Hey.

I'm going to be starting a S4 campaign soon, and I'm trying to kinda flesh out my plot and run ideas. The big hitch I'm running into is compensation...

How much does a typical run (B&E, Extractions) pay? Obviously there is a wide range of runs out there, but on average, what are we looking at? 10,000 ? 100,000 ? And a Fixer usually gets, what, 10% off the top?

Thanks for your help

Rule of thumb I use is to average (or just take highest) lifestyle cost of the group. That's using the premise of one run a month .

I've been wondering this myself. I think the average yearly income in Seattle is supposed to be 55,000. Lots of fictional Runners seem to spend time worrying about making rent, which would make the 10k and lower runs appropriate. Parties that are trying to cyber up or replace drones and vehicles are going to want more money, fast.

My first run netted me 10k for ganking the Night Hunter Jack-The-Ripper wannabe, and an extra 10k for bringing him in alive for the troll pimp to personally finish off. Technically alive.

When I ran my players through a simple 'intercept the briefcase' run (which turned into a six-week adventure with explosions and assault vehicles) and tried to pay them 20k, there was...dissent.

My last run we were offered 45k to infiltrate a facility during an armed takeover by a third party. We managed to swipe their orichalcum stockpiles and a Power Foci, which bumped my cut up to nearly 80k. That was more then the GM expected us to get, and I admit it seems high.

There should really be a way to eyeball the value of the run when you compare the risk to the character's competency. If you hire a bunch of gang-bangers to fight another bunch of gang-bangers, you've got a fair fight. If you hire a bunch of well-armed, chromed, professional mercs to fight a bunch of gang-bangers, you're going to have to pay extra for the quality of the mercs, but perhaps less due to the risk being negligable for them. If you send those gang-bangers to infiltrate the Aztechnology pyramid, you're going to have to drown them in nuyen to get them to take the chance.

That still doesn't give us a baseline, though.

I don't really have any solid reasoning for my opinions on rewards. In general, I want to start with a baseline of 6 karma per session. If the adventure takes 4 weeks, that's 24 karma. Now before you start crying foul, I count cash as karma. During character creation, the ratio is 1BP = 2 Karma = Y5k. That averages to 3 Karma and 7.5k a session, which translates into a baseline of 12 Karma and 30k for 4 weeks of work, provided the players succeed. Assuming you play every week, that's about 150 Karma and Y400k a year, real time. You can easily change the baseline 6 karma to whatever number suits your desired advancement rate, as well as adjust the karma to cash ratio.

These are my baselines. I also allow for extra karma and cash due to player awesomeness and clever loot grabs. Generally I hide one uber-loot somewhere in each adventure (not session), so the players have the opportunity to do something unreasonable and get an unreasonable reward in return. That's my angle though... I'd rather have character advance quickly and die hard, than advance slowly and die of boredom.

you aren't going to get a definitive answer...
the main issue is just simply have fun. throw a number out there...if they snag it no haggling then at the final payment the johnson wants to haggle them down some...
if they scoff see how "professional" they scoff then negotiate.
make them understand the johnson is in the business of making you work for free. if he offers you a job and you say no...there's alot of talent out there he's coming to you as a FAVOR to YOUR friend (most likely a fixer)
when I'm the face no matter what the johnson says as his price, I wait 3 seconds and then say "you get 1: fast, 2: cheap, 3: good...pick two and lets deal."

this is what I use to calculate how much to pay
Standard Payments:
Courier service: 1,000¥
Investigations: 300¥ per day (data investigation only)
Observations: 200¥ per day
Wet work: 5,000¥ per target
Hazard Insurance: 5,000¥ per contractor
Bodyguard/Security Duty: each contractor receives 200¥/day +100% expenses.
Breaking and Entering: 2,000¥
Courier service: 1,000¥
Datasteal: 35% Market value of data
Hooding: 20% Street Value of merchandise
Tailchaser: 50% of secondary run
Structure Hit: 5,000¥
Enforcement: cost equal to lifestyle rating per target
Encryption/Decryption: 1,000¥ per rating level.
Extraction: 20,000¥ per target
Hacking: 1,000¥/rating per secure system
Investigation: each approved contractor receives 200¥/day +100% expenses
Smuggling Run: 5,000¥
Magical Assistance: 500¥/rating non combat assistance.
1,000¥/rating combat assistance.
2,500/rating High threat assistance.
Spirit use: 500¥/rating non combat use.
1,000¥/rating combat use.
2,500/rating bonded spirit.

Matrix Runs:
Green Rating Node (4): 2,000¥
Orange Rating Node (5): 5,000¥
Red Rating Node (6): 10,000¥+

Light Security: 5,000¥
Medium Security: 10,000¥
Heavy Security: 20,000¥
High Threat Security: 50,000¥
Explicit Magical Danger: 10,000¥+

Explicit on site Stealth: +25%
Short Term Stealth: +50%
Long Term Stealth: +100%
No looting: +5,000¥
No Killing at all: +50%

Time Constraints: (modifier added after total cost)
2+ weeks -25%
1 week +0%
3 days +25%
1 days +50%
now +100%

Heh. Yeah, I know I asked an open ended question, but I'm not looking for a "This is how much you get" kind of answer either. At the same time, I've got a group with 2 cash hungry players and 2 karma hungry players (2 Sams, 1 mage, 1 technomancer) and I don't want to screw either side over when it comes to advancement.

I use a very similar system as above.

Because my players are big on frequent games and only moderate on RP I generally have a very modular mission system. Roughly 1/4 of my missions are campain progression. The rest are random. player driven, or sub plots that develope. This allows players to pick their work, looking for specific job types and/or compensations.

My campain arc generally allows enough built in compensation for a team of 4 to live at Middle/high lifestyle. They want more, they do extra missions. The more compensation they need, the higher the danger.

I had a major issue with this in the campaign I'm running. I was looking at the pre-made adventures and the like, and the payouts were in the 3-5k range for just about anything. This seemed a tad low, but I went with it to start with. I quickly found that it made for extremely slow advancement and created issues with the level of fun and ability to take on new missions/challenges.

I try and go with this idea now:
Runners won't roll out of bed for something that doesn't cover rent.
If they are getting shot at, they need to be able to buy something shiny afterward.
If you give them too much, its really easy to wreck some of their gear and bring things back in.

With that said, runs are a minimum of about 7-9k and usually run between 8-12k. Occasionally, give a dog a bone and throw them the potential of a 25-35k payoff, and remember that how long you have between runs is just as important as how much they make on the run.

Here's what I did while I GMed.

For each player I would :

Figured out how much they would need per day to keep their monthly rent multiply by how long they're given to do the job.
[ (Lifestyle cost / 30) * Time for job ]

I'd give each player 2500 per point of mission karma. (Bonus karma for good RPing, etc. do not get factored into this)
[ + (2500 * Karma) ]

Add on any expenses they might have (within reason). Can just add to 1 player as it'll get split up later.
[ + Expenses ]

Average out what each player should get
[ (Add each players rewards) / # of players ]

Round down to nearest 1000 then negotiate from there.


EX: 4 players, 2 with Low, 1 Middle, 1 High lifestyles. They are given 4 days to complete the objective. It's a simple B&E job, minimal security. Estimated karma reward of 3. Expenses ~2500 (bribes, etc)

Low [ (2000 / 30) * 4 + (2500 * 3) ] = 7767
Mid [ (5000 / 30) * 4 + (2500 * 3) ] = 8167
High [ (10000 / 30) * 4 + (2500 * 3) + 2500 ] = 11333 (added expenses)

AVG [ (7767 + 7767 + 8167 + 11333) / 4 ] = 8758

4 day B&E job would start at 8000 to be divided how the players choose.

I don't care what the PCs lifestyle is. If they all have luxury but the whole team can't handle 4 gangers they are not going to be mysteriously paid $25,000 when a competent team with middle would get $5000. If your characters want to live high on the hog you should design a character that can do jobs that pay well.

Well, there is always the risk of players looting/stealing some vehicle, when that happens, even with all the modifiers, such a vehicle can make them alot of money. In fact i find it odd with standart shadowrun payouts that they don't just go on a grand theft auto instead.

Our (me and a co-GM) first longer campaign in shadowrun is starting this friday however, so I'm following this with much interest, I think ill snag your list djinni, it gives a good idea about a lot of different jobs. I guess the best way to keep the actual shadowrunning viable compared to looting/stealing cars, is to be very harsh about stealth RFD tags on anything of value (along with alarm GPS for the vehicles)

Djinni's list is good, and Kzt is correct. The pay and the Karma has nothing to do with the class of runner their lifestyle or their competence. It has something to do with the job itself, the budget of the Johnson/Employer, the streetcred of the runners and their negotiation.

For a standardjob (get me this/that object, find me some information or such. Small breaking and entering, maybe slight magic-usage, getting some Data and decrypt it or such) And 2-3 days work i pay maybe 5000 (Not per person...).

For some bodyguarding or ongoing investigations maybe 250 per person. (The run my people have now they get 250+free food and a place to sleap+ medical bills+extra bonus if they got shot at/dismembered/killed - and they just got shot at so maybe) But their employer is very wealthy and wanted them for a special job at the side (They should fake his death and investigate his family and friends afterwards)

But for some high-class running against a big corporation, where the run will do millions of nuyen damage/profit - hwere they have to do extensive legworks, bribes, preparations... extra Sins- spirits, drones and stuff tailored to the job it should begin at maybe 40-50 k. and will reach astronomical heights. Also getting some REALLY good paydata at the side can net a huge profit for the successful cyberlooter too. (Or stealing cyber and bioware which has not been implanted yet can bring a good profit too, maybe 20% of the worth of the ware.

And in Karma: around 2 is base, then survival, danger, roleplaying, special (important new experience or knowledge), daring actions could boost it to maybe 10 points per run (I give per run, not per session... no point in giving them 2 Karma for sitting in a basement and planning a run 6 realtime hours) Also i keep track of the offtime and what they do in that time. and net extrakarme on the next run. (I think normal people generate about 1 point a month on their own, without adventure (see it as good roleplaying *g*)

Also i allow Karma for Cash and Cash for Karma. (With variable rates based on their available funds and my mood). My roleplaying excuse for that is "lucky investments", "extra-magical lifestyle" or "Oh, you used your cash to do something in the world? - fed the hungry clothes the freezing, plotted world-domination?".

For example when i give somebody 5000 Nuyen and 4 Karma for a Run, he could give me about 2500 for an extra Karma Point. If it were 10000 and 4 Karma it is maybe 4000 or 6000 for a point. If they got 7 Karma, but no cash (betrayel of Johnson) They could maybe trade me 2 Karma for 4000 Nuyen. But depends on my mood.

First- you should check out the Search Function (try payment or typical).

Second- I agree with kzt's point above.

Third- the problem with low run payments is that no one would risk their life or their freedom for such shitty reimbursement. Remember the for the SINless in SR just showing up to a corporate facility with a gun infringes on enough laws to put you away forever (or worse). Why the hell would anyone be a runner when they could make *more money* selling drugs or stealing cars or doing any number of other things with significantly less risk?

How is stealing cars and selling drugs risk free (ah ok, less risk you say)? You have to avoid the cops and their traps, the other organisations (triads, mafia) will want to take you down. Private people you pissed of (by selling crap to their teenage daughter and putting her in a coma or just stealing their nice Mercedes S-Class). All will be out to take you down/shoot you in the face. When you are running against corporations at least only a few people know your face/where you are/who you are dealing with. And if the run is over and all went well even revenge isn't worth anything for the corporation.

So yeah. i would take the runs if i am good enough at it. I don't want to get shot in the back while climbing in my new stolen car or get hit by a drive-by shooting when i am selling crack in front of a club. (Or worse getting caught by the star when pawning off the cars at the docks)

After the run, you'd still have to avoid the cops and their traps (because the johnson wanted you to kill so and so), other organisations (because the corp is connected to those organisations), private people you pissed off(because you just screwed over their chance at the fat bonus and promotion) and all are just as likely to take you down/shoot you in the face in addition to the corp's own security forces.

So I tend to make sure the pay is much more than what they would get for crimes of lesser risk. As much as you can get shot climbing into your new car, or get hit in a drive-by, your competitors may be looking to take you out as well simply for being a shadowrunner and cutting into their pie.

You somehow think corporations are less likely gto go after shadowrunners then individual people are to go after drug dealers or car thieves? Man I want to play in your game.

I presume that runners are paid according to a couple things

The value of their targets - If corp A stands to make millions by setting back Corp B's research it's not unreasonable to think that they will throw a hundred thousand nuyen, ore even a few hundred thousand nuyen at the problem. That may mean hiring multiple teams or that may mean hiring a team of Prime runner talent. Granted some of this is going to come down through multiple layers of plausible deniability, fixers taking their cut, bribes, etc.

The quality of the team - As a corollary to the above, you don't hire a 200 karma runner to knock over a stuffer shack. More successful runners should be picked up for better paying work.

The balance factor - Tech characters cannot advance without money, giving people just enough to pay their lifestyle is a giant FU to all your tech player characters.

The fun factor- Now happily I'm not at a point in my life where I have to worry about making rent month to month and seldom have been. However there are those at my table who do and there was a time in my life. I wouldn't call that fun. So for escapisms sake I always let my players be the globe trotting mercenary superstars they want to be.

In the end, money and toys are easy to take away so if your going to error error on the side of overpayment.

Money and Toys are Oh SO Easy to take away...

Keep the Faith

Seriously dude? You're going to argue that car jacking a shitty Mercury Comet from Joe Wageslave is more risky than infiltrating the most vulnerable corporate facility and stealing anything thats worth a Johnson actually paying for? You do realize that all the (questionable) risks you sited are inherent to any SR right?

If you use the rules for Fencing Gear on page 312 of SR4A your starting price for a Comet is 4,200¥ and all you have to do is stick a gun in the face of a presumably unarmed desk jockey and know enough about Hacking to cover your trail. Hell, if you know enough about Hacking you don't even need to leave your apartment. The wageslave might be pissed, but he has insurance and I doubt its cost effective for the insurance company to go after lowly car thieves. And of course there's Lone Star but that risk is inherent in any shadowrun. I would bet that they will take far more interest in finding the "terrorists" that attacked a corp facility than a lowly car thief.

With a reduced price (say 3000¥) and the right contacts you can steal a car and fence it in a matter of hours, and you can do that day in and day out. You could even steal two or three a day. Sure the risks goes up, but if you're smart about covering your trail its basically free money. And if you do get caught you spend a few years in an overcrowded prison and (especially if your a non-violent hacker type) get out early for good behavior.

Why the hell would anyone take a job that involved risking your life for 5,000¥?

Of course, SR would be boring and stupid if the premise of the game was just to run around stealing cars. My point is that there is some common sense economics involved here.

Of course there are. First: you can't steal three cars a day and expect someone to buy it. It takes time to take them apart and sell the parts. and then you have satisfied all of your customers, drugs the same. You have a much wider clientelle. dozens of people know how to contact you, where your operations are located, where one can find you or have just your phonenumber. Hell... a lot of people know your face (Or Nanopaste every day... ewww *g*)

Police undercover tries to get you. Patrols are centered around your activity. It is just you are much more in the open with that kind of business. As a shadowrunner only the Johnson, the team and the fixer know what you are working on right now. All other MIGHT know what you are doing for a living, but not what you are up to now. You work only for a few days a month. The rest you are warm and cozy and (relatively... umm yeah) safe. In these few days (of course) everyone wants to see you dead, but if they can't get you then, and fail at picking up your trail (magical residue, genetic material, photo and camera evidence) You have completed (or failed) the job, and there is no interest in getting you, since it is unlikely you can or will damage the people further. (Of course they will never miss the opportunity to pick you up on a later point, but it costs money to chase people around and if you don't know who they are you can stop early better than later.

But having an ongoing scheme in public damaging hundreds of people, criminal syndicates and being a point of interest for the cops / corp sec AND dealing with dozens of people (who can betray you makes for a constant low-threat against you.

Say every third run goes HOLYSHITIHOPEWESURVIVETHIS-insane. That is still just every few weeks. If you are selling drugs EVERY shipment, every small dealer, every person you see could be cop/rival or anything. It is just this constant threat which makes this job undiserable. Sure you could work for a syndicate. With their approval you might not fear the star and such. But also your cut is VERY much lower... and then you have to participate in gangwars and wars with other syndicates and such.

Everything has its ups and downs.

You'd probably get more like 500 per car after street taxes etc, but then you can steal more than one per day. And if you pay off the guys who you should you don't have to try to sell the car, just deliver it to the guys who will do the further processing.

So yeah, you could earn $5000/week stealing cars for the mob with minimal chance of getting shot and fairly low chance of getting arrested or you could make $2000/week with the rather higher probability of getting shot or arrested per some of the suggestions.

Monty, I'll take what's behind door number one.

Part of me wants to make a smart-assed reply about making a character like Kwai Chang Kain who gets paid for his deeds with various stuff, like getting a Johnson to give them a month free of meals at a corporation owned restaurant, or various stuff like that. I remember another character like that, but I can't think of the name right now for them.

But I tend to set my pay indirectly from the runners, much like the run itself. It is set for a specific price range because that's what the J will pay for it. The J is being given 50k to do this job, and he feels its easy enough to start at 30k, but will negotiate up to 40k, taking his 10k cut for the job. Doesn't matter how good the runners are; if they think they're too good, they'll walk away and leave the job.

However, there are some people who are really good that will take smaller jobs from time to time to help out their pocketbook, do something they believe in, assist a 'trainee' they are mentoring, etc. In an episode of Hustle, the con-men needed to get their hands on a lot of money quickly, so they did a number of short-cons to get their income for their long-con. It's not something they would do normally, but they were willing to do it because they needed the money. Say you're on a run for sneaking into this facility, and you need to get some money for bribes, you could take a secondary job to get some spending cash to throw for the people.

I usually offset low pay by stealing extra stuff, usually stuff that is expensive but not so drek hot that no one would want to buy it. Have to be smart about that as corps tend to track there more pricey assets rather closely, I usually swiped guns(Got picky about which ones since you can only carry so many weapons until it gets awkward) and ammunition. Data chips, small electronic devices and such. Data chips could have valuable data that would even be sold after the run and could net more then the whole run was paying, such is chance. High end runs I tended to steer away jacking stuff as I dont want to make it obvious that we where even there.

2009 and still talking about stealing Americars (or Mercury Comets)?

I think the key to this problem is not the amount of the payment but the explanation behind it.
If you're able to give a convincing explanation about why Shadowrunners can't make a living out of car stealing, then you can have them get paid less that what they'd get from car stealing.

Simple, the market of stealing cars is already saturated.
There are already plenty of SIN-less who commit these crimes every day and willing to do it for scraps.
The organized crime families pay these scraps and any upstart runners who are trying to get 500+ per car are a threat to business and dealt with.

Or they simply won't find a buyer, since the other suppliers sell their stuff for almost nothing.

For example.
Whatever works for you and your group is okay.

My group is awarded around 10k to 20k per person for a run. This allows them to actually buy and use most of the toys in the books. A fair amount of this goes back into expenses like lifestyles, medical treatment and replacements for exploded vehicles).

I do like to offer flexible payment for a mission with bonuses if certain criteria are met.

Okay so I haven't even bothered reading any of the above since this has been spoken about before...

Want further comments on such a subject?

Read this

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=25982

Stealing cars is only one of a myriad of possibilities. You guys are missing the point. Sure, as the GM you can rationalize lots of ways to deter creative players and railroad them into low paying, high risk jobs. I could do the same to explain why selling ice cream would pay better than shadowrunning. The point is that anyone with the skills required for a shadowrun could find a variety of paying jobs that entail considerably less risk.

I'll agree on the risk vs reward.

No way someone is going to risk 50 or 100K in deck, drones, and or vehicles for 5K unless it is a milk run, they are hurting for the cred, or they want to build up their rep.

And the last two would exclude anyone but someone pretty green or on the way down.

Even the Street Samurai has to look at streetdoc costs, ammo costs, cyberware replacement costs, and down time healing.

Also it depends on who the run is against and what the risk of them IDing you.

You slot of the Yaks or the Mob and they can make life very difficult for you just by dropping a dime.

And that doesn't even get in to illegal activities risks in a surveillance society.

So I figure a group of pros would pull in at least a high lifestyle so 10 to 15K a month easy. More if they have to lay low after the run.

Course there are expenses to living in the shadows and I could see a third of that going to stay hidden.

Risk vs Reward is a great way of doing business... if you have enough information up front. Most Johnsons will definitely downplay just how dangerous the run is going to be "Don't sweat it... it's a milk run."

I really HATE the idea of basing any pay off of current character lifestyle unless it was being offered by someone who knows them very well and doesn't like them much. An example might be a Rating 4 or 5 Loyalty 1 Fixer who takes the 100k Job and cuts 50% out for himself because he knows that the runners are skilled but all live like slobs in a Roach Motel in the Barrens. But this definitely shouldn't be an every time thing unless the players just keep accepting what is given and never ask for more or look around.

I am also curious, for those that do base pay off of lifestyle, how many runs per month these folks are making? If they are barely making their rents for 2 runs a month on average how will "tech" or gear dependent chars ever advance like the awakened characters will from the Karma they get?

Some people in this post definitely had a great point in that as a team's reputation grows so should the quality of jobs they are being offered. While Street cred is already a factor for negotiations you might also want to keep it as an idea for base pay. Alternatively you could use something like what SR Missions has going with the "Table Rating" system and how they multiply the Table rating in to the payment of a run (and which also is used to scale difficulty akin to the EL/CR system of a game that causes cancer.)

Well precisely Faradon, I couldn't agree more. I think pay should directly relate to the groups reputation. As mentioned in the topic I have provided a link for above, the average karma of the group is used to determine a base rate.

This is then adjusted by actual performance in runs that have become public knowledge.

In the case of our group, considering our characters have been going a long time and the average group karma is around the 800 mark, we have in the past worked for dragons to do their dirty deeds as our reputation has become high enough for us to warrent their attention, their time and their money.

At the moment we are running with the whole flipside scenario and although its certainly not cannon as per the adventure (which I do not want to know about as I have not read it nor do I want to know any further details as our gm canabalises runs and fits them into his own campaign), we are making millions by assisting a cartel sell the stuff internationally while trying to find out how it is made and why spirits hate the stuff so much...


When it comes down to it, of course a runner is not going to risk more than he is going to make. It simply does not make financial sence to even the most simple minded of people.

If you can keep the pay realistic, then the job won't be turned down. Just don't over pay, and if you do; make sure you let your players know that it was a one off. Perhaps the Johnson was desperate... whatever. You're the GM, its your game... make up whatever excuses you want.

I got the point, I was also using car-stealing as an example, but I think it's the same with every other money-making scheme.

More then they need.
Less then they want.

The PCs decide what they want to do in the world. The world doesn't decide for them.

I keep thinking this topic should be subtitles "It's all about the dollars and sense".