[MH] Patron Pricing Question

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Patron (Modest Budget; Light Influence) costs [10]. I want the (Light Influence)

Are you sure you don't want a Contact?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Are you sure you don't want a Contact?

Contacts don't interact with the MH2 Patrons and Influence rules.

Contacts don't do: Access, Bailout, Cover Up, Expert Access, Extra Gear, Prisoner Storage, Research, Transportation and Other Requests as described in those rules.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Contacts don't interact with the MH2 Patrons and Influence rules.

Contacts don't do: Access, Bailout, Cover Up, Expert Access, Extra Gear, Prisoner Storage, Research, Transportation and Other Requests as described in those rules.

Contacts are also much too expensive for what they give you. A completely reliable contact that you can always use once per day with a skill of 12 or less costs 12 points, while just purchasing an H skill up to Stat+2 costs the same amount. Contacts provide no game benefit aside from a single use of a single skill per day, either, which makes them nearly useless, and certainly useless for modeling pull with the mob.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Contacts don't interact with the MH2 Patrons and Influence rules.

Contacts don't do: Access, Bailout, Cover Up, Expert Access, Extra Gear, Prisoner Storage, Research, Transportation and Other Requests as described in those rules.

If you say so, but contacts do provide information and organizational favours and a number of the things you mention sound like they would in fact be worth money. Transportation? Extra Gear? Bailout?

[Langy]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you say so, but contacts do provide information and organizational favours and a number of the things you mention sound like they would in fact be worth money. Transportation? Extra Gear? Bailout?

I'm guessing you don't have the MH series or you'd know that Transportation/Extra Gear/Bailout/etc are all specific 'Common Requests' that Hunters can make of their Patrons. This is all outlined in MH2 page 27, and is pretty much the same idea as the Pulling Rank rules from Action 1.

Also, Contacts don't give any mechanical benefit for getting organizational favors. They only have a single skill (not even a group of related skills!), and can only roll against that single skill once per day. They aren't fully-fledged characters at all, much less organizations able to provide actual material support rather than just create forgeries or answer questions about hidden lore.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you say so, but contacts do provide information and organizational favours and a number of the things you mention sound like they would in fact be worth money. Transportation? Extra Gear? Bailout?

So I can take Contact Group: Local Mafia (Constantly; Completely Reliable; Supernatural Means), and I can use my Contact multiple times per session, it will provide me with a variety of on-demand security clearances, bail me out of jail with the charges dropped, perform effective cover-ups for anything I want concealed that has gone public, give me access to any and every possible expert no matter how obscure, give me extra gear for free regardless of the budget it may or may not give me, store my prisoners for me (humans, demons, vampires and the more exotic stuff), do research for me, provide local and distant transportation (up to and including helicopters) and satisfy a variety of other arbitrarily specific/expensive/dangerous requests as I come up with them?

... and the Contact Group will do this for [10] points or less?

[PK]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

The Mafia doesn't equip the character, but it does have influence in the campaign's city and is willing to use that influence to benefit the character ... so should cost something!

I've a character that has a Patron that doesn't provide a Budget and only has Light Influence. How should I price this?

At 10 points. If it had Heavy Influence, it'd be 20 points.

A Light Influence Patron is just Patron (9 or less) [10]. A Heavy Influence one is Patron (12 or less) [20]. That's the secret formula behind it all. :)

Now, for that base price (10 or 20 points), your starting budget is equivalent to what it would be if you hadn't taken a Patron. A person without a Patron starts off with $20,000 in gear. A person with a Patron starts off with $10,000 in normal gear and $10,000 in vehicles. Both get the same $2,000/month salary.

Taking higher levels is the equivalent of adding Wealth (Comfortable) or (Wealthy) -- notice that the values are multiplied by 2 or 5. Voila!

Monetarily speaking, a Patron adds these two drawbacks and one benefit, which cancel out:

1. Your budget is divided sharply into two separate budgets for two separate types of expenses (normal/vehicles).
2. You cannot resell your equipment to recoup your costs.
3. You are given a modest replacement budget every mission.

So, a Patron with Modest Budget is the equivalent of using your normal starting wealth to equip yourself. That means that "modest budget" and "no budget; I use starting wealth" are the same thing. Either way, you start off with $20,000 and get $2,000/month. Instead of spending +10 or +20 points to buy higher levels of a budget, you can spend 10 or 20 points to buy levels of Wealth. Same deal.

Originally Posted by Langy

It's not actually Struggling wealth. It gives $20,000 initially and $3,500 per adventure, and this is in addition to the normal $20,000 and $2,000 per month that all characters get as part of normal Wealth.

Not quite. You either use the Patron rules for budgets or the Starting Wealth rules for budgets. As the section Wealth says, the rules there are only used for hunters without Patrons. (Obviously the special case above is a way to bridge the two.) If you have a Patron, all that Wealth affects is the $2,000/month you get in addition to your budget.

Does this match up to the normal GURPS wealth rules? No, but it's not supposed to. Just like DF, and like Action, Monster Hunters uses a customized, simplified take on the wealth rules. Either your Patron provides you with a budget or your starting wealth takes care of it.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

At 10 points. If it had Heavy Influence, it'd be 20 points.

A Light Influence Patron is just Patron (9 or less) [10]. A Heavy Influence one is Patron (12 or less) [20]. That's the secret formula behind it all. :)

Ah. Cool. I'll do that then. Thanks!

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Langy

Also, Contacts don't give any mechanical benefit for getting organizational favors.

Sure they do. If you have a police contact, then you can use it to get small police force favours.

They only have a single skill (not even a group of related skills!), and can only roll against that single skill once per day.

They can roll against their "skill" a bunch of times if you have a bunch of questions or requests when you talk to them. You are just limited to one conversation per day.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Not quite. You either use the Patron rules for budgets or the Starting Wealth rules for budgets. As the section Wealth says, the rules there are only used for hunters without Patrons. (Obviously the special case above is a way to bridge the two.) If you have a Patron, all that Wealth affects is the $2,000/month you get in addition to your budget.

Does this match up to the normal GURPS wealth rules? No, but it's not supposed to. Just like DF, and like Action, Monster Hunters uses a customized, simplified take on the wealth rules. Either your Patron provides you with a budget or your starting wealth takes care of it.

Ah - I didn't get that at all from reading MH1. Maybe I just missed it somewhere *shrug*

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Sure they do. If you have a police contact, then you can use it to get small police force favours.

This isn't supported by the actual game rules or through any game mechanics I know of. I've seen nothing to suggest that a detective contact (maybe he's a Contact (Criminology-15) or something) can be used to get yourself out of a parking ticket, or even tipped off that the police are after you. They might be covered in Social Engineering (I hope contacts are rejiggered in Social Engineering, since, if you haven't noticed, they're one of my pet peeves of the system as-is), but in the RAW a contact is just a source for rolls against a single skill. A Lawyer contact can't drive you to a meeting (no Driving skill), can't chat up a woman using his Lawyer smooth-talking (no Sex Appeal skill), and can't even operate a computer (no Computer Operations skill); instead, all he can do is stuff that Law (Criminal) can do, since his character sheet is just 'No skills/advantages/etc except Law (Criminal)-15'. Oh, and he might turn you into the cops if you tell him that you've committed a crime (thus breaking lawyer-client privilege) unless you increase his reliability from default.

Of course, this is all very silly and takes it all to extremes, but you get the idea - the RAW rules treat Contacts as if the only thing they can do is roll against a single skill, even when most professions have multiple related skills. You need to pay three times the normal amount to get a Wildcard Contact, where he's got multiple skills and thus is able to act like a normal human in society.

All of these problems don't even get into the fact that contacts are way too expensive for what they give you, especially when compared to just purchasing the skill straight-out or getting a much, much much more competent, cheap, reliable, and available ally, who can actually do things besides background tasks.

They can roll against their "skill" a bunch of times if you have a bunch of questions or requests when you talk to them. You are just limited to one conversation per day.

Forgot about that rule. It makes Contacts a tiny bit more useful, but still nowhere near enough.