My intent was to keep WoTC’s parcel system for magic items in order to preserve the power curve they’ve gone to trouble making while also adding more gold to the world to simulate day-to-day purchases and a real economy without throwing off the game balance.
As it is, 4e actually has two currency systems for magic items. You can use gold to buy items or you can disenchant magic items into “residuum” which can be then used in a ritual to create an item at 1:1 ratio in place of gold. 50gp and 50 residuum buy the same magic item. So what I purpose is keep the same parcel system as in the DMG but modify it.
The parcel system works by handing out items per level not per fight. During the course of earning one level, the group will receive magic items equal to: 1) n+4; 1)n+3; 1)n+2; 1)n+1; and gold equal to 2 times n (where n is the party’s level). If you have more than 5 players you add more items and less than 5 you take items away. Thus a group of 5 level 5 characters will earn a lvl 9, 8, 7, and 6 item and 2,000gp (two lvl 5 items worth).
What I suggest is that instead of handing out 2000 worth of gold, give out instead 2000 residuum and then set up the economy so that magic item shops only accept residuum as currency for items, not gold. There could be an exchange rate of 5 gold pieces equals 1 residuum (20% of its value, as per their standard 20% rule).
Along side the residuum change, the DM then can hand out whatever gold pieces he/she sees fit. Gold pieces can be used to purchase potions, mundane items, rituals, and ritual components. The DMG states that when you buy a magic item, it costs 10-40% above the market price (a service fee if you will), that 10-40% of residuum would be paid in gold not residuum. For example, a level 1, +1 magic long sword costs 360. If a person wanted to buy it from a store, he/she would pay the clerk 360 residuum and (lets say 25% mark up) 90gp.
So what does this do to the game? Gold is now irrelevant to a character’s power curve; gold now serves as fluff and “normal people” currency that makes the world feel good and alive. Gold is arbitrary so the DM can state: “an average farmer makes 40 gold a year. I want my PC’s to be richer than normal, so at level 1 they earned 500 gp”, etc., etc. Gold is now used to buy a house, buy a horse, get married and raise a child, book passage on a ship, open your own store, all of the fluff stuff that we’ve grown used to in earlier editions. It also puts in a profit motive for creating magic items. For example, with my artificer, I want to eventually open my own magic shop. With this system, I can now take 360 residuum and make a +1 sword. I can sell it for 360 residuum and 90 gp (or more), making a 90 gold profit. Do that 20 more times, and I will earn enough gold from profits to buy an additional 360 residuum. I can now sell 2 +1 swords at a time, and get richer, and richer. Will it happen over night? No, but it has a natural feel to it.
There is a danger that if the DM gives out too much gold, a character might buy 20% of its value in residuum and gain extra magic items, but that is just something that has to be controlled by the DM. Characters will be able to afford more mundane items (like arrows), potions, and rituals. I don’t see this as a bad thing. Potions are already self-balanced in that they use a healing surge; having many potions on hand will just help avoid a total party kill. Potions also use up a minor action and provoke opportunity attacks. As for rituals, there is already great concern that they are neglected because you have to fuel them with your wealth which is better spent buying items, so this will allow a lot more ritual use. Rituals are typically only usable outside of combat anyway, and because 4e is notorious for being too combat focused, I can only see this as a win-win. A character will not have infinite gold so therefore will not have infinite rituals but they will have a lot more than they would otherwise.
One last note on the parcels, if you want to avoid having to hand pick items for each character and using item wish lists, you can randomly give out the items of the appropriate level but then you have to allow the disenchant ritual to be able to break down that item to 100% of its value in residuum. In effect, they get random items and break them down and then turn them into something useful. It is certainly more flavorful: the monsters aren’t carrying around a Santa Clause sack of pre-selected goodies, and if the group doesn’t have a ritualist to break down and then create, they have to pay someone to do it (pay in gold not residuum). One potential sticking point is that a level 5 caster cannot use the rituals to break down a level 6 item nor create another level 6 item, so you’d be forced to pay a higher level caster, but that just fuels the economy even more.
I really don't understand what the problem is to begin with. It seems that you dislike that treasure parcels are by level and that you're not used to that, but expected wealth gain has always been by level regardless of whether it's specifically spelled out or not (similar to how party roles existed even back when they weren't specifically stated to). It also seems that you don't like how people don't use their gold to pay for houses, land food, general good, anymore when the truth is they never did anyways. I'm exactly as likely to use my gold to buy land in 4E as I am in 3.5 or 3E or 2E or whatever else. If this case is different with your particular players, that sounds like it's just their play styles, and play styles don't necessarily need to be fixed.
Really, if I were to play in one of your games, this wouldn't at all change how I spend my gold. I'd still keep it to buy magic items and cast the occasional ritual and wouldn't even think of using it to buy land.
I don't get the point. How will this encourage players to purchase mundane items, houses, etc. and perform rituals any more than it will encourage them to save up gold to get residuum to buy magic items anyways?
I really don't understand what the problem is to begin with. It seems that you dislike that treasure parcels are by level and that you're not used to that, but expected wealth gain has always been by level regardless of whether it's specifically spelled out or not (similar to how party roles existed even back when they weren't specifically stated to). It also seems that you don't like how people don't use their gold to pay for houses, land food, general good, anymore when the truth is they never did anyways. I'm exactly as likely to use my gold to buy land in 4E as I am in 3.5 or 3E or 2E or whatever else. If this case is different with your particular players, that sounds like it's just their play styles, and play styles don't necessarily need to be fixed.
Really, if I were to play in one of your games, this wouldn't at all change how I spend my gold. I'd still keep it to buy magic items and cast the occasional ritual and wouldn't even think of using it to buy land.
It encourages the purchases of mundane items because all of your adventuring items are provided through the parcel system, you're not losing anything in that regard. I did mention in my post that there is the temptation to use the gold for more items but the system slightly punishes that (5 gold equal 1 residuum) and it is something for the DM to monitor. The converting gold to residuum can even be dropped if it becomes a problem, it was only left there to provide a profit incentive for item creation.
What does this change/improve? The parcel system only provides enough resources for characters to deck themselves out in goodies to walk into the dungeon with. As they level, they buy better goodies that cost more. It is an arms race for dungeon crawling that leaves little for character growth/misc. expenditures. The 3.5 system had a gold curve but it had more wiggle room because instead of being handed X,Y,Z item and a pittance of gold, there was more liquid currency AND you could create more wealth through the craft systems. Also, we object to the "you want the item, here you go!" style of 4e. In 3.5, when we had gold to spend, we had to go search for a shop that sold X item. It couldn't be assumed every magic shop kept a complete stock of everything anybody could want.
Perhaps you never bought anything besides what you needed to adventure with in previous editions but that doesn't mean others didn't. If you were in my game and hoarded all of your cash to get another magic item worth 20% that gold value you'd be very, very bored waiting for another dungeon crawl to start while the rest of the party were building their keeps, air ships, building churches, etc. And with this system you can build that keep without it hurting your combat effectiveness.
Perhaps you never bought anything besides what you needed to adventure with in previous editions but that doesn't mean others didn't.
But that's really exactly what I mean. Under your system, somebody who plays in the same style of group as I do has no desire to do anything other than just do the same thing they' did before. However, I've also played in other groups where people did commonly purchase land and build castles and such, and in that kind of group, I don't see what's so broken about the 4E economy that this sort of group wouldn't continue to do the same thing that they were doing before, spending some of their gold on more role-play-oriented matters rather than purchase magic items for combat. In either case, spending gold on stuff other than combat items hurts combat effectiveness. Some groups care more about combat effectiveness, some don't. I just don't see what about this needs "fixing."
It just sounds like you're trying to force people into playing contrary to their preferred play style, and that doesn't quite sit well with me. If your group likes to spend lots of money on land and raising ostriches and building castles, then lower the difficulty of their encounters to account for their inadequate magic items or just give them more gold to spend to keep their combat effectiveness up to as should be appropriate for their level. If your groups doesn't like to spend lots of money on such things, then maybe make encounters a bit harder to match their improved combat effectiveness or don't give them quite as much wealth with which to improve that combat effectiveness. Aren't these solutions much simpler than trying to change how the entire economy of the game works?
Here is what's going on with our group. We got very, very tired of the imbalances between classes and styles in 3.5 so we came to 4e because of its vaulted balance; however, we were all flabbergasted by the economic system and its extreme deviation from what we know and like. The group WANTS to have gold to spend on luxury items and fluff but they DO NOT want it to hurt their combat effectiveness because it would change the game's balance (the whole reason we switched).
So the choices were to, like you said, alter the encounters to reflect their weaker combat ability or change the economy. It seems less like meddling with things to leave the fights alone and create a fluff-subsystem.
My system does not diminish the DMG 4e economy at all, it only adds to it. In that respect, game balance is not altered at all. You personally see it as (forgive me for generalizing your very well articulated and valid argument), "I'm (as a player) getting everything the DMG says I should get and you're giving me more gold? I'll buy more magic items". That puts you above the intended power curve. The way we see it is, "I'm getting everything the DMG says I should get, but I have extra that lets me play artistically". That keeps the intended balance while operationalizing the fluff of world/character building.
You seem to be unhappy about the wish list method of placing magical items. I don't like this either. When I DM, I don't ask for the wish list. I simply try to ensure that all (or at least most) items that players find are at least useful to someone in the party. I think players appreciate finding a magical item that they can use even if it is not the exact one they they want. If no one wears plate, I try not to put any magical plate armour in the treasure. Putting in a magical item they cannot use at all is a real downer. If players wear chain, I'll put in some chain armour, but (most likely) not necessarily the one with the exact enchantment that a player is hoping for. If players want to customise their gear, they can use the Enchant/Disenchant magic item rituals.
The only time I would have an item unusable by the party is if it is a story-based item. If players are looking for the treasure of some paladin who wears plate, it would make sense to find a suit of magical plate than magical leather.
You seem to indicate that your group has a shortage of gold for rituals. Do they just use of all of their gold to enchant or purchase magical items? If they are not blowing their gold on something else, then perhaps increasing the amount of gold will allow ritual casters more resources to use rituals. If they simply value enchanting items rather than saving for rituals, they just like one over the other. Perhaps you can encourage them to save gold for rituals by indicating within the adventure that certain rituals may be very useful.
See, my disagreement with you comes from your conclusion that the 4E treasure system doesn't allow your players to spend money on non-combat purposes and still remain combat-viable. They most certainly can. If you didn't use all your gold to buy combat items in previous editions, I don't see why you would think you need to do so in this edition. In every edition, you are less combat effective if you don't spend your gold on combat items and more combat effective if you do. If you got along fine this way in previous editions, you should also be able to get along fine this way in 4E. I still don't see where this problem is that supposedly needs fixing.
We honestly never stuck to the previous editions gold curves. During one 1st edition adventure the party ended up with like 10 million gold from one fight (sacking an air ship). In 3.5, we played it a little closer to the line but still very loose. So in effect, spending gold on fluff never hurt our combat effectiveness because we usually had too much gold per level anyway.
That imbalanced things though, to the point that it sometimes wasn't fun to DM. With 4e we want to walk that balanced line as closely as possible to keep the combat portion of the game working right, but we all love the role playing and are addicted to the big, fluff purchases and having disposable cash.
Here is what's going on with our group. We got very, very tired of the imbalances between classes and styles in 3.5 so we came to 4e because of its vaulted balance; however, we were all flabbergasted by the economic system and its extreme deviation from what we know and like. The group WANTS to have gold to spend on luxury items and fluff but they DO NOT want it to hurt their combat effectiveness because it would change the game's balance (the whole reason we switched).
Let me make sure I understand your groups issue. Your group wants to be able to spend their wealth on non-combat items without compromising their combat abilities. They found that in 3.5, they had to spend all of their wealth on combat items and were hoping that in 4E, they would not have to do the same. They are unsatisfied with 4E because the wealth system is similar to 3.5 in that spending your wealth on non-combat and fluff compromises your combat abilities.
The basic set of magical items a player would need would be the weapon/implement, armour and neck slot (for NADs) that enhance your combat abilities. I would figure that once the players have the complement of these three items, they more or less have what they need to be adequate in combat. There are also a limited number of magical item slots you can wear. Once you have a full complement of items that fill up all your slots, you should be more or less set and any further magical items may be a bit redundant an can be sold for gold to power rituals. Are there just so many other magical items that your players feel they need to get or they feel inadequate in combat?
You seem to want to keep the economics of magical item and mundane items separate. I guess you want to ensure that mundane items get purchased and rituals used instead of most of the wealth going to magical items. I'm not sure if this is necessary or will be well liked by some players. If someone wants to spend more on non-magical items, or more on magical items, you are simply limiting his flexibility. On top of that, everyone has to keep track of two pools of wealth.
Essentially, yes. Magic and mundane are separated and it encourages the purchases of non-magical items (which we've included as potions, rituals, etc.). If a player wants to buy non-magic items, they get to buy more because it is on the gold system. If a person wants to buy magic items, they get to buy the same amount of items as the DMG says they should for their level (everyone does, a difference in the system). No body is hurting at all except the player who wants to take the extra, free-given gold and buy more magic items than the parcel system allots for.
I really should have called the thread changing or altering the 4e economy because fixing probably isn't right. Fixing implies it was broken which isn't really the case.
We honestly never stuck to the previous editions gold curves. During one 1st edition adventure the party ended up with like 10 million gold from one fight (sacking an air ship). In 3.5, we played it a little closer to the line but still very loose. So in effect, spending gold on fluff never hurt our combat effectiveness because we usually had too much gold per level anyway.
That imbalanced things though, to the point that it sometimes wasn't fun to DM. With 4e we want to walk that balanced line as closely as possible to keep the combat portion of the game working right, but we all love the role playing and are addicted to the big, fluff purchases and having disposable cash.
If you find that players need more gold, why not simply try to increase the amount of gold in the treasure packets? Wouldn't that be a simpler solution?
I'm not sure how you manage the way players can acquire magical items in your game. Normally, the Enchant Magic Item ritual is the primary way players can custom pick the item that they want. Magical items that players find in treasure are generally a higher level than what players can create on their own using the ritual. This equates to roughly one fewer +1 of magical enhancement. Finding magical items (if the item is appropriate) would generally make the player more powerful than their enchanting their own items.
I generally do not like "magic shops" because it diminishes the thrill of finding a magic item of a higher level than them. If magic shops are too abundant and can too easily custom make items for players, it diminishes the usefulness of the Enchant Magic Item ritual as well as reducing the excitement of finding a higher level item.
Let me make sure I understand your groups issue. Your group wants to be able to spend their wealth on non-combat items without compromising their combat abilities. They found that in 3.5, they had to spend all of their wealth on combat items and were hoping that in 4E, they would not have to do the same. They are unsatisfied with 4E because the wealth system is similar to 3.5 in that spending your wealth on non-combat and fluff compromises your combat abilities.
The basic set of magical items a player would need would be the weapon/implement, armour and neck slot (for NADs) that enhance your combat abilities. I would figure that once the players have the complement of these three items, they more or less have what they need to be adequate in combat. There are also a limited number of magical item slots you can wear. Once you have a full complement of items that fill up all your slots, you should be more or less set and any further magical items may be a bit redundant an can be sold for gold to power rituals. Are there just so many other magical items that your players feel they need to get or they feel inadequate in combat?
Well in 3.5 you had to keep up with a lot of magic items at once to stay effective but that's a different story.
You're right, there are only really 3 or so items one needs to stay up to date in 4e so you could just spend remaining gold on fluff. The two objections I have are A) why should the player have to choose between getting married and supporting a kid or buying that cool magic item with a daily power he/she could have had if their character hadn't fallen in love. And B), why limit a system that works. Having a maxed weapon, armor, and neck with other magic goodies for fun is the balance the game made. So why change that to add stuff (like a family) that won't impact the combat/adventuring.
We like this system because it lets us play the same D&D 4e game everyone else is playing, while still having keeps, solid gold goblets, etc.
I really should have called the thread changing or altering the 4e economy because fixing probably isn't right. Fixing implies it was broken which isn't really the case.
Honestly, this was probably the source of most of my confusion.
Honestly, this was probably the source of most of my confusion.
I finally figured out how to change the title and I edited the first paragraph to remove the references to "problems" and emphasized that it didn't fit our style.
That being done, if you can understand where I'm coming from and why I've changed the economy, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not so arrogant to think that it's perfect and couldn't benefit from other great minds.
The two objections I have are A) why should the player have to choose between getting married and supporting a kid or buying that cool magic item with a daily power he/she could have had if their character hadn't fallen in love.
If your game includes issues like marriage, I would say that the game will get more complex to the point that whether or not to purchase a luxury (but not necessary) magical item is insignificant at that point. There is a tradition in western society where the ring is supposed to cost a significant portion of your yearly income. The character may have to deal with this issue in the game. There may be other benefits with that marriage. He may be marrying for wealth and the marriage may end up netting him better magical items. Dealing with such issues in the D&D game may be even cooler than buying a coll magical item that may marginally increase the character's combat effectiveness.
I don't think that it is entirely bad that characters have to deal with such issues of spending wealth on fluff or on combat effectiveness. For instance if a character has a business of some kind and that business needs an influx of cash in order to make payroll and other bills, it presents an interesting dilema for the character. It may not be much of a dilema. If the player wants this business as an important aspect of the D&D game, he would obviously save his business. Likewise, his character would feel that his business is likely more important that getting a luxury magical item.
Issues like this is what makes the role play aspect of D&D fun and interesting and cool. You cannot always separate non-combat and combat aspects of the game.
It's quite one thing to sacrifice a feat or power to gain roleplaying fluff and another to sacrifice wealth. Wealth can be more easily accumulated than character options. Everyone always has the same character options, but wealth can be adjusted by the DM. Obviously a good DM doesn't just hand out wealth to make up for any wealth used for fluff. The best way is to make an interesting adventure to accumulate wealth based on the fluff. As long as a non-low level character doesn't go broke for an extended period of time (thus only impacting combat effectiveness temporarily), I'm sure the DM and players can make everything work out more or less.
If you look at character death and resurrection rules, characters that have died suffer temporary combat penalties. A character who loses wealth will probably have to deal with something similar until he manages to reacquire some magical items and/or wealth to bring him more or less back up to par with the average character of that level.
And B), why limit a system that works. Having a maxed weapon, armor, and neck with other magic goodies for fun is the balance the game made. So why change that to add stuff (like a family) that won't impact the combat/adventuring.
We like this system because it lets us play the same D&D 4e game everyone else is playing, while still having keeps, solid gold goblets, etc.
Sometimes it make it interesting to have your magical items and wealth impacted due to story reasons. I think that as long as the impact is not too severe and not permanent, it can be incorporated into the game and still allow players to have fun.