Money-to-point comparison/conversion

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by FeralVentas

It is not the case that being Broke revokes your ability to ever have money.

<snip>

You start with nothing when the game starts. The reasons for this can vary, but that is All that that disadvantage states.

There are two additional issues. One is that wealth also affects the income you can expect to get from a job, and the other is on page 26:

If a poor PC becomes wealthy, the GM should require the player to “buy off” the disadvantage with character points

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by FeralVentas

"Dead Broke: You have no job, no
source of income, no money, and no
property other than the clothes you are
wearing. Either you are unable to work
or there are no jobs to be found. -25
points."

You start with nothing when the game starts. The reasons for this can vary, but that is All that that disadvantage states.

Actually, no. This is a description of part of the concept of the character. For whatever reason, this guy has no money, can't hang on to money, and perhaps doesn't even want money. It's not just the state of the character at start.

If a character sheet lists Phobia (Snakes), described as "you have a fear of snakes", this doesn't mean that you're only afraid of snakes at the start of the game, and that that Disad disappears as soon as play starts, or the first time you kill a snake. The Disads are part of the characterization. Stuff that's as transient as your meals doesn't rate a Disad.

From the roleplaying point of view, the player presumably _wants_ to be Dead Broke, and it would break the character concept for him to suddenly be rich. It's not just a way to scam some character creation points out of the system -- or at least it shouldn't be. Some players might want a rags-to-riches story arc, in which case they'll be planning to buy off that Disadvantage and accumulate wealth during play. (See the note in the "Starting Wealth" box at the bottom of page B26.) Other players might want to remain that ragamuffin or monk or what have you because that's the character they wanted to play.

There's been any number of past threads if you're interested. You'll find Kromm describing Wealth as most importantly an ongoing social advantage, and least about starting cash.

At any rate, per RAW, there are two ways to convert CP to cash in a one-shot, no-ongoing-effects kind of way. (Debt and Independent Income are tied into the Wealth and Jobs rules.) "Trading Points for Money" on B26 gives you a rate of 10% of starting wealth per CP. "Signature Gear" (B85) gives 50% per point, plus the plot protection aspect. So despite the "but never cash" caveat, it's far more effective at producing a pile of cash than the rule on B26. However, that's something of an abuse of the rules; Sig Gear is supposed to be stuff that's vital and intrinsic to your character concept, not something you'll dump at the first shop you pass to score some lucre. So, the basic unrestricted conversion rate per RAW is 1 CP = 10% of average starting wealth for the setting.

PK's rules page has some nice rules for separating the plot protection from the goods value, as well as some other wealth changes. You might want to take a look at those.

Sounds like you might be expecting a game with a wide range of wealth for the characters, coming and going due to the whims of their self-employment as adventurers. In that case, you might simply want to ignore the wealth rules entirely. Those are really more for games where the characters are largely settled (say, urban fantasy, or Ars Magica Covenant-style games, where "adventures" occur as a relatively small percentage of lifetime of the characters). The Wealth rules matter mostly when you're trying to build characters whose "super power" is precisely that wealth, so it needs to be an important (and permanent) part of the character build that not just anyone can acquire.

[Varyon]

I think I've mentioned it before, but one thing I came up with for DF was to separate monetary wealth from selling power (in DF, your Wealth level determines what % of an item's worth you get out of selling stuff). For that, all characters start with normal starting wealth and can either cash it in or get more using Points for Cash, and Selling Power simply starts at 40% and is worth [5] per +/- 20% of this (to a maximum of 100%). In that, I'd allow characters to later burn cash for extra character points, albeit at only half the efficiency of character creation (so you have to burn $1000 per point in DF), and you can only gain as many points as you would have started out with by beginning play with nothing (so if you started out with $3000 by burning [4] on Points for Cash, you could later regain this by burning $6000 worth of loot, then get up to an additional [2] by burning $2000).

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Actually, no. This is a description of part of the concept of the character. For whatever reason, this guy has no money, can't hang on to money, and perhaps doesn't even want money. It's not just the state of the character at start.

It's the can't hang onto money part that's objectionable. He can't obtain money in the abstracted daily life, but if a Dead Broke character goes an adventure and retrieves a chest of $1,000 in gold coins, he's got that money and can spend it. He could, for instance, buy a weapon and armor. He can pay for his Cost of Living with it. He can't, however, put it in the bank and get interest on it, or use it to buy a new suit solely for the purpose of going on a job interview. He has no way of getting more money except by going on adventures.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It's the can't hang onto money part that's objectionable. He can't obtain money in the abstracted daily life, but if a Dead Broke character goes an adventure and retrieves a chest of $1,000 in gold coins, he's got that money and can spend it. He could, for instance, buy a weapon and armor. He can pay for his Cost of Living with it. He can't, however, put it in the bank and get interest on it, or use it to buy a new suit solely for the purpose of going on a job interview. He has no way of getting more money except by going on adventures.

He can do whatever the GM allows.

But if I was his GM I'd rob him of that 1000$ somehow IC. -25 points is a HUGE disadvantage for someone to just mitigate once play starts. There's talk all over the forums about people taking disadvantages (Such as that) without the negative circumstances.

It really depends on the character explanation of why he's dead broke.

But according to Dungeon Fantasy:

As noted in
Dungeon Fantasy: Adventurers, the sum that an adventurer
will actually receive depends on his Wealth: Dead Broke yields
0% of this price (a euphemism for “Get out of my shop, you
bum!”);

People won't take a dead broke person's gear to sell ever.

It might make logical sense that they can grab 1000$ and keep it, but he's paying -25 points for the world not to let him. Just keep that in mind.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It's the can't hang onto money part that's objectionable. He can't obtain money in the abstracted daily life, but if a Dead Broke character goes an adventure and retrieves a chest of $1,000 in gold coins, he's got that money and can spend it. He could, for instance, buy a weapon and armor. He can pay for his Cost of Living with it. He can't, however, put it in the bank and get interest on it, or use it to buy a new suit solely for the purpose of going on a job interview. He has no way of getting more money except by going on adventures.

Dead Broke means that whatever money you manage to gather above what you need for sustenance will not be of any real use to you.

Dead Broke is almost at the Pacifism (Total Nonviolence) level of disadvantages. Would you let a character with P (TNv) initiate combat without consequence?

[Dwarf99]

PK's MyGURPS page has a fix for this I think.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

It's the can't hang onto money part that's objectionable.... he's got that money and can spend it.

In which case, just buy off the disad with CP. Or the player could find a way to make the money not useful, which I think he would if he really wanted to play Dead Broke. (If he's just a munchkin that wants 25 CP just for not having a nice sword for the first hour of play time, well, too bad for him.)

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

But if I was his GM I'd rob him of that 1000$ somehow

Or just go into point debt until the earned CP pay off the Disad -- which the player clearly has done if he's making his character rich. Buying off Dead Broke would also take longer this way, since the player is also eating a "bad roleplaying" penalty, unless he's already arranged with the GM to buy off the disad as part of the story arc.

I think ideal wealth rules would make a better separation between start-of-play cash/equipment, and ongoing ability to retain and earn money. In a way, RAW does that if you apply "Points for Money" in reverse: 100% of starting wealth is worth 10 CP, so deduct that from the cost of the Wealth levels to get the socioeconomic advantage part of that trait. If we go with PK's house rule, the starting wealth component is even less (5 points, at 20% per point).

[Cybren]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

He can do whatever the GM allows.

But if I was his GM I'd rob him of that 1000$ somehow IC. -25 points is a HUGE disadvantage for someone to just mitigate once play starts. There's talk all over the forums about people taking disadvantages (Such as that) without the negative circumstances.

It really depends on the character explanation of why he's dead broke.

But according to Dungeon Fantasy:



People won't take a dead broke person's gear to sell ever.

It might make logical sense that they can grab 1000$ and keep it, but he's paying -25 points for the world not to let him. Just keep that in mind.

Kind of like having Anti Plot-Protection?

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

He can do whatever the GM allows.

But if I was his GM I'd rob him of that 1000$ somehow IC. -25 points is a HUGE disadvantage for someone to just mitigate once play starts.

I can see both sides of this, and I'll argue for the one that's not RAW for the moment. If a TL1 player start with a bad eyesight, then obtains a TL8 pair of eyeglasses that happen to be his prescription via play, then he shouldn't have to pay off bad eyesight, but only the mitigator cost.

Having newly acquired money doesn't give you a better job history or credit rating. A bum with cash will still have trouble finding a job better than his starting wealth allows, and he's also still out the starting wealth he could have had (He only has $20,000 while the other party members have $40,000). The new money's not quite a mitigator, and it's also got limitation on what it can mitigate.