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| #1TheRealOrionJun 20, 2009 11:20:11 | So the Wealth system has some fundamental flaws. That's been demonstrated to me, and I think I was the last to understand that. I thought, then, that we might brainstorm a few patches and fixes for those of us who like the system in theory, and would like to find ways to fix it in practise. So here's what I'd like: point out a problem with the Wealth system (an inconsistency, a cheat, what have you), and then suggest a solution. Please don't fill the thread with examples of how broken the system is without suggesting a way to fix it, and please don't just say that it's beyond fixing. I respect both those positions but, seriously, that's just not what this thread is for. Respect the topic. My first suggestion comes out of something Backstabbist pointed out:
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| #2DwarfFighterJun 20, 2009 13:05:35 | Within the current system, rewards are perhaps best represented by a purchase DC rather than the simplistic increase in Wealth bonus. If you express the reward as a purchase DC the the character can "sell" then you achieve the desired effect: A Wealth bonus +0 character will gain a huge increse from a purchase DC 20 reward while a Wealth bonus +20 character will only receive a relatively slight increase. I think this is a fair way to deal with things, and I use this method myself. There is a flip-side to this which isn't immediately obvious. The Wealth-to-dollars chart suggests that purchase DCs are non-linear: each time you add 8 to the purchase DC of a dollar amount you increase the dollar value by a factor of 10. So +8 means x10, +16 means x100, +24 means x1000 and so on. This analysis supports the use of purchase DCs as a measure of rewards. However, the automatic loss of Wealth bonus for purchases of purchase DC 15+ breaks this otherwise smooth mechanic. Disregarding, for the moment, the Wealth bonus loss for buying items with a purchase DC greater than your Wealth bonus, two characters that earn a single +1 Wealth bonus increase are each capable of buying one significant new item regardless of their respective Wealth bonuses. In this regard, the direct increase in Wealth bonus as a reward is perhaps a better mechanic. -DF |
| #3TheRealOrionJun 20, 2009 13:16:26 | And the PCs then "sell" the PDC going by the normal rules for reselling something, even if that PDC represent a bag of money? Cool. |
| #4dbayJun 20, 2009 13:51:43 | brilliant stuff I like that. A lot. So you use the wealth to money and actually say "hey guys, theres 50K in this suitcase." or the goons's gear as treasure. Now, onto the wealth 15 problem. My party got it's wealth bonus to the point where we had 3% of Earth's GDP by giving all of the guns we found off goons to one character. Possible Solution: Instead of a 15-point mark, it will be either 15 points or Wealth Bonus-X. I haven't decided on X yet, maybe 5? Ex: Jimmy the Squealer, who has a wealth bonus of 5, loses 1point for anything 15 or above (in addition to the normal penalties for buying above his wealth bonus). Joe the Wealthy-but-not-too-wealthy Publicist has a wealth bonus of 17, and the 15-point mark is still in effect. The Princess has a wealth bonus of 87, and if she buys anything of 82 or higher goes down a point. Problems with this system: It's too forgiving to wealthy characters. Its really hard to lose wealth points. You could buy a whole bunch of things 6 points below your bonus, then buy lots of expensive things, then sell the 6-point below things to go back up to almost as high as you were before. Maybe instead of Bonus-X it should be more complicated, like (Bonus/2) +X? (as an example) |
| #5backstabbistJun 20, 2009 14:50:48 | There really is no need at all for having the arbitrary PDC15 hit. Things are either above your wealth or not. If we remove any arbitrary hit, then the Wealth30 guys and the Wealth 9 guys each should take a hit at PDCs at straight multipliers of their of Wealth #. 1x Wealth 1.5x Wealth 2x Wealth Its not a matter of how well you can gather certain fixed numbers of cash, but can well you get Half your buying power / All your buying power / or even 150% leverage of your buying power.... dont matter if that is $500/$1000/$1500 or if its $20k/$40k/$60k. If you have Wealth 10 and buy a PDC9 item why should you loose less wealth than a guy with Wealth20 buying a PDC18 item? Both of you used 90% of your buying power, why does that make him poorer and not you? The plan of giving a bag full of PDC rather than a bag full of Wealth+ is that it will still be rampantly abusable if there are set PDC Wealth hits. Also, Princess will never gain wealth if we divide the bag of cash, it will just be a power creep that gives wealth to the rest of the party over & over while she gets nothing. To say she can use that as a seperate buying pool, why even have a wealth score of you are going to run a cash/gp/dollar/PDC curency system outside of Wealth? If you have to avoid the whole wealth system with bags of currency, to have the wealth system not be broken, then the wealth system is still broken. How many Wealth points does a BassBoat cost? That depends on if it is 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, or 2x your Wealth score. If it is 2x your wealth score, then it costs a lot of Wealth points, if it is just 0.5x your wealth score, then it Wealth cost is negligible. ..... works exactly the same for the PDC20 outboard boat and the PDC40 ski boat |
| #6dbayJun 20, 2009 19:07:40 | With Backstabbist's system, how much wealth should people lose? should it be a straight number, a die roll, or a fraction of their wealth? |
| #7nobodez_hereJun 20, 2009 20:54:08 | Okay, so, using the rules on page 204 of the MCRB and the addendum in one of the Bullet Points articles, you get the following table of expected Wealth values, assuming max ranks in Profession (add in Windfall and Occupation as needed). |
| #8TheRealOrionJun 21, 2009 14:15:47 | I'm having trouble following all of this. Can someone summarise? |
| #9dbayJun 21, 2009 15:24:25 | I'm having trouble following all of this. Can someone summarise? 'Kay. I'm not sure that I understand nobodez_here's idea. My plan: instead of the arbitrary wealth drop at 15, I think it should scale with levels. Instead of 15 it would be 15 or wealth bonus-X (I'm thinking X=5), whichever is higher. Everything else is the same. Backstabbist's plan, as far as I can tell, is to have specific wealth drops at fractions of your bonus. If you buy something equal your bonus, you lose a certain amount, if you buy something 1.5x you lose more, double you lose lots more. Does that help at all? |
| #10TheRealOrionJun 21, 2009 17:22:07 | That's making it a little more clear yeah, thanks. This is all in relation to buying things, right? That's the application we're talking about? |
| #11DwarfFighterJun 21, 2009 18:20:21 | Now, onto the wealth 15 problem. My party got it's wealth bonus to the point where we had 3% of Earth's GDP by giving all of the guns we found off goons to one character. Ok, while this may be a glitch with the Wealth system, please, please! note that the real problem is that the players are meta-gaming. If you're a gang of but-kickin' agents, street-fighters or honest-to-God adventurers, is it even remotely realistic or reasonable that you pack all the loot onto a single member? The first fix is to tell the players not to do this. Tell them not to try to abuse the Wealth system. It simply isn't robust enough to hold up against meta-gaming. As a rule of thumb, anything a player wants to write down on his character sheet as a significant possession he should by with his own Wealth check. A friendly sponsor may help. This is clearly detailed in the rules for aiding others. Building a Wealth mule to sponsor the party is exactly the purpose of the Aid Another rule in the Wealth rules! It costs the sponsor a point of Wealth bonus, so expensive items will cost the two characters involved in the transaction more in terms of Wealth bonus. Alan has a Weakth bonus of +10 and wants to buy a purchase DC 22 item. He doesn't have time to take 20 on the Wealth check so he asks Bob to help out. Bob has a Wealth bonus of +35 and so easily passes the DC 10 Wealth check to help Alan. Alan announces that he is taking 10 on the purchase and gets a 22 on the Wealth check. Alan now loses 1 + 1d6 points of wealth (purchase DC 15+, purchase DC is 11 to 15 points higher than Wealth bonus). Bob loses 1 point of Wealth (Aid Another). Had Bob bought the item and gifted it to Alan then the purchase would have cost Bob 1 point of Wealth bonus (purchase DC 15+). You should make sure that the players use this rule instead of having the Wealth mule buy "gifts" for the party. The immediate fix here is to disallow the use of "gifts" in this manner without some sort of compensation. Example house rule: Gifts A character may gift the PC with an expensive item. Even though no money changes hands, running expenses of maintaining the item still affects the character's buying power: with a car comes taxes, insurance and fuel costs. If the PC wants to accept the item he'll have to "buy" it: he takes the appropriate loss of Wealth bonus, but he really doesn't have to make a Wealth check or spend time shopping for the item. -DF |
| #12dbayJun 21, 2009 18:40:18 | We only used his money to buy party things. Like our island. And tanks. We bought BBC in order to get a voice in the media because the bad guy was spreading propaganda about us. All of our weapons, gear, and such were paid for by the character who would get the most use out of it. As for your gifts, couldn't the rich character maintain the expenses, too? Otherwise you're turning them into a white elephant. I think it unnecessarily restricts what players can do- also, by the same system, loot found would count as being bought, which is a little weird. We did metagame a lot though. We sort of had to, we had an insanely obsessively railroady GM and the only way we could get around his railroading was to be insanely powerful. |
| #13DwarfFighterJun 21, 2009 18:58:06 | Regarding the purchase DC 15 limit: As I stated earlier, the purchase DC 15 limit turns the Wealth system into a strange hybrid between exponentia and linear: A higher Wealth bonus enables you to buy items that are exponentially more costly in terms of dollar value, but you are limited in the number of items you can buy in that price range. If your Wealth bonus is x points higher than a certain purchase DC of at least 15, then you can buy x items of that cost before your Wealth drops to equal the purchase DC. That's the linear factor. E.g. Your Wealth bonus is +20. You can buy 5 items of purchase DC 15, leaving your Wealth bonus as +15. Of course, these items could be of purchase DCs 20, 19, ..., 15, but the point remains: Your current Wealth bonus is limited as to the number of purchases you make. While the Wealth bonus appears to be an exponential representation in terms of dollar value, this is a false impression. It is a simple mistake to add 20 to one's Wealth bonus and say: "this is what I can afford to buy, this is my net worth." It's a mistake, since even if you make that purchase you're likely to have some of your Wealth bonus left. Also, purchases in the "near Wealth bonus" range (1-10 greater) affect characters in the same way. Two characters with Wealth bonuses of +1 and +9 both lose a single point of Wealth bonus when buying a purchase DC 10 item. Think of having a high Wealth bonus as having a functioning economy rather than as having lots of cash on hand. Use your imagination to rationalise these oddities instead of looking to the Wealth bonus rules for an explanation: "Ok, my character has a Wealth of +10 but I rolled a 3 on the dice. So even though he can usually afford a purchase DC 23 notebook PC, his credit card is currently maxed out. He'll spend the next couple of days shifting some money around and then try again. I guess I could take 20 on the check... Which means he's gonna have to wait 460 hours rather than just 23. Ok, he orders a new top-of-the line PC on the 'net and it ships from abroad. He'll get it in three weeks." -DF |
| #14DwarfFighterJun 21, 2009 19:02:20 | As for your gifts, couldn't the rich character maintain the expenses, too? (1) 1. At this point I'd really question wether your characters were simply that player character's minions. I might suggest that your characters become NPCs under his control. 2. I find it hard to fault the Wealth system in such circumstances. You guys (GM included) made your bed etc. -DF |
| #15backstabbistJun 21, 2009 20:52:45 | E.g. Your Wealth bonus is +20. You can buy 5 items of purchase DC 15, leaving your Wealth bonus as +15. Of course, these items could be of purchase DCs 20, 19, ..., 15, but the point remains: Your current Wealth bonus is limited as to the number of purchases you make. yeah, the brokeness that will make Bill Gates poor after buying 40 glocks There is no reason Bill Gates should pemanently lose a Wealth point if he buys a Glock/Lexus/Condo (dont mater which, they are all 1 wealth cost to him). Just the same, Princess shouldnt gain a wealth point when we give her one of the guns off the 4 mooks we killed.... she is frickin rich and spent more on Goldleaf Truffle Lattes this morning than the gun is worth. When you have a +14 Wealth, a PDC13 item is expensive.... but when you are Oprah, a PDC13 item is couch cushion change... and the same goes for PDC16... chump change. The arbitrary PDC15 hit is dumb, cause it makes PDC15 equally 'expensive' to Wealth16 as BillGates Wealth50+ I say Starbucks coffe is expensive, my old pals say it isnt. Is it expensive? It is, to me, and it isnt, to them. If you have a Wealth6, $5 coffe is an expensive luxury, but to my Wealth18 pals it is just a cup of coffe. So, can we set a arbitrary PDC that is 'expensive' to everyone? Heck no. Cause if we do that, it will have to be around PDC5, cause the majority of the earths population are peasants making $1000/yr or less |
| #16TheRealOrionJun 21, 2009 21:37:12 | We bought BBC in order to get a voice in the media because the bad guy was spreading propaganda about us. The Beeb is a Crown Corporation. It isn't for sale. Buy Fox News. They're soulless sell-outs anyway. On the subject of "Wealth mules": I don't actually have too much of a problem with this! If one character's resources have been pumped into being "the rich one," then that is his or her super-power and everyone should just be grateful for it. Oliver Queen sponsored the Justice League of America, Giles bank-rolled Buffy, the Earl won the lottery. It's a literary tradition. As long as players don't use their money to eliminate the actual adventure, I don't mind, and that's part of the challenge for GMs: build adventures that cannot be resolved by throwing money at them. Eliminate money as a factor, or at least minimise it. More on-topic, I do see the realistic problem with the hard cap of PDC 15, regardless of your Wealth. I think the problem, though, is not just the hard cap but that that cap always costs 1 Wealth even though 1 Wealth for a poor person could represent $20 of their income, but for a really rich person, it could represent $200,000. The question is, then, how does it affect the game to remove that PDC15 cap? Is it a change we can live with? |
| #17dbayJun 21, 2009 21:44:59 | 1. At this point I'd really question wether your characters were simply that player character's minions. I might suggest that your characters become NPCs under his control. RE: RE: 1. I'm sorry? I don't see how having individual funds and a separate party fund makes us non player-characters. you do know that the difference between an NPC and a PC is that there's a player involved, and has absolutely nothing to do with wealth, right? Why on earth would I want to turn my beloved charismatic hero into an NPC because he wasn't the wealthiest character? he had a rich backstory, an interesting character concept, motivation, relationships, etc. Every character had his own wealth bonus, from his profession checks and stuff. One player decided to make his character extremely wealthy. He focussed his build around wealth entirely. We decided it was most effective for the party for him to get the loot that we found because a)wealth is nonlinear and b)it was his character concept. We would give magic swords to a fighter and magic books to a wizard, we give liquidatable loot to our Combat Accountant, as we called him. RE: RE: 2. The point was not why we did it, but that it was so easy to do it. It's not even unreasonable to give all the loot to one character- most people wouldn't think to take the guns from the corpses of their enemies and sell them on the black market. It's the sort of thing this person would do. Players shouldn't be forced to deliberately avoid the obvious best (mechanics-wise) solution to a problem because of how easy it is to break. It would be like making Wish a first level spell with no XP or GP cost and hoping the players don't use it, and calling them metagamers when they do. I simply don't see how you jump from me saying that it's easy to turn a large amount of SMG's into a ridiculous amount of buying power to the conclusion that me and my friends are non-people. Either I'm missing something or you're being an [edited out because children visit this forum]. |
| #18dbayJun 21, 2009 21:48:51 | More on-topic, I do see the realistic problem with the hard cap of PDC 15, regardless of your Wealth. I think the problem, though, is not just the hard cap but that that cap always costs 1 Wealth even though 1 Wealth for a poor person could represent $20 of their income, but for a really rich person, it could represent $200,000. The question is, then, how does it affect the game to remove that PDC15 cap? Is it a change we can live with? It will unbalance somewhat. For people who are wealthy, it will be really hard to lose wealth points if they are careful. The things that people really need in D20 (like guns) are mostly 15-22, more if you mastercraft it. So you'll start getting huge quantities of really good stuff. However, I'm not sure how useful it will be to have like, sixty BFG's when you only have two hands, so it might not be too bad. |
| #19backstabbistJun 21, 2009 23:10:57 | "So you'll start getting huge quantities of really good stuff" uh, yeah... thats why being rich is plain better than being poor. Yes, it will be hard for rich folks to lose wealth points buying the stuff poor folks buy... like guns and notebook computers. Back when my dad was working, his entertainment budget was orders of magnitude greater than my gross income was. If BigAl can budget a $100 impulse item a week on his income, and Princess can budget a $1000 impulse item a week on her income using the same % of income, then yes, Princess will have nicer things, and more of them, with the same burden on her income as BigAl.... they both should lose the same Wealth even though she can spend 10x as much |
| #20TheRealOrionJun 21, 2009 23:46:59 | I'll tell you why having fabulous wealth (or indeed, Wealth) doesn't bother me so much in d20M: you can't just go out and by a Holy Avenger +10 in the modern world. There's only so much money you can spend on game-changing stuff. Future is a whole different deal. I'm not touching that with a 10-ft. pole. Once you introduce "magic" (by whatever name you want to call it), then money makes a huge difference, but in a world where you can't just buy power like that, it soon just becomes points. I had a fabulously wealthy socialite hero in my last game. We most flavour-texted her repulsive opulence: huge apartment in the most expensive part of the city, a house computer that choses music for you depending on your body language, etc. What was interesting about her character wasn't that she was disgustingly rich, but what she chose to buy with her money. During a very public sting operation, she bought a dozen digital cameras and hooked them all into her laptop so that she could observe the whole street. That's a really smart use of resources. She could have just bought a nuclear warhead, I suppose, but the narrative circumstances were such that a Big Gun wouldn't have solved her problem, so she had to get smart about it, and she did. It was a brilliant moment of creative thinking. |
| #21dbayJun 21, 2009 23:48:15 | "So you'll start getting huge quantities of really good stuff" Well, put like that, it does seem pretty obvious. So we need to hammer out an actual mechanic. Also, does anybody here think that rich people should be able to buy things faster, too? Or is that just represented by the whole take 20 thing? I think we're mostly in agreement that the PDC 15 thing is the biggest problem with the wealth system, but its sort of important from a game balance perspective for their be some sort of deterrent from buying lots of expensive stuff. Should the wealth drop just come in when you buy something above your bonus? I still sort of like my bonus-5 system, but it was sorta spur-of-the-moment. |
| #22TheRealOrionJun 22, 2009 0:24:43 | A relative cap is better than a set cap, yes. Wealth -5 or -10 or something like that works pretty well, although at that point, you're going to need to wave it for exceptionally low Wealth scores. So how about this: A PCD equal to your Wealth Bonus -10 always costs -1 Wealth to purchase. But if your current Wealth Bonus is less than 10, this rule does not apply. The modifier (the -10) could be -5 or -15 or whatever, but the same rule woudl apply: you don't have to pay that 1 Wealth point if your Wealth score is lower than the modifier. Make sense? I'm just picking round numbers, here. Edit: um, wait, should that be a PDC equal to your Wealth bonus +10? I'm confused now. |
| #23dbayJun 22, 2009 3:08:39 | No, it's minus ten. I was thinking the minimum PDC would be 15 and then increase. So, if it's wealth-5 minimum 15, then someone at 14 can buy anything up to 14 no penalty someone at 18 can buy anything up to 14 no penalty, 15-18 loses 1. someone at 97 would lose at 92-97, with no penalty below 91. to summarise: You lose a point if you buy anything of 15 or over OR your wealth bonus-5, whichever is higher. You also lose points as normal by standard rules for things over your bonus. Do you think it should really be -10? you don't start noticing a change until you hit bonuses of 26 or so that way. -5 the change comes in at 21, which seems a little more reasonable. EDIT: I thought a bit, and maybe the 15 should be done away with altogether. it doesn't really make sense, does it? So, I still think it should be -5. Otherwise, someone at +15 (affluent, according to the SRD) can only buy up to PDC 5(some rope, 12 days trail rations, or a first aid kit) without taking a hit. At -5, they can buy a camping backpack or a swiss army knife without affecting long-term buying power. |
| #24DwarfFighterJun 22, 2009 3:26:56 | yeah, the brokeness that will make Bill Gates poor after buying 40 glocks 1. In my mind the purchase DC 15 threshold is there to give the players a sense of accomplishment when they make a significant purchase. This threshold fits the idea of the PCs being a gang of hard-working, hard-hitting adventurers. If you want the klind of wealth you see Lex Luthor, Ovliver Queen and Bruce Wayne flaunt then you can do away with the threshold altogether because it doesn't fit your theme. 2. Yes, a higher Wealth may mean that you have a more relaxed view of money. -DF |
| #25backstabbistJun 22, 2009 10:11:53 | 1. In my mind the purchase DC 15 threshold is there to give the players a sense of accomplishment when they make a significant purchase Bill gates buying a Glock is not an accomplishment. My dad buying a glock is not an accomplishment. Jimmy the Squeeler buying LUNCH is an undertaking he writes home about .... Jimmy says everyone should lose a point of wealth on PDC8 items, cause they are expensive to HIM no matter what your wealth is Which is what you are trying to keep in game: Eeverone loses a Wealth as PDCXX cause it is expensive to (who?) Jimmy says XX should be 8 cause below that is not expensive Princess says it should be 25 cause below that is not expensive Oprah says it should be 40 cause below that is not expensive Before you say PDCXX is expensive, you have to admit that 'expensive' is a subjective term An 2 Ogres is a TPK encounter ... oh, wait, you're a 10th level party not a 1st? Nevermind, you get no XP at all for killing the ogre. Is the pair of Ogres TPK? You say yes cause it is to just the newbs Is the +2 sword expensive? it is to the newbs but not to the 10ths |
| #26DwarfFighterJun 22, 2009 10:41:01 | Bill gates buying a Glock is not an accomplishment. And Bill Gates is not a PC. But for the average PC, the transition from not owning a gun to owning a gun is worth the loss of a point of Wealth bonus. -DF |
| #27TheRealOrionJun 22, 2009 12:20:27 | What "average PC" are we talking about? 3rd level? 10th level? 17th? The problem is that the system needs to scale, which is something that the 3e designers were not great at. The PDC 15 hard cap doesn't scale. Perhaps it should be set at 15 until your Wealth goes up to some higher number, at which point that cap becomes relative again? |
| #28DwarfFighterJun 22, 2009 15:06:14 | Well, assuming the players run their characters all they way to level 20 and they spend the same amount of time achieving the next level, then the average character level is 10. Exactly. -DF |
| #29dbayJun 22, 2009 15:18:59 | What "average PC" are we talking about? 3rd level? 10th level? 17th? The problem is that the system needs to scale, which is something that the 3e designers were not great at. The PDC 15 hard cap doesn't scale. Perhaps it should be set at 15 until your Wealth goes up to some higher number, at which point that cap becomes relative again? That's what I thought at first, but stabby is starting to sway my opinion. If your bonus is +5 and you buy something at +15, you already lose a whole lot. I think the -X thing is good, because then you can have really, really, really poor characters. When your guy is so poor that duct tape will put him in the red, that's memorable. You're like Peter Parker or Harry Dresden. Next campaign I play will have the cap at wealth-5, and I'll see how that goes over. |
| #30DwarfFighterJun 22, 2009 17:27:46 | So issue here is that you don't feel that the "arbitrary" purchase DC 15 threshold scales properly with the characters Wealth bonus. Well, here's a little news flash for you: it isn't tied to the character's Wealth bonus at all. Characters already take a hit for buying items that are costly in relation to their current Wealth bonus: 1 point for 1-10, 1d6 points for 11-15, 2d6 for 16-20. Changing the "threshold" to be based on the character's Wealth bonus is kinda meaningless since this only changes the above Wealth cost. I you really want to make this a dynamic threshold you might instead base it on the character level, e.g.: Character levels 1-5: threshold purchase DC 15 Character levels 6-10: threshold purchase DC 20 Character levels 11-15: threshold purchase DC 25 Character levels 16-20: threshold purchase DC 30 Or whatever suits you the most. Or even get rid of it completely. Just remember that its current effect is a bit like a safety valve: It ensures that the PCs will at least be spending some of their wealth and be all the more motivated to earn rewards through adventuring. -DF |
| #31dbayJun 22, 2009 17:44:13 | So issue here is that you don't feel that the "arbitrary" purchase DC 15 threshold scales properly with the characters Wealth bonus. Well, here's a little news flash for you: it isn't tied to the character's Wealth bonus at all. That's exactly the problem. |
| #32TheRealOrionJun 22, 2009 18:39:52 | I you really want to make this a dynamic threshold you might instead base it on the character level This is an intriguing suggestion. Seriously, I think it deserves some thought. If the problem is people of low level buying stuff that's game-changing then this kind of floating cap would work pretty well, actually. I mean, there's no realistic reason for it, but in game terms, it could be exactly what we're looking for. To figure the proper cap, we'd need to determine the average Wealth bonus of a 1st-level character and then subtract that number from 15 (if we were to key it to the original PDC 15 cap). Then you'd end up with a cap of "Character Level + X." |
| #33backstabbistJun 22, 2009 20:35:16 | When Jimmy the squeeler reaches 15th level, he will still have a hard time gathering the cash to purchase a Ham Sandwich. What on earth does the number of things you have killed in your life (XP & Level) matter when you have a metric of buying power called WEALTH that is exactly that the characters metric of buying power. WEALTH determines if you have a hard time affording something... it is the meter of how much you can afford: You can afford things below your Wealth without losing anything. How rich or poor you are has nothing to do with your level. Princess is the same level as Jimmy the Squeeler, she is rich and he is poor. Jimmy says the plane ticket is kinda expensive, lets get cheaper tickets Princess says the plane is kinda expensive, lets buy a cheaper plane. Same level, ones rich & ones poor: Different tiers of what is hard to afford. Character levels 1-5: threshold purchase DC 15 Maybe we would say that as PDC (Level+10) will cost you a wealth point. Or maybe we would say it like Purchases with PDC(Wealth) will cost you oh... we have that Wealth determines what PDCs you can afford without losing buying power. Why try to tell Jimmy that PDC15 is expensive when he has a hard time buying a movie ticket. And dont expect an apology from Princess when you tell her that PDC15 is expensive and she laughs in your face. Although, she might give you $500 since you are so destitute... she is philanthropic that way... what a nice lady Its very simple we already have a scaling metric of what PDCs you can afford without losing Wealth. It is the Wealth score. Jimmy loses wealth on PDC6 items, Princess and BigAl dont. BigAl loses wealth on PDC14 items, Princess dont Princess shouldnt lose wealth buying a PDC20 item, since it is a good bit below her wealth score |
| #34TheRealOrionJun 22, 2009 20:44:26 | Dude, seriously, no need to be snotty about it. It's a game balance issue, not a "realism" issue. It's not a realistic game to start with. If it were, your PCs would have to actually work for their money. If your goal as a GM is keep PCs from buying things way out of whack with their general power level, then putting a cost-cap in relative to level will help with that because even the disgustingly wealthy will make themselves poor if they buy crazy-expensive stuff. I think it's a great idea if that's your goal as a GM. House-rules are just that: rules of your house. You can use them if they seem like a good idea to you. Removing the cap entirely is a house-rule too, BTW, XP is not a measure of "how many things you've killed." At its most simplistic, it's a measure of "how many dangerous situations you've defeated," and when it's more complex, it's "how many narrative experiences have you had." If your players earn XP only by killing things, well, that's a different game than what I play. |
| #35backstabbistJun 22, 2009 21:14:18 | Oh, we are looking for a way to have artificial game balance stop rich folks from having nice things. Why didnt you say so earlier. you guys have a good time with that, its not the way I roll, so I'm outta here cause my group plays Cash & Carry... Wealth just dont work or make sense |
| #36TheRealOrionJun 22, 2009 21:28:56 | All game balance is artificial. RPGs are constructs that, when they're working, maintain a certain generic/narrative mode. Depending on what kind of narrative mode you want, you can choose different ways of implementing game balance, but it's all artificial. The Wealth system's built-in artificial game balance makes it harder to make money when you already have money. To more closely simulate actual modern Capitalism, we should add +1 to your Profession check for every +5 to your Wealth. You got to have money to make money, after all. What we're looking for is various tweaks that people might find useful depending on the kind of game they want to play. If you're playing "cash and carry" (which I assume means "smash and grab"?), then you might as well just use actual cash. In a superhero game, Wealth means a lot less on a per-adventure basis (superheroes don't "loot"), but way more depending on your character type (e.g., wealthy playboy), so I have different in-game results I'm shooting for. Your mileage, as always, might vary. |
| #37DwarfFighterJun 23, 2009 3:43:58 | cause my group plays Cash & Carry... Wealth just dont work or make sense Well, that pretty renders any advice you have on the Wealth system worthless beyond "It doesn't work for me!" I'll thank you not to waste our time in the future. -DF |
| #38backstabbistJun 23, 2009 9:47:10 | Well, that pretty renders any advice you have on the Wealth system worthless beyond "It doesn't work for me!" I dont like eggs, but I can tell ya how to cook them without wasting your time if you want to talk about how to cook eggs. I will refrain from applying your logic to others here, such as those that give all kinds of firearm rule advice yet dont shoot, because it would make me rude and condescending think about that If you require folks to be playing just the RAW to give commentary on what is broken in RAW and house ways around it, then this will become a very quiet board. Perhaps next you would like to CyberDave to not talk about fixing Ships because he isnt using the broken RAW so he is wasting your time. Is all CyberDaves ship talk worthless to you? You gonna tell Johannixx to not talk about shotguns because he isnt playing the bad RAW for shotguns? Is he wasting your time too? Is all Johannixx's shotgun advice WORTHLESS to you? I cant wait to hear how the SQRL101 caliber damage table is a worthless waste of time to you cause he aint playing RAW. You have some very high standards. Perhaps you should denote which threads are only open to posts from folks playing that subject with just RAW and no house fixes. |
| #39DwarfFighterJun 23, 2009 10:42:53 | Ok, I don't want to start a flame-war, so I'll start off with apologizing for... Damn it! I was entirely convinced that you were having actual problems with the Wealth system, but that for some reason you were just using it wrong. I guess it would have helped if you made it more clear earlier that you are, in fact, not using the system. That way I could have saved myself the effort of trying to help you out by offering my own suggestions. I want to apologize for implying that your contribution has been an unqualified waste of time. It's been a waste of my time, but I can't make the same claim for every other user on this forum, of which at least one has responded positively to your posts in this thread. -DF |
| #40TheRealOrionJun 23, 2009 11:08:15 | Guys, this is the kind of stuff that gets us in trouble. Backstabbist, the sarcasm does not become you. You're capable of rational discourse. Dwarffighter, there's no reason to react with righteous indignation. It's just a game. None of us should ever forget that. I'm quite willing to entertain Backstabbist's thoughts, even on rule systems that he doesn't use, because if nothing else it gets me thinking about different kinds of application. I'm not delighted when he switches to sarcasm to make his point, but what the hell do I care? It's the interwebs. There's lots of room on here. My mouse is even equipped with a scroll button for just such an emergency. To speak to the rule issue at hand, I think what we've seen is that different money/wealth rules fit different kinds of games. Backstabbist wants to play a game that's all about the swag, grabbing big sacks with dollar signs on the side (fair characterisation?). I want to play a game where money is a secondary consideration at best, a tambourine that occasionally makes a little tinkling noise while the rest of the band rips off their solos. As such, he and I are going to want (and should pursue) very different kinds of rules around money. We've seen some great suggestions for those kinds of changes in this thread. Let's all just take away what we think is useful and fun and not get in each other's way, okay? |
| #41MechaPilotJun 23, 2009 13:55:50 | I think we all know that Stabby and I are usually polar opposites on most things, but I do agree with him about just using a cash system. Cash is much easier as a mechanic and much easier to explain to players who are entering the game. It's also probably why SWSE went with credits instead of a Credits bonus. That being said, there have been some good ideas about how to make the wealth system less broken than it is in the RAW. Probably the best of these so far has been from Stabby. All we need is to find a way to slide the DC 15 wealth loss for wealthy characters. Maybe if we tied it to a character's Profession skill level, since that's the skill that earns their cash. This way, Jimmy the Squealer (who has little/no job experience) can be level 20 wihtout affecting the wealth loss (though I doubt a street snitch is gonna live long enough to get higher than level 5). I still don't have a good way to alter the "bag o' variable cash" wealth award, but another suggestion I have is dropping the die rolls for wealth loss. My players and I always felt that additional bit of randomness was unneccesary and just used an average of 3 on a d6 roll. |
| #42narukagamiJun 23, 2009 14:44:58 | I think we all know that Stabby and I are usually polar opposites on most things, but I do agree with him about just using a cash system. Cash is much easier as a mechanic and much easier to explain to players who are entering the game. And then I get a credit card, and the entire cash system falls apart. The complexity of modern-day economics and buying ability is precisely why a straight-cash system doesn't work. Unless you want to play d20 Accounting, or Mongoose Publishing's Armageddon 2089, which are the same thing. :P Personally, I like the idea of what threshold actually impacts your wealth score scaling with your wealth bonus, and handling rewards as a "sold item" of a particular PDC. Seems like a solid quick-fix. |
| #43MechaPilotJun 23, 2009 15:02:13 | And then I get a credit card, and the entire cash system falls apart. The complexity of modern-day economics and buying ability is precisely why a straight-cash system doesn't work. Unless you want to play d20 Accounting, or Mongoose Publishing's Armageddon 2089, which are the same thing. :P Well it's granted that a cash-only system has it's issues. I don't want to rp negotiating a loan for some adventuring gear. It did solve things for the group I was playing with at the time, who had a problem grasping the mechanics of the wealth system. As far as the sold item thing goes, I've done that too. I didn't want to say they found so much wealth bonus in the bad guy's wallet, so I said they found credit cards they could sell to a fence (one card for each of them). I guess this could be a problem if they were more heroic characters, but they were vigilantes afterall. And to quote the movie Blade "This ain't exactly the March of Dimes." |
| #44TheRealOrionJun 23, 2009 15:09:53 | I think we've got a line on a few good ideas, here. The PDC Cap can be tied to Wealth score, Level, or Profession. We could try to hash out which of those would be most appropriate? These different choices would represent richness/poverty very differently. Tied to Wealth score, it's straight up "Wealth = access to money." Full stop. Tied to level, you're normalising Wealth to level progression. Tied to ranks in Profession, you're linking it to your ability/status within your job. I must say, now that it's been suggested, I kind of like that last one. |
| #45backstabbistJun 23, 2009 23:28:58 | ok, so we are done with the personal junk, lets move on If there were no fixed tier like PDC15 = 1Wealth then when you find a bag of PDC20 cash Princess wont go up any wealth, because Princess wouldnt lose any wealth if she bought PDC20 The brokeness of a Bill Gates or Princess selling a Glock raising their wealth is gone. If she sold 10 PDC15 items, she shouldnt be any richer casue they are well below her Wealth score. What is the purpose to have a wealth score, if not to determine what PDCs you can easily afford, and how much a purchase over your wealth stresses your wealth. Nothing should determine how much you can afford except your Wealth score. -- If you want it tied to levels... no problem, every time you leavel you gain by the Profession check. Low level guy make fewer checks and gains. -- If you want it tied to Profession Skill, great, it is just that in the leveling check Maybe we should look at stopping folks from acheiving abusive Wealth scores that break the fragile system |
| #46TheRealOrionJun 24, 2009 0:19:39 | Maybe we should look at stopping folks from acheiving abusive Wealth scores that break the fragile system Okay, shoot! What you got? |
| #47backstabbistJun 24, 2009 0:44:50 | for starters dont give wealthy folks another point for each Glock they sell If they sell something under their Wealth, they get nothing. Me & BigAL get some Wealth when selling PDC14 items, Jimmy gets a big boost selling PDC14 items, Princess doesnt gain any buying power by selling PDC14 items, nor PDC16, and not even PDC17 As such, it would turn around that Me & BigAl would lose some when buying PDC14 Jimmy would lose a lot buying a PDC14 and Princess wouldnt lose any buying PDC14, or PDC16 or PDC17 Next, restrict the times you give out Wealth+X rewards. Figure out what a decent PDC reward would be and give that. Most of the time Princess will not go up any Wealth while the rest of the party might get a point or few Again, this will slow down the freakishly high wealth folks from getting richer. If you can only gain a Wealth by selling stuff over your wealth score (and leveling with non-insane Profession ranks) then we should get non-insane rich PCs |
| #48TheRealOrionJun 24, 2009 1:14:40 | That's a great idea. I love it. House rule: adopted. If I weren't in the middle of a kinda huge project right now (sort of, um, finishing my PhD as we speak!), I would volunteer to compile all this stuff into file and host it for a while. |
| #49backstabbistJun 24, 2009 9:18:47 | Unfortunately, this doesnt address the problem of infinite count of affordable purchases. Jimmy would have to sell 4 used cordless drills (PDC8), each would be above his wealth and raise his wealth a point, to raise his Wealth to 8 At that point, he may purchase an infinite number of cordless drills. If me or BigAl sell 4 or 5 Glocks we can then buy an infinite number of Glocks If sells X number of , they can then buy an infinite number of that item. For Jimmy, sell a few coffee makers, and he can get afford an infinite number of coffee makers... and under RAW it dont take long to buy/sell a coffee maker cause it is cheap. This shouldnt be, cause it takes Jimmy a good long time to search the couch cushions and car ashtrays to come up with the funding to buy a coffee maker.... as much time as it takes Princess to shift account balances to buy the 60" plasma TV. Purchase time should reflect how expensive an item is to the buyer, not arbitrarily set purchase times by PDC alone. It should take Jimmy a lot longer than Princess to buy the same coffee maker from the hip, for discussion- Hours = 10 x (PDC/Wealth) PDC8 Jimmy, 10x ( 8 / 5 ) = 16hr BigAl, 10x ( 8/12) = 7hr Princess, 10x ( 8/24 ) = 3hr PDC18 Jimmy, 10x ( 16 / 5 ) = 32hr BigAl, 10x ( 18/12) = 15hr Princess, 10x ( 18/24 ) = 7hr hmmm, maybe 10x is a bit high... perhaps 8 or maybe even 5 to scale all of i down a bit |
| #50nobodez_hereJun 24, 2009 17:48:20 | Okay, well it seems that I've instituted a rule that would easily solve most of these abuses. It's called a multiplier. Simply put, if you want yo buy a quantity of something, you don't buy them individually (or sell them individually for that matter). Instead, you buy (or sell) in multiples. Assuming a base item PDC of 9 (chosen because it's the smallest of the +8/x10 PDCs), the following table emerges to detail the multiples and the increase in PDC. |
| #51backstabbistJun 24, 2009 22:43:48 | Kill 4 mooks on Tuesday, sell their guns & watches & nikes and each PC gains a wealth (except Princess) Kill 5 mooks on Thursday, sell their guns & watches & nikes and each PC gains a wealth (except Princess) Kill 2 professionals on the weekend, sell their PDC X + PDC y + #PDC z stuff for a combine 'multiple' PDC of 30... which gets split to PDC26 each, and even Princess gains a Wealth The problem is not when the PCs kill everyone at a Lair and have a sack full of guns to sell... that is when the Multiple would come into play to raise the PDC as a single transaction. The problem is that after pretty much every gunfight the party will have just a few guns to sell, and when they split the loot each PC gets 1 gun to sell.... and this will happen 3 or 4 times a week Why would the pc choose to keep a trunk full of guns he looted off folks he killed, considering that a) metagaming will give more wealth if you sell them as you get them b) when the police find the gun owned by some 'murdered' guy (the mook you got it from) in your box, along with some guns used to murder other folks (the mook you got it from killed them now you're holding the gun)... you will ride the lightning for mass murder |
| #52DwarfFighterJun 25, 2009 2:31:06 | In my group we also use a similar mechanic for buying items in bulk: Quantity * 2^n = purchaseDC + 2n (Each time you double the quantity you add +2 to the purchase DC) So any number of five to eight Glocks at purchase DC 18 means a quantity multiplier of 8 which means you add +6 to the purchase DC. I also use a system for combining purchase DCs:
Notice that the order you pair up purchases is rather important so it makes sense to pair up the lower cost items first. On the other hand it's quicker to write up a list of stuff and pair up new items with the running total as you go. These systems do nothing to counter Wealth hoarding (quite the opposite, in fact!) but they make for good ways to determine a purchase DC for equipment packages quickly. -DF |
| #53TheRealOrionJun 25, 2009 15:47:48 | As someone who doesn't do math on a regular basis, this stuff is already far far far more complicated than I want my in-game calculations to be. If you want to fix the system, you need to come up with math that anyone can do. Personally, I'm willing to sacrifice some "reality" (ha ha ha) and open a loophole or two, in exchange for numbers I can scan by eye and calculate without need of a slide-rule. That's just my opinion, though, and I don't mean to dismiss the work you're doing on the problem. I just honestly can't follow the numbers, and I suspect there's a lot of gamers like me out there. |
| #54MechaPilotJun 25, 2009 16:00:12 | When my players (in one of the groups that used the wealth system) used to buy or sell in bulk; I took the dollar value of the Purchase DC for one of those items, and multiplied it by the number they bought or sold to find the total dollar value. Then I consulted the CRB table to find out what the Purchase DC was. One of my players, under the RAW, wanted to buy thousands of boxes of ammo, storing them till needed. Naturally, he could have also sold that ammo when he was low on cash later on; so I said no. I told him he would have to buy the entire lot at it's Purchase DC, which he clearly could not afford to do even if he took 20 on his check. I've always found that to handle most bulk-item issues. |
| #55dbayJun 27, 2009 15:21:30 | I let the players decide depending on the purchase, they can do the double=+2 or buy them individually. The first has the advantage of being a lot faster, but the cost adds up quickly. The other might let them hit infinite, but takes forever. It's worked alright so far, I'm 99% sure it could be broken like a bad kobold given a fair amount of thought, but nobody's tried it. I'm going to start using Backstabbist's higher PDC selling house rule thingy. |
| #56narukagamiJun 27, 2009 15:38:45 | I was just thinking: How about a hybrid system, sort of an "abstract cash" system where Wealth points are just that, points to be spent on buying things. The points themselves are still an abstraction of your purchasing power and not a 1=$1 representation. For ease of conversion you could leave all the PDCs of items alone, just say thats how many "Wealth Points" they cost instead. So a PDC 15 item in this system would instead cost 15 Wealth Points to buy. Rewards could be simple because a bag of money could be "+10 Wealth Points." The only real work that would have to be done is figuring out how many Wealth points a PC starts out with and gets from profession/Windfall/ect. Because unlike in Modern where you could potentially buy infinite PDC 14 items, every time you buy one it subtracts 14 points from your total. |
| #57backstabbistJun 28, 2009 0:40:16 | By making Wealth Points turn into Wealth Pieces (wp) such as saying you lose 8wp when you buy a PDC8, and you lose 15wp when you buy PDC15, you are leaving any single wp be a variable amount. buying a PDC1 (half a ham samwich) every day for 18 days would cost you 18wp, while buying a PDC18 glock (stack of hundred dollar bills) would also cost you 18wp. If you had 18wp and ate lunch for PDC1, you would lose 1wp, and you lose hundres of dollars of buying power as you can only buy PDC17 items rather than PDC18... lose $hundres of buying power over half a ham sammy You cant aply linear WP math (add&sub) to the exponential PDCs without a logic failure in how much buying power a WP has... sometimes its worth a sandwich, and sometimes it means you get a Porche in the garage of the condo you bought for just 1PDC more than the condo |
| #58goblinbunnyJul 02, 2009 16:04:27 | You cant aply linear WP math (add&sub) to the exponential PDCs I don't think Narukagami intended to keep the same exponential dollar values assigned to the Wealth system. More like using D&D GO system, essentially just a cost in dollars without having to fiddle with inflation. At my table, we simplified things a lot by just eliminating the selling rules. PCs can only increase their Wealth scores by leveling or for story reasons (marrying wealthy, finishing a big mission and getting a bonus from the organization, ect). To balance the loss of additional wealth bumps, I cribbed the concept of the Windfall from Polyhedron #161 (Pulp Heroes). Windfalls (not to be confused with the feat) are a reward that gets handed out to represent big financial rewards, like finding a stash of gold bricks or stolen Nazi paintings. At any given time, a hero can spend a Windfall to gain a +5 bonus to a single Wealth check and suffer no Wealth loss for buying above their means. The system is very fast, the Windfalls make for a fun reward I can hand out relatively often, and so far I haven't had any player complaints about the changes. |
| #59DwarfFighterJul 03, 2009 5:39:06 | If you want to support the exponetial cost then I guess you could treat purchase DCs as an open-ended range of "copper, silver and gold pieces". E.g.: 1 item of purchase DC 9 = 10 items of puchase DC 1 (due to the +8/x10 paradigm). So a character could have a "Wealth inventory" like this: ... 16 - x4 18 - x1 27 - x2 ... Buying a single item with purchase DC 8 would cost 1/10 of slot 16, leaving the player with this: ... 8 - x9 16 - x3 18 - x1 27 - x2 ... It would be pretty awful to handle this in practice... -DF |
| #60TheRealOrionSep 23, 2009 13:58:12 | I just had a thought on the Bag Of Money problem: What if you treat the bag as if it has its own Wealth score? It really is a Bag of Wealth 5. It loses Wealth if you make purchses out of it. It potentially even gains Wealth of you stell stuff and add the money to it. I'm not clear on how you'd divvy it up between people, though. Does that get us anywhere? |
| #61backstabbistSep 23, 2009 15:27:50 | oooooh, thats an interesting concept I would suggest we have all transactions that incur a d6 in the change to Bag Wealth,
I dont know if we should do a Split that yeilds another Wealth Bag... but we should be able to make PDC Bags from it (with the proper hit to the original bag wealth). I dont know... it might get abused like the PDC Bag |
| #62TheRealOrionSep 23, 2009 20:58:30 | Honestly, I'm way less concerned about whether it could get abused, because a creative gamer can always find a way to abuse a rule. What I'm concerned about is whether it's straightforward enough that people will mostly just treat it the way it's intended. The biggest problem with Wealth is not, I think, that it's totally broken (although it is full of holes). The problem is that it's full of weird and counter-intuitive rules that people can't remember; therefore, they think they've found a huge loophole even if there's a rule against it, because they can't remember what the hell the proper rule is. I think "Bag of Wealth 5" could be a useful stop-gap. I figure if a party finds a Bag of Wealth 5 (or whatever), they might just end up spending it during the course of an adventure, so there'd be no need to divvy it up at all. Avoid some headaches. When you get a bag of money, it should not automatically integrate into your personal finances. It doesn't just go "into your backpack," or for that matter, it does not instantly integrate into your bank account and notify your credit-cards. In the modern world, getting a big bag of money is actually kind of a pain in the ass. What we really need, though, is a clean way to divide the bag up between X number of people, and then yield a number of PDCs that those people can then "transact" to their own Wealth. I'm also instituting your earlier rule that PDCs below your Wealth never add to your Wealth, so that divvied-up PDC is what I'm really after. I'm writing my chosen Wealth tweaks into Phoenix and I really want to solve that problem. Alternatively, the party could incorporate (why not?), and get a joint account that has one big Wealth pool. Bag of Money 12 becomes Bank Account 12. Thoughts? |
| #63backstabbistSep 23, 2009 22:52:04 | Alternatively, the party could incorporate (why not?), and get a joint account that has one big Wealth pool. Bag of Money 12 becomes Bank Account 12. well, that is basicly what you have with the Bag Wealth12:
If the GM rewards the party with a Wealth12 Bag, |