So yeah, if my player puts 70K on a certified credstick in character creation, then... Does he just get to start with that much money? Circumventing the usual rules of starting nuyen?



If so, that's extremely broken.

*has never had a player try this stunt before with so much money; it's usually a non-issue*

common mistake. you don't start creation with money.
you start with ressources worth a certain ammount of nuyen.
every last bit of nuyen you somehow retain gets divided by ten and added to the money you rolled with 2d6
if you start creation with 1 million "nuyen", you could start the game with 100k+2d6x100 nuyen at most

Thank you.

I've let players start with a couple of 5K credsticks, usually as part of a bugout bag.

Not really. The player is circumventing the rule by buying a credstick in which there is a certain amount of money with his starting resources. He is not retaining those resources, but using it to buy money.

You can only purchase starting equipment with resource points. The only thing pertaining to buying Credsticks in the rulebooks is on page 239 and it only lists the credsticks rating and its maximum capacity. You cannot fill a credstick with nuyen until after character creation is complete.

I allow players in my games to fill their credsticks at a 1:1 ratio with a maximum of 5000 per stick at character creation. If players dont buy any credsticks at creation with their resources then they dont have a SIN (fake or not). They just get certified cred at the 10:1 ratio.

We were discussing at the table a rather interesting(and kind of funny) character concept where we would allow circumventing the system. The concept was for some bum-just a squatter of some kind. No gear, no nothing...who somehow, through the luck of whatever, a heist gone wrong and all kinds of other crap happening...ended up with a credstick with the million nuyen on it.

Of course, this thing would be hot, he'd have to hide it, and people would wonder what the hell a bum would be doing with it but it seemed fun at the time.

It's an interesting rules loop hole if you see a certified cred stick as gear and so can be purchased in the creation process.

By SR3 RAW, the credstick is equipment, and the funds on it are not, hence the 10:1 ratio is always in effect.

The actual loophole in the starting resources rules is prebuying lifestyle. Use significant resources to prepay many months of lifestyle, and then sell said lifestyle in game. If you do not rush the sale, you should get most (say ~90%) of the value back as Nuyen (but no guarantee).

And there is always GM ruling, I would also let players put limited amounts on credsticks they have purchased at 1:1, and 10,000¥ total seems reasonable. Lastly the mundane bum (no cyber, magic, nor unusual advantages) with a 1,000,000¥ credstick is too cool to not allow if a player wants to give it a try.

It would be neat to see how it could play out. Meeting people to maybe crack the credstick, trying to figure out how to get it into a spendable form that doesn't look too suspicious(meeting the right street contacts who don't give a rat's ass), or...would he even care about cyberware, and buy himself a lifetime high lifestyle or even almost a year of luxury somehow?

10k at the start, if they purchase it 1:1, is a reasonable amount. It allows folks to maybe have that ''nest egg'' just in case things are slow and they have to pay for the lifestyle and the like. I actually allow this myself; i recall someone doing it once and it never got abused in any way. 10k isn't enough(especially in SR3 terms) to get a bunch of hot cyberware(which is harder to get in game anyway, and they'd probably be better taking the 10k and getting the little piece at chargen if they wanted it that bad.) Really, I always saw it as ''crap, really slow couple months, gotta pay the bills'' sort of thing.

Dunno if I'd let it go much higher than that, but 10k is quite a reasonable amount.

I´m clearly in the "it is against the rules, but I would allow it" camp. There is still the GM approval step of character creation to proctect campaigns that would suffer from this trick.

Where is everyone getting this 10:1 ratio on turning resources into plain old ? From my reading of the rules, the only nuyen you have on you at the start of play is what you roll from your lifestyle. You do have the option of adding a bonus of up to half the roll to the roll at 100:nuyen: per, but that only translates to 10:1 at certain lifestyles, and only in a very limited amount.

That question aside, I feel that the credstick is the equipment, and the on it is your own money that comes out of your starting pool of cash. Then again, I really don't see an advantage to having a bunch of in game when that could have been spent on all the same things in chargen.



Why in the world do you need a credstick to have a SIN? The game says that virtually all legal purchases are done via wireless transfers. And even if you don't have a credstick on you any more, it doesn't mean you've never had one in the past. Granted a credstick isn't expensive so it isn't that huge of a requirement, but it still seems like there is a strong lack of correlation.

much better way of cheating the system is buying expansive gear with high street index and selling it to a connected level 1(Character has a contact that buys or sells certain contraband with or without street index, to the character's advantage.|src.26) or level 2(Character has a contact that buys and sells certain contraband with or without street index, to the character's advantage.|src.26) for more than you spent on it in char-gen . . vehicles, high grade electronics, cyber-decks, certain weapons etc. . . that's the one way i found of circumventing the system . .
or just make a magician and spend all your "money" on radicals in gold and the such so you can in game quickly either sell them or make orichalcum out of it for more profit and less work/time than it would take to gather/refine raw-materials . .

Read the rules. p63 BBB.

I have. p63 doesn't mention anything at all about trading in resources for starting whatsoever.



The first paragraph seems to indicate that that is the only nuyen you start the game with, and I haven't seen anything in my reads through the book to suggest any kind of 10:1 trade in ratio.

The second paragraph indicates that certified credsticks are in fact something you buy with starting cash, and not with resources. The credstick itself could likely be bought with resources, but the money on it is starting cash.

Are you sure you are reading the right book?

• SR1 – Tech is equivalent to nuyen, but can only be spent on Cyberware, Equipment, and Friends (Contacts, Buddies, Gangs, and Followers).^(p.53)
  Everyone gets a free credstick and rolls 3d6×1,000¥ for their total starting cash, which directly determines their starting lifestyle.^(p.51)
• SR2 – Resources is equivalent to nuyen, but can only be spent on Cyberware, Gear, and Extras (Contacts, Buddies, Gangs, Followers, and Lifestyle).^(p.46)
  Any unspent Resources translate into nuyen at a 10:1 ratio, and are added to the rolled 3d6×1,000¥ starting nuyen.^(p.47)
  You can also get up to 700¥ extra starting nuyen by taking an allergy,^(p.46) but you would have to be insane to take the nuyen instead of the other bonuses allowed.
• SR3 – Resources is equivalent to nuyen, but can only be spent on Gear ("cyberware, weapons, contacts, foci and magical items, cyberdecks, vehicles and plenty of other toys"), Friends (Contacts, Buddies, and Friends For Life), Lifestyle (required), and extra Spell Points.^(p.60,62)
  Any unspent Resources translate into nuyen at a 10:1 ratio, and are added to the rolled 3d6×100¥ starting nuyen.^(p.63)
  Edit: Did errata ever indicate if SR3 meant to be that stingy, or did they drop a zero by accident?

Umm, Karaden. You do realise were talking about Shadowrun 3rd edition not 4th in here right?

This was something I always house-ruled in my own games.

To avoid these problems I made the amount of resource that was converted into nuyen a percentage based on the highest lifestyle you choose for the character. If you have street lifestyle spend it all because you get nothing other than your flat roll. 10% for Squatter, 25% for lower, etc.

Ah, that would explain it. I have this amazing ability that allows me to overlook one important word in anything I read. In this case it was SR3

Still say the money on the credstick is starting cash and not resources regardless.

it would seriously unbalance several of my characters . . as i am a big fan of cyber/bio, i generally start out with 1 million or at least 650k nuyen/ressources . .
but usually, i still have about 50 to 200k left, when i am completely done with the character . . including permanent low lifestyle, one or two vehicles, 2 dozend bought contacts, level 1 and level 2, a complete set of gear and things i think should be available in a flat, like a telekom for 3k nuyen and entertainment gear . . heck, sometimes i bought a doc waggon super platinum WITH dwarf/troll adjusted price and STILL had that much money left . . but i could not change the money to the next lower limit, because then i would not have enough money for the things i thought the character would need, so i am stuck after creation with 50 to 200k . . now imagine a fully decked out cyber/bio combat monster troll for example starting game with that kind of money . .

Depends what you define as 'fully decked out'. I can't imagine not being able to easily spend the million just on implants, let alone things like vehicles, weaponry and miscellaneous gear.

fully decked out meaning most attributes on maximum, a weapons arsenal that would make certain gangs proud to have something like that, one fast and flashy vehicle, one utility vehicle armored and armed, capable of transporting at least the entire team and if the former is a motorbike the other vehicle as well., like i said, at least one permanent lower lifestyle made for LIVING and another made for hiding, every little gadget i need for the skills i want him to have in creation.
and yes, i did manage such characters and still had plenty of ressources/nuyen to spare . .
especially if i don't go all out combat-monster fighting machinei tend to have enough ressources to spare so i can get what i think the other team members might need too . . occassionally i had more vehicles than the rigger, a better deck than the decker and a bigger arsenal than the street sam all in one character . . granted, that character had at least rudimentary skills to use all of that stuff too, but mainly it was a face that had no use for most of it too . . i basically supplied the whole group with whatever they could not afford witout having to make cut-backs in other areas . .