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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1780659" data-attributes="member: 12744">Maybe it's d20 Modern's use of gunpowder firearms and steam/electric/combustion trains and tanks to inherently unbalance our game in lieu of using armies wielding wands of magic missle and magically constructed warforged thingys that's got him so upset... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> (just joking) Seriously, I understand that the wealth system can easily break down under the microscope of theoretical mathematics miniutia, but seriously I don't think it was ever intended to answer those questions. It's not like we're doing Partial Differential Equations here, it doesnt have to hold up as long as it works. I admit on the infinite sandwiches/hobo example, it does fall flat, and sometimes on other more reasonable examples also. But I've always felt that it is within GM's power to rule on these and similar instances. It's all a matter of scale. The wealth system, to me, is just meant to handle the scale of modern living and economics so that the boring stuff (balancing the checkbook) is handled more efficiently than "real life". In modern, a guy with no bills whatsoever that just wanders around living hand-to-mouth scrounging from whatever he can find is called homeless. In D&D he's called an adventurer <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. If all you have to worry about is 100 bucks and an occasional meal, then the wealth system isnt even necessary; no credit, no bills, no permanent shelter, no problem. Just shell out a few bucks when the GM says you need to and go on with life.  But if your character is a modern professional, with a day job doing <x> and a night job of whatever your campaign does, then not having to worry about his bills, credit, etc is what I like about the wealth system. Anyway, we've never even had the complexity of issues stated by some of the pro-wealth system examples I've read above. We just look at it as 'selling' cash to yourself per the rules. EDIT:  Ok, sorry, I just redundantly spit out Heap's example, apparently I didnt read the whole thread very well in the first place.  Doh, my bad, sorry.  Anyway, we do it the same way he does, as follows. A four person group receives $40k, lets split if four ways ($10k each, DC 25). They have the following wealth: 6, 10, 14, 22. Each one computes their new wealth as if they had just sold an object that cost $10k.  "Purchase" DC is 25, -3 for "selling" for a DC 22, or in this case, overhead for a big pile of cash; I know, it sounds wonky, but work with me. Call it taxes, overhead towards your mundane bills, a straight infusion of cash not that directly affecting your absolute on-the-spot purchase power, whatever. They increase in this order per the nice easy little table on page 91: 6 gets 2d6+1 increase (2d6 for 'buying' > 16 over his current wealth, +1 for > 15 purchase) 10 gets 1d6+1 increase (1d6 for 11-15 points > current wealth, +1 for > 15) 14 gets +2 increase (+1 for 1-10 points > current wealth, +1 for >15) 22 gets +1 increase (+1 for >15) That may not be how it's supposed to be done, and folks may have covered it already (my apologies if I'm just beating the dead horse), but there is very little math involved here. Split it up, subtract by 3, look at the table. At first glance this may not seem fair, but it is an increase in effective buying power at that moment, in relation to their current standard of living. So the guy with a 6 may actually surpass the guy with a 10 if the rolls fall right, but that *is* possible because the guy with a 10 may have had incidents in his lifestyle, which already costs him more, that bled away some of the cash. A good GM will make the standard of living for each player be felt in subtle ways, and in the ways others react to you. If you are flashing around $100 bills at am up-scale night club trying to get information but dressed in ratty Dollar Store clothes and arriving in a busted old Ford Fiesta, then people will react differently to you than if you spent some money on nice clothes and a decent car first (reducing that wealth, or 'current buying power'). If for some reason the players wanted to just spend it outright, I'd just let them do that, provided the GM handles issues like spending large wads of cash in one place, which can possibly incur modifiers to the DC for buying on the black market, etc. Now I've done a few scenarios where I ran these kinds of numbers with similar episodes in *my own life*, from the starving college days when 10k would feed/shelter me for over a year, to now when 10k wouldnt quite pay off my car.  In agency/military-type games, the requisition rules seem to work pretty well, though we've really not used them that much as our game features everyday people who have semi-ordinary lives.</blockquote>

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