d20 Modern Wealth problem?

[Perpetrated Press]

I've been reading the Wealth Bonuses for Adventuring Gains rules on page 204.

Is it just me, or is there a large gaping hole in this section? It doesn't say how to apply the Wealth bonus. Is it split among the party or can it be given to one PC? I assume the bonus is supposed to be added to the PCs current Wealth total, although this is not explicitly stated. If this is the case, why would any party ever give a wealth bonus to anyone except the designated Money Tree PC?

Why would I ever give any Wealth bonus to someone other than the character with the highest Wealth? Continuing to raise the Wealth of one character will reap the party much more than splitting it up because that one character can buy equipment of greater value for the whole party.

For example, a party of 4 PCs of 3rd level with Wealth bonuses of +3, +5, +6, and +8. They defeat an encounter of EL 3, and snag a wallet with cash that provides a treasure of +6 Wealth.

Now, who are they going to give the Wealth to? Splitting it up equally, or thereabouts, gives two players +1 Wealth, and two +2 Wealth. Let's say the two lowest PCs are raised by two, so it's now PC wealth = +5, +7, +7, +8.

On the other hand, if they give all +6 Wealth to the PC with the highest bonus, he gets now has a Wealth +14. This means that the Wealth +14 character can buy any item with a Purchase DC 14 or less at his leisure. He can equip his comrades with these items at no reduction in Wealth.

Extending that logic, the higher one PCs Wealth the more stuff he can "get for free", that is, by not reducing his Wealth score. A +6 bonus to Wealth is much more valuable to a character with higher wealth.

Now, the obvious restraint on this type of munchkinism is the GM. He can demand that the treasure wealth bonus be split up as equally as possible.

What do you guys think?

 

[Saeviomagy]

The best way to hand out 'wealth' is to hand out stuff with a specific purchase DC to each of them. They can then sell it, and get some cash (which will be based on the wealth bonus they each have). I think the generic wealth bonus reward would be just assigned to the characters to the GM, rather than telling them they've got 5 points of wealth to distribute how they like.

 

[Kage Tenjin]

have the DM divde the bonus before-hand, and giving each character at least a +1 bonus, but giving the chacters with the lowest bonuses the extra points, at 1 each.

 

[danzig138]

Party Cohesion

Wow, I just think it's neat that some groups might cooperate enough to give the wealth bonus to one character. That kind of thinking would never happen in my group. Even if they entertained the thought, they would never agree on who should get it.

 

[Geoff Watson]

The Wealth system can be easily abused.
You can get as much stuff as you want up to (Highest Wealth in group +17)

Here's how you do it.
1)Wealthy Dude gets stuff equal to his wealth bonus, and gives them to the Other Dude.
2)OD sells them,
3)Repeat 1&2 until OD's Wealth reaches WDs Wealth-3.
4)OD buys the expensive stuff, taking 20 if need be.

Repeat until you've got all the stuff you want.

With more than two people you can get even more expensive stuff, using the Aid Another rules.

So DMs, watch out for co-operative PCs.

Geoff.

 

[Terath Ninir]

The Wealth system was, I think an honest attempt to make a moneyless system that could be applied to many eras and many scenarios. It fails totally, but it is not due to maliciousness of the designers.

The DCs of items are eccentric at best. Chainsaw 9, 8-person tent 13, .22 pistol 14, machine pistol 15. Nope, sorry. Not even close, in any time or era; the .22 pistol is cheaper than any of them, and usually by a lot. I especially am amused at the thought of a machine pistol only being a little more expensive than a bottom of the line pistol.

Then you have the problem of the basic concept. The DCs still represent money and, fundamentally, there is a direct correspondance between the DC of an item and its real price. (Theoretically. They obviously got some of them wrong.) And you have to pick a specific time and place to base the DCs on the prices of real items. In this case, 2002 USA -- so any other time or place cannot use the DCs as-is.

A related problem are the licences. In general, they are a good game tool. But they come already applied to items, making that part of the item stats again useful only for 2002 USA. Again, take the .22 pistol, which is listed as needed a simple licence to own one. That wasn't true when I was born just 30 years ago. Hell, I don't think that even the machine pistol needed a licence in 1972 USA, though I could be wrong on that one.

Or travel to the UK. (I'm sure Morrus wouldn't mind having you crash on his couch. ) There, the .22 pistol requires a military licence, not just a simple licence. Again, the rules don't work. You have to have a list of equipment and licences necessary for any area the characters travel to, if you want to use licences at all.

The wealth reduction and increase rules are so... weird I don't even know what to make of them. I don't think they'd work well in practice, especially if a power gamer (me) came along. You could do a lot of damage to a game just by the order you "bought" items in.

In conclusion, I'd say that the Wealth system, at least without heavy revision, is not usable at all. If you're doing a 2002 based game, this is not a problem at all, though. I *know* you have access to the internet if you're reading this. So just use Google and look up the price for whatever you need. And use real money! Cash is much more fun than wealth points.

 

[nsruf]

The DCs of items are eccentric at best. Chainsaw 9, 8-person tent 13, .22 pistol 14, machine pistol 15. Nope, sorry. Not even close, in any time or era; the .22 pistol is cheaper than any of them, and usually by a lot. I especially am amused at the thought of a machine pistol only being a little more expensive than a bottom of the line pistol.

The problem seems to be that they wanted to limit the quantity of certain items (e.g. firearms), and for that purpose they choose to set a DC (15 in this case) beyond which any purchase would reduce wealth. Now the consequence is that a pistol always has at least purchase DC 15, while "harmless" item prices are converted according to scale. Another resulting weirdness is that someone with wealth 30 can buy exactly 30 .22 pistols - after which he is utterly broke I think a first step to fix the system would be to get rid of the automatic wealth reduction and price all items according to the same scale.

 

[hong]

The DCs of items are eccentric at best. Chainsaw 9, 8-person tent 13, .22 pistol 14, machine pistol 15. Nope, sorry. Not even close, in any time or era; the .22 pistol is cheaper than any of them, and usually by a lot. I especially am amused at the thought of a machine pistol only being a little more expensive than a bottom of the line pistol.

I think the DCs are supposed to reflect availability as well as price. Thus the pistol gets a high DC because you need a license to own one.

 

[Gez]

The system is a bit too abstract to work properly, sure.

A problem comes from mindless stacking of the wealth bonus. There's a huge gap between a WB of +3 and a WB of +6, as the +6 WB is, financially, not equivalent to two +3 WB put together.

From statistics I've seen, a big corporation CEO's salary in the USA is worth around 531 blue collars' salaries. Now, this won't be represented by having the blue collar with, say, a +2 WB, and the CEO with a +533 WB. They're a logarithmic scale somewhere.

That's why I think the WB should not stack. When your part found the big wallet with its +6 bonus, it's not going to change anything to the PC with the +8 WB. However, the PC with a +6 WB could reach +7, and the PCs with +3 or +5 could get to +6 -- that is, if they don't share.

I would rule that, when shared, one +6 bonus is worth two +5, or four +4, height +3, etc. Remove one from the bonus each time you double the number of shares. When not sharing among a set power of two, use the nearest higher power usable, so that the +6 shared among 3 would give a +4 to each three persons.

In your example, if the +6 wallet is shared equally among the 4 PCs, I would then rule that Mr +3 goes to +4 (as 3 is lower than 4), and all others stay where they are (+5, +6 and +8 being all higher than the share they get).

 

[drothgery]

From statistics I've seen, a big corporation CEO's salary in the USA is worth around 531 blue collars' salaries. Now, this won't be represented by having the blue collar with, say, a +2 WB, and the CEO with a +533 WB. They're a logarithmic scale somewhere.

FWIW, that 531 number is wildly wrong, I think. An average blue collar worker makes around $40,000/yr (possibly as little as half that or as much as twice that, depending on location, experience, and the type of job). Very few CEOs make more than $1,000,000/yr, both because of tax laws and because most companies really can't afford to pay one person that much. And even if you figure in much better benefits for the CEO, that only amounts to a factor of 30 or so.