D&D -> DFRPG: Gold to $

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Where's the interesting part?...

I get that this opens up an interesting decision. Taking merchant skills instead of combat skills relatively increases the risk of a delve (one member of your party is 10-18 points weaker than they would have been), and relatively increases the reward of a delve (you can sell non-coin loot for 1.5x to 2x as before). I just wonder if this is a fun decision to give the players.

Exactly, yes. That's part of the interesting part. Players who know it's not fun for them can just skip it and invest in combat skills, but players who like the money game can specialize in it to get more money per adventure. Do you want to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term advantage? If so then have a Wealthy bard in your party from the start and take Hidden Lore (Magical Writings), Connoisseur x3, etc. It's a choice with no obvious best answer: therefore interesting.

But the sell decision isn't the only interesting part of the money game. What to bring back to civilization to sell is also interesting. As you keep saying, the identification skills can fail, so if nobody knows whether that 12 lb. book is worth anything, the question of whether to leave it behind (and never know its value) or stick it in your backpack and take it back to town (and probably learn that it's junk, but maybe not) has no obvious best answer. Therefore it's interesting.[1]

Do you optimize for hauling maximum amounts of loot back to town (wagons and oxen), or just small amounts of what you can carry in your backpack, like Indiana Jones? No obvious best answer.

What do you do with the money you get? Hirelings? Scrolls and potions? Enchantments? More wagons?

BTW you're assuming that the extra profit has to be split equally among the party so that the Wealthy PC gets no personal benefit from their points, but a more fun way to do it is to let them keep a portion of the extra. Selling a $10,000 sword for $10,000 instead of $4000 can yield an extra $2000 for the Wealthy PC, $2000 for everybody else (split), and $2000 to be spent by the Wealthy PC on behalf of the party (paut, Stones of Hindering, universal uncharged scrolls of Bless, etc.). Having control of the party gadget budget is both fair and fun, and a valid way to spend 20+ points.

Last adventure (Ascent of the Leviathan) was underwater. My players had several scrolls, which they couldn't take with them. The money spent on those scrolls was mostly wasted (unless they reuse these PCs). Scroll buying is an interesting decision. Fire can burn not just scrolls but potions and many weapons too. If you have $20,000, should you buy stuff now and carry it, or save it to replace lost gear later? If you save it, will you hide it somewhere safe or carry it on your person? No obvious best answer there.

In D&D 5E none of these questions are interesting.

[1] Note that the book could also be interesting for reasons unrelated to its cash value. Maybe it has a carveout inside with a hidden magical weapon. Maybe it contains the genealogy of an NPC you wish to befriend. Maybe it's a cipher key for a treasure map you found earlier.

[beaushinkle]

In a DFRPG 'style' game the wealth advantage has never come up, but that's mostly because of how I use DFRPG, you obviously are trying to use it differently than I do. DFRPG, for me, is really just a lets do some mindless hack and slash because we need/want a break from what ever or maybe its around the holidays so only half the group can show up what can we set up quick like for those of us that still want to game. I haven't ever had to "forbid or manipulate" wealth because no one has ever wasted time on it, the characters and the setting aren't long term.

Not to twist things up, but DFRPG really isn't my go to for anything but a quickie largely disposable setting/characters. I prefer long campaign style play (100+ sessions), GURPS DF if it will be that genre, which is going to be much more thought out and discussed up front with the players before we start. It will also not be dungeon crawling because, as a GM and a player, I personally don't care for that genre as anything but a one off (maybe 3 sessions tops) or just a small subsetting within the larger campaign.

I think our disconnect is the difference in mind set, it's obviously important to you. We just play different styles of games, in hindsight I shouldn't have tried to offer you advise because we don't game the same way.

When I convert old D&D adventures I just take the parts that would add to my game. I don't worry about keeping the loot the same because each time I use it it will be tailored to the situations and the table. I can't honestly say that since leaving D&D I have ever run a "canned adventure" out of the box. I use them to make my life easier, but I don't feel obligated to use them exactly as is.

I've often talked about wanting to be a fly on the wall for how other folks run their games. The advice you're giving is totally coherent if you're running a one-off: treasure and economy takes a huge back seat because there's no time to build wealth and save for items down the line. You run I Smell A Rat, and then haul everything out of the dungeon, sell it, and then... you're done. The prices may as well be made up because you're not buying anything; the adventure is over! It becomes way more important in these contexts to make sure the players are getting fun treasures now because this treasure and these characters will only last 1-2 sessions. Totally coherent.

[beaushinkle]

As you keep saying, the identification skills can fail, so if nobody knows whether that 12 lb. book is worth anything, the question of whether to leave it behind (and never know its value) or stick it in your backpack and take it back to town (and probably learn that it's junk, but maybe not) has no obvious best answer. Therefore it's interesting.

If you have an appraiser in town, that's your own homebrew. RAW, once you learn an item's worth, that's what it sells for. Otherwise, now the GM is in the business of describing encumbrance traps to players in the hopes they fail their identification roll. As in, the GM hypes up the Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead, then the player finds out it's worth $4, and metagames that it's probably worth more and they just failed their identification (or else why did the GM spend so much time describing it), and so they lug it back down town only to find out it really is worth $4 and they could have used those 12 lbs on something else. Got em!

I just... don't understand why we're doing this.

As for the rest of the post, these are all decisions you have to make regardless of whether or not you have to identify mundane treasure. If you find The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead in a Dungeon, and are immediately able to tell that it's $500, 12lbs vs having a 95% chance to tell that it's $500, 12lbs and a 5% chance to tell that it's $4, 12lbs, we're still making a decision about whether or not to leave it (it's significantly less money-dense than copper coins), and we're still making a decision about whether or not we, as delvers, want to be bringing just our backpacks, or if we want to bring a wheelbarrow, or a horse+wagon.

Knowing the value of items doesn't change that we have to figure out whether we want to spend our money on gear upgrades, hirelings, consumables, or wagons. Those remain real choices.

Knowing the value of items also doesn't stop scrolls from being destroyed under water. Likewise, scrolls are still destroyed underwater in D&D. I'm not sure if the RAW provides specific guidance, but I don't think anyone would blink if a 5e DM warned folks that their scrolls would be getting or destroyed if brought under water.

Players who know it's not fun for them can just skip it and invest in combat skills, but players who like the money game can specialize in it to get more money per adventure. Do you want to sacrifice short-term gain for long-term advantage? If so then have a Wealthy bard in your party from the start and take Hidden Lore (Magical Writings), Connoisseur x3, etc. It's a choice with no obvious best answer: therefore interesting.

The trouble is that when you have a table of players who want to be powerful, as in all of them would prefer to invest in combat and exploration skills, are now seeing who draws the short stick because the fastest path to power is that one of them takes some selling-stuff-for-more points in a long-term campaign. Especially because the loot of N people is worth more by sacrificing a few points of one person.

So yeah; the players who just care about combat can skip it, and simply earn less treasure. Many won't. The same way that if you give MMORPG players a daily quest reward that incrementally increases their character power, they'll begrudgingly do it every day, bored out of their mind, simultaneously wishing that it just didn't exist so that they wouldn't have to.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

I really don't want to derail this thread on this aside: but this is mostly what I'm getting at. Say that you take the jewelry to the appraiser. How much is it worth, or what does the appraiser charge?

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

If you have an appraiser in town, that's your own homebrew. RAW, once you learn an item's worth, that's what it sells for.

You can't complain when you ask to reduce GM legwork: "How much is it worth if the player fails their Religious Ritual roll? More legwork for the GM on each item." and then someone points out that you don't need to do that legwork. It also doesn't make sense for you to complain about my suggestion being "homebrew" not "RAW". You've acknowledged already that there is no RAW here; there's only good rulings and bad rulings. What are you actually looking for, solutions or agreement?

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

see https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comment...f_the_weakest/ for a reddit thread of folks generally complaining about buying/selling stuff and how other systems handle it

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

That thread is not applicable to DFRPG, which actually has a very strong money mini-game, assuming the DM's random loot tables do a good job of having lots of hard-to-identify good stuff. A party who invests in a lot of hidden lore/connoisseur skills will discover that there's a lot of good stuff to be had, as will a party who hauls everything back to town and (e.g.) pays 20% of the gross receipts to a good appraiser. So if the The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead is sold by an Wealth: Average PC to a secondhand book merchant for 40% of its hypothetical full $5000 value, the appraiser gets $400 and the party keeps $1600. That's a fair deal on both sides. If the party invests in becoming Very Wealthy with good reaction bonuses and high appraisal-related skills, they will keep the full $5000 next time they come across a similar tome.

That is much, much more interesting than the buying-and-selling minigame in e.g. Dungeons and Dragons, and we haven't even discussed yet the effects of encumbrance on loot retrieval.

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Where's the interesting part?...

I get that this opens up an interesting decision. Taking merchant skills instead of combat skills relatively increases the risk of a delve (one member of your party is 10-18 points weaker than they would have been), and relatively increases the reward of a delve (you can sell non-coin loot for 1.5x to 2x as before). I just wonder if this is a fun decision to give the players.

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

As for the rest of the post, these are all decisions you have to make regardless of whether or not you have to identify mundane treasure. If you find The Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead in a Dungeon, and are immediately able to tell that it's $500, 12lbs vs having a 95% chance to tell that it's $500, 12lbs and a 5% chance to tell that it's $4, 12lbs, we're still making a decision about whether or not to leave it (it's significantly less money-dense than copper coins), and we're still making a decision about whether or not we, as delvers, want to be bringing just our backpacks, or if we want to bring a wheelbarrow, or a horse+wagon.

We're discussing the quality of DFRPG's money and equipment mini-game. If you acknowledge that it's pretty good, and you want to talk strictly about your desire to skip part of that mini-game, namely identification skills and rolls, well, go right ahead and run it that way (per Adventurers page 93, Removing Skills, "If the GM is willing to guarantee that a skill will never arise – or that a simple roll against its controlling attribute will do in the rare situations where it matters – the skill can go away."). Don't expect me to try to talk you out of skipping things you personally feel are unfun.

Again, what's your goal here?

The trouble is that when you have a table of players who want to be powerful, as in all of them would prefer to invest in combat and exploration skills, are now seeing who draws the short stick because the fastest path to power is that one of them takes some selling-stuff-for-more points in a long-term campaign. Especially because the loot of N people is worth more by sacrificing a few points of one person.

You're assuming that the extra profit has to be split equally among the party so that the Wealthy PC gets no personal benefit from their points, but a more fun way to do it is to let them keep a portion of the extra. Selling a $10,000 sword for $10,000 instead of $4000 can yield an extra $2000 for the Wealthy PC, $2000 for everybody else (split), and $2000 to be spent by the Wealthy PC on behalf of the party (paut, Stones of Hindering, universal uncharged scrolls of Bless, etc.). Having control of the party gadget budget is both fair and fun, and a valid way to spend 20+ points.

If your players all want abilities like Extra Attack more than they want stuff you can buy with money, then they clearly don't value the stuff money can buy, and no one has to invest points in Wealth. IMO that's a mistake because e.g. uncharged universal scrolls of Bless are the only way to Bless the cleric without investing in a second cleric, but hey, you do you.

In any case, if your players are "seeing who draws the short stick", I just want to reiterate that Wealth doesn't have to be a short stick. If your players make it a short stick by refusing to let the Wealthy player get any benefit from it, that's on them. No wonder nobody wants to be Wealthy if so.

There's a solution if you're seeking solutions. If you're seeking something else like a change to the text of Exploits, then I can't help you.

[beaushinkle]

You can't complain when you complain about GM legwork: "How much is it worth if the player fails their Religious Ritual roll? More legwork for the GM on each item." and then someone points out that you don't need to do that legwork. It also doesn't make sense for you to complain about my suggestion being "homebrew" not "RAW". You've acknowledged already that there is no RAW here; there's only good homebrew and bad homebrew. What are you looking for?

The RAW is that each item has an unidentified price (DFE73-73):

Success in either case estimates the real value of metal present; failure means a lowball lie, and thus a lower return in town.
...
Failure means the GM lies – as always, erring on the low side. As gems aren’t coins that always trade at full value, this makes Getting a Good Price (pp. 15-16) harder.
...
Each piece requires a secret Merchant roll to evaluate, with the usual effects on a failure. Optionally, the GM may note each piece’s metal value, gem value, and craftsmanship; e.g., a tacky quarter-pound silver belt buckle with a smiley face picked out in 50 tiny $10 diamonds might be worth $250 for silver + $500 for gems + $100 for work = $850. If the delvers prefer, they can prize out gems to sell at whatever price the merchant offers and then exchange the metal at coin rates, but they’ll lose any value added for fine work (and automatically ruin any mag- ical powers!).

As in, RAW, items have 3 values: their fair market price, their weight, and their failed-identification price. If I want to follow RAW, when my player fails at their identification roll, I need to give them the failed-identification price. If the module I'm running doesn't provide such a price, then I need to make up a reasonable one. I don't think that a blanket $0.35/lb for all items regardless of material or context is reasonable. This is legwork. If the module provided me with the 3 values (which was the original complaint in the OP), then this would be less legwork.

As in, compare:

• (1) Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead [$500, 12 lbs]
• (2) Lesser Kunsian Book of the Dead [$500, 12 lbs, misid (Religious Ritual): $80]

In the first one, the GM has to do legwork to give a price in the case that the Religious Ritual roll fails. In the second case, that legwork is done by the author. This adds up for hundreds of items across an adventure.

You're off topic. We're discussing the quality of DFRPG's money and equipment mini-game. If you acknowledge that it's pretty good, and you want to talk strictly about your desire to skip part of that mini-game, namely identification rolls, well, go right ahead and house rule it that way. Don't expect me to try to talk you out of skipping things you personally feel are unfun.

No, you're off topic. I opened the thread to analyze how effective converting 1gp to 1$ from D&D 3.5 to DFRPG modules was, and included an aside about how DFRPG modules not including the misidentification price creates legwork for the GM. Folks suggested that this legwork can be avoided by using a default misidentification price of $0.35/lb, which looks ridiculous to me. Folks further implied that the misidentification can be circumvented by homebrewing an appraiser system.

This doesn't address my core complaint. If you have an appraiser system, you still have to tell players what they think the item is worth when they fail, and so you still need a misidentification price, which means the legwork still exists, and now we've created additional complexity in that players are now sometimes not trusting their own character's appraisals.

So far, I haven't seen anyone refute that module authors providing the misidentified price would reduce legwork on the GM.

In one of my responses to bocephus (who was off topic at this point), I linked a reddit thread where folks were folks were complaining/workshopping about buying/selling stuff in general, and discussing how different systems handle it. You interjected that this thread doesn't apply, and explained that DFRPG has a strong money mini game.

At this point, I can either straight up ignore your post or engage, and explain how it does apply, further going off topic, because this relates now in basically no way to the original point that not listing the price of misidentified items creates extra legwork for the GM. I chose the second, and mildly regret it.

So, what followed was an analysis of DFRPG's money mini-game, with the goal of arguing that the listed thread does, in fact, apply (since that was the core assertion being challenged).

I argue that DFRPG's money mini game, RAW, is D&Ds with more steps. Players in D&D find an item and learn its value. Players in DFRPG find an item in learn its value. Players in D&D take the item and sell it at a shop. Players in DFRPG take the item and sell it at a shop. The core difference is that, GM side, in DFRPG sometimes we tell them (based on a probability dependent on a character stat), either the true number or a lower number for the value of the item. The player doesn't know which they're getting. Likewise, the value that items sell for in DFRPG are dependent on a roll based on a character stat. It's still fundamentally the same system.

Items sometimes being sold for less than their true worth doesn't invalidate that reddit thread (the players would never know). Adding in an appraiser is homebrew, and thus doesn't invalidate that reddit thread. Including a bargaining system where you can sometimes sell individual items for 1.5x or sometimes 0.5x what you would have sold it doesn't invalidate that reddit thread. The rest of the money mini game between D&D and DFRPG are roughly equivalent: you probably can't carry the whole dungeon back to the shop in both systems, either due to fictional or mechanical constraints. Scrolls still get wet. Players still make interesting purchasing decisions about what magical items / equipment / consumables they want to buy with their money.

More generally, I'm arguing that the added complexity buys us little and eats at precious table time, but agreed; that part is off topic.

You're assuming that the extra profit has to be split equally among the party so that the Wealthy PC gets no personal benefit from their points, but a more fun way to do it is to let them keep a portion of the extra.

Why should they get an outsized share if this makes the party less powerful, and thus makes the everyone more likely to die?

As in, say that you've determined for the best way for the party to spend the wealth they just accrued is Strategy-X. Strategy-Y on the other hand allocates more of that purchasing power to items specifically for the wealthy player, and is overall a weaker and less successful allocation. Now this forces the players to play sub-optimally (ie, increase the chance their characters die) in order to appease the wealthy player. Yuck.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

*snip dead horses* Why should they get an outsized share if this makes the party less powerful, and thus makes the everyone more likely to die?

As in, say that you've determined for the best way for the party to spend the wealth they just accrued is Strategy-X. Strategy-Y on the other hand allocates more of that purchasing power to items specifically for the wealthy player, and is overall a weaker and less successful allocation. Now this forces the players to play sub-optimally (ie, increase the chance their characters die) in order to appease the wealthy player. Yuck.

Who is the "you" who is determining the best way to spend the extra wealth? If it's the player of the Wealthy character, problem solved: the person who is most interested in wealth as a path to power gets to spend points to control the extra wealth. It's no different from the way a player who is interested in magic gets to spend points on learning spells and FP on casting spells. That doesn't mean there can't be a group discussion, but at the end of the day the wizard's player is who determines what Strategy-X[Wizard spells] gets employed.

If you insist on choosing which wizards spells to cast as a group, disempowering the wizard player, don't expect to see many wizards in play. Wealth is no different.

[beaushinkle]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Who is the "you" who is determining the best way to spend the extra wealth? If it's the player of the Wealthy character, problem solved: the person who is most interested in wealth as a path to power gets to spend points to control the extra wealth. It's no different from the way a player who is interested in magic gets to spend points on learning spells and FP on casting spells. That doesn't mean there can't be a group discussion, but at the end of the day the wizard's player is who determines what Strategy-X[Wizard spells] gets employed.

If you insist on choosing which wizards spells to cast as a group, disempowering the wizard player, don't expect to see many wizards in play. Wealth is no different.

I'll bite.

My table generally just has "party wealth" then they buy the stuff the party needs most. If that means one player gets a whole bunch of upgrades first (because that's what's optimal in that game system), that's what happens. It's in everyone's interest because it keeps everyone alive.

They've also experimented with splitting up wealth equitably each time: sell off some items for $10000, everyone gets $2500. This ultimately devolves into "party wealth", as they just loan each other money to buy what's best for the group. Each player can technically say no, but it doesn't usually happen. 4 players individually keeping track of money and equipment is also more annoying than 1 person/GM just saying "okay, 10000$ going into the treasury". This usually gets scrapped after a handful of sessions in favor of party wealth once the characters establish trust.

In wealth-splitting with no loans, this gets really sub-optimal. You run into situations where multiple folks will be close to an item (and thus the party would be stronger for the next adventure if a loan was given), but they all just hold onto the money.

Now, if one person can spend 10 character points in order to earn 1.5x loot for the party, what happens?

In party wealth - nothing except that the character who spent 10 points now paid 10 character points to make the party wealthier. Thanks Fred!

In wealth-splitting with loans, same thing.

Wealth-splitting with no loans sounds like what you're imagining. How much of the extra does the wealthy-character receive? As in, say you brought back $20000 of treasure. An average wealth party sells that for 8000, and so 4 players each get $2000. If a Comfortable wealth character sells that treasure, the party brings in 12000. Do the other 3 still get $2k and the wealthy player gets $6k? That's the amount of money they would have gotten if they didn't have wealth. That's a lot of money. So much that the wealthy character probably passes (via gear power) the non-wealthy characters pretty quickly in any long-running campaign.

So much that it might behoove the other characters to also buy wealth, which is ridiculous. Having two characters with wealth doesn't help at all but now because we're not equitably splitting up the money, each player is incentivized to waste points.

Yuck.

[beaushinkle]

Worth pointing out that there's some pretty wild game theory going on when you attempt to split the wealth in any other way but evenly.

As in, say that Alice, Bob, Carol, and David are in a party. Alice sells a haul on behalf of the party and comes out with $1000.

If Alice has full authority over the distribution, why doesn't Alice give herself all $1000? The only thing stopping this would be that she doesn't effectively have full authority. As in, the Bob, Carol, and David might not be able to vote in the moment, but they can certainly beat up Alice and take their $333.

Which means that Bob, Carol, and David can effectively always vote on Alice's proposal of the split.

Alice could propose that Alice, Bob, and Carol each get $333 and David gets nothing. Alice, Bob, and Carol each like this because they effectively get 33% more wealth than an even split. David obviously doesn't like it, but gets outvoted. If David tries to retaliate, he gets 3v1'd, which is tough. David is now probably very annoyed and isn't likely to keep delving.

Alice could propose that they each get $250, and all seems well until one person decides that they ought to get a bigger share of the loot than the others. Maybe it's because they contributed more to acquiring the loot. Maybe it's because they contributed more to selling the loot at a high price. Maybe it's because they contributed more to the group's survival in the dungeon. Maybe it's because they contributed more to the group making it to the dungeon in the first place.

Maybe ya'lls tables are interested in loot equity discussions: "what percentage of the loot does each character deserve?". Mine isn't, and so just splits loot evenly (when they aren't just sharing wealth).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

I'll bite.

My table generally just has "party wealth" then they buy the stuff the party needs most. If that means one player gets a whole bunch of upgrades first (because that's what's optimal in that game system), that's what happens. It's in everyone's interest because it keeps everyone alive.

They've also experimented with splitting up wealth equitably each time: sell off some items for $10000, everyone gets $2500. This ultimately devolves into "party wealth", as they just loan each other money to buy what's best for the group. Each player can technically say no, but it doesn't usually happen. 4 players individually keeping track of money and equipment is also more annoying than 1 person/GM just saying "okay, 10000$ going into the treasury". This usually gets scrapped after a handful of sessions in favor of party wealth once the characters establish trust.

In wealth-splitting with no loans, this gets really sub-optimal. You run into situations where multiple folks will be close to an item (and thus the party would be stronger for the next adventure if a loan was given), but they all just hold onto the money.

Now, if one person can spend 10 character points in order to earn 1.5x loot for the party, what happens?

In party wealth - nothing except that the character who spent 10 points now paid 10 character points to make the party wealthier. Thanks Fred!

In wealth-splitting with loans, same thing.

Wealth-splitting with no loans sounds like what you're imagining. How much of the extra does the wealthy-character receive? As in, say you brought back $20000 of treasure. An average wealth party sells that for 8000, and so 4 players each get $2000. If a Comfortable wealth character sells that treasure, the party brings in 12000. Do the other 3 still get $2k and the wealthy player gets $6k? That's the amount of money they would have gotten if they didn't have wealth. That's a lot of money. So much that the wealthy character probably passes (via gear power) the non-wealthy characters pretty quickly in any long-running campaign.

So much that it might behoove the other characters to also buy wealth, which is ridiculous. Having two characters with wealth doesn't help at all but now because we're not equitably splitting up the money, each player is incentivized to waste points.

Yuck.

You didn't answer my question. Who is the "you" who is deciding in your hypothetical scenario?

Even if 100% of the $10,000 from selling a $10,000 book is dedicated to boosting the party, someone still has to make the decision about whether to buy five more uncharged scrolls of Bless for $2000, or commission 14 paut potions for $1890 (delivery in two weeks), or hire a 125-point knight and equip him in plate armor for $400 a week plus $7500 for armor, or save towards a Penetrating enchantment for someone's sword. Who takes responsibility for those decisions?

If it's genuinely a collective decision with no one taking special responsibility for it, why doesn't that happen for spellcasting too? Why isn't it a collective decision whether the Cleric picks up Power Investiture 6 and Sanctuary, or 4 more points of energy reserve? Why isn't it a collective decision whether the wizard should concentrate on Invisibility for everybody, or Darkvision + Resist Sound? If it is a collective decision then the guy who spent 20 points on Wealthy has no reason to complain compared to the guy who spent 200+ points on Darkvision-20 and Invisibility-20. They both benefit from party decisions and capabilities.

[beaushinkle]

Even if 100% of the $10,000 from selling a $10,000 book is dedicated to boosting the party, someone still has to make the decision about whether to buy five more uncharged scrolls of Bless for $2000, or commission 14 paut potions for $1890 (delivery in two weeks), or hire 125-point knight and equip him in plate armor for $400 a week plus $7500 for armor, or save towards a Penetrating enchantment for someone's sword. Who takes responsibility for those decisions?

In wealth sharing, someone proposes a way for the party to spend wealth and gets unanimous agreement.

In wealth-splitting-with-loans, folks buy their own stuff and ask for loans and other people write IOUs for stuff they can't afford. People attempt to talk each other out of purchases when someone spends their money on something stupid because it means that person has less money to loan for good stuff.

So for example, in wealth sharing, folks will discuss whether they want to buy a bunch of paut potions, if they want to buy a hireling knight, or if they want to save up for penetrating for the barbarian's axe.

In split-wealth-with-loans, the barbarian might say "hey i want to get penetrating for my axe; can ya'll save up to loan me money for that?"

If it's genuinely a collective decision with no one taking special responsibility for it, why doesn't that happen for spellcasting too? Why isn't it a collective decision whether the Cleric picks up Power Investiture 6 and Sanctuary, or 4 more points of energy reserve? Why isn't it a collective decision whether the wizard should concentrate on Invisibility for everybody, or Darkvision + Resist Sound?

I don't let Alice decide how Bob plays his character. That said, they definitely coordinated which spells the cleric and the wizard would choose at the beginning of the game, and they definitely discuss as a group which spells are working well and which ones would be useful to pick up going forward. The Wizard is free to cast whatever spells they'd like in combat. The other characters are free to notice that the Wizard is casting useless crap and berate the Wizard after combat for goofing off while their lives are on the line, and to get back to casting Great Haste or whatever. The Wizard gets to pick, and the other characters get to be annoyed or pleased with the Wizard's decision.

If it is a collective decision then the guy who spent 20 points on Wealthy has no reason to complain compared to the guy who spent 200+ points on Darkvision-20 and Invisibility-20. They both benefit from party decisions and capabilities.

Is the idea here that wealth is for the good of the group, darkvision is for the good of the group, invisibility is for the good of the group, a big beefy knight that hacks apart enemies is for the good of the group, and so all points spent in any of these ways are all just contributing to the common collective, and everyone should be equally happy that they're fulfilling their role? Nonsense.

Some of the stuff that contributes to common success is more fun than others. I'm not going to be able to give you a definition here, and it's 100% subjective.

If you have a player that wants to trade not-merchant-effectiveness for merchant-effectiveness, then I'm happy that DFRPG supports that for you. What I'm saying is that by including it in the game, a table full of not-merchants now feels like they have to draw short-sticks for who gets shoe-horned into spending points on merchant-stuff because it's absurdly rewarding.

edit:

In any case

• Module authors not providing misidentified item prices creates legwork for the GM
• The reddit thread I linked about buying/selling applies to DFRPG

That is what we're talking about, right?