On character wealth an d game balance

Greenfield said:

One of my favorite 4e absurdities was that you could take a room, fill it with dynamite, padded with gun-cotton, soaked in nitroglycerine, and hit it with a Fireball, and nothing would happen. Unlike all previous editions, they left out the text that said it affected everything else in the area. as written it affects "targets" in the area, with "Targets" defined as "living creatures". So the explosives are perfectly safe.

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And in 3e the tubes of dynamite and explosives would be unaffected if creatures were holding them, since fireball damages creatures and unattended objects, and items creatures are carrying can only be damaged if you roll a nat 1 on the saving throw. And even then there's an order in which the items are damaged.

The general philosophy in 4e is that, basically, the rules are abstractions for certain purposes, not the ultimate rules and facts of the gaming world. [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] did a lot of the work for me, but I’ll add: the cost of components is what the PC pays for such components. With a merchant.
The system was devised for adventurers buying and selling stuff, not merchants. The rest of the economy works in any way the DM wants to work.
In addition, there are rules regarding damaging objects. In fact, almost every power that target living beings can affect objects too, at the DM discretion; such tricky terrain effects are, in fact, encouraged; and add to that page 42.

What I'm getting, on the crafting of things in 4e, doesn't sound like rules citations. If I'm wrong, please correct me (and cite some actual rules).

No disrespect, but I can rationalize the irrational as well as anyone here. (Okay, maybe not anyone, but you get my drift.)

I wasn't saying the game was unplayable, just humorously flawed. I was pointing out an oddity in the Rules as Written. Like the fact that the Fireball spell (or any radius-based AOE) actually fills a cube, not a ball. Diagonals are counted as one square, so the "blast template" is always square. Yet somehow Fire Cube lacks that something special. It just sounds wrong.

Every game system has it oddities. To have a truly realistic game, in all details, would call for a Basic World Rules set the size of the Library of Congress.

My point was that, while the D&D 3.* economy is clearly broken, the system is hardly unique in that way. For 4e they put a lot of work into codifying a way to keep greedy/manipulative players money making schemes in check.

In my work we have a saying: The chief cause of problems is solutions.

It happens to be true at play too.

Greenfield said:

What I'm getting, on the crafting of things in 4e, doesn't sound like rules citations. If I'm wrong, please correct me (and cite some actual rules).

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That's right - there are no 4e rules for PCs operating a business. So it would be wrong to say that the rules mandate PCs who make things sell at a loss, or at cost of materials.
We do have some indications here and there of how things could be run, such as the 20% 'rule' and the 10-40% markup 'rule', which I have found helpful in thinking about how NPC merchants and crafters operate.

But the 4e rules do not describe the economy of the 4e world.

It's not that there aren't rules for "PCs operating a business". The rules are there, they just don't allow *anyone* to operate a business profitably.

You want to limit PC business opportunities, write a rule about the required down time to create that business, to establish business relationships that allow people to access raw materials from the source (and thus cheaper).

Or maybe you write, "To make any real profit in crafting, be it magical or mundane, means giving up the adventuring life."

As it is there's no reason to ever take a crafting skill or feat. Everything you might craft for yourself is just as easily purchased, with far less down time.

regarding damage to gear: By the 4e rules, a character could dive into a pool of acid, with no special protections. They'd take damage, but their gear would remain untouched.

Though shalt not destroy treasure, after all.

Oh, and in D&D 3.*, your gear can survive that same bath untouched as well, if the player says "I voluntarily fail the3 Save". No dice roll, no chance of rolling a 1. And it's not like there's really a Save v swimming in acid.

Oddly, by the rules, it's only magical gear that can be damaged on a natural 1 Save, and then only one item. So you might lose your Ring of Acid Resistance to that bath, but your fine (but mundane) silk cloak with the pearl cloak clasp are indestructible.

Greenfield said:

It's not that there aren't rules for "PCs operating a business". The rules are there, they just don't allow *anyone* to operate a business profitably.

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I agree, but its inevitable that if rules don't work, someone will always say, "Those aren't really the rules, and proceed to suggest some reasonable house rules as if they were actually the rules."

Oh, and in D&D 3.*, your gear can survive that same bath untouched as well, if the player says "I voluntarily fail the3 Save". No dice roll, no chance of rolling a 1. And it's not like there's really a Save v swimming in acid.

Oddly, by the rules, it's only magical gear that can be damaged on a natural 1 Save, and then only one item. So you might lose your Ring of Acid Resistance to that bath, but your fine (but mundane) silk cloak with the pearl cloak clasp are indestructible.

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In my house rules, these rules are still highlighted in red, which is how I communicate to the players that the rules are currently under review and may change at any time. I know basically what I want the rules to be. I'm even not particularly worried about destroying treasure, in that non-magical treasure is disposable in the long term, and magical treasure is both semi-disposable (in a non-fungible wealth economy) and in my rules rather resistant to damage anyway (because there are in game ways to easily magically protect an object from harm, which I realized 25 years ago in world that wanted to have both fireballs and sail cloth needed).

The problem I have is I know in the long term I'd just ignore the rules, not because I wouldn't like them, but because tracking damage to equipment is such a bookkeeping hassle that it just wouldn't be worth it. I mean, I worry that players don't track their own hit point loss or damage when its convenient to forget to do so, but there is no way that I'm going to take on the burden of tracking hit points on the players. I'm sure that in practice no one is currently tracking food and water, and that bothers me but not enough to continually audit the players regarding their inventory.

Oh I agree.

A good DM can make any rules work.

A bad DM can't make any rules work.

What we look for in a game is one that works for a DM between the two extremes.

As far as rules are concerned: I prefer to play by the RAW as much as possible. When we have a rules disagreement I like to be able to support my position by pointing to a written rule. It may not always be "right", and it may not always make 100% sense in a given situation, but having it there in black and white makes it inarguable. It halts the arguments and lets the game continue.

Greenfield said:

What I'm getting, on the crafting of things in 4e, doesn't sound like rules citations. If I'm wrong, please correct me (and cite some actual rules).

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Damaging objects: Dungeon Master's Guide, pg 65-66
Improvisating effects: Dungeon Master's Guide, pg 42.
Making interesting terrain: all the chapters on building encounters.
Rules being abstractions, not ultimate truth: all the books and Word of God, many times repeated.

Pages may differ a little bit because my books are in Portuguese.

I never questioned that rule books are guidelines. Even D&D 1st Ed had more rules than anyone could possibly use. I never knew anyone who used them all.

What I questioned was whether it actually said, anywhere, that PCs got charged more for crafting supplies and other things than anyone else. That wood and bone, sinew and glue needed to make a master crafted composite bow were having their prices jacked up whenever a PC went to buy.

Do professionals have better sources? Regular suppliers? Probably. Maybe better prices as well. But it never actually says that anywhere.

So how does one become a "professional" a member of the guild in good standing to get these better prices? By the rules, it's an arduous and challenging process that consists of writing it on your character sheet as backstory. That's it.

Which kind of rationalizes a way around the rationalization that was proposed as a solution. Except this rationalization is actually in the rules.

Greenfield said:

It's not that there aren't rules for "PCs operating a business". The rules are there

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Cite?
Seriously, you know fine well there are no "rules for operating a business" in 4e, and have previously indicated as such. You seem to be taking the rules for adventurers selling loot and extrapolating them? But 4e makes it clear that non-adventuring activity is outside the scope of the game rules (unlike 3e & 5e).