Unless Sean and the other developers can learn how to teleport into your living room, nobody can stop you from houseruling ( or interpreting RAW ) as you like.
My apologies - it was meant to be a joke. Even if they could learn to teleport I don't believe they would.
What I was trying to say is: I think the rules concerning item creation and wealth per level should be seen as a suggestion on how to handle the topic. In my opinion this topic is a very diverse one depending on the style of play of each group and because of this there is no "one perfect solution".
Unless Sean and the other developers can learn how to teleport into your living room, nobody can stop you from houseruling ( or interpreting RAW ) as you like.
If given this skill, I feel like Sean would have bigger plans than just playing Big Brother to every GM in the world anyway. :)
Unless Sean and the other developers can learn how to teleport into your living room, nobody can stop you from houseruling ( or interpreting RAW ) as you like.My apologies - it was meant to be a joke. Even if they could learn to teleport I don't believe they would.
What I was trying to say is: I think the rules concerning item creation and wealth per level should be seen as a suggestion on how to handle the topic. In my opinion this topic is a very diverse one depending on the style of play of each group and because of this there is no "one perfect solution".
Actually, I meant to make my remark more joking as well, I just forgot to add the smiley. :)
Although the second sentence was once again meant to be serious ( though not directed at your remarks, only a general observation. ).
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or in this case, a change to an existing ruleMaybe I missed something. Which existing rule are you talking about here ?
Well, if you read the magic item crafting rules from the CRB as RAW, there is no limitation there to how much a magic item crafter can do for himself and her/his group, aside from the physical limitation of time and the money s/he has available.
The new rules ( or maybe they are just meant as "advice", rather than RAW clarifications, which would be nice to know ) put a quite clear limit on how much profit a crafter can expect to make from his feat and if other party members are supposed to benefit from said profit.
What this entry on magic item crafting lacks is any context on why magic item crafters should suddenly stop crafting when they've reached that invisible WBL ceiling, how to enforce those rules as a GM and any meaningful explanation as how this should be explained in-game. If the author of the article would have added some fluff about "magical encumbrance" or whatever, it would at least have given some sort of official explanation to adhere to with those changes when trying to explain them to your group of players.
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The background tables are pretty cool.
The only problem: Now you need a book with background tables for all the races from the Advanced Race Guide!
I am really looking forward to it as well.
GEORGE IS HERE!!!:D
AND SHE LIKES KEY LIME PIE!!!!!
SUPER SHINY JOY JOY!!!!!
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Would it cost as much to convert an existing building to your current needs as it would to build it outright? (For example, some one takes a manor house in Magnimar and wants to convert it to a 'dance hall')
50% of construction cost, maybe? Assuming same size building, if you're using the lot rules for city grids. There are rules there for upgrading iirc. Seems like the best place to start your conversion.
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the actual meaning of your statement stays the same. "How dare you criticise me".
If you say so. :)
Stop taking problems people have with your rulings as if they were making a personal attack upon you, that is not how creative writing works.
I was once the third-most hated man on the internet. I stopped taking internet arguments personally LONG ago. :)
Would it cost as much to convert an existing building to your current needs as it would to build it outright? (For example, some one takes a manor house in Magnimar and wants to convert it to a 'dance hall')
I'd look at it more like "the current building has a certain number of rooms, which of those rooms can I repurpose as-is for my intentions, which require additional construction to convert them, and what additional rooms you need to construct to suit your intended purpose.
Using your examples:
Mansion (with an asterisk indicating a room that's present in the Mansion that you can use as-is for your Dance Hall): 1 Bar*, 1 Bath, 4 Bedrooms, 1 Escape Route, 2 Furnishings, 1 Kitchen, 1 Laundry, 1 Lavatory*, 1 Lodging, 1 Office*, 1 Secret Room, 2 Sitting Rooms*, 1 Stall, 2 Storage*
Dance Hall (with an asterisk indicating a room that's present in the Mansion that you can use as-is for your Dance Hall): 1 Ballroom, 1 Bar*, 1 Common Room, 1 Lavatory*, 1 Office*, 1 Sitting Room*, 1 Storage*
You probably could pay to knock out some walls between the Bedrooms to create a Common Room or Ballroom, pay to convert the Laundry and Kitchen into a Common room, use the Lodging for ... "dancing" ... and keep the Bath, Secret Room, and extra Sitting Room as-is.
The system, room descriptions, and room sizes are designed to be flexible so you don't have to plan out every 5-foot-square for a building. If you're cool with a change and the GM is cool with a change, that's fine. :)
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WBL a guideline to begin with?
As a GM, I know how I would handle things... that 25% difference is, as someone suggested, due to the spellcaster's intimidate familiarity with the item they crafted for themselves. That's not something that the other players benefit from. Purely a game balance decision. The alternative is to quietly tone down how much treasure you hand out (with said crafting in mind).
I made a mistake early in my current game by allowing Merchantile Background from the FRCS with a player. Since he was 'the merchant', he was selling all of the treasure for the party... at 75% instead of 50%. I just quietly adjusted how much treasure they received to keep them on WBL. Eventually that player left the game for other reasons and I have since adjusted again.
But yes, it does create some rather odd logical questions, for instance, if a spell caster can only gain a discount on items made for themselves, why would they ever make magical items for someone else? Why does a Ring of Protection +1 cost what it costs? Why is it not marked up so that someone CAN make a profit selling it, because that's exactly what would happen.
Also, I have seen a game group come close to disintegrating over issues like this. A player in a game group I was in was playing a Wizard that worshipped Abadar. He picked up Craft Wondrous, and said that he was willing to craft for others, at a 10% markup (of which he tithed half to Abadar). Dear god, the crap storm that ensued was enough to turn you off of gaming. Yes, the upset players were being entitled jerks but to discount how players will receive an arbitrary ruling that doesn't include some sort of justification... Ultimately the player of the Wizard said 'screw it' and asked the GM if he could swap out CW with Spell Focus and everyone else had to pay full price rather than get a 15% discount.
Now, why this justification has to come from a book rather than the GM, that I don't know. Thankfully, my players aren't that invested in RAW.
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So I understand that Crime, Law, etc. are all settlement attributes from the settlement rules in the GMG, but I can't seem to find any explanation for Productivity... Anyone know of the source for that?It's explained in the text that Productivity in UCam is the same thing as Economy in the GMG. Since the kingdom rules already had an existing stat for Economy, we couldn't very well also have a separate settlement attribute for the same name, so I chose the less important one (the settlement attribute) and renamed it Productivity.
This is noted on p. 215 under the paragraph with the subheading Settlement.
Thanks Jason!
And the adopted sibling race table works so well as an advanced reincarnation table. Even if it's not intended it adds almost all the options form the race guide to a table for us all!
Actually, that table does not work all that well for that purpose because it contains a number of native outsider races -- so you would have to either reroll races of different types (humanoid vs. outsider) or house rule that all races on this table are legal options for any character who started out as a race on that table.
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Because most rules are not really arbitrary but give context? I have a problem when rules don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny and one simply has to completely put on horse blinders to maintain suspension of disbelief.Of course then we get into the question of how item crafters make any profit whatsoever and why would they craft magic items for other people in the first place...So why not accept that the rules exist the way they do for arbitrary game reasons and play on?
-Skeld
By your own admission, this seems to be your problem. The crafting rules are the way they are for the purposes of keeping the game moving in an unbroken fashion, not to be logical, internally consistent, or model a real-world economy.
-Skeld
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And the adopted sibling race table works so well as an advanced reincarnation table. Even if it's not intended it adds almost all the options form the race guide to a table for us all!Actually, that table does not work all that well for that purpose because it contains a number of native outsider races -- so you would have to either reroll races of different types (humanoid vs. outsider) or house rule that all races on this table are legal options for any character who started out as a race on that table.
Don't see why, reincarnate allows you to technically incarnate as any of the races it has including others with different sub-types. All of the native outsiders are still base humanoids and its magic. It just allows a lot more options. Its much nicer than it used to be where you might come back as a badger...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WBL a guideline to begin with?
No, it's actually a rule.
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No, it's actually a rule.Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WBL a guideline to begin with?
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value.
That kind of sounds like a guideline to me...
I'm loving this book so far.
But I have run into a concern in retraining Hit Points.
In the example given you have a 5th lvl fighter with a 14 Con (+2 HP per level) which will give him a max of 60 hp's. You are not able to train past this point.
Lets say he has rolled a "5" for every level after his first. This will leave him with a total of 40 HP's.
Based on the math defines for training (3 days per HP) you will need to train for 60 days. (20 HP short of max x3)
The cost for this would be (10 x lvl x # days training) for a total of 3000 gp's.
The only limit I can see is you need someone of a higher level to train you. Am I missing something? Should there, or is there a limit outside of this?
Otherwise I can't think of a reason why most PC's won't have max hit points.
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I noticed that the downtime rules for scribing spells is, actually, a rather major change. It used to be a spell level per hour, but according to Unlimited Campaign it's just a spell per hour (eight hour day, eight spells).
If you’re a magus or wizard, you can spend 1 day of downtime to copy up to eight spells from other sources into your spellbook...
So, my question is, if the wizard has Cypher Script, does this translate to 48 spells per day since 10 minutes per level is 1/6th the time? (assuming he can pay the scribing costs)
No, it's actually a rule.Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WBL a guideline to begin with?
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value.That kind of sounds like a guideline to me...
1st quote by SKR
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkid&page=14?Raise-Dead-and-the-Diamond-Th ing#6602nd quote by SKR
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkid&page=14?Raise-Dead-and-the-Diamond-Th ing#671
the 2nd quote is cooler :-)
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No, it's actually a rule.Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WBL a guideline to begin with?
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value.That kind of sounds like a guideline to me...1st quote by SKR
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkid&page=14?Raise-Dead-and-the-Diamond-Th ing#6602nd quote by SKR
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkid&page=14?Raise-Dead-and-the-Diamond-Th ing#671the 2nd quote is cooler :-)
Fair enough... poor use of the word 'might' then, as that suggests that 'might not' is also an option for a low or a high fantasy game.
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I noticed that the downtime rules for scribing spells is, actually, a rather major change. It used to be a spell level per hour, but according to Unlimited Campaign it's just a spell per hour (eight hour day, eight spells).
If you’re a magus or wizard, you can spend 1 day of downtime to copy up to eight spells from other sources into your spellbook...So, my question is, if the wizard has Cypher Script, does this translate to 48 spells per day since 10 minutes per level is 1/6th the time? (assuming he can pay the scribing costs)
Based on your quote, and devoid of surrounding text, I would read into that, that there is no change to the rule. It says "up to" which indicates to me that there might still be other factors that will limit how many spells you may be able to copy, though I may be wrong. Just an observation. ^_^
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Based on your quote, and devoid of surrounding text, I would read into that, that there is no change to the rule. It says "up to" which indicates to me that there might still be other factors that will limit how many spells you may be able to copy, though I may be wrong. Just an observation. ^_^I noticed that the downtime rules for scribing spells is, actually, a rather major change. It used to be a spell level per hour, but according to Unlimited Campaign it's just a spell per hour (eight hour day, eight spells).
If you’re a magus or wizard, you can spend 1 day of downtime to copy up to eight spells from other sources into your spellbook...So, my question is, if the wizard has Cypher Script, does this translate to 48 spells per day since 10 minutes per level is 1/6th the time? (assuming he can pay the scribing costs)
Yeah, it's a little weird as it creates cases where you may be better off NOT using the downtime rules (a high number of low level spells), and cases where you're better off using the downtime rules (spells of sixth level and above).
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Oooooh, matte paper. I love it.
So I get excited by strange things.
Anyway, book is even prettier in person. Can't wait to get started using it!
The only limit I can see is you need someone of a higher level to train you. Am I missing something? Should there, or is there a limit outside of this?
Otherwise I can't think of a reason why most PC's won't have max hit points.
Perhaps there are no masters of combat, martial academies, or monk monasteries around. Maybe they're not interested in taking in any new pupils. If they are, they may not have 60 days to spend on a single student. A player doesn't just get to retrain their PC to max HP just because. The GM pretty much has to allow it to happen and is in complete control of how much of a benefit the PC receives through retraining.
When it comes to magic item creation I like to use it for adventure hooks by requiring special components that the party has to track down. Now of course this depends on the level of the character and the type of item. I'm not going to make they track down components for potion of enlarge when they are 10th level but I would when they are 3rd level. By 10 level it would assumed they have the connections to get components or would acquired them during adventuring. For more powerful items it requires more powerful components. This keeps the WBL in check pretty good from what I can tell in my games.
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Unless Sean and the other developers can learn how to teleport into your living room, nobody can stop you from houseruling ( or interpreting RAW ) as you like. However, my personal hope and actual expectation is that a new rule ( or in this case, a change to an existing rule ) is given context so as not to appear arbitrary.
Seems like you're carrying quite a torch here. Hopefully I can help out. The WBL has been a guideline based on game balance for some time. It may feel arbitrary, but it's completely necessary and was decided on carefully. It's one of the few things however that doesn't tie in well with the 'fantasy world.' There's never been a great in story reason why a person couldn't receive a large inheritance, take a year off and work a craft to make a lot of money, or just find a really great magic item/gold horder early in their career rather than later.
It's all about game balance. A party's average wealth has strong impact on their ability to handle combat in conjunction with their APL vs. the CR rating of the encounters. If WBL is much higher or lower than the guideline given for your party's live, you can expect that the guidelines given for how tough an encounter is (based on the APL vs CR table) to no longer apply properly.
There's no really great in game reason given for the WBL guideline...much less for the fact that the average gold per encounter table shows less for the slow xp advancement track and more for the fast one. It's may feel arbitrary, but it's all set in the name of game balance. Fleshing those rules out for item creation, which is what this book does, similarly makes no more attempt to give in-game reasons for its guidelines than the CRB did with its tables.
Wealth is hardly the only place where this applies. As a GM, I know I have even created house rules that were done purely for similar reasons /game play balance reasons that had no direct tie-in with the lore. It's all in the name of fun...and proper game play balance is a huge part of the fun in any game. I absolutely love they way PF rules tie in really well with lore (it does that better than many Pen and paper games), but at the end of the day, it IS a game, and some rules/guidelines have to be there for fun/balance reasons even if there's not a great way to tie it in with the setting/lore/RP.
the actual meaning of your statement stays the same. "How dare you criticise me".If you say so. :)
Stop taking problems people have with your rulings as if they were making a personal attack upon you, that is not how creative writing works.I was once the third-most hated man on the internet. I stopped taking internet arguments personally LONG ago. :)
I actually admire you a lot for sticking your head out for us to criticise you, but, man, you get grumpy sometime. Like here. ;)
Because most rules are not really arbitrary but give context? I have a problem when rules don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny and one simply has to completely put on horse blinders to maintain suspension of disbelief.Of course then we get into the question of how item crafters make any profit whatsoever and why would they craft magic items for other people in the first place...So why not accept that the rules exist the way they do for arbitrary game reasons and play on?
-Skeld
By your own admission, this seems to be your problem. The crafting rules are the way they are for the purposes of keeping the game moving in an unbroken fashion, not to be logical, internally consistent, or model a real-world economy.
-Skeld
Yeah, I'm sorry, man, but I have stopped putting blind trust into developers sense of balance somewhen in 3.5. The crafting rules were, up to this ruling, a broken mess of unbalance. After this ruling they are somewhat better, but I really still need context to them, rather than arbitrary handwaving.
Seems like you're carrying quite a torch here.
I'll say. The unbalancing effect magic item crafting has on WBL, and the efforts the GM therefore has to invest to maintain game balance despite that unbalancing effect are my biggest goblin with the game overall. And there is other stuff ( Monks, high level play, diplomonsters, more ) which also should be adressed someday, but this issue is the one which most concerns me.
Hopefully I can help out. The WBL has been a guideline based on game balance for some time. It may feel arbitrary, but it's completely necessary and was decided on carefully. It's one of the few things however that doesn't tie in well with the 'fantasy world.' There's never been a great in story reason why a person couldn't receive a large inheritance, take a year off and work a craft to make a lot of money, or just find a really great magic item/gold horder early in their career rather than later.
It's all about game balance. A party's average wealth has strong impact on their ability to handle combat in conjunction with their APL vs. the CR rating of the encounters. If WBL is much higher or lower than the guideline given for your party's live, you can expect that the guidelines given for how tough an encounter is (based on the APL vs CR table) to no longer apply properly.
There's no really great in game reason given for the WBL guideline...much less for the fact that the average gold per encounter table shows less for the slow xp advancement track and more for the fast one. It's may feel arbitrary, but it's all set in the name of game balance. Fleshing those rules out for item creation, which is what this book does, similarly makes no more attempt to give in-game reasons for its guidelines than the CRB did with its tables.
Wealth is hardly the only place where this applies. As a GM, I know I have even created house rules that were done purely for similar reasons /game play balance reasons that had no direct tie-in with the lore. It's all in the name of fun...and proper game play balance is a huge part of the fun in any game. I absolutely love they way PF rules tie in really well with lore (it does that better than many Pen and paper games), but at the end of the day, it IS a game, and some rules/guidelines have to be there for fun/balance reasons even if there's not a great way to tie it in with the setting/lore/RP.
My counterpoint: WBL rules make inherent sense. You fight some low-level mercenaries and they won't have much valuables you can take with you. You fight a high CR dragon and it has a bigger hoard than a younger one. While the amount of resources a character gets at a certain level may appear arbitrary, I have enough confidence in the developers that they actually balanced that number with the expected gear characters should have to deal with the challenges they are facing.
The problem with the magic item crafting rules prior to this new ruling was that they had no limitations on them, outside of available time and money. The CRB did not impose any other numerical limits on the amount of crafted items, which is why inexperienced and/or more simulationist GM's could suddenly have to deal with a highly inflated WBL, resulting in pushover encounters and players running roughshod over planned encounters ( be they homebrewn or AP's ).
This new rules seeks to impose a limitation on how much extra WBL can be crafted from the item crafting feats, which is something I actually applaud. But I personally feel that the lack of explanation on how those new limitations come about and why suddenly PCs can't craft more when they have reached their WBL "limit" knock my suspension of disbelief right out of the gate.
If you are able to just accept a ruling which promotes unrealistic behaviour, more power to you. But "because game balance" is not enough of an argument to sell this, nor to me nor to many players, who will suddenly have to face the fact that the feat they selected just lost about 50-75% of its power. If you decide to overturn more than a decade of precedence, you should give more context than "balance".
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Though in my mellower old age I've used things like action points and hero cards and such to improve survivability, historically speaking I've been something of a killer GM. However, that creates an interesting problem around money. People who die come back with less stuff, because they have to pay to come back from the dead (unless the party decides to pay the cost collectively, which is rare), whereas a replacement character brought in at or around the same level has all their stuff (and may have a more advantageous ability to tailor their stuff to the character and campaign, rather than dealing with found loot).
This problem would be exacerbated, of course, if the decedent's equipment was also sold or shared out to the existing party, making character death a source of net monetary gain to the party as a whole.
To counter this, I invented the "Viking funeral" rule. A dead character's equipment stayed with them, period. If they happened to be carrying some party item (like the wizard's bag of holding or something) or a plot-relevant item (the Sword of King Awesomeguy), the party recovered those, but the rest of a character's gear was buried with them.
Does that make in-game sense? Maybe. If you assume funerary practices that include burying the dead with their gear (like, for instance, in LotR when Boromir is sent over the falls with his sword and armor and horn and pretty much everything else he owned (in the movie, Aragorn takes his bracers, seemingly as a memento)), then it makes sense. But really, it's pure metagame.
Either way, it worked well for our group.
One thing I have certainly learned from pre-ordering from Amazon is to just flat out ignore the estimated shipping date.
Mine just shipped from Amazon today, and because Amazon Prime is so freakishly awesome I should have it tomorrow, I am so excited!
Never owned kingmaker so this is all new stuff for me.
1) things that other classes can do in their downtime that generate benefit to them analogous to that the wizard can gain by crafting.
There's an entire chapter on the Downtime system to give all PCs something to do during "downtime," and a section on Retraining that gives PCs the option to increase hit points, replace skill points in obsolete skills, and so on.
2) some suggestions on how to adjust encounters when a party has a great deal of wealth, or less than WBL would indicate.
That's an interesting topic, but it is a side topic to the purpose of the Magic Item Creation part of the book, which talks about pricing new items, cooperative crafting, upgrading items, recharging items, altering existing items, and creating items for profit. Much as the vow of poverty monk option in Ultimate Magic brought up the issue of "what about a campaign where PCs aren't dependent upon gear?," which is off-topic to a book about new magical options in the game, a general discussion on "how do I handle a campaign where the PCs have too little or too much wealth?" is off-topic for a section on magic item crafting, where it's still assuming "hey, you're going to want to stick close to the expected WBL."
To be fair, I could see the point of having a discussion about your topic elsewhere in Ultimate Campaign, but obviously that didn't happen. And honestly, I think your topic and the VOP/gearless topic are related... and are probably better discussed in a book whose purpose is to analyze, discuss, and advise about campaigns that greatly skew from the default expectations of a Pathfinder campaign—wealth by level, availability of magic items, divorcing PC reliance on magic items, preponderance of non-human intelligent monsters in the campaign, spreading out leveling over a longer chronological period, and so on.
I especially dislike the idea that the wizard is obligated by virtue of having his crafting feat to provide services to the group, paid for out of his own treasure share. I hope this isn't really what the book says, and that I've misunderstood this part.
That's not what it says at all.
P.S. The deletion of the asterisk from the Farm is not official errata, though; it's there in the final text, so if you're playing RAW then by all means use it. If you're interested in RAI, I intended for it not to be starred. Typos happen. :(
Typos happen, but that's a pretty major one. On the order of adding a "'t" to something like "She can't cast any spell she knows without preparing it ahead of time." (From sorcerer spellcasting). It completely changes the nature of how the rule is used.
I can only assume it was intended. It's not an unreasonable change, given that farms already behaved differently from mines/quarries/sawmills (variable cost, spreading irrigation, -2 Consumption instead of +1 BP and +1 stat), but official clarification one way or the other would be nice.
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While I'm in that section, how do you reconcile page 212?
A settlement’s population is approximately equal to the number of completed lots within its districts × 250.
Population | Settlement Size
Fewer than 21 | Thorp
21 - 60 | Hamlet
61 - 200| Village
201 - 2000 | Small town
....
Does building a single building in a new settlement automatically qualify it as a small town, with one major business? What if that first building is a house? Does that differ from if it was a shrine or smithy?
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My counterpoint: WBL rules make inherent sense. You fight some low-level mercenaries and they won't have much valuables you can take with you. You fight a high CR dragon and it has a bigger hoard than a younger one. While the amount of resources a character gets at a certain level may appear arbitrary, I have enough confidence in the developers that they actually balanced that number with the expected gear characters should have to deal with the challenges they are facing.
But your counterpoint doesn't explain why a party can't do things like take a year to perform in public and earn a few thousand gold (putting them above the WPL), inherit items/gold, start a business, sell a ship they got when they killed pirates, or do any number of things that would earn them more money than WPL allows. Making money by magic items is only one of a myriad of logical options that players can come up with that puts them well over WPL. It's always been up to the GM to either come up with in game reasons why they cannot, outright stop it (or make changes to rules such as lowering the gold value) with no explanation other than to cite game balance or allow it and hope it doesn't break the game. The direction that Ultimate Combat gives is only a guidelines. It's up to the GM to provide the support or whatnot. If you feel that too much wealth isn't an issue, then feel free to ignore it. If your GM suddenly has hordes of monsters attacking your town after you've created X GP in magic items, you'll have a good reason in the back of your mind what might have motivated him to do so :P
To counter this, I invented the "Viking funeral" rule. A dead character's equipment stayed with them, period. If they happened to be carrying some party item (like the wizard's bag of holding or something) or a plot-relevant item (the Sword of King Awesomeguy), the party recovered those, but the rest of a character's gear was buried with them.
Either way, it worked well for our group.
I use the same rule. The new character starts out at about 75% of their original character's GP value, as well. This tends to balance out, since they are buying exactly what they want for their build, whereas the character who died may have been 'worth more' but had some items that were not really optimized for their build.
In my homebrews, players who stick with their characters longer accrue points (awarded when they earn hero points and levels) that they can invest for the occasional extra feet, better stats, etc. These benefits are lost if a character moves to a new character for any reason. Again, they tend to feel similar in power despite this draw back, since when they are built, they can build completely optimized from the ground up and skip certain feats and decisions they may have taken to survive through lower levels.
I also allow retraining, and I was surprised to see that retraining rules in UC closely resemble my own. The relationship rules in UC has also been something I have been using since I read the original ones in Jade Regent. I really like what a lot of what's here, as I have already experienced that these types of sub-systems really do add to the flavor and fun of campaigns.
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Sean this is my equal favorite hardcover I've ever bought from Paizo (tying with the RotRLAE Collector's Edition). For what it's worth, this:
And honestly, I think your topic and the VOP/gearless topic are related... and are probably better discussed in a book whose purpose is to analyze, discuss, and advise about campaigns that greatly skew from the default expectations of a Pathfinder campaign—wealth by level, availability of magic items, divorcing PC reliance on magic items, preponderance of non-human intelligent monsters in the campaign, spreading out leveling over a longer chronological period, and so on.
sounds awesome. I suspect I'm in a minority in preferring less rules to more, but I really liked the way Ultimate Campaign has expanded the rules sideways rather than higher (if that makes sense). More rulebooks with that sort of focus would be a development I would welcome.