In SR that every single one of the Megas.

Right, but it's not the runner. So saying "You're profit by 100 million by this technology so I want a million" ignores the infrastructure needed to make it happen which the PC adds no value to. For a million they maybe could write some skillwire and some long haul and get some wage slaves to work 6 months to try and replicate it instead of steal the data.

In 2 months that data isn't worth squat most likely.
The exact reason to hire someone to steal that data is that you need it now not six months from now.

And you've also got to consider that some things just aren't something you can do by replicating it.


It's not enough for Ares to know that MCT has a new Rating 8 Firewall out. Ares probably has its own Rating 8 firewall out. They want to have MCT's Rating 8 firewall, (A) so they can search it for holes they missed in making their own R8 Firewall, and (B) So they can search it for holes that MCT made, so they can put those in their own hacking programs.

Sometimes you're not stealing data, too, sometimes you're stealing something unique, something that can't be replicated, no matter how much time, Long Haul and Skillwires you throw at the problem. Usually this will be talent; such as the aforementioned simstar, or a researcher or something.

Sure, those are all valid points. I'm just saying it's simplistic to say "Well they'll profit by X therefore we can demand Y and they'll give it to us."

The problem with this "fresh out of the 400bp box" idea that I've recently discovered is that, while you're fresh out of the box, you're still *massive* skilled compared to the rest of the world. You've got 5/5 in your expertise at least, possibly as much as 7/9 if you've tricked yourself out. That's epic level skills, effectively. I keep going back to "Peyton Manning is a skill 6 example." But, per the rules, that means that a 6/6 runner is among the best of the current generation in whatever they're doing. They may be inexperienced, but they are incredibly capable. At least per the rules. You wouldn't hire James Carville or Karl Rove to help you run a PTA bakesale, but that's sort of the games we're playing.

While I tend to agree that our fiction is better, it doesn't fit with the RAW.

But, take a look at the sample characters, who are roundly considered to be subpar and weak. *Those* are the expected power level for runners. The weapons specialist maxes out at something like 10 dice. *That's* what the game has put up as expected level of ability. The covert ops specialist has agi 5, inflitration 4. The Face has Cha 5, Negotiation 5. They're running pools in the 10-11 range. I think most of us are building characters that are 14+, and some folks consider 18-20 to be normal. The pistol adept, who is basically the one trick pony, has 13 dice (5 agi + 6 pistols + smart link). I think most of us consider that to be the lower end of mastery.

Yeah, the description of skills is silly. I think it's more to give players the opportunity to be "masters" in their craft right away rather than because of game balance. Nobody wants to max out their skill at char gen and be told they're a journeyman. But I also view shadow running as a bit like pro football to use your example. You might be good but so is everyone else alive and playing the game. It's a profession that will, by it's nature, bump you up against the best of the best.

Except that Professional Level is only a Skill 3. You can't have it both ways. Either you are a Professional or you are the Best in the World. The Game presupposes the first, and not the second. The descriptiopns of the skills are spot on. And you can build more than effective characters by crafting characters with their Descriptions in mind. If the Character is a Professional, then you should not give him higher than a Skill 3. Arguing that the character is a special Snowflake is where the problem comes in.

I have found that many players tend to overrate what they think a skill should be equated to in Shadowrun. They do not like the fact that, with a skill of 3 (Professional), a Specialty and an average attribute of 3, the PROFESSIONAL character is only getting a few hits on any given roll. They want to have a LOT of hits, and therefore they move the goalposts of what Professional means in the game. Lorechaser hit it on the head. The game presumes that you will be in the 8-12 DP range for your characters, and has crafted the system to make that the expected level of capability, while still allowing the character to progress in the future. Given that paradigm, and a couple hundred earned Karma, you will then approach the 16-20 DP range in many of your skills/areas of expertise, becoming a Prime Runner. You are not meant to be the Best of the Best of the Best right out of the gate. Does it allow that? It does. Should you exploit that? I say no. Just because you can do something does not mean that you should do it. But that is just me.

I promise, I will not rant about this, though.

I brought up Missions because it does have lower payouts than the norm but it's still FAR closer to the setting baseline than what you are describing.

Even at the low payout, though, typical Missions characters still usually turn a profit and can save up to buy most gear in the game, save perhaps the higher end military grade vehicles. Even in Missions where you have wall to wall combat, I've found I rarely expend more than 5000 nuyen in consumables, more commonly probably closer to 1000-3000 on average with occasional larger expenses like burning a fake identity. In return most Missions pay 8000-20000 nuyen, and you pay Lifestyle only once every 4 Missions or so, so, well, most folks can build up a nest egg.

And yes, somehow, across the hundreds of SRM players and tables that have been run over the years, somehow most folks have a grand old time playing the game.

Again, we are NOT attacking "how you play". What folks are "attacking" you over is your assertion that your style of play is somehow more "correct" than theirs.

Your style of play works for you. It's nowhere near how others play, but that's okay.

Just be aware that your game is NOT the norm, and proceed from there instead of ridiculing others for how they like to play.

I repeat, I don't actually care how you run your game, I was just responding to your attitude that others are playing the game wrong, somehow.

And yes, the mechanics don't match the setting. What else is new? I like the game anyway.



-k

Except that the system requires that you spend what, 150 BP on skills? Unless you are either making about half the skills on the list at level 3 or buying pretty much every skill in the game at level 1 then you will have a skill of 5.

You have to try harder to not be professional level at half a dozen skills than you do to be world class at one or two skills.

I mean when is the last time you saw a combat focused character without at least 5 ranks in the relevant skill? When is the last time you saw a matrix specialist without 4-5 ranks in the relevant skill groups? When is the last time you saw a mage with only 3 magic? When is the last time you saw a face without 4-5 ranks in the social skill group?

There are plenty of characters who will do things like take the entire medical skill group up to 3-4 ranks as an after thought. That's being a doctor as an afterthought.

Throw in skill wires and there is no reason to load down all those nifty but situational skills to less than 4 levels. Why is a character with skill wires going to take 3 ranks in pretty much any skill when he can spend a few thousand nuyen and have 4 ranks in that skill on hand for whenever he needs it.

Or take driving, you can upload a rating 6 Agent with a rating 4 skill soft to the vehicle and get better results then you would have unless you had 4/4 and specialized in that vehicle. Incidentally, the agent also saves you combat turns that could be better spent doing something besides drive.

Isolate your cars driving computers from the matrix or wireless connections and you are safe from a hacker crashing you or stopping your vehicle.

The point is that you have to actively try to not build an NFL level football player, a SAS level operator, or a major politician level public speaker.

One of the things that bothers me the most about game design in many systems is when the system for building a character at creation is vastly different than how he progresses during play. Having a lot of skills at 1 and a few at 3 and then using karma to build up from 3 to professional levels is a pretty crappy way to spend karma. You're much more efficient at 0/6. /rant

Anyway, in nearly every game system I ignore the stats about how average people have skills of xyz and instead go with game balance. It's pretty lame to have an unchallenging encounter because the PC's built their characters "smartly" and the NPC's have 2 agility and 2 firearms.

Runners Companion page 180. Netcat made 100,000 nuyen for doing a single resonance realms search to recover deleted data. No real expenses and minimal risk and she made a hundred thousand nuyen. That is SR fluff. It took her a grand total of 3 days to do that "run" and she never had to leave her living room or commit any felonies or commit any violence.


Those assertions come after others choose to attack how I play. Those assertions of mine are also correct. How I play the game is far more inline with the SR rules and fluff than the reasonably pink mohawk games that seem to be the norm at most posters tables. Quite literally, if you GM isn't burning you because you forgot to wipe the RFID's in that cola you drank last night before a run then he isn't GMing inline with the published rules and fluff. Quite literally, if you don't take steps to alter your gait on every run against an Ares subsidiary or Knight Errant protected building then your GM is not running the world inline with the published rules and fluff unless he has Ares recognize that the same runner team has been hitting all of those buildings and then running gate analysis on everyone who passes through a public area in the Seattle sprawl.

Sure, you can have plenty of fun playing in a world where the GM ignores this kind of stuff (I've done it and had plenty of fun); but it's not actually what the rules and fluff state the world is like.


If others don't want the flaws in their play style pointed out to them then they should have the common courtesy to not attack another poster for asking a question when said other poster is actually playing the game in question far more inline with the published rules and fluff than they themselves are.


And I was responding to the attitude of others.


The game mechanics match the setting quite well.

There is no reason for any corp guard to ever have any skill below 4. Skillwires are pretty much a requirement in most corps jobs and the corps will put them in 99% of their wage slaves. Do you really think Ares has a problem giving every single KE combat employee a high rating skill wires system and a R4 Activesoft for every single weapon that they are issued along with every single skill that might be relevant to their job?

You can pretty much flat out assume that none of your opposition will ever be rolling with less than 4 points in the relevant skill. Figure 3 points in the relevant attribute and another 3 points from various modifiers and you should figure that any corp opposition you face (even the most basic rent a cop at a corp facility) is, baseline, rolling 10 dice on most every test.

Nope, it does not REQUIRE you to spend any amount of Starting BP on Skills, though Most players likely spend about 120 or so points on skills, at the least.



No you don't. What you get is a coherent character with the appropriate amount of skills to support the character concept adequately. Here is a question for you. How many skills do you think the average person has at "Professional" quality? It is probably not more than a handful, with maybe a few approaching Veteran and Elite... Maybe. Why should a character be any different?



Lets see... our current group has no character with a skill higher than 4. Our current Mage has a Magic Rating of 3. My last Hacker had the Hacking Group and Electronics Groups at 3. My Prime Runner Hacker has Hacking at 3, with Electornic Warefare at a 5. My Prime Runner Mystic Adept has a Magic 5 (3 Sorcery 2 Adept) with 4 Initiations. My Current Unaugmented Mercenary has 2 Groups at 4, and 2 at 3, all other of his 56 skills (Includes Knowledges and Languages) are below 3 with NO COMBAT SKILL AT A 5. Our Face has all Social Skills at 2 or 3, and Charisma at 5. Shall I go on?



Which is ludicrous... And does not sit well at our table. Concept rules all. If the execution of concept is a load of crap, it is back to the Drawing Board.



Money and availability. 10,000 Nuyen per Rank is 5 Months of Low Lifestyle.... PER RANK of a Skill soft. That is why.



Again, only if you can afford it. Most people will drive with the Pilot that they have in the vehicle when they bought it.



Except by law the average person will not do that because it is illegal. You must have an open connection to GrigdGuide for your vehicle if you are on the grid.



The point is, NO YOU DON'T. I do it all the time, and I do not actively try to do so. It happens organically. Why? Because I actually look at the fluff of the Skill system, and fit my characters into that Fluff. If he is only a Professional, I do NOT give him a Rank 5 in the skill. The character gets the skill ranks that the concept allows, and nothing more. *shrug*

But a Skill Rank of 3 IS A PROFESSIONAL LEVEL. *sigh*



*shakes head* Then the GM is allowing characters to be made that do not conform to the world as described. *shrug*

Hey, they should have made the mechanics fit the description better then... We manage to have fun anyway.

Skill 3 is only a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL if the job you're undertaking is boring, simple, and has virtually no job-related distractions that would provide a dice pool penalty you're not compensating for in some way, and that only requires one hit per test, max.

If you have skill 3 and the related Ability at two - our PROFESSIONAL in question - will roll a 5 or more - a hit - 70.37% of the time. That sounds like a lot - remember that this means that your PROFESSIONAL is failing to do the thing he does for a PROFESSION 29.63% of the time.


Would you want a surgeon with a 29.63% failure rate doing surgery on you? Even if he doesn't glitch, he's still failed. What about the mechanic fixing your car? The carpenter working on your home?

Now, say that the situation's gotten bad, and the threshold has risen by one - just one. A measly, tiny one.

Suddenly, the PROFESSIONAL'S success rate takes a nosedive to 25.93%. Near-as-makes-no-difference to 26%. Just (or rather, just over) a 74% failure rate.

Just for operating in the presence of a measly, small hindering factor, only a +1 threshold.

Not much of a PROFESSIONAL, is he? If a job is so easy it can be done on five dice, it can be done by a skillwired schmoe or a drone. He's not very good at his PROFESSION, now is he?


So, no. 3 is not a PROFESSIONAL rating except in the eyes of that one stupid call-out in the book that arbitrarily says it is, and I say that with Clarksonian emphasis. You are predicating an awful lot on a bullshit blurb of fluff text, a blurb which the numbers fail to back up.

I'd actually be interested in your rant, although not necessarily in this thread.

Well, I've never run into it, but I'll take a stab at it since it seems everyone else is intent only on trying to claim that high payouts "kill the game" (I do think you guys are making a little too much though).


Starting fair value of a simple run, IMO: 15,000 nuyen PER RUNNER (go up as run becomes more dangerous, more complicated or more costly)

No Time Limit: Base fair value

12 hours: Add 75%

2 days: Add 25%

1 day: Add 50%

Based on the average characters posted here for review, and the updated archetypes thread, plus my experience, players tend to put a 5/5 in their "role" stat, whether that's Automatics or Con or Cybercombat. If they want to be awesome, they go 6/6, or even 7/6+2. I see your argument, and it's supported by the fluff and sample characters. But now we're back to "I don't think that's how most people play the game" but from the other side.

but the fact that I can get 14 dice in a pool without losing much (5 skill + 5 att +spec +2 from smart link/mentor/qual/tool/etc) means that even the rules don't really follow the fluff. It's 62 bp to get 12 dice (40 for the attr, 20 for the skill, 2 for the spec). For a 400 point build, that's 16% of your points. That's far from unreasonable to dedicate 1/6 of your points to your primary focus.

NetCat is an iconic NPC. She gets those pay rates. She also hobnobs with the Elite of the ShadowRun world.

The "average" runner isn't anywhere near that. It's not just her game statistics, she has contacts and game history that no regular 'runner will have access to.

If you want a more game mechanic direct example of an "average" run payout, a poster on the official boards looked up the suggested pay rates from the 3E Shadowrun Companion.

Third Edition, true, but relative costs haven't changed THAT much in 4th. Shadowrun 2050 also has some suggested payouts, and that is 4th edition.

As far as your original question, generally +50% to +100% for rush jobs. Possibly more for "right now NOW NOW" jobs.




I will grant you that some folks have attacked your play style and should not have.

Most folks don't track every little thing like RFIDs in your drink, true. Despite the fluff saying that it exists. This is because most folks find that kinda thing kinda tedious and unfun. It's not an unreasonable attitude.

My personal main issue with doing military style full bore assaults on targets instead of the usual "street" type tactics is that this sorta thing tends to escalate. The more you do it the more the opposition starts breaking out their OWN military level gear. It gets to the point where you're fighting World War 3 instead of, well, discreetly running the Shadows.

My personal favorite runs are ones where I got the job done without a shot fired, and possibly the target never even knows anything happened until my team is long gone. But then again, personal preference.



-k

She's also a Technomancer doing the TM equivalent of a Metaplanar quest.

Most Magicians won't command 100K for a metaplanar quest, but that's largely because there's a lot more magicians than technomancers. Even so, I'd expect something in the range of 60-75 for the average Magician on a metaplanar quest. When you need data that some Runners fragged all to hell and it's your only possible hope, you pay that hundred K to any virtuakinetic willing to risk his ass on your behalf who asks. Especially if the down-payment is low.


Really, millions spent on research versus a hundred K to get it back, and only IF you get it back - with a 10K up-front payment?

That's pocket change. You pay it. You pay it and be damn grateful that there's someone out there who can conjure something out of the aether that was stored on a hard drive that was supposedly kept offline that just met the wrong end of a thermite grenade.

Why is the 12h the lowest modifier, shouldn't it be the highest?

Magicians also don't have a price on their heads by Megas to figure out how they tick. TMs do, so the risk of taking a job where you're even admitting you're a TM grows quite a bit. Bigger risk, bigger payout. Of course, bigger payout, easier to just not pay in the first place and cash in on the bounty. It's a fine line.

Fixed.

Heh... Never noticed any issues with the current System, personally. But fun is all that matters in the long run.

All that means nothing when your PROFESSIONAL (Skill 3 guy) also has a Specialty in his, you know, Specialty (you know, like most people have) and the equipment bonuses that you get. And do not forget that Attribute 3 is going to be average. So 8 Dice with Bonuses (not the 5 you posit). At that point, he succeeds almost always in his specialty. As it should be.

Most people in a profession would probably be veterans (skill rating 4), specialized in a field, and if they've had to get a longer education to even get the job, probably above average logic, so for an actual professional, you're looking at something like 10 dice. It even goes to say that for a technical skill, rating 3 equals straight out of college. In my mind, shadowrunners are expected to be above and beyond a veteran in the field, so 14 dice before specialized tech (smartlinks, medkits, emotitoys etc.) comes in seems to fit with what I expect of the world (achieved with stat-boosting 'ware or skill-boosting powers).

Also, that rating 5 skill that's so rare? For a technical skill, that's apparently just being published in a peer-reviewed journal, i.e. every professor. The vehicle example is an ancients go-ganger. Given that it's a large gang (per Seattle 2072), that level of proficiency should be well within reach of a runner. Basically, it should not be that elusive.

Yeah, for some things they describe it as perfectly ordinary people who are good at their jobs but then they use it to describe athletes and superior markesmen who are ultra rare. IMHO a starter in the NFL athlete would be a 6 or so. With the really really elite being 7.

We've teased about that around the table before. "My 4 driving means I'm former NASCAR but your 4 Hardware means you worked at Geek Squad for a few years after college" type jokes.

Considering that, in 2070, you can get by with NO skill in Driving, I say that is okay.

Most Shadowrunners will have some kind of a price on their head, too. The Johnson doublecross is a standard factor of the game. The risk isn't really any greater for the TM than for the Magician; you takes your job, you pays your chances. Also, remember that that's changing; some Megas may still have prices on VKs, but others are looking to hire them.

Basically, it's not Mr. Johnson you want to be worried about. If Mr. Johnson is looking for a TM, he'll find a TM. It's that bastard Clockwork and the hypocritical bastard Nightfire* you need to watch out for. Or, you know, put out a hit on first.

*Runner's Black Book, page 95: Nightfire comments "Part of the problem with today's generation, is that they lack a moral compass." Page 135, same book, he comments "Note: Designate Tracking Agent Omega 4, Target: "Netcat," pass intel to Virtuakinetic research team." At least Clockwork isn't a hypocrite with his bastardry, he's just a monster raving maniac.





Alright, fine. Let's go with your PROFESSIONAL having that Ability of 3 and be generous in assuming he gets his Specialization bonus of +2.

Rolling for one hit, he has a 96.10% success rate. That means a 3.9% failure rate. Okay, for most things, that's acceptable, well within what insurance would cover, anyway. But that's only rolling for one hit, and under completely perfect conditions.

That means that, say, for a doctor, the doc in question must be:
1: Working in a sterilized medical facillity.
2: Working with full supplies.
3: Not applying medical care remotely.
4: not have a Magician, Adept, or Technomancer as a patient.
5: Not have any augs.

Not many of the patients we care about (IE, players,) will be both non-Awakened (or techno-awakened,) and non-augmented. With three skilled assistants, he can get a +3 bonus to his dice pool, but that will mostly go away if the patient is a TM, and probably entirely go away if the patient is augmented.

And that's assuming perfect conditions and the applicability of a specialization, which most people probably likely won't have.

If you need to roll two hits, your success rate drops to 80.49%, meaning you have a 19.51% chance of failure. That's not a lot if you're doing something you can just start over on if you screw it up, but if you're, say, defusing a bomb, or performing emergency surgery to save someone's life, then PROFESSIONAL just doesn't cut it. And again, this is assuming the applicability of specializations! Take that away, and the one-hit likelihood drops to 91.22% - not bad. But two hits? Takes a nose-dive to 64.88%.





Exactly.

I wouldn't put a formula 1 driver, rallyman or the like as a rating 4 professional driver. That would be equivalent to considering a SAS, DELTA and similar specforce types at the benchmark of professional soldier. A 'professional driver' would be a truck driver, taxi driver and the like.

Now I am convinced that we are playing different games. I can't remember the last time I saw a character spend 150BP on skills. Nor can I recall a time a player had 30-40BP left to take 3-4 ranks in a skill group "as an afterthought".

You are being oversimplistic in your assertion that having the Medical skill group equates to being a doctor, though. As well as his surgical skills, a doctor will have a helluva a lot of knowledge skills appropriate to his profession, at least one social skill such as Ettiquette for his bedside manner etc.

The same would go for the gun-bunny. Ex-military background? The character will have all physical stats at at least 3 (before metahuman adjustments, I would imagine), at least a rank or two in the Athletics group and probably the Outdoors group etc. An ex-gang enforcer gun bunny would have a whole different set of complementary skills to make his background convincing. It ain't just the AGI and the Automatics skill that the gun bunny wants, unless of course a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out excuse of a character is your goal.

Sheer utter absurd arrogance. Every GM has their own unique take on the gameworld from the published rules and fluff, and it should be more than apparent to you from the feedback you have recieved that your group's pretty unique take on the gameworld is very different from that of other groups. Just two quick examples from your post above.

1) RFID tags in cola you consume
Do you even know what an RFID tag is, and what it is used for? RFID technology is there to help manufacturers and retailers with their logistics in the distribution of said product. The manufacturer will be able to trace the product from the batch it was produced in through to the retailer it was shipped to. For the retailer, RFID technology allows them to manage stocks in each of their outlets without wasting valuable time and money in physical stock-taking.
While it is safe to say that in the SRverse of 2070 each bottle/can of pop will have an RFID tag on it, where are you getting that there are going to be tags in the sugary carbonated liquid you have consumed? Can you give me a quote from the rulebook to back up this assertion? Can you even give me a logical gameworld reason why this should be the case?

2) Gait analysis and getting caught
I am happy for you and your group that you use persona-chips to confound potential gait analysis, but again this is pretty simplistic thinking given that you happily proclaim that each member in your team is one of the best in the world in their chosen field. Your individual way of shooting with skill 6 + specialization + high base attribute will reveal your MO just as much as your gait might ("Look at the lack of scatter on that wide burst, looks like the same guy who hit our Tacoma facility 2 months ago."). Add to that your best-in-world colleagues and their individual and equally revealing ways of doing things, and Ares (or whichever corp) will pretty quickly be able to figure out the same group was behind both runs.

Two important tropes in the game setting are those of data balkanization, and (rightly or wrongly) the fact that corps will not waste valuable time, resources and money to chase down the perps once the team have got clean away and passed the McGuffin onto the rival Johnson.
Data balkanization means that Ares will only have access to Ares cctv footage. So PCs who did not take the precaution of using persona-fix chips to alter their gait might want to avoid stepping on Ares turf for a week or so after the run, but this is why runner Good Operating Practice dictates they lay low for a while after each run. The second trope implies that Ares will not waste resources hunting the PCs down once they can be fairly certain the PCs no longer have the McGuffin, so that R6 agent or hacker tasked with looking for the same gait on Ares databases will not spend much more than a week or so on the task, and quite possibly nowhere near that long.

The fact that your group seemingly ignores these two central planks of gameworld logic goes a long way towards explaining why you play the way you do, and in part explains your disconnect with the way other tables see things. It sounds like you are having fun (and as I said in my earlier post, your hotel run sounded like a blast), but do not try to tell people that you are playing closest to "the one true way". There is no such thing.

Sorry to bring this sub-thread up again, but I am shcoked by the low level of economic (mis)understanding exhibited by most dumpshockers on the subject.

Let's assume a prototype MacGuffin that Corp A believes will give them 100 million/year in profits once they steal it from rival Corp B, and cut into Corp B's bottom line in the bargain. So far so good, but this is where the ignorance starts showing through.

Corp A is going to have to spend a lot of that potential profit to bring the product to market. The data will give them a headstart, but they will still have significant R&D costs to finish developing the product and perhaps add a few improvements of their own. Next, the marketing people spend time and money to brand the product, the production facility spends money installing the line to produce this new marvelous MacGuffin, and then there will be distribution, sales and advertising costs to pay.

Meanwhile Corp B will also be working on this MacGuffin, even if their schedule has been set back a bit their research team will remember the basic principles and be able to catch up quite quickly (unless all the researchers have been geeked, and even then there should be some data stashed at another facility from earlier presentations/demonstrations, even if the corp was not stupid enough to have back-up data somewhere). Once Corp A's product is on the market, Corps C, D and E will start developing cheap knock-offs, or perhaps improved versions on the MacGuffin theme. All these rival products will eat into Corp A's market share.

All this while as new tech continues to be developed, Corp A may have to spend some money updating and improving their MacGuffin, then finally the day may come where Corp E brings out a new product with bleeding edge tech that make the MacGuffin redundant, and sales (and profits) go down to nothing.

So a great MacGuffin worth an estimated 100 million/year in gross profit might only net the corp 10 million or less in operating profit, and the presence of heavy-hitting rivals means that over time sales and profits will be eroded until the product becomes obsolete.

Once you start thinking on these terms of competition, risk and obsolescence, you begin to realize that paying runners a million or more to steal a prototype is quite absurd.

You forget the bonuses for teamwork tests (surgery is normally done by teams) and the R6 medkit/medical facility. If you consider those, suddenly your skill of 3-4 and attribute 3-4 surgeon is not likely to botch the job in his hospital/clinic.

You know, this thread has been quite an entertaining read, and most things have been covered fairly well by now. I'll throw in a couple of creds worth of thoughts anyway though.

Tippy. As others have pointed out, I do believe that you and your mates may be taking the paranoia level a bit beyond what the rest of us do. That being said, you are no more paranoid than your GM has forced you to be over time, and you do put up many quite valid points. Where I believe your group differs from many others, is at the interpretation of which lenghts a Corp might go to in order to protect it's assets, or more importantly, track down a runner. Again, you act based on what the reality is at your table, so to you it's true that you need to deal with super timing, multiple back-up plans, and (to me) grotesk levels of planning paranoia. Having to plan for the possible presence of a shipmounted anti-vehicle weapon 20km away, is pretty damned extreme in my book.

When all that is said and done, I'll tell you that I believe that your group's and mine oppinion of what a Corp. is willing to do to find a runner, is somewhat different. I don't disagree with you that in theory, a Corp. can track your runner in god only knows how many ways, depending on how many clues you left behind related to your identity. The thing is, at the end of the day, to a Corp. it's about the bottom line. The Corps. all know that Shadowrunners are simply independant contractors who do a job they have been hired to do. They all use such individuals, and at the end of the day it's just business. Sure, a runner team can manage to somehow piss off someone and turn matters into a personal issue, rather than a business one, but a decent runner will do what he can to make sure that a Corp. or other target has as little cause to try and come after him/her as possible. That means that unless a runner team causes enough havock and damage that it makes sense to expand the additional money and effort to try and come after them personally, the Corp. will see no point in doing so. After all, they might be able to use them themselves in the future. And even if they do find the runners, what good will that do them? They can kill them, sure, but why? It not like it's going to get them back their lost "X". The runners are highly unlikely to have it any longer anyway. Going after runners is simply additional expenses added on top of the loss they've already suffered from the Run against them.

Another point where i think we differ is the amount of ressources a megacorp can bring to bear. The AAA don't operate in a vacuum, there's still other actors around that will limit their slice of the pie. As a rough ballaprk, let's suppose the Big Ten together have a worldwide clout and cash somewhat on par with the USA. That would grant them a 20% slice of the world's GDP - around 2% each. Say from 1% to 3% to account for variation.

Which in relative terms would put them in term of cash and clout would place them on par with today's Italy (3.11% of the world's GNP) and Mexico (1,1%). Which puts their ability to track troublemakers on a wolrdwide scale on a not so impressive level (Both Mexico and Italy field roughly 300 000 soldiers and cops - spread that worldiwde and is starts getting fairly thin on the ground).

Ummm...not really. 100 million in PROFITS means that the 'Corp A' you mentioned for your example would be making 100 million after ALL expenses are paid to develop and produce. It is the very definition of profit to be the remainder after all expenses have been covered.

Level 3 being a benchmark in anything was back from the days of Shadowrun when we rolled skills without the linked attribute added. Target numbers were usually NOT 5. If level 3 equals pro, then what is someone with a 16 dice, ten of which coming from level 10 agility? I know the rulebook has a big section about what each skill point means, but it's completely outdated with the new system.

People pay based on economics, not how much money they have. It depends entirely on how many people are competing for the job. Rich people in developing countries pay very small amounts of money for services. That's because there is no shortage of people willing to do many kinds of jobs at a small rate of pay. Only foolish people make a habit of overpaying people.

Except that the Estimate of 100 Million in Profits is likely grossly exagerated.

The system/skill definition is not outdated. It was designed as a whole, after all... It is just that players do not like the definitions. *shrug*

Because they do not make sense given the mechanics!


In the Exalted 2e core rulebook, there are panels calling out Ox-Body Technique (a Charm) and Resistance (an ability; skill) as things which you really really really should invest in if you plan to be a combat monkey. As in, if you don't, you're an idiot.


The mechanics of the game, though, make Ox-Body Technique (which gives you more health boxes, directly analogous to Shadowrun's condition monitor) and Resistance (which is virtually never rolled in combat,) two of the most useless things to have invested your XP in if you get into a fight, just below Bureaucracy (an ability,) and Hypnotic Tongue Technique (a Charm that lets you issue unnatural mental influence to follow a command, which, because it requires social combat to be used, is unusable in combat peroid.)


When fluff and crunch state two directly contradictory things, then crunch wins, peroid.

Spy Games page 13: Medical shots have RFID tags in them that remain in your body for a month or so.
Runners Companion page 22 (under the Staying off the Grid Header and the RFID Sub header).
Runners Companion page 24: "Radio signal scanners and tag erasers are cheap. Scan and Erase everything before you use it. Yeah, it might be a pain in the ass to scan your candybar and then have to erase the tag in it, but really, do you want Azzie corporate security wondering why someone’s in their facility with a Horizon CaramelCluster bar in their stomach? Hmm?
> Pistons "


Which is why you have to alter such things. I did not, even remotely, list out everything of relevance. I simply chose two things off of an entire list.


How many runs do you think are made against secure Ares facilities? Laying low for a week or so isn't remotely enough. If you ever run against an Ares facility again and don't make sure no footage survives or that the footage shows false information then they will link both runs to the same team.

Ares also has the police contract for Seattle (and many other sprawls). Every public/police controlled camera will be running gate, facial, etc. analysis on everyone that passes in front of those cameras and comparing it to a database of interesting information (like the gait profile of those dudes who ran against an Ares R&D facility last week). Data Balkanization and Data Overload do keep you safe but, well so long as it's all within the same corporate hierarchy, DB does not apply and DO fails as well because there simply are not that many runs being done to make it an overwhelming amount of data.

Run against Aztechnology and don't use a false face and gait alteration? Then you better not ever set foot in a Stuffer Shack.



What I am talking about is less than a weeks worth of effort from the corp's security section. Yeah, a corp isn't going to be investing months in tracking a person down but they will spend a week or so and then flag all the data for continued comparison and analysis.


We don't ignore them, we simply recognize what they are (and aren't).


The corp isn't going to kill you if they find you. Information is power, especially information on assets and entities as valuable as prime runners. The corp will use it's information to find more information and then attempt to control you. The profit in having a good, deniable, runner team under your thumb is worth far more than a hundred million or so nuyen investment to the corp.


That's a hideous understatement. Every AAA has a quarterly revenue stream greater than the current annual US GDP. As a whole they are the sole relevant political voice (being the membership of the Corporate Court). Individually everyone of them is more powerful (socially, economically, militarily, and culturally) than any nation that exists in 2070. Any AAA could literally buy an entire Airforce the size of the current US air-force out of it's daily profits.

Something doesn't really effect an AAA's bottom line unless it is in the trillions of nuyen.

----
Nations really don't matter in Shadowrun. They don't have the money, men, infrastructure, military, or cohesiveness (every single mega has every nation so riddled with spies and agents that no nations government could ever act without the mega's consent).

Erm, no. Afraid what you are saying is almost impossible to calculate, especially for a super-diversified monolith that the megas are supposed to be.

When you talk about a product profit you are pretty much always talking about GROSS PROFIT, which is the difference between sales price and production price times the number of units sold. OPERATING PROFIT for a company is its total gross profit minus all costs, salaries and overheads.

The reason it is difficult to calculate operating profit for a product is that it is hard (and pretty arbitary) to calculate the shared overheads - how much of the CEO's salary should be taken out of Product MacGuffin's gross profit? What about the board of directors? What about the salaries for the human resources department? If the product isn't made in a dedicated facility (i.e. Product MacGuffin, Product X and Product Y are all made at the same facility), how much factory operating expenses should be taken from the gross profit of which product? As you can see, it becomes a big mess pretty quickly.

Also, as TJ alluded to, there is the business risk to factor in. It is pretty simplistic to say "You will make 100 million from this MacGuffin.". The marketing guys might project 100 million in gross profit, but that might not turn out to be the case. What if the R&D guys discover a fatal flaw in the prototype MacGuffin you've just stolen for them? What if they bring the product to market but find consumers aren't so interested? That 100 million return you are talking about might never be realised, and then they just threw away a cool mill to criminals for nothing.

All this talk of "100 million profit" is hardly relevant anyway. If I start an etail business and want to pay for the design of its website, I am going to pay the going rate for website design, regardless of whether I am going to make millions or thousands. If I am thinking millions, I might pay a little more for a kick-ass designer to design a site with cool bells and whistles, but either way I am going to pay the designer what I think he is worth for the job I want him to do, no more no less. Well, less if I can get it, but anyway ...

The same principle applies to shadow runners. Difficult jobs might require the use of prime runner assets, which don't come cheap, but no job is worth more than what someone else of equal skill is willing to do the job for. As we can see from the various threads about pay for runs, different GMs see things very differently. In my gameworld, starting 400BP characters are just starting to get a rep as pros rather than wannabees, which is as the BBB suggests. Tippy's group seem to operate as prime runners even though they are, apparently, starting characters. To each his own but, as I have argued from a game logic perspective, 4 mill seems a bit rich of a payout, even for a snap high-risk high-profile extraction. Naturally, YMMV.

Note that I didn't say a thing about abslotue money but their relative power - and I find your evaluations very, very optimistic, though it explains why your games requires an amount of precaution that I would find completely antithetic with fun.. I hope your numbers are hyperbole, because they stray very, very far from anything I'd consider even remotely plausible. To take your example, today's US air force has 7500 planes - count 10 millions a pop, that's 7,5 trillions (half their current debt and representing something like two decades of buildup). Let's assume a (high) 25% profit margin, that's a daiily revenue stream of 30 trillons.Times 10 AAA, 300 trillions, five times the current world GNP for a whole year..... In a day. Even worse, those insanely high profits have to be generated from someone who's outside the megas to be anything more than financial razzle-dazzle churning meaningless financial assets into an ever-increasing bubble. What are the Megas supposed to sell to whom to be able to generate that sort of cash flow ?

I grant you that with that sort of absurd level of ressources, the AAA can effectively afford to literraly a spie (wether flesh or drone) behind every potted plant on the planet, but then it raises the questions of why there's anyone sucessfuly flliping the corps the bird for more tha na few days like the Siberian awakened or Tir Tairngire. Or the Yucatan rebels.

Well, I never. Makes zero sense to me (even though they are cheap, RFID tags inside consumed food are a pointless waste of profit to my mind), which is why I will take "Pistons" shadow comment as misinformation in my game world, but I am starting to see where you are coming from on this point.


How does Michael Jordan alter his game (without dumbing down and effectively withdrawing dice from his DP)? If skill 6 or 7 is so god-like and unique (which you are using as a rationale for demanding such high prices), then that tell will give you away as much as your gait.
Either way, it is not clear exactly how easy it is to find someone in a sprawl by gait analysis (on whatever parts of the city that corp has eyes). There is lots of raw data for one, and success might only tell you that perp A went into such-and-such a Stuffer Shack 2 hours ago. As long as the runner doesn't use his local Stuffer Shack or visit the same one all the time, such data trawling won't prove useful. "Laying low" could mean hiding out in the barrens (where there are few to no cameras anyway), and in the short term you could beat gait analysis at the Stuffer Shack by affecting a limp or something.


These figures seem ridiculously high to me, where are you getting them from?
I will give you that at least the Big 10 will probably have their own air force of sorts, they certainly couldn't make one the size of the current US airforce out of one day's profits. Even if they wanted to, there would be a long lag between placing the order and getting the goods - if you were to place an order for jet fighters IRL you would probably not be able to get more than x number of units a year, and I don't see why this lag wouldn't be in place in the 2070's.

Still thnking about how much cash can an AA get to play with, let's give it a try from the other end. Let's assume a world population of 5 billions, with and average income enough to pay for a medium lifestyle (5 k nuyens a month, 60 K a year). That tranlates at 60 K x 5 billions = 300 Trillions a year as a world yearly GNP. No matter how you twist and turns the repartition, you get an absolute ceiling in the 30 Trillions gross income for an AAA - assuming a realtive parity between them AND nobody else to divert a nuyen from them. Since that's not the case, I'd lower that to 10 Trillions (10 thousand billions nuyen) - not in profit, but in gross income. And starting with fairly high assumptions for both average income and population.

Which means that a trillion nuyen is really affecting an AAA's income, even if they can soak up the odd billion here and there without breaking a sweat. And if we assume a rough parity between Nuyen and dollar, raising an airforce the size of the US one would eat about one full year of their yearly income.

I think you're *way* underestimating the population of the world. Current estimates put it at around 9 billion in 2070, and we're at 7 billion right now. I know there's VITAS and such, but I still think it will be more than today, at the minimum.

But looking around, it seems like the game is unwilling to commit to real numbers for total money very often, because they's smart.

See, I disagree... I have stated over the years WHY I disagree. Mostly, for those who have not seen my opinion, it is becasue there is apparently a character design imperative (especially here on Dumpshock) to generate the largest dice pool available at chargen so that the character can have some overwhelming advantage. And I always contend that htis was never the intent of the system (Yes, you can design a character that way, but it puts the characters so far above the intended paradigm of the game that it is problematic). If you instead design to the skill descriptions, you would still see very capable characters (All of My characters are designed with the Skill descriptions in mind, and are always good at what they do), and there would always be room to grow. If anyone is truly interested in this discussion, we could always create a new topic (though this has been done many times before, honestly).

In essence, If you will succeed with 12 Dice, WHY would you need 20 Dice? I do understand that the 20 Dice allows you far more options (in theory), but there is generally no ABSOLUTE reason to have them. In effect, If you can take down your opposition with 12 Dice, the 20 Dice character has wasted whatever resources he invested to get those extra dice. You are no more dead with 20 dice than you were with 12.

Anyways, having never actually played Exalted, I can not draw any real comparisons there. Sorry.