Money-to-point comparison/conversion

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by FeralVentas

"Dead Broke: You have no job, no
source of income, no money, and no
property other than the clothes you are
wearing. Either you are unable to work
or there are no jobs to be found. -25
points."

You start with nothing when the game starts. The reasons for this can vary, but that is All that that disadvantage states.

Actually, no. This is a description of part of the concept of the character. For whatever reason, this guy has no money, can't hang on to money, and perhaps doesn't even want money. It's not just the state of the character at start.

If a character sheet lists Phobia (Snakes), described as "you have a fear of snakes", this doesn't mean that you're only afraid of snakes at the start of the game, and that that Disad disappears as soon as play starts, or the first time you kill a snake. The Disads are part of the characterization. Stuff that's as transient as your meals doesn't rate a Disad.

From the roleplaying point of view, the player presumably _wants_ to be Dead Broke, and it would break the character concept for him to suddenly be rich. It's not just a way to scam some character creation points out of the system -- or at least it shouldn't be. Some players might want a rags-to-riches story arc, in which case they'll be planning to buy off that Disadvantage and accumulate wealth during play. (See the note in the "Starting Wealth" box at the bottom of page B26.) Other players might want to remain that ragamuffin or monk or what have you because that's the character they wanted to play.

There's been any number of past threads if you're interested. You'll find Kromm describing Wealth as most importantly an ongoing social advantage, and least about starting cash.

At any rate, per RAW, there are two ways to convert CP to cash in a one-shot, no-ongoing-effects kind of way. (Debt and Independent Income are tied into the Wealth and Jobs rules.) "Trading Points for Money" on B26 gives you a rate of 10% of starting wealth per CP. "Signature Gear" (B85) gives 50% per point, plus the plot protection aspect. So despite the "but never cash" caveat, it's far more effective at producing a pile of cash than the rule on B26. However, that's something of an abuse of the rules; Sig Gear is supposed to be stuff that's vital and intrinsic to your character concept, not something you'll dump at the first shop you pass to score some lucre. So, the basic unrestricted conversion rate per RAW is 1 CP = 10% of average starting wealth for the setting.

PK's rules page has some nice rules for separating the plot protection from the goods value, as well as some other wealth changes. You might want to take a look at those.

Sounds like you might be expecting a game with a wide range of wealth for the characters, coming and going due to the whims of their self-employment as adventurers. In that case, you might simply want to ignore the wealth rules entirely. Those are really more for games where the characters are largely settled (say, urban fantasy, or Ars Magica Covenant-style games, where "adventures" occur as a relatively small percentage of lifetime of the characters). The Wealth rules matter mostly when you're trying to build characters whose "super power" is precisely that wealth, so it needs to be an important (and permanent) part of the character build that not just anyone can acquire.