Economics, Balance and Magic Items

[Graf]

Economics - Realistic

All income is tracked (players link to posts), everything (every ale, every boat trip, stabling costs for mounts, cost of living/maintaining a residence/etc) are assessed to characters irrespective of whether they are adventuring or not
Pick this if you want to link to every copper you own, and every copper you spend (or someone decides you should have to spend to survive)
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Economics - Realistic but frozen when "offstage"

When the character is active everything is per realistic above; but no costs are assessed when the characters aren't active. So if you buy a beer in the tavern you have to pay, but, so long as you stay "off stage" (i.e. your character isn't in the tavern or adventuring you don't have to pay cost of living or anything else).
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Economics - Easy -- only for equipment

Gold given out during adventures is only used to buy magic items magic items and adventuring equipment. All other expenses are part of roleplaying.
You buy someone a beer? You just rp it.
One character has a nice house? You can go there to visit, but they "can't sell it for magic items".
So if a DM says "your total gp for the adventure is 4000 gp" that's what you have to spend on equipment, items, etc for your next adventure. Your characters probably got some extra amount of gold that they spent on expenses during and after the adventure but that's just hand-waved.
edit: A player can of course "waste/spend money" on things if they like (tithing to a church, spending 100 gp for wine, etc) but that would be a player choice and the player would explicitly state that they were doing so OOC)
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Magic Items - Normal

Every magic item you get is dealt with just like in the core books (someone keeps it, or it's turned into ressidium or what have you)
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Magic Items - Balanced after Adventuring

Some system is set up to ensure that everyone gets roughly equal equipment from adventuring
(if 4 1st level PCs get one 5th level magic item then the character who keeps the item "owes" the other characters a debt of some sort?
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Magic Items - Balanced at leveling

Some system is set up to ensure that everyone at one level has roughly the same amount of items
Maybe you give people without items more items?​

 

[garyh]

I voted for:

Economics - Easy -- only for equipment

Gold given out during adventures is only used to buy magic items magic items and adventuring equipment. All other expenses are part of roleplaying.
You buy someone a beer? You just rp it.
One character has a nice house? You can go there to visit, but they "can't sell it for magic items".
So if a DM says "your total gp for the adventure is 4000 gp" that's what you have to spend on equipment, items, etc for your next adventure. Your characters probably got some extra amount of gold that they spent on expenses during and after the adventure but that's just hand-waved.
​

Magic Items - Balanced at leveling

Some system is set up to ensure that everyone at one level has roughly the same amount of items
Maybe you give people without items more items?​

I think we should track money only for real costs, and not worry about 2 CP per ale.

I also don't like the idea of characters "owing" other characters after an adventure, due to the shifting nature of Living adventuring groups. But I'd rather not see folks be at the whim of the DM or balance. Maybe we recommend that DM's mke awarding items to the least item-ed PC in the adventure a priority?

 

[covaithe]

Enworld ate a longer post (a first for me, using Firefox), but the short version is, I haven't voted yet, 'cause I'm not quite sure what to vote for. Three points:

First, I don't think we need any kind of world-wide magic item balancing system. As Graf points out, there are pretty good guidelines for that sort of thing already in the DMG, and if DMs deviate too far from that, judges can gently remind them. I don't think we need to put in any more rules structure than that.

Second, I don't want to keep track of minor expenses like 2cp for a mug of ale. That sounds too much like work, and not enough like fun. But I do want to allow players, at their discretion, to spend real gold in rp-ish ways. Bribery, gambling, tipping, charity, even the occasional flamboyant purchase: "Bartender, bring me a bottle of your best Eladrin summer wine, in a bucket of ice, with two of your finest crystal glasses for my lady and me. And put some fresh cut flowers on the table, will you?" Those things are more real, and more fun to my way of thinking, if there's gold at stake and they're not just empty gestures.

Third, I think what I've described is pretty much the default position adopted by most players and DMs if you just leave them to it. So I'm not sure we really need to do anything at all.

 

[Graf]

I think that we can't do "Default" because what you think is default is not what I think is default.

[d]--[/d]

I'm happy to have "Easy" include: "you can waste money if you explicitly choose to" (I wouldn't stop someone if they insisted they spend 100 gp on wine, or just wanted to throw it out or give it to a church... the point is that I wouldn't force them to pay for it either).

 

[covaithe]

I think we're on the same page then, or close enough. I don't want to force anybody to play the game the way I like, and I certainly wouldn't want DMs or judges to have to enforce the right price for elven wine, either. But as a player, I want to have the option to... well, call it "waste resources" if you like. I'd prefer to call it "spend resources on improving my gaming experience".

 

[Graf]

Sorry. Waste wasn't the best word. I was just trying to be explicit.

 

[Erekose13]

I'm ready to vote on economics (Easy) but magic items is harder. I've been on both sides of the argument in LEW where no controls have been put in place. I had a 4th level character who couldn't afford masterwork armor let alone a better sword. And I've had an 10th level character who can literally make money if he needs it and has been rewarded well in game. At last count (and it has been a while) he was well a head of the curve in terms of the 3.5DMG.

So for L4E I'm not convinced of any of the three proposed methods.
Method 1 - Leaving it all up to the DM and group. This is the method that LEW and LEB both use. It creates inbalance, but with 4e magic items mean less than they did in 3.5. Inbalance is not as big an issue in 4e. The only items that characters NEED to have to stay with the curve is their +x weapon/implement, armor, and cloak/neck thing.

Method 2 - Of the two balancing methods I prefer this one because a DM who creates an adventure based on the wealth packets in the DMG may have plans to balance things by the end of the adventure and not necessarily as characters advance in levels. The weakness is that it creates an artificial wealth distribution system not based on reward. If my character ends up at the end of the adventure disadvantaged based on in-game decisions then the DM and/or judge has to give me something to balance my character? That just smarts of metagaming and brakes the verisimilitude of the living world for me.

Method 3 - As mentioned above at time of leveling puts more work on the DMs to balance treasure packets timed to character advancement which is an incredible amount of work. It also has the same metagame issue as the above method.

Alright so I've spoken about the three proposed mechnics, time for a couple of my own I guess.

Method 4 - Removing item based plusses and handing them out in a chart.
The DMG mentions that items are not required, but that the level based suggestions on when a character should possess a +x weapon/armor/neck item are built into the math of the system. We could use the suggestions in there to remove those plusses from magic items and just assign them to characters as part of advancement. We are then left to hand out items based on DM whim since they mean little to the math of the system now. The drawback of this system is that it changes a significant amount of the content in the PHB (the magic items section).

Method 5 - Post Adventuring plus balancing.
In this method the only balancing done is the bring characters up to the math required for the system to work. We use the DMG to advance the items already in the player's possession if they are behind the curve. So a character with a +1 wand at the end of an adventure who by the system should have at least a +2 weapon/implement at that level automatically has the wand increase in power. All other magic items are handed out at DM whim based on the treasure packet system, including plus based items. This system has less impact on verisimilitude and metagaming, but it is still present; especially in the case of players metagaming treasure splits and taking non-plus items because they know that their measily lower level plus item will automatically be increased afterwards.

 

[garyh]

I like Method 5.

 

[Graf]

I'd considered suggesting a system basedon the idea that as heroes the gods rewarded them, effectively, by making their stuff better (but only obviously for that person). Withthe idea that scholars were debating whether it was to "help save and protect civilization" or because "magic item imbalance is screwing with the odds for the god's gambling sessions".

I guess I was worried a bit that it was too avant-guard/weird for enworld at large.

would help act as a fluffy underpinning for most of ere's methods.

 

[Phoenix8008]

I voted for easy economics. I like the idea of not having to track every last copper. We can do fine assuming that the PC's can pay for living expenses and such. Keeps the fun where it belongs.

For magic items, I voted for normal because that was the best option on the poll. Erekose's Option #5 sounds pretty decent though if we don't go strict DMG rules.