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Old 11-23-2021, 03:37 PM   #11
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
That's a legitimate character concept, and one supported by GURPS... but it isn't - nor do I feel it should be - the default (rather, you make such a character by giving them below-average Wealth). Although if they do have good gear, well, starting them at low Wealth won't really work (unless that stuff is Signature Gear).
DF assumes that the total value of the a character's possessions are in line with their Wealth. If their items are worth more than their Wealth and Signature Gear would allow, they somehow lose the excess to city taxes, debts, wasteful spending habits, or whatever else works. An experienced delver would need to buy up Wealth to keep whatever fancy loot they have gotten their hands on during their career.

A GM is obviously free to hand out additional levels of Wealth as a reward for successful adventures or other milestones. But the system as written has an unstated expectation that characters set aside some points for Wealth and/or Signature Gear over the course of their careers.
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Old 11-23-2021, 04:44 PM   #12
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Infornific View Post
But once the character starts adventuring in Dungeon Fantasy/DFRPG he gains experience both in character points and treasure. So typically if you start with a 125 point Squire or character from Delvers to Grow and run it long enough to reach 250 points, you haven't just gained 125 character points. You've also accumulated treasure on top of that. So your 250 point character is worth more than a standard 250 point character because the character point total doesn't precisely reflect the character's true value. If you were to stat him out like a newly created character he might be more like 260 or 270 points.
Yeah, those are my thoughts as well. Indeed, depending on what sort of rewards the GM opts to give out, you may well end up with the character who started Dead Broke and the character who started Very Wealthy having fairly comparable gear within only a few sessions - meaning the former character has been able to invest around [55] more into adventuring skills than the latter, and is likely (now that they have comparable gear) much more effective for it. The Very Wealthy character does get some benefit from his Wealth (he's the designated party seller, as he gets 100% of the list value out of things he sells; this generally means more money for everyone), but probably not enough to make up for the disparity. That's an extreme example, of course.

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Originally Posted by Kalzazz View Post
Personally I'd just give them mundane gear as seems appropriate which Delvers to Grow touches on and only care about non mundane stuff
I'm... not sure what you mean here.

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
I usually give Point Value / 50 = levels of trading points for money as additional gear when I run. So 250 point characters start with $1,000 + $2,500 in gear
That's an interesting option. As I said, I'm not sure how rapidly it's typical in DF for characters to improve their gear relative to gaining character points, but that seems like it would be too little of a boost outside of a setting where gear improvement is slow relative to character improvement. Have you used this for new characters joining an existing DF party, and did you find this put their gear roughly in the same ballpark as the established characters, or was there a large difference there?

Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
But the system as written has an unstated expectation that characters set aside some points for Wealth and/or Signature Gear over the course of their careers.
That's a pretty flipping huge "unstated expectation," seeing as it flies in the face of the genre (where characters continually gain more and more wealth without any impact beyond just having awesome gear).

Also, I'm fairly confident that one of the big reasons why Kromm opted to modify the way Wealth worked for DF (it determines how much you get out of selling things (old gear, loot that isn't money, etc) - Dead Broke means you can't sell anything, Poor means you get 10% of its value, Struggling means 20%, Average means 40%, Comfortable means 60%, Wealthy means 80%, and Very Wealthy means 100% - is because once you have done a decent amount of adventuring, differences in starting wealth doesn't make much difference (it also makes a nice analogue to the Jobs rules, which were an important part of typical GURPS Wealth but not represented otherwise in DF). Also note that list isn't "Very Wealthy or higher," because in DF, you cannot buy Wealth above Very Wealthy. If you're meant to lose anything beyond your Wealth level, that would mean a character has a ceiling of $20,000 worth of gear, money, etc. There are individual items in DF8 that cost more than that (mostly magic items, but a few pieces of jewelry and some weapons and armor that are of extreme quality and/or made of exotic materials as well). So... yeah.

Now, mainline GURPS? Requiring players to invest in Wealth to protect their windfalls - or even giving them levels of it as part of the quest reward - makes sense. But not for DF.
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Old 11-23-2021, 04:53 PM   #13
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
That's an interesting option. As I said, I'm not sure how rapidly it's typical in DF for characters to improve their gear relative to gaining character points, but that seems like it would be too little of a boost outside of a setting where gear improvement is slow relative to character improvement. Have you used this for new characters joining an existing DF party, and did you find this put their gear roughly in the same ballpark as the established characters, or was there a large difference there?
It varies. A lot. New characters in an old party don't quite have the same amount of gear, but they're better than scrapping by. I'd say it puts them below or just about average to the rest of the established PCs.
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Old 11-23-2021, 06:29 PM   #14
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
DF assumes that the total value of the a character's possessions are in line with their Wealth.
Can you point me to where it actually says that?
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Old 11-23-2021, 06:33 PM   #15
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Can you point me to where it actually says that?
p. 23 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers. The box that says "Buying (and Selling) Gear" under the header, "Starting Money."
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Old 11-23-2021, 07:02 PM   #16
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
p. 23 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers. The box that says "Buying (and Selling) Gear" under the header, "Starting Money."
That's a box about starting money. It has nothing to do with amount of money after the start of play.
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Old 11-23-2021, 07:11 PM   #17
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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That's a box about starting money. It has nothing to do with amount of money after the start of play.
I didn't read through to the post - probably should have. It appears he was talking about starting gear from the small block you quoted.

On topic: DF doesn't do that at all that I've ever read. It must be an internalized house rule. The closest it talks about upgraded gear is on p. 5 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables.
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Old 11-24-2021, 09:31 AM   #18
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
This is something that bugged me ... a [62] Novice Adventurer and a [250] Veteran Adventurer start out with the same amount of money for gear. With a higher point budget, the Veteran may be more likely to be able to afford Wealth, but buying that is clearly expected to be the exception rather than the rule - and is meant to demonstrate someone who comes from money rather than someone who's made money off of delving.
  1. Most things in DFRPG that are advantageous cost points, and good gear is advantageous.
  2. Players making PCs will often neglect stuff that is easy to get "in play" so they can get more stuff that is hard to get once the game starts.
  3. Most folks playing delving games expect a lot of loot gained "in play."

Points spent on gear are thus minimized.

The easiest way to counter this is to do what several other posters have suggested - give some "free" points that can only[1] be spent on points4cash to delvers that start at higher totals. Since points4cash points evaporate (aren't included in point totals) this makes the bookkeeping easier.

Folks who have a PC concept that is "poor" are at a small disadvantage here, but often they can justify a chunk of grotty equipment with no sell value that is nonetheless worth significant amount of money in the rules.

[1] If you allow these to be traded back for abilities many will be.
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Old 11-24-2021, 09:45 AM   #19
Varyon
 
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice View Post
It varies. A lot. New characters in an old party don't quite have the same amount of gear, but they're better than scrapping by. I'd say it puts them below or just about average to the rest of the established PCs.
"Below or just about average" sounds like about the ideal point, yeah. It sounds like you rely a lot on randomly-generated loot for directly gearing-up the PC's, rather than letting them purchase bespoke magic items and the like in play, is this correct? That seems like the sort of situation that would result in the established characters having more gear but the new ones having comparable gear (so, maybe the established swordsman and the new one have comparable swords and armor, but the established one also has some backup weapons, various trinkets usable in specific situations, etc).

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
  1. Most things in DFRPG that are advantageous cost points, and good gear is advantageous.
  2. Players making PCs will often neglect stuff that is easy to get "in play" so they can get more stuff that is hard to get once the game starts.
  3. Most folks playing delving games expect a lot of loot gained "in play."

Points spent on gear are thus minimized.
Yeah, that jives with my thoughts as well.

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
The easiest way to counter this is to do what several other posters have suggested - give some "free" points that can only[1] be spent on points4cash to delvers that start at higher totals. Since points4cash points evaporate (aren't included in point totals) this makes the bookkeeping easier.
I mean... yes, but the difference between "You have an additional [5] you may only spend on Points for Cash" and "You have an additional $2,500" is just that the latter skips the step of cashing in those points. What I'm trying to determine is how much extra cash it's appropriate for higher point characters to start out with (and possibly how much less cash it's appropriate for novice delvers to start out with, although honestly I'm inclined to start them at $1000).
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:46 AM   #20
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Default Re: [DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I mean... yes, but the difference between "You have an additional [5] you may only spend on Points for Cash" and "You have an additional $2,500" is just that the latter skips the step of cashing in those points. What I'm trying to determine is how much extra cash it's appropriate for higher point characters to start out with (and possibly how much less cash it's appropriate for novice delvers to start out with, although honestly I'm inclined to start them at $1000).
I'm at work right now, so I can't go too in-depth in it, but here's a guideline I'd use.

Starting Wealth For Novice = W1
Starting Wealth For Veteran = W2

Starting CP For Novice = C1
Starting CP For Veteran = C2

Figure out how many CP you'd typically give per adventure, so you can estimate how many adventures the pc had. Similarly come up with a number for how long each adventure lasts.

CP Per Adventure = CP-Earned
Length of Adventures = Adventure Length

Adventures = A = (C2 - C1)/CP-Earned

DF 8 Treasure Tables has a section on weekly expenses, I believe adventurers need to make at least 250 a week just to break even, and everything above that can be expected to go to loot and whatnot. For simplicity's sake, assume each adventure lasts a week.

Loot Per Adventure = L

W2 = W1 + (L - 250) * (A)

Let's say the veteran has 250 CP, and the Novice has 62, and the Novice starts with $1000. We'll also say that the GM gives $500 worth of loot each week, and 5 CP per adventure. That gives us:

W2 = 1000 + (500 - 250) * ((250 - 62) / 5)
W2 = 1000 + 250 * 37.6
W2 = 1000 + 9400
W2 = 10400.

That seems like a bit much to me, but you can also use the Training Expenses rule in DF3 to help pare it down a decent bit.
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