That's a very valid point Shiloh

My players seem to neglect contacts in favour of gear and stats, so they get low end jobs with small karma and nuyen rewards, but can build up a rep with contacts.

If the players make characters with lots of high level contacts, then they'll get bigger karma and nuyen rewards for bigger jobs, with which they can boost their gear and stats.

I think I've read the first one, and thought it was retarded because the plot is dependant on you openning the box - but 90% of the time, your not actually supposed to open the box.

But this begs another question about risk. If there is to be a sense of danger, don't I the rigger need to get into situations were I may loose my drone. Drones are a pretty disposable asset for a rigger - they are cheap enough to buy a dozen or so at char gen, I can easily throw 3 into a routine combat. It's actually pretty easy to loose a drone in a fight.

Should the mission just be a total cakewalk because the pay is low? Doesn't that lack suspense if all the challenges that may use resources are not going to use any.

Hell, what if a mage uses a service from a bound spirit. That could cost several thousand yen right there.

I suppose it never says 'validate SIN here' in which case you could actually argue that you'd never loose any fake SINs ever, but thats a bit of an open question.

I'm pretty sure its not the runners that pull in the jobs initially, its the FIXER. IF you have a 6/6 fixer then he IS well enough known to FIND the
1,000,000+ jobs and send them along to you if he thinks you can handle it BECAUSE he likes you.
Your pay will almost exclusively depend on your FIXER contact ratings until you become well enough known to have people looking for your skills by name.
And as for what happens if someone axes your fixer? Well obviously since he is well connected with people who CAN pull these jobs, and you just chopped off the hand that fed them, they are going to be very upset with you, and likely feed you feet first through a wood chipper when they find you, so you will strongly avoid taking such actions cause you enjoy breathing without pain, and the ability to chew solid food.

The first Shadowrun Mission (Parliament of Thieves) emphatically does not rely on you opening the package, although that is an option. If you do, you run the risk of not getting paid, and pissing off the Mafia.

In that mission you're actually far more likely to lose your SIN trying to pass through a checkpoint than a drone, and even that expense can be bypassed by paying a bribe, or getting the face to talk you out of it.

My point really is that the rigger knows how much he's getting paid, and can make a value judgement as to whether to put his drones at risk or not. Likewise with the mage. Given a choice between calling up your bound spirit (3k:nuyen:) and not calling up your bound spirit (0:nuyen:), you need a 3k motivation to pull out your spirit.

Sending your drone (or your bound spirit) into a fight and running away may make the run a cakewalk, but if you stand a fight, directly rigging the drone to increase its survivability, and summoning on the fly (which is free) the run is more difficult. So, cakewalk and less cash, or challenge and more cash? It's your choice.

Well, good you said early Missions.

But let's take Mission 13 as an example of really shitty payment.



Seriously, WTF? Do you consider this proper payment?

Honestly this whole debate can be summed up by thinking to yourself "What will keep the players coming back to my table, and how to I balance Sams, Riggers and Hackers with Physads and Mages."

Do your players want to be globe trotting power brokers who can go toe to toe with Tir Ghosts or Firewatch and survive? That's cool. Give them 1,000,000 jobs that net then 20+ karma. Do your players enjoy the idea of running around the dark edges of society struggling to keep their edge? That's cool too. Give them 50,000 jobs that give them 5 or 6 karma.

Do you want the campaign to start out low powered and end up crazy and over the top? Go for it. It's easy to up the challenge of the opposition once you have a bit of experience as a GM.

If you're a new GM I'd recommend keeping the power level lower, at least initially. It's easier to ballpark a teams capabilities at the lower end of the karma/nuyen scale and make sure you're throwing opponents at them that they can handle but won't be a walk in the park either.

IMO A far more important thing to balance is the advancement between money hogs and karma hogs. If you're giving out 50K a run and 15 or 20 karma your street sams are going to hate you. The reverse is true too. That's IME what causes games to run into trouble. A mage who's on his second initiation and has a magic rating of 8 is going to be a lot more powerful than a Sam with the same amount of Karma but hasn't been able to scrape together the cash to tear out the wired II he started with and replace it with a nice MBW system or other piece of killer ware.

That's the big reason I created that "street cred" system I posted back on page 1 of the thread. I feel that it gives a good balance between Karma and Nuyen which lets the different archtypes get access to their toys at about the same rate. I had a bit of a problem with giving out too much karma and not enough nuyen early in my GMing experience so I created that as a guideline to go by.

If you notice that your team is having a tough time 'paying the bills' as it were then it's not too hard to give them a quick cash infusion (find some extra paydata or something) to get them back on track. Also remember payment doesn't necessarily have to be cash. If the team Sam needs a new piece of ware or the Rigger really really wants that customized Citymaster then you can always give it to them over the course of a run without necessarily plopping a million nuyen payday down on the table.

I oftentimes ask my players to give me a 'wishlist' of things that their characters want. There is no limit on this. They can ask for an AGIS Cruiser or access to a Thor shot if it suits their fancy. It doesn't mean they'll get it but particularly for pricey items (like say a Beta MBW II system) it lets me reward them to the PC's without throwing the whole system off kilter.

Zak:
I'd not read that one. It does look harsh, and the payment is pretty poor.

Given the number of J's willing to screw over the PCs this looks more like a hose job than anything else.

Our group solved it in a different fashion. We had a cash to Karma system where you could buy and sell Karma at a fixed Rate.
We handwaved it as saying things like spending karma buy a winning scratch ticket, or buying karma by giving money to a noble charity.
Very noncannon, but if you can find the right "price" for karma, then the system works very well. SR4 seems to suggest such a price to be around
2,500-5,000/Karma if such a system were ever implemented, given that 1 BP is worht about 2 karma, and also worth about 5,000

Has anyone tried something like basing it off of earned Karma?

I suggest to look at the average monetary gain a character makes per real-time month. Will the augmentations and other purchases possible with that money satisfy the player?

A net gain of 30k¥ per real-time month will allow for one large purchase per quarter, certainly not a rate that will make players feel ultra-powerful fast. (Street campaigns need a way lower value, until the chars hit it of)

>Obviously there's the whole spectrum of origins and power/rep levels beteween and beyond these two vague points, but for illustration, they'll do.

Exactly. I was taking issue that PCs at char in some way should be doing low end jobs for a while. The rules allow for characters to come out of the gate with very impressive skills, gear, and contacts. If the GM approves such a character, which should vary by campaign, they should treat them "realistically".

I'm just thinking low level fixer contact = low level jobs, high level fixer contact could mean much higher jobs

Even 'low level' jobs have to have a risk vs reward balance.

A low level job might be "go and convince these shopkeepers to sell their shop". Consider that a team of 4 runners can each make 5K by stealing an 80K Y sports car and selling it to their fence @ 25%. If the job is easier than stealing a sports car, the it's ok for it to pay less, but if the job is more difficult than simply stealing a sports car, it had better pay more.

Stealing a 10K econo-box and selling it to your fence @ 40% gets each of you 1K. If the job is paying less that 1K, it's either a favour you are doing for someone and they are basically buying you lunch in exchange, or the job had better be a simple as going to the bathroom.

Of course, who wants to play through a mission that's easier than simply stealing a car? You might as well say, "OK, you've done some low level jobs for a while, now it time for your first real job..." I'd assume that the only way a job that pays less than stealing a sports car to be interesting is if it screws up royally. So either the players/characters are complete and utter incompetents, or the GM is just screwing with them. Either alternative is unpalatable.

The big advantage to doing extremely low-level runs is karma grinding. Sure delievering a package across the street isn't going to pay very much, but a character can do several of those types of runs per day, earning a measly 1 karma each one. A Prime Runner character out fighting dragons and saving the world might spend weeks doing it and only earn 10 or 20 karma. The extremely unbalanced Karma payoff should make grinding such runs a favorite tactic of all sorts of magicians who aren't quite audacious enough to try to deal with a Succubus.

Might as well send all your off nights doing high speed pizza delivery then. Get the pie to the customer in less than 10 minutes and get an extra point of karma!

Those Redmond pizza delivery runs really give your Predator finger a work out.

I'm pretty sure that shadowrunners are like spies and assassins; the best ones are the ones that you never hear about.

As for jobs, I give a flat amount. Inexperienced, starting runners make 5000 nuyen each. 500 up front, the rest when the job gets done. Depending on how sloppy the runners performed, there can be pay deductions on the final amount, ranging from 5% (minor inconveniences, unnecessary casualties) to 50%(when the media gets involved, but identities of runners remain unknown).

Um, no, it won't. Your fence doesn't buy stolen cars. "What do I look like, a fucking used car dealer?" The guys who do buy stolen cars pay like crap because they have to do a shitload of work to build a fake title, repair the damage you did stealing it, and ensure that they don't lead the cops to their shop, since every car has built in a cute little system that will be telling the cops where it is right now until you turn it off, if you know how. Expensive cars have several of these, which do clever things like wake up every hour or two and send a message about where they are, then go back and hide in the engine control computer and the anti-lock brake computer, etc.

You can sell them yourself, in a stuffer shack lot, for a good chuck of change. Once you find a customer who wants it. But are YOU going to pay big bucks to "some dude" selling a used car with fried security and the pilot ripped out, with no title, in a stuffer shack lot while he looks around for the Star? Or might you suspect that it's kind of toasty to extremely hot and offer 200 for that late model sedan?

If it was easy to make serious money, car thief wouldn't be the bottom of the criminal pyramid. Car thieves who want to live well between stretches inside find better paying occupations....

Like Fastjack!

Stolen cars are like stolen people. With few exceptions, you can make more money chopping them up and piecing them out. If you sell a stolen car then you sell it to a chop shop, which breaks it into pieces and sells all the parts individually, which generally turns out to be worth more than the car itself retails for.

And if your crew is too ill-skilled to turn off the lowjack, you have no business doing anything runner like in the first place. That crew you want to hire to break into a place with state of the art physical, magical, and matrix security? They have better be able to break the security system of an automobile without a problem.

Sure, it might be like that, but the game has rules that explicitly contradict you.





So you get 10% of the book value per car you steal after selling it through a R4 fence for parking it outside his chop say and saying 'yo, dude, a car!'

Sure, all you have to do it carefully examine the car for security and stealth tags. Every part of the car, for the really small and easy to hid security tags. Which requires that you have a couple of days and about 100 square meters of a nice concrete surface with good lighting so you can disassemble the car and examine things like the floor under the carpet and the rear seats, the inside of the ABS computer, inside the tires, the bottom of the dashboard, and the inside of the battery compartment. Remember to peel off the spray on plastic sealant too, the tags are very thin. Consider that for every place that a modern automaker inscribes the VIN or a part serial number they would install a RFID tag at minimum, probably many would be stealth tags.

That's one reason that runners typically are stealing information or small items that can be easily searched and are small enough to fit in things like portable Faraday cages, or are being rapidly handed off to soemone else.

What are you talking about? Fastjack does not exist! Just a street legend made by a sci-fi RPG writer!

Personally my team is just starting out. Their first run was for 5k per runner with a bonus based on how they performed. The run went off flawlessly and they each made 10k. Their second run was a bit more difficult. I started them off at 10k per person, with an additional 5k for bribes and equipment. The job was to stage a riot during a public appearance of Karl Kombat mage. Furthermore they had to ensure that Lone Star Security ended up looking bad, and Knight Errant who was performing body guard work on Karl came out looking very good. I gave the players the stipulation that depending on the size of the riot, how good Knight Errant looked, and how bad Lone Star looked there would be additional money given.

When a dominated mob attacking a Lone Star officer ends with the decker catching video of a crying 8 year old girl in a bloody dress sitting on the unconscious officers chest is leaked to the media by a blogger contact, you can bet they got a hefty bonus. The fun part, the 8 year old girl was part of the mob that beat the officer down due to the mage gliching on her assessing test to make sure she didnt get anyone in the mob who would notice her casting.

The point is that personally I like to keep payment down, around 10k per person, per run. Then offer the runners additional sources of income they may, or may not take advantage of. If the run takes a week, they will more than pay for a medium lifestyle and any expenses they accrue just on that. They do not feel to bad losing a drone, or buying nanopaste, or renting cars because they know they can afford it. Which tends to mean they spend more money during the planning phase. Give them 5k and they will scrimp and save as much as possible. Give them 10k and watch them blow 5k in stuff for the run.

Seriously?
The crew has unrestricted physical access to the car.
They can hack the car's PAN.
They can read pirated shop-manuals.
They can summon a spirit to do their dirty work.
They can just sell the thing with the most seductive and persuasive sales elf a corporate wage slave is likely to see in the flesh.

They can probably defeat this security easily.
But that's not what you want, is it?
Selling that car is supposed to be hard! That's your whole point.

This sounds like a bad case of the, "GM dosn't want you doing this, so it's going to be stupid-difficult."
I get the fealing you'd ramp up the difficulty of running a car-theft ring to be the equivilant of heroic shadowrunning just out of spite.

All to avoid paying your players some cash. Which costs you nothing.
Is your favorite player playing a mage? Do you hate the sammy in your group?
What gives?

This whole argument of "Why would any character be a Shadowrunner if it doesn't pay oodles and oodles of cash?" comes up a lot and it's silly to me. The answer is simple: that's part of coming up with a character concept. People in SR don't become runners because it's a sweet deal. They do it because they feel like it's their best option. Maybe they feel like it's all they know how to do. Or they feel trapped in the shadows, having no real connection to a legit lifestyle. Whatever. If you can't justify your character being a shadowrunner, then he probably isn't appropriate for the game (barring certain campaigns that take a different focus). If your character thinks he'll do better boosting cars, awesome. But he's not a shadowrunner if he does that instead. That decision is most likely a decision to stop playing.

Best to think of it this way: the point of the game is going on shadowruns. Which get money. Which is spent to get cool thinks to make you better at shadowruns. We play the game for the adventures. If you turn them down all the time because you think your character deserves more money, you're missing the point. You're refusing to take part in the fun part of the game, for the sake of a secondary, supporting part of the game. Have fun. Play the game. And GM's, pay as much cash and give as much karma as seems appropriate for the kind of game you're trying to run.

The question of "why would someone risk their life for 5k a pop" or whatever the job pays is based on the assumption that you're like you are now: reasonably educated, certified as such, and a legal citizen. You aren't. By default, Shadowrunners are assumed to be SINless, which means that your peers in the modern age aren't guys like you, they're the guys who hang out by Home Depot looking for odd jobs and working dirt cheap.

The question is "what should a shadowrunner earn", not "what could a shadowrunner earn instead".

My primary concern is the long-term mundane vs. awakened balance, which I find pretty good at chargen. A rate of 5k¥ per karma, with occasionally monetary windfalls, is in my experience a rate that works. The size of the combined reward depends on the length and intensity of the scession. Consequently there are 4 karma / 20k¥ base runs and 6 karma / 30k¥+ special occasions.

Or a Shadowrunner's peer/equivalent is the drug dealer/pimp/art thief. There's a continuum of talent and earning potential.

Note that the 5,000 Y per 2 points of karma rule of thumb should be net of expenses, lifestyle, hospital stays, repairs, replacements, etc. So if you are going through a SIN every month, and are burning drones, and so on your pay should account for that as well.

So, as an example:

A 4 karma run pays out 10K net per runner.
Depending on the group, this might be 250K for a crew of 5, but with 200K of burned gadgets, bribes, fake SINs, genewipes, lifestyles, transportation etc.
Or it could mean a crate of 90K worth of useful loot for a crew of 5, and 40K Y in out of pocket expenses.