Wealth system - what would be the impact of..

[genshou]

OK, I've got a new question

Can you think of any way that PCs could pauperise themselves in order to make an extremely large purchase. I'm thinking of traveller/firefly style where they buy/lease/etc a starship, a space freighter say. The basic DC for this is going to be very high (much higher than a tank or something), but by the standard rules the party members might need something like a wealth bonus of +30 to even attempt it, and the results of success is at worst only -2d6 to their wealth. That doesn't leave them in the struggling to make ends meet kind of situation that made Firefly so much fun!

I wonder if there is room for PCs to boost their wealth check by accepting a guaranteed loss to the wealth in addition to the normal reduction due to the purchase? e.g. I take -5 to my wealth to get +5 on my wealth check, and when the sale goes through I lose 2d6+5 from my wealth.

The one additional proviso is that if the total result would reduce your wealth bonus below 0 then the purchase doesn't come off, so PCs with a wealth bonus of +7 are not going to be able to really benefit from this possibility, although much more wealthy PCs can.

How does that sound? Any obvious pitfalls?

Cheers

Sounds perfect to me. The ability to take a huge hit makes perfect sense and even matches with an already existing mechanic in balance factor.

But since you can use Aid Another to drop your own Wealth by 1 in order to boost someone else's check by 2, maybe a 2-for-1 trade is viable?

 

[drnuncheon]

The way that HT does it is pretty much the way that I do except that I don't do the "-3 DC for sales" if they have recieved a monetary award, since that is already as liquid an asset as you can get.

I expect the -3 DC for sales would involve putting the liquid asset into a form that continues to generate money - you're investing it in some way so that you can continue to make those low-DC purchases without draining your Wealth score.

J

 

[genshou]

I expect the -3 DC for sales would involve putting the liquid asset into a form that continues to generate money - you're investing it in some way so that you can continue to make those low-DC purchases without draining your Wealth score.

J

"Selling" cash is actually the one thing that doesn't follow the -3 DC rule according to the RAW.

 

[genshou]

If I were to use an alternate system like the one you do, Plane Sailing, my OCD-driven mindset would require that I determine what the average Wealth reward would be at any given level, based on the amount calculated for creating PCs above 1st-level, then use Charles Ryan's system for determining the "dungeon dressing" cash value of a Wealth award (found in this Bullet Points article). Then I could have a handy table with cash amount per PC laid out by level for easy reference, and thus I could make a "good" reward have a cash value that was appropriately represented in the Wealth rules. That's just my suggestion, and one I'm going to get to work on and post so you can see what I mean.

The table as indicated above has been made! A quick explanation of how I got the values listed there:

I used the table for Wealth by Level on pg. 204 of the core rulebook with Charles Ryan's clarification in the second issue of Bullet Points (there's a link to it in the post I'm replying to). I assumed a character with 1/2 max ranks (round up because I'm generous) in Profession and a starting occupation with Wealth +2. The rest I did according to the rules Charles sets out in that article for calculating a "cold hard cash" value for adventure rewards based on current Wealth scores. In my document, the top cell in each column has comments that list what that column represents. I think you'll find it an interesting read if nothing else