Stipend, Audit and free trade-in - in short, treasure!

[Ulrik]

edit: This is about the 4e version.

In the Expanded player's guide it is noted that players can at anytime return items they've requisitioned for a 100% refund. That would imply that, as long as the players spend the majority of their stipend on permanent items (as my players are wont to do) their wealth will always be about equal to the sum of the stipend from all adventures.

However, in adventure #3, the audit expects them to have 12,800gp, the amount owned by a newly created level 8 character by the 4e DMG - but this is less than 1,000gp more than the stipend they receive in just that adventure. They should also receive about 5,400gp in adventures #1 and #2, for a total of about 17,300gp.

My first party just got reset to 12,800gp after the audit, but with the new (to me) trade in rules my second party will be way over that by the time they get to their own audit. How much magic items should PCs really have?

 

[Ulrik]

All right, having looked at the numbers more I think I've made sense of it:

- Zeitgeist frontloads treasure, I assume this is because it is expected that the PCs won't be able to spend all the money at once, or that because they likely won't be able to spend the money during an adventure it's better to hand it to them before the action starts rather than after the excitment is over. (If they use items recovered from foes before handing them over to the RHC they'll be quite a bit over the money curve, but I guess it will never be anything gamebreaking).

- Up until the audit the Stipends follow the tables from DMG1, assuming a 5-man party. As noted above, the treasure is front-loaded, so the PCs get the "expected loot" from adventuring at level 2 as a lump sum when they start the Dying Skyseer (where they start as level 2).

- Starting at the audit the campaign now makes sure that all PCs have equipment with a value equal to what a new character at that level has (three items at level +1, level and level-1, plus cash equal to an item of level-1)

Given this I will change the stipends for Skyseer and Lies to match the "new character"-standard. I'll also be more restrictive with how quickly they'll get their items - they'll have to use the favor system during adventures (they can spend freely between adventures of course, but the front-loaded money generally appears just as an adventure starts).

Combined with the free trade-in rules this means that all PCs will always have the default value of equipment - except for consumable items like potions and ritual components. I've never been too comfortable about how 4e expected you to burn permanent character power (gp) to fuel rituals, so I'll use this as an opportunity to replace it with bureaucracy instead:

PCs can at any time requisition material components, spending money from their stipend to do so. Mostly it will be a low level favor, but if I think the ritual should require something rarer I can make it higher (if I think it's worth the hazzle). After the components have been spent, the PC can request reimbursement, increasing his stipend again to the appropriate value. This, of course, will require forms, in triplicate, as well as statements from the rest of the party or (preferably) from another member of the RHC that the components were indeed spent on rituals relevant to ongoing investigations. (If they were spent on making magic items the value is not lost, so nothing is reimbursed.)

If they requisition potions, they'll be required to return the empty vials. Failure to do so means that the cost of the potion comes out of their salary!

Comments?

 

[eamon]

Sounds like a good idea to me!

Alternatively, you could make them pay more often for in-game progress - bribes, tickets, organisational fees, compensation for the property they inevitably damage, etc.

You could even lay some blame on sloppy paperwork by whomever determined their stiped, which probably works only depending on exactly how (or if) you roleplayed that.

 

[Ulrik]

Alternatively, you could make them pay more often for in-game progress - bribes, tickets, organisational fees, compensation for the property they inevitably damage, etc.

That's a good idea for versimilitude. But, it requires an extra level of book-keeping above just handing out the stipend and "reseting" it every adventure. I'm not sure if it's worth the hazzle? I think it would depend on the players - I doubt mine would appreciate it enough, but I could be wrong. Will keep it in mind.

You could even lay some blame on sloppy paperwork by whomever determined their stiped, which probably works only depending on exactly how (or if) you roleplayed that.

Sloppy paperwork is always a good excuse!

 

[eamon]

That's a good idea for versimilitude. But, it requires an extra level of book-keeping above just handing out the stipend and "reseting" it every adventure. I'm not sure if it's worth the hazzle? I think it would depend on the players - I doubt mine would appreciate it enough, but I could be wrong. Will keep it in mind.

Yeah, I guess that depends on the group. Since we're lazy like that we've occasionally "retroactively" figured out how much we must have spent, and then a little correction after the fact isn't so jarring.

By the way, you could also just let the PC's keep the money - clearly the intent is to place them under the microscope, not necessarily that it really matters whether they have a few thousand gp extra. Since you've done the math as to how much they should have anyhow, you can easily enough just label that the target amount .