Wealth between Poor and Dead Broke

[Bicorn]

What would be a suitable starting wealth multiplier for a Wealth level worth -20 points (poorer than Poor, but not quite Dead Broke)?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bicorn

What would be a suitable starting wealth multiplier for a Wealth level worth -20 points (poorer than Poor, but not quite Dead Broke)?

The increasing levels of wealth go x2, x5, x20, and the decreasing ones go x1/2, x1/5, so I think x1/20 is only logical.

[Maz]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The increasing levels of wealth go x2, x5, x20, and the decreasing ones go x1/2, x1/5, so I think x1/20 is only logical.

I agree.

But you could also just go for the halfway mark for the halfway cost.
I have a Wealthy+ level in my games at x12,5 costing 25 pts. It works fine.

[Stormcrow]

Why would you need a level between Poor and Dead Broke? If it's about starting wealth, just take Dead Broke and spend one character point on Trading Points for Money to get 1/10 the campaign's average starting wealth, which is exactly halfway between the 1/5 of Poor and the 0 of Dead Broke.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Why would you need a level between Poor and Dead Broke? If it's about starting wealth, just take Dead Broke and spend one character point on Trading Points for Money to get 1/10 the campaign's average starting wealth, which is exactly halfway between the 1/5 of Poor and the 0 of Dead Broke.

I don't think you can do that if you're Dead Broke.

At the very least, the money you get can't be the equivalent of starting wealth. If it were, you could take Dead Broke for -25, and then trade 20 points for cash, and get the equivalent of Comfortable wealth for -5 points instead of 10. Or you could trade 2 points for cash, and get Poor for -23 points instead of -15. Them's free points! Any rules interpretation that yields free points has to be wrong.

Most basically, the definition of Dead Broke says that you have "no money." I think that could be taken as precluding gaining money by trading points for it.

I'd also note that your only property is the clothes you are wearing (you don't get the multiple outfits that normally come with Status); and they're going to be quite cheap, possibly rags, and might not be very clean, since you have no money for laundry, either. Buying money for points won't solve that problem.

You can't take Independent Income, either; or if you do, it won't do any good, as 1% or 20% of starting wealth $0 is still $0/month.

There are probably other things that buying up Wealth will get you, but trading points for cash won't, even if you suppose it's legal.

[Brandy]

In an old thread about wealth, as part of presenting some house rules I show that "10^(pts/25) is a good approximation of the GURPS wealth multiplier".

By this guideline, "Dead Broke" doesn't come out to "absolutely nothing" but rather 10% of starting wealth. A 20 Point disadvantage works out to about 16% or 1/6 of starting wealth.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Brandy

By this guideline, "Dead Broke" doesn't come out to "absolutely nothing" but rather 10% of starting wealth. A 20 Point disadvantage works out to about 16% or 1/6 of starting wealth.

Yes, but that means you're not saving the appearances. Such a rule would have to be a house rule.

There's not perfect symmetry between high and low Wealth. x2 is 10 points, and x1/2 is -10 points; but x5 is 20 points, and x1/5 is -15 points, not -20 points. Given that, I don't think it's unreasonable to have imperfect symmetry between x20 being 30 points and x1/20 being -20 points. And it does fit it in between Poor and Dead Broke.

As for Dead Broke not being zero, I suppose you could say that x100 for 50 points goes with x1/100 for -25 points, but having only 1% of Average starting wealth isn't all that different from having nothing. Rounding 0.01 down to 0 keeps things simple. In any case it IS RAW, and I was trying to answer the question in terms of RAW.

[The Colonel]

I would almost expect x1/5 do be worth more points than x5 costs - after all, in day to day play, wealth would seem to be subject to diminishing returns and, for example, paying five times as much for a sword is not going to give you as much of an advantage over the baseline sword buyer as he has over the guy that can only afford 1/5 of a sword.

Unless I'm missing something...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I would almost expect x1/5 do be worth more points than x5 costs - after all, in day to day play, wealth would seem to be subject to diminishing returns and, for example, paying five times as much for a sword is not going to give you as much of an advantage over the baseline sword buyer as he has over the guy that can only afford 1/5 of a sword.

Unless I'm missing something...

Well, it's a logarithmic scale, not a linear one, so the utility per added dollar does fall. Taking current Starting Wealth of $20,000:

Dead Broke to Poor: $4000, 10 points, $400/point
Poor to Struggling: $6000, 5 points, $1200/point
Struggling to Average: $10,000, 10 points, $1000/point
Average to Comfortable: $20,000, 10 points, $2000/point
Comfortable to Wealthy: $60,000, 10 points, $6000/point
Wealthy to Very Wealthy: $300,000, 10 points, $30,000/point
Very Wealthy to Filthy Rich: $1,600,000, 20 points, $80,000/point

That looks like diminishing returns to me. Okay, there's a little bobble at Poor to Struggling. If you made that 10 points, you'd get $600/point, and if you made Struggling to Average 5 points, you'd get $2000/point, which might not be unreasonable; having a flat scale for the two steps around Average probably does relatively little harm. So that might be a suitable house rule. But I think that having $400 be worth 1 point to the Dead Broke guy and 0.005 point to the Very Wealthy guy looks like a big drop in utility.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Why would you need a level between Poor and Dead Broke? If it's about starting wealth, just take Dead Broke and spend one character point on Trading Points for Money to get 1/10 the campaign's average starting wealth.

Yay, broken rules. Trading Points for Money should give wealth-level adjusted money.