RttToEE: Buying Loot in Verbobonc ***Spoilers***

[AGGEMAM]

Xar666, has it really taken your party 6 months to reach 4th (or 5th) level ??

I remember back in the old days, that in nov/dec last year, when you first joined the board, you asked as a newbie DM a question about The Sunless Citadel, and they have only now reached to the RttToEE ??

How did they do it so slowly ?? Did they die along the route ?? Is the Paladin still in the party ?? Tell !! Tell !!

 

[Xar666]

Xar666, has it really taken your party 6 months to reach 4th (or 5th) level ??

I remember back in the old days, that in nov/dec last year, when you first joined the board, you asked as a newbie DM a question about The Sunless Citadel, and they have only now reached to the RttToEE ??

How did they do it so slowly ?? Did they die along the route ?? Is the Paladin still in the party ?? Tell !! Tell !!

Hey Aggemam!

Man it has been a hell of a ride. We only play for 4 hours once per week and since we are all good friends everyone likes to socialize a lot before we finally get started. Once we get going it is really good, it just takes a while for us all to get into the pocket. The only Paladin we ever had was an NPC and he was recently slain. This is the history of my 3rd edition campaign (and my first time as a DM of any version)

Module: The Sunless Citadel

Fudo: Human Mnk1
Razfellow: Half-Orc Ftr1
Sacchariah: Human Clr1
Nekrataal: Human Sor1

At the end of this module: Fudo had died and the guy playing Nekrataal could no longer attend.

Module: The Forge of Fury

Razfellow: Half-Orc Ftr2,Rog1
Sacchariah: Human Clr4
Killian: Rgr2 (This character was rolled up by the player of Fudo)
Kern: Human, Bar4 (NPC)

After this module: Kern had been slain and chose not to be resurrected.

Module: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

This is the current party:

Razfellow: Half-Orc Ftr3,Rog4
Sacchariah: Human Clr7
Killian: Human Rgr2,Ftr4
Veshrack: Human Rog3,Sor3

So far, in this module, Razfellow has died once and an NPC Paladin died.

And last session ended with the PCs in combat in the following condition:

Razfellow at –6 but stable
Sacchariah at 21hp
Killian at 18hp
Veshrack – dead

They are currently fighting 12 Hobgoblin,War1 and 6 Hobgoblin, Rog1, a Hobgoblin, Adp6 and a Dire Ape. Wonderful.

 

[doktorstick]

OT: Time to Level

Xar666, has it really taken your party 6 months to reach 4th (or 5th) level ??

In the campaign I ran from April 2001 to January 2002 the characters went from L1 to L7 with each character dying once. We played consistently--about 6-10 hrs per session and three sessions per month on average.

I limited the XP rate to 50%, however, because we felt that the character did not get a chance to experience their level with the standard rate.

/ds

 

[doktorstick]

And last session ended with the PCs in combat in the following condition:

Razfellow at –6 but stable
Sacchariah at 21hp
Killian at 18hp
Veshrack – dead

They are currently fighting 12 Hobgoblin,War1 and 6 Hobgoblin, Rog1, a Hobgoblin, Adp6 and a Dire Ape. Wonderful.

Egads. You left it hanging...!? The question is: how many of those enemies are left standing at present?

 

[Werdnam]

Back to the topic at hand ...

I had to deal with this "buying stuff" issue in my campaign recently, and after some thought I came to a solution that I'm happy with.

I, too, was a bit uncomfortable viewing the DMG and other sourcebooks as "catalogs," but I also didn't want to hamper my players TOO much. They were a bit under the suggested character wealth levels, so I wanted them to be able to freely acquire some stuff with their hard-fought treasure. Plus, it made sense to me that in a city the size of Verbobonc, there would be shops that had some stuff on hand.

To that end, I decided that pretty much anything that cost less than 3,000gp could be freely bought off the shelf, as long as the characters spent some time asking around for where to go. For most things that cost more than 3,000gp, players would have to go through a "magic item broker", i.e., a guy who knew wizards that made stuff, and could pass an order along. Since other residents and visitors are continually placing such orders, the players generally have to wait a few days (or more) longer for the item they want created than the base creation time would indicate. Some pricey but generic stuff can usually be found off the shelf, though (things like basic +x weapons and armor, cloaks of resistance, rings of protection, etc.).

I like this system, because it makes cheap, general utility stuff like potions, scrolls, and some wands easy to come by, and it gives me a chance to control what magic items the party gets (though I haven't yet had to exercise that control), a la "I'm sorry, but none of the artisans I know have heard of such an item ... "

So far, my party has only just gotten to Verbobonc for the first time, and they didn't seem to mind having to stick around for several days to wait for the monk's belt to be made. But then again, they don't yet know of the CRM ...

 

[Kershek]

Let me add to this:

My cleric has item creations feats and he even said, "Why the hell would I waste my XP and time to create items when I can just spend more gold and buy them? This makes my feats useless, can I swap them out?".

You like that?

Then make the feat more valuable. Make all magic items in the town 150% of market value or something higher and think of a reason why it would be that way.

Just because they can get an item worth 20,000 gold doesn't mean it's on a shelf. Perhaps it will take a month to get it commissioned.

 

[AGGEMAM]

My cleric has item creations feats and he even said, "Why the hell would I waste my XP and time to create items when I can just spend more gold and buy them? This makes my feats useless, can I swap them out?".

In the DMG it states that items worth more than 3000 gp are generally not avaliable but can be ordered.

When the party order an item, calculate the creation time of said item using the lowest level NPC that could make the item from the list of NPCs in the DMG, that is the time it takes to complete the item.

And btw, I'm very happy that you took the time typing up the history of your campaign, although from the looks of their situation I'd say it is nearing its end.

 

[Westwind]

Could someone give me a page reference for the 3k gp cap? I've looked for it a few times, but no luck.

One method I use to control rabid player spending is to create specific NPCs for a given type of item (weapons, wands, potions, etc.) and then keep track of how the PCs interact with them, which makes taking a nice Charisma a must if you want to buy nicer items or pay a fair price. This allows me to balance things out (wand merchant and potion merchant are from rival houses, so you have to "favor" one over the other) and create plot hooks when merchants ask for favors from the PCs, giving them a break on prices as a reward. Of course, this only really works if the PCs are working out of a base of operations, but it helps add depth to the town/city and make PCs think carefully about which direction they want to take their character in terms of magic items.

 

[AGGEMAM]

Could someone give me a page reference for the 3k gp cap? I've looked for it a few times, but no luck.

Yup. PHB, page 114. As a note to table 7-9.

And DMG, page 247-248, has a table with all magical items up to a market price of 3000 gp, coincidence, I think not.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

The party I am running through the RttToEE just had their first major opporunity to rest, rearm, and plan for the next stages. I let them buy anything they could afford, reasoning that:

a) the RttToEE is very stingy with treasure early on, especially when it comes to providing the party with the means to take on the later levels

b) it is also a very expensive module early on. Up through the end of Part 1, there was 1 death, 1 petrification, and oodles of permanent stat losses, all of which were beyond the abilities of the party to deal with outside of paying for NPC help.

c) at this point, the average cash wealth of a character in the party was around 6000 gp, which is not enough to allow them to do anything really unbalancing.

Anything truly odd or expensive will require some work to find (what are the odds of finding elven boots that fit a Gnoll?).

RttToEE can be a real bear. I figure I'll cut them some slack.