Capital Accumulation in Ultimate Campaign


Rules Questions


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I generally like the downtime rules in Ultimate Campaign, but one usage caught me off guard and I wanted to make sure I'm understanding it correctly.

You can use units of Capital on paying for goods at the purchase price, and pay that for the crafting costs?

So, for example, if we are supposing that a wizard is making a magic item that costs 2000gp. This will cost them 1000gp in raw materials. But they can use units of Magic to assist in paying that cost - in this case, 10 units. But earning units of Magic only costs them 50gp.

Similar rules exist for other goods, including nonmagical ones.

Would this mean you can now effectively buy any item for half price, craft magic items for 1/4th price, and nonmagic items for 1/6th the price, given enough downtime?

Even for unskilled laborers and basic Goods capital, you'd spend a day's work and 10gp and get 20gp of purchasing power - why would anyone use normal profession checks ever again?


I haven't read ultimate campaign yet, so I can't clearly answer this, but it seems as though this rule is used to implement an effective barter system. If I want to buy a sword from you, but only have half the cost in gold, we come to an agreement that I give you what I have and then work off the rest by mowing your lawn.

Its a crude example, but I think most people get it.

Grand Lodge

Time. You also need to have a bit of a bankroll up front to use the system.

You can get things much cheaper but you need to spend the time to build up your capital. If you need to go back to adventuring you can loose capital based on how long you are gone. Plus whatever you needed was not made while you were building capital.

It is a give and take. Do you have more money then time or more time then money? We see it in the real world all the time.


Right. But since an unskilled laborer earns 5 silver per week, normally, somehow paying 10 gold for a day's work seems a bit of an overpayment. If they are worth that much, they are no longer unskilled labor.

And in PC hands... again, 25% prices for magic items seems very broken.

EDIT: Further response to Crispy 3ed - yeah, I guess it really depends on the campaign. A sandbox where the PCs essentially control the pacing of their activities could get very unbalanced, very fast, especially if they start building businesses that pay for their magic items easily. Less of a problem in a campaign where the downtime isn't so free.


Kingmaker, beware!


Hmmm...interesting.

Yet again, why I ban crafting of arms, armor, wonderous items, rods, staves, and rings.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Claxon wrote:

Hmmm...interesting.

Yet again, why I ban crafting of arms, armor, wonderous items, rods, staves, and rings.

On the contrary, I encourage the use of feats on craft item feats. Most players seem to look at that as a loss of "power" by spending a feat to craft items. I look on it as a great role-play tool that helps casters (and non-casters with Master Craftsman and such) to look into other aspects of their character. SUre, they get some great deals but it also begs the question of a place to craft. So, I have players looking at purchasing homes or forges, etc.

As for the Ultimate Campaign, I have yet to fully digest everything but it seems like add-on rules versus core rules, so if you do not want to incorporate them, then don't.


Derek Vande Brake wrote:
And in PC hands... again, 25% prices for magic items seems very broken.

It's almost as though p. 173 doesn't exist.

Ultimate Campaign, p. 173 wrote:
As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.

It says a lot more than that, but I'll just quote the sound byte.


Distant Scholar wrote:
Derek Vande Brake wrote:
And in PC hands... again, 25% prices for magic items seems very broken.

It's almost as though p. 173 doesn't exist.

Ultimate Campaign, p. 173 wrote:
As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
It says a lot more than that, but I'll just quote the sound byte.

Ah. Guess I did miss something.


One of the things that came out odd. A player owned a tavern/brewery before the book came out. Liked the details the book added and wanted to add a bedroom so she could sleep there too.

So we started trying to figure the resource point system and as soon as she saw the cash option, pulled out the old money pouch and paid for it on the spot.

Unless you tightly control the money in your world, I don't see many people using the point system.

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