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Post by SaintYin on Mar 31, 2015 0:49:14 GMT -7
So this session has recently got me thinking. Players love it when they get cool side-stuff. Kill a giant animal, get a chance to harvest it. Find a field of potentially valuable flowers, collect them all in a haversack for later. Pick up 6 barrels of some unknown concoction because why not, the bandits/vampire-mage you're slaughtering won't use it. This is usually fine in normal play, since it's just one group and a DM. If WBL gets out of whack from the change, they can easily scale back what the group gets later or boost encounter difficulty to keep things interesting. In DG, however, players are limited by wealth per session, and these material additions must be figured out and deducted to keep everything fair. Even if the player has no intention of selling the object, the fact they might needs to be kept in mind to keep everyone in the recommended wealth level. Continuing back to Geck's session (as linked), Ben's been given access to 80 liters of Titan Centipede poison, due to harvesting it himself from a titan centipede. To make the problem more clear, I'll use this gain as the example. If Ben were to pawn the poison to some merchant with really deep pockets, the math would go as follows: 1- A vial in pathfinder is listed as containing 1 ounce of fluid. Since there is no other measurement, I'm assuming a dose of poison is kept in a vial. 2- 1 ounce is equal to ~30 milliliters. 3- 80 liters is 80,000 milliliters. 4- The closest listed poison to Titan Centipede Poison is Hemlock. There are differences, but they're mostly in favor of the Titan Centipede poison, so Hemlock's price is a good floor. 5- Therefore, there are nearly 2700 doses of poison worth 3,332,000 gold if Ben sold them at half market price of Hemlock. There are clear faults in the thought process to trying to sell a lump sum of that much poison, but I feel the point is clear enough. The normal DM result would be to shaft this character's gold gain until it levels out, set up some sort of event to remove most of the wealth, or make the processing stage of the poison fail (losing 90% to all of it), but those solutions are knee-jerk reactions that make it fun for no one. Here is the solution I'm suggesting:When a player gains some large quantity of material that can be sold for insane profit, they cannot sell this as a PC. Instead, they must use their downtime building/organization to sell it over time, gaining a tiny fraction of the profit as if it were a room. The small quantity gained daily is to reflect the fluctuating sales of the material in question, along with the majority of profit going to keeping the building in business. In addition, if the material is of a smaller quantity or limited in some way, then the daily GP boost is limited to a set number of days from gaining it. During this period where a specific player's building has acquired a material, other players could purchase it at market value. Going back to the poison example: Ben acquires 80 liters of deadly poison of high value. Instead of trying to sell it all himself, he uses his merchant-guild to provide a location to purchase the finished poison until it runs out. Ben gains the equivalent of 3% of a titan centipede poison's dose value per downtime day for 1 year. The benefits of this suggestion are numerous: 1) Players get to harvest things and still get something for harvesting them. 2) Large quantities of materials can no longer heavily impact the PC's WBL. 3) This encourages PCs to make buildings/organizations, since I can only assume not having one means they'd have to let the materials go if they don't have a means to process/sell it themselves. 4) It increases player options. For example, the introduction of Titan Centipede poison as a PC-purchasable type of poison could inspire players to start using it, since it's pretty good stuff. There is the negative that if too much materials are given to players, it might make them break WBL just from having so much working in their favor. Additionally, the limited duration means a sum total can still be calculated, which means it's less a flavor reward and it becomes another thing that can be calculated into effective WBL. On a semi-related note, Ben's got 80 liters of this poison, and would like a ruling to figure out what he can do with it. I'd prefer the method I've suggested, but I wouldn't mind 3 million gold either. |
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Geckilian
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Post by Geckilian on Mar 31, 2015 6:32:38 GMT -7
You raise good and valid points.
My ruling for you would be in agreement with your proposal - 3% share on a dose per downtime day for a real time year.
That ends up being 75gp per downtime day spaced across a year. In addition you may construct an additional Alchemy Lab at half cost/resources if you wish, to provide most of the work for distilling, packaging and organising sales.
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diskelemental
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Post by diskelemental on Mar 31, 2015 15:39:38 GMT -7
Uh Geck... you're aware that's 27,375 GP, right?
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Geckilian
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Post by Geckilian on Mar 31, 2015 16:50:44 GMT -7
In one entire real life year, yes. Spaced out across that length of time it hardly has an impact - approx a session a month assuming Ben never levels up. If he does then it becomes less.
Compared to some of the wealth magic item crafters can amass in a drastically shorter time frame it's a drop in the ocean.
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Zanos
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Post by Zanos on Mar 31, 2015 22:01:09 GMT -7
A sessions worth of gold per month as a reward from a regular session seems rather significant to me, especially considering how infrequent higher level sessions are.
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Geckilian
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Post by Geckilian on Apr 1, 2015 0:01:40 GMT -7
Lets compare it to downtime Magic Capital - a scholarly type who can generate 17 Magic capital per day essentially makes 170gp in asset profit daily. Across a week that's 1190gp, and 4760gp a month - 61880gp across the next lunar year for example. I don't think a non-magical crafter having less than half of that for character motivated looting is all that bad really.
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Ash
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Post by Ash on Apr 1, 2015 5:06:47 GMT -7
Profiting off of magic capital became a lot more difficult when the crafting was changed. Now the only way to profit is off of crafting for other people, and in order to continuously make that 170gp in potential profit a day they need to invest 850gp to create the capital every day while also always having someone to sell to.
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diskelemental
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Post by diskelemental on Apr 1, 2015 7:07:44 GMT -7
It's also kind of a question of fairness... Ben got 27k, with (next to) no effort. Everyone else got 3 Oxen.
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Geckilian
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Post by Geckilian on Apr 1, 2015 8:23:49 GMT -7
Alright. I'm open to other suggestions you guys have for dealing with loot with high theoretical value that can be obtained in normal play that wouldn't generally be in line with session wealth, aside from 'don't ever include it'.
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Post by Haskalah on Apr 1, 2015 10:18:11 GMT -7
I know I'm fairly new here, but perhaps an ideal solution could be to have the loot's sum value be up to twice the normal session wealth but require x days of downtime to fully prepare/process/sell/etc., and the players deduct that from any rewards that session.
Ex: In the venom example, perhaps it's worth 4,000g altogether (it quickly spoils and has a long processing time, for example, so most of it is unfortunately useless), but the player gets no immediate GP that session and has to spend 30 days' downtime overseeing its processing (perhaps not taking up their downtime actions, but requiring that they make note of it). It allows for more reward but requires extra time to come to fruition.
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Post by SaintYin on Apr 1, 2015 10:45:05 GMT -7
The current arguments against the suggestion are more on the example used, so I'd like to sum up the current argument against it:
1) It breaks wealth per session.
2) Other participating players within the session did not acquire a similar reward.
These are both fair points to the specific example, and these are the best responses I can think of at this time:
1) It does, but it can be used as a mechanism to bump non-crafting characters closer to the effective WBL of crafting characters (sort of, since the crafters will still end up with all the money). Additionally, there is a very large difference between getting that gold now, and getting that gold a real-world year from now. Since WBL tends to go up exponentially and this will remain linear in its increment, it is incredibly unlikely to actually push Ben past WBL. Between the ~8k he dumped in the building and the ~4k below his current level's suggested wealth, it'd take close to half a year of waiting on this thing to get to where my character is allegedly supposed to be. As an aside, Ben's about 2 sessions away from hitting 9, meaning the gap grows ever wider.
2) While I may be biased in this portion, I've been of the belief that DG groups really haven't been looting what they kill. I can understand why; wealth per session is close to a law instead of a guideline, so anything you pick up is deducted from your pay, or else everyone is expected to get one as well. The problem with this mindset is that it dissuades characters from looking or trying to do things if it isn't related to combat or their own ends. Why do it if your discovery will either be given to everyone or you'll get zero-summed for doing it?
I believe slight disparities between player rewards should be allowed, either to aid those with wealth deficiencies or to reward those that fulfill character goals or are the ones to take risks (such as being the guy that pulls out a sac of poison that'd probably knock him out for a few weeks if it were accidentally ruptured while harvested). I'd like to believe the slight inequality of the session in this example encourages others to explore their options more in future games. Perhaps collecting the kobold armies' weapons so their shop could sell them, for example.
With this said, if the example still must be toned down, I've thought of a few options that could impact the final value:
a- Reduce the duration from 1 year to 3-6 months. This encourages characters to find more to maintain a supply (assuming more of it manages to pop up, of course).
b- Reduce the percentage to 1.5-2%. 75 gold per day is slightly high for the current level range, and this change would cause it to drop to less than one session per month.
c. Reduce the percentage to 0.5%, but make the duration indefnite. The reward is effectively a downtime room at this point, which makes it much harder to gauge how much it's actually worth in GP.
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Geckilian
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Post by Geckilian on Apr 1, 2015 13:58:38 GMT -7
Hmm, along those lines - SaintYin, rather than a 0.5% an appropriate close award would simply be a free alchemy lab - 190gp resale value compared to the 150gp of an Oxen, with the appropriate effect on your downtime. It's basically fluffed as venom distillation and production. Technically more gold in the long run - the VERY long run, right?
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Post by dragonus45 on Apr 1, 2015 14:51:40 GMT -7
I like that idea, it also opens up doors for things like offering free or reduced cost construction of things to pcs looking to build, outside of just giving them materials.
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Post by SaintYin on Apr 1, 2015 16:51:46 GMT -7
I am in slight disagreement over condensing it all the way down to a predetermined room, mostly because rooms aren't designed to produce much at all. For example, an alchemy lab may be worth about the same as 3 oxen on resale, but the turnaround to actually get that gold from it would be 150 days, as a lab produces a measly 1 gold per day. At that point, I'd be more willing to have Ben condense the entire 80 liters into a single dose, then sell that as a PC since it'd make 3.5 years' worth of profit immediately rather than needing to wait 3.5 years. That's assuming 99.96% of the batch goes bad, which I'd argue is fair.
I believe the issue is that wealth by session is still dominating the decisions being made, almost as if it's beyond reproach. I will reiterate - this suggestion is meant to:
1) Give a means of lessening the gap between crafters and non-crafters.
2) Aid players that are below WBL because certain sessions didn't provide full gold per session.
3) Encourage roleplaying/reward exploration/risk-taking for specific players.
4) Provide a method of fairly selling large quantities of material that, if sold by the PC directly, would result in several millions of gold.
It's fun to have a custom value from accomplishing something, at least when compared to "you gain 8 goods, 1 influence, 5 labor, 1 magic." While I can understand the desire for every session to be equal, what players can do outside of sessions can quickly make them unequal. I believe allowing variation in rewards means those that actually are under wealth get a chance to catch up, and the cleanest way to do that is through rewards that can generate it over time.
If the poison was reduced to be very roughly the same value as 3 oxen, I end up feeling shafted by the decision because my risk taken was essentially a free hand-out to the rest of the group in the form of oxen. No one needed to roll for them, and there was no inherent risk is recollecting them. I'd probably not attempt future risks since I'll magically get whatever anyways, even if it were in-character to take those risks.
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Post by SaintYin on Apr 2, 2015 18:54:29 GMT -7
To aid the example, I've taken the liberty of condensing relative income values between a non-crafting character and a crafting character. It was condensed into three categories: session wealth (all gold gained from sessions), character-invested wealth (all non-consumable items specifically purchased for use by the character), and estimated worth (all sources of income and all items valued at full). The first is a solid measurement of what sessions are granting per session to the character. Perhaps it was misfortune, but the non-crafter was at 77% WBL from sessions while the crafter was at 102%. The second is a solid means of measuring how much of the total wealth is invested into the character, and keeps better track of true wealth placed in the character. The non-crafter was at 78% while the crafter was at 234%. The final measurement basically assumes all wealth gains are never spent, which can make it a poor candidate to the WBL standard. However, it does provide a good measurement for how much wealth has passed through the character's hands overall. Regardless, the non-crafter was at 125% while the crafter was nearly 500% when using the same system. The non-crafter sheet is here, while the crafter sheet is here. There are some discrepancies from the original sheets as I didn't feel like taking the time to match dates. The final value was all that mattered. What I'm trying to point out is not that the crafter is insanely wealthy, it's that downtime activity can be spent to vastly widen the WBL gap. Is it really an investment to take a retrainable feat that grants a 30-35% cost reduction on your own items? And if it's not for you, is it an investment to be able to shill other people for a profit margin of 10-15% per day of work? It's even more personal wealth if you actually set up a building that generates Magic capital for you. Is it any more of an investment than taking "unnecessary" risks during a session for the chance of a reward? How is the non-crafter ever going to catch up with the crafter if sessions can't grant specific players additional rewards for their actions? Trying to beat a crafter at the downtime game is a battle that will be lost, as the best they can do is generate Magic capital to pay a crafter. Profession checks, while in a good spot, is still worse than the 10 gold profit per magic capital in most cases. Any boost to downtime activity wealth generation would simply boost the crafters along with it. |
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Zanos
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Post by Zanos on Apr 2, 2015 19:17:25 GMT -7
Yes, I crafted every magic item that Lorek owns currently before crafting was nerfed.
Effectively being able to double your wealth by doing so is why crafting got nerfed. The nerf changed the monetary advantage of crafting your own items and selling items you craft to other characters by 60%. If the crafting nerf wasn't significant enough, that's a cause to nerf crafting more, not give everyone who isn't a crafter freebies.
Technically anybody getting appropriate session rewards and creating magic capital (at least, gryph said that magic capital is fair game for purchasing magic items from crafters) could have a WBL of 150%. You could, for example, by generating magic capital and paying crafters with it, buy 100000 gp in magic items for 66,666 gp.
So no, I don't think getting a sessions worth of gold every month for nothing but passing a single DC 20 skill check is appropriate.
I also am not against taking risks for bonus loot, however. In several sessions run by Geck, which he can confirm, I've personally transported cursed objects and picked magic tattoos off of an NPC we defeated on my own initiative. I didn't receive 100% of the proceeds for either of those endeavors; the reward was evenly split between the party.
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Post by SaintYin on Apr 2, 2015 19:49:08 GMT -7
Indeed, Lorek's not needed to craft anything since the nerf and would still be above wealth until halfway through level 12. I'm saying that even with the nerfs, crafters will still continue to pull away from non-crafters, especially if wealth per session is this deadlocked value where no one player can receive anything more than other players that existed within the session.
Again, I'm not trying to single out Lorek's wealth. I'm trying to point out that crafters, given time, create a huge disparity that is not solved/removed by ignoring it or nerfing the profit margin. Anything a non-crafter can do, so can the crafter (but with more wealth to throw at it). Most of what a crafter can do is dictated purely by being a spellcaster; the "investment" is temporal. What's more, it's worth several times that of many other feats, which are usually designed to be minor additions to a character's efficacy.
Going back to the poison: should wealth per session really be the sole dictator of determining whether a reward is fair to the other players? Maybe the player in question is choked for wealth compared to other participants.
What constitutes a risk or investment? Having the theoretical lack of a thing that's fundamentally worse than what they've taken in its place? Is it an investment to keep track of how much wealth your character gains?
Edit: These questions and this discussion is meant for GMs in general, in case Zanos is feeling targeted. I am glad you agree with session bonuses and I have mentioned the 0.5%/indefinite idea (which would round out to 12.5 gold/day).
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Post by SaintYin on Apr 3, 2015 13:15:17 GMT -7
Due to the 66,666 per 100,000 statement, I've made another sheet to measure the gains for crafters and non-crafters to figure out the effective worth of generating only magic capital. While it is true that this can be a legal action to take for non-crafters, I believe the values speak for themselves in showing how it doesn't keep both in the same relative wealth level. What's more, crafters are generally spellcasters, which don't need additional power above martial classes, last I checked. In short, a crafter saves 416-458 gold per 1000 invested for crafting their own gear with magic, while a non-crafter saves 333 gold per 1000 invested. Crafters generate at much as 258 gold per 1000 they craft in the current system (though it's more likely they'll generate ~83-150). In addition, crafters can generate up to 4000 gold of work per day with little investment beyond choosing to be a tier 1 class, resulting in anywhere between 333 to 1033 gold generated per day of crafting for a non-crafter. This is a few orders of magnitude higher than the 10 gold per 10 on profession/generate capital(Magic) checks that non-crafters can take, and it's still ignoring that crafters get additional reductions for their own item purchases. I'm also ignoring that crafters generally can afford more Downtime building rooms, and that crafters are spellcasters and thus can abuse the spell "Business Booms" to make promoting one's establishment profitable. Forcing everyone to generate magic capital to slow the speed at which crafters pull away from the rest is also a case of pigeonholing. If that becomes the standard, then why should my next caster build anything other than a field of classrooms? They have the highest ratio of magic capital to gold price of all rooms, narrowly behind Courtyards. Edit: For laughs, I decided to calculate Lorek's income as if he were a non-crafter. That is to say, all purchases cost an additional 15% for him, all gold gains from crafting for others were negated, all wealth (after purchasing the building) is converted into magic capital, and see how well his character-invested WBL fared before drying up. That's the suggested way non-crafters keep up, so I suspected it to be a poignant comparison. His effective wealth from those minor differences went from ~130k and growing to a hard maximum of 63k for items. This would put him at 122% maximum possible character-invested wealth with 101% wealth from session rate, compared to the "lazy" approach that resulted in him having 234% without any investment into the character's wealth for the last 6 weeks. Again, this is not to target Zanos or Lorek, but to give a clearer example of the disparity between a crafter and a non-crafter trying to compete in the same game, with the one difference being who has the crafting feat. I believed comparing two different characters left too many variables open, and since it's hard to gauge how much a non-crafter could have made in crafting, it's easier to move in the other direction. |
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Post by shroudb on Apr 16, 2015 16:05:31 GMT -7
back to the original point:
my pov:
giving cool things to players is cool and nice.
giving 3m worth of poison breaks the game.
what i would have done instead would be something along those lines:
first: how the hell did you even manage to extract such a quantity. even with top of the line modern equipment, you would need surgical rooms and etc to seperate the actual poison from the glands without losing a ton of it in the process due to spills and etc.
secondary, and more on gameplay (with a slash of rl logic behind):
sure, a gargantuan/huge whatever beast could hold that much poison. but the beast also has a gargantuan/etc mouth, with gargantuan/etc teeth to deliver a whole lot more than an ounce/per bite.
so, the gameplay change i would say would be something like:
out of the 80lt, you manage to extract something like X (where X depends on a heal check roll, and like a "treat deadly wounds" takes 1hour to perform). let's say, heal dc 20 to extract half of it. +1lt for every point above 20
then you have a whole lot of natural poison. Now, you need to actually distill it enough to make it potent enough to be appliable with only a vial of that stuff, instead of whatever quantity the monster injects with each bite.
that would be alchemy rolls and downtime days spend on them.
approximate the value of the poison. You can normally make it at 50% value via alchemy when buying all the ingredients. Now, you can make it for 10% cost (for varius other ingredients) till you run out of stock.
The actual quantity:stock ratio, would have to be calculated by the gm depending on actual poison cost:player level.
edit:
this way, the way i see it, it stops being "free loot" and instead becomes a skill based loot.
it's no different that p.e. using sleight of hand to pickpocket the nice gem from the quest giver's manor.
or diplomacy him for extra reward
or intimidate a poor thug to give out where he has hidden his stash
or appraise to notice that that rusty sword is actually a relic from a past war worth a pretty penny.
all of the above, would be "extra" revenue in any of my quests.
similary, skills that don't see much use, as heal, crafts, professions, appraise, and etc might get a chance on extra loot on some of my quests if they make sense. and it rewards the player for skill choices apart from the obvious knowledge/perception/etc
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