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Old 07-16-2015, 08:29 PM   #1
Blood Legend
 
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Default Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

In certain games it's a great bother to reasonably restrict the income of adventuring parties, especially when four out of the five man band have a rogue sub-class. Scavenging is always at an all time high and it's not always reasonable to put the team under pressure with some form of time limit (if you don't hurry up now bigger monsters are showing up!).

Players will often slay a group equal to or greater than their own numbers and if their enemies were even remotely humanoid in shape, chances are high they were equipped with weapons and armor. The problem is that weapons and armor are high value, even though this can be mitigated somewhat.

Gurps makes note in several places that selling is usually done at at 40% of the fair-cost of the item before haggling, and you can go further and declare recovered weapons and armor are of cheap quality. A 100 dollar piece of leather chest armor will end up being sold for 16 dollars, but if you want enemies who can take a punch they're likely wearing full suits, and that's not considering that it might be scale or plate. A $3050 suit of light plate, carefully dissected from its user will fetch for $1220, and even if it was ripped off a mangled corpse, they're still getting $488. At 20 bucks a pound, that's not bad loot.

Swords are another issue. Standard fantasy fair is the thrusting broadsword at $600, sold back at 240 bucks. If each of your players kills 2 mooks, they can likely pull in a couple thousand dollars, even a band with shortswords is going to haul them a bit of cash.

I know you can equip your mooks with rags, clubs, axes and spears, but that's not always reasonable for a threat that wants to be taken seriously so here's my first question ~ What are some of the tactics you utilize as a GM to mitigate the income of thrifty players?

Now on the flip side, what does a typical TL4 5-man band of adventurers look like from an accounting perspective considering basic wealth? What does it ultimately cost from wagon to wheat for them to travel per day, considering all expenditures? I figure 5 guys could do minimally with a wagon, 2 horses, and a couple of barrels of food, walking with their more easily removed weapons and armor thrown on the wagon (helmet, sword, shield). I guess my next question is How much does it cost to have an adventure?

I don't want to nerf the loot only to find my players can't get anywhere.
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Last edited by Blood Legend; 07-16-2015 at 08:34 PM.
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Old 07-16-2015, 09:07 PM   #2
Victor Maxus
 
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

Very fascinating point. There isn't much from a realistic stand point you can do about it. In real life, a lot of income was derived from loot. I think one solution is reducing prices further for more expensive armor. Remember, this stuff was tailored to individuals, thus someone buying it wouldn't give that much because me may not be able to resell if he can't find a buyer who fits it. Throw in legal issues; the authorities might want to know where they got a half dozen broadswords and suits of chain armor from. Finally, in real life, most soldiers were equipped with cheap weapons. The broadsword was reserved for the elite few who could afford one, most made do with spears, axes, cheap falchions and the like. And their armor wasn't the best.

As for cost of adventure, I've played Harn as a background using GURPS rules for years. They list a lot about the price of feed, tolls, rations and so forth. They even have prices for inns to stay at and expensive meals to buy. How that looks in GURPS dollars (I still use the Harn economic system) I don't know, but if someone can come up with a conversion, you can get a good idea on basic cost.

But here are a few rough numbers. The average pay for the average working class person (like a modern mechanic or teacher) is between 40 to 60 silver pennies a month. Staying at a cheap inn in a private room can cost 2-4 SP for one night. A good meal is 1 SP (at an inn) an expensive one 4-8 SP. Tolls range from 1/4 to 1 SP at bridges and city gates, feed for a draft animal can be 1-2 SP a day as is travel rations for a human. Stabling an animal is 1 SP a day as is their toll. With these numbers you can see that a one week adventure, with a three night stay at an inn with a horse for one person can cost from 30 to 80 SP, or a months wage for the average person. And that is just one week.

Again, in reality, it was expensive in the days of old to live on the road and feed large animals. There is a reason only the rich had horses and could afford to travel and peasants just stayed home.
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Old 07-16-2015, 09:13 PM   #3
Kalzazz
 
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

Cheap axes are great budget weapons, they do Sw+2 so are decent for cracking armor, and since are U weapons you don't want to parry much anyway

Shields have pretty horrible $/weight ratio, if you want your axeman to survive, give him a shield to go with his axe

Many primitive guns are quite cheap, pack a commendable wallop (and can be made cheaper), and can be reversed to use as a maul! So you get an inexpensive two handed weapon that can be fired one then folks can try to hit with it in melee
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Old 07-16-2015, 09:48 PM   #4
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

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Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
Shields have pretty horrible $/weight ratio, if you want your axeman to survive, give him a shield to go with his axe
And in a lot of cases, a shield, which was made primarily of wood rather than metal, was not expected to survive a battle; the (metal) boss would be recycled to be put on another shield.
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Old 07-17-2015, 05:04 AM   #5
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

I tend to use the Fallout approach: Equipment looted or scavenged is probably damaged (reducing it's effectiveness and value), while maintaining equipment is costly (maybe 2-3% of each gear's cost a months, and 4-5% additional cost after a challenge where it has been used (a weapon you used in the fight counts, while your climbing gear doesn't. When you are climbing up or down a cliff, you don't need to fix your gun but you need to give extra maintenance to your climbing gear. Adjust for environment, it's harder (for example) to maintain weapons in a jungle than in a temperate climate). Require the characters to carry parts and maintenance kits, but abstract the supplies by saying every kilogram of supplies = so many GURPS $ to be used to fix the weapons and armors. Supplies can only be bought at a town or if they happen to meet a traveling merchant. Feel free to reduce the stats for the gear if the PCs have not been doing necessary maintenance.
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Old 07-17-2015, 09:54 AM   #6
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

Mooks should not have full coverage heavy armor and swords. They should have breastplate+axe or spear+ shield in the low end.

But what I have done overall is to raise the overall wealth level as the campaign has continued and while in the beginning the enemy arms and armor were expensive and worthwhile.. the PCs are now longer even bothering to carry copper coins back as loot.
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Old 07-17-2015, 10:14 AM   #7
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

At the power level where plate-armored foes wielding good-quality swords are "mooks," the PCs should already have such great gear of their own that they need $50,000+ in loot apiece just to manage a small upgrade. That's how the power curve for gear works in DF. If the PCs are still at the level where reselling a suit of plate and a good broadsword would net them a huge payday and let them massively upgrade, then the former owner of that gear ought to be the BBEG of the entire adventure, and very hard to defeat. At that level, mooks have little to no armor and cheap weapons.
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Old 07-17-2015, 10:47 AM   #8
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blood Legend View Post
Players will often slay a group equal to or greater than their own numbers and if their enemies were even remotely humanoid in shape, chances are high they were equipped with weapons and armor. The problem is that weapons and armor are high value, even though this can be mitigated somewhat.
The basic rule of thumb that I use when I run a game that is heavily loot based is to provide several outlets for the cash beyond just directly better weapons & armor via social costs to the characters. Temples come to the priest and ask for donations to improve the church, wizards ask for patronage to research new spells. The local nobility invite them to lavish parties so that they gan regale them tales of their heroics...parties that require very expensive looking clothing in the latest styles to avoid embarassing themselves.

Then once you have more wealth than you can carry on your person you have to start considering how you are storing it which usually involves a stronghold/mansion of some sort which typically then starts requiring additional costs. Hirelings to keep the place looking good, guards to patrol the facilities while you are gone to keep thieves out. Adamantine very fine locks with traps to stop the thieves that your guards missed etc etc.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Blood Legend View Post
Now on the flip side, what does a typical TL4 5-man band of adventurers look like from an accounting perspective considering basic wealth? What does it ultimately cost from wagon to wheat for them to travel per day, considering all expenditures? I figure 5 guys could do minimally with a wagon, 2 horses, and a couple of barrels of food, walking with their more easily removed weapons and armor thrown on the wagon (helmet, sword, shield). I guess my next question is How much does it cost to have an adventure?

I don't want to nerf the loot only to find my players can't get anywhere.
2,000$ per draft horse, 380$ for the wagon, + the cost of a hireling teamster to drive the wagon/look after the horses while you are in the dungeon itself. You may want one or two additional hirelings to protect the wagon/horses as well from bad guys when your primary group is in the dungeon.

You mentioned 4 of the 5 characters are rogues which may mean that you lack a good healer that adds healing potions to everyones kit cost probably 2-3 per character at a 120$. Which adds in another 1,200-1800$ for the group per dungeon run. Even with a healing cleric the party is probably going to want at least 600$ in healing potions as a back up asset.

Overall depending on their magic skills and their need for things like potion of flight (3,000$) they can qucikly run into a situation that potion x is going to require them to loot 1- 20 swords for a single use disposable magical effect. I have certainly seen in play characters loose money on fights because they end burning to much combat boosting potions against high danger low cash value opponents in the past.
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Old 07-17-2015, 11:02 AM   #9
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

Armor takes up a lot of volume, so unless your characters are either bringing a cart with them or hauling things back out to their waiting cart (each of which can cause its own problems), they shouldn't be able to carry a lot around - weight isn't the only concern. As for weapons, mooks typically won't be carrying around Good quality swords - Cheap swords, or a plethora of less-expensive weapon options (spears, axes, polearms, etc - a man with a dueling halberd can be more of a threat than one with a thrusting broadsword, despite the former's weapon being 1/5th the cost). If you want swords to be as common as they are in typical fantasy settings, I'd suggest dropping their price - in 3e Dungeons and Dragons, a longsword (GURPS thrusting broadsword) costs 15 gp, while a halberd (probably GURPS dueling halberd) costs 10 gp - using the same conversion, a GURPS thrusting broadsword in a DnD-like setting might cost only $180, or 30% of its current price.

Another option is to count the worth of foes' gear as part of the treasure reward for the adventure. Let's say you want each character from a 5-man band to haul in $5,000 from the adventure. If the adventure involves killing 20 armed foes that have a combined total of $20,000 worth of gear ($1,000 per foe), that accounts for $8,000 of the adventure's treasure, so the rest should come out to around $17,000.

Yet another option is to make the foes' gear useless to anyone else. It could be cursed, fragile, or even artificial (that is, it works normally for the foes, but vanishes when they die, like the Bound Weapons from The Elder Scrolls). For armor, it might be shaped to the foe's body enough that you can't really rework it, meaning its only worth is as scrap. A related option is using foes that don't need gear, or don't need as much of it - monsters work well here, and humanoids with natural or magical DR can get rid of the armor problem. Similarly, if the characters need to travel a good distance before they'll find anyone willing to pay for a cartload of shortswords, they may find it worthwhile to ditch the extra weight so they can reach the next adventure more quickly (and with more room for treasure they can liquidate quickly).
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Old 07-17-2015, 12:31 PM   #10
Langy
 
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Default Re: Mook Weapons, Scavengers and overhead.

If you find this a problem, just introduce government dis-insentives to scavenging. You could either tax the adventuring party or even make selling scavenged items be treated the same as selling stolen items (which is how it works in the modern world).
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