kigmatzomat said:
Methinks there's something wrong with your game world's internal logic. I don't know how much loot you have, but your character should have ~66,000gp in gear if they were "joe bob, hero for hire." 3E also expects fairly easy access to magic items; hence the city-size:item-gp ratios. In theory, you should be able to customize your gear without mindnumbing amounts of effort.
My character has 70,000gp worth of stuff. Most of this, however, is a Pearl of the Sirines and a Holy Symbol of Summoning (like the prayer bead), which "belong to the family." The only things in his inventory which he actually considers his own are his greatsword, fullplate, and a bunch of mundane equipment which tallies up to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of an extra 500-1000gp. The rest of it, if required by the family, is up for grabs at any moment and stays behind if he should ever leave for some reason. So, at the same time, I have both more treasure and less treasure then I should. But, that is mostly my own doing. Very little comes up in the hoards that I’m interested in, so I almost never claim treasure. It usually ends up with one or more of the other players saying, “You’re taking this. Don’t argue.”
We do have access to the market in the city, but the clan that runs the markets is an ally of one of our suspected enemies (and is not friendly with us anyway). So sure, while we can buy stuff from the market, we can by no means trust it to behave as it should (or not have extra abilities like a focus for scrying or be cursed).
Okay, here's a problem, as I see it. You have massive taxes, which means you should also have a massive revenue base. 50-60Kgp means you should be seeing revenues of 100-200Kgp with 3-5% profits (above and beyond expenses like food, shelter, caravan guards, etc) of 3,000-10,000gp for your clan even in a brutal totalitarian regime with a 50% taxation rate. At a more reasonable 25% tax rate you see a revenue of 250-300,000gp and clan-wide 5-10% profits of 12,000gp-30,000gp.
We do have colonies that are a large source of revenue. But, we are losing a lot of shipments to either corruption or theft. We had only just found out about this and started investigating before the winter started. I have a feeling it will be a large part of the initial game sessions once spring comes (gametime).
We also have massive orchards for the production of wine, but they have grown wild and we have not had the "leisure time" to work on getting them operational again yet. We have also gone through all of the bottled wine over the course of surviving this past year. We had just under enough in our bank accounts in the city to pay off the taxes and had liquidate 10,000gp worth of assets to finish paying them off once we had emptied the accounts. So, next year, we will have to come up with all of the cash on our own.
Also, the reasoning behind the massive taxes is supposedly because ours was the third noble family of the lands.
Having paid taxes, you should be able to call for assistance to deal with the ogre assassins and the freaking dragons that keep plagueing your people. Alternately, your taxes should go down to cover the manpower that you aren't using.
I'm sure the Prime Minister would love to send troops out to help us deal with our problems of assassins. Unfortunately, he's one of the ones trying to bump us off. As for the dragons, not all of them were our direct problem. We've got a green dragon in our basement serving jail time (which is a confusing topic in and of itself, especially if you include the monk’s plans on how to reform said dragon) and we had a dragon assassin that was going to crash a very important political party we were hosting (so we had to go deal with it ahead of time). The red dragon that we found to be leading a band of thugs didn't have to be dealt with (at that time, the DM said), he just happened to.
Second, as head of a clan, you should be able to use the clan's resources within reason. Heck, there should be a clan armory of gear to deal with these scenarios. Even if there's not, you should have zero problems arranging for your gear to be exchanged for something better through this massive organization that deserves a 50,000gp tax bill.
We do have an armory with lots of suits of mundane armor. No magic in that bunch. It’ll equip an army nicely… when we get one. Currently, our lands are being protected by 11 armed soldiers loyal to my character (and thus the family), some number of monks loyal to our monk’s cohort (and thus loyal to our monk and the family), and a mass of several kobold tribes that are loyal to the laird of the clan. The kobolds are loyal in the sense that they are a conquered people. They were brought back to the family lands by the last group of our clan after the group had sunk Kobold Island (with a raise water spell). Our lands are now the kobolds’ home and their previous job involved reloading the crossbows for the real soldiers.
Problem is, there is a war going on right now which our country is involved in. So, there is a distinct lack of soldiers available to protect the family lands. I know that, sometime after the spring thaw, we’re going to be approached to supply soldiers for the war effort. Where they’re going to come from….well... no clue yet, but we’ll see.
As for exchanging gear, we get the standard half price selling, full price (or maybe a bit more then full price cause of who we are) for buying in the market.
Having said all that, I should probably say that one of the main objectives/challenges of the campaign is to restore the family lands and name. So while all the resources you mention would be available to an established family, we are still discovering where they are and how to manage them. There are no older clan members to show us the ropes, and few people we trust enough to ask and expect the truth. The campaign is heavily political, and we do garner XP for doing things like restoring sources of revenue, making allies and thwarting enemies.
My point is that while discussing the issue of money and resources in the thread makes it sound like the DM is putting too many obstacles in our way, it's important to know that getting over them is what the campaign is about.
Third, cohorts are expected to be adventuring heroes in their own right. They aren't in the PCs league so they shouldn't be in the front line, but they should never want to stay behind. Heck, they should be the personality types that you have to argue with to get them to stay behind.
That was the DM’s view, until he noticed almost everyone had taken leadership (because this is the type of campaign where it is pretty much expected of you to take it) and we had a group of 6-8 PCs with several cohorts in tow. It became not feasible to take cohorts with us if we didn’t want to spend 30-45 minutes per round of combat. This does give us more competent people to stay on the lands and keep it safe while we’re away taking care of matters. And, with the way things are with our clan, I'm sure they aren't bored staying at home.
Otherwise, the cohort cleric should get off their duff and get back to adventuring with the PCs. Maybe she stays farther back and casts Sanctuary constantly, but she should be there to at least heal the party after each battle or cast the occassional utility spell.
This is mostly what she did in combat. But, it turns out everything could easily make the save to get through her sanctuary spell and whap her if they wanted to.
Heck, she should be able to cast Imbue with Spell Ability and give the party at least a few spells on the fly.
Hmm… not sure why that trick wasn’t tried. Guy with the cohort probably didn’t think of it.
Oh, and interesting Invis detector ideas.
