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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 2737829" data-attributes="member: 1165">You know, that's a good question. I was under the impression that people used Wealth because it's easier than balancing a real character's checkbook.When I played and ran Modern, Wealth turned out to be nearly useless. You bought a gun and maybe armor at character creation. You just might end up buying a house and car. But that's it. Characters who put ranks into Profession got ridiculously high and semi-random Wealth values, but they could do nothing with it. So they ended up wasting ranks.Then we ran a D20 Future game. I wasn't the GM - the GM was very permissive, however. He let us buy anything at PL 7 or lower except for Dermal Plating, as that was too broken even for him. And this is a DM who let us play prestige classes from first level in DnD!For PCs, it isn't that much, actually. If you could buy the same mecha for a Purchase DC of 3 lower, but it did much less damage, then what is the point? You get to do a heck of a lot of extra damage due to rolling a couple points higher on your Wealth check. I think there's something ... wrong ... with that. The player is going to lose his 2d6+1 Wealth regardless of what the actual purchase DC of the mecha was. Furthermore, the results of that higher Wealth check stick around a long time.Making matters worse was how you "added together" Purchase DCs. A player of mine actually complained that he could build an overly-powerful 8-legged robot that could do 30d6 damage (mind you, the bullets were expensive) because he was able to buy it as one unit, rather than piece-by-piece.We did have a PC who bought a mecha. I don't know what his Wealth rating was like, however, but I do know he could afford it. (He was the player who understood the Wealth system the best, too, but he did not have the highest Wealth rating in the game.)And if the organization rolls high ... well, I guess the GM can have them "take 10" but he can't do the same thing to the players. A Wealth "swing" of 20 points is a huge deal, and can result in lame mecha or uber spaceships.There are pages and pages of threads on this forum about how "product x" and "feat y" are broken. I'm expecting balanced and useable rules coming out of something I paid money for. I don't think we can just blame the players or the DMs.I see little love for 2e psionics, another system widely regarded as broken (more than Wealth anyway) even though the problem was just bad DMs and munchkin PCs. It wasn't just them. The system actually had problems.I disagree. Strongly.XP is a character cost. As for magic items, I do think they're broken. It's really really hard to hand out magic items (or treasure) at the "right rate", taking into account magic items sold for half value (or slightly higher with Diplomacy). It comes out too low, even with the massive heaps of treasure players find. It also makes NPCs wimpy compared to equivalent PCs - at least, for non-spellcasters who can't blow all their slots in one battle and are equipment-dependent. And finally, it makes character generation take much longer, although that's less of a balance problem and more of a "increase prep time by three-fold" problem.Nah, I can't agree with this one, either. It's "hidden nerfing". It's a bit like, in a DnD 3.0 game, having every NPC you use have a gem of true seeing because the PC mage overused greater invisibility. Sure, the DM has to share some of the blame for not finding a good solution to the problem, but it's also the rules' fault for making the spell so overly good.I have no problem with them doing that ... provided they do it with their own skills, instead of complaining because huge chunks of the gear chapter are rendered "illegal". Alas, Modern Crafting rules have their own faults. Not that DnD has better non-magic crafting rules.</blockquote>

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