Wealth system - what would be the impact of..

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

I've always had difficulty with the Wealth System, even though I can understand why it was implemented.

That hard coded DC: 15 == -1 Wealth rule is understandable from the point of view as: "Most expensive items are DC 15 and above, and buying them would really strap a character" but when you are dealing with a high roller or a Corporation with a Wealth of 50 or higher, it makes no sense for an item at DC: 20 reducing a coporation or individual's wealth from 60 to 59.

A way around, quite simply, is put some vairables in. I've used this to some extant and it works well enough.

• For items that are lower than the character's wealth by more than 5, then no adjustment to wealth takes place.
• Between 5 below wealth to 5 above there is a -1 adjustment to Wealth.
• For every 5 points above the characters wealth, there is a cumalitive -1 to Wealth.

That allows someone with a Wealth 50 to buy an item DC 45 and lower with no penalty, 46-55 imposes a -1 hit, and something like a DC 75 would impose a -5 Wealth reduction.

I've found it works in most games that use Wealth, even d20 Future games where the party has a seperate Wealth score than the individuals.

Good luck, buddy, hope this helps.

Addendum: The problem with a cash/credit system, as put forth in explanations of Wealth, is the book keeping involved in with stocks, credit lines, credit rating, morgates, etc. That's a whole different kettle of fish, and others have written for more about it then me.

 

[genshou]

I've always had difficulty with the Wealth System, even though I can understand why it was implemented.

That hard coded DC: 15 == -1 Wealth rule is understandable from the point of view as: "Most expensive items are DC 15 and above, and buying them would really strap a character" but when you are dealing with a high roller or a Corporation with a Wealth of 50 or higher, it makes no sense for an item at DC: 20 reducing a coporation or individual's wealth from 60 to 59.

A way around, quite simply, is put some vairables in. I've used this to some extant and it works well enough.

• For items that are lower than the character's wealth by more than 5, then no adjustment to wealth takes place.
• Between 5 below wealth to 5 above there is a -1 adjustment to Wealth.
• For every 5 points above the characters wealth, there is a cumalitive -1 to Wealth.

That allows someone with a Wealth 50 to buy an item DC 45 and lower with no penalty, 46-55 imposes a -1 hit, and something like a DC 75 would impose a -5 Wealth reduction.

I've found it works in most games that use Wealth, even d20 Future games where the party has a seperate Wealth score than the individuals.

Good luck, buddy, hope this helps.

Addendum: The problem with a cash/credit system, as put forth in explanations of Wealth, is the book keeping involved in with stocks, credit lines, credit rating, morgates, etc. That's a whole different kettle of fish, and others have written for more about it then me.

Good to see you pop in here, Warlord Ralts! I've been a fan of Future fun after discovering it recently, and am glad to see you agree with me that some sort of system needs to be set up based on the character's current Wealth score vs. the actual PDC of the item. I used to use a similar system, but went as low as 20 points below their Wealth in order to keep in effect the idea that items above PDC 15 are useful to the characters and should still be heavy hitters on Wealth reduction.

I based my current system (in the edited post above) off of an idea for determining a "dungeon dressing" reward amount for when the PCs receive a Wealth bonus increase as payment for an adventure. WR, would you mind taking a look at my idea and sharing your thoughts on it?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Genshou - Like your enthusiasm, but I have to admit that even contemplating that makes my eyes go all crossed. It's not as much of a pain as it SOUNDS, but it would still involve alot of flipping back and forth for something that I, honestly, consider to be a very minor aspect of the game. If you're so far above the DC 15 watermark that it's naught but an annoyance ...

Here's the thing. I think the system was put into play with an assumption that the people doing the buying and selling would be "normal" people ... I.E. not megacorporations, nor buying things on the government's tab, nor multi-billionaires a la Doc Savage.

Like any d20-based mechanic, it starts to get wonky up past +20 ... same thing happens, really, with attack bonuses (been in a D&D game against high-strength appropriate-CR creatures that pretty much COULDN"T MISS?).

So, I think you really need to decide the kind of game you're going to have before you start. You should know if the possibility is going to exist that, even if you start the game as "average Joes" that they're going to be working for The Bavarian Illuminatus Society and have +50 Wealth Bonuses to play with before level 7.

Notice that the game sets out the "limit we bothered with" at +30 ... there you're supposed to be too rich to care, most of the time. The 50s and 60s are well well beyond. The Wealth By Level chart tops out at +16 at 20th level. That's what they ASSUME you'll be doing with your characters. If characters can recquisition equipment from their employers, that's something else, and there are other rules for that.

One thing you might do is subtract 10 from everything, Wealth Bonus and Wealth DC alike. Start at 10 as +0 and DC 12 is DC 2. This gives you a little more play. You can do the same thing with larger increments, effectively knocking out the low end of the spectrum. Thus your new DC 15 is actually DC 25, or 9,000 bucks. Your poorest character is +0 (+10) or Middle Class.

Because why have the low end if you're not using it? If you're going to be playing with people who have a +60 Wealth Bonus, subtract 40 from that and all of the DCs. Anything less than a million dollars ... bah! Who worries about chump change? Ptuie, we spit upon being so common!

Now, I do, in fact, support Plane Sailing's idea of "clumping". Remember that the Purchase DC of an item is also the "Time Spent Searching For" that item. Before you can roll your purchase check you have to spend 15 hours getting the "best buy" or filling out the proper forms etc. So buying a whole bunch of guns will take weeks if you do so one at a time. Purchasing a crate of guns could save both time AND "money", or purchasing 4 of them on the black market all at once ... say you need 4 Colt handguns, ASAP, to do some "gray" things ... I'd say you cross-reference the DC 15 purchase price (500$) and multiply by 4 (2000$, DC 20), then "add one" because it's a liscenced object you're buying on the black market.. So final DC is 21. 2,750 bucks. 21 hours of shopping time. So several 'waking' days of shopping around the dark underworld ... as opposed to 1 Day for the proper paperwork and 15 hours apiece for each gun.

That's how I do it in my own games, anyway.

--fje

 

[genshou]

Genshou - Like your enthusiasm, but I have to admit that even contemplating that makes my eyes go all crossed. It's not as much of a pain as it SOUNDS, but it would still involve alot of flipping back and forth for something that I, honestly, consider to be a very minor aspect of the game. If you're so far above the DC 15 watermark that it's naught but an annoyance ...

Here's the thing. I think the system was put into play with an assumption that the people doing the buying and selling would be "normal" people ... I.E. not megacorporations, nor buying things on the government's tab, nor multi-billionaires a la Doc Savage.

Like any d20-based mechanic, it starts to get wonky up past +20 ... same thing happens, really, with attack bonuses (been in a D&D game against high-strength appropriate-CR creatures that pretty much COULDN"T MISS?).

So, I think you really need to decide the kind of game you're going to have before you start. You should know if the possibility is going to exist that, even if you start the game as "average Joes" that they're going to be working for The Bavarian Illuminatus Society and have +50 Wealth Bonuses to play with before level 7.

Notice that the game sets out the "limit we bothered with" at +30 ... there you're supposed to be too rich to care, most of the time. The 50s and 60s are well well beyond. The Wealth By Level chart tops out at +16 at 20th level. That's what they ASSUME you'll be doing with your characters. If characters can recquisition equipment from their employers, that's something else, and there are other rules for that.

One thing you might do is subtract 10 from everything, Wealth Bonus and Wealth DC alike. Start at 10 as +0 and DC 12 is DC 2. This gives you a little more play. You can do the same thing with larger increments, effectively knocking out the low end of the spectrum. Thus your new DC 15 is actually DC 25, or 9,000 bucks. Your poorest character is +0 (+10) or Middle Class.

Because why have the low end if you're not using it? If you're going to be playing with people who have a +60 Wealth Bonus, subtract 40 from that and all of the DCs. Anything less than a million dollars ... bah! Who worries about chump change? Ptuie, we spit upon being so common!

Now, I do, in fact, support Plane Sailing's idea of "clumping". Remember that the Purchase DC of an item is also the "Time Spent Searching For" that item. Before you can roll your purchase check you have to spend 15 hours getting the "best buy" or filling out the proper forms etc. So buying a whole bunch of guns will take weeks if you do so one at a time. Purchasing a crate of guns could save both time AND "money", or purchasing 4 of them on the black market all at once ... say you need 4 Colt handguns, ASAP, to do some "gray" things ... I'd say you cross-reference the DC 15 purchase price (500$) and multiply by 4 (2000$, DC 20), then "add one" because it's a liscenced object you're buying on the black market.. So final DC is 21. 2,750 bucks. 21 hours of shopping time. So several 'waking' days of shopping around the dark underworld ... as opposed to 1 Day for the proper paperwork and 15 hours apiece for each gun.

That's how I do it in my own games, anyway.

--fje

Hmm, you speak words of wisdom, HT... thank you for taking the time to write such a lengthy response. I think the problem stems from the fact that the PCs are GETTING +16 Wealth per adventure at those levels, and they have to either
1) find something to spend it on or
2) keep having it add up until they can buy a Dreadnought with expanded nuclear missile loadout on the black market sixteen times per adventure.

And yet they still can't buy a Colt M1911 without suffering a reduction to their Wealth score. My dislike of this rule is more from a "why the hell?!" perspective and less from an "it's breaking my game" perspective. After all, my PCs will only need so many PDC 15-20 items before they start dropping them in favor of the "big guns" anyway. So though it doesn't make sense, it's not unbalanced in any way IMHO. I just don't like it.

 

[genshou]

Another idea that I had was to make some combination of my old system and the newest one. It gets tedious to record every single PDC 15 item when your Wealth is +40, right? So, allow the free purchase of any item with a PDC 10 or more points lower than your Wealth, and anything above that adds to the tally as previously described. Would that make you less cross-eyed? :\

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I dunno. Guess it's just me. I like the simplicity of the Wealth system, and I think that's really one of its highlights. So I hate to strap anything onto it. It's sort of like taking an iPod and adding an equalizer to the front panel. I guess it could be useful, and a few people might really like to be able to push the little sliders up and down to balance each song, but part of the beauty of the iPod itself is the simplicity of its design.

I guess my questions are: Is it really coming up in the game alot?

And if so ... why not just move the DC to something higher, but still maintaining it's purpose of effect? I.E. if they're buying packs of missiles for their space-ship every week at DC 25, put it at DC 25, so that you're maintaining an opportunity cost on the common-weapon DC but not dealing with something lower?

I dunno. It just leaves me scratching my head sometimes. I've NEVER run up against this as being a problem in my own games. I had a player who sort of came in "in the middle" of one of our Wealth-using campaigns who wanted to argue about it for a few minutes, but he agreed to "try it" and thought it worked great. Even with Wealth bonuses that ran up into +23, it just wasn't a big enough deal to try and rebalance the system or add extra house rules to alleviate something that came up, I think, once, when somebody bought something that was exactly DC 15 even though his Wealth at the time was 23.

I think one thing that keeps my total Wealth bonuses low is that I give out static money awards, instead of "Everybody gets +3 Wealth." type awards. You decide to give 5 PCs 50,000 in cash, each gets 10,000 in cash, which is DC 26 ... then each "sells" the cash at DC 23 and you see how that affects their final Wealth score. As they get richer, that value goes down and down. Just because they're richer, doesn't mean that drug dealers leave more money in their briefcases or whatever.

And, likewise, I don't bother with complex simulationist rules to adjudicate getting hired by a multinational supercorp ... I just give everybody a Windfall feat and let it go at that.

In the end, people get richer, but it doesn't balloon to huge numbers, even when they were running their own business, had an airship worth the GNP of a small nation, and traveled the globe to gamble big dollars. (In fact, when we had the "gambling" episode I hand-waived the money because they were rich enough that "it didn't matter" and we played for XP instead. The money wasn't what was important, it was what the character was putting on the line in involvement.)

Not telling anybody how they should run their games, or ridiculing anybody for how they want to work with the system. But if it isn't broken ... y'know?

--fje

 

[Khorod]

This rule is sort of a weal and woe kind of thing.

I've always thought that for some groups it was essential to prevent munchkin-shopping.

I prefer to drop the rule, and get my players to be as financially responsible with their money as their character should be.

What does this mean? If a particular character is going to get away with ridiculous or problematic purchases, it shouldn't be too hard to make that a special case.

My way of handling financial responsibility is to treat the financially irresponsible as 'Gambling' on a broader economic level. And I use the Gambling mechanics to see if they've gotten themselves in trouble or can get away with the spending.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think one thing that keeps my total Wealth bonuses low is that I give out static money awards, instead of "Everybody gets +3 Wealth." type awards. You decide to give 5 PCs 50,000 in cash, each gets 10,000 in cash, which is DC 26 ... then each "sells" the cash at DC 23 and you see how that affects their final Wealth score. As they get richer, that value goes down and down. Just because they're richer, doesn't mean that drug dealers leave more money in their briefcases or whatever.

I think this is vital. Giving out 'wealth awards' for missions is pretty nonsensical, since any reward should logically be more significant for the ones with lower wealth. The way that HT does it is pretty much the way that I do except that I don't do the "-3 DC for sales" if they have recieved a monetary award, since that is already as liquid an asset as you can get. If their reward is in goods though ("you get to keep the car". Great, we'll sell it an split the dosh") then the -3 for selling comes into play.

This selling or rewards to increase wealth idea is also behind ditching the "DC15 is always 1 wealth" rule, since bill gates could sell a pistol and suddenly increase his effective purchasing power by millions (going from, what, wealth bonus +50 or more going up by 1) under the existing rule IIRC!

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

OK, I've got a new question

Can you think of any way that PCs could pauperise themselves in order to make an extremely large purchase. I'm thinking of traveller/firefly style where they buy/lease/etc a starship, a space freighter say. The basic DC for this is going to be very high (much higher than a tank or something), but by the standard rules the party members might need something like a wealth bonus of +30 to even attempt it, and the results of success is at worst only -2d6 to their wealth. That doesn't leave them in the struggling to make ends meet kind of situation that made Firefly so much fun!

I wonder if there is room for PCs to boost their wealth check by accepting a guaranteed loss to the wealth in addition to the normal reduction due to the purchase? e.g. I take -5 to my wealth to get +5 on my wealth check, and when the sale goes through I lose 2d6+5 from my wealth.

The one additional proviso is that if the total result would reduce your wealth bonus below 0 then the purchase doesn't come off, so PCs with a wealth bonus of +7 are not going to be able to really benefit from this possibility, although much more wealthy PCs can.

How does that sound? Any obvious pitfalls?

Cheers

 

[genshou]

I think this is vital. Giving out 'wealth awards' for missions is pretty nonsensical, since any reward should logically be more significant for the ones with lower wealth. The way that HT does it is pretty much the way that I do except that I don't do the "-3 DC for sales" if they have recieved a monetary award, since that is already as liquid an asset as you can get. If their reward is in goods though ("you get to keep the car". Great, we'll sell it an split the dosh") then the -3 for selling comes into play.

This selling or rewards to increase wealth idea is also behind ditching the "DC15 is always 1 wealth" rule, since bill gates could sell a pistol and suddenly increase his effective purchasing power by millions (going from, what, wealth bonus +50 or more going up by 1) under the existing rule IIRC!

Cheers

I admit that this works better, but the Wealth mechanic is just so much easier...

Not to mention, a group of 4 PCs getting a total of +16 per 20th-level adventure means a +4 increase per character... and if they're buying 4 items at PDC 15+ per adventure (which they should, as expensive as their ammo's gotta be), then that kind of high-cash reward makes sense. I mean, we're talking about the rich, debonair 20th-level character with a 5-Gundam garage and a spacedock or ocean dock (depending on Progress Level) with a few battleships. Maybe he even owns his own private island (or planet). On a 20th-level adventure, he's sure to use up some of those items and need to have a way to replace them. That +4 to Wealth, regardless of your current bonus, works to fix that.

If I were to use an alternate system like the one you do, Plane Sailing, my OCD-driven mindset would require that I determine what the average Wealth reward would be at any given level, based on the amount calculated for creating PCs above 1st-level, then use Charles Ryan's system for determining the "dungeon dressing" cash value of a Wealth award (found in this Bullet Points article). Then I could have a handy table with cash amount per PC laid out by level for easy reference, and thus I could make a "good" reward have a cash value that was appropriately represented in the Wealth rules. That's just my suggestion, and one I'm going to get to work on and post so you can see what I mean.