Dude, you're just repeating yourself. Expensive doesn't mean squat. You are assuming, without argument, that security costs more money that it saves. That is flat out crazy. If it did, they wouldn't spend so much on it. Security must protect at least as much investment as it costs, otherwise they wouldn't have it.

Chances are, being that these are corporations for whom everything is the bottom line, they use cost cutting measures to ensure that security always costs less than the money it saves, making it a net gain. Things that cause a net gain in loss prevention are not expensive. They are free, because the money you spend on them is money you would have lost if you didn't have them. That money can be completely written off as offsetting a loss -- by preventing losses, security pays for itself.

Things that pay for themselves are not "expensive" as you put it, they are money makers as far as the balance sheet is concerned. An investment that costs 150k and saves you 250k in losses that otherwise would have occurred is not an "expensive" investment, it is a very smart investment that returned 60%. And they don't even need a 60% return -- I'm sure that on something like security, they can scrape by with as low as 2-3% return. As long as security isn't a drain on capital, they can spend as much as they want on it. The only time they have to stop spending is when they're overspending, where security costs more than the losses it prevents. But you're going to need quite a lot of security before that hapens.

Also, you're still assuming, without argument, that salaries in the 2070s will be comparable to salaries today, even after having been refuted. Rentacops are not even comparable to blackwater mercs. Blackwater are soldiers who are too hardcore for the regular military, almost all of them are ex special forces, and they probably left because they'd rather tromp around and shoot people than become officers. Blackwater are essentially elite mercs, so you can't use their salary as the baseline corporate security guard. The baseline corporate security guard sucks really badly, if you check the grunts in SR4A. His primary job is not really to go toe to toe, but to trip the alarm and summon the high threat response or turn on the automated defenses when Shadowrunners show up. The baseline guard has only average combat skills and physical abilities, he's probably got no military training or education. He's probably lucky if he can pull down a Middle lifestyle, which is 60k per year.

And let's not forget, corporations who own their own enclaves can probably provide a lifestyle to their employees at below cost. A mage might expect a high lifestyle, but instead of it costing them 120k per year, it would probably cost significantly less because they don't have to profit, they can get things for their employees at cost. And you're making the faulty assumption that wagemages would get paid a serious cash salary. That sounds like a dumb thing for the corps to do. You don't pay employees cash, that lets them do what they want and buy what they want. And the worst part is, they stop needing you. A mage who made double his living expenses could leave the corp after 10 years and not think twice about it. They don't want that. I imagine that they provide employees with living expenses, plus a certain amount of corpscrip which can only be spent on things available from the corporate stores. That way they keep people dependent on the corporation. For mages, they doubly need to keep them on a tight leash, because they're afraid of the things that a mage can do against the corp if they become disgruntled.

If you think that they treat mages with the utmost solicitousness, you're way off base. They give the bare minimum they can. Why? Because competition is not real in the 2070's. The corporations don't compete with each other on salary, because they all pay the same crap salaries on the same crap terms. What they depend on are programs to root through existing corporate citizens, find the magically awakened, train them, and indoctrinate them into willing wageslaves. They are not like today's doctors, they don't generally graduate college and become free agents to the highest bidder. The very best might be like that, but the vast majority of mages, like the vast majority of everyone in Shadowrun, are basically serfs belonging to corporate interests. You're thinking free market economics when it comes to employment, and you're flat out wrong. You should be thinking more like corporate feudalism.

Real world, most people's living expenses will grow with their salary, if not faster. Very few people will save half their salary any more now that people will do that now. How many people do you know who put 50% of their money away vs people who have maybe month or less in savings? I know maybe two people who save anything like that and a lot more who are maxed out on credit cards, etc.

It's on my To Do list.

K.

That's kind of beside the point. The point is, corps will not hand people huge gobs of cash and say "here, go nuts!" At least, not unless they're executives. Wage mages are kept on a tight leash, you don't want them procuring unofficial magical supplies, or building up a retirement account that would let them leave the corporation. You want them dependent on their employer and the employer's pension and benefits. Shadowrun megacorps are not like modern global companies, they're more like the GM of yesteryear. Once you join up, you don't leave. You don't get rich unless you're an executive, but they take care of you from cradle to grave. It might be economic nonsense, but it's fiction, not a prediction. That's the way it works. Mages are even more tied down to the corporation than other wageslaves because a) they don't want to let mages go, and b) they pose a security threat to the corp itself and can't be given a long leash.

Nice. But don't forget the softer ways of keeping the magicians tame too. When their partner is bound to the corp by a long-term contract, they're stuck. When their children are enrolled in a corp school, paid for by the corp (but with reimbursement fees for withdrawing them of course), then they're stuck. But it's not all chains. I'm sure the corps do what they can to give the mage a comfortable and well-respected position within the corp. After all, people who talk to invisible friends and engage in bizarre exercises such as starvation to improve spiritually themselves are not the sanest of people (or don't appear so). One of the reasons in my game that you get magicians running the shadows when they could be on easy street, is that they're just too Cream Crackers for corp life. (Though that tends to be the shamans, not the hermetics).

K.

Sure they will. They'll hand them corp scrip, which is worthless outside the corporation. However, the goods that you can buy with corp scrip have to come from somewhere, which means it's not free for the Mega, either. Mages can be tied down by having ritual samples kept on file; you don't quit, or you risk something nasty popping out of astral space some dark night.

The point is, live mages are expensive and rare, too expesnive and rare to be showing up all over the place. Spirits bound long-term are also going to be a rarity. Thus, most guards are going to be doing without Counterspelling, or any other defense against direct combat spells.

I don't get it. I explain to you twice why the word "expensive" make no sense in this context. Your counter is to repeat the word as if I had been yammering about nothing at all. Is this what you consider argument?

No, you've stated that it makes no sense but you have not explained it even once.

Why this resource of all the resources that Mega-corporations squabble over?

Why is this one immune to the rules of supply and demand?

Why have the Mega's co-operated in this one area to drive costs down artificially?

Mega-corporations are at war. Economic war at best but war none-the-less.

If you can take a Mage from your competitor you gain and he loses security. Lose a Mage and your bottom line is hit.

If Mages feel hard done by they will leave and your competitors will be lining up to take them from you.

Pay them in Corp Script sure, but pay them enough that they can't see the bars or don't care. Just like Scientists and Programmers a Corp's Mages are an irreplaceable resource. You can at least train new Scientists, Mages don't just grow on trees....

As has been explained, expensive has nothing to do with it. If they save slightly more $ then they cost, a corp will pay.

Rarity is actually a selling point to contract out your security. One mage can be spread out quite a bit, BECAUSE of their rarity - how likely is it that someone will bring significant magical assets to bear? Not very.

I'm curious as to how "free-market" you run your SR world.

Wait, sorry, what?

So we are agreed that Mages are expensive and rare but worth paying the cash for?

I was under the impression we were talking about contracting out Magical defence. In which case it is expensive. Endof.

If it is only the Mega's that can afford in house Mages and they recognise their great value and also the value of monopolising them then this creates a situation where contracted out Magical Support is artificially expensive.

It is in the interest of the Mega's to keep them all to themselves, in fact it makes it easier to pick off the minor league competition who cannot afford the enormous cost of the tiny number of Mages not under Mega-corporate control.

No, the point was that mages may be expensive, but the reason for their expensiveness (rarity) also allows them to be used widely and for reasonable costs in order to provide magical security for many smaller corporations.

.

Your employee costs 250k. He nets you 1mil+. Easy decision to employ him, no? In fact, the hardest part would be recruitment and retention - yet the contract firms have a selling point a Mega won't: he never has to show up unless absolutely necessary. As long as he's willing to have a commlink on him at all times, he can go on with his life and spend his money however he pleases until he's called in to provide backup, or spend the 30 seconds to bring up a bound spirit and loan a service out. You focus too much on dollars and cents.

'

Sorry, what?

Just to be clear here.

Al'Queda loonies trained in flying planes into buildings are pretty bloody rare.

The degree of security used to protect against them is somewhat disproportionate.

Imagine if you could only defend against them with a group that was just as rare.

Demand for these services would drive the price up to the point that only the richest and the most important could afford them.

Sorry, you edited that while I was replying.

Why do you think the Mega's would tolerate that shit?

One can assume that the Mega's are the Mega's precisely because they did not tolerate it.

They snapped these fledgling companies up when they first appeared, gave all the Mages a 50% pay rise and kept them all exclusively in-house.

Their Astral Security became impenetrable and all their minor league competition were wide open for being picked off by the big boys the instant they came up with anything of any value.

I did explain it, but apparently you did not understand. Which I get, because I explained it in a very verbose way, and you may not be familiar with the concepts. Easy to gloss over or misunderstand. Here it is in simplified form:

Every asset on a corporate balance sheet is two numbers: cost and benefit. Cost is what you spend on it, benefit is what it earns you.

In order to find out the net value of an asset, you must subtract cost from benefit. The numbers are 100% meaningless independently.

For instance: If something earned me a million yen, that's good, right? Not necessarily. If it cost me ten million, its value is minus nine million, which sucks. Just the same, if it only cost me a hundred grand, and it earned a million, its value is 900 grand, which is a superb return. If something costs me x, and its benefit is x, then its value is 0, which means that as far as balance sheets are concerned, it was free.

So you understand now? Saying that a mage costs the corp 250k (to take an arbitrary number) is actually not saying anything at all. You must look at both numbers: cost AND benefit. Subtract cost from benefit. If mage costs 250k, but he prevents even 251k of losses, he made 1k for the corp. He was not expensive, he was profitable. An investment with a net gain does not count as a loss, no matter how high the cost is. As such, the cost of a mage is absolutely meaningless, assuming that he saves as much as or more than he costs by preventing losses. Rather than expensive, mages (used in an efficient way) are cost-free from a corporate perspective. Clear enough? What you and Cain are doing is ignoring the benefit side, and acting like a mage's salary is a loss to the corporation. It is most certainly not, unless it's a mage who just sleeps or smokes pot all day without providing any benefit to the corp.


You are also making erroneous assumptions about supply and demand which I have already addressed in my previous posts. Fully functioning supply and demand requires a free market, which does not really exist in Shadowrun's corporate feudalist system. But I won't say more in this post because I want to be clear about the above point.

Sorry, I was trying to make my point a little more clearly.

Re: keeping mages in house. How the hell do you make money if you don't sell your services? That's like saying Ares will refuse to contract Knight Errant out to another corporation because they don't want the corporation to derive any value from their service. That's bizarre, and a good way to minimize, not maximize, your cashflow. We know corporations aren't completely 100% at war with each other, because they have collaborate - sure, Corps may periodically be engaged in a pissing contest over one product or even an entire sphere of production, but they don't take counter-productive measures just because it generally inconveniences a rival - they do so for specific, profitable purposes.

Everyone's acting as though this were a free market. If you grew up SINless in the Barrens then maybe so. But if you grew up in the Arcology then it's not even close.

• You were born in the Corp hospital, and probably got RFID tagged for easy identification/location.
• You went to Corp schools where you were indoctrinated (Ask not what Renraku can do for you; ask what YOU can do for RENRAKU!)
• When you tested positive for magical [or resonance] potential, you were moved to a prestigious (and secure!) corp boarding school to groom your talents.
• Now you've been designated a high-value asset. The next time you go to the hospital for appendicitis or wisdom teeth (or something they have to make up) they install a kink bomb. (Hey, it's a mark of favor, really. You should be proud. And it keeps those evil Wuxing bastards from abducting and enslaving you.)
• You get paid a decent wage. It's not much, but you get by. You know that you're making more than your mundane friends, and what else do you have to compare it to?
• Most of the time, you aren't even where another corp would know you existed, much less be able to give you an offer.
• Even if you wanted to go, you know it would ruin your parents' reputation. And you're kids are now off at boarding school. And your wife works in another department. You'd never all be able to get away without somebody noticing. And you've heard these rumors about kink bombs...

Dude, you pinch my argument, use it for over a page to support the opposite point and then quote it back to me very slowly and loudly?

Support the statement I have quoted at the top bearing in mind this quote.

No, thats stupib beyand belif.
Their lot more likely to take a ritual sample.

If being a security mage pays so freaking well why dose any mage bother running really its like being born being able to earn more than a doctor. Really combat mage corp/millitary/merc job enchanter working for a corp really even if born sinless you could still get a good pay from illegal work with syndicates.

I seem to recall a piece of fiction from 1st Ed where the child is discovered to be a Mage, I think it was Renraku was the parent corp, and everybody gets an upgrade. The child is taken from the parents but they are rewarded with promotions and better quarters etc.

Mega-corporations are extremely keen to have as many Mages as possible and to keep them as wildly happy with their lot as it is humanly possible to be.

Why would they sell the services of their Mages to minor Corps that are merely competition when the parent Mega has more facilities than they can possibly cover effectively with the resources they have?

Because a cage is still a cage.

As was proposed a couple of pages back it might be the case that Mages are locked into the Mega's by the enormous cost of their education. The only real way to escape that debt is to give up your 'real' life and move into the shadows.

I don't think that we disagree on this quote. Mages are valued and kept happy, but on a short leash. They will make sure you do your job well, but they will also make sure you don't end up doing it for anyone else, ever.

The real point I was trying to make though is that expensive is a meaningless word. First you jump on me for not explaining that, then I explain it for a third time. And now you jump on me for something completely different. What exactly do you want here? An actual argument, or just a melee? Just victory for its own sake?

Yeah I can see rebelling but still why run. Get a new job at a corp that is less oppressive become a merc or just work freelance why are you going to risk your life for a 40k job split 5 ways when you can get 250k a year by putting up a few wards and sit on you ass. You might to to responed now and then but hey it pays better tan running a job each week and is safer.

I'd imagine they'd do that, too. Both are reasonably cheap, and can get the job done. The kink bomb is faster, and can be executed much quicker than the time it would take to assemble the ritual magic team. But the ritual link is good for lots of other things, too (Control thoughts on the new Wuxing Department Head!). They wouldn't necessarily let you know that they'd done it, if they thought that would hurt employee morale too much. But there'd be rumors about that mage in the Theoretical Planar Ascention division that had a convenient aneurysm during an extraction.

Yes, to the Mega-corp's that own most of the Mages.

However a AA trying to contract such services in will find it extraordinarily expensive.

Your cost benefit analysis merely emphasizes the fact that most of the Mages will be under Megacorporate control. The cost of allowing the minnows in the corporate pool access to decent Astral Security is to high to risk.

Oh, ok. I guess we're not arguing then. Lower level corps would have to pay mages a lot because they don't have the same clout and ability to turn them into wageslaves. What does this translate into? Milkruns often won't encounter magical security. Higher level runs will. The way to realistically challenge your mages is to let them graduate up from the small time and run with the big boys. If your opponents remain gangers and rentacops all the way up into the 100+ karma level, of course the system will fall apart. To use D&D terms, you need to face the appropriate Challenge Rating. Milkruns where the opposition doesn't have a chance aren't actually worth karma. Thread over now?

Sorry, i remembered that kink bomb would cost essence, but just checked and it doesn't.

You're talking about a wage mage working for a small corp. How about a mage funding his own security corp (with some friends eventually)? This might even be a campaign setting for players who want to stay on the good side of the law for once.

We could go back to the original topic.

How do you do it for cheap without a dedicated Initiate in every facility.

I quite liked the security PMV I posted about 3 pages back...

*sigh*

Here's the dictionary definition of "Expensive"


So, it doesn't matter that it pays for itself or is profitable, it is still expensive. Hiring a good security mage still requires a high outlay of cash. It doesn't matter if you'll earn that investment back, you still need to be able to fork over a quarter-million in the first place. That, along with the 1% figure, means that mages will be rare. Having a live security mage is going to be the exception, not the norm. And a live security mage, along with spirits with magical guard, are pretty much the only defense against a manabolt.

Look at it this way. Suppose I offered you a chance to safely, legally, and quickly earn ten million dollars. All you had to do was make a million-dollar investment. Could you do it? Do you have a million dollars to invest? Or is it too expensive for you?

So, you have apparently chosen to ignore the entire OP. Congratulations, you have chosen mendacity and repetition over making an actual point. If you have a point regarding why one of the many other options in either the OP or brought up since then to defend against magic doesn't work, please make it. Otherwise, you're dragging the thread down with your dead horse.

Which is why you go with several other corps in the area for magical security. Yeah 250k for a year is expensive, but if it is split amongst 10 different businesses then it becomes much more affordable. There is nothing keeping larger corporations from providing warehouse space, retail outlets, etc. The cost of rent could include higher level security. Some pay to the local lonestar or knight errant and you have magical protection.

Unless your shadowrun games are against suburban small law offices you will face better security at some point especially for the good ones. Else hell you will get enough work for low or maybe middle class and nothing else. Sounds kind of boring when I could just take day job for the same pay off and danger.

Doi, thanks! That wus informuhtive! Give me a break. I know the dictionary definition. I was trying to explain what it means in economics terms. And what does cost mean, without a benefit analysis, in economic terms? Jack diddly squat. So when you say, "it's expensive," and ignore the benefit side, you might as well be typing random letters and number for all the meaning that your statement has.



You are pointing to a different problem, liquidity. You're correct, to a point, that liquidity is a factor when considering these kinds of expenditures. I was actually going to talk about that, but my discussion of cost/benefit was too long as it is, and it seemed to be whiffing right past peoples' heads, so I decided to make it less complicated. But yeah, when making an investment, you must have sufficient cash on hand, and enough cash left over, that it makes sense.

However, in order for your invocation of liquidity to have any meaning, you have to posit a world where the cost of personnel is a serious threat to a corporation's liquidity. This will simply never be the case. Employees are always a significant expense, but any entity as large as a mega has fully planned how to provide enough cashflow to support them. In order for your point to be relevant, you have to be claiming that the cost of employing mages actually threatens to drain so much capital from a megacorp that it could pose a threat to its competitiveness. I don't think there's any chance of that being the case. And once again, you're making a point, assuming it to be true, and then moving on as if you had proved it. Yes, liquidity is an issue. It does not, however, follow that megacorporations lack sufficient liquidity to employ all the mages they need to (or at least, all the mages they have access to).

If you want to make an argument about how the megacorps, entities which have exceeded national governments in their strength and wealth, are too poor to afford run of the mill wage mages, go ahead. But don't just drop dictionary definitions and cursory references to economic problems as if it was an argument. Liquidity is relevant here if and only if mages are so expensive that megacorporate cashflows have trouble paying for them, fully considering that when used efficiently, they end up paying for themselves. Are you going to claim that they're that expensive? Or are you just going to repeat yourself again without argument? Or maybe you'll concede for the first time ever that you're wrong (not holding my breath on that one)?

Okay guys, reality check here. In the year 2000 approximately 1% of the U.S. population had Ph.D.'s. A Ph.D in a highly technical and desired field is worth about $20k above regular pay for a non-Ph.D in the same job. Ph.D.s in a less desired area (say...equivalent to a mage with few skills useful to a corp) very often earn *less* than regular businesspeople or, say, lawyers and doctors.

This idea that mages are going to earn beaucoup bucks because they have an unusual skill set and are only 1% of the population is just baloney. In economic terms, being part of a 1% category is simply not rare enough to command a huge increase in pay.

If your typical wage mage is earning more than medium lifestyle wages on his magical talents alone (i.e. without politics, connections, or seniority), you're probably overestimating the demand for his talents.

I exited the other thread because of the argument about whether D&D4 was a better system than SR4. You were one of the prime opponents in that. Now YOU ARE PROPOSING THAT SHADOWRUN SHOULD BE RUN IN EXACTLY THE SAME MANNER AS DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in my SR games I tend to let the PCs decide how tough they want things to be)

It baffles the mind.

Anywho, back to the OP. The best defense against mages is to NOT PLAY THE MAGIC GAME. What is a mage really going to do to you? Especially if, as someone said a couple of pages ago, security in SR4 is more focused on response than prevention. Why bother with static security? All of the best solutions people have provided is responsive. So ignore static defense.



So not only do most facilities not even get a dedicated mage, odds are that you are going to encounter an egghead who is busy pondering the great unknowables rather than paying attention to what is going on. Arcana 7 doesn't really help protect those Skillwired Low Lifestyle guards except to say "Hey that's an Asgardian signature." <Poof!>

Also, on the economics. Raising a mage from birth isn't free. Even if the corporation provides everything itself it still has departments and no department is going to take a 100,000 nuyen hit to train said mage without any revenue to offset it. Just because the Magical Research department and the Magical Training department both have Magical in their name doesn't mean their manager doesn't want to look good to HIS managers. And the above quote seems to point out that mages are better spent doing things OTHER than security so the whole cost 1/4 million to save 1 million doesn't really hold weight because the mage makes more than 750K doing non-security stuff (with a bit of security stuff on the side).

Military doctors are found by one of two means: you are too poor to go to medical school and didn't get a scholarship or else you have a deep sense of duty to your country and/or fellow man.

Runner mages could be 1) Crazy, 2) Addicts, 3) Dangerous, 4) Jilted, or 5) several dozens of other things that could have made them not want to work for Corporations. Corporations also don't control who Awakens. Corporate affliation is usually less than 100% (more like 50%) according to the Shadows of... books. SINless populations are actually a sizeable %age of most nations. The odds of a wageslaves' kid Awakening are VERY slim.

No, I'm just reading the book.

SR is a fictional world based in a possible near future that does not necessarily have an entirely accurate economic model.

The book says Mages get paid very well so they get paid very well.

Yes but what percentage of those PhDs have real world applications for their degrees like a businessman, lawyer, or doctor? Ancient Sumarian Basketweaving doesn't command a high salary no. PhD in Rocket Science sure does.

Compare a lawyer who has passed bar to one who has a PhD in International Tax Law and has passed the bar (actually irrelevant for the second guy to pass bar). Fuck, compare a guy who focused on International Tax Law in his Law Degree to the guy with the PhD. You'll find some significant differences.

Ok stuffer shack employee. Probably worth 300-500 nuyen. Short time to train, plenty of skilled labor, and impact on business minimal

Corporate Drone: 25000-40000. Skill wired and autosoft. Takes some work to replace and damage is pain, but not irreplaceable.

Corporate skilled: 100000-400000. Skills hard to skillwire or lack of enough skill autosofts to train. 2 level 2 autosofts, plus skillwires, plus variety of skills to make them useful and hard to replace.

Corporate Elite: 500000- Skills beyond skillwires. Bioware, magic and cyberware aiding them in their tasks.

This ignores any data and equipment that is threatened. A medium sized company would find it worth protecting their employees.

Hang on, you can just make up numbers, all by yourself, without any supporting fluff or arguments, and draw a conclusion from that?

Not that I disagree with your ultimate conclusion, but creating your own numbers out of nothing isn't actually a valid way to argue. I would say your point is better made by arguing that, whatever the numbers, corporations invest in their employees. They give these people food, shelter, training, and benefits, all to create employees who are both skilled and loyal, inasmuch as possible. A new employee will likely be neither as skilled nor as loyal, and therefore will require them to totally start the investment process over. So corps will indeed want to protect employees, because they're investments.



The situation you propose would create hopelessly broken institutions. No training facility directly makes money, not unless it's charging tuition. What you're proposing is that training divisions train the fewest, cheapest people they can in order to spend less money. To imagine that their mandate is actually to save money by not training anyone is actually hilarious. Corporations have full, military strength security wings. There is no (0) chance that these security wings are incentivized based on how much money each individual part of them makes. That would be impossible, because they are not engaged in money making, they are engaged in asset protection. A security division has to be judged on how secure they make things, i.e. how much money they save, because they don't directly generate revenue. Cost overruns matter, of course. But an incentive system where training divisions are penalized for training the best people would cause any megacorp to come crashing to the ground. Bravo on imagining the most unworkable incentive system imaginable, I think you've got Wall Street well and truly licked.

Now, you also seem to be making the broader point that, uh, security mages practically don't exist? I'm not sure. Regardless, the fluff says they do exist. The fluff does not say they're rarer than rare. However you want to justify it, your conclusion can't be right. Maybe some handwavium is required if you can't accept any of the justifications proferred, but this idea that there is no real population of security mages is flat out debunked by the books providing very clearly for mages being engaged in security work without specifying extreme rarity.



Wait, 50% of the population is corporatized. So... half of all the world's mages are corporatized from birth, right? How is that the same as very slim odds? That is actually the very definintion of "just as likely as not." It's got nothing to do with the definition of "very slim."

Larme, it is simple math for the first few levels.

Skillsoft 2 4000 nuyen
Assume 2 skills at 2 which gives 40k.
Include any training or knowing processes which is sort of intangible and that is where I got 25-40k

Extrapolate that with skill softs of 4, 2 skills, plus ancillary skills and you get into the 100-400k range. This value is also about how much money they save the company.

The rest is highly specialized skills where the assumption is the person saves the company more money than they cost for salary. I know a man who in 2 weeks do what it took 4 researchers 6 months, and half a million dollars to validate. This ignores the the fact he also found a good working relationship that will be used for future projects. He also did with 4 samples what the previous company with 200 samples could not. How much do you think he is worth to the organization? Several million. This is where the number comes into. There are intangibles, cost to replace, and realized savings. While we may talk gritty, but corporations still view these people by their net worth to the company whether they work for them or not.

Ph.D's with real world applications earn less than lawyers and doctors. So, mages with real world applicable skills will earn...

My previous post was incorrect. SR4 does not overestimate their value, it underestimates their supply. Again, being part of a 1% isn't that rare.

Crizh, you're right. If you just read the book, wage mages earn a lot of bucks. I think my first post on this thread mentioned I thought the RAW vastly overpaid them.

But, in the spirit of trying to drag this thread back on topic, I think octopii did a decent job with his first post. I also think that SR4, with a section on physical security and a section on net security, is lacking by not having a section on magical security. The lack of security-focused spells is also an oversight. Whatever we players think, I hope the writers correct this in the future and give some thought to what sort of magical security goes along with threat levels 1-6.

Umm... no. You're assuming that the value of a person's skills is the cost that it would take to replace them with skillsofts. The actual value of a person is the cost it would take to replace them, period. Not replace with skillsofts, just replace. Skillsofts are not the one single alternative to a given worker, there are other alternatives, such as another equally skilled worker, or sending someone to school. Your entire structure is based on simple math and one very big logical flaw, that the only alternate source of labor is people with skillsofts. I'm not saying your numbers are definitely wrong, I'm just saying that they're not based on anything that's reliable enough to call them concrete. They're guesses, and not much more.

Ummmmm... Never forget the benefits of assensing your opposition from a Fiberoptic Security station... You can pinpoint ALL of your magical opposition through usage of this tactic, or through watchers/spirits who can see the magical auras on the astral... of course, some metamagic techniques may slant this technique, but it is still pretty effective, allowing you to determine who the magically active characters are in any given team, not to mention who has spell augments on them...

Actually I am basing those numbers if they get blown up by a bunch of shadowrunners. Hence why you have security to protect the investment of cyberware and value. That is why the numbers are actually low. This ignores things like training, support, etc which adds a lot more.

Correct me if I am wrong here, but by your logic, most shadowrun teams would also NOT have any magical support then... You Can't have it both ways here... Either they are plentiful enough to provide a challenge to the relative handful of shadowrun mages that choose to run, or very few shadowrun teams will ever see a mage, let alone have one on their team, as they cannot find one to recruit...

By your terms, the average mage on a team should be bringing down all the cash for the run, leaving nothing for the other members of the team... where you gonna find a mage willing to take a couple thousand nuyen as his split? Either they are expensive, or they are not, you cannot have it both ways here...

But what is not delineated is the term "Very Well"...
Very Well to someone who only makes the minimum wage is not the same as Very Well to someone who is pulling in 500,000 a year... the term becomes very fluid depending upon who you ask...

I make less thatn 50,000 a year... very well to me is someone who makes 75,000 a year... anything above that is exceptional to ludicrous (ie. my opinion of the salaries of professional atheletes is well beyond ludicrous)... "Very Well" is a term that has no real meaning...

Same could be said for a hacker. I look at it shadowrunners do it for more than money. They like the adventure, danger and testing their skills. They also like their independence and freedom compared to a corp worker. They could make a lot more, but decided to find another path. That said is I still think most missions are underpaid except where characters can get ancillary benefits.

Yes, most SR teams wont have a mage in the fluff. Most SR groups will have at least 1 player whose character is a mage. Which is why this discussion spawned since the palyers will be that rare 1%, but the opposition probably wont. Which makes it hard to protect against the all powerful manaball. Note this is not in the setting sense but in the game balance sense.

But players usually decide pay splits basically out of character. And an idnividual mage can come up with any reaosn to take a even cut. Mages on the whole across society its harder to argue that sinc ethye are well paid in the fluff.

I also tend to tailor the opposition to the players. If there are not any mages in the group then I run a very low magic world. If there are mages then I run it as an ever present force.

Honestly, I know several people who get paid 100-130k a year who are senior engineers. For all the crap and responsibility I would have to get paid that well to take their jobs. The is a point where the increment in pay is not worth the excrement. It is better to go home at a reasonable time (while there is still daylight) and spend it with family.

That sort of depends on your family.