Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

Au contraire, mon ami.

In my hypothetical DF campaign with Wealth allowed, The Wealthy Guy is paying points for being the Fence (and getting better starting gear and better comforts). Thanks to his Fence benefits, he would ensure that the party gets a better price for their loot. He would also get social benefits as detailed in my previous posts. So, he has his niche, and he has paid points for that niche. if the Party allows him to negotiate the accommodations, he finds a Friend of a Friend, who just so happens to be heading to the capital on urgent business: would The Wealthy Guy mind housesitting for him? Need a ship to take them to the adventure site? No problem, there is a trading vessel owned by Wealthy Guy and Company in the harbor, and the captain is happy to make a small detour from his usual route to keep the owner happy.

The Cleric, in my campaigns, is seldom required to heal ANYONE. Certainly not these greedy mercenaries who are not giving tithes to the church in question. One exception being the clerics of the Goddess of Healing, but they are pacifists and unlikely to be dungeon delving (and if they were, they might be just as driven to heal the enemy!). That is, unless the Cleric has a Vow or a Code of Honor requiring him to heal the party members, he can say no and expect no divine retribution (the barbarian looks mightily miffed, though).

In short, I think I am much in agreement with Kromm and Turhan's Bey Company in how McMoneybags should be played for him to be an asset to the Party. Where we differ is how to accomplish that. Me, I'd divide the loot equally (after transferred to money), and keep the Wealthy Guy's wealth in the background: dungeon delving is more like a hobby, not his main source of income. They'd use the skimming of the loot to make the loot the driving force of actual monetary resources in the campaign (which, I admit, might be truer to the roots).

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

It would depend on How he did it, if he did it blatantly the other PC's would stop using his service and rellie on their 'poor' skills... if IC he is promising he has the skill and connect to make sure they don't get short changed and secretly skimming, then occly they players know and ignore it ans long as the not getting less than if they didnt, and the player does not with hold the funds when the need it even if ICly the wealthy chacter get to show of a little.

the point is the Fighter has payed of for his power are slaying the monsters, he except his character to get to behave like a monster slayer. McMoneybags has paid the point to act like he has Money, he does get to ack like that if he cant show off his wealth by the player who did noy pay for the wealth can do the same thing. He does Want ever to rend their own horse, HE want to rents the horses.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

I was suspecting that myself. I know that there is this psychological experiment setup, where you have two people and an amount of money. One of the two can divide the money. But it is the other one who says 'yes' or 'no' to the division. If he says 'yes', they each take their share. If he says 'no', neither gets anything.

Now, in this kind of setup, lets say 100 bucks, the greedy alternative would be 1-99 split, and a rational man would accept 1, because it is more than 0. However, in testing, it was found that people tended to say 'no' to unequal divisions and the most successful (and common) one was 50-50.

I am paraphrasing from memory. :)

In any case, this reminds me of the McMoneybags selling the loot. After all, he is in essence dividing the excess. Many people have remarked that half-and-half of the excess is 'fair' in their mind, which would seem to support the above point.

I was going to add something more, but the thought escaped my mind... Ah, there it is. Like TBC and others mention, the adventurers tend to be pretty violent bunch. And I for one would like my partymembers to think of me as a good guy and an asset to be protected, than 'that greedy, doubledealing, conniving SoB'.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

How would they ever know?

The Wealth Advantage in Dungeon Fantasy is essentially paying points to have access to contacts, special offers or other things that other people are not privy too.

If the other players inquire about the value of their loot anywhere in town, they're told that it's worth X*0.4. McMoneybags tells them that he can get X*0.5 for it and they give it to him to sell. He then sells it for X*0.6 (or X*0.8) and if he doesn't feel comfortable walking out with all the cash, just spends the excess with his fellow guildmember, contact, whatever.

How, without metagaming, would the other characters ever have cause to be unhappy with this division?

Hell, if the issue is that he's lying to his fellow party members, nothing forbids the GM from stating that a member of the Merchant's Guild who sells loot in town receives a certain percentage of its value as a rebate into his account with the Guild. Then he's not lying at all, about anything. He just benefits more from selling loot than his fellow adventurers as a result of his position (paid for with points spent on the Wealth Advantage).

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

For example, accompanying the Wealthy Guy to the sale. Granted, it can always be pre-empted, but frankly, if a guy says he can get a better price, are you sure he is actually telling you the full price?

In any case, I see your point. The Wealthy Guy could just as easily offer to buy the loot himself at 0.5 of its countertop value. If he can then sell it ahead at a profit, where is the lie here? But still, the above point remains and it would cause some bad feeling ICly should it come out, and likely even OOCly since that is what people are like.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

Half of the excess would still be McMoneybags getting his full share plus 1/4 of everybody else's (everybody keeps the 40% they would have gotten, then splits the extra 40% halfsies with McMoneybags). In a 5 member group that's equivalent to McMoneybags getting a 2.66 shares when everybody else gets only 1 share. Which isn't far off from Langy's earlier suggestion...

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

If the character paid 30 points for Filthy Rich, allowing him to sell for 100% of the value, and splits the difference between what he gets and what the average adventurer would be, this means that the delvers are getting 70% of the value instead of 40%. However, if you look at his side of the bargain:

He gets 100% of his share, plus 4x30% of everyone else's share. This adds up to 220% of his share. He's getting a little more than 3 times what each otehr character gets. Imagine that the delvers have found 5 rods of valuablium, worth $1000. They split it, so each delver gets one. Now, Mr Moneybags sells his for $1000. The rest of the delvers can choose to sell theirs for $400, or let Mr Moneybags sell it, and pocket $700. It's only fair, because they're getting an advantage worth 15 points for free (Halfway between Comfortable and Wealthy), while Mr Moneybags paid 30 points for his. That's 45 points of difference against Mr Moneybags.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

McMoneybags can sell the loot for 80% of it's full "retail" value, not 100%, at least in the examples we were using (None of the templates have Very Wealthy available as a standard option). The other PCs are limited to 40% of it's full value. Our numbers are off from that different start.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

It makes little sense for the characters to ever become upset over this. After all, their friend is buying their loot at higher prices than anyone else in town is offering. If he is profiting by doing so, well, so are they.

If the players would become upset, well, I'd find new players. Envy is an ugly emotion and I don't want it anywhere near my free time. People who are the sort to be envious of an imaginary character having more imaginary coins than another are also the sort to be envious when an imaginary character rolls better, makes cooler enemies in-game or delivers better lines. In other words, anyone who'd really make an issue of this is someone I'm better off without around my gaming table.

Re: [DF] - Party wealth disparity
 

This is not DF nor does it have to do with Wealth Advantage, but it does address the issue of skimming the loot, which is pretty much where this discussion has been revolving around.

One of our campaigns is a scifi campaign. This isn't exactly as it went down, but it illustrates a point. Imagine that the crew of the spaceship is made of a pilot, a mechanic, a computer hacker and a merchant. The ship is attacked by a pirate ship. While the mechanic and the merchant are manning the turret guns, the computer hacker is taking care of the sensors and electronic warfare. The pilot, however, is the most important person, as he is the one who keeps everyone alive by dodging the blasts from the pirate ship. He is also the one who actually hits and neutralizes the pirate ship, with the big main guns of the ship. Once the fight is over, the mechanic fixes the pirate ship. The computer hacker hacks the mainframe of the pirate ship, transferring the command codes to the PCs. They fly both ships to the nearby planet, where the merchant sells the ship.

Now, what should be the equitable sharing? Lets say that the normal selling price is 0.4, but the merchant manages to negotiate 0.6. Should the sharing be 0.1 each of the others and 0.3 for the merchant? Should it be 0.125 for everyone else and 0.225 for the merchant (0.5 shared+ 0.1 commission)? After all, while the Merchant has the same Wealth as everyone else, he has spent more points to charisma, appearance and such, which allowed him to negotiate a higher price. In DF, this is represented (mainly?) by Wealth. His advantages, so why shouldn't he be the main beneficiary?

We came to the conclusion that the only fair way to share it was 0.15 equal share to everyone:
Without the Pilot's skills, they'd all be dead and no loot.
Without the Mechanic's skills, they'd have a broken pirate ship (less valuable).
Without the Hacker's skills, they'd have a pirate ship that doesn't work.
Without the Merchant's skills, they'd have less money for the sale.

In short, it took everyone's contribution to make it happen, and the last guy on the line is not in a preferential position simply because he is contributing to the party in the loot-money transfer zone. We also found it counter productive to start counting 'contributions towards the goal'. We all take the risks, we all share equally.

Now, this is not totally applicable to the DF, since the Wealthy Guy is presumably filling another slot as well, and presumably doing it well enough (but in the above scifi example, the Merchant was shooting from the turret, too). But the general idea is the same:
Without the Cleric, the Monster would have splattered...
... the Meatshield, who was protecting...
... the Mage, who incinerated the Monster, leaving behind the chest...
... with a trap that the Thief disarmed, hence allowing them to grab the loot...
... which was sold by the Wealthy Guy.

Now, the wealthy guy can be any one of the above. Now, why should the Wealthy Guy's Wealth Advantage allow him to have a larger share of the loot than
a) Cleric's Healing Advantages and Spells?
b) Fighter's Combat Reflexes and Strength?
c) Mage's Magery and Spells?
d) Thief's Alertness and Danger Sense?

If I understand correctly, in Kromm's and Turhan's Bey Company's games the Wealthy Guy is supposed to act as the logistics support, in other words, providing for the other characters between dungeon delving or arranging new equipment or transportation. This is a good argument as to why he is entitled to a larger share, since he is taking on some Party expenses, too.

The other argument, which is that he is entitled to a larger share because his advantage happens to be about money I find less satisfactory. Yes, I admit, it is RAW and there is an argument that a rich guy's niche is being rich. But let me ask you this... If instead of Wealth advantage, he would get his better prices through charisma and social skills, would he still be entitled to a larger share? If so, why? Why would his specialization to social skills entitle him to a larger share of the loot, when the loot was gained by the sweat and blood of his fellows (and his, presumably)?