Stealing

[S'mon]

In a medieval style city there won't be significant inventories kept in stores - that's a modern phenomenon. Most high-value goods will be made to order. The exception is stuff like silk & spices, imported from a long way away. Warehouse theft of presumably low-value goods by a single thief shouldn't be generating vast amounts of cash.

 

[reiella]

Some more specifics for you: He's done this only 2 or 3 times, but has made off with large amounts of junk, which he then sells in a -different city- (Namely, Greyhawk vs Enstad). Yes, yes, I know all of you just said "Greyhawk?! He's trying to screw over the thieves' guild in -Greyhawk-?!" I'm going to get right on that, don't worry. Anyone got some specifics on that guild? He also basically breaks in a window, at night, into the storeroom, then teleports out. (Wand of teleport). I know there's all sorts of fun spells to impair teleport, but I'm trying to think how many merchants would actually have them?

Either way, he's probably going to have the Greyhawk TG on his butt very soon. Right after he saves the world (next session).

Thanks
Eltern

Hmm, only 2 or 3 times? I wouldn't worry about it too much then myself. City Jumping is good. Although completely ransacking a merchant isn't too good (and most likly would ruin said merchant).

Breaking a Window isn't quiet (even with move silent, unless he uses a stone of silence).

Have regular guards in the storerooms if they keep a high stock, have regular rounds and such (just to limit the amount he can haul in a single job).

 

[RSKennan]

Why should you curb it? What right do you have? If you'd said 'help, one of my players bought Focus and Specialisationa dn Improved Critical and now he kills a lot of monsters?", you would be renowned as mockworthy.

Did you say at the beginning of the game 'you can't play a Chaotic Criminal (one of the unnoficial alignments that abounds in D&D) character'? If not, how can he be doing anything wrong?

Form an out of game point of view, I see what you're saying, and I agree with you. This character is within his rights to try these things. I don't think it's right to consider the consequences of an action as a moral or value judgement. My standpoint is that the character isin't likely to get away with it forever. Someone's likely to find out -eventually- in a world that has any level of realism. Even when the characters in my campaigns are trying to get away with something, and NPCs are trying to stop them or to protect their own interests, I'm rooting for the PCs. It's not us (GMs) vs them, it's NPCs vs them. We as GMs are (usually) impartial, or even a little biased towards the PCs. Another part of the job is to ensure that cracks in the rules, which though admittedly few in 3e, allow the Player to cheat, where his character realisitically could not. This inludes getting more milage out of a low level spell, or a skill than the rules intend, and than reality would allow. When in doubt, I go with reality-social, physical, or genre ,etc. over the rules.

 

[RSKennan]

sorry- double post

 

[Eltern]

Actually, he has ye' olde glass cutter/suction cup assembly to get into the windows.

Eltern

 

[heimdall]

I'd go with the Thieves' Guild approach already mentioned. Think how an organized crime syndicate would react in a similar situation... stores are paying them "protection" money and unless they can ensure these stores say safe, the merchants aren't going to pay. That means they'll start staking out the places.

Also, keep in mind that Locate Object is only a level 2 spell for bards, wizards, and sorcerers. That means a merchant having discovered an item is missing (they are going to be more cautious now since everyone is getting hit) is going to hire some magical assistance ahead of time and give said magical assistance time to go through their inventory (need to have visualized items first hand to locate a specific one)... look at the range on the spell. 400 ft. + 40 ft./level. A 3rd level wizard has a radius of 520 ft. to detect said item... that means 1040 ft. diameter... a 4th level wizard has 560 ft. -> 1120 ft. That's almost a quarter of a mile (1420 ft.) coverage. Won't be too hard to find said item, eh?

 

[FrankTrollman]

Actually, I'm sort of puzzled. What exactly is the problem?

He's going on adventures and getting money - isn't that what adventurers do? I mean, he's going up against fortified towns instead of caves full of orcs - but the result seems identical.

Money just isn't that important, or at least, it shouldn't be. And stealing from townsfolk just isn't a really fast way to collect money, compared with home invasions on evil wizards. The crime he is committing sounds virtually identical in practical result to the crime that adventurers always do.

I just don't see the problem, or why you would be having difficulties with this.

-Frank

 

[Eltern]

The problem is that I don't provide any challenge to him, -at all-, because I was/am having difficulties making reasonable sounding defenses that are of a good CR for the potential rewards. PC walks into a random storeroom at night and says he wants to steal things, I end up going "Derr...there's some rings" and he makes off with a handful of magic rings. That's not equivalent to a fight with a wizard, it's equivalent to beating up a toddler with a 1,000gp lollipop in its mouth. So, I guess I need to get the thieves' guild involved and set up some preplanned traps.

Eltern

 

[FrankTrollman]

I think your problems here are:

1> You make money matter.

2> You have expensive stuff lying around in a world where money matters.

Costly materials don't balance anything, which is why they are a bad idea.

The amount of character "wealth" - in terms of game mechanically affecting stuff such as tools, magical objects, and adventuring equipment is to the most important extent alloted to the party by the DM.

If the players expend some of that casting spells, the DM will have to make up for it in the placement of more equipment in treasure piles if he wants to maintain the game in the manner he was planning in terms of relative "wealth".

If the DM did not have a goal for party "wealth" - then any semblance of balance with regards to party "wealth" is a hillarious joke. And if the DM did have a goal for party "wealth" he's going to have to take costly material component expenditures into account.

In short, if the game is even attempting to be balanced in terms of equipment - the cost of the costly material components factors out of the equation - it simply gets added to expenditures and to income and never gets heard from again.

-

However: why should we care anyway?

As things currently stand, characters get their money bins filled at level 9 when the Wizard gets Fabricate and the Cleric gets Plane Shift.

That's a stupid way for your monetary woes to go away, but why should they really be there at that point anyway?

You're a level 9 character. At this point, you've overcome approximately one hundred and four obstacles - any one of which could have been the major plot hook for a fairy story. Sooner or later, you're just going to marry the Princess and become the Prince.

And that level is ninth level. At ninth level you qualify for "Land Lord" - where you simply take a feat and arbitrarily become the Prince.

That doesn't kill adventuring possibilities. Prince Charming still adventures, he just doesn't stop in the middle of assaulting the Witch Queen's Black Tower to figure out how much the tapestries are worth on the black market.

Eventually you just need a motivation for adventuring other than "amassing money". Dragons should have enough gold to sleep on. Slaying even a halfling-sized dragon therefore should be netting you a tenth of a cubic meter of gold - or roughly two hundred and eighteen thousand, two hundred and ninety five gold pieces. You don't have to do that twice to not need more gold for anything other than bathing or sleeping on.

The only meaningful way to make people not strip-mine the worlds of imagination is to make them no longer care about money by the time they get there. When you get to the legendary adventures of 9th-16th level characters, there should be statues with ruby eyes the size of your head, bridges made entirely out of amethyst, and tremendous gateways made of high-quality bronze.

And if you are actually trying to screw people for individual gold pieces at that level, they will stop the adventure in order to strip all the jade out of the forgotten shrine, loot the golden flatware of the lycanthropic and insane lord of the valley, and pry all the moonstones out of the eyes of the statue garden of the chapel of silence.

Prince Charming doesn't do that because he is the Prince, and he already has arbitrary amounts of wealth. Unless player characters also get arbitrary wealth they will strip the scenery for cash.

"Gold Piece Value" just isn't a limiting factor to Legendary Characters. It can't be. If they for some reason needed cash - they'd just go get it.

And while there's a certain cache to playing "Scrooge McDuck" or "The Quest for More Money" - these are comedies for a reason. You just can't take a story seriously if the primary motivation is supposed to be cold hard cash once the character has already captured four dragon hordes.

If the story is going to even attempt at Drama instead of Comedy - character wealth must become abstracted at Legendary levels. It just doesn't work to try to worry about characters' budgets down to the gold piece at levels 9 and up.

What you are running up to is the fact that medium-to-high level characters can just go out and get however much wealth they want. That's not a problem. The problem is that the "wealth by level" guidelines imply that this is somehow game breaking.

If you can buy +4 Holyswords, then the fact that 8th level characters can just go get 80,000 gp in cash is probably a big deal. But if you limit purchases to much more modest trinkets - that huge pile of gold just doesn't matter.

3rd edition attempted to enforce an Everquest like system under which players would bean count for their entire lives - but that's simply not enforcable in D&D. It never has been, it never will be. There is no consistant way to limit character wealth as long as the environment is supposed to be realistic and immersive in any way.

If some character wants to bathe in money you should probably just let him - it's more harmful to good storytelling to have 3rd edition style "Dragon Hordes" with enough gold to fit in a five gallon jug (which is, btw, thirtynine thousand gp, despite the fact that I could literally lose it in my refrigerator) than it is to scrap the "wealth by level" indicators.

-Frank

 

[Shadeus]

He also basically breaks in a window, at night, into the storeroom, then teleports out. (Wand of teleport).

Well, the first thing you could do is remove that illegal wand of teleport. Wands are limited to 4th-level spells or lower. He could have a wand of dimension door though and it would have a similar effect.