Me and some friends have recently been playing Payday: The Heist a lot recently, and we were thinking of doing a campaign inspired by it in Shadowrun, but we could use a hand. Would anyone happen to know what sort of security might make sense for banks/arcologies to have, not counting anything Magic and ignoring the whole "Banks put into orbit on spacestations" part with the Zurich bank. Mainly stuff like what sort of 'ware would make sense, levels of programs, and maybe numbers of guards/possibility of calling in Lone Star/Knight Errant type security forces and what they might have?

Well normal banks probably have 5 guards on duty at any time (smaller branches anyway) they'd likely have reflex cyber mods, maybe perception enhancing mods, perhaps something to help aim, possibly built in nodes to check video feeds remotely.

You won't get much from robbing a bank in SR. There is relatively little cash in circulation, so what are you going to steal? I'm not even sure there are bank branches as people think of them in existence.

Possibly go to mostly safe deposit boxes, but that is a very, very high risk job. Someone, local or remote, will set off an alarm. It takes time to open the individual boxes and that whole time security forces will be on the way. Remember the end of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"?

A burglary would seem more likely to work out, but the reason why those kind of massive thefts are rare is because they are very difficult and often require some inside knowledge.

Would you maybe have some idea of what might be a possible substitute for that type of thing? Robbing arcologies for research/tech?

Not very familiar with the original source, but how about Jewelry Stores? Drug stash house or other large-scale criminals? Pharmaceutical warehouses?

Those could certainly work, thanks.

you're more likely to see people robbing Firearms warehouses & such than a bank, though hacking banking accounts might happen for hackers.

anywhere that black-market-saleable goods are stored or produced are viable targets, anything from weapons to soy. As a general rule you want something that you either already have a buyer for (For things such as art, which is both massively valuable and almost impossible to shift on the black market), or something for which a market can readily be found (guns and soy, for instance).

A couple of other things that might be worth going after of your own volition: Gold (limited supply, can be melted down to make tracking more difficult), Drugs (You'll probably piss off at least one organised crime syndicate with this one, and most hauls will have you selling to another. BE CAREFUL NOT TO GET THE TWO MIXED UP!), or even Bio/Nuclear weapons (successfully pull of a heist that steals one of these and find a buyer who won't screw you over and you've made retirement money... which is a good thing, as there will be a lot of people who want to stop you from even thinking about pulling a stunt like that again in a very permanent and no-nonsense way).

Naturally, while you can make a living pilfering stuff like weapons and food on the black market if you want to strike it big you need to go after something seriously valuable, which means it's generally worth having a buyer lined up in advance.