Shadowrun

Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Erling on <08-31-14/1654:57>

Title: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Erling on <08-31-14/1654:57>: Greetings, fellow GMs :)

Tell me, please, how strictly do you follow rulebook's guidelines about cash rewards?
I find them too restraining and a bit harsh. Fighting Yakuza (e.g. highest dice pool 12) and being outnumbered 3 to 1 result in 12 000¥. So fighting 12 yaks in a single combat gives you enough cash for ~2.5 months of Medium Lifestyle ("a lifestyle of an ordinary wage-earner").
I usually tend to give my players' characters a bit higher prizes. For instance, breaking and entering into A-corp facility provides at least 12 000¥ (highest dice pool 12, very scarce security - runners aren't outnumbered) because, well, runners risk their lives, they can run into KE patrols and so on. Clashing AAA-corp almost always provides at least 25 000¥.
On the other hand, obviously easy job (breaking into no-tell motel or corner shop) is not a job for a pro, even street gangers are capable of fullfilling it. Thus reward can be about 1000¥.

BTW, Splintered State adventure provides about 75 000¥ reward per runner in average (if there are four PCs in the team. If less runners are involved, individual's share will be even higher)! It's SIGNIFICANTLY higher than book's guideline, even taking into account that opposition in Splintered State is quite harsh.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Glyph on <08-31-14/1701:43>: I don't find the cash rewards too plausible, myself. Especially since some characters are so gear/augmentation dependent. Runners should get paid a lot more, although lower awards might fit certain styles of campaigns (street scum games where the characters are always one step away from eating out of a dumpster, and the only way to realistically upgrade your 'ware is to indenture yourself to a corporation or a syndicate). I think it is crucial to balance cash and Karma, because if you don't, characters such as hackers and street samurai will stagnate while adepts and mages will initiate multiple times (the higher skill caps ameliorate this slightly, but gear is still a major vector of improvement for mundane characters).
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Erling on <08-31-14/1712:28>: Yeah, that's what I take into account as well. Most worthwhile pieces of 'ware (Rating 2 or so) cost 45 000¥ - 60 000¥ in average. That means obtaining new combat augmentation is worth ~7 runs (taking into account Lifestyle payments). But street sam usually has good chrome at the very beginning of the campaign, and he wishes to become stronger and faster. To do so he will need 150 000¥ worth augs.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: MijRai on <08-31-14/1717:39>: I find the nuyen rewards are far too low as well. My Shadowrun GM had his own reward set-up, and also provided his reasoning; "The Rule of Americar". If you can make more money boosting cars than by really risking your life on 'runs, why the hell are you 'running, omae?

Though, the example about the Yakuza from Erling is a little biased. Keep in mind, a single fight against twelve guys does pay for 75 days of living better than the majority of metahumanity across the world (seeing as the majority are in the Low or Squatter category).

As near as I can tell, the values for the nuyen reward table are good for covering expenses and a lifestyle; it doesn't really cover upgrades.

Another way to fix this, depending on your interpretation of the setting, is to supplement your pay with acquiring loot on the job. In one of the games I was in, we raided a BTL studio, and managed to grab a bunch of 'chips on our way out. Selling those (at 30% value, still a profit for us, since they were free) got us a good cache of money for the team on top of our pay. Of course, this is, like I said, up to the interpretation of the setting. Some perspectives put in a lot more things that make such activities less desirable.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: The_Hyphenator on <08-31-14/1747:46>: Yeah, I quickly realized that the Nuyen rewards weren't really adequate, especially since my group only meets about once per month. So I just went ahead and started doubling them, and that worked pretty well.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: LionofPerth on <08-31-14/2307:48>: Personally I think they're just a little too low, in between the Americar rule, as well as the fact they're breaking the law..... it's not enough. They'd need something more in my mind to run in the first instance.

Personally I'm getting around this in two ways. The first is that I'm having my Johnson get them on a 12 month contract, he needs a go-to strike team, intelligence gathering team, whatever the group turns out to be. He needs them on short notice, 48 hours anywhere in the world. He simply doesn't have time to recruit individually for each job and choose the best, or spend a day or two making calls and waiting for people to get back to him.

The other part of it is that I wanted the group to have a pretty respectable life style, something that gives them at least a Medium life style for the year. I don't want to be too generous, ie High, but on the same side, Low or Squatter, yeah, I don't think so. Especially if you're a respectable, starting to be known Runner.

So, the contract he's offering to the group is a 150K Nuyen for the year, 50K unfront, 5K a month with a 40K completion bonus. I'm almost definitely adjusting some of those number. Either way, considering what he expects of them, as well as their own stated goals, I expect some purchasing to be done at the start, go bags made and a whole lot of money being thrown about.

It also means that the group can focus on upgrades without needing to focus on just trying to stay with a roof over their head and ammunition in the magazines. it gives them the freedom to do what they want.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: emsquared on <09-01-14/1531:44>: While I also reward my players at higher rates than what is "recommended", I would like to provide an important counterpoint for new GMs (or players);
SR is not D&D (or Pathfinder, etc.).

By which I mean, players (or GMs) may have to temper their expectations for progression. In the majority of cases, going off of purely anecdotal/personal observational evidence, it seems like SR is not most people's first foray into table-top gaming. Most people (again, IME) it seems it's a d20 system/game. The thing about d20 games is the mechanical progression is so noticeable with new bonuses and/or capabilities coming every level, a late campaign or even mid to early progression characters can be exponentially more powerful than a new character. Accordingly, so are (or perhaps because of) the rewards for adventures, every adventure you're getting new toys and abilities. SR is of course not that.

What can a player expect, depending on the build/goals of the PC, maybe a 50 -100% increase in his primary pools over the course of a career (compared to a d20 PCs bonuses, which are more like 600%+ increase)? A lot of new players I think are disappointed by the mechanical progression (or lack thereof) in their character in SR (though 5E has taken some steps to remedy this). Just to get a couple more dice can be a long term goal for a PC.

Accordingly, there is a danger in trying to meet what might be a players (or GMs) expectations of having new toys at the conclusion of every story arc or run as that scalability is just not there. It's very easy to give a boat-load of loot when you realize things have fallen behind, it's much harder to take things away (or even put on the brakes) once things are rolling as if you decrease rewards PCs could feel like they're taking steps backward in their career. It really requires a good grasp of your (as GM) and the player's goals for the campaign, and what/how much they need to achieve them. As others have mentioned it's very important (IMO, more important than giving the "right" amount of Y after each run) to balance the karma v. Y rewards.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Namikaze on <09-02-14/0051:28>: Emsquared, once again your insight is invaluable. I like to award my players with a little extra nuyen for their hard work as well, but that's because nuyen is pointless without things to spend it on. And without those all-important Contacts (or a well-stated Face) you won't have a lot of selection. So my players come up with other unique uses for their money. They like to use their money to buy upgrades for their hideout, extra hideouts and identities, and all the extra stuff that most players take for granted. It's not always going to come in handy, but when it does they are always extremely grateful for that extra boost to income. The karma is the real stickler - even 1 extra karma per game can throw things out of whack fairly quickly (I play weekly, so it adds up fast). On the other hand, if your games are more spread out then a higher karma reward makes a lot of sense. And don't forget to give the players downtime so that they can use that hard-earned nuyen and karma. All of these things simply don't exist in most games, and so the whole mechanical system for Shadowrun is way outside most people's expectations.

TL;DR - Emsquared is right.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: LionofPerth on <09-02-14/0352:32>: Or a shorter version, know thy group. Tell them what they should expect from the get go and just be honest.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Poindexter on <09-02-14/0443:32>: Quote from: MijRai on <08-31-14/1717:39>
Another way to fix this, depending on your interpretation of the setting, is to supplement your pay with acquiring loot on the job. In one of the games I was in, we raided a BTL studio, and managed to grab a bunch of 'chips on our way out. Selling those (at 30% value, still a profit for us, since they were free) got us a good cache of money for the team on top of our pay.

This is a BIG part of the solution, although not a full fix.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: The Wyrm Ouroboros on <09-04-14/0008:16>: Simply put, the better you get, the more you should get paid. I pondered this for a while, and played around with some computer simulations, until I hit upon something I find to be ideal: the book prices are the standard run prices for a starting shadowrun character. Someone who's been in the biz and is still at the sharp end ain't gonna get paid the same piddly amount as some grunt shadowrunner just starting out.

"But Wyrm, how the hell do you figure out how much a PC is worth??" Simple, says I. At character start, assemble this clever little formula:

1 + [ (Street Cred - Notoriety - Public Awareness) / 10 ] = Runner Value

Whenever you give Street Credit, Notoriety, or Public Awareness, apply them directly to this formula; even if they burn Street Cred in order to reduce Notoriety and Public Awareness, the people in the shadows (and those who hire them) are going to remember it. Similiarly, if you consistently do a bang-up job, they're going to remember that, too. Also, don't forget to add the 1 SCR for every 10 karma they receive; again, this SCR is added directly into the formula. If the players have formed a solid team, you can use their averages of the above formula to get how much they're going to be paid.

If a character keeps being loud, they're going to get paid less than standard; if that 'being loud' was at the direction of the Johnson, on the other hand, you might consider balancing out the Public Awareness penalty you gave them with a Street Cred bonus, for doing the job just the way the ohnson wanted it. This will penalize people who mess up immediately after the run in which they mess up, and it may take them a few runs toeing the line to get that back; unless they're consistently loud and obnoxious, however, their rewards should slowly creep upwards as they gain in competence until they're getting paid two, three, four times the standard amount.
A sideline thought, in regards to making extra cash via 'Brokerage X': must possess Street Credit - Notoriety - Public Awareness of 5 or more in order to be contacted. (Or whatever minimum you, as GM, decide.) Loyalty is never more than 1; Connection is never more than 4. Monthly earnings are equal to [2d6 + (2/3 * Average Karma Earned on the Month) - 3 ] / 200. This, multiplied by their current investment, is the amount gained for the month. Yes, this means that if you don't go on runs and call them up to tell them what's going on so that they can, you know, do insider trading, you don't earn as much, and may in fact lose money. Additional modifiers as per Loose Alliances can be added directly (not multiplied by 2) to the above formula before dividing by 200.

Note that this really can be an incredible rate of return, since it compounds every month, doubling an investment within three years. This really is fantastic, and if a smart runner adds 75-90% of their ill-gotten gains, it will go up fast.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: 8-bit on <09-04-14/0118:17>: That formula is pretty cool Ouroboros, but I have one question. How do you handle a starting character who has Notoriety? It is possible, as according to page 372 of SR5, your starting notoriety is modified by the following qualities.

Positive Qualities: Blandness, First Impression, Lucky

Negative Qualities: Addiction, Bad Luck, Combat Paralysis, Elf Poser, Gremlins, Incompetent (any skill),Ork Poser, Scorched, SINner (criminal SIN only), Spirit Bane, Uncouth, Uneducated, Weak Immune System

For each positive quality reduce Notoriety by one, for each negative quality increase Notoriety by one. I'm sure a few other qualities such as Combat Junkie from Run and Gun would apply here too. This means someone can have a multiplier of 0 or a negative number when using your formula. The GM is of course allowed to ignore this, but I'm curious as to how you would handle it.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: The Wyrm Ouroboros on <09-04-14/0126:36>: No offense, but I would smack the shit out of anyone who took ten or more Negative Qualities that impacted their Notoriety, then send them back to the drawing board and tell them to not be a moron.

Even good runners can go into the 'negative total' - meaning they start getting .9, .8, .7 or less as a multiplier. You can work your way out of this, of course, but if you actually hit 0.0, congrats - you've been burned, nobody will talk to you, nobody will hire you except for a fifty-nuyen drive-by hit. You're a has-been, a failure. Go out in a blaze of glory, man.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: 8-bit on <09-04-14/0135:10>: I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding, I wasn't saying take 10 qualities that affect Notoriety, I was just saying that any one of those gives you 1 point of Notoriety. I was asking that a character who starts with 1 Notoriety and not Street Cred, how would you handle the multiplier? You could theoretically start with 2 or even 3 Notoriety, but that's probably inadvisable. By your formula, that would be 1 + [(0 - 1 - 0) / 10 ] = Runner Value. As you have clarified, you would start at 0.9 for the multiplier then, which is all I was curious about.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Namikaze on <09-04-14/0201:03>: I actually use a very similar "system" to Wyrm's - though it's not really hard-and-fast so much as it works fine for my purposes. I use the total karma earned to determine the runner team's quality. As they earn karma, usually on the scale of 10 or 20 karma (that's 1 or 2 Street Cred, by the way) I bump the nuyen up a multiplier. And just to keep the whole thing from being too static, I have a variable that I throw in as well, usually a variance of up to 10% of the base wages, not counting any negotiation successes that the players get.

So if you took my system and put it into Wyrm's formula, you end up with this:

Total Karma / 10 = Multiplier

It's far from elegant, but it basically means that every three or four runs (barring the big-karma runs like Splintered State) the players get another 3,000¥ tacked on to their normal wages.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: The Wyrm Ouroboros on <09-04-14/0209:12>: Not bad, Namikaze. My 'run multiplier' comes into effect after the total is determined, while yours applies to the baseline - so we're actually on roughly the same scale.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Namikaze on <09-04-14/0257:25>: Yeah, I figure that Notoriety and such factors into the negotiation rolls, so I think it all comes out in the wash. :)
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: emsquared on <09-05-14/1627:09>: I personally am not a fan of a formulaic approach like that. It may be handy to get an idea of what your end game is, or perfect for if the group is a corp-salaried team, but I want the different natures of different runs - and Johnson's - to be reflected in, and require, different pay rates. A scalar progression like that, drains some of the character from the setting, IMO. There's no IC quantification of these things, so paying out that way seems... I dunno, weird... too mechanical. I don't want my players to know how much they'll earn for the next gig, based on this linearly increasing amount they've gotten each time in the past.

I want booms and busts, drama, mystery.

Which isn't the handiest of advice, as it means you (newbie GM who happens to read this) have to figure some things out for yourself; there is no formula. Which is part of what I was trying to communicate in my OP. But really that's what this thread is about: Do you use THE formula? No, but I use A formula. ... I disagree, each Run, each campaign, each table and each GM should be different. It all deserves something specific.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: The Wyrm Ouroboros on <09-06-14/0955:39>: It's basically an assist to understanding the value of the runner and/or team. I understand - believe me, I understand!! - wanting players to have to come to grips with different Johnsons' pay rates, how much different corporations are willing to pay, that sort of thing. However, after you get 100, 200, 500 karma under your belt, after you've been through hell and back and have both the scars and the street cred to prove it, after you can slip into an MCT zero-zone without being spotted and then out again with your target without being spotted - when you can consistently perform without the target corporation ever knowing you were even there - a player and a character should expect to be worth more. Fastjack isn't going to get hired to heist the plans for a prototype and get paid the same amount as New Jack in the City; New Jack is fresh on the scene, while Fastjack has a reputation for a) getting the job done, b) getting it done fast, and c) getting it done right.

And that skill and reputation should have a commesurate increase of payment. Let me quote something from ol' Shadowland 6, back in the day:

Quote
>>>>>[ Have you ever seen some of their published adventures, and the sort of thing expected of a so-called "average" Shadowrunner?

Dude, I'm all for scraping the gutter cyberpunk, trust me. But when you reach a certain level of karma and nuyen, the game takes on a different feel. In D&D, for the first few levels, goblins are scary motherfuckers and a +1 dagger is a rare prize. But sooner or later, the GM has to up the ante, y'know?

That happens in every game. ]<<<<<
- Talondel (09:24:54/07-29-2064)

(Talondel is our own Critias, for what it's worth.)

The above is a handy measure for the GM to help gauge around what amount the runners should be paid. If it helps, this should also help scale how dangerous the opposition is; nobody's going to pay 'Jack to grab the formula for a new stuffer from Podunk Brands, Ltd. He'll be going after something nova-hot. But if the PCs are getting paid 25k + 2k/net hit a head to snatch the top scientist in the field from an ultra-paranoid corporation - which is a 'run scaled to their capabilities - then the GM maybe needs to take another look at how much he's paying them.

Booms and busts, drama and mystery are great. I entirely support it. Johnson screws you over, or is very pleased and gives you a bonus credstick and a promise to contact you in the near future. Or he sends you off to Fantasy Island (http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=16405.msg291597#msg291597) both as a bonus and to help get you out of the way of irate locals. But as I said - these formulas help the GM determine a ballpark value that the street and the corps put on the work of the runner. Where you go from there is up to you, but I know Hawatari as of 2074 isn't going to take a piddly little 10k gig when she's worth ten times that amount, proven by her own ups and downs, successes and failures.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: emsquared on <09-06-14/1234:19>: I don't disagree (properly skilled/successful runners deserve proper pay), but the booms and busts can be street cred/skill-level appropriate too, and furthermore - at least at my table - not everything the characters do are going to be for pay, not everything they do and earn rewards for are runs. There's gonna be player and group goals that will require them to do things that they're not gonna get paid for (which is not to say that they can't find some way to make some money while doing it), no one's hiring them to do it, it just has to be done if they want X - but they're gonna get karma for it - so you may need to compensate with heavier cash down the line. Conversely, there will be certain lucrative things they could do (like investments) that could net them a lot of Y, but not a lot of karma. So that's why you (again, speaking to GMs who might find this thread for advice) need to have clear visions of player/group goals (financial, mechanical and story) and what will be required from your campaign and accompanying rewards for them to achieve that.

Not saying that you can't use your equation AND still keep things organic,. I don't disagree that it's a good guide for what your PCs may be "worth". All I'm doing is warding people away from only using a salary like pay scale equation.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Glyph on <09-07-14/0249:12>: One of the biggest problem areas of the game, to me, is how utterly dependent some archetypes are on gear that is hard to get and monstrously expensive compared to what typical runner pay is. I think a nice, gritty game would have more damage to augmentations, magical foci, or decks, but it wouldn't work out that well in practice. It should be - go on a run, something gets shot up, you have to spend part of your pay to replace it. It is - go on a run, getting paid a few thousand to risk your deck, which is worth hundreds of thousands. If it gets shot up, then you might be better off making a brand new character, as opposed to having your current character functioning at a significantly reduced capacity for the scores of shadowruns that it will take to replace that deck. If you are a mage and lose a focus, you are not quite as impaired, but are still out not only a lot of money, but a lot of karma. And street samurai or riggers - it can be so hard for them to advance in a low-pay game, that you wonder how the heck they got their starting gear/augmentations in the first place.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Ursus Maior on <09-07-14/0731:27>: Quote
If it gets shot up, then you might be better off making a brand new character, as opposed to having your current character functioning at a significantly reduced capacity for the scores of shadowruns that it will take to replace that deck.

Quote
nd street samurai or riggers - it can be so hard for them to advance in a low-pay game, that you wonder how the heck they got their starting gear/augmentations in the first place.

True and I always struggled with these two things as a gamemaster. I think it's my responsibility to come up with solutions (not only mine, but as well) to this problem, by giving the players plot hooks that can turn bad luck back into "at least it's not a complete loss". I think taking risks and leaving some things to chance/fate are part of the fun, but getting mauled and piling up debts all the time will nullify any fun a player has with his character. If you like suckerpunches, live real life. Playing SR in your free time is about having fun.

Last session (friday night's firefight) the group planned well and executed very promising. Then the Technomancer failed a role impersonating a contact of their target, tipping of the target and his crew. So everythin erupted into action. The rigger made a bad choice by hot-simming into his drone, instead of his car (the respective other was to shoot autonomous). The drone got shot to pieces, the rigger was hurt by biofeedback and the whole highway errupted into a full sized firefight between two fully fledged combat crews. The group prevailed, but not without loosing the drone and having to shoot plenty of (expensive) rounds, wrecking a lot of salvagable equipment, getting shot badly and leaving witnesses (one family in a car). Thank the heavens it was on route 70, 2:30 AM outside of Farwell (TX). Then came the contacts of the target in a rigged SUV. They almost geeked the group's mage (he'll be needing some downtime now), before being shred to pieces by hitting a barrier spell doing 120 kph.

The group accomplished most of their goals in the end, but not without some serious consequences. The initial mission was to bust a ring of human smugglers between CAS and PCC (in 2060). The group works for the DA of New Orleans and they were to secure "the cargo" after the deal went down and provide the DA with members of each party (to pin it on). Unknown to the group a corp was mingling with the buisiness (they have bad history of course) and the corp belongs to the DA's boss (governor of Louisiana). The only living witness of party B is working undercover for the corp. So now if they deliver the witness to the DA the corp will know everything: That the runners were behind the ops, that they cost them the cargo and that the DA is investigating a multinational case implying the governor into criminal activities.

Someone will have to geek the witness or the runners, both being bad for the group.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: emsquared on <09-07-14/1159:06>: Disparity in player aspirations/needs is a problem, but if you pace rewards to the highest player, everyone else will find something to do with the Y/karma, don't you worry. Maybe it's just luxury lifestyle maybe it's something sweet they didn't even know they needed. Alternately, find ways to provide the goal at an appropriate time, at an appropriate discount.

Riggers are easy. You know he wants that bleeding edge flyer, so maybe in a garage at the end of a run, voila, there it is. Maybe it's just the shell or maybe just the motor and mobo, but either away it just costs 60% of MSRP (and some mech checks?) to get it up and going.

Sammie's are only a little bit harder; a significant part of 'ware costs is the surgery to install them, find a way to work a very grateful doc or lab or even corp into the story who will do the surgery at cost to the facility, reduces the whole package to 75% MSRP.

Players love non traditional rewards like these, moves things away from the sterility of "here's your karma and cash, what's next?".
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Reaver on <09-07-14/1855:36>: I too use the formula in the book as a baseline, then modify the pay by the history of the runners/team. Do they have a rep for getting the job done right? More pay.

Also, every few runs I throw a "grab" bag their way... this being an exceptional pay out, fancy new toy, access to shiny cyberware.... what have you.

And of course, the opposite happens if they happen to be idiots (or a rep for being idiots..) Jobs dry up, fixers and johnsons don't return calls, and what work does come their way isn't well paying...
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Frankie the Fomori on <09-07-14/2245:18>: Two cents from this peanut gallery, after reading cybermancy and the story about the Street Sam and his move into more and more ware it got me thinking...runners have to do allot of shit all the time to further push there careers and reputation. My group may play 1-3 times per month and then Go for whole months of nothing, as they say life happens. But even if we run once a month the pay is maybe equal for the job but not growth or lifestyle. So what I am starting to do is creating a concept that will allow the players runners to have there busy shadow lives and gain some reward from it while still keeping the game alive. Not sure about actual amounts yet but looking at examples like "street Sam took 3 jobs this month a bodyguard, helped move street Doc's high end import(illegal) goods from Salish boarder to barrens, part of assault team that hit a prostitution ring that was snipping woman from his former gangs turf, etc" this could bet him 2100 for bodyguard, 500 plus 10% discount on ware from street doc and maybe 1500 from grateful former gang boss.

This combined with 8-15K he gets from that months run map his progress towards Aplha cyber eyes a possible thing in a week, if I plan the events the. Him saving up over time could bet him a great discount on some expensive ware.

Other things I do is rule that archetypes get reduced costs associated with gear expense. Our rigger is one badass for finding exactly all the parts he needed for his damaged drone to get it working....no punishment, just awesome concept of his scrounging ability and allowing him to not sweet bad die roles.....now if he decided to waste his drones on some poor thought out an completely useless plan then he does not get such a great break. All archetypes are treated with this....upkeep is not handled out of take home pay, it is part of the deals that they interact with during there off shadowrun time, I give them a brief email to describe what they have been up to and then I square the bill(s)
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Ursus Maior on <09-08-14/0556:35>: My problem with the payment formula from the core book is that it is tied to the game values of the opponents. That would mean Mr Johnson has really good intel and is very transparent about it. In the (not too large) shadow community such a rigid formula would mean that everyone can guess how difficult Mr Johnson's intel conceptualizes the run. The formula however raises payment linear to the highest opposing dice pool, that is a problem since the difficulty of opponents grows proportionally to the growth of their dice pools. A low thug with a professional rating of 1 to 3 has little expierence, few contacts and only little augmentations. Someone with professional rating 4 to 6 has been around far longer, might thus have top contacts and is possibly highly augmented. Also, while his highest dice pool actually used against the group (e.g. firearms, hacking etc.) just adds little to the payment, his many other dice pools that - though lower and thus not adding money - advance combat value, also make him considerably more dangerous. A street sam with a firearms pool of 11 and two fellows with pools of 8-10 is fairly common and can be disposed off by a good team in one round. A street sam with a firearms pool of 12, two fellows with pools of 11 and all three having pools in small unit tactics of 10 are considerably more dangerous than the 0.25 modifier would suggest.
Title: Re: Nuyen run rewards
Post by: Grinder on <09-08-14/0620:19>: Quote from: Erling on <08-31-14/1654:57>
Tell me, please, how strictly do you follow rulebook's guidelines about cash rewards?

Not at all.