Request: Reduce DM Award Gold

Warmaster Horus said:

The Epic DM quest seems like an extreme outlying case, IMHO.

Click to expand...

If you're lucky enough to live in Wisconsin or any surrounding area, you've got plenty of options to run the Epic -- it's been run at GameHoleCon and is planned to be run at GaryCon, plus other conventions around the area have requested it (including my own local con, Con of the North). Given that the admins are seriously promoting the ability of local conventions to both request and run the Epic as well as to create their own AL content, I expect this will become more common as time goes by, which makes it all the more important to correct the imbalance in DM gold now, before it becomes a bigger issue.

I haven't seen DM gold being an unstable effect in my experience.

Click to expand...

I suspect you also haven't seen whooping cough or measles -- doesn't mean that not getting your immunizations is now a good idea.

I also don't accept player resentment as a reasonable cause to reduce DM rewards - if someone wants those rewards they can put in the work to get them, just like DMs do.

Click to expand...

It's not a question of 'player resentment' -- it's mathematically provable that DMs get a far larger amount of gold for a given amount of XP than a player character gets for that same amount of XP. It's a question of game balance, though fairness could be argued to come into the comparison as well. I don't mind if DMs get a bonus amount of gold compared to PCs; the problem comes in when the difference is so large that DM PCs can trivally do things that non-DM PCs have to seriously work for.

--
Pauper

Pauper said:

It's not a question of 'player resentment' -- it's mathematically provable that DMs get a far larger amount of gold for a given amount of XP than a player character gets for that same amount of XP. It's a question of game balance, though fairness could be argued to come into the comparison as well. I don't mind if DMs get a bonus amount of gold compared to PCs; the problem comes in when the difference is so large that DM PCs can trivally do things that non-DM PCs have to seriously work for.

--
Pauper

Click to expand...

Mathematically provable? Only if you ignore the largest source of DM XP, the DM Quests. Many of these provide XP with 0 gold, which actually leaves the total DM XP/gold ratio on the low side.

A quick look at my current totals show that the gold I have available to place on characters is 9% of the XP I have to add to characters.

rczarnec said:

Mathematically provable? Only if you ignore the largest source of DM XP, the DM Quests.

Click to expand...

And you are ignoring the other side of the PC coin, which is that player characters, during adventuring, often have to spend gold on things -- meals, mounts, consumables like healing potions, etc. Once higher than level 4, PCs even run the risk of having to spend cash on resurrection spells to keep playing, which is not a risk when simply adding DM XP and gold to a character's log.

The real argument to be made for DM Quests, though, is that they are a separate reward system from running adventures and should be treated as such -- adding gold to the DM Quests would be an obvious next step after reducing gold from DM awards from running adventures, to keep the systems in balance. In both cases, a balanced amount would appear to be 20% of the XP gained from a given quest or award.

--
Pauper

Pauper said:

It's not a question of 'player resentment' -- it's mathematically provable that DMs get a far larger amount of gold for a given amount of XP than a player character gets for that same amount of XP. It's a question of game balance, though fairness could be argued to come into the comparison as well. I don't mind if DMs get a bonus amount of gold compared to PCs; the problem comes in when the difference is so large that DM PCs can trivally do things that non-DM PCs have to seriously work for.

--
Pauper

Click to expand...

Does anyone other than you actually care about how much gold DM's get? I sure don't.

Pauper said:

And you are ignoring the other side of the PC coin, which is that player characters, during adventuring, often have to spend gold on things -- meals, mounts, consumables like healing potions, etc. Once higher than level 4, PCs even run the risk of having to spend cash on resurrection spells to keep playing, which is not a risk when simply adding DM XP and gold to a character's log.

--
Pauper

Click to expand...

The amount of cash that players spend after level 4 is immaterial. It isn't being ignored, it barely exists.

That is why most players have to look for things to spend cash on and end up buying ships and things like that.

Pauper said:

And you are ignoring the other side of the PC coin, which is that player characters, during adventuring, often have to spend gold on things -- meals, mounts, consumables like healing potions, etc. Once higher than level 4, PCs even run the risk of having to spend cash on resurrection spells to keep playing, which is not a risk when simply adding DM XP and gold to a character's log.

The real argument to be made for DM Quests, though, is that they are a separate reward system from running adventures and should be treated as such -- adding gold to the DM Quests would be an obvious next step after reducing gold from DM awards from running adventures, to keep the systems in balance. In both cases, a balanced amount would appear to be 20% of the XP gained from a given quest or award.

--
Pauper

Click to expand...

Why are you spending gold on meals? That's covered in lifestyle expenses. And you really don't need a mount. We even almost got in trouble at one con because one guy had a gazillion healing potions because there was nothing to spend his money on. So we just guzzled them down.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

Don't forget that players who play hardcovers often have opportunities to earn ridiculous sums of gold that far outstrip their XP award. And that never really causes any problems because gold doesn't do anything. They get to buy more healing potions, oh well. Having 50% of XP rewards turn into gold is a mathematically simple formula that works reasonably well, and on balance comes pretty close to player rewards if you account for the fact that players occasionally get hilariously high amounts from hardcovers.