[DF] - Party wealth disparity

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

He gets three times as much money, sure. That's the advantage he paid for, which makes this setup fair. Other PCs paid for traits that mean they take fewer HP of damage (even lose fewer limbs . . .), don't need to buy equipment (because they turn into wolves, have Gizmos, cast spells, are ascetic monks, etc.), or otherwise excel in areas that aren't "earning money." That, too, is fair. "All PCs have an equal crack at being rich" isn't how game balance works here. "All PCs have an equal crack at being good at their chosen niche" is how it works. A rich character has chosen the niche of being, well, rich.

Still sounds screwy to me. All the other niches support the party as a whole in one way or another. And it doesn't emulate any dungeon fantasy game I've ever come across. I've never encountered the "Being much richer than all the other PCs" niche in any game I've ever played. Now that I've been told that the rules did support some characters starting with ten times more money than others, I'm sure I must have been in games where that happened even if I can't remember it, but I really don't see it as anywhere near as big a deal as this Wealth thing appears to be. That one character started with 20 gp and another with 200 is going to be forgotten long before they've reached 2nd level (both having earned about 2000 gp along the way).

The players are trying to accomplish the goal of becoming powerful. For some PC concepts, that means "a big power item, a huge Energy Reserve, high Magery or Power Investiture, and lots of spells." For others, that means, "deliver as much damage per second as possible." For still others, that means, "sneak anywhere with no risk of getting caught." Money isn't, in fact, central to that goal for anybody who hasn't decided to invest in Wealth and make "getting really, really rich" his personal definition of "powerful."

So money doesn't help achieve any of those other goals? I find that hard to imagine.

It doesn't matter as much as I originally thought, though. I was thinking in terms of the Wealthy character having spent 50 out of 100 points on his wealth. If it's actually 20 points out of 300, he should be able to pull his own weight in the dungeon-crawl. I'd probably just buy Wealth myself and undercut his prices ;-).


Hans