I'm running the final fight for SRM 04-00: Back in Business tomorrow, and I'm wondering if it isn't a bit excessive that some smuggler trying to get an artefact that's apparently worth a couple of thousand nuyen, has hired magical defenses with a special ward and a bunch of spirits.
According to the adventure, if they deliver the artefact to a buyer, they get 2000 (up to 4000) nuyen each for the artefact. That makes it a total of 20,000 with optimal negotiation and a team of 5. From someone who has no claim of ownership, hasn't invested anything yet, but is very interested in acquiring it, so you'd expect this to be close to market value. It might be worth a bit more than that, but it's not going to be worth 100,000, especially considering it doesn't actually do anything.
The artefact is in the hands of a smuggler who has a ship and a warehouse, and abducted his client, the owner of the stone. His usual defenses consist of a couple of automated drones, which is fine. To protect this artefact, he apparently hired a quality mage who put up a ward and left a couple of spirits to defend the place. On top of a bunch of armed goons.
How much would such services normally cost? It feels to me like this should be a fairly small-time operation hoping to hit it big this way, but if he spends everything up-front on expensive defenses, he may end up risking more than he's likely to make on this.
I'm not an experienced GM, but I really feel like there should be some more loot to justify these kind of defenses. There's only a crate of very traceable pistols, but it'd be easy to at least give the smuggler an anonymous credstick or something.
I mean, the players are probably going to do their job no matter what, because they want to play Shadowrun. I suppose the mission has been designed to be balanced an interesting, and the total reward for the mission is more than just the value of the rock, but if the market value of the rock itself is only about 20,000 nuyen, and they ask why this guy put up so many defenses for it, I'd like to have an explanation for them. Is this reasonable? Does everybody who has something of that value to protect, hire a mage to summon a bunch of spirits and a ward for them? How much does it cost to hire a mage? Plenty of businesses seem to have far less defenses than that. Or am I wrong about that?