Selling loot (wealth advantage and time spent)

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Eh, when I did it I did 30 points into Very Wealthy and suffered a bit for it at the outset. The PC certainly grew to be "more" competent in dungeoneering later... and it was also a Thief (which I wasn't considering above) and we probably know my thoughts on how relatively unworthy that profession is when you've got a Wizard with Lockmaster and a Knight who just "tanks the traps".

Kinda... really skews the old perceptions there. I'd still rather slowly buy up Wealth on another profession than ever do Thief or Bard.

In DFRPG you don't even have the option to buy Very Wealthy without creating a custom profession (Adventurers pg 14). The Thief template only has Comfortable and Wealthy.

This is okay because between "For You, A Special Price" (+1 to effective Wealth ~50% of the time, per Exploits pg 16) and "Haggling" (also +1 to effective Wealth and 50% of the time, also on Exploits pg 16), Very Wealthy is redundant 75% of the time anyway--you can't sell for more than 100%. If you count black markets, it's redundant 90%+ of the time.

I agree that Thieves are pretty terrible, but Wealthy Elven Bards are awesome.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

It seems that the rules highly suggest that the wealthiest delver sells the loot for the entire party... but are there any limitations in place?

The short answer is "there are no (rules-based) limitations; go at it however you like." That doesn't mean there are no consequences to choices, though.

You'll find a big discussion of the topic (with input from Kromm) here, and a summary by me here.

Social dynamics can get interesting when a party has delvers of very mixed wealth levels...

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by tbone

The short answer is "there are no (rules-based) limitations; go at it however you like." That doesn't mean there are no consequences to choices, though.

You'll find a big discussion of the topic (with input from Kromm) here, and a summary by me here.

Social dynamics can get interesting when a party has delvers of very mixed wealth levels...

Note: to me the confusing part is where Kromm says

"somebody playing the cleric who shells out for Power Investiture 5 and lots of Energy Reserve to Bless people all the time and walk around at -1 to spells"

because if you're Blessing "people" that's more than one Bless so you'll be at -2 or greater to all spells.

I'm 90%+ sure that Kromm is not suggesting that spells "on" are counted per-skill and not per-instance, and even if he were suggesting that I would veto it for my own games anyway as overpowered. I think he probably meant "-1 to spells per Bless" and just didn't write that.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Note: to me the confusing part is where Kromm says

"somebody playing the cleric who shells out for Power Investiture 5 and lots of Energy Reserve to Bless people all the time and walk around at -1 to spells"

because if you're Blessing "people" that's more than one Bless so you'll be at -2 or greater to all spells.

Well, I would assume that means performing Bless on numerous people, but just one at a time.

If the cleric did place Bless on n people simultaneously, then yes, that should mean -n on further spells, for as long as those Blesses remain in effect.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by tbone

Well, I would assume that means performing Bless on numerous people, but just one at a time.

If the cleric did place Bless on n people simultaneously, then yes, that should mean -n on further spells, for as long as those Blesses remain in effect.

Isn't that backwards? If you somehow Bless N people simultaneously with one spell you're only at -1 going forward (but that's not actually possible). If you cast Bless N times you're at -N going forward.

It's -1 per Bless, not -1 total, isn't it?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If the wealthy elven bard sells $10K of loot for $10K instead of $4K and says, "okay, let's split $6K of this evenly between everyone, but I want to keep $4K to buy healing potions and spell scrolls to help the party," they're not doing anything wrong[1]

Yes, that. If one PC is doing all the selling, they are holding all the money. What they do with it after that is their business. If they want to negotiate a deal with the rest of the party where they sell the stuff at a higher price and keep a fraction of the difference, that's how brokerage works in reality, and should probably be encouraged.

In fact passing a note telling them how much the loot sold for, rather than revealing it to the party as a whole, is a perfectly reasonable way to handle this as the GM. If they then want to lie, you should let them.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Isn't that backwards? If you somehow Bless N people simultaneously with one spell you're only at -1 going forward (but that's not actually possible). If you cast Bless N times you're at -N going forward.

It's -1 per Bless, not -1 total, isn't it?

Maybe poor wording here. By "simultaneously" I mean multiple subjects "wearing" Bless at the same time. The actual castings would indeed be successive, taking many minutes per person, one at a time.

[beaushinkle]

The idea of the wealthy character keeping more of the coin has always confused me.

Here's the situation:

• The wealthy character can sell loot for 1.5x what it would have sold for
• The wealthy character is less powerful; thus less effective at acquiring loot
• The non-wealthy characters are more powerful; thus more effective at acquiring loot
• There are more non-wealthy characters than wealthy characters

Here's roughly how I think this plays out: 4 non-wealthy characters and a wealthy character go into a dungeon. They all risk their lives and pull out a 100g worth of treasure. The wealthy character can get the best price for it (60g instead of 40g).

The wealthy character might say "If I didn't have wealth, we would receive 40g, and you all would receive 8g. Instead, I have wealth and we receive 60g. I propose you each get 9g and I get the remaining 24g."

The archer could pipe up "I could have taken wealth as well but didn't, and as a result we earned more treasure for you to sell. Had I also been a Bard, we might have died or been unable to find some of the treasure we did".

The cleric could pipe up "I could have taken wealth as well but didn't..."

----

The more mercenary conversation looks like:

"If you don't give us our equal share, the four of us will forcibly take it from you."

Additionally, the wealth itself tends to be best spent on the non-wealthy; they probably spent the points on dungeon-useful areas rather than selling-things-for-more, and giving them better armor or a more powerful weapon or whatever is a force-multiplier.

The dynamic this creates is that money optimizers feel optimization pressure to delegate one of their members to be wealthy and that player is forever ~4 weapon skill behind all of the other ones (which is a massive difference).

If your table experiences this tension and players don't want to be mr moneybags but feel like someone has to because it's ridiculously effective, I advocate for removing the option and splitting the difference: stuff just sells for 50% instead of 40% or 60%. Has the advantage of easier mental math too.

[sjmdw45]

The archer could pipe up "I could have taken wealth as well but didn't, and as a result we earned more treasure for you to sell. Had I also been a Bard, we might have died or been unable to find some of the treasure we did".

That's quite a leap.

(1) It's not like wealthy elven bards don't pull their own weight, especially if they use some of their wealth for things like universal Bless scrolls to help the party, or paut, or better weapons and armor; or put Resist Sound up on everybody and then chuck Concussions.

(2) Even if it happens to be an adventure where archery is better than whatever the bard does, it's not like more treasure magically appears just because the delvers are deadlier.

In some cases, the archer's remarks could be fair and true after a given adventure (e.g. archer's arrows brought down a flying gryphon and the lich-king on it, who had powerful and valuable items on his person), but it's a niche scenario. And it's mostly a moot point because a Scout can't take Wealth anyway. Positive Wealth is only on the bard and thief templates.

The more mercenary conversation looks like:

"If you don't give us our equal share, the four of us will forcibly take it from you."

Do I need to point out that robbing your own allies is a really stupid way to live? Suppose this Chaotic Evil conversation does happen. What's the Chaotic Evil victim going to do in response? Well, how about smile and agree until several adventures have gone by and lots of loot has accumulated, and then backstab the robbers at the tail end of a crucial battle which they're winning, then take all of their accumulated loot and retire?

Stupid betrayal leads to stupid betrayal.

[Anthony]

The core problem with being the guy who sells things is that it's really not a job that needs an adventurer.