[DF] Wealthy Novices, Poor Veterans

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Varyon

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.

Sure, it's just fiddling around to avoid busting the wealth rules, and as GM you can always circumvent any rules you want.

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).

There are no rules about how to break the rules, and this is triply true for anything as setting specific as Who Has What Stuff. I will warn you that with too much money and the players can spend a long time deciding how to spend it, or do weird things with it like hiring 27 henchmen or investing in real estate.

Have you considered starting the campaign with the amnesiac PCs waking up unequipped in a room full of dubious junk (and perhaps any purchased sig gear) at some point far from the entrance of the first "dungeon?" Less of a cliché than a tavern, and gets to the action quickly.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by martinl

I will warn you that with too much money and the players can spend a long time deciding how to spend it, or do weird things with it like hiring 27 henchmen or investing in real estate.

This is certainly true. Of course, if a player makes a PC that doesn't fit with the campaign (such as the ones you mentioned, who command a small army or are real estate barons), as GM I'm well within my rights to say "Thanks for designing an NPC for me; now, what character are you going to be playing?" But analysis paralysis is a thing, and is more of a thing the more choices a player has to make (this is part of why I like Delvers to Grow - you make meaningful choices for creating your character, but not so many that you end up spending hours designing it). So, certainly something to keep in mind if starting characters with a lot of money to spend.

Originally Posted by martinl

Have you considered starting the campaign with the amnesiac PCs waking up unequipped in a room full of dubious junk (and perhaps any purchased sig gear) at some point far from the entrance of the first "dungeon?" Less of a cliché than a tavern, and gets to the action quickly.

Ha! Yeah, that could make for a fun campaign. Honestly, part of what I want to do for a first campaign is to have the PC's actually be a sort of "golem rider," who projects his mind into a golem that is assembled on-the-spot from a special "seed." The PC's would be adventurers in their own right, but the golems would be created using Delvers to Grow, and would be expected to be expendable (the PC's control them remotely - my current idea is that they can partially detach their souls from their own bodies to teleoperate the golems). I haven't worked out quite all how I want it to work, but my musings here would be separate from that campaign, more for when I decide to delve into a more serious DF setting.
(EDIT: If anyone's curious, I opted to make another thread for discussion of the Golem Riders idea)

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Varyon

"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).

It depends. I do allow purchasing magic items - especially when the loot generated is all unusable - but I mostly rely on random loot. I have a list I use somewhere, but I don't feel like digging it out at the moment.

The point is this: I've allowed higher point characters to have more gear in every campaign I've run since about 2012 and it has broken nothing and mostly allows for player characters whose concepts run counter to just another rich boy.