I'm not sure. Personally, 5 levels into Starfinder, I find the 10% thing to leave me feeling very cash poor and it only gets worse as you look at higher level items. Either you have to get luck and find that new gun you wanted, or you go without.
It's an awkward balancing act. From what has been played so far in the early levels, salvaging for the most part isn't worth it. Looking at the GM's section for loot per encounter based on CR, I think the intent was that salvaging isn't important like it was in Pathfinder.
Pathfinder players will want to do it, but for the most part, due to the change in setting and the lack of it fitting in with the world, I think you're not really supposed to do the Salvage-Sell game.
Think of it like Skyrim I guess? Where you /can/ pick up everything to hoard away or try to sell, but you'll encumber yourself with worthless junk quickly. You take the few things of use to you and leave the rest.
However yes, I do feel that cash poor feeling. Our party is only level 2 (though from where we are in our AP I think we're supposed to be 3. Splitting EXP and treasure between 6 players is keeping us a pinch under the bar) and I did manage to purchase all the level 2/3 gear I wanted. However when we hit level 3 and I'm looking at level 3/4 gear I'm staring down a 6000+ credit price tag, and worried that I won't be able to afford it all. 10% sell of level 1-4 gear isn't really going to make much of a difference in that though.
50% sell would tip the economy huge when you factor in the wealth per encounter I mentioned above. Because enemies need all the same things you do (it's all level based) it's not like selling a few cheap daggers anymore. No one at level 10 is still going to have an Azimuth lazer, where in Pathfinder a dagger vs a +1 dagger is still viable.
Question 1: Does using Pathfinder's 50% selling state break the game?
As long as the "can't buy anything over your level+1/+2" and bulk rules are strictly enforced, shouldn't be much of a problem.
Question 2: So, you can build things with UPBs, but can you break items down back into UPBs?
No rules for such a thing, but it'd probably involve the UPB-cranking machine having to eat 90% of your loot and only producing 10% worth of UPB, otherwise it would be quite the exploit.
Question 3: If not, is there any official method for creating UPBs?
Since you need to use UPBs to all crafting, this would be a very weird experience. Right now you can only purchase them, but I see no reason for a GM to restrict access to UPBs - unless you're stuck in a primitive planet, but then everything else is also unavailable.
It appears to be stating that one cannot salvage UPBs directly, forcing the creation of an additional section of salvaged goods, making crafting that much more obscure.
Crafting lost a lot of its steam in comparison to Pathfinder, since you can't save any money at all. It's pretty much just for fluff right now, with minimal mechanical advantages.
Splitting EXP and treasure between 6 players is keeping us a pinch under the bar)
Your GM isn't adapting the AP for 2 extra players? You're getting screwed.
Better starting pumping those "Earn a Living" profession skill checks whenever possible.
And to both: as long as the character is within the parameters of Character Wealth by Level (page 391 CRB), you should be fine – but this will require the GM to give less loot (if selling for 50%) or more (if 6 people are diving the loot designed for 4 people).
He could be adapting the AP by having the 6 players run at a level behind the APs recommendation. 6 players at level 3 is the same APL as 4 players at level 4. It may take some xp fudging or milestone leveling to get this to work smoothly though.
I'd be more concerned in matters of wealth indeed.
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I'm not sure. Personally, 5 levels into Starfinder, I find the 10% thing to leave me feeling very cash poor and it only gets worse as you look at higher level items. Either you have to get luck and find that new gun you wanted, or you go without.
For...reasons...I’ve been playing around with various character builds, seeing what equipment they would likely have at each level using the WBL table. The one thing that has become abundantly clear is that the game is not designed with the expectation that you will be continually upgrading your weapons and armor to match (or exceed) your class level each time your level goes up.
You will either be using weapons and armor 2-3 item levels below your class level (and upgrading continually) or leapfrogging up to your class level every 4-5 levels, then waiting another 4-5 levels to upgrade again. It also doesn’t look like you can buy many upgrades of your character level unless you put your weapon purchases even further on the back burner.
So yeah, when you are a 5th level character who can’t afford to buy more than an Item Level 2 gun, you do feel cash-poor. But it seems to be part of the game design.
I'm not sure. Personally, 5 levels into Starfinder, I find the 10% thing to leave me feeling very cash poor and it only gets worse as you look at higher level items. Either you have to get luck and find that new gun you wanted, or you go without.For...reasons...I’ve been playing around with various character builds, seeing what equipment they would likely have at each level using the WBL table. The one thing that has become abundantly clear is that the game is not designed with the expectation that you will be continually upgrading your weapons and armor to match (or exceed) your class level each time your level goes up.
You will either be using weapons and armor 2-3 item levels below your class level (and upgrading continually) or leapfrogging up to your class level every 4-5 levels, then waiting another 4-5 levels to upgrade again. It also doesn’t look like you can buy many upgrades of your character level unless you put your weapon purchases even further on the back burner.
So yeah, when you are a 5th level character who can’t afford to buy more than an Item Level 2 gun, you do feel cash-poor. But it seems to be part of the game design.
I've also been toying with per-level wealth math and keeping equipment up. The early levels are alright, but as you start getting further up in levels it becomes more and more... Bleh.
Level 13 for example ballparks player wealth in the 200,000 range. That's supposed to include weapons, armor, augmentations, magic, etc. Now since you can't upgrade equipment you're rebuying equipment every time you upgrade, retaining 10% of your spent wealth.
Just trying to maintain keeping 2 augments up to level, armor, and weapons, a character will spend almost 850,000 credits.
Granted, that's keeping multiple small arms in varying damage types to bypass resistances. However character wealth isn't just spent money, those guns you choose to keep count against you, so the number is pretty much in the ballpark. And guns are the cheapest thing a character will purchase.
Armor is a huge credit sink, but it's also one of the most necessary with linear attack bonuses and damage. Trying to push armor to every other level is dangerous, every 4-5 and the AC bonuses start to get big, and not having them (especially on non-Dex characters) isn't an option.
Augments are a bit worse, because they're horridly expensive (the level 14 Dermal Plating Mk5 will run you 105,000 on its own for DR 5, at a point in the game where all creatures will have a +14 to damage due to specialization. It's good but not 50% of your character wealth good) and with the release of Pact Worlds there are a lot of themes that allow for and encourage multiple augments. Added that augments cannot be upgraded or sold, and having gotten Dermal Mk 4 at 12 for 48850 suddenly makes costs that much higher.
When last I looked at the wealth per encounter, number of encounters per level, and expected wealth you have at any given moment, I think the conclusion I came to was you update your equipment when it becomes 3 levels out of date, and you'd probably be OK wealth wise.
Say you're got level 7 gear, level up to 8, then level up to 9, then when you hit 10 buy level 10 gear again and the cycle repeats. This gives you one level where you're at expected, one level at -1, and one level at -2. So I don't think its leapfrogging every 4-5 levels, but only every 3.
For armor, level - 2 relative to equal level armor is generally only 2 or 3 points behind in EAC/KAC, which isn't the end of the world. Generally it'll be something like a 65% chance bumping to a 80% chance against similar CR enemies.
You're going to have to survive bad luck in any case, as sometimes the NPCs will get lucky and land every hit. Admittedly more likely, with lower AC, but its still probable that it will happen at least a few times on the road to level 13 (approximately 169 equal level encounters means fairly good odds to see 1 in 100 chances, like roughly 7 hits with 50/50 odds landing all in a row). So you'd better be able to take the damage spikes anyways.
As for the wealth earned per level, if you look at the XP awards per enoucnter on page 390, and compare to XP needed to go up a level on page 26, you'll see it takes about 13 or 13.33 equal CR encounters to level up.
So lets take an example where we go from level 1 to level 2. 13 encounters at 460 wealth, divided by 4 adventurers gives everyone 115 credits per enounter. 13*115 = 1495.
1000 starting credits + 1495 = 2495 credits. Roughly 25% more credits than your expected wealth at level 2. So 500 credits are expected to disappear into consumables and selling existing equipment for only 10% of its value.
Now just add up the table from the rewards from CR 1 through 12. Divide by 4. Multiply by 13.33. Add 1,000 (for starting credits).
That is roughly 349,000 credits, or what you would have earned playing from level 1 to level 13 in total. If it does cost 850,000 credits to keep constantly updated, then you should be able to update a little less often than every other level. Thus, updating weapons and armor every 3 levels should keep you with some reasonable excess to put into a few other toys.
When I picked up the CRB, I quickly ascertained that my SFS character would have to cut costs somehow. That's one reason that I chose Armor Storm for my soldier... a free, automatically scaling attack.
I later picked up 500 UPBs from a boon and made myself a tactical pike that didn't cost me anything. I also spent a couple hundred credits on a called starknife for a ranged option.
And I do fine. I was able to shell out for fancy armor, and I'll be able to afford all my armor upgrades and augments very soon.
Similarly, my technomancer uses the Junksword line of spells so he doesn't have to buy a melee weapon. He'll eventually have enough to be buying Power Armor.
So, a little creativity can save you some credits in the long run.