Unmasked, Part 4/4
No, we’re not talking about lawful good PCs bending their character concept to accommodate evil. We already did that.
And no, we’re not talking about outrageous and unbelievable lies. We did that too.
We’re not even talking about the lengths you’ll go to in order to preserve your secret identity, because we literally just did that.
Instead, today’s comic is about a much more important concept: Asking for a bigger reward. It may be distasteful work for a hero, but somebody in the party needs to be willing to pull the trigger and say “what’s in it for me?” You aren’t a charity after all. There’s magic swords to be bought and potions of healing to be chugged, and that mess requires coin.
My thinking on this subject has been shaped by my time among the modules. In many cases, the notion of PCs pressing for bonus loot is baked right into the adventure. In my Strange Aeons campaign, for example, you get this little nugget:
If the PCs try to bargain with Winter, they find she can’t offer much in the way of value. If forced, she can only raise 28 gp worth of coins and cheap jewelry from the survivors, and she won’t like doing it.
In Out of the Abyss, you get this interesting little aside:
Bruenor assures the adventurers they will have his gratitude and that of all Gauntlgrym—indeed, of all Faerûn—if they are successful. If the characters press for details or try to negotiate compensation for their service, the king points out that Gauntlgrym has considerable space, and he can offer them titles, property, and the products of the Great Forge as rewards. Such mercenary negotiations lowers Bruenor’s opinion of the adventurers a bit, but he never loses his genial manner.
You see? It’s an incredibly important job with literally no downside. What I’m saying is that, if you don’t have a face assigned to negotiating duty, it’s time you started squeezing those starving orphans and terrified villagers for coin. In fact, I’m honestly amazed we haven’t covered this topic before. >_>
Question of the day then! Do you like to press your quest givers for bonus treasure, or would you rather act the selfless hero? Sound off in the comments with your favorite negotiating strategies and finest loot hauls!
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Depends on the character I’m playing. Prince Alester and Princess Tara would never think of demanding money for their services. Outside of taxes that is, lol. Leonard Snart would have already stolen something as payment. The twins Crissie and Tristan probably would as well if the quest giver was wealthy, but not if they were poor. While Irlana just sold tons of dragon meat and dragon hide and became the richest person in the kingdom that way.
Aye, exactly. “Depends on the Character.”
I’ve Characters who will skinflint for every last bit they bleed out of a situation, some who do it all for free for various reasons, and others who are just happy if they can get anything.
I dunno. I feel like this might be a party question rather than a character question. It’s right in line with loot distribution after all, and some parties actually draw up charters to govern that mess.
It depends on the character and the campaign. Negotiating is a lot more fitting if we are professional mercenaries approached by a client interested in hiring us to protect their caravan, than if we are wandering knight errant’s that just happened to be nearby when a distraught farmer ran into town square screaming about their children being kidnapped and won’t somebody please help.
In general I prefer the last type of games for DnD alikes through, it’s normally more fun for me.
Huh. I think that the “appraise” skill in Pathfinder has a full on haggling minigame. It always struck me as obnoxiously complex for selling loot, but I bet that it could play nice as a quest negotiation.
Virtue is its own reward.
Still, it’s no good to be too proud to ask for help. People like doing you a favor a lot more than negotiating a price. For instance, you can get more free lodging with a grateful family than paid lodging you could get with their money, and your reputation will stay intact. Haggling is for selling loot.
And sometimes if you just shut up you can just let them tell you what the reward is. You don’t want to accidentally ask for less than they were going to give you, or get the same amount plus some stink eye.
Overall, most people like to show their gratitude. Just let them. The best Face can ask for what they want without any questions.
Just look at today’s comic. They could have “explained” the “mix-up” without asking for anything and I’m sure Theif would have gotten her pardon and, if the doppelgänger threat was sold well enough, a nice reward, without spending any goodwill.
But there is also the question of goods will vs ” good will.” Will the GM actually punish this sort of play beyond the immediate moment? In the context of a long campaign, ” elf princess will remember this” can be tough to pull off.
it could be argued that the Heroes actually own money to the Quest Giver for the information where they can find ethically harvestable XP and loot.
It could… just not by the quest giver. :^)
Depends on the “quest giver”.
The Seller of Secrets? Damn straight you pay or get //your// secrets sold for cheap.
Sketchy Dave the Snitch? Well… sometimes it’s worth tossing Sketchy a few coins and sometimes you just need to let him go with all his fingers still attached and call that payment enough.
Context!
My experience is that there’s invariably one character in any party who considers themselves above such concerns as payment, and one who’s an utter mercenary and will automatically look to negotiate no matter how worthy the cause. And usually these two characters are the high-charisma types who’ll be doing all the talking when the party is interacting with potential patrons.
The tale of the bard and the paladin, eh? I should think that the bard would tend to win out due to being the proactive person in this situation.
I like to play heroic types who need no reward, but the other end can be fun too, and ultimately I think every party benefits from having someone who’s willing to step in and say “We don’t work for free”.
I ran an adventure once where the curmudgeonly alchemist who hired the party only handed them 5 gp (1 gp for each of them) after they braved a dangerous dungeon for him.
They got more of a reward after one of them complained to his appreciate. The young man basically offered them free alchemist casting services (to the limit he could provide) whenever they were in town. He didn’t really have money to make up for his boss being a cheapskate, but they made good use of his aid throughout the campaign after that. It was ultimately probably worth it.
Well hey, that’s cool and flavorful. That’s a nice way to make negotiation a “feels good” experience for the party.
I once had a CN bard who the party tasked with collecting a reward for some bandits that we had captured. He went the the guards to find any wanted posters, and sure enough these bandits were wanted…for a whopping 80 gp. My bard didn’t ask for a bigger reward; he took the poster off, added a 0 to the end of the reward price, then talked up how terrible these bandits were and persuaded the guards not to look deeper into the matter, at least long enough to skip town. He appeased the rest if party by splitting the 800 gp evenly and not telling them the rewards was 10x higher than it should have been.
I think this may be an appropriate case of hidden plans:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unmasked-part-1-4
Well done that bard!
My characters usually don’t like asking for more as rewards. But they may ask for more, as business expenses. You know, stuff like “if you want us to rescue the princess, we need to hurry. We need horses/lightning rail tickets/an airship” or “if you want us to fight those gorgons, we’re gonna ask you to give us all the stone to flesh potions and scrolls you may have. We’ll give back those we didn’t need after the deed is complete”, this kind of things.
It would be interesting if living expenses mattered. Usually, room and board is so cheap for working adventurers that you can afford to be generous. I wonder what kind of system could make the gritty low fantasy feel really work, where making sure you get paid can have serious repercussions beyond “+1 magic sword instead of +2.”
Well maybe if the quest giver was a bit more generous, PCs wouldn’t NEED to ask for a reward. An appopriate one would be provided. At the very least let them keep their legitimate battlefield salvage without the whole “the treasure was stolen, it rightfully belongs to the kingdom” hogwash.
In all seriousity though, no one likes being empty handed at the end of a quest. I think a token of gratitude would suffice for most PCs who aren’t ancient wyrm levels of greedy.
Really, this mess is all about letting the party face be a party face. I think the biggest determinate is if the party or the individual PC wants this experience.
My group save a villages.
My group ask for more treasure and/or reward.
Villagers refuse.
Villagers ask the gods to bring back their old problem because we are worse and angrier 😛
Lots of times we have asked for more reward. What better reward for saving a king than a tittle? And coin, and treasure, and his daughter hand in marriage, and his crown, and his throne… lets add his job and his soul and maybe we can strike a deal with the king. There is no enough reward on the world to leaves us satisfied. After all, no matter who ask for what, they are asking because they can’t deal with the problem. The adventures can deal with the problem, which means they are worse and should we rewarded accordingly. More than once a campaign have got a sudden turn of event when the not-so-much-wise-king ends up dethroned and defenestrated, by his former throne room fifth floor window, and the party managing the kingdom, if people know what is good for them. If not impaling for all 😀
Also no dead thief? I am disappointed of Lumberjack Explosion, disappointed… but not surprised 🙁
Thief, like any good rogue, immunized herself to unwanted offing by becoming too important/ingrained in the Handbook of Erot-uhm, Heroes, to be simply killed off.
And in a slayer-themed cómic she and wizard are getting laid when a hockey-masquered fighter appears welding Mr. Stabby and kill them both. None can cheat death, thief even less. Probable she will too busy trying to pickpocket Death to even care about the fact she is dying. Good thing Cleric got resurrection… But who resurrects the resurrectors? 😛
NPCs, A.K.A. Acolyte and Priest, obviously.
You know, when people don’t get my references they make me feel older than i am already are:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhoWatchesTheWatchmen
🙁
“None can cheat death, Thief even less”
You seems yo be forgetting Evasion exists.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dodgy
Dodge, a way to escape death until this happens: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
He who lives by the dice, by the dice will die. For Rogue will bet his life on quantum immortality* and loose 🙂
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
What is happening in this thread!? 🙁
We are talking about things like Thief and Wizard getting laid, thought experiments in quantum physics, slayer films and the importance of NPC on the resurrection of the pc. Typical HBoH talking 🙂
Ah. Jolly good then. Carry on.
I think you might have misnamed the various parties.
Seems to me the group composed of Witch, Necromancer, Antipaladin and Succubus is the Other Evil Party… 😉
No wonder Paladin detected great evil when he was among them.
And that Horsepower feels the need to hide his righteous secret identity.
How long until Fighter uses his old characters to pin crimes on to get the reward?
What do you think this is, Paranoia?
Hmm, makes you wonder, how many times the various characters of the Handbook officially died (and presumably got rezzed or retconned back). Fighter’s certainly got quite a number of bodies behind him.
Everyone in Handbook-World is a jerk. It is known!
I think the Princess has just lost some of her respect for the Vigilante…
Princesses generally don’t approve of neighsayers.
DisapprovingFace.exe
It’s largely character dependent, but also depends on circumstances.
Is there already a reward being offered the feels fair? If so, no reason to press our luck (unless we’re really sure we’re never going to have to deal with this person/group ever again).
Do we have other ways of acquiring valuables without needing to ask for permission?
For example in a game I’m playing in right now we’re going to clear out some undead and hopefully save some miners in a mine. My character is a blacksmith. If there’s opportunity he will totally make off with some mined ore/gems/precious metals or mine himself any exposed worthwhile veins.
Though the more standard example is “Do I have mending and slain foes have arms and armor?”
And of course there’s the always important question of “how difficult/how bad are the risks for me to just steal things worth the effort to be bothered to steal around here?”
Because it’s better never get caught and having to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. ;D
I find myself most intrigued by the interplay between player and GM rather than PC and NPC. It seems to be about whether or not both parties think haggling is reasonable in the moment, and whether or not a “greedy bastard” penalty will be imposed for haggling when it’s deemed inappropriate.
Character and Circumstance dependent. A few examples for many different games follow.
I once played a character in Shadowrun who ran under the name Siren, because she was a Dryad. Dryads are an Elf metatype that form a bond with a certain area and feel either good or terrible based on how that area is doing. I took contacts in the neighborhood with a high loyalty and was a “retired” combat medic who had originally worked with Doc-Wagon. It was fairly known in the Neighborhood that I offered even magical healing to people in the neighborhood cause them feeling better resulted in me actually feeling better. Siren was also the negotiator for her Running team, due to her Charisma of 8, +3 from Dryad Grace and social skills. If it wasn’t for the neighborhood, she was a pretty hard negotiator.
In D&D, I was more prone to making perception and Gather information work for me. Before we went to answer requests, my rogue had already asked around about how the person’s finances looked. Generally, the further my alignment got from Chaotic Good, the more I had to be paid to care. Unless you were asking me to kill someone I already hated. Those jobs were a steal.
I’m beginning to wonder if it’s down to a GM to telegraph haggling opportunities. Like… If a GM thinks it’s appropriate to have quest givers try and short change the party, how can you convey that information so that the party can act on it?
As others have said, it depends entirely on the character and the campaign. For Doktor Krauss, it’s all For Science. Granted, lab equipment doesn’t pay for itself, and he recognizes the Captain’s need to keep her airship fueled and her crew paid, but Krauss sees no utility in trying to squeeze plasma from a member of the brassica rapa family. Plagiarize or discredit his DATA, now, and you’ve made an enemy for life…
Churrik the ratfolk merchant, on the other hand, will be quite nervous unless there are contracts, balance sheets, and subclauses for every contingency, however remote. It’s not greed — he’s probably the NICEST character I’ve played — but it’s how things are done. What if the next dragon, instead of swooping down and belching fire or trying to carry away the pack mules, demands to AUDIT CHURRIK’S BOOKS?!?
Churrik will help those poor orphaned orc kids, but he’ll do it by putting them on payroll as consultants — their screams saved us crucial seconds in locating the zombie horde, after all — and scheduling an emergency advance distribution of their annual Queensmas bonus. Thanks to his innovative employee-ownership program, they’ll probably end up with a share or two of stock in Menagerie Imports as well, and receive dividend cheques and bewildering annual reports for years to come, along with complementary gift baskets showcasing Churrik’s latest discoveries in tasty surface foods.
Xaari and the crew over at Arclight Industries, on the other hand, play financial hardball. They don’t necessarily play it WELL — way too many lab explosions, product liability settlements, and unleashed eldritch abominations to ever turn a consistent profit — but their CFO, Ms. Clinklevault, will squeeze every last copper out of any given opportunity, because how else could she keep score?
So many folks here are saying that the cue should come from the player side. Have you ever seen a moment where the GM instigated quest haggling? Is that ever appropriate, or should the GM be taking cues from the players?
A general rule of thumb for me is “all expenses covered”. One of my current characters is Skyspinner, a generous rogue/bard who’s pretty much the conscience of her party. She doesn’t normally ask for extra rewards, and won’t even take regular rewards if they’re from people who are already desperate. However, when she had to buy a costly rare material on a mission for a rich and powerful king, she made sure to ask him for compensation since he could afford it a lot more easily than she could.
Aside from that, like others have said, it depends on the character and circumstances. The mercenary fighter down on their luck will demand extra pay since they need it, but the well-off noble sorceress doesn’t care as much. The selfless paladin will only ask for more when they’re obviously getting cheated, but the power-hungry wizard will squeeze for all they can get. An especially interesting case was my rogue Kayen Dust – while she could be greedy and selfish, she still didn’t press for (extra) rewards because she hated drawing attention to herself more than she liked money.
Have you ever received a negative reaction from NPCs for trying to go the “all expenses covered” route?
Not as such. I’ve had disagreements over how much I should get besides the compensation, but generally they understand that if they’re paying us to do a job, they should also pay for the resources to get the job done. It helps that I’m not wasteful with single-use items or costly material components, so if my characters have a big extra expense, it’s for a good reason.
When you’re a private contractor, a reputation for fiscal responsibility is a major asset.
I enjoy systems that reward mechanically but not always with gold. For example the sci-fi game Fragged Empire, and by extension the fantasy Fragged Kingdom, the sea-faring pirate adventures of Fragged Sea, and the souls-like city-crawler of Fragged Aeturnum.
These games have two large stats: resources and influence. Resources are alloted. For example in Fragged Empire you use these to aquire equipment. It is explained that wealth is actually a stat, since the nature of credits is investment and fluctuating matkets, and sometimes your money isnt good on this planet. Resources can represent a lot, but having more means better guns and such.
Influence is different, obviously. In Empire (sci-fi) it helps you with your ship. The party’s total influence is how they purchase a ship, since this is normally a purchase far beyond anyones typical life savings. Instead you need backers, friendly planets and stations to refuel, colonies that will help you with repairs if you keep doing good by them, and corporations willing to trade their latest lazer cannon upgrade if you do a job for them.
In kingdoms (fantasy) it is how you build your colony into a town into a city into a kingdom. City-building is a large part of the game, and you need noble families willing to front you, serfs to work the land, and merchants who find traveling to your backwater village to be worth their time.
There are other games as well. Broken Rooms sometimes rewards players with magic power for being “selfless”. Kuro rewards with valuable information. Even D&D and Pathfinder have great non-monetary rewards in the way of artifacts. No amount of money can buy that Cloak of the Last Magus, they aren’t exactly on the rack at goodwill-save.
My game, Suited, has inbuilt rewards in the form of minor perks, basically mini-feats the GM is encouraged to award selfless players, among other things.
I even hand out things like “hero points” or “roleplay points” in other systems when it doesnt make sense for the npc in question (or lack of any npc) to reward them with anything special, but the players are being awesome. For example, going out of their way to bury the body of a traveler they found while on the road. The body was only there to warn of the griffon in the area, but my players, after investigating and discovering it was a flying predator, took the time to bury it. Even the arcane trickster who wouldn’t normally help gave the in-character explanation that “I think he’d help.. He’s convinced it’s a drake, and if we hang around the site of the kill it may come back. Then we could track it to it’s lair and find it’s treasure. So no reason to speak against the party, I’ll even help dig a little”.
That being said, if you want to run a murder-hobo, steal all the loot munchkin-style game, and the players are having fun? Go for it, there is no bad wrong fun as long as no one gets harmed irl
I love that Broken Rooms solution. Giving mechanical rewards for selflessness is counterintuitive, but it’s also good design. You’re rewarding the behavior that builds a specific type of story. If you’re going for that white knight, do-gooder aesthetic, then it’s a clever way to play.
While it might not be “heroic” to ask for a reward, good deeds on their own rarely pay for the various magic items that help make those deeds possible (or at least more survivable). After a few adventures of barely getting enough money to make ends meet while taking incredible risks to life and limb, almost any party is going to start wondering “What’s in it for me?”
D&D 5e doesn’t do a great job of this IMO since it greatly restricts magic items. Personally, whoever did the designs and pricing for the magic items REALLY didn’t do a good job. Many of the prices are inconsistent for the value of what they do in comparison of something that has a similar function (potion of flight, flying carpet, broom of flying, and winged boots for example) or is far more expensive than it justifies (Vicious weapons).
Where are the 5e price lists? Is there a homebrew or something?
Reminds me of early on in my first campaign ever (Runelords), when my NG Magus and the Cleric of Saranrae found the secret money safe of a farmer who had been murdered by cultists and/or ghouls. Instead of pocketing the money like the AP authors no doubt intended, we turned it in to the sheriff to be distributed to the farmer’s heirs.
Some of my later partymates would no doubt be shocked and appalled.
What’s so weird about Pathfinder is that, in theory, you’ve got “average wealth by level” as a yard stick. So regardless of what you do with treasure, you’re always “supposed” to have the same net worth of gear.
In practice though, you wind up with much more or much less depending on whether you find hidden caches, take on optional fights, or give away the booty in the name of do-gooding. I’d be curious to see Average Wealth by Level as a range rather than a hard number,
I’ve talked about my pirate character Smyler a few times before… and I’m going to do it again, dammit!
One of his first adventures was a city under attack by the undead. Smyler had no qualms with helping to defend citizens and even halt the undead advance, because it aligned with both his goal of a great reputation and his preference for helping people when practical. Tracking down the legitimate authorities and asking for a reward in advance would have interfered with both of those.
However, then the Prince asked the crew to eradicate the (halted) armies of the dead at their source, and it was time to point out that “Hey, we don’t typically work for free. Ships are expensive.” We probably lost some of her respect… but to Smyler, that’s only important insofar as it results in building his reputation or acquiring power/resources to do the same, and the Prince was always likely to end up an enemy regardless when it came time to start building that pirate kingdom, so demanding a reward greatly increased the short-term benefits with no real long-term cost.
Naw man. I feel like the Prince is overstepping at that point. If a literal pirate captain has been kind enough to chip in for civic duty, it’s on you as a smart ruler to begin making some Onion Knight offers of royal titles and official designations as a privateer and such.
I like games where you don’t need to pester NPCs for every spare coin, because it’s just not that important. That’s probably my favorite change in 5e; even if the lack of a magic item market is annoying and makes it harder to stock up on neat, cheap utility items that might come in handy someday, detaching character power from wealth (once the fighter gets plate armor) means characters can feel freer to express themselves economically. They can buy drinks for everyone at the bar without a second thought, turn down/not ask for rewards when doing good, and just randomly buy a couple horses and a wagon to apologize for misbehavior…but there’s still enough use for money (if you like healing potions and whatnot) that there’s at least a nominal purpose to hoarding gold, if you’re that kind of player.
I am so sorry for leaving all these dang backdated comments, but this is a good question. I don’t mind players who, eyebrows waggling, lean against the fourth wall and ask ‘so, just theoretically, how much is Princess Gumdrops’ theoretical life theoretically worth? Real gold, not theoretical gold.’
But personally, I think systems that decouple wealth from gameplay are the best, much like the GreatGoldenWyrm above me. I actually backported spycraft/modern d20/d20 cthulhu’s wealth system into dnd 3.5 for precisely those reasons. I ALSO let players accrue hard, noted cash if they like – knowing your character is now the richest person in the world is cool, a fun goal!
For ordinary purchases, though, physical wealth ends up feeling /immaterial/ fast. If it takes only 2 cp to buy a good meal, and you’re making 1000 GP in a level one adventure, well…
This ends up devaluing rewards that should feel impactful. One of the coolest features in games are random artistic loot tables. Things you might sell for gold/income, trade, or even take for yourself – but if you view them just as ‘oh, a statue with gold leaf and gemstone eyes, that’s 50GP, boring’ –
You can see how that spills over into other items/things, even magical items.
None of this has to do with characters ASKING for more rewards, though, I think it’s fine and ducky, if it’s in character. If Sir Kasper the Generous is shaking down the Holy Priory of St. Woebegone, hmn, not so much, bahaha. But I like my players trusting me enough to give me a hard time –
“Are you SURE the Holy Priory can’t find fifty-eight copper coins worth of treasure? We did just slaughter all those imposter lamias, it’d be a pity if we forgot some…”
and have fun doing it. More to the point if it creates something I can throw back at them to howls later.
“The Holy Priory’s doors remain locked; the rain continues to pound around you, flooding the low-paved roads. Your comrade’s limp body is heavy in your arms.
No one answers, and in your heart, you know exactly why.”
Hey, if you’re gonna take the time to write, I can take the time to answer. 🙂
Just looked it up:
http://dmreference.com/MRD/Basics/Wealth/Losing_Wealth.htm
Sounds like a nice middle ground between 3.5 style gp counting and d10 system’s abstract Resources score.