Giving It Away
Back in the halcyon days of my first ever Pathfinder game, life was good. The gold flowed like wine, my spellbook was full to bursting with new and exciting spells, and every magic item was a fresh wonder. My GM provided loot in the form of quest rewards and slain monsters’ hoards, and that was good enough for the likes of me.
Eventually however, 10th level rolled around. The campaign had gone on for years by this point, and I’d been spending time on forums. According to the internet, my party was long overdue for the staple items of 3.X. Realizing that my party was undergeared, I decided it was time for my wizard to take some crafting feats. First I built a belt incredible dexterity, which I gave to our rogue. Then our paladin got a headband of alluring charisma. Then the party looked under their seats, and EVERYBODY GETS BETTER STATS! If you’ve read any of my past posts on the need to make magic items special, you may imagine my poor GM’s reaction. Nothing make magic feel mundane more quickly than mass production, and I was turning out stylish accessories like I’d multiclassed into fashionista.
The friendly debate I had with my GM at the time mirrors the ongoing debate in the community: What is gold for? If you take Paladin’s approach to the problem, then your mounds o’ glimmering etc. are there as a device for roleplaying. You might follow his example and use your wealth to help the poor. You might buy a network of informants, lead armies, build fortresses, start your own business, or acquire big ticket items like airships. You might even drink your gold away à la Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, providing yourself with a reason to head back out to the wilderness in search of more booty next session. Of course, all of these options take effort on the part of the GM. Building an army is going to have one heck of an impact on a campaign. And since you don’t want to “penalize” players for playing carousers rather than crusaders, even the hypothetical hard-drinking PCs ought to receive some sort of benefit from their pub crawling (useful rumors, popularity among the Union of Tavern Brawlers, etc.). In these scenarios, it’s the GM that decides what mechanical benefits the gold confers.
That can be extremely cool from an RP perspective. However, in games predicated on small bands of heroes kicking down doors and killing monsters, a healthy real estate portfolio isn’t going to help you excel at critter slaying. In fact, it’s not going to do much of anything unless your GM says so. It might be cool for Paladin to found a temple to spread the light of the Goodly Gods, but unless you devote screen time to the effects of this project it’s going to feel pretty hollow. I think that this more than power gaming is the reason players like magic item shops. Looking at the magic item lists like a Sears Catalog might not be especially interesting in RP terms, but it does represent an effort by players to have a demonstrable impact on the world.
This all leads to a bit of a conundrum. If you want to include some kind of gold / power exchange rate in your game, how do you balance that with gold-as-RP? In other words, if you can pay for magic items, new powers, or powerful minions who are willing to fight at your side, how do you balance those hard mechanical benefits against the guy that wants to build a city wall for the town?
So what do you say? How do you make sure that the “personal power” guy and the “good RP” guy both feel like their gold went to a good cause? Do you simply divorce the two, or is there some other solution here? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Holy Shi,….Shillelag! I never expected Thief to be so,… Evil. I mean robbing the Beggar sure. But killing her? That just changed my view on her. On the other hand,… there might have been Signs before that i overlooked.
To the Topic on hand: Do your know about http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/ . As far as i expierenced it Players don’t enjoy the + 1 this +1 that Stuff, but they feel it is necessary, because otherwise they would fall behind. But they DO enjoy getting new Stuff. Which is why i would make both possible. The one Guy can build a City Wall. The other dude buys himself the biggest collection of Magical Swords/Weapons in the Area, one Sword at a Time. Each of the Weapons will be somewhat equally Powerfull, but offer advantages against certain Foes/Situations Both get what they enjoy, and none will overshadow the other
I feel like Fighter and Thief are murderhobo buddies. She’s just less of a dick about it. Also, given her track record of flubbing dice rolls, I’m not sure her success rate on Evil deeds has ever got her out of Neutral territory. For example, I’m pretty sure this murder/robbery ends in Thief stepping in a bucket and Fighter getting smote.
I do like that Unchained implementation, though I’ve never played with it myself. Freeing GMs to hand out more interesting gear than “you get +X to stat” is good juju. The Starfinder gear progression might also help to solve some of this. I’ll have to spend a year or two playtesting though.
But who knows? Maybe the dagger is just there to intimidate the victim during the robbery?
Did you read the hover-over text? There’s always hover-over text. Unless I forget to add it, in which case there’s no hover-over text until such time as I’m reminded.
No, I never knew that there is hover-over text. Until now at least.
How do I access the hover over text on an IPad?
If I touch and hold the image on my iPhone, it appears at the top of the resulting options menu.
Other methods:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/34841/how-do-i-view-mouse-over-text-with-an-ipad
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/47016/how-do-i-hover-on-the-ipad
Ha! I just remembered this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/detect-evil
The middle ground is that magic items can be purchased, but are rare and require roleplaying to do so. Perhaps you go to a magic item auction and bid against rich and spiteful nobles.
Solid quest hook. Of course they’re richer than Creases, so you lose and plan a heist or overbid and go in debt. Either way it’s fun times at the table.
I’ll tell ya though, I’ve been listening to a lot of Critical Role lately, and I’ve been surprised at how much they A) utilize magic shops in 5e and B) RP those interactions at the table. It’s a nice reminder that the common wisdom of “5e doesn’t do magic shops / you should skip the boring shopping trips” isn’t the only way to go.
Crit Role is a converted Pathfinder game, so i’m not surprised they do things the Pathfinder way.
I’ve played with some groups that have magic item shops, and i’m neutral about it. On one hand, I agree that even with a bit of RP to spice it up, it’s usually not very interesting. On the other hand, those magic items will be put to good and interesting uses. So, if it happens it happens, if it doesn’t, oh well. 🙂
I have a homebrew system where magical items always come with drawbacks, making it very questionable whether they’re worth using outside of specific situations. You can upgrade items – at a price. And there’s a chance to fail, or even critically fail, potentially destroying/cursing items. That way, there’s always a gold sink for players, they’ve never got more than they know what to do with.
Any examples of these drawback items?
https://seagull.obsidianportal.com/items
Just the list of found/identified items
One concept I’ve seen floated is certain kinds of non-item holdings or investments conferred mechanical benefits, either directly or indirectly. E.g. being the Baron of Thisthat might straight up give you a bonus on certain kinds of social checks, or your rank enables you to commission magic items from powerful wizards where ordinary adventurers can’t even get an appointment. A paladin of sufficient achievement (and sufficiently impressive donations) may get divine blessings equivalent to a magic item or be able to call upon temple priests for spellcasting favors, etc…
Right on! At that point though, the million gp question is whether players should know what those benefits looks like before or after they’ve made the donation.
I personally really like the whole ‘spend the gold building/improving a town or location’ type thing, because it lets your character really become part of the world. Sure, the other guy might have slightly better numbers, but so long as your GM is willing, you can get also sorts of benefits, like followers, good political standing, or even a position of power over organizations of NPCs.
Question: Do you think the player should have some say about what those benefits look like, or is it solely the role of the GM to figure that out?
When I do it as a GM, I work with the player, though I don’t just let them pick and choose what they want; we come up with a general idea together and the GM puts it all together.
Very cool. What do you say to a little thought experiment? I’d like to see what this looks like in practice.
Suppose the PCs just defended the small town of Brendenford from an orc army. They realize now that Brendenford is not a very defensible location, so they volunteer 3,500 gp to build a village wall and watch towers. What RP benefits and what mechanical benefits should they expect to see for their efforts?
Hmm. In that case, I’d give them a favorable reputation at the town, so they’re treated really well by the inhabitants, maybe offered free rooms at the inn, and every now and then the villagers would present them with some sort of gifts. I’d also start to grow the town as well, making it easier to find services they are looking for there. Depending on if they stick around and keep helping the town, they also might become part of the town’s ruling council, or offered lands in or near the town to create their own home or base.
Cool. That all sounds reasonable. Now comes the interesting part: What happens if the player says, “Can I get a watch captain cohort? You know… Just for town-defense missions.” In other words, does the player get to choose her reward (like picking magic items from a shop) or is it always the GM’s job to decide on appropriate benefits? Where does that storytelling authority lie?
I’d say the authority lies with the GM, but that’s no reason not to listen to reasonable player requests. Like the watch-captain cohort is totally a reasonable reward, and I’d probably even let them make a few decisions about the character (unless there already was a fleshed-out watch captain). I wouldn’t let them do any rules stuff, but backstory and personality, sure, since this is an NPC who theoretically has some kind of relationship to their character, even if it is just a good working rapport.
I try to make any “productive” investment of wealth come back as a benefit, whether it be numbers or renown or some other positive effect. Haven’t really found a way to make drinking/gambling/whoring away the wealth pay off mechanically and consistently, but the players whose characters do that are usually in it for the RP rather than hard rewards.
I think that some kind of “boons table” could be cool. If you spend all your time carousing in bars and blowing your money, you get X, Y, or Z benefit per unit of game time (you might choose between useful rumor, favor owed, or bonus to Constitution). I’m picturing a subsystem with ~5 examples and a 5e background-like “consult with your DM to build your own” blurb. In my mind, the idea would be to permit players to spend their gold on “non-gear items” but still give them a quantifiable benefit for their trouble. You’ll run into the problem of players saying, “Why the hell would I do that when I could buy a +3 longsword?” but I think a consolation prize is better than the current default of “you get nothing.”
Perhaps a situational cohort? The night spent in the pub hammers home just how much the PC and NPC have in common (on top of being hammered themselves lel). The NPC leaves once the quest is complete ofc…
Sure. I’m reminded of the NPC Boon system:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/#TOC-NPC-Boons
You could easily build something like that into the “gold as RP” paradigm.
The whole economic system in D&D is a little dodgy; in my settings a 5th level adventurer could sell off all his gear and retire to live for decades in comfort, if not luxury.
Personally I feel that RP-related rewards should have RP-related costs. You don’t buy a castle, the king grants you one in thanks for your service. You don’t found a temple, someone else is inspired to do that upon hearing the story of your deeds, and maybe you help write the scripture.
If someone does decide to sink their gold into something, maybe have it give some sort of long-term payout. For example, if you take the Leadership feat and establish a group dedicated to yourself, have them occasionally turn out better weapons or armor, magic items, new spells, research the next plot-hook, etc.
I meant to say *in MOST settings*, or possibly “in my experience”, and then got them mixed up. In my setting I try to keep most groups with a few hundred in spending-cash for consumables, and award them item-specific powerups via the story at appropriate moments.
Interesting… So if I’m hearing you right, you’re suggesting that we should divorce the gold/power exchange from “RP purchases,” allowing them to operate as separate systems. That’s an elegant solution, but it does leave you with a bit of a problem if a player says “how much does it cost to buy an inn?” I guess it would take good player / GM communication to know that the PC wants to buy that inn so that the GM can plan a way to insert that reward into the storyline.
I’m all for improving GM/player communication, and to make things as blunt as necessary. GM’s should tell players what sort of game to expect and help them with character creation- or players should get together, discuss it, and then tell the GM what kind of game they want. I think games run smoother when the GM isn’t trying to crush the players and the players aren’t trying to outwit the GM and trick him into giving them what they want. There has to be elements of cooperation as well as competition there.
If someone seemed interested in acquiring an inn or tavern, my first instinct would be to give a vague answer like “a cheap one could be bought with a few years wages for a normal person”, which you could probably say about LOTS of things (few months, few weeks, few decades, etc) and then next I’d try to delve a little deeper into what they wanted it for. Owning a business isn’t typically in the same vein of adventuring, so before we turn Dungeons and Dragons into Beds and Breakfasts, I’d want to know where the player is going with this. If the player decides that their character’s motivation for adventuring is so they can retire as a slumlord or real-estate tycoon, fine, but then we should decide how to tell that story together.
If a GM doesn’t seem to be picking up on your subtle clues, the player should approach them directly, before or after a session or during a break, and broach the subject in as plain language as possible. Whatever amount of immersion you lose for not doing everything entirely in-character, I feel like in the long run you’d gain more fun than that from being able to implement zany schemes, having the party do something unexpected, and giving players opportunities they might otherwise would have missed.
Hmmm. I’m not sure this is a question with a single correct answer. It really depends on the game, the GM, and what the players want (for this set of characters).
Players want good characters moments and good stories, but they also like shiny things to make their characters better/cooler.
I would certainly recommend keeping magic items available for purchase to a reasonable minimum if you want to encourage your players to do anything else with their funds though. It’s really hard to resist the twin temptations of “no seriously, this is a thing I can USE *when I want*” and “this makes me just *better* at all the things I do, which allows me to more easily have more awesome moments”. Because yeah, +2 items aren’t inherently interesting. Until you realize that that’s like a 10% less chance of lamely using your action to fail to do something.
That’s just my short answer since the long answer is that this question ties so much into all sorts of other things we’d be examining it until the Old Ones all wake up.
True that. I’ve just recently opened a “made to order” magic shop in my megadungeon Pathfinder campaign, and even there I’ve limited it to wondrous items worth 7K gp or less. Up to now it’s been “wait for the magic merchant wagon to show up and hope his ~15 items are worthwhile.” It’ll be interesting to see how opening up the catalog affects the game.
I gotta say, this is much darker than I expected from Thief OR Fighter. This isn’t funny like their other acts of minor depravity and mayhem. It crosses a line when you start going after the helpless, and this doesn’t manage to Cross the Line Twice, either.
To be fair, having PC-level wealth raises a peasant’s CR by at least +1.
Which is part of why the in-game economy and magic-mart style of item-acquisition, combined with the dung-ages setting as presented, are so bjorked IMO. You could have the party spend an entire month training a village so they have their own militia, showing them how to dig ditches and erect palisades, teaching them tactics for use against wild animals and raiders, maybe even constructing a bunker for use against bigger dangers like airborne-magical-creatures. Or any mid-level+ party could just use a relatively small part of their wealth to buy all the villagers better gear, and achieve the same improvement in effectiveness.
I like to imagine that a big sack of loot simply functions as a +2 flail.
In a game that evolved from an adventure of-the-week dungeon fest into a diplomatic game of gathering allies, we once used almost all our party’s gold to buy a mob of mercenaries. It seemed to be worth it at the time.
So… What did you do with your private army? Did they become long term allies?
I usually just say “You can buy mundane versions of the Big 6 as competence bonuses, don’t stack with Enhancement bonuses, don’t take a slot. Basically just spend time crafting them, pay full price, bam, ya done.”
I personally can’t read one of Paladin’s lines without hearing the voice of Tyrael from the Diablo games. Not gonna lie, I’d have a hard time going against that voice no matter HOW evil I was.
Huh. I’ve never played Diablo, so I’d never seen that before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DESKsNOuq0A
Voice actor headcanon accepted SO HARD.
Hi, first time commenting during a long archive trawl!
I’m currently playing in my first Pathfinder campaign (first TRPG game in fact), and we’re playing the Zeitgeist adventure path. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, the campaign has you employed as a law enforcement agency, and every time you level up you get paid and can buy /anything/ with your cash. And when you don’t want it you can return it to the armoury for the price you paid for it.
I’ve actually found it really dissatisfying. Getting new gear for my character now feels like a chore of trawling through SRDs looking for the most effective way to use 8,000gp. I think I’d much rather get random loot, and then use any actual gp for RP purposes instead.
A quick aside – is there any way to see the mouse over text on mobile? I feel like I’m missing something here…
Well hey, thanks for trawling! Hope to see more of you down here in the comments. 😀
As for the tech troubles, it look like a long-tap in Chrome does the trick. The alt-text shows up at the top of options box that opens up.
For encouraging players to spend their characters’ money on things other than improving their equipment, there is a method I’ve toyed with in Shadowrun that, while terribly metagamey, does seem to do the trick:
Just tell your players outright “Here’s the money you get to spend on equipment, and here’s the money you get to spend on other stuff. Lifestyle, investing in the community, custom paint job for your motorcycle, whatever, just spend it on stuff that isn’t personally useful.”
It means that nobody has to choose between enhancing their character in the most advantageous way possible, and engaging in the things that give their character definition and meaning. Because everyone wants to do the latter, or at least they should want to, and this way they know that there’s no risk of them falling behind the power curve (against other PCs, or against the challenges they will fight) by doing so.
I like this idea personally, but I worry about players that would have trouble accepting a “because I said so” ruling.
“Hey GM! Can I take my lifestyle dollars and use them to upgrade my shotgun collection?”
“What? No!”
“Well why not?”
“Because I said so!”
What I mean to say is that the method solves the problem, but it raises some difficult in-game questions. Have you ever had to deal with that?
There’s hover text? Re-reading everything!
lol. The comic has replay value!
Done. Since I didn’t need to re-read the articles underneath, it went a lot faster. Now I can go onto new stuff.
lol. I hope it was worth the re-read.
It was. 🙂
Divorce characters’physical power from their wallet size. 5e, by default, doesn’t let you buy power beyond full plate and arbitrary numbers of healing potions; in my experience, players usually roleplay their financial habits more in 5e than those same players do in Pathfinder, whether it’s prob bono heroism or miserliness that Ebenezer Scrooge would find psychotic.
One time our party was a bunch of fugitives, so shopping was out of the question (we stole a flying ship with a merchant on board, but their gear become outdated very fast). So one of us took some levels in crafting, and was taking most of our hard earned (I mean stolen) gold in exchange of making us new gear.
And I was playing an assassin, which means just gear was not enough for me. i was brewing my own poison. Once I got my hand on rare ingredients for a very strong one, I was very afraid to fail it, so I was brewing it several days, to be sure. And as soon as I finished it, the GM started to use almost exclusively undead and constructs in all encounters. Imagine how pissed was I.
I image you began researching ways to transfer your poison from the game world and into the GM’s Mountain Dew.