[Senko]

First off this is purely speculation for my own interest not game related in any way hence why its in general. While most mages would be on a contract or runners I'm curious what people think an independant mage could sell a spell or potion for. That is how much would they be likely to get selling a healthy glow potion to celebrities for their parties or a trid entertainment spell to a childs birthday party. Personally I think they could get a decent price for them given the relative scarcity of these things but not too much as a lot of corporate workers would go via their own corporate stores. I'd be inclined to go with average prices of . . .

Potion: 1.500 to 2,500 yen each.
Spells: 500 to 1,000 yen each

with variations depending on power/nature e.g a spell of move earth would fetch a different price when clearing a path to trapped miners than it would in preparing the foundations for a new skyrise.The potions would sell for more because they have hard time limits associated with them requiring them to be made, shipped and used very quickly requiring you book in advance while spells you can work out a time the mage will be available more easily. Again obviously these wouldn't be for an actual game because it'd provide mage runners a source of income that is better represented by things like day job. Just world building musings what do you think?

[Overbyte]

Seems like any pricing would have to be tied to Potency. And they would have to be a lot cheaper than you mention IMO, because they are very/fast easy to make and most be sold very quickly (within hours) or they go bad.
Think how much you could make per day cranking out potions. Your healthy glow is a great example.
A good alchemist could easily make 3-4 of these a day and if they sold them for 2000 a piece they would make 6-8000 nuyen a day.
Thats well over 100,000 a month!

[Senko]

Hmmmm I didn't think they'd be selling them that fast sure you can make 3-4 healthy glow potions a day but would you sell all of them 7 day's a week? If so then yes it would be a lower price but even with the strong desire for good locks I can't see that heavy a demand.

[Kiirnodel]

This question has been talked about before, and I think the biggest thing to take away is that spellcasting for others is a lot more dangerous than people think.

Now, not because drain is an issue, but more from a legal ramifications standpoint. You need to remember that spells leave behind a signature tied to the caster. So if someone orders a spellcasting (especially in preparation form), and then goes out and does a crime, it can get tied back to that spellcaster. So there is a very limited market for public spellcasting services. Plus, a lot of people are going to be distrustful of strangers casting spells, suspicious of what having a spell sustained on them long-term might do. Mundanes walking around with quickened spells, for instance, are just asking for trouble as they don't have any way to avoid the attention that would attract.

All in all, I would say that most spellcasting as a service industry just falls into high end services in general. Someone casting Healthy Glow on a patient is part of the premier service in healthcare. Using Shape [Material] is done in the high grade fabrications to reduce tool-marks. Any services that can be done "better" by magic would probably just be the high-end level of that service. The sort of stuff people pay 10-100 times normal mark-up to get.

[Senko]

Sorry I think I wasn't really clear I wasn't talking specifically about individual mages/runners running a "spells R us" shop at the kiosk but a more general what would spells cost. Whether your getting that healthy glow spell from the aforementioned kiosk or the highly exclusive Pampers health spa there is going to be a cost attached. That's what I'm wondering about just like when you hire an electrician from a company you pay them X which is then split up between office salaries, insurance, paying the actual electrician, etc. How much do you pay for a spell/potion/magical service. To use your example a major company is repairing a restraining wall for the railways. They come in lay the metal reinforcement, spray on the concrete and then when its in place a company mage shows up and casts shape concrete to give it the desired smooth finish with maybe a few nice patterns of fish. You have to pay the company something for the mage's spell casting to smooth the concrete even if it'll be lumped into the general construction costs of X concrete, Y vehicles, Z men, Q mage spell all to work out the final quote.

Which brings us back to my earlier costs if your paying a massive mark up. This isn't "mates rates" where the mage you know does a trid entertainment for your kids birthday party and maybe charges you materials this is you paying "Parties To Go" for some entertainment you need to pay for the spell components, for the mages time, for the insurance, for the office mark up and so on.

Now for a long term job or mass production its easy to work out. length of job * Mages Time (Day job, 50k work out hour rate) + materials (if needed) + X (overheads insurance, office cut etc I'd say 2 * the mages hourly rate). You need the earth cleared for a foundation of a building and it'll take 9 8 hour day's of move earth or 1 day for 9 mages either way its (9 * (mages rate + X) + Parts, same if you order a stock of potions you pay (Time * (Mages rate + X) + Parts. Its the one off costs that throw me if you only want a mage to cast one spell or make one potion. I'm not sure how to work that out. To use the health spa again you have a mage on staff casting healthy glow on the rich socialites frequenting it how do you work out what they'd pay for that part of their spa treatment. You can't use my formula because the mage while still on X an hour might cast a dozen healthy glow spells in that time. Its not what the mage earns that is my focus its what the client pays.

If you see what I mean?

On a seperate note I imagine magical licensing as being much like electricial licensing basically you pay for any parts, for the electricians time and an extra on top to cover office expenses like the office staff salary and insurance. So while an electrician might only earn 31 dollars an hour (if they're lucky) you'll be paying 94 + parts an hour with the extra 63 going for other expenses. While the mage has to pay off their education expenses, for their license and if they're working for themselves insurance and the like to cover them against someone using a potion to commit a crime. Of course I also doubt most mages would sell things like invisibility, grenade, mindprobe, etc spells purely for the legal reasons. However that's another thread (albeit an interesting one) I really should restart the magical law one sometime.

[Kiirnodel]

Well, different spells would cost very different amounts, based on time, risk, skill, and availability (how common the spell is, not availability for items in the rulebook).

And like I said, I don't think an average joe is going to have access to a "contracted mage" to be able to just hire spellcasting services. That sort of service falls more in line with having a corporate mage whose task is to provide the required service.

But as far as your question goes, I can't really give a good answer because, sort of like other contracted work, there aren't a lot of resources for what specific services are valued at.

[Senko]

Hence my problem and question  I like worldbuilding.

[Overbyte]

Hmmmm I didn't think they'd be selling them that fast sure you can make 3-4 healthy glow potions a day but would you sell all of them 7 day's a week? If so then yes it would be a lower price but even with the strong desire for good locks I can't see that heavy a demand.

You are looking at the specifics and not my general point.
If you can't sell the potions you wouldn't make them, because as I said they only last a few hours. They have very little "shelf life" according to RAW.
And it takes almost no time to make. I think your idea of working backwards from total income is not a bad idea.
Ive done a lot of contracting work and the rates are based on the following:

1) Imagine you are working for a company, getting all the perks of and office, desk, computer, health care, dental, retirement, etc. Lets say you would make $100,000 per year.
2) When companies hire you out to others (or to the government) they figure in the "overhead" of all these perks. Around +100% isn't unusual. So when you are a private contractor you mark up your price by that much because you will have to personally provide these things for yourself. That makes the 100k per year, 200K.
3) There are approximately 2000 working hours in the year. So you would charge $100 per hour.
4) You might take into account that as a contractor you won't have work 100% of the time and therefore need to make that up with your hourly rate. Lets say that you will only have work 80% of the time. This makes your rate +20%. or $120 per hour.
5) Now.. how long does it take you to do whatever task is involved? Just figure out how much to charge given the hourly rate.

Now.. in SR if you are a mage, you would probably have to include the "average down time" from casting a spell into the total time required to do the task.
So lets see what we get:
1) Lets say that a good wage mage will make enough for a High Lifestyle (10k per month). That's 120k per year. or 150 per hour.
2) You want him to cast a spell for you that is likely to result in a few stun worth of drain which will take a few hours to rest up from.
3) Cost = 150 * 3 = 750 nuyen.

Now you might also figure in (as many contractors do) minimum charges (1 hour perhaps) and travel time/expenses.

[Senko]

Thanks, I hadn't thought of factoring in the downtime afterwards for the spell. Of course this still runs into the same problem I've been struggling with and that's how to handle the one off spells in a short span of time (We'll leave aside potions for now because the rules for them are pretty bad in my opinion). That is not what mage X makes but if mage X casts lets say 5 healthy glow spells over the course of an hour on 5 different clients of the Hirohito Health Resort what do those clients pay. The mage's salary is fixed they earn 10k a month, 120k a year and their job for this day is to cast healthy glow on the people who paid for that so they'd look more attractive at tonights big gala. Those people are going to get the costs for that spell added to their bill (Massage, soak in the mineral waters of its baths, pedicure, manicure, Healthy glow).

So lets consider your estimate and see if it works. There's no travel expenses, no downtime as their not casting it at a high enough level to knock themselves out and no resources (we'll assume a fairly decent wage mage that can easily handle this workload for their 6 hour day). Which leaves us with a nice simple 150 nuyen cost as a minimum since that covers the spa's expenses, a nice profit and the mages wage. If they charge each client that amount (lots of profit for them) that's 50 yen less than a animatronic action figure or cheap suit and 50 yen more more than an animatronic plush toy or undgrad textbook. That doesn't seem to bad for me actually. Especially considering the clientelle who'd be paying for those services. The mage earns 10k a month while the company is earning that in maybe a week. However we don't have your earlier problem of that mage earning that much in a day because if they tried they'd run into all the expenses to eat it up (buying/renting the building, providing the other services, building the clientelle, hiring other mages when they can't keep up with the workload etc).

Of course the other alternative is to split the costs and keep the base the same although I don't like that. If only because of the difficulty in dealing with a mage charing 15 nuyen if they get 10 clients in an hour and 30 if they get five or 150 if they get one.

It also fits in fairly well with the run faster table. Unskilled labour is 8 yen/hour, highly skilled 50, good prostitution 100 and a nice escort service 500. So a mage earns more than general labour and prostitution but less than a nice escort service (significantly less). Not sure if that's labour in the general sense i.e. highly skilled = doctors/laywers (medical is 50 for cheap service and 500 for emergency so there's a huge range there) or in the more specific of labour but skilled i.e. electrician blue collar but really needs to know what they're doing or people die/have their house burn down.

Honestly I rather like mage services being 150 yen/hour or part there of + materials (reagents) and going off both casting and recover time with perhaps a 500 yen/hour for emergency services. whatever they would be. It also means that in my above example of the health spa the spells could be offered at a discount for job lots e.g. you purchase a healthy glow spell as part of your treatment it costs 100 yen (assuming a spa with enough clientelle to guarantee at least 2 spells an hour thus earning the minimum 150 to keep a mage on staff) if you buy 2-5 its a 20% discount meaning you only pay 160 for 2 or 400 for five, a 35% discount for 6-10 meaning if you bring 5 friends you only pay 390 yen in total (cheaper than if you brought 5) and if you bring 9 585 yen and a 50% discount for 11 or more people meaning if you brought 10 friends you'd only pay 550 for the healthy glow spells on all of you. Expensive sure but not that much considering your all chipping in 50 yen each the price of a good meal out. Meanwhile the company makes a profit even if they hired 3 mages to handle the load of 11 people that's only 450 yen meaning they still made a hundred yen pure profit that hour assuming no other work and of the 450 a significant portion goes to pay off their operating expenses anyway rather than the mages salaries. On top of which they're also making money off any other things the group buys while visiting (manicure, pedicure, soak, massage, drinks and snacks, etc).

[markc]

In very general terms that probably will not help you much,
 Companies do this all the time, they take what you can do and then charge more for it and after a time if you are making them a $$ and you ask for a raise they give it to you.
 The other thing to remember is that companies have a lot of overhead to include in there price. For example you health spa, location, building maintenance, cleaning service, materials, other labor the company depends on to operate, insurance (all types) and factoring in seasonal business price adjustment (ie if a spa is primarily used in the summer you have to make enough $$ to live through the winter so you can operate again the in the summer)

MDC

 

[Senko]

True but that's why I like the 150 or part there of for magical services. That way Jim's Mages contracts out to supply a mage for clearing the earth in a new highrise construction as there's a lot of cables and they want to ensure those aren't damaged by normal excavation techniques. He charges them 8 * 3 * 150 (a mage's services for 2 work day's and a day for them to recover) = 3,600 Yen. The actual mage's Salary is 60 yen an hour  (well a bit more but for simplicity all these numbers are for a mage earning 120k after tax as per the game system, it'd be more than 150 as well but anyway) but that's only used to work out overtime and profit since they're on 120k a year + overtime work. This means its 60 * 8 * 3 = 1,440. Jim's Mages has made 2,160 yen for that contract which they can use to help pay rent, insurance, Jim's Salary, etc. That's from 1 mage working a 3 day contract if Jim's mages had 11 mages on payroll working 5 day's a week you'd be looking at an average assuming he can find enough business to keep them at work each day of . . .

60 * 8 * 5 * 11 = 26,400 (Mage Salary)
150 * 8 * 5 * 11 = 66,000 (Payments)
66,000 - 26,400 = 39,600 (Earnings)

So even after paying all his mages he's earnt nearly 40 thousand yen in one week to pay for building rent, advertising, insurance, his own salary and so on. For a place like the health spa they're doing the same  150 per spell the mage casts means 80 yen for them to use as they need and if the mage casts a second spell in that hour its now 230 yen for them, a third spell is 380 yen in one hour. Of course this is as long as your talking about a mage casting the spell on different customers and not being contracted out so all those spells come under the 1 hour contract fee.

This also lets them discourage independant contracters from competing because they can afford to give options an individual mage can't if a company mage is off sick they move another to cover those jobs, if an independant mage is sick they lose those jobs or work sick, if company mages are competing against an independant for jobs the company can offer lower prices and cover the costs from other work.

[Overbyte]

Senko posted while I was writing this.. but I'll post it anyway..
I kinda like where this discussion is going and thinking about how you might quickly figure out a charge for such things.

In very general terms that probably will not help you much,
 Companies do this all the time, they take what you can do and then charge more for it and after a time if you are making them a $$ and you ask for a raise they give it to you.
 The other thing to remember is that companies have a lot of overhead to include in there price. For example you health spa, location, building maintenance, cleaning service, materials, other labor the company depends on to operate, insurance (all types) and factoring in seasonal business price adjustment (ie if a spa is primarily used in the summer you have to make enough $$ to live through the winter so you can operate again the in the summer)

MDC

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here.
This is what companies call "Overhead". As I was referencing in my post.
Overhead includes such things as "General and Administrative" costs (also know as G & A), and profit.
For example, government contracts usually stipulate that you may take no more than 8% profit or something like that. The rest of the overhead is real costs. Lease of the building, salary of administrative personnel that can't be "direct billed" to clients, toilet paper in the bathroom, whatever.
When I had my own company I could keep overhead down to 50%. I've worked at companies that were as low as 70% and ones as high as 200%. But 100% is generally reasonable/standard.
So if you have a mage on staff at a spa, you consider his salary and then mark it up by 100% to your clients assuming that he gets all the company perks (as mentioned in my original post). If not, then you have to pay him as a consultant and give him his full fee (which would be 100% than if he was on salary) and bill your clients that amount plus whatever profit (if any) you want to add on. That profit could be as low as 0% if they feel that just having the service adds to business revenue in other ways, or whatever they think the customers will pay.

As another point of reference a Street Doc gets 500 nuyen a day according to SR medicine tables. What this means exactly is of course unknown, but I would assume that is for someone operating out of a small clinic (perhaps with only one doctor) so the overhead is built into that number. However, that number might be low if they only trreated one person at a time. I would assume that number would have to be based on having a few patients (at least) paying that fee at all times, so the doctor is making a "decent" wage. And emergency services, along with any costly supplies would be billed as additional expenses but nurse salary, rent and ordinary supplies (like bandages and medkit supplies) would already be factored in. A good Street Doc might have very high overhead given the nature of the equipment and supplies you would need. So at 500 per day, or 15k per month you'd really be scraping by at Low-Middle Lifestyle or less with only one patient at a time.

So your buddy takes a bullet and is looking bad.. you don't want to take him to a corp hospital because they'll ask questions, but you have the number of a doc that does house calls.
What's he gunna charge you?
Well he might start at the same 150 nuyen per hour with a minimum of 1 hour.
Maybe he charges a 50 nuyen premium because its a rough neighborhood.
But he's going to charge you for the Trauma Patch (500 nuyen) with perhaps a little markup (600 nuyen)
And then another 100 (including markup) for the tranq patch to help your buddy rest comfortably.
So you might be looking at 900 nuyen.. but its better than dying.

[Reaver]

Overbyte has done a good job of laying it out.

Speaking as a contract worker for a construction firm, I can tell you what we bill for my time, is not the sane as what I get paid.

My last contract had a bill rate of $375 an hour, and of that, I saw $170/hour in pay and benefits. That other $205/hr goes to the company, and pays for the tools, toys, buildings, and Admin department. Whatever is left over at the end of the month, the owners take part of it as their pay and invest the rest back into the firm.
Basically, for the last 2 years I have made more as an employee then the owners.


An other way to look at this is:
When you go to the store to buy milk, which one do you buy? The one that expires in a day, or the one that expires in 2 weeks?

A mage selling a preperation has a lifespan of hours before it is useless, so what can he charge for such a limited time item? Who is going to buy such a limited time item at 'X' cost? After all, if the customer buys an item at noon, by dinner its useless (6pm).

Spells are a little different. For a spell to be quickened, your need an experienced mage (initiated) and he needs to know the spell. And he needs to have karma to burn....

All things that point to a more specialized service then a store front you can just walk into, have a spell cast, and walk out. For such services, provided the mage is willing, I would expect to see a price tag of several thousand PER casting. With no warranties on lifespan, effect or value..... And that's assuming the 'Law' allows the sale of active spells, which I am not certain it does. (I KNOW its illegal in some countries)

[Senko]

By and large I agree with you (which is why I've houseruled alchemy otherwise is practically useless) however there are exceptions. I used healthy glow specifically because it is one of those exceptions that could (legal issues aside) see good business at a high end health spa with multiple customers/casting per hour. This being because once cast its permanent (barring general wear and tear from your lifestyle as normal) with mechanical benefits to social and medicine lasting for 24 hours before people adjust. So you could easily have this being cast to ensure people are at their best for that important social event that eavening. Another would be stabilize in an emergency clinic (covered by health insurance per person), detox at detox clinics and so on.

[Kiirnodel]

For the most part, I think the discussion is pretty on-par for how you determine things like pricing, but I just wanted to reiterate that in the Shadowrun setting, spellcasting (in general) has never really been a particularly viable service. Not saying that magical items aren't, Talismongers are a time-honored profession. But a mage who is hired (by a private citizen) to perform spellcasting isn't something that is really seen. That's why I emphasized the idea that certain services might include spellcastings as part of higher quality service, but not necessarily something that you can really go into a shop and "order a spell."

There are a lot of reasons for this, and some have at least partially been mentioned. Preparations for example, have a short shelf life. Not only that, but they can't be triggered by anyone other than the original creator (or set up to to off after a certain amount of time, or by touch) which means you really can't order those preparations to go.
And of course as I mentioned before is the fact that handing out spells is potentially dangerous to the caster in more ways than one.

So my answer to the original question is that there really shouldn't be an easy "spells sell for X" answer. I don't think they should be readily available. But if you do happen to find a magician who is willing to sell their services, you can definitely expect a higher rate, or at least a hefty surcharge for the service provided.