OK, due to something being said in another thread, where it was being insisted that there is a set amount spelled out
for what one should be paid per run, I went looking through my SR4A. I checked Rewards, Payment, and even went looking for
Shadowrun payment/rewards, and read through the Adventure creation section. I even looked through the whole
"Running the Shadows" section. There is no "This is the suggested payment for shadowruns" like insisted.

Can someone give me, in SR4A, the page number where I can find these rules?

No one can give you that page number because it doesn't exist. It depends on alot of things, like if you're running a normal game or a street game or a high end game. It depends on how often the runs happen and what kind of lifestyles you generally expect people to be living. It depends on if you want mundane to be a more attractive option than awakened.

I've heard anywhere from 5k to 20k per run and up if it is higher levels. Personally I figure following the rough line of karmagen is a decent rule of thumb, giving out about 2.5k nuyen for every 1 karma. Of course I've heard some people say this is far too generous, but I figure it works well enough in CG to keep awakened and mundane balanced, it should be fairly reasonable after that.

My suggestion is to just go with whatever you feel is right. If you find the mundanes are all strapped for cash and being vastly outstripped by the awakened, pull up a super high paying job to even things up. If you find that the mundanes have money coming out of their ears and make awakened look like glorified lightbulbs (or whatever) then have some of their equipment get doestroyed, or have some low paying jobs or make them unable to find a job for a while to eat through rent. Also consider making things harder and more expensive to get by someone pulling a monopoly on the things they want, or a police crackdown, or the various other modifiers to price.

As GM you have fairly strong control over the flow of cash in the game, so just try whatever for a while to get a feel for it, and then adjust as you find you need it.

Runners are always paid in stolen vehicles.

No link?

Yeah, I thought about mentioning the 'Make sure they can't make more money stealing vehicles than they can running' thing, which is always tossed around whenever this question pops up.

Yes, that usually gets down to "how can you ever be sure you got all tags off it?"

We (two on our team taking turn GM'ing) have been quite generous, but then, our players are fairly good at spending money on other things than gear and bioware.
I think its good if its a little varried. Sometimes, things are really gritty, and the next rent is your main concern. At other times, you get one of those rare, relatively easy jobs, that someone pays well for (because of potential threats, or just because its an important job)

The last job i gave out as a GM, was supposedly a fairly easy one. and it had an interesting twist on the payment side.
As per the jobs description, the team wouldnt earn very much (i think, 5000 for the entire team) but there was a threat involved that the Johnson wasnt aware of.
Now, if the team had taken perfect precautions, the threat might have been avoided completely, the johnson would have never known, and the team would have gotten the described payment. (the team was hired by a manager to buddyguard a famous rockstar)
If things had come to worst and the rockstar had died, the team would have gotten nothing.
Things happened to end up in between (as a GM, i had made sure there was a high chance of this), thus, the rockstar took a gel-bullet form a sniper, but was up and walking the next day. The manager being relieved at this, and happy with the teams quick response, gave the team a huge bonus (the team ended up earning at least 3 times as much as they where expecting to)


As for payment amounts in general, I once found a great list in a similar topic. I don't really follow it, but its a good way to get a basic number that you can then tweak depending what you think the team should earn.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=863255

There're rules for that? And tag blasters? Sorry, this is a bullshit argument.

Tell that to the guy who recently left his car running in Times Square.

In my experience around 2,000¥ per karma is a good starting point.

As for why street crime does not pay as much as running: Each category of crime (drugs, prostitution, auto theft, etc.) is already controlled by a local syndicate (gang, mob, yaks, etc.) and they will not take kindly to you cutting in to their action. You either become an employee for a minor cut, or you take them on for dominance over the class of crime in contention. If a group would have fun playing such a game more power to them.

All the threads, complaining that "safe, easy crime" pays more than running, focus only on the mechanics of the theft, and ignore the fallout that would result with existing underworld powers. Again if the group wants this game, more power to them.

As an aside, someone posted in another thread that blackwater type operatives make ~$600 a day, with ~$900 being charged for the service. Extrapolating to Shadowrun, a high-end long-term contract should probably pay about the same: I.E. the Johnson pays up to 1,000¥ per runner per day, with the fixer taking 25–33% as their fee.

"It is possible" and "some uneducated dude from a shithole in Pashtunsistan would know about it" are two different things. Also, while such technology does exist in SR, it is rather less effective IRL.


As I said in the hijacked thread, I already factored a 75% mafia cut in. It still netted the runner more than four runs a month. At a vastly reduced risk, and with the additional benefit of syndicate contacts and some syndicate protection.


True, but Blackwater operatives get free equipment and everytingmand have a decidedly different relationship with their employer. For the same quality of employee, maybe double the price.

And Blackwater employees cannot easily turn to theft of everything, since there mercifully is no equivalently tech controlling technology as an all-6 commlink around anywhere.

Stolen cars net 4% their value on the black market.

Please keep in mind setaling more than one a night is very much possible in SR4, with cars you hack and that then drive to whereever you want to meet with your fixer that night by themselves. you can even have them drive through a tag fryer before, and since they're sold that very night, any remaining tags are not your problem.

Still pays more than running.

And that's for ordinary mundanes. Why any awakened should work such a high risk job for such a shit payment is beyond me.

It is difficult to set a standard fee for services, as it is highly dependent on:

1) how difficult the job will be
2) how much the Mr. J wants it done, and
3) how much money the Mr. J has

The same job from an Aztech Mr. J should pay more than the same one from a Snohomish commune Ms. J.

There is no such thing as risk-free crime. Even stealing cars, eventually someone in the crime enforcement area is going to notice nice cars are disappearing in a locale, or there's a spike in city-wide car thefts. Then they start dropping bait cars to find you, or otherwise actively hunting you.

Society has a certain tolerance limit for crime. If someone goes beyond this tolerance, society will push back. Those syndicates you're all chummy with won't like someone making a huge living off of crime, without getting a huge cut, especially if it means law enforcement's suddenly emphasizing that enforcement more and more because you're a single-person crime-wave.

For any individual there is always something that could pay more. Why aren't all individuals doing the thing that pays them more?

Finding an example of less then optimum income earning potential doesn't make the norm any less the norm.

Hey, can we please not turn this into another thread about stealing cars? Go make your own, don't hijack this one.

Except that the stolen car market is like any other market and driven by supply and demand. As the number of stolen cars sold increases the pool of potential buyers decreases (since some of those folks have cars already). If the availability of stolen cars skyrockets (caused by someone stealing multiple cars a ngith, every night) then the ammount you can sell a stolen car drops, for everyone who is selling them.

Also each instance of theft carries a chance of detection. The more frequent the thefts (especially if the same M.O. is used) will make it a little easier to predict future thefts. Eventually some LS/KE hacker or technomancer will get some pattern analysis right and there will be an observation team staking out a car you are stealing. This leads to a SWAT team taking down your fixer and you have just burned a contact.

In every game I have playing in or run, losing a contact would be a huge downside. Leading the cops to your fixer and getting him burned should be worth some Notoriety too.

As to the tag fryer, I sould say that they should be pretty good at frying the electronics in the car too. No driving safely through a tag fryer with the car's node up and running.

I swear we should just sticky this question since the exact same question gets posted every two months...

Here is some VERY rough "science" you could apply.

Starting with the our world - note that these are all averages:



Based on these numbers, your typical Blackwater Contractor makes about 3x the median US income. If we apply this in Shadowrun terms, we're looking at around 500 nuyen per day. ( (Middle Lifestyle x 12)/365)

Now taking into account that I don't believe your typical Blackwater contractor is expected to partake daily in the type of heavy live fire action your Shadowrunner will, let's say we only REALLY expect our shadworunner to REALLY work 2-3 days a month. Throwing in the fact that the Shadowrunner is usually doing something illegal as well, we throw in some additional pay for the risk.

In the end, it strikes me that a relatively experienced Shadowrun, doing a job with a decent chance of physical injury, that takes about 2-3 days, would make around 15,000-20,000 nuyen.

You can then slam it into a grid:





DISCLAIMER: I pretty much tossed these numbers together on the fly with a few google searches. I imagine you could build a much more accurate scale, taking into account things like reimbursement for expenses, and such - plus there may be errors in my calculations - but I think you could pretty easily build a really nice "What a runner gets paid" system.

Good point, I know in the game I am currently in, we always have extra money - right up until someone needs to go purchase some vital gear, and then we don't. It always feels like we have alot, but then you need 3-4 activesofts and all of a sudden that cash is gone pretty quick. For us, it isn't so much about big purchases, but more that we always buys some outrageous stuff to do a run. I swear to God that we had a run that included a catapult loaded with fresh meat as a vital component (OK it wasn't that vital, but is was fun).

Our GM lets the Karma pigs (mages and TM's) spend ridiculous ammounts of money to earn more Karma. Our Technomancer hid the target of a wetwork mission, set up a fake death for the guy and then gave him a $250k nestegg to get started somewhere else. He didn't get a pile of extra Karma right away, but rather has been getting 1-2 extra per run. It will end up being about 20k to 1 karma in the end.

He has been funnelling money to some non- profit groups to help out the downtrodden too. I think the technomancer always seems to have money sitting around, but rarely buys gear. He always is there to pay the Doc (for trauma surgery anyway) or cover the rent....but he doesn't fund the group's cyberware or gun purchases.

Just give everyone some outlet for their money and everyone will be happy. In general it is better in the long run to have the team short on cash than have them overflowing with bucks. If they get to much gear, have a reocurring NPC blow some of it up. Gets everyone motivated to go do things then.

Our group has a "gear fund" or whatever, we usually put whatever is payed up front in there, along with some 20-50% of the final pay. Its for bribes and preperations, for stuff that might benefit the whole team (larger vehicles and safehouses) and for funding expensive gear upgrades (if we all agree a character needs it)

As for the whole stealing cars stuff (might aswell be burglary or something similar). We can make alot of arguments back and forth, but i agree that the pay in fluff seems very low, and i usually give quite a bit more (unless it is 1-3 day jobs that doesnt require much recovery or cooldown). In my experience it works out rather nicely, its not that gritty, but the streetsam still does not want to be living high lifestyle, and there is nothing wrong with loosing a vehicle or safehouse now and then...

I look up the probable charges on the internet with my state judicial site and multiply the highest charge in years by 5-10K . It's worked pretty well so far...

Stolen vehicles aside, shadowrunners usually tend to be very good at break and entry and hacking security systems.
If one compares the difficulty of breaking into high security research labs or doing extractions on corp assets to the difficulty of breaking into a normal shop and getting away with the stored goods, running should not be too badly payed.

As for exact numbers, I also have trouble to provide these as an economy I only read about does not give me a very good "feel" for what would be real value.

As a GM, for a fair offer (and my NPCs do tend to misjudge dangers or offer a too low price occasionally) I usually think about for how many game sessions the run is designed (because each session will usually present some challenges that need to be overcome), and how tough the challenges at each stage are. I also try to anticipate the amount of money my players will invest into bribes, information dealers, hardware and other things. For an average run with some danger and (probably) some bullets flying I aim to have them earn about 10.000 each.

Back when I was a player, when we felt the GM was being especially niggardly again - which he tended to be quite often - we would simply refuse the job and design one of our own: find a small and nice target, nothing too dangerous, and steal all we could.
Or, when we were feeling very annoyed by him, we'd set off into Ghoul territory once more, trying to earn some cash bounty hunting. He eventually got the message after the 7th or 8th evening we spent ghoul hunting. He was only paying a reduced bounty of 500 for them, so we never really earned money with it; it was just our way of telling him if he'd plan to waste our runners time we'd at least waste it in a way of our own choosing.

Also, if you want to be a bit more realistic, think about how much the hiring party stands to gain off the success of the mission. If the job is to go poison the latest batch of Jack Daniels or whatever to nuke competition, then they likely stand to gain a ton of money in increased sales (like tens of millions or more) and should be willing to pay an amount relative to that gain. If they're hiring you to guard someone because he is semi-important and his death would be a minor inconvenience, then the amount they're willing to invest is going to be way way lower.

It's the old 'you get what you pay for' and a corp is going to have alot of money to toss after a multi-million dollar sales increase or new product or whatever. I mean coke and pepsi spend how much a year on marketing?

Again the Job is the BBB is liteary go here do this in this order tonight job no legwork of any large kind and its a one nighter sure 5-6k is still a bit low for it but its not that bad a sum for hitting a low security holding area. Its not braking in an R&D lab and making out with several million of prototypes and fleeing for the HTR. Also the J gets to poket any thing he has left over from pulling the run. In some cases he might hire some teams to do the legwork and others to pull the job ect while if one team had to do it all solo he might pay 5-6k up frount and maybe 20K+ after he might just play four separate teams 5-6k each to do parts of the job.

I had players tell me that their characters would not get out of bed for less than 10k. Cheesed me off...considering that they had all the tactical finesse of a B-52 bomber on a carpet bombing run.

Character creation says 1 BP buys 5000 nuyen, and KarmaGen says 1 Karma buys 2500 nuyen.

If you award 10 Karma at the end of a session/adventure/campaign, then 20-30k nuyen +/- (GM fiat) per runner seems reasonable to me. I think that's much higher than any of the books suggest, but I like advancement to be as similar to character creation as possible, so no one feels ripped off.

If the Karma:Nuyen ratio leans toward Karma, then Awakened characters tend to benefit. If the ratio leans toward Nuyen, then Mundanes benefit. If you notice your Awakened players are outshining the Mundanes, then throw in a couple thousand more nuyen for them to buy some more toys, or vice versa.

Of course, you can always award 15 Karma and have the Johnson back out of the deal. Or conversely, the players could find a military-grade commlink on a corpse without any bonus Karma. It's all a big wash in the end.

You cannot scrub a security tag... you have to actually find it and remove it... and cars have a hell of a lot of places to hide a Security Tag... or hell, a Stealthed Security Tag... even worse...

Just sayin'

Keep the Faith

OK, so I am seeing quoting numbers, and saying stealing cars makes more then Shadowrunning.

I am still, however, not seeing, as I asked, page references from the SR4A, or any corebook, that state how
much a run is supposed to pay. Page numbers for this, please, preferably from something in-print. Or else it is just your baseless opinion.

Edit: Closest you can get is looking at the payout for the various published missions, but those of course are only really valid for those particular missions, though I suppose they at least give some rough idea of what might be good.

Like I said last time though, just try whatever and then adjust as you find you need it.

See, there has to be a page number for the rules, since people keep saying that stealing cars pays more per
the rules. Thus, there must be published rules.

See that's the thing, there is a smattering here and there but nothing solid. I believe the GM book from the Denver box set (2nd ed) mentioned average payment for runs. The Contacts and Adventures book that came with the 4th ed GM screen lists "pay offered" on the random run generator (pg 24) but the options are "A bit lower than standard.", "A bit higher than standard.", "Standard rate for the team's abilities.", et cetera. Where you actually find the aforementioned "standard rate" I have no idea! I think the run generator was yanked straight from Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book (3rd ed) so try checking that out, it's probably your best bet.

The nature of payment in SR has always been abstract; you could get paid in creds, gear, info, favors, or even your life. Pay your players what you think they need to cover their expenses, and still be able to buy a couple of neat-o toys every now and then.

Sorry if that doesn't help.


EDIT:
Mr Johnson's Little Black Book PDF preview shows "getting paid" on the table of contents, I'll check the book tomorrow and see if that's what you're looking for.

Since it is not in a 4th Edition book, though, it is not likely to answer the statement that in 4th Edition,
it is cheaper to steal cars then to do runs. I want hard, current numbers to show that that is either
right or wrong.

SR4A pg 312 "Street Costs"
Item Used -20%
Item Stolen - 20%
Total = -40%

As per SR4A pg 351 a Honda Spirit costs 10K
On average the cheapest available car in the core book will fetch 6K on the black market.

Now if you have a good fence contact you can expect to get requests for specific models of cars, and since these cars are being requested specifically that means there is a demand which lets us apply the black market modifier "Market Dry +20%".

As for concrete SR4A payment rules you aren't going to find them. The GM pays what he thinks is fair to his players and what fits his campaign, and for most street level runners their cut of the run is going to be a little better than going out and stealing a nice sedan. I think that's the sentiment being expressed by many on here.

Aren't there also rules for fencing gear that lower the selling price?

I highly doubt you will find any rules that can prove this.

What you can find is the minimum amount a runner can earn from stealing a car excluding any outside influences such as law enforcement snags and pissing off the local syndicates that require the GM to place them. You can calculate this as the rules for selling goods is listed in the book. Fenced goods go for 30% of their book value, but you can subtract 5% to add a die to your extended test (Charisma + Negotiation [10, 6hr]) to find a fence as well as adding the item's availability to the pool as a bonus. Most of the cars listed in the BBB have no availability.

So let's make some assumptions.

#1 - The runner's face will be handling the fencing and he has 5 charisma and 4 negotiation with no further augments to his dice pool.

Give those stats we can safely assume, by the law of averages, that the face will be able to fence a stolen car after 24 hours of leg work, so he will be able to fence a stolen car about every 1.25 days (including rest).

#2 - The face is not required to be present during the car hijack allowing him to spend his time fencing cars.

In order to maintain a constant flow of cash, the runners must have another car hijacked by the time the face has sold the first one, so they only need to jack a car once a day.

So with a car sold every 1.25 days, that means in 30 calendar days a crew can potentially sell off 24 stolen vehicles. If they do this non-stop, over 365 calendar days they will have stolen 292 vehicles.

#3 - Most vehicles stolen will be Subcompacts and Sedans.

Sure there will be the occasional limousine or sports car stolen, but those would be out of the ordinary and considered a bonus. It's better to use the subcompact and sedan as a baseline.

#4 - Theft rate will be about 60% Subcompacts and 40% Sedans.

Sedans cost more (not much) and will likely be less prolific. This means the average book value for each car stolen will be 11,600 (Fenced for 3,480 )

#5 - The crew's actions are unhindered by law enforcement and crime syndicates.



So what we know is that in a year the crew will be able to hijack enough cars to have a total value of 3,387,200 which they will sell for 30% of it's value which happens to be 1,016,160 split among the members.

If runners complete 2 to 3 runs a month for about 30 runs in a year then they would need to be earning more than 33,873 (as a group) on average for each mission they take on for it to be more profitable than stealing cars.

Those rules won't apply to fencing gear. You're already starting at a 70% reduction in price, which exceeds the 40% price reduction you gain from the item being stolen/used.

You can argue that the modifiers are multiplicative rather than additive (which would yield a 110% price reduction) meaning you would sell it for 12% of book value rather than 30% but I don't think the rules back that up. However my scenario is far less profitable than the one you proposed and I would still consider it profitable enough for a 3 man team to pursue stealing cars over running the shadows. 28,226 a month isn't bad pay for an individual.

Car thieves could probably break the cars down into parts, and sell those over the matrix, retaining the -20% used penalty but possibly avoiding the fencing/-20% stolen rules if their buyer is unaware the parts are stolen.
With the amount of security a capable Hacker or Technomancer can provide I doubt KE will spend enough resources to track them down for something as low-priority as stolen car parts.

I don't think it will generate more revenue by taking a reduction on the asking price, but I'm going to see.

By going with a 25% asking price instead of 30%, then on average you will take 82.5hrs (66 hours + 16.5 hours rest) to sell three cars instead of 90 (72 hours + 18 hours rest).
By going with a 20% asking price instead of 30%, then on average you will take 76hrs (60 hours + 15 hours rest) to sell three cars.
By going with a 15% asking price instead of 30%, then on average you will take 67.5hrs (54 hours + 13.5 hours rest) to sell three cars.
By going with a 10% asking price instead of 30%, then on average you will take 60hrs (48 hours + 12 hours rest) to sell three cars.
By going with a 5% asking prices instead of 30%, then on average you will take 52.5hrs (42 hours + 10.5 hours rest) to sell three cars.

30% Book Value - 292 cars sold @ 3,480 = 1,016,160 revenue
25% Book Value - 318 cars sold @ 2,900 = 922,200 revenue
20% Book Value - 345 cars sold @ 2,320 = 800,400 revenue
15% Book Value - 389 cars sold @ 1,740 = 676,860 revenue
10% Book Value - 438 cars sold @ 1,160 = 508,080 revenue
5% Book Value - 500 cars sold @ 580 = 290,000 revenue

This assumes that the face is only capable of fencing one stolen car at a time and they're probably pseudo-rough figure using 6hrs of rest for every 24 hours of being awake.

Just to clarify a few things. Fencing items basically will have about 3 steps to get a product from the runners to an end consumer. The runners sell to a fence, the fence. The fence, who should have a superior setup for laundering stolen property will do what he needs to do and probably sell to a black marketeer who then sells to the end consumer. If a runner could sell direct to the end consumer, then a 60% book cost would apply rather than a 30% book cost base. This model really does fall in line with basic economics. If we assume that -most- goods sold on the black market will go for 60% of their book value (used/stolen) then we would be having each individual in the chain getting a cut. The fence pays 50% of the final sell value to the player, the black marketeer pays 75% of the final sell price to the fence, and the end consumer pays the final sell price to the black marketeer.

The players would earn 1,016,160 minus to opportunity costs and direct costs of obtaining the goods to achieve final profit.
The fence would earn 1,524,240 minus 1,016,160 for buying the vehicles, for a profit of 508,080
The black marketeer would earn 2,032,320 minus the 1,524,240 for buying the vehicle, also yielding a profit of 508,080.

Don't let those numbers fool you though, the fence is the most profitable of the bunch and the players are the least profitable.

People aren't saying that it is necessarily more profitable to steal cars than do runs, but that you need to make sure that the runs offer more than stealing cars. Since there are no figures given for runs by the actual books, stealing cars has become a bit of a baseline because it is so much lower risk than running, and so shouldn't be more profitable.

Exactly, the books don't list run payouts. The runs do list all the rules for fencing and the book price of cars. From there you can reverse engineer based on the highest Negotiation dice pool of your players the maximum they can extract from stealing cars if they spend all their time doing that with no recreation for the person selling the stolen cars. Do a quick mashup of the average car cost based on the ration of Sedans to Subcompacts and you're good.

I would say that as long as the pay for your runs averages out to be that value or even less than that value, then you're good. After all, runs don't consume 100% of the time of runners so they will be getting free time for their characters.

After all, my number of 1,016,160 revenue was based on 7,008 hours of work for just the face. If it's three people running the op, the share is 338,720 for a face and a wage of essentially 48.3 per hour.

Let's say that you earn 1,016,160 from runs. You go on 30 runs in a year, with each run averaging 4 hours of executing and 48 hours of planning. You spend 1,560 hours in a year running and that same million turns into a wage of 217/hr. To achieve the same profitability as stealing cars... that three man team would need to be paid about 7,500 per run (for the team).

However, I suspect that 5,000 per run (for the team) would be sufficient to keep runners doing runs instead of stealing cars. Like I said, stealing would require devoting the entirety of one's time to that task. The free time offered by running does have a value that I suspect exceed 2,500 . You can see the behavior modeled in real life with any sort of welfare or entitlement. If you're earning $10,000 in entitlements, you aren't going to go work for $12,500 a year. Chances are you will need to be earning $15,000 a year or more before the added pay from the job outstrips the intrinsic value of free time.

Lets not forget...

Market Flooded -10%
Price War between Rival Dealers -20% (after all, if there are that many cars being stolen daily, price wars are a given)

So now you are at -70% of the 30% of the base asking Price... so that becomes, for a 100,000 Nuyen car... lets see, add together, carry the two... Hmmmmm....... 9,000 Nuyen, and probably a day or three for fencing the equipment... of which you really need to worry about reprisals, storage, etc. Now, instead of the ultra high end cars, lets look at something more practical... Base 17000 for the Shin Hyung... again, add together, subtract the one, and carry the 2... wow, your base take home for that will be a whopping 1530 Nuyen... yeah, that is a lot of money... it just might pay for one of my meals at a high end restaurant where I meet my Contacts... I would need to do at least ten just to pay the high lifestyle that I am currently living (15,000 Nuyen/Month), not to mentiomn anything else that I may want to do... the fact is, if I was stealing cars, I would probably not be living that high lifestyle at all...

Stealing Cars is nowhere as lucrative as it is made out to be... not to mention that you are going to need facilities to store all these cars you are stealing until they can be stripped and shipped... just ain't worth it...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

30 runs * 7.500 Nuyen = 225.000 Nuyen for the team or 75.000 per runner. I do not understand how this equals 1.1016.160 (team) or 338.720 (runner) from your example above. Did I miss something ?

You're incorrectly combining the rules from black market street price and fencing gears. They are two separate cost structures. When fencing the asking price is 30% of the original price (book value). Street Cost modifiers do NOT apply. When dealing with the black market the asking price is the book value modified by the street cost modifiers which also modify the original price.

By the book, fencing a car is 30% of it's book value losing 5% for each extra die on the negotiation check. Any other modifiers are GM discretion and mostly going to be attributable to those street price modifiers causing the black market price to dip below 30% of the book value.

For the Face:
Stealing Cars: 338,720 per runner for 7,008 hours of effort. 338,720 / 7,008 = 48.3/hr
Running: 225,000 per runner for 1,508 hours of effort. 225,000 / 1,508 = 149.2/hr

For the other two:
Stealing Cars: 338,720 per runner for about (5hrs per car) 1,460 hrs of effort. 338,720 / 1,460 = 232/hr
Running: 225,000 per runner for 1,508 hours of effort. 225,000 / 1,508 = 149.2/hr

I will note, and admit that it is the face that gets 48.3/hr in the stealing cars scenario. The other two likely do not expend 7,008 hours of effort so their profitability would probably be slightly higher than committing runs, however that profitability is entirely based on the face being will to take such a lower profitability. Stealing Cars requires the face to accept a lower profitability than he would normally get by running. In other words, the problem to stealing cars not being as profitable to running rests solely on the willingness of the person handling moving the stolen goods and how much they're willing to accept a lower profitability for higher profits.

TL;DR- Stealing cars is more profitable for runners when the face is a schmuck and has no financial acumen.

Do you really think that you are going to steal 24 cars a month and not piss of the local syndicates? Really?

Good Luck on that... as you indicated earlier (though I think your numbers are a bit too high), you fence stolen cars at the 30%, but you also minus all the modifiers, (Do you really think that those modifiers would not apply? The Black market is getting your gear, so why would you not apply the modifiers? I would... Market Flooded is still Market Flooded, you will get less for that car than if the Market was dry)... so 1530 or so per car (on a value of base 17,000 Nuyen) and 292 vehicles per year (Damn, you were working an awful lot that year weren't you; all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy); which comes to... carry the 3, subtract the 2... 446,760 Nuyen over the course of a Year, split 3? Ways... equaling 148,920 Nuyen each... Now, a High Lifestyle (what my character maintains) costs me 180,000 Nuyen a year (15,000/Month), so I have yet to actually pay my lifestyles, not to mention anything else... Now, for the run where we extracted a Vice President of Mitsuhama (Elite Programmer on the cutting edge of Artificail Intelligence) it took our 5 man team 3 weeks, for a net pay of just over 850,000 Nuyen, after which our Fixer took his cut, reducing the team cut to 605,000 Nuyen; now we recouped 40,000 Nuyen in group expenses, so the split 5 ways... subtract 3, carry the 2... for a total payout of 113,000 Nuyen each...

Now I know what you are going to say... these runs do not come down the road every day... and you would be right, that was the best paying run we had all game year... and we made a lot of enemies pulling that run off, not the least of which was Mitsuhama itself... but when I can make a run like that, even once a year, my expenses are pretty well taken care of... My High lifestyle is covered, with room to acquire a few pieces of extra equipment that I have had my eye on, and still have money left over to have a good time on the town frequently... with your car stealing scheme, I am still short funds for lifestyle alone, and am working 365 days a year, as you indicated above...

And oh yeah, you just pissed in some syndicates wheaties (to the tune of 450,000 Nuyen on my scale, or 1.016 Million on your scale), and they are going to come looking for you eventually, so you are not consequence free either...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

#1 - You're applying external influences to the situation that aren't guaranteed and are purely at GM discretion. Unless the GM has the local crime syndicates get pissed off it doesn't happen. Remove it from the equation.

#2 - You're applying street cost modifiers to the asking price when the rules don't support it. Please reread the section on fencing gear and tell me where it says to apply street cost modifiers. Best I can tell is that the GM may apply other modifiers as he sees fit. So it could be lower or higher than 30%, but it's not necessarily affected by street cost modifiers.

#3 - Your high lifestyle is utterly irrelevant to determining the profitability of the task but the profitability is used to determine whether it is good for your lifestyle. Since profitability can be expressed as a nuyen/hr figure we can know the minimum profitability for a venture given the percentage of time you're willing to work. In any given year, assuming your character needs 6hrs rest for every 24hrs of being awake, you will have 7,008 hours that can be used to earn nuyen. You have a fixed cost that must be reached (180,000 nuyen for a high lifestyle). That means at minimum you must earn 25.7 nuyen per hour if you work the full 7008 hours. Let's say you only want to spend 25% of your time working. Then you must have a profitability in the venture of 102.8 nuyen per hour in order to maintain your lifestyle (no savings).

#4 - I am arguing that running is more profitable than stealing cars.

The "profit" numbers for stealing cars are just as made up as the shadowrun payouts. It's your game, you choose which one pays more. What you choose doesn't make Shadowrun itself right or wrong or broken.

1. External influences are logical and expected... they should always be taken into account... other wise the game loses verisimilitude..

2. Street Cost modifiers would have an influence on what you get for fencing, over and above the basic 30% value, it is only common sense... and I have read the rules... they do not NOT support it either... these modifiers are always in the hands of the GM, no doubt, but my point was that if you are going to play it realistically, you will get variability in return even for the same car model on two different weeks... Some weeks you will have a flooded market, maybe next month the market is dry... tehy are modifiers to control availability and cost, and that is all... Not applying them to the Fencing makes absolutely no sense... unless you are playing in a vacuum anyways...

3. Of course, I was using it as an example in comparison to your figures is all...

4. I am agreeing with that.

The problem that I see in the car example is this though... If you can steal 24 cars a month, why not 50 cars a month? or 60, or even 100... the camp that claims that Car Stealing is more profitable makes that claim, and they make it in a vacuum... there will be consequences to their actions, but they do not allow for such, because it is "GM Dickery" to assume that anyone would care, let alone pursue it... I refer you to your point 1 above... "No consequences" are completely unbelievable, and as such, you must EXPECT a reaction for your actions... The people care, the cops will care, especially if it ramps up to the levels that would make it more profitaable than Shadowrunning, and the Syndicates whose business you are cutting into will care when they see their profit margin disappearing... if you work for the syndicate, you will get a pittance, as the majority of the funds will go up the ladder; if you go independant, you may not live to see your next birthday, AND you are working like a dog most every day of every year...

Just sayin'

Thanks for the interesting diuscussion StealthSigma, I am enjoying it...

Keep the Faith

Wow, You seriously need a few fixer. Almost 30% cut when s/he doesn't do any of the actual work?

Going to open a thread so you can stop thread-jacking this thread onto a car-jacking topic.

Yes and no. My numbers all work from an ideal situation unfettered by external influences and assuming you can move the product constantly. In the ideal situation steal cars is still not as profitable for a face/negotiator as committing runs. Keep that in mind. Which would address some of your latter concerns. This is why I use a nuyen/hr figure instead of a raw profit figure. Obviously, you won't be able to do this 24/7 just like you won't be making runs 24/7, but it's the only way you can reasonably compare the two activities.



Simply put, it requires effort to move the product. I see nowhere that states that you can move multiple cars at once. So the limiting factor on profitability rests solely on the shoulders of the negotiator and size of his negotiation dice pool. It's a 6 hour interval with a 10 threshold. You need to bump from a 9 to 12 to guarantee you can move a car in 18 hours. To be able to move it reliably in 12 hours would require 15 dice. To move it in 6 hours would require a pool of 30. My count of 24 was not how much you can steal. I'm fairly certain a single runner could steal at least 4 cars a day if he wanted. However, even if the syndicate or law enforcement decide to crack down on you, the person at highest risk the face moving the product. He's the most visible and at the highest risk. Law enforcement could setup a sting operation to try to buy some stolen vehicles or the local syndicate could setup a meeting to six the face. Those do not change the fact that the face's profitability is still only 46.3/hr while he would have a 149/hr profitability from running.

The only advantage to stealing more cars than your negotiator can move is that you now increase the stock you have to choose from to sell. So if you only go out to steal just before you negotiator is about to close a deal you may get a series of 10,000 nuyen subcompacts. If you constantly steal you can build a higher number of sedans to sell off and eek out a little more profitability. Additionally you may get a few other nicer things if you go out and spot a sportscars rather than just looking for something to jack.

The whole scheme, as I said, boils down to having a dumb negotiator who is willing to earn such a low profitability. If I could do that, you be your butt I would steal cars instead of do runs. The risk is much higher on the product movement end than the theft end, but it's no where near as risky to steal a car as take on a run. Given that the profitability would be around 232/hr instead of 149/hr for a lower risk, I would certainly take it. As I said, it requires a dumb negotiator which may be a bit hard to find....

That makes a bit of sense I guess... Can't argue any of that really...
And yeah, I am not going to hold my breath for a Dumb Negotiator, especially one that is throwing around that many dice...

Keep the Fatih

moving that many cars could be a run in and of itself. but its an operation that has three basic parts.

part one is the actual car theft, and where most of the actual risk is. bypass security systems and grid guides, avoid detection by cops or drones or cameras, and avoid surprises in the back seat (because a homeless ghoul may live in that car, you never know).

part two is the car shop. and it does need to be at least an automotive mechanics shop for what needs to happen next- they have to break the car down, pull out a few security features, put it together again, and repaint it. this is not just a matter of security tags, but also resetting the computer that runs the car (sometimes as simple as resetting the BIOS), as well as the onboard GPS before it ever gets to your shop. you need skilled labor (hardware and auto mechanics) for each car that comes in, with the limit of cars stolen set by limits of available skilled labor and limits of available tools. This shop will probably ALSO do legit work on cars for various customers.

part three is when you sell the thing, which is a question of supply and demand for the price. you have to make enough money to pay the car thieves their percentage, plus the money to keep the shop running and labor employed. the problem here is that the more labor and tools you have, the smaller your margin is going to get as you quickly saturate the market. now some cars you sell as parts because of the risk of you sell it as a proper car. other cars you customize before you sell in order to increase the profit. but still you can only sell so many cars a month, even as spare parts shipped across the country.

In order for the operation to actually work, you would need your freelance thieves to have a list of desired models, and a limit to how many will be accepted. first delivered first paid.

street cost.. lets see, its a stolen used car from a crime (GTA) under investigation, and the market is probably flooded with a 'price war between rival dealers' ie a lotta guys trying to make a buck. -70%, for your basic 30% value. and at that price stealing one honda spirit a month will net enough for a low lifestyle with some left over.

honestly, at these prices and with the skills a team of runners have, stealing helicoptors makes a lot more sense! 30% of a GMC banshee is about 700,000, good pay for a team of runners who can pull it off. just be sure to find a buyer before you do you DIY shadowrun.