General Discussion

[IronWolf]

I think Mowgli brings up several good points in regards Arcane Row and some of his commentary in general.

I want enchant Borric's weapon. So I rolled the dice and succeeded on the 75% check. But it would appear that I cannot do that, needing to treat it as crafting and wait 18 days RL to cover the 6000gp. Why must it be crafting only?

If I roll and make it, why not treat it as regular crafting IC; 8hrs per 1000gp which is 6 days IC. With a DM cooperating, this might be hand waved. In between adventures, no waiting required.

It's crafting because it is crafting . . . the roll is to see if the Row has an item for which you are looking in stock. You're asking them to take an existing weapon and craft an enchantment into it.

I agree with Mowgli. It is crafting which takes time. It is tricky to balance time in a Living Campaign because we experience time warps frequently because of the nature of the fluid campaign world. In order to balance the time cost of crafting we end up needing to tie it some form of time - which was chosen to be real world time. I think this is reasonable and rather ingenius.

Is it inconvenient? Yes. But that is how you pay the cost of time. I think it works well for a Living World. I would not want to see crafting costs of time handwaved by GMs for the sake of convenience.

Now in home games when folks craft I certainly let a number of days pass quickly when it seems appropriate. But since I am the sole GM in the world I can also appropriately advance events in the world as need be to reflect the passage time. In the shared world a GM can't advance plot time due to the nature of the world being shared and there being fewer long term plots afoot.

On another note, the spending limit for Venza is 8000gp. This is going to be hampering as some characters start getting to 7-8+ levels.

Looks like the next jump to spending limit would be to see Venza grow into a metropolis which has a 16,000gp limit?

It might become more hampering as time goes on but I think the crafting rules lets us buy some time in this awkward growth period without making any hasty decisions.

 

[IronWolf]

In the absence of the city limit, though, I will say it seems a bit odd to me that there needs to be a mechanical difference between saying "I turn this thing in and get the exact same thing plus extras" and saying "add the extras." Especially since the general description of an item is, I believe, up to a PC. So she or he can even say they bought something with the exact same unique scrollwork pattern or whatever. At that point, it *does* seem silly to force the person to wait longer if he or she wants to fluff the upgrade in a more realistic context (upgrading an item) than a clearly contrived one ("I found something that looks identical to what I have, has the same base enchantments, and then has extra ones"). So long as there's still an availability roll at stake, I'm not sure what the benefit is of forcing the latter.

I think this might point more to a flaw with 100% sell back value rule than anything though.

I think for me a lot of this 're-fluffing on the fly' stuff has become a matter of verisimilitude and/or immersion. "Don't see a deity that gives your cleric the favored wapon you want, or the domains you want? No problem, just make one up! Can't get exactly the combination of trait benefits you want? Just throw together a new trait, re-categorize it, and there you go!"

When we started this a couple of years ago, we set out to be very careful to make sure everything fit the world we'd conceived, and proposals were very carefully scrutinized, debated, edited and resubmitted. We also set a precedent of keeping as much of the official Paizo published Pathfinder Rules as Written as we could.

I think Mowgli points out the potential of the slippery slope. The key point being proposals being carefully scrutinized and debated, edited and resubmitted. We are quick to approve things because we don't want to deny someone their fun unnecessarily. That is awesome that we want to help enable people's fun, but that doesn't mean we need to abandon scrutiny or edits along the way.

Let's take a quick look on Systole's Streamlined Traits proposal sitting out there now. While I am not entirely against the idea it is a rather large deviation for how we've done things in LPF. We have tried to stick to RAW as closely as possible, frequently modeling after PFS when in doubt. To vote streamlined traits in is a major deviation from that precedent.

Despite that major deviation we had three yes votes in less than 24 hours to approve the proposal. To me it seems enough of a shift that it warrants some discussion - both on the proposal itself and how this impacts our penchant for staying as close to RAW as we can to ease new players into the LPF.

Now I just might adapt this way of handling traits for my home game as I think it could work well for it. But for LPF I am more hesitant to introduce a sweeping rule change in with the small amount of discussion we have had - both on the rule itself and the door we open to more heavily customizing the Pathfinder rules.

In the end we may end up voting it in, but I would like to see discussion from all judges surrounding the proposal and make sure everyone had had their chance to raise objections or have their questions addressed.

I honestly can't remember whether or not I voted for reselling items at 100% value; I know the reason (it makes bookkeeping a LOT easier) but I now find myself regretting the other unintended effects (there is no "saving your money" now, and no thinking ahead when making item purchase in case there's something else you want to spend your money on later; and just how, exactly, does the Pearl make any money?). It's another example of a written mechanic being thrown out for convenience, with unintended results that - for me, at least - are jarring every time I run upon them.

I agree. I wasn't here as a judge when the Peral rules were established, but I find the 100% buyback a bit jarring as well. That barn door may already be open (though I suppose a proposal could be made to set it back to RAW), but the 100% buyback rule could now be skewing our impression of our crafting rules with something thrown out of whack.

I've gone on long enough. But I guess I want to say I agree with Mowgli, lets not forget to really think about proposals and scrutinize them. It is fine to send them back to edits. It is fine to ask for them to be resubmitted in a more defined manner. And it is fine to comment on them due to precedents they might set for future proposals. It is all part of judging a living world versus judging your own game at home.

 

[GlassEye]

It sounds like there are several things that people are dismayed by and that could use further discussion to see if they still work for LPF as we want them to work.

1) Arcane Row/The Mystic Pearl
Some are concerned about the availability of high level magic items. The issue with the Pearl the bugs me the most is its interlinked nature and how that affects settlement base value. I think the limits need to be more clearly defined.

2) Settlement size
Briefly mentioned before, Venza could be bumped up to metropolis which affects the above. I'm not sure about settlement size for other locations. In the current adventure I'm running the characters have traveled through two other large settlements (K'issp & Hruthrip) and the lack of detail has given me pause.

3) Craft-Your-Own Deities.
This worked well in the beginning to get us going but now it's a couple of defined pantheons and a list of unrelated deity names and little else. Perhaps its time to close the open door and accept new deities by submission and discussion only.

4) 100% sell back.
Does this work as originally intended?

 

[Satin Knights]

As to the Streamlined Traits: I am for it because of the nightmare that traits are for PFS. Normally, I would stick to straight approved books or PFS interpretations. But, in PFS, not only do the traits come from the APG, but 10 factions having on average 5 choices, 6 racial books, a couple nationality books, 3 Faith books, 7-8 Adventures Paths, etc. Whatever trait combination you need can most likely be achieved if you buy enough books. PFS does have the "if you use it, you must own the book" rule, so Paizo makes a little extra money off of all these extra 30 page books.
We as judges are not going to approve all these extra books. Approving the traits one at a time from the books when someone wants want looks to be tedious. So, the Streamlined Traits proposal looks to be a good choice, even though it goes against our purity standard.

As to the city limit and commissioning: Yes, it should take time to add new magic to a weapon. In the case of Songdragon's upgrades, to upgrades of 1,000 each could be done in parallel with only a three day wait. That is not a problem in PbP. Borric on the other hand wants to upgrade his +1 weapon to +2. That means turning the old weapon in and waiting 18 calendar days without a +1 weapon in hand for battle. That is unless he buys another +1 weapon to use while his is "in the shop", and then selling it back. Since sell back is at 100%, the "rental" wouldn't bite him there. Not picking on Borric here, he is just the first to hit the wall, well second. Yoshiki gets to wait 39 days for his new toy.

Having the "city lmiit" be just below the cost of a +2 weapon is annoying. But we need to set is somewhere to slow down the christmas tree effect. And it makes owning a +1 flaming weapon special. So, the limit is fine where it is for me.

And yes, Anaerion's amulet took seven in-game days to craft. The binder just delivered it in 2 1/2 hours. She is high enough level and racially different enough, she can cheat. That is part of the reason why the elite in town fear her. She can do the things that they say cannot be done.

Settlement size: In essence, we can treat the Mystic Pearl as a settlement of it's own. Since it has a doorway in every major city, it is actually could be a small, permanent demiplane with many portals, all leading to a different "floor" of the building. Only the employees are allowed to go through the back room to the stairwell to get to different floors. That eliminates the "city hopping by going into the Pearl" issue. We simply need to vote on what "city value" we are going to assign to it.

100% sell back: Without it, accounting becomes a nightmare. Right now, we can count earned monies - items destroyed - paid serices - carried equipent = coins left. Nine out of ten characters are still off when it comes to review time, including my own. If we go to 50% sell back, it all becomes a grand nightmare.

Craft your own deities: I thought that door was already closed. Ruvalra was the latest and she went through the submisson/review process.

 

[Systole]

1. The main thing about magic item availability (in my opinion) is that you're trying to cover too many character levels and too much variation in item power with a single ruling. The hard cutoff going from 75% availability to 0% availability is a bit strange to me.

I might suggest thinking about a tiered system like this:
Up to 5000 gp value: 75% availability (4000 gp wouldn't cover +1 weapons)
Up to 10000 gp value: 30% availability (+2 weapons are ~8300gp)
Over 10000 gp value: 10% availability or whatever.

With that said, crafting times do get a little out of hand at higher levels. A month is a long time to be hanging out at the DWI waiting for an item. A +1 weapon is as important to a 2nd level character as a +3 weapon weapon is to a 8th level character, but the crafting difference is 6 weeks. Maybe front load crafting time, so it's 3 days base + 1 day per 1000gp?

 

[jkason]

I know the primary reason was ease of accounting, but it does seem to me that 100% buyback also helps with wealth-per-level balancing, which as I understand it is a high priority (and, I think, rightly so). Consider:

* Character X and character Y start out at roughly the same time at level 1. For simplicity's sake let's assume neither one took the Rich Parents trait. Heck, let's even make them the same class.

* Two first level adventures recruit at the same time, and X and Y each choose a different one.

* For timing reasons, neither one winds up in back in the DWI with the other for several levels.

* Whether due to class or luck, character X keeps winding up with magical treasure which is well-suited to her needs throughout adventures. She accumulates these as she levels.

* In contrast, character Y keeps killing enemies possessing magic items he can't even use, and which are thus useless. In order to stop carrying around glorified junk, he sells these off at 50%.

* At level 5, both of them wind up back in the DWI. By this point, X has nearly 5,000 gp more in equipment / magic than Y does.

I suppose we can argue something like that probably balances out as time goes on, but 100% buyback makes sure it definitely does, provided treasure values are properly calculated by judges approving adventures. Which also puts a bit less pressure on potential GM's to try to design for the characters they think will be in an adventure to avoid effectively chopping rewards in half when something winds up in the pot that no one can use.

 

[Systole]

Accounting is already the most labor intensive and mistake-prone part of character tracking. Multiply that by a factor of about 20 if buyback is not 100%.

If the suspension of disbelief bugs you, I can understand, but LPF is a gigantic mess without full buyback. That said, the Mystic Pearl thread already kind of hints that there's some sort of hocus-pocus going on. Maybe the proprietor is the servant of some alien diety of Marxist economic theory. Maybe the Pearl exists to stabilize the multiverse by swapping out the +3 sword you just sold for its exact duplicate from a parallel dimension. Maybe the weird energy beings in the back room feed on the psychometric energies of items used in combat, and mortal races does even know that the energy exists, let alone goes missing between sale and resale.

 

[Qik]

I have calculated the DMC for the time run so far and updated the Adventure Tracking page. You should be good to go @Qik .

Thanks, IronWolf!

 

[Qik]

I know the primary reason was ease of accounting, but it does seem to me that 100% buyback also helps with wealth-per-level balancing, which as I understand it is a high priority (and, I think, rightly so). Consider:

* Character X and character Y start out at roughly the same time at level 1. For simplicity's sake let's assume neither one took the Rich Parents trait. Heck, let's even make them the same class.

* Two first level adventures recruit at the same time, and X and Y each choose a different one.

* For timing reasons, neither one winds up in back in the DWI with the other for several levels.

* Whether due to class or luck, character X keeps winding up with magical treasure which is well-suited to her needs throughout adventures. She accumulates these as she levels.

* In contrast, character Y keeps killing enemies possessing magic items he can't even use, and which are thus useless. In order to stop carrying around glorified junk, he sells these off at 50%.

* At level 5, both of them wind up back in the DWI. By this point, X has nearly 5,000 gp more in equipment / magic than Y does.

I suppose we can argue something like that probably balances out as time goes on, but 100% buyback makes sure it definitely does, provided treasure values are properly calculated by judges approving adventures. Which also puts a bit less pressure on potential GM's to try to design for the characters they think will be in an adventure to avoid effectively chopping rewards in half when something winds up in the pot that no one can use.

Just wanted to say that I think jkason makes a very good point here.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

I'm not at all suggesting that we move away from 100% buyback - as I said, I understand the reasons and think they're good ones. Accounting would become a nightmare, and with the different GMs and all of their different styles and philosophies when it comes to doling out treasure, jkason's point is valid as well. And this is a case where using PFS procedures wouldn't work, because in PFS every player has access to exactly the same loot in each scenario - which is definitely not the case in LPF. It does work as we originally intended, it's just got some unforeseen repercussions (that I can live with ).

I was just using it as an example of a time we voted to use our own system rather than RAW, and it had some unforeseen consequences that are still disconcerting to me.

In regards to crafting time, I think RAW is perfectly fine. As SK pointed out, this is a case where 100% buyback becomes helpful - just rent an item to round out your equipment list and go adventuring whilst you wait. No need to sit around on your duff in the DWI.