Bemused by surgery costs, What am I missing? Options

[Nythrun]

Saell, folks. I've recently finished my eighth Shadowrun session and have somewhat outgrown the stage where one fumbles awkwardly with unfamiliar rules. Which outgrowth has brought me to a snag that I hope someone here might be able to help me unravel: my Magician's Way Adept in the Shadowrun Missions Campaigns is stymied by surgery costs. Pardon if you will the first-post verdigris.

In specifics: the decker in my group wants upgrade surgery on his cranial cyberdeck, to free up a sliver of essence so he can have a cyberskull installed. For this task I have Biotech 6, Medicine 6, and a rating 2 clinic, all of which allows me up to two positive options and a good chance to succeed at getting them both. Proceeding with the plans, we have:

1. Medical profile: Medicine(4) test with a base time of 48 hours. Easy.

2. Plan Surgery: Medicine(4) test, base time 72 hours. The TN is adjusted up to Medicine(6) for the two positive options I've selected, and the process requires 288 hours. This test has a one in three chance of failing outright - I do not yet have Centering: Knowledge Skills - and would require me to buy a new computer, as my tabletop pc lacks the requisite 576MP of memory to hold this puzzlingly vast program.

3. Perform implant: upgrade cyberware surgery: Biotech(4) test, base time equal to the TN for surgery. The adjusted TN will be 4, +1 (decker has Bioware), +1 (decker has misplaced his essence), -1(it happens in my clinic), -1(additional doctor on my staff), -1(I'm a caring magician), -2(I have Microscopic Vision) = TN1, with calculated thresholds at 3 and 5. So in practice it's going to take one hour (reduced by superfluous twos). Failing this test is a matter of some difficulty with 6 + 8 complementary dice, and even if I do fail in step two the repercussions are mild: the surgery takes two hours instead of one and I'll need to roll 2,2,2,4,6 instead of 2,2,2,3,5 to pull my sawbones act flawlessly.

So far so good and an attractive way to spend some illgotten gains. By the book (as Shadowrun Missions favors letterism) these admirable services will demand a bill of:

240 nuyen each for myself and my colleague - no hourly wages for doctors.

120 nuyen for the medical profile - which I've done already, I'll just need to do another post-operatively for future reference.

And 57,600 nuyen for the Surgical Plan. Yeah, huh?


Practically speaking I should just omit step two, bear the higher TN stoically (it's still an 82.47% chance of total success!) - but the price for the procedure is utter nonsense either way: my reasonable GM will balk at 600 nuyen for fragging brain surgery, and 58,200 nuyen is disportionate to both my skill and the task at hand.

Is there errata to which I'm not privy, or perhaps a recollected remark from a developer, that unskews this picture?

Thanks for reading and for any salient replies.

[mfb]

welcome to hell, sucka. there is no unskewing. you are doomed.

[Nythrun]

Santa, is that you?

[mfb]

seriously, the surgery costs are insane. what should have been done is, the surgery costs should have been modifiers to the base implant cost--it's not like a chrome lip and some synthetic brain tissue are going to cost the thousand fuckin' nuyen a datajack is listed as! base implant costs should have included surgery costs.

[Critias]

My favorite part is the "surgery plan" that (assuming a doctor does nothing but work on it for 8 hours a day) takes months and months to prepare.

[FrostyNSO]

Seeing as it cost us $23,000 just to have a baby, I'm not sure the total cost is all that far off. I mean sheez, with us, they weren't even putting anything in!

[ Spoiler ]

...that was my job :D

[Dawnshadow]

Ok.. question...

Are you just taking the costs out of the appropriate book?

If so: Why aren't you getting a massive discount for it being a PC doing it? I mean.. I would expect the massive nuyen for the plan is something like: it's got a base time of 288 hours.. so, we'll charge 200 nuyen an hour, and that will cover it.

I mean.. I would make the decker pay you that, maybe with a discount to make him keep coming back, but really -- that's what is charged for the service.. when you're getting it done in a hospital. Why does everyone assume that's what it costs the hospital to do the service? Really... it's just time. The equipment is already paid for. (Hospital at least).

Really, the GM should consider what the actual surgery costs to perform, for the person DOING the surgery -- not what the surgery costs the performee.

[Edward]

The surgery plan is not worth the time and expense, it’s cheaper to hire a magically talented nurse that will more than overcome the penalty for not having a plan.

If a PC dose the work then you pay what that PC wants, he may do it s a favour or at mates rates or he might charge you extra, before doing work for another PC I always check the book values of the work however.

Edward

[mfb]

mmmm, magical nurses.

[hyzmarca]

[hobgoblin]

first off, i would not allow any surgeon, no matter how skilled and experienced, to operate on me with his eyes closed.

second, this isnt your avarage mergency room bullet removal.

you want to get a nice checkup on the medical history of the patient so you dont have stuff like allergic reactions to some drug used.

and you plan every cut your going to make and where to make it. the less cuts you have to make, the less bloodloss, the less recovery time needed.

and the costs for elective surgery. ie, its not like every joe and his neighbour will have it done. not even a datajack. and no matter how many times one does a datajack implant you dont want to assume anything, your working on someones brain...

specialiced training euqals specialiced prices. there is a reason why medical costs are high...

[SpasticTeapot]

[hobgoblin]

if your a corp then most likely you got it done at a corp clinic and have the down payments drawn from your paycheck.

i was not saying that datajack surgery specificaly where specialized but rather that surgery in general is a skill that require specialized training.

if you mess up a motorcycle then your left with a non-working motorcycle. mess up a patient and your left with time in jail.

[Catsnightmare]

The surgery rules as presented in the book are complete crap. You're better off ignoring them and just pulling numbers out of your ass till you find something that sounds appropriate.

[Frater Inominatu...]

Also consider that we are talking about a world where cyberware is as ubiquitous as the cell phone is today. Granted we are talking about things like replacing an arm or an eye but "they" have the technology down to an art. And generally where a process is perfected, the price goes down.

There is also the legality of the 'ware to consider. You might be able to go to a local clinic to get a legal data jack installed for a reasonable price. But getting move-by-wire 3 takes a higher level of expertise to install, not to mention someone who either has the authority to do it or the resources to do it under the table.

As Catsnightmare so eloquently put it, the prices are, in my opinion, over-inflated and should be adjusted to a level the GM is comfortable with.

[Eyeless Blond]

Well, to be clear, the prices for the surgery itself are under-inflated: a few hundred nuyen for any kind of brain surgery? You've got to be kidding me. The problem is that the cost and associated time for the surgery plan is over-inflated, to the point where it's just not in any way useful unless you're implanting beta or deltaware (at which point you need every TN mod you can scrape together). Of course at that point the plan itself becomes the work of several lifetimes, so it's difficult to contemplate making it then either.

[Edward]

Getting a data jack is about as common as having your tonsils removed, although significantly more complicated yes.

My guess is that most data jacks are installed without a patient specific plan, the surgeon gets the full medical worksheet on the patent takes 10 min to mach it to one of the standardised plans than fit reasonably closely and covers for the differences in the surgery room,

9 man days is a bit long for a plan but not imposable, what throws me is it’s the same regardless of wether your getting a data jack, a fingertip compartment (with no neural interface) or wired reflexes. Not to mention that the size of the surgery plan would be 2.4 hours of video (with +10 zoom available) or more text and diagrams than you could read in a year.

Edward

[hyzmarca]

[Smiley]

Just run between the bullets and all this can be avoided.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Eyeless Blond]

[Modesitt]

I disagree. This is not a cell phone or ear piercing, the former being a non-invasive practically disposable consumer electronic and the latter a simple and easy procedure that you can honestly do in your own home with no training and not have complications. 1,000 nuyen is 1/5 of a middle-class lifestyle for a month.

A much closer example would be laser eye surgery. It's permenant, it requires not-insignificant-training, and it's a substantial investment.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Then you put your 'jack on lay-a-way or rent-to-own maybe.

[Smiley]

"Two more payments and this sumbitch is MINE."

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

"Miss a payment and see what happens, bitch."