of searching for additional work, there might be another reason, why runners don't work all the time.

As SINless they can't have legal jobs, so in any job they will have to deal with criminals.

Most of the jobs (smuggling for the rigger, wards and magical bodyguard for high mafia bosses, bodyguard for a criminal) have the runner being more or less alone, if the boss tries to screw them over (for example to get rid of a witness).
If the runner does missions with his team a traitorous boss/Mr. Johnson has to deal with the whole team. This gives some security.

If a runner does a lot of these sidejobs, I would have the dangers of doing this job for criminals come up sometimes.

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Or hell, any character who's a Rocker type, and whose band is actually good enough to even get PAID for their (probably local) gigs.

Known in canon, of course, as Kat O' Nine Tails.

It's also worth mentioning that several canonical runners maintain businesses as covers--Turbo Bunny leaps to mind--and one would assume that every so often they have to actually do that job.

[Neraph]

Mage's can turn raw reagents into radical regents at a rate of 3 (or 4) per day. Exact value depends on what reagents you decide to use and how many days you feel like investing.

Raw to refined. Gold. 10,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) profit per unit.

[bannockburn]

I get that this is a thought experiment (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
I'm just saying, I'll not be optimizing a character for downtime money creation on the basis of dice rolls. If I get offered something to make money, I want to roleplay it (at the very least).

_Pax._: Sorry, I should have specified the highest version of the flaw. 10 or 20 hours are doable, of course, but a 40h day job for a runner leaves a lot to be desired in terms of time flexibility. Which obviously is a must have with the strange hours the usual runner works (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) This is just my opinion, though, so YMMV

And damn: Now I actually want to play an Iron Chef adventure (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)