Cost of living and Create Food

[no dm god]

I'm very confused, why not?

Sometimes you have to put the RAW aside when the "rule of common sense" is bigger. In this case, a spell that let you create food from thin air obviously has a noticeable impact on the cost of living considering that food, by RAW, is the biggest expense in a day. I'd say 100$/week is even too high, but acceptable if one good meal per day is included.

Justifying this arbitrary player abuse with "oh, but what about tithes, charitable donations, expensive unguents and oils to conduct your prayers?" would make me pretty mad as a player, since you can use the same argument with every class: A warrior will need to sharpen his sword, clean and polish his armor, then waste more money on training equipment that wear out faster and so on.
At this point you might as well say that the Survival skill doesn't help to reduce the cost for food too, since I literally see no difference between this skill and Create Food.

And as a player, hearing that since I don't spend that money for food I HAVE TO spend that money for the other things mentioned I would expect that since all the other players spend all their money for food and a place to sleep, they are just just surviving in conditions barely suitable for living, with absolutely nothing extra.

Also this is supposed to be a roleplay adventure game, who cares about the RAW of the cost of living, creating a credible and immersive environment is more important, while also I see no need to deny a negligible money advantage to someone that invested points to have that advantage.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by no dm god

Also this is supposed to be a roleplay adventure game, who cares about the RAW of the cost of living, creating a credible and immersive environment is more important, while also I see no need to deny a negligible money advantage to someone that invested points to have that advantage.

This is for DF/RPG. So, therefore, it's per the social contract of playing DF/RPG where 'verisimilitude' is a dirty word and town living is literally abstracted to a few rolls, marking off money, and then heading out to the next dungeon.

If your group does not play that way, cool. But it isn't "arbitrary player abuse" or any other nonsense. There are ways in the rules to avoid the "living in town tax", that's it.

Lastly, food doesn't cost that much, deciding that Create Food will cut your town Living Expenses by a third when even Rations cost less 50$ for a week? That's an abuse of logic.

[no dm god]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

This is for DF/RPG. So, therefore, it's per the social contract of playing DF/RPG where 'verisimilitude' is a dirty word and town living is literally abstracted to a few rolls, marking off money, and then heading out to the next dungeon.

If your group does not play that way, cool. But it isn't "arbitrary player abuse" or any other nonsense. There are ways in the rules to avoid the "living in town tax", that's it.

Lastly, food doesn't cost that much, deciding that Create Food will cut your town Living Expenses by a third when even Rations cost less 50$ for a week? That's an abuse of logic.

Then just say "cost of living is an abstraction and create food is not on the list of things that by RAW helps you with it". And it's fine. But creating excuses to justify it is just gonna make people mad, because there is no logic in not giving a little cut to the expenses (maybe 50$ is too much after all, ok, but like a symbolic -20$ just to feel the player rewarded, it would not break the campaign) considering that food is part of the expenses and this spell literally creates free food.

I repeat: the only real argument against it is "it's not in the RAW", everything else is nonsense. And there's nothing wrong in just accepting the abstraction as is it and move on.
HOWEVER, the moment you wanna ARGUE IT and start making excuses like "it does work, and you don't pay for your food, but when you use the spell during the downtime, all the other expenses magically raise, so you pay the same thing as everyone else" I AM gonna call it arbitrary player abuse, because you are arbitrairly raising the cost of living of his character just to not give him those few $ that will change absolutely nothing in the game, creating a feeling that players choises don't matter: the DM can just alter the reality to make them irrelevant just because he wants.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by no dm god

... giving a little cut to the expenses (maybe 50$ is too much after all, ok, but like a symbolic -20$ just to feel the player rewarded, it would not break the campaign) considering that food is part of the expenses and this spell literally creates free food.

I'd go this route myself: anyone who doesn't have to buy food due to magic or stockpiled food or daily hunts in the forest or whatever gets a minor discount on cost of living, just as anyone who dwells in the wilderness doesn't have to pay cost of living at all.

A $30 discount sounds fine. (There may be other consequences depending on why you don't need to buy food. In the case of Create Food, "you have to eat blah tasting food regularly" is enough of a consequence IMO.)

If players want more detail I'll calculate town expenses more precisely, but if 7 days of rations costs $42 then earmarking $30 for town food seems a reasonable abstraction.

Originally Posted by no dm god

Also this is supposed to be a roleplay adventure game, who cares about the RAW of the cost of living, creating a credible and immersive environment is more important, while also I see no need to deny a negligible money advantage to someone that invested points to have that advantage.

I entirely agree with the bold. Creating new rules as needed is my job as GM.

[mirtexxan]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I'd go this route myself: anyone who doesn't have to buy food due to magic or stockpiled food or daily hunts in the forest or whatever gets a minor discount on cost of living, just as anyone who dwells in the wilderness doesn't have to pay cost of living at all.

You forget two HUGE DISADVANTAGES that comes from "living in the wilderness".

1) the risk of starting the next crawl with 1d damage.
2) no access to "in-town" activities.

The RAW is quite binary. Either you are in town and then YOU PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE, or you aren't.

Any shade of "gray" here really stretches the DFRPG abstraction, and it's easily handled by some kind of ruling/justification that still allow to keep create food AND the verisimilitude together.

The worst possible approach, IMO, is just say "it's RAW". And by the way, even if we decide for a more realistic approach, critical spell failure and the moral responsability implied by a Power Investiture in a God of Good are very realistic reasons to why I won't discount even a single dime without the possibility of severe consequences.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

You forget two HUGE DISADVANTAGES that comes from "living in the wilderness".

1) the risk of starting the next crawl with 1d damage.
2) no access to "in-town" activities.

I didn't forget. See the following paragraph, re-quoted below. Emphasis not in original.

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I'd go this route myself: anyone who doesn't have to buy food due to magic or stockpiled food or daily hunts in the forest or whatever gets a minor discount on cost of living, just as anyone who dwells in the wilderness doesn't have to pay cost of living at all.

A $30 discount sounds fine. (There may be other consequences depending on why you don't need to buy food. In the case of Create Food, "you have to eat blah tasting food regularly" is enough of a consequence IMO.)

The possibility of dying messily while everyone else is in town is one possible consequence of living in the wilderness.

[no dm god]

I'm starting to think that some people here are just trolling.
"the moral responsabilities" of creating food? To eat? Because you're hungry?
And using a divine spell that creates food to create food is now "exploiting your divine gifts".
you guys must be trolling lmao

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by no dm god

Then just say "cost of living is an abstraction and create food is not on the list of things that by RAW helps you with it". And it's fine. But creating excuses to justify it is just gonna make people mad, because there is no logic in not giving a little cut to the expenses (maybe 50$ is too much after all, ok, but like a symbolic -20$ just to feel the player rewarded, it would not break the campaign) considering that food is part of the expenses and this spell literally creates free food."

Okay. You spend a week in town. Roll to cast Create Food 21 times. If you fail, roll again until you succeed. If you critically fail, I'll roll 1d on the following critical spell failure table:

1. You set the inn on fire.
2. The spell spoils all the grain in the village's storage.
3. A giant made of marshmallows is summoned in the town square.
4. The local noble's 15-course banquet has every course replaced by Created Food.
5. You immediately lose 2d FP to hunger. These FP recover at the rate of 3/day so long as you get three meals.
6. You take 1d HP of injury as the meal creates itself from your own flesh.

As others have said, if you're running by DFRPG RAW then 'whether you get your food from the inn's stewpot or by praying for it' is below the game's resolution; pay your $150/wk upkeep and move on. If you want the extra resolution, keep in mind that you're rolling for this spell three times per day per person you're feeding, and critical failures suck.

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by Harald387

Okay. You spend a week in town. Roll to cast Create Food 21 times. If you fail, roll again until you succeed. If you critically fail, I'll roll 1d on the following critical spell failure table:

7 rolls at most. Even the base df cleric can spend 9 fat to create 3 meals out of rocks or dirt. 8 with 15 skill. Granted, this is per pc.

Most of your crit examples sound more like revenge for trying to use abilities to mitigate some game-mandated costs than reasonable crit failure results. Do you commonly set off explosions in a dungeon for 1 crit failure?

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by corwyn

7 rolls at most. Even the base df cleric can spend 9 fat to create 3 meals out of rocks or dirt. 8 with 15 skill. Granted, this is per pc.

Most of your crit examples sound more like revenge for trying to use abilities to mitigate some game-mandated costs than reasonable crit failure results. Do you commonly set off explosions in a dungeon for 1 crit failure?

Given how rarely critfails actually happen? Yes. I mean, two of those are directly off of the official spell critfail table - "summon a monster" and "take 1d hp of injury" - but in general my policy is to treat spell critfails seriously, because the groups I play in very much tend to lean in favor of metagame currency to never critically fail in the first place.

Maybe as general advice I'd go a little less hard, but only a little. I like memorable spell critfails.