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I'm running a Kingmaker game and the alternate profession rules sound like a great way to get the PCs more invested in their kingdom. I'm reading through them, though, and I have some questions about places where the rules are unclear and other places where features of the system do not have any effect.
I apologize because when I started digging into the mechanics, the entire system fell apart. I have tried to put it back together, but that makes this VERY LONG. Consider yourself warned.
1. Employees
Why would anyone want extra employees beyond the minimum? Each additional employee imposes a penalty on your Profession check but as far as I can tell, each employee beyond the minimum does not provide any mechanical benefit. I guess you could hire your no-good relatives (or fellow adventurers) to keep them busy, but it really feels like part of the ruleset just got deleted during the editing process and nobody noticed.
2. Finding an Assistant
What mechanical benefit does hiring an assistant with extra skill ranks provide? As written, there doesn't seem to be any benefit, even though the added cost remains.
3a. Counting Assistants
Since employees provide no mechanical benefit, are assistants supposed to count towards your employee count? One possible effect of this would be that a mobile business could only have 2 assistants maximum, thus forcing the business owner to spend at least 50% of their time working on the business?
3b. Counting Assistants Part 2
A side effect of 3a's hypothesis--one that may be borne out by the example in Pathfinder Unchained--is that each employee actually counts as an assistant, meaning that the PC does not need to spend any time running a Medium or Large business themselves, even with the minimum number of employees.
Is this intended? It seems to be, based on the example on page 79 under Determining Profits where the PC adds 2 extra assistants to a small business (for a total of 4 employees) and seems to spend zero time running the shop, whereas having only the minimum (2) employees would have been "unable to adventure for half the month."
3c. Finding Assistants if Assistants Count as Employees
If the hypotheses in 3a and 3b are both true, that suggests that a PC must spend Assistant time finding and hiring each individual employee. For a higher-level PC, this could easily outstrip the given setup time; at level 20, this would be an average minimum of 250 days to open up a large business, compared to the 30 days. Is it intended that the setup time incorporate employee acquisition time, or is it in addition to employee acquisition time, or is it simply the minimum employee acquisition time?
4. Upgrading a Business
Does upgrading a business take time? Are the costs incremental (the difference between the previous level and the new level) or are you forced to pay the full amount for the new business?
5. (Re)Training Assistants Following an Upgrade
We know that assistants have ranks. We don't know what ranks do for us, although we do know that there is a minimum rank we need them to have in order for them to work for us. If a PC with a business (and assistants) gains a level and upgrades their business in such a way that some or all of their assistants have too few ranks to work at that business, does the PC need to spend time retraining those assistants? Can the training happen in parallel or does it happen serially?
Is the training time calculation incremental or is it based on the final number of ranks? For example, I have an employee with 4 ranks in underwater basketweaving; I have upgraded to a rank 10 business and now she needs to be trained because she needs 5 ranks to work in my business. Does this training take 1d4 x (new ranks - old ranks) days, or does it take 1d4 x new ranks days?
6. Making Ridiculous Amounts of Money
I am going to assume that stable businesses (Small, Medium, and Large, but not Mobile) only make sense in a campaign where the characters will have several months of downtime at a number of different points in the campaign. If you're running around Golarion and the whole campaign wraps up in a month, these calculations are meaningless. Therefore, I'm looking to compare returns on investment across a year.
With an investment of 6,250 gp, a character with 1 rank in a profession skill can get a Masterwork Large Business that nets him or her 8,000 gp per month, more than making his or her money back in that single month. Not bad for a month of downtime! (assumptions: 1 rank, +3 bonus from class skill, +2 bonus from wisdom score, +2 bonus from Masterwork Large Business.) You really start raking it in during the second month, when you get another 8,000 gp without any additional effort. This is totally doable at PC expected wealth for level 5 or 6, or sooner if PCs collaborate on the business. The income projections will go down somewhat if we assume that, contrary to the example, assistants are extra staff and therefore a PC would need 14 employees to go adventuring full-time instead of 10. Over a single year, 6,250 gp worth of Masterwork Large Business will earn a PC an average of 96,000 gp, a return on investment of 1536%. (Where 100% means break even.)
Continuing with these assumptions:
(Wisdom 14, ranks as indicated, Profession is class skill, masterwork business, no other bonuses; +8 at 1st level, +27 at 20th level. Staffing levels are at minimum to allow character to adventure full time, except where noted.)
Mobile
1 rank: 1.25 gp setup. 30 gp/month, 50% time working the shop.
20 ranks: 25 gp setup. 125 gp/month, 50% time working the shop.
Small
1 rank: 125 gp setup. 140 gp/month. Investment returned in 1 month.
20 ranks: 2,500 gp setup. 320 gp/month. Investment returned in 8 months.
Medium
1 rank: 1,250 gp setup. 1,300 gp/month. Investment returned in 1 month.
20 ranks: 25,000 gp setup. 2,200 gp/month. Investment returned in 12 months.
Large
1 rank: 6,250 gp setup. 8,000 gp/month. Investment returned in 1 month.
20 ranks: 125,000 gp setup. 27,000 gp/month. Investment returned in 5 months.
Conclusion
These rules are definitely incomplete, are potentially internally inconsistent, and would have seriously benefited from even a cursory arithmetic check; but even so, if my GM made them available, I would use them all the time every time. I will have SO MUCH MONEY it isn't even funny. And then after a few months my GM will have my business burn down and then my PC will get in trouble with the local BBB and they will never be able to reopen their business, because these mechanics completely shatter the expected-wealth-by-level curve.
There's also the small matter of business size being much more important in calculating income than skill ranks. That seems wrong to me, but I don't know that it wasn't what the designer(s) intended.
I cannot recommend any GM ever in their right mind use this variant rule unmodified.
Proposed Solutions
It really just feels like a key mechanic got left on the cutting-room floor and nobody bothered to do the math. Also, each employee of a large business makes 1000 gp worth of salary, which is a little excessive.
It seems like the intended text should be errata'd with this change, at minimum:
- Replace "assistants" with "employees" everywhere in the text
The table could be modified to reduce the monthly profits factor, although this doesn't address the disparity in income as you increase in skill.
The multipliers in the monthly profits factor column could be changed, and the table supplemented by a second table similar to Pathfinder Society's Day Job Results; for example a result of 25 could earn you 50 gold x1 from a mobile business (50 gp), x10 for a small business (500 gp), x50 for a medium business (2,500 gp), and x250 for a large business (12,500 gp). These multipliers are a little arbitrary because the rest of the table is pretty arbitrary; the proposed values keep time until repayment for the larger businesses at around 12 months.
That still doesn't address the maximum employee column for medium and large businesses. One approach would be to change the "time spent managing the store" calculation to be in percentages of the maximum employee number; so at 15 employees in a large business, you spend 25% of your time managing the shop. This would provide benefits for having more employees and somewhat offset the high monthly profit numbers, although it's late so I'm not going to do the math.
You could also simply drop the maximum employee value for the larger two classes of business.
It occurs to me to suggest that you can simply remove the "Labor Factor" column from the table--with minimum and maximum employee columns, and the maximum employees for any business at 20, the calculation for "-1 per employee" is far easier than "- labor factor, -1 for EXTRA employee."
Some other thoughts:
- I think all costs should be incremental because it's silly that they're not, but RAW/RAI it really doesn't seem to suggest one way or the other.
- Hiring assistants seems to be an irrelevant mechanical cost; I would remove it, and apply the setup time to each upgrade, and assume that staff hiring/training occurs during setup time.
How on earth did you finish reading this whole thing? You're awesome! Have a cookie, it's on me.
It's less broken than the old rules, if you can believe that.
Earning capital is easy in any campaign with significant downtime, especially ones like Kingmaker. Consider that, for ~7,000 gp I can purchase a large home containing:
A furnished alchemy lab, bath, 4 bedrooms, kitchen, lavatory, furnished magical repository, furnished observation dome, office, furnished scriptorium, sewer access, sitting room, storage, and vault, and then hire a pair of Apprentices.
With that, I have a very nice home suitable for any wizard, and which grants a +55 on checks to generate magical capital. Even if I'm rarely home and need to hire a Headmaster to oversee the place at 3 gp/day, that only costs me 1,095 gp/year, whereas even in my absence, the place is able to produce 6 units of magical capital per day, converting 50 gp of coins into 100 gp of 'stuff' suitable for crafting magical items with. I don't actually have to spend any of my character's own time to get that benefit, and that's 219,000 gp worth of 'stuff' per year. Most characters won't even have enough money to actually keep things running all year long, but with just a single month of downtime during that year, you could craft 30,000 gp worth of magical items, sell them for 15,000 gp, and have a profit of 6,405 gp for the year after all expenses.
Indeed, with this setup, as long as you spend at least 5 days crafting items to sell each year, you're making at least some profit, and you can produce over 400,000 gp worth of items at a cost of only 250 gp/1,000 gp of base cost, rather than the normal 500 gp. And all you've invested is a mere 7,000 gp. Imagine how much more productive you could be if you built up an entire mage's academy.
And then there's RavingDork's method of making magical capital even cheaper through things like Focused Overseer. The new rules are still terribly broken, but I thought some perspective might be useful.
I'm running a Kingmaker game and the alternate profession rules sound like a great way to get the PCs more invested in their kingdom. I'm reading through them, though, and I have some questions about places where the rules are unclear and other places where features of the system do not have any effect.
I apologize because when I started digging into the mechanics, the entire system fell apart. I have tried to put it back together, but that makes this VERY LONG. Consider yourself warned.
1. Employees
Why would anyone want extra employees beyond the minimum? Each additional employee imposes a penalty on your Profession check but as far as I can tell, each employee beyond the minimum does not provide any mechanical benefit. I guess you could hire your no-good relatives (or fellow adventurers) to keep them busy, but it really feels like part of the ruleset just got deleted during the editing process and nobody noticed.2. Finding an Assistant
What mechanical benefit does hiring an assistant with extra skill ranks provide? As written, there doesn't seem to be any benefit, even though the added cost remains.3a. Counting Assistants
Since employees provide no mechanical benefit, are assistants supposed to count towards your employee count? One possible effect of this would be that a mobile business could only have 2 assistants maximum, thus forcing the business owner to spend at least 50% of their time working on the business?3b. Counting Assistants Part 2
A side effect of 3a's hypothesis--one that may be borne out by the example in Pathfinder Unchained--is that each employee actually counts as an assistant, meaning that the PC does not need to spend any time running a Medium or Large business themselves, even with the minimum number of employees.Is this intended? It seems to be, based on the example on page 79 under Determining Profits where the PC adds 2 extra assistants to a small business (for a total of 4 employees) and seems to spend zero time...
I read these rules too, and my thinking was that if you combined the business rules with Unlocked Profession skills you could make an obscene amount of money. Something like 6,000gp profit per day.
1. Because sometimes you want additional employees. For example, the business my character will be running will require at least 15 people for the various different aspects of the business.
2. You can only hire a trained worker who has at least half as many ranks in the appropriate Profession skill as you do.
3. It states that the assistants are employees.
4. Upgrading the business takes the time listed in the Setup Time, since some business sizes have to be upgraded to rather than being initial sizes.
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It's less broken than the old rules, if you can believe that.
And then there's RavingDork's method of making magical capital even cheaper through things like Focused Overseer. The new rules are still terribly broken, but I thought some perspective might be useful.Earning capital is easy in any campaign with significant downtime, especially ones like Kingmaker. Consider that, for ~7,000 gp I can purchase a large home containing:
A furnished alchemy lab, bath, 4 bedrooms, kitchen, lavatory, furnished magical repository, furnished observation dome, office, furnished scriptorium, sewer access, sitting room, storage, and vault, and then hire a pair of Apprentices.
With that, I have a very nice home suitable for any wizard, and which grants a +55 on checks to generate magical capital. Even if I'm rarely home and need to hire a Headmaster to oversee the place at 3 gp/day, that only costs me 1,095 gp/year, whereas even in my absence, the place is able to produce 6 units of magical capital per day, converting 50 gp of coins into 100 gp of 'stuff' suitable for crafting magical items with. I don't actually have to spend any of my character's own time to get that benefit, and that's 219,000 gp worth of 'stuff' per year. Most characters won't even have enough money to actually keep things running all year long, but with just a single month of downtime during that year, you could craft 30,000 gp worth of magical items, sell them for 15,000 gp, and have a profit of 6,405 gp for the year after all expenses.
Indeed, with this setup, as long as you spend at least 5 days crafting items to sell each year, you're making at least some profit, and you can produce over 400,000 gp worth of items at a cost of only 250 gp/1,000 gp of base cost, rather than the normal 500 gp. And all you've invested is a mere 7,000 gp. Imagine how much more productive you could be if you built up an entire mage's academy.
Ultimate Campaign does also state that the crafting rules are not intended to be used for profit, so your example of turning all that magical capital into profits is a bit misplaced. If you want to make 'gold', you have the downtime business make 'gold'.
The problems the OP states with the unchained profession rules seem true - and, much like ultimate campaign, these rule seem incomplete. So now we have 2 different incomplete, and mutually incompatible ways to run your downtime enterprise.. yippie!!
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It's less broken than the old rules, if you can believe that.
And then there's RavingDork's method of making magical capital even cheaper through things like Focused Overseer. The new rules are still terribly broken, but I thought some perspective might be useful.Earning capital is easy in any campaign with significant downtime(...)
I don't disagree, although I seem to remember there being a few extra steps to breaking those rules than deciding to use those rules. I guess I should go re-educate myself...
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I read these rules too, and my thinking was that if you combined the business rules with Unlocked Profession skills you could make an obscene amount of money. Something like 6,000gp profit per day.
That appears to be correct, although you need to be pretty high level for the daily stuff. Something else to do the math on. Since it's a skill unlock and you need to have 20 ranks, you can project 27,000 gp/day from the rank 20 business. Not just 6,000 gp/day. I guess that makes this book more broken than Ultimate Campaign since your income can be 365 x 27k gp per year if you're a rogue, because let's face it, most of us are letting the rogues use skill unlocks.
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1. Because sometimes you want additional employees. For example, the business my character will be running will require at least 15 people for the various different aspects of the business.
Why? I get that there may be out-of-system reasons, like RP reasons, you might want to have additional employees. But they provide zero mechanical benefit. Why does your business require 15 employees?
2. You can only hire a trained worker who has at least half as many ranks in the appropriate Profession skill as you do.
That's true and that determines the minimum, but why isn't the calculation simply using the minimum? They could have stated it takes 1d4 days times half the number of ranks supported by the business to hire an employee. Why add the additional complexity? I still think there's a subsystem missing here that was included in some previous iteration of the alternate profession rules.
3. It states that the assistants are employees.
If it says that anywhere, I must have missed it. Can you point me to where it says that?
As far as what I've found, it does imply that in two places--one, where the text transitions from using "Assistants" to saying "It takes time to find and hire such skilled employees. For each employee, you must spend 1d4 days × the number of ranks she possesses[...]" and the second, in the example.
It is never stated that assistants count as employees for purpose of the minimum or maximum employee calculation, nor does it say whether all employees are assistants. You can house rule it, and I have made my suggestion here, but that doesn't mean the rules work as written in this case.
4. Upgrading the business takes the time listed in the Setup Time, since some business sizes have to be upgraded to rather than being initial sizes.
Upgrade time clearly affects business size, but whether it affects business rank is unclear. I probably should have phrased that point more clearly to call out the ambiguity.
The main reason to have skilled employees is so that you can go adventuring. Those income figures assume that you are working four weeks out of every month, with each skilled assistant allowing you one week in which to adventure. (Why you'd then want five or more skilled assistants other than story reasons, I don't know.)
I think it's fairly obvious that the "trained apprentices and assistants" count as your employees, skilled or otherwise.
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Pssst . . . Sshhhhhhhhhhhhhh -- these are the rules written for Golarion's top 0.01%.
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The main reason to have skilled employees is so that you can go adventuring. Those income figures assume that you are working four weeks out of every month, with each skilled assistant allowing you one week in which to adventure. (Why you'd then want five or more skilled assistants other than story reasons, I don't know.)
I think it's fairly obvious that the "trained apprentices and assistants" count as your employees, skilled or otherwise.
That was the crux of the question, though. Once you get past 4 employees, assuming that any employee counts as an assistant, there's no mechanical benefit in this particular system to having more employees. So what mechanic would require 15 employees?
Trained apprentices and assistants could be supervisory, in which case they're counted separately from other employees. I don't think that's the case, but the rules are unclear on that point when they really didn't need to be.
I agree that there's no apparent point to having 15-20 employees, but to address your original point, I believe that if you're in a position to pay out a minimum of 6,100 gp per rank in Profession, let alone the additional time and cost for hiring employees so you can actually go out and adventure, getting a few thousand gp a month is certainly not the massive issue you claim it to be.
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I believe that if you're in a position to pay out a minimum of 6,100 gp per rank in Profession, let alone the additional time and cost for hiring employees so you can actually go out and adventure, getting a few thousand gp a month is certainly not the massive issue you claim it to be.
Have you ever played in a campaign with months of downtime between adventures before? Any sort of campaign that lasts across years? Assuming RAW, a party of 6 third-level characters could pool their funds pretty easily to get a rank-1 large business. A 5th-level character could invest in such a business themselves.
Over the course of two months, you double your money. If it's a game with more downtime, like Kingmaker, and you're looking at a year, it gets silly. Those numbers don't even include other potential optimizations, like skill focus, stat boosts, or more appropriate classes.
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Imagine I were a cleric of Kalistrade PC with 16 wisdom and skill focus in profession (merchant) in your Kingmaker game. I hit 5th level and open up a large business. I have 1 usable rank, a +3 wisdom bonus, +3 from a class skill bonus, +2 from a masterwork store, and +3 from skill focus. That's a +12 total bonus, not including a -10 penalty from the business's minimum staffing due to size. Assume an average roll of 10, that gives me an average result of 12. (actually 12.5, but we'll skip the fractions.)
Month 1: I spend most of my money, and all of this month, setting up the business.
Month 2: This is the first chance I get to make money from my business. On average, I double my money; I make 12,000 gp a month on average.
Month 3: My investment quadruples. I've spent 6k to make 24k.
Month 6: I have 54,000 gp, plus whatever trifling funds I had left over.
Month 12: I've made 132,000 gp so far, minus my setup costs.
Month 18: I've had 17 months of income and 1 month of setup. I've made 204,000 gp at this point, minus the 6,250 I spent on setup. I might be level 7 or 8, with expected wealth of 23,500 gp to 33,000 gp.
Don't get me wrong, I like empowering players. I allow all sorts of ridiculous things as long as everyone's having fun. Allowing a system that gives canny players 4 or 5 times the expected wealth by level over the course of a year is a little too empowering for even my tastes.
It's less broken if you limit the PCs' opportunities to use it, but it's still broken. Doubling your money is pretty powerful, and that requires a mere 2 months, the second of which you don't need to be around at the shop for.
A system is probably a bad one if it only seems to "work" when you don't use it.
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Sounds like some rules that they should have farmed out to the boards before endorsing.
Sounds like you need to cut the income by a factor of ten or a hundred to be more accurate.
==Aelryinth
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Sounds like some rules that they should have farmed out to the boards before endorsing.
Sounds like you need to cut the income by a factor of ten or a hundred to be more accurate.
==Aelryinth
The more I look at the numbers, the more I think the biggest problem is that the level of investment for the higher tier is very high, which puts a lot of pressure on the income to cover that gigantic initial investment. You don't want to make 1,000 gp per month if you just spent 50,000 gp to set up the store.
The lowest two sizes are somewhat reasonable; although the return on investment is even more dramatic in percentage terms (recoup your investment 30-fold in a month!), the stakes are much lower. 30 gp isn't going to make or break anyone.
If you lowered the initial setup fees, like if a large business cost 500 gp to set up per rank, then you could probably balance it out with several hundred GP worth of income per month and nobody would bat an eye. Sure you're making 500 gp a month, but you spent 2,500 gp up front. It's more useful than a day job check but it's not going to seriously threaten the overall expected wealth curves.
And this is complicated by campaign timescales, right? What works for a Rise of the Runelords game is going to be different from what works for a Kingmaker game which will be different from Skull and Shackles. If you don't get your money back in a month in a RotR game, it's going to be a bad investment.
So in addition to lowering the overall stakes, you probably want to give the GM two or three different time scales to choose from, with the longer time scales giving you less income per month.
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I haven't analyzed the rules in detail, but I think that the trick is to ask people to live like someone with that kind of income.
You pay the cost of living in your game? Those cost add up in a campaign with long downtimes.
Destitute (0 gp/month): The PC is homeless and lives in the wilderness or on the streets. A destitute character must track every purchase, and may need to resort to Survival checks or theft to feed himself.
Poor (3 gp/month): The PC lives in common rooms of taverns, with his parents, or in some other communal situation—this is the lifestyle of most untrained laborers and commoners. He need not track purchases of meals or taxes that cost 1 sp or less.
Average (10 gp/month): The PC lives in his own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from his home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less.
Wealthy (100 gp/month): The PC has a sizable home or a nice suite of rooms in a fine inn. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 5 gp or less from his belongings in his home in 1d10 minutes, and need only track purchases of meals or taxes in excess of 10 gp.
Extravagant (1,000 gp/month): The PC lives in a mansion, castle, or other extravagant home—he might even own the building in question. This is the lifestyle of most aristocrats. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 25 gp or less from his belongings in his home in 1d10 minutes. He need only track purchases of meals or taxes in excess of 100 gp.
The character has an house? If he is earning hundred of thousand of GP in a year I suppose he is living in a villa with plenty of servants.
He pay for people that guard his establishment and protect his assets?
The location where he live can support the kind of establishment of which we are speaking? There is a market in operating distance?
If the character is taking all the profit from the shop and using it to make magical items there is a problem. if the character is using it as a rich person would use it the problem exist but is smaller.
In a recent high level adventure we ran part of the treasure was 62 200 gp dresses. Perfectly appropriate (and even too few and cheap) for someone with that kind of income.
In our word you can buy handbags that cost 20.000 € and more with ease, I doubt that it is different in Goalrion. With my non official exchange rate that is a 400 gp handbag. The whole no magical outfit that will go with that and maybe will be used only once in a lifetime? Several thousand of gp.
The simplest way is to say "By rules you are entitled to X gp of gear at your level, as show by the WBL tables. You can get halfway to the WBL appropriate for the next level, beyond that you are limited to non adventuring gear."
Or another way is to limit the ability to overcast when crafting. If the character can only make +3 weapon because he is 9th level and can't overcast to make a +4 weapon the benefit of having a wast reserve of cash is lessened.
Naturally you should limit the availability of magic items at the local magic mart too.
You don't open a large business, as it states that you only open a mobile or small business and you upgrade from there.
That said, almost anything would break down if you apply it over a period of years, especially if you set out to break any particular subsystem. The so-called Diplomancer springs to mind.
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I haven't analyzed the rules in detail, but I think that the trick is to ask people to live like someone with that kind of income. [...]
There are certainly ways to deal with PCs with a large amount of wealth. And sometimes that sort of conceit can be fun. I think that should be done on purpose, though. I don't think that's what a random GM is going to know what might happen if they just skim the section and decide, "Paizo published this, so it's okay to use!" They could be very surprised.
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You don't open a large business, as it states that you only open a mobile or small business and you upgrade from there.
Ah, I see now. That's a weird place to put that.
So yes, you're right in the sense that it does change the startup time and cost from 1 month to almost 2 months, and the cost increases from 6,250 to 7,350 gp in the worst (serial, non-incremental) application. Neither of those significantly changes the income curve. You're out a month of productivity and an extra 1,100 gp up front. Both are still reasonable at the character levels in my example. It's still nothing compared to the money you're going to make.
That said, almost anything would break down if you apply it over a period of years, especially if you set out to break any particular subsystem. The so-called Diplomancer springs to mind.
There are systems that are resilient and fun to play for many years of in-game time. Paizo published some of them! They're not even hard to make. I don't know what happened here.
I am curious why you think "building a single-rank large business" constitutes setting out to break this subsystem. This isn't even a combination of two things, it's an incredibly straightforward application of the rules. There are four rows in the accompanying table and utilizing two of them in almost any way results in unsustainable income.
I've noticed some of the same issues, but mostly I'm just looking to clean it up and make it clear how it works. I've got a replacement for the magic item subsystem that mostly takes actual wealth in gold out of the character power equation, so I like the fact that characters can become super wealthy from running a large business.
The lack of risk isn't fantastic, though...anybody know of a good 3PP product that does something like this?
I am curious why you think "building a single-rank large business" constitutes setting out to break this subsystem. This isn't even a combination of two things, it's an incredibly straightforward application of the rules. There are four rows in the accompanying table and utilizing two of them in almost any way results in unsustainable income.
Well, given that you mentioned taking Skill Focus (Profession: Merchant) but only 1 rank in said Profession skill by 5th-level, that made me rather think you were trying to get the most extreme result possible. You also seemed to be suggesting that said 5th-level character would spend over half his expected WBL on his new enterprise.
That said, the system could do with the ability to lose money and the like, I agree.
Why? I get that there may be out-of-system reasons, like RP reasons, you might want to have additional employees. But they provide zero mechanical benefit. Why does your business require 15 employees?
Because the business needs mages for managing communication between the offices, people to manage the customers at each office, mages to assist in crafting magic items, people to do R&D, a group to manage the business when my character is being a "Hero" or crafting a major project. Considering the business would have at least three minor offices and then the major research facility, that would be At Least 15-20 people. Personally, I'd prefer if there were some larger sizes, admittedly making new ones wouldn't be difficult, but it would require GM permission.
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I am curious why you think "building a single-rank large business" constitutes setting out to break this subsystem. This isn't even a combination of two things, it's an incredibly straightforward application of the rules. There are four rows in the accompanying table and utilizing two of them in almost any way results in unsustainable income.Well, given that you mentioned taking Skill Focus (Profession: Merchant) but only 1 rank in said Profession skill by 5th-level, that made me rather think you were trying to get the most extreme result possible. You also seemed to be suggesting that said 5th-level character would spend over half his expected WBL on his new enterprise.
That said, the system could do with the ability to lose money and the like, I agree.
I assume that a Prophet of Kalistrade would have more than one rank in Profession (Merchant) but for the example, (s)he only built a business that could support 1 rank in Profession, so the rest of those skill ranks are irrelevant to the calculation. Increasing the number of ranks the business can support is cost-effective, but only over a longer term, and a level 5 character cannot feasibly afford such an investment anyway. After running their business for a few months, they might rethink that, though...
Since I often find myself taking short-term disadvantages in favor of long-term advantages in builds of all kinds, this kind of planning doesn't seem foreign to me, and a follower of Kalistrade would be totally in character to pull this sort of thing off. Not every player will think the same way, of course.
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Don't worry guys, it will only be 2 1/2 years before there's a glimmer of hope for an errata...
So has anyone else noticed that the Alternate Craft rules mention Masterwork Workspaces, but no means of getting one besides rental? It seems like the easiest way would be to have a business which you pay the masterwork cost for... It also seems like their could be some synergy between employees/apprentices and the rules for assistants under craft.
I feel like they missed a great opportunity to tie these two new subsystems together.
Don't worry guys, it will only be 2 1/2 years before there's a glimmer of hope for an errata...
Well, there is currently no hope. Since no one seems interested enough to request an FAQ.
There, feel better? Now the wait is on until it gets nerfed from overpowered to utter uselessness.
It'll get done better if we do it ourselves.
No FAQ required.. there's no question on HOW the rules work - they just don't. That is errata material, not FAQ material. Or, since this book fixed the mundane crafting system, they felt the need to introduce a new broken system that won't be used to replace it. Not trying to sound overly negative, but it's a bit insulting that a system gets published and sold to us with absolutely no playtesting, not even internally.
I wouldn't say the new Craft rules fixed anything, really. They just made it easier to use. Not that I don't like them, but it's hardly revolutionary.
I'd also say these rules work just fine from my perspective, but they need some tidying up. But then, I did say that I've got some rules that make gold mostly irrelevant to character power, so I suppose its a bit of a unique perspective.
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Not trying to sound overly negative, but it's a bit insulting that a system gets published and sold to us with absolutely no playtesting, not even internally.
Why do people keep saying this? How can you possibly know whether something has not been play-tested, other than just your opinion on whether or not something is broken?
It's not just a passing gripe. There is a history that backs up this opinion. There are just some systems and game options that it has long seemed the developers simply never use in their home environments. The mundane crafting rules have always been in that neighborhood, which is why, even though they were universally considered broken in 3.5, Paizo didn't touch them and simply reprinted them in the CRB. Similarly, non-adventuring based world-building has also never really been a key point of focus for the devs, but they've made some 'attempts' to try to satisfy that niche group. Consequently, the arguably weakest (in terms of development of a working system) section of Ultimate Campaign is the downtime business/organization rules. Similarly, one of the weakest sections of Pathfinder Unchained seems to be the Alternate Profession/Business rules.
I think I'd agree that it's possibly the weakest section there in terms of rules implementation, but there are several things in the book I won't be using at all, whereas I might well implement the Profession rules in some fashion.
I think the first change I'd make is to say that you can only support 2 workers per Profession rank, so you'd need 5 ranks in Profession before even opening a large business (which makes sense) and 6 or 7 before you can get the 14 workers necessary to go full-time adventuring again.
Having a high number of ranks also dramatically increases the up-front cash you need for the business and the length of time you need to search for assistants. After all, those 1-rank assistants are no good to you when you have six ranks yourself. By this point, you've likely spent over 50,000 gp on your business, so your access to huge sums of ready cash are already not in question.
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Personally, I feel their main flaw in all the downtime/business stuff, is that they try so hard to abstract everything out, then when they get a system that is too slimmed down to be interesting, they start adding things back in. The result is they lose any sort of natural progression in the system, and make it very hard to figure out the system at first glance. A good game rule is one that works they way you'd think it works at first glance. These few systems I've mentioned are far from that.
I honestly think there was enough good in the core 'profession' skill as far as earnings/week, and all that really needed to be created was a way to incorporate multiple character's profession/craft checks into a working business. These skill ranks do not change often, or sometimes at all, so it's not like abstracting all that out really gains much, but it destroys a lot.
In my opinion, a 'business' should be made up of a number of employees. Those employees really only need to have one or two applicable stats - the craft or profession skill modifier, and in some instances, a leadership score. The system only needs a way to integrate these together in a way that allows the whole to be more productive than the individual, which is the reason for a business in the first place.
An example would be a smithy. In the smithy could be 3 smiths, with, Craft (blacksmith) +5. Each blacksmith would earn 7.5gp/week on their own with that skill check, taking 10. So that needs to remain as what they'd be taking home. So how does the business itself make money? There is the facility itself boosting productivity - in the case of the blacksmiths, there is the +2 tool bonus for masterwork tools that is provided by a well equipped shop (this is direct from the downtime room stats for a workshop). That is 1gp/week in added productivity from each smith that is a result of the investment from the owner in equipment. That becomes a shop profit. Then, there'd be a benefit of having management to keep tasks divided efficiently, and maintain books and such. You could simply use the Aid Another bonus of +2 to give added efficiency to each worked under a given manager, but that creates a snowball effect where one manager can provide any number of those +2 bonuses - so it needs to be limited by how many people a manager could effectively manage. In the downtime system, the total levels of characters a leader can recruit to a team is limited by their leadership score. If we take an average level of 2 for most employees (apprentices at 1, experts at 3), that simplifies down to where the manager can manage half their leadership score's worth of employees.
If we get rid of all the explanatory text above, we get a much more simplified system for how a business earns gold per week:
1 gp per unmanaged worker + 2 gp per managed worker - management wages.
In the above shop, there's 3 workers and no manager on duty, so that's a simple 3gp/week. The example smithy in the downtime system, which consists of a forge, and office, and 2 storages, costs 730gp. Unmanaged, that shop would be paid for in 4.6 years. That is a relatively realistic timeframe for zero time outlay by the owner. More importantly, these napkin scribble rules are simple, yet based on the actual skill checks for income AND cost.
The income would also have to be limited by settlement size. You can't bring a group of 40 smiths with adequate management to a tiny village and expect to make 80gp/week...
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DM: After you come back from your month long trip to the catacombs, you find your business empty. The door is locked. You find your key is still working. As you enter, you see a two notes on the front desk, and a couple of envelopes:
Note 1: "Boss, we were hired out by a competitor in the north district; please find attached our letters of resignation with a two week's notice. Sincere thanks for the opportunity."
Note 2: "Boss, we tried everything to reach you and tried to send a messenger to look for you. It has been more than two weeks now and the employees have been gone since Friday; as I write this it is Sunday night. I waited for you an extra two days over the weekend, but I must leave at this point as my new employer awaits my arrival tomorrow morning. I will leave the key of the business at the Lord Mayor's office where you can pick it up, and will put a good word with the City Watch to keep checking in on the premises until you return."
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DM: After you come back from your month long trip to the catacombs, you find your business empty. The door is locked. You find your key is still working. As you enter, you see a two notes on the front desk, and a couple of envelopes:
Note 1: "Boss, we were hired out by a competitor in the north district; please find attached our letters of resignation with a two week's notice. Sincere thanks for the opportunity."
Note 2: "Boss, we tried everything to reach you and tried to send a messenger to look for you. It has been more than two weeks now and the employees have been gone since Friday; as I write this it is Sunday night. I waited for you an extra two days over the weekend, but I must leave at this point as my new employer awaits my arrival tomorrow morning. I will leave the key of the business at the Lord Mayor's office where you can pick it up, and will put a good word with the City Watch to keep checking in on the premises until you return."
Violates the basic tenants of the system as it's laid out.
The system explicitly says that the owner does not need to be present to run the business once it reaches a certain size (which is, you know, a really common thing in the real world).
Also kind of a dick move. Saying that there's a rival in the north district trying to tempt away your workers? That's a cool story hook.
Taking away your workers off screen Because GM? Especially given that this is an optional system that's just being a terrible GM.
If these dudes are worth 8,000gp a month, they are well in their rights to accept a position that will double, triple or maybe even quintuple their income. Dick move? yes, very much so a dick move for the PC to pocket 8K a month doing nothing and expecting his employees to take no share of the profit. I get ownership... you're taking risks and making an initial investment. This scenario, however, has zero risk, so very dickish in its own right (real world? really? you might be able to break turn in a profit after two years of operation... but paying back your investment in full by the end of week 3 is absolutely ridiculous)
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If these dudes are worth 8,000gp a month, they are well in their rights to accept a position that will double, triple or maybe even quintuple their income. Dick move? yes, very much so a dick move for the PC to pocket 8K a month doing nothing and expecting his employees to take no share of the profit. I get ownership... you're taking risks and making an initial investment. This scenario, however, has zero risk, so very dickish in its own right (real world? really?...DM: After you come back from your month long trip to the catacombs, you find your business empty. The door is locked. You find your key is still working. As you enter, you see a two notes on the front desk, and a couple of envelopes:
Note 1: "Boss, we were hired out by a competitor in the north district; please find attached our letters of resignation with a two week's notice. Sincere thanks for the opportunity."
Note 2: "Boss, we tried everything to reach you and tried to send a messenger to look for you. It has been more than two weeks now and the employees have been gone since Friday; as I write this it is Sunday night. I waited for you an extra two days over the weekend, but I must leave at this point as my new employer awaits my arrival tomorrow morning. I will leave the key of the business at the Lord Mayor's office where you can pick it up, and will put a good word with the City Watch to keep checking in on the premises until you return."
Violates the basic tenants of the system as it's laid out.
The system explicitly says that the owner does not need to be present to run the business once it reaches a certain size (which is, you know, a really common thing in the real world).
Also kind of a dick move. Saying that there's a rival in the north district trying to tempt away your workers? That's a cool story hook.
Taking away your workers off screen Because GM? Especially given that this is an optional system that's just being a terrible GM.
Well, based on the way Labor Factor works, they're getting paid 1,000 gold a month - not exactly 'no share'. Also, this is how real business works, some guy at the top makes millions or billions, while the people who actually make it work get smurfed on.
Also, considering how, pretty much nothing in PF looks anything like real - world timescales, we shouldn't worry about that. Kingdom Building rules much? (It uses monthly checks, btw.)
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If these dudes are worth 8,000gp a month, they are well in their rights to accept a position that will double, triple or maybe even quintuple their income. Dick move? yes, very much so a dick move for the PC to pocket 8K a month doing nothing and expecting his employees to take no share of the profit. I get ownership... you're taking risks and making an initial investment. This scenario, however, has zero risk, so very dickish in its own right (real world? really?...
I can't speak for everyone, but assuming there aren't any extenuating circumstances (a particularly bad relationship with your employees, for example) this is something I would recommend not be done. It's an optional system, so if gaining these sorts of benefits are problematic, just don't use the system, instead of punishing players for using an option available to them.
Of course, if you didn't know exactly how the income scale was broken when you decided to run with the alternate profession rules, then you've got to find a way of getting out of the hole you dug and this would be one way of doing it. But I'd probably let the PC make his or her money back at least (maybe through the second month where they can start earning income beyond their investment) before you pull the system rug out from under them.
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Good suggestion terminal. I wasn't suggesting my scenario happened in the first month but ultimately it should happen. Unless you're running the business with slave labor. Anything not sustainable balance wise should be corrected by the DM. Anything that results in players WANTING downtime in preference of adventuring should be yanked or at least not allowed to translate into magic items (for instance I'd allow if all profits go to funding orphanage or building a castle)
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Good suggestion terminal. I wasn't suggesting my scenario happened in the first month but ultimately it should happen. Unless you're running the business with slave labor. Anything not sustainable balance wise should be corrected by the DM. Anything that results in players WANTING downtime in preference of adventuring should be yanked or at least not allowed to translate into magic items (for instance I'd allow if all profits go to funding orphanage or building a castle)
I'm with you, at least with the "don't translate downtime into magic items" option. Downtime can be fun if handled well.
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If these dudes are worth 8,000gp a month, they are well in their rights to accept a position that will double, triple or maybe even quintuple their income. Dick move? yes, very much so a dick move for the PC to pocket 8K a month doing nothing and expecting his employees to take no share of the profit. I get ownership... you're taking risks and making an initial investment. This scenario, however, has zero risk, so very dickish in its own right (real world? really? you might be able to break turn in a profit after two years of operation... but paying back your investment in full by the end of week 3 is absolutely ridiculous)The employees are getting paid ridiculously well by Pathfinder standards, at 1000 gp per month. Compare their income to what a farmer makes in a year; the results are downright hilarious.
If you feel a need to create risk, that is fine. There are good ways to do that. Highly interesting ways that create plot hooks and turn the business into something that the player is actively involved in.
There are also bad ways to create risk. Handing someone an optional system and then punishing them for using the shiny toy that you gave them is a bad way to create risk
I disagree. Players should be kept on their toes.
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Good suggestion terminal. I wasn't suggesting my scenario happened in the first month but ultimately it should happen. Unless you're running the business with slave labor. Anything not sustainable balance wise should be corrected by the DM. Anything that results in players WANTING downtime in preference of adventuring should be yanked or at least not allowed to translate into magic items (for instance I'd allow if all profits go to funding orphanage or building a castle)I'm with you, at least with the "don't translate downtime into magic items" option. Downtime can be fun if handled well.
Yes... downtime can be fun indeed, especially if you play a bard or rogue (downtime is the only time you can be a rock star or steal stuff without a feat... :) )
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I disagree. Players should be kept on their toes.If these dudes are worth 8,000gp a month, they are well in their rights to accept a position that will double, triple or maybe even quintuple their income. Dick move? yes, very much so a dick move for the PC to pocket 8K a month doing nothing and expecting his employees to take no share of the profit. I get ownership... you're taking risks and making an initial investment. This scenario, however, has zero risk, so very dickish in its own right (real world? really? you might be able to break turn in a profit after two years of operation... but paying back your investment in full by the end of week 3 is absolutely ridiculous)The employees are getting paid ridiculously well by Pathfinder standards, at 1000 gp per month. Compare their income to what a farmer makes in a year; the results are downright hilarious.
If you feel a need to create risk, that is fine. There are good ways to do that. Highly interesting ways that create plot hooks and turn the business into something that the player is actively involved in.
There are also bad ways to create risk. Handing someone an optional system and then punishing them for using the shiny toy that you gave them is a bad way to create risk
Of course.
"Sorry, your stuff got shut down while your back was turned" is not keeping a player on his toes. It's just punishing them for using something you gave them.
Contrast:
"Thugs from the Big Ed's Sewing Circle in the north district have been intimidating your workers while you were away. What are you going to do about it?"
The answer to that question can create all kinds of risk-- a public brawl will draw official attention and potentially lead to sanctions, inaction will lead to workers quitting (on the PC's watch, which is entirely different). Hiring the thugs away increases the PC's employee count and thus cuts into his profits. Dozens...
Nonsense! this is merely common sense in order to suspend disbelief... unless your business is in Numeria and operated by unquestioning robots, (or by slaves in Cheliax/Katapesh) those workers are not the property of the PCs, and have free will, and will not waste a minute working for an absentee landlord when they can do so for more money uptown (with better lunchtime view... if you know what I mean)
The player still has a choice: he can confront his competitor about it, strike a deal with him, hire a barrister to give him legal hurdles, etc. If he wants to earn 8k a month doing nothing he better be absolutely cutthroat and ruthless about it, and strike the fear of God into his opponent, otherwise this nice little nonsensical money generating fantasy is gonna disappear.
Those conflicts and such are all represented in the Ultimate Campaign downtime system.