Selling loot (wealth advantage and time spent)

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The core problem with being the guy who sells things is that it's really not a job that needs an adventurer.

Having better weapons and equipment, on the other hand, is something an adventurer very much wants. Even if you just take that initial $5000 from Wealthy and buy four scrolls of Universal Bless ($1600) and a dwarven whetstone ($500) and hire a $400-a-week 125-point henchman, you're bringing a lot to the table. The fact that you also sell high just means that this advantage in gear and equipment isn't a one-time thing, it's an ongoing advantage.

There's an antisynergy in that multiple Wealthy characters in the same party have diminishing returns, but then that's true for multiple healers too.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Having better weapons and equipment, on the other hand, is something an adventurer very much wants.

Oh, sure, it's useful to the party. It's just useful to the party in a way that's not at all fun for the player. Honestly, being the healer has similar problems, though at least the healer has a logical reason to leave town.

There's two methods of handling wealth that are both simple and fair:

1. Don't use it at all. You have what you have, and the wealth advantage doesn't exist.
2. Wealth doesn't just give you stuff -- it's also a limit on how much stuff you can have.

There's games where either option is appropriate -- DF type adventuring usually falls in the first category -- but the hybrid GURPS tries to use doesn't really work for anything.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Oh, sure, it's useful to the party. It's just useful to the party in a way that's not at all fun for the player. Honestly, being the healer has similar problems, though at least the healer has a logical reason to leave town.

There's two methods of handling wealth that are both simple and fair:

1. Don't use it at all. You have what you have, and the wealth advantage doesn't exist.
2. Wealth doesn't just give you stuff -- it's also a limit on how much stuff you can have.

There's games where either option is appropriate -- DF type adventuring usually falls in the first category -- but the hybrid GURPS tries to use doesn't really work for anything.

3. Split loot equally BEFORE evaluating or selling it takes place.

4. Let players worry about how they want to deal with it. How and when they choose to divvy up loot is none of the GM's business.

The DFRPG method of handling Wealth works absolutely fine. I don't know what you mean by "the hybrid GURPS tries to use".

P.S. I cannot enough emphasize how much fun Wealthy characters are. DFRPG has an excellent gear and equipment minigame. A healer "has" to go into the dungeon to keep people healthy, but a Wealthy elven bard who has to go into the dungeon because he's a bard gets to burn scrolls and potions like water while doing so because he's Wealthy.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

The idea of the wealthy character keeping more of the coin has always confused me.

Here's the situation:

• The wealthy character can sell loot for 1.5x what it would have sold for
• The wealthy character is less powerful; thus less effective at acquiring loot
• The non-wealthy characters are more powerful; thus more effective at acquiring loot
• There are more non-wealthy characters than wealthy characters

Here's roughly how I think this plays out: 4 non-wealthy characters and a wealthy character go into a dungeon. They all risk their lives and pull out a 100g worth of treasure. The wealthy character can get the best price for it (60g instead of 40g).

The wealthy character might say "If I didn't have wealth, we would receive 40g, and you all would receive 8g. Instead, I have wealth and we receive 60g. I propose you each get 9g and I get the remaining 24g."

Back in my first on-line DF game, it was 6 people and roughly $18,000 in treasure. If Lenia hadn't taken Wealthy, each PC would have gotten a $3,000 share which sold for $1,200. Lenia generally took a 10% fee off the top for her services as a sales-elf, so everyone except Lenia got $1,500 and she got $3,000. Or it might have been 5%, so everyone got $1,650 and she got $2,400. Whichever, everyone felt pretty good about it.

I am doubtful that another 20 CP in anything would have generated enough raw treasure to make a difference, since the PCs mostly cleared the dungeons and the stuff they missed were player decisions (like not searching the crushroom guts for metallic treasures or failing to inspect a false wall and missing a treasure room).

And the CP for Wealth always comes out of the Advantages section of the template, not the Skills section, so it's the bard not having Terror or Telesend; or the wizard having Magery 4 instead of Magery 6. Having -2 on all spells compared to a differently optimized character is a little painful, but it's not the stark contrast of having Melee Weapon-18 while the guy next to you has Melee Weapon-23.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Having better weapons and equipment, on the other hand, is something an adventurer very much wants.

Although you could hire a factor in town to sell stuff for you, instead. Not sure how cost effective this is.

Edit: You probably want a 125 point guy for this job just to afford wealth, so that's $400. So assuming the factor gets +60% returns on loot for you, you need a $667 haul to break even.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Although you could hire a factor in town to sell stuff for you, instead. Not sure how cost effective this is.

Yup, that's how I allow my group to handle it, though in DF they're called Agents (DF 15 Henchmen).

Depending on how good (or lucky) the agent/factor is they can get them anywhere from 20-80% return on their goods, with an average of right around 60% (I give regular in town Hireling Agents Comfortable Wealth and Merchant skill 14 and have 'critical' failures to drop price by -40%, it's the risk of hiring someone to make you more money).

[beaushinkle]

That's quite a leap.

(1) It's not like wealthy elven bards don't pull their own weight, especially if they use some of their wealth for things like universal Bless scrolls to help the party, or paut, or better weapons and armor; or put Resist Sound up on everybody and then chuck Concussions.

The having a character with wealth means that the team has more money and makes more money, and money is power. Spending 15 character points on wealth means that character has less intrinsic power (otherwise they could have had 3 higher weapon skill or a level of magery and 5 spells or something).

What I was getting at is that the line of "If I hadn't have made X character choice, we would have earned Y loot, so I deserve Z share" is a path to madness. We don't want to be in the business of measuring a class's DFRPG equivalent of NFL's Wins Above Replacement.

(2) Even if it happens to be an adventure where archery is better than whatever the bard does, it's not like more treasure magically appears just because the delvers are deadlier.

To use your (extremely condescending) phrase: Do I need to point out that deadlier delvers are able to delve deeper for better risk-reward/have a higher success rate of winning encounters that block treasure/suffer less ailments that require going back to town or healing services/need to use less consumables in order to succeed?

And it's mostly a moot point because a Scout can't take Wealth anyway. Positive Wealth is only on the bard and thief templates.

There's the (optional) extraordinary training rule that allows classes to spend money to acquire advantages that aren't class limited (wealth is available but a rogue's backstabber isn't iirc). It seems very odd to me that a wizard (or any class really) isn't able to become Wealthy, given how many instances of heinously rich and savvy wizards you see in the genre fiction. Iucounu in The Eyes of the Overworld, for example.

Do I need to point out that robbing your own allies is a really stupid way to live? Suppose this Chaotic Evil conversation does happen. What's the Chaotic Evil victim going to do in response? Well, how about smile and agree until several adventures have gone by and lots of loot has accumulated, and then backstab the robbers at the tail end of a crucial battle which they're winning, then take all of their accumulated loot and retire?

Stupid betrayal leads to stupid betrayal.

Taking money from allies sounds really evil! How about the wealthy bard doesn't steal the other 4 party member's equal shares? If the bard is giving all of us 9g when equal would be 12g, that sounds like a betrayal and maybe he gets backstabbed at the tail end of a crucial battle.

[beaushinkle]

Back in my first on-line DF game, it was 6 people and roughly $18,000 in treasure. If Lenia hadn't taken Wealthy, each PC would have gotten a $3,000 share which sold for $1,200. Lenia generally took a 10% fee off the top for her services as a sales-elf, so everyone except Lenia got $1,500 and she got $3,000. Or it might have been 5%, so everyone got $1,650 and she got $2,400. Whichever, everyone felt pretty good about it.

I am doubtful that another 20 CP in anything would have generated enough raw treasure to make a difference, since the PCs mostly cleared the dungeons and the stuff they missed were player decisions (like not searching the crushroom guts for metallic treasures or failing to inspect a false wall and missing a treasure room).

I tend to agree that wealth is the best 15 points that can be spent on generating money, especially long term!

And the CP for Wealth always comes out of the Advantages section of the template, not the Skills section, so it's the bard not having Terror or Telesend; or the wizard having Magery 4 instead of Magery 6. Having -2 on all spells compared to a differently optimized character is a little painful, but it's not the stark contrast of having Melee Weapon-18 while the guy next to you has Melee Weapon-23.

Yeah, it comes out of the advantages section at character creation, but after that folks are free to buy advantages and skills using earned points. Here's how this came up in my game: the party comes back from a delve relatively flush. They have enough points to buy wealth and no one has it. I play with the optional training rule where you can buy off-template generic advantages for money and some downtime.

The players immediately start discussing who "has" to take wealth; which person the 15 point tax should be placed on. No concept that the loot distribution would be anything but equitable ever came up. If it had, it would have been dunked on immediately (if you take wealthy and want more treasure, i'll take wealthy too. we'll all take wealthy. antipattern).

Wealthy is too good for someone to not have it which is a problem imo.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

The having a character with wealth means that the team has more money and makes more money, and money is power. Spending 15 character points on wealth means that character has less intrinsic power (otherwise they could have had 3 higher weapon skill or a level of magery and 5 spells or something).

There's a reason most people don't play Dead Broke delvers: having good equipment is an advantage. This is as true for Wealthy as Dead Broke. Instead of $1000 in starting equipment, you get $5000 in starting equipment (for 20 points BTW, not 15).

Surely you're not arguing that someone who spends 20 points to get a 125-point crossbowman hireling ($400), five universal scrolls of Bless (5 x $400) so that everybody can be Blessed without penalizing the cleric's spellcasting, a dwarven whetstone ($500) to sharpen all the crossbow bolts and everyone else's weapons too, a weapon and light armor for himself ($900 or so), and an extra $1100 to up-armor the party frontliners or buy paut for the wizard or healing potions in case the cleric gets injured... surely you're not going to argue that those 20 points made him and the party weaker!

Your whole argument appears to rest on the assumption that Wealth makes you a burden on the rest of the party, but that's just not the case. For example:

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

To use your (extremely condescending) phrase: Do I need to point out that deadlier delvers are able to delve deeper for better risk-reward/have a higher success rate of winning encounters that block treasure/suffer less ailments that require going back to town or healing services/need to use less consumables in order to succeed?

What you need to do is prove that losing the dwarven whetstone, the crossbowman, and the extra armor for the knight, and accepting an extra -4 to -5 penalty on the cleric's spells from casting 5 Blesses "natively", and spending those 20 points elsewhere, always increases the party's ability to delve deep. Good luck with that proof.

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

The players immediately start discussing who "has" to take wealth; which person the 15 point tax should be placed on. No concept that the loot distribution would be anything but equitable ever came up. If it had, it would have been dunked on immediately (if you take wealthy and want more treasure, i'll take wealthy too. we'll all take wealthy. antipattern).

Wealthy is too good for someone to not have it which is a problem imo.

That's just a normal collective action dilemma: the traditional way of solving such problems is by bidding, e.g. a Vickrey auction to see who's willing to spend 20 points on Wealthy (not 15) in exchange for the lowest premium. If I'm willing to do it for 10% off the top, and you're willing to do it for 1%, and Bob is willing to do it for 0%, then Bob takes Wealthy and gets 1% off the top as his reward. Nobody can complain because Bob is never charging more than they think those 20 points are worth/would have charged themselves.

[johndallman]

We found it simplest for the wizard to take a point or two of Merchant and haggle on the stuff that looks most worth it. But our party is small, and doesn't compete internally very much; we're more about the story than the loot.