So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.
Consider a common glass flask, 3 cp value
Consider The same flask filled with acid is 10 gp. that means one pint of acid is worth 9.97 gp.
Consider a modest 10 ft. cube acid pool. that's 1000 sq feet of acid.
Now according to onlineconversion.com the pool of acid 1 000 cubic foot = 59 844.155 844 pint [US, liquid]
That means your average 10 foot pool of acid is worth 596,646 gp + 23 cp
What's to prevent greedy players from purchasing 60 thousand flasks and sell the filled flasks for 300,000 gp profit or so?
I just want place interesting environments for my party, I don't want to need to resort to complicated economics around supply and demand to keep them from getting obscenely rich.
Best I can figure is to say that large quantities of acid are typically of a less dangerous variety (something like real world hydrocloric acid) as compared to something more dangerous (like sulphiric acid) in thrown flasks. Using the lesser acid would deal 1d3 points of damage with a throw, making them not an effective weapon, hence not worth harvesting.
Note: I don't purport to be any good at chemistry, but to my mind alchemy should work on very different principals anyways.
Any thoughts on this?
Forget chemistry.
Just tell your players the acid eats straight through whatever flask they put it in.
So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.
Consider a common glass flask, 3 cp value
Consider The same flask filled with acid is 10 gp. that means one pint of acid is worth 9.97 gp.Consider a modest 10 ft. cube acid pool. that's 1000 sq feet of acid.
Now according to onlineconversion.com the pool of acid 1 000 cubic foot = 59 844.155 844 pint [US, liquid]
That means your average 10 foot pool of acid is worth 596,646 gp + 23 cp
What's to prevent greedy players from purchasing 60 thousand flasks and sell the filled flasks for 300,000 gp profit or so?
I just want place interesting environments for my party, I don't want to need to resort to complicated economics around supply and demand to keep them from getting obscenely rich.
Best I can figure is to say that large quantities of acid are typically of a less dangerous variety (something like real world hydrocloric acid) as compared to something more dangerous (like sulphiric acid) in thrown flasks. Using the lesser acid would deal 1d3 points of damage with a throw, making them not an effective weapon, hence not worth harvesting.
Note: I don't purport to be any good at chemistry, but to my mind alchemy should work on very different principals anyways.
Any thoughts on this?
Well, for one thing it is boring.
Jimmy runs up to Ralph, Greg, and Sally: Hey guys let's go check out this temple there's supposed to be a mummy.Ralph: Nah, you guys go on, I'm going to go to the acid pool today and collect flasks of it.
Ralph heads down to the glass shop. "I would like to purchase 1,000 empty flasks"
Shopkeeper: "I have 12, that will be 26 silver"
Ralph heads to the acid pool he has to cross a bridge guarded by a troll
Troll: If you want to pass the troll, you have to pay the troll.
Ralph: No problem mister troll here's 5 GP I'll have more for you when I come back, Enjoy this fried chicken
Troll: Be safe Ralph
Meanwhile back at the temple, Jimmy, Greg, and Sally have just found a +1 longsword!
Ralph collects his 12 vials of acid without falling in and his GM doesn't punish him for forgetting to buy stoppers for his flasks.
They meet back at the tavern that night and talk about their days adventures. Jimmy, Greg, and Sally are planning on going back to the temple where they found a crate of alchemist fire's and a secret door heading in even deeper. Ralph has found a shopkeeper with 50 mason jars and will be collecting even more acid tomorrow.
Sometimes it is ok just to tell the players "no." or You can do that but youre 300,000 GP can't go to equipment, it can go to building a base however.
Why does pc get treasure? To have millions of gp?
Plz just relie on the spirit of the game and common sense!
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Have some Alchemists come to have a "quiet, discreet word" with him about trying to cut into their business. Or drop the price as some bozo is now flooding the market. Also raise the price of glass vials for the same reason. I prefer the alchemist guild representatives, though as then you have an adventure out of it.
Insist on skill/ability rolls when doing this. Failure, or Natural 1's result in BAD NEWS.
They may be rich for a while, but your job as GM is clearly to maintain Wealth by Level, so many many parties will be interested in liberating them of such wealth (you can't really keep secret selling bulk quantities of acid), and they obviously won't have much gaining further wealth until they are under WBL - and why not keep them below it to 'equal out' against the time they were above WBL?
And/Or you can use the guidelines for how wealth affects CR to alter their effective Character Level when designing encounters. Of course, their fantastic wealth will make 2nd Level Spells FANTASTICALLY effective against such foes.
Not to mention they will quickly run the market out in any one town, and wasting their own time moving between cities will quickly bore themselves. While they are cluelessly teleporting to the next big city, interested parties will take notice and take advantage of them... If this is what your players want to do, why not make it interesting?
Or drop the price as some bozo is now flooding the market. Also raise the price of glass vials for the same reason.
And this would be as reasonable an effect as assuming you can sell swimming pools worth of acid.
Creative Director
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This problem isn't limited to acid. It extends to ANYthing in the game. Trap parts. Poison from monsters. A house left behind after you defeat the bad guys who live in it. A ship left behind after you defeat the pirates who sailed it. Cows and pigs and chickens. Pretty much ANYTHING that you might mention in passing can be seized upon by greedy PCs to line their pockets.
Of course, some things are more obvious income resources than others, such as the case for poison or the aforementioned acid.
The best way to handle this is to simply tell the PCs that they can't harvest the items. Tell them the items are crude and raw materials that degrade or are simply not suitable for use in the way they expect. Or just tell them that you're not interested in the minutiae and paperwork of tracking all of that information.
Another way to handle it is to make the harvesting of such materials dangerous. Have the Pcs make Dexterity checks each time they gather acid to avoid taking damage. Assign chances for large revisions of acid they're carrying around to break during combat or other misadventure so that they'll destroy nearby gear or hurt them. Make them EARN their 9.97 gp.
Yet another way to handle this is to simply inform the PCs that the mateiral they're trying to collect represents the RAW materials needed to create a vial of acid or a use of poison. In order to transform their harvested acid or poison into something that they can use, they'll need to make the appropriate Craft check to refine the raw resource into a proper use. And make them buy specialized equipment like an alchemist lab in order to do this in the first place.
Also, if PCs are significantly into the idea of looting things like trap parts or monster poison glands or acid from acid pools, you really should ask them if they REALLY want to play that kind of game. If they do, you should probably become absolutely draconian on encumbrance and crafting times and the like. The idea here is that making it rich by salvaging acid or poison or trap parts or whatever is not supposed to be fun to play—it's not very adventurous, and it's not the way the game was designed. Usually, a quick reminder to the players about what the game's supposed to be about will suffice.
Great advice, James! You know, you guys should really do a guide for GMs to handle tangential situations like this.
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I usually go with the dm pow.
DM: "You want to start filling up flasks with acid so you can sell them?Really? Are you really sure you want to go there?"
Players: "Yep! We're going to get rich!"
DM: "Ok, start going. For each flask you fill, I want you to roll me a percentile. We're going to be using the same rules as those for poisoning yourself. On each failed roll, you take acid damage. Now, I need you to roll one at a time. What did you get, Bob? Hmm... umm... hmm... nope, you didn't take any damage. Oh, by the way, what are you storing those vials in? Hey, I need you guys to calculate out for me the exact area each bottle takes up in your handy haversack. Oh, the volume too. Do you have anything else in there right now? Because I'll need you to calculate that out too."
Mid-calculations
DM: "Hey guys, roll initiative! In the surprise round, you take... what? No, all your players were too busy trying to do calculations to notice as I set all the miniatures out for the combat. Hey, can I see your notes page? *crumples it up* One of the gnolls puts a flaming arrow through the parchment you were writing on. It is completely destroyed."
After combat
DM: "So, do you guys want to keep trying to harvest the acid? Do any of you check on that first bottle? Yeah, you open it up and the liquid inside smells like water. Yup, it doesn't deal any damage when you pour it over your hand. So, start harvesting again, or not?"
This problem isn't limited to acid. It extends to ANYthing in the game. Trap parts. Poison from monsters. A house left behind after you defeat the bad guys who live in it. A ship left behind after you defeat the pirates who sailed it. Cows and pigs and chickens. Pretty much ANYTHING that you might mention in passing can be seized upon by greedy PCs to line their pockets.
I have this party. Five chapters into the AP and they are now two ships, five captive henchmen, and one rust monster ahead of the expected "default loot adventurers will grab". They would have kept the Hydra too if they could have stored it, or if it could have kept up with the ship speed.
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very very easy to handle.
The party is perfectly able to get 60,000 vials and sell them.
Just tell them to hand in their characters as they are now NPC merchants and no longer adventurers. The game is about adventuring.
It will take a lot of work on their part to collect all of the vials necessary and a lot of time. They will need to transport their acid vials to market unless they intend on setting up shop in the dungeon (good luck actually selling any). They will need to buy a warehouse to store all of the vials, pay protection money as well, hire employees unless they intend to work the counter all the time. Then they will need to advertise their wares and find a way to actually sell that many vials of acid, which will likely take many many many years.
Seeing that these characters have now committed to years of mercantilism they are no longer adventurers. Great idea guys, make new characters please.
This works with nearly every get rich quick scheme players come up with. You just can't go and sell 60,000 vials of acid (or whatever they come up with). You can sell a couple here and a couple there, but how many players out there actually go to the Copper and Gold store and buys 60,000 acid flasks at a time?
Also, if PCs are significantly into the idea of looting things like trap parts or monster poison glands or acid from acid pools, you really should ask them if they REALLY want to play that kind of game. If they do, you should probably become absolutely draconian on encumbrance and crafting times and the like. The idea here is that making it rich by salvaging acid or poison or trap parts or whatever is not supposed to be fun to play—it's not very adventurous, and it's not the way the game was designed. Usually, a quick reminder to the players about what the game's supposed to be about will suffice.
This is the best advice ever.
If they players want this kind of "realism," then by all means give them what they have asked for.
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KROME > I think that's a good way indeed.
OR may be there's another way.
Selling 60 000 vials is life long adventuring. Do they really want todo that ? Don't go against them but help them to build their project.
Let me tell you a little story, of little stories which can lead to great adventures.
At the time I was playing AD&D 2nd edition my character had been cursed by a demon in a mirror. It left me with 100 days before my soul (and my character) was eaten by the demon.
The only way to avoid that was to free the demon from the mirror and fight him by having a specific curse removal cast on the mirror.
The enchantment was long lost and it took us a bit of time to find it in a temple. The material component was one million copper pieces.
We started laughing at our DM as he asked us how we would get these 1 000 000 CP (If I remember well that was equivalent to 500 GP so the price was ridiculously low).
But the DM insisted
- "How are you going to get ONE MILLION Copper pieces ? There's no way you will find that many in the towns around or even in the whole country"
It ended up that we had to go to dwarf mines in the mountains to ask them to make one million copper pieces for us.
The problem was that their copper mines were invaded by creatures and they did not dig in since they didn't want to take risks for copper ...
Therefore we had to clean the mines before they started digging copper.
By the time they forged the bloody coins the dwarves asked us.
-"Now ... they all have been done ... how are you going to carry them ?"
Us : "Carry ... We bought a couple of additional back packs and my friend got 22 in strength so it shouldn't be a problem".
The dwarf started to laugh :
At that time 25 coins = 1 kilogram (10 coins = 1 pound).
So 1 Mil coins = 40 Metric Tons !
There was only a few days left and we had to prepare a whole bloody convoy. And escort them, and explain to the guards of the city why we were bringing one million cp in town (We had to perform the ritual in a specific place below the city). Of course, like in all good films, we had to rush in the place as time was running very low.
Like in all good films, the countdown stopped a few seconds before the end ;o).
The whole campaign had been one of the best I ever played. I think it lead us from level 4 to level 12 ish.
What I really wanted to tell you is that even mundane activities can lead to great adventures.
There are two ways to handle this :
-Either : "No you can't"
- Or "OK yes you can"... and create a whole lot of adventures around it. These could be the best adventures your players would have as it is what they really want. Of course that probably means you'll have to rewrite the adventures you had carefully prepared for them ;o).
The best way is to be creative !
Okay, first figure out how big a surface area one vial of acid covers. Let's say 10 square inches.
Now calculate the surface area of a Medium adventurer. Google tells me that's roughly 2,615 square inches.
So if immersed in acid as strong as that in the Pathfinder Core Rules, a typical person would take 261d6 of damage. Per round.
So obviously, the acid that sells for 10gp per 1 lb flask is HUGELY CONCENTRATED. By professional alchemists. No player would EVER expect to take two hundred dice of damage from immersion in a pool of acid. But if it's as strong as the Acid (flask) entry, that's what happens.
Just show them the math, and ask if they really think your 10d6 (or whatever) pool of acid is strong enough to be worth raiding.
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I prefer to just make it so that gold can't buy magic. Sure, you can have a successful business and live like kings, but that's not going to get you that vorpal sword you always wanted. You're going to have to do some favors for some very powerful people that don't care about your yellow rocks. I use the WBL as a guide for how much equipment the characters need, not how much their equipment is worth.
So if immersed in acid as strong as that in the Pathfinder Core Rules, a typical person would take 261d6 of damage. Per round.
Immersion in acid should be handled like immersion in lava. As in "You die, no save" (unless you have requisite IMMUNITY).
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The other thing to keep in mind is, "Who would BUY it?"
Seems to me the flask of acid on the equipment list is mostly for adventurers. You're probably not going to find a buyer for 60,000 flasks of acid. Your party would now have a bunch of unsellable inventory taking up space.
(Just because something is listed in the book as having a market value doesn't necessarily mean there's a market for it.)
(Just because something is listed in the book as having a market value doesn't necessarily mean there's a market for it.)
And as previously mentioned, the market would probably be unable to hold such a glut of product causing values to spike downward... which in turn would cause that local Alchemist guild (or individual) a reason to turn on the PCs, for ruining a portion of their profits.
So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.
Now according to onlineconversion.com the pool of acid 1 000 cubic foot = 59 844.155 844 pint [US, liquid]
That means your average 10 foot pool of acid is worth 596,646 gp + 23 cp
What's to prevent greedy players from purchasing 60 thousand flasks and sell the filled flasks for 300,000 gp profit or so?
I just want place interesting environments for my party, I don't want to need to resort to complicated economics around supply and demand to keep them from getting obscenely rich.
Well, for one thing, applying *simple* versions of economics (and, really, availability) will get you pretty much everything you need.
1. I'm not sure where a party would find 60,000 flasks. [I mean, really, that's not just a week's work for a craftsman, here...] Obviously, they'd need to set up a special order at a large glassworks somewhere and then guard the pool while waiting for them to be made. (To be sure noone else steals their precious resource).
2. They'll need to buy acid-proof stoppers for these. A simple waxed cork that works for a potion bottle would just get eroded by the acid. So, there's some additional expense. Also, I wouldn't point this one out until they *try* it. (eg - "I fill the flask!". "Ok, make a dex check... well done, no damage. Now, you have an open flask full of acid, what do you do?")
3. I think it's a safe bet that a naturally occuring acid may not be as effective as the distilled acid people buy from alchemists (it could, in fact, be picking up much of its acidity from minerals in the rock or pool, etc.) -- as such, thinking that you'd get anything near full value for even 1 flask seems extreme. Myself, I'd probably say that this stuff *can* be distilled into stronger, useful acid, and set the value at something like 2gp per flask.
4. After somehow getting 60,000 flasks of pseudo-acid, they'd have a hard time lining up a buyer -- who the heck wants that much? And, of course, there's the whole matter of flooding the market - the stuff you don't want to deal with, yes, but it still works out. If they find a single buyer, they'll be doing so at a massive discount. If they want to find individual small-scale buyers to increase the value, I'd ask them how much time they'd rather spend on this, and in the meantime, have other adventurers show up and start collecting "real" treasures and gaining levels -- let them hear the stories or see them throwing around new-won coin at the tavern and what not.
5. The transport logistics are pretty much impossible. It's a whole lot of freaking glass containing something deadly and corrosive. It's not like a shipment of wine, that if one bottle breaks all you ahve is a mess. If a flask of acid goes, it'll weaken the thing it's being carried in... which tends to lead to more flasks falling and breaking. (Think how much fun it would be to have an Ogre smash them in the back with his greatclub if the pack's full of acid...)
So, really, if I had a party that wanted to try this, other than advising them that gathering acid from a pool is dangerous and that it would probably take a fair amount of time to collect the acid (which would also be very heavy), I'd let them go to it.... and then let them learn the hard way about the pitfalls (the fact it's not worth as much as they wanted, the fact they can probably only get a few dozen empty flasks, the need for proper seals, etc, etc..)
Finally, if they're stubborn enough to go through the whole thing (and manage to plan around it and what not), then, yay them.
Assuming they mass-sell it, the profit per flask would be pretty low (maybe 10-20% of the value of the *lesser* acid [20% of 2gp = 4 sp per flask], depending on how well they roll - which itself would be lower than the price of distilled - and of course, we still need to subtract the overhead: money they'd have already ponied up for the containers, seals, wagons, teamsters, storage, etc, etc. -- and taxes, since they're obviously being merchants now), which will probably run them at least 1-2 silvers per flask, when all is said and done... plus, they'd probably not get 100% of the stuff out anyway (due to trial and error at the beginning and losses along the way). Build in some skill checks to help maximize profit, use some random rolls too see how much of the stuff they lose along the way -- including random encounters like bandits (and remember, a flask lost is still a piece of glass they spent money on). Net result, they might clear 5k or so. And, in the few months they spend doing that, the world keeps on turning, and they miss out. They could probably have made more cash had they been out adventuring, and most people now think of them not as heroes but as sellers of stuff.
If they insist on carrying and trying to sell for more profit, then I'd offer them the choice of making new characters while these ones go off to be merchants, or rolling something big (say 8d8 months, just from the top of my head) that it'll take them to sell it all for, maybe, 3 times they would have gotten if they mass-sold it. They clear, what, 15K, it took them up to 5 years. Meh. They have no reputation, are closer to middle age and got the equivalent value of a +3 weapon.
Also, if PCs are significantly into the idea of looting things like trap parts or monster poison glands or acid from acid pools, you really should ask them if they REALLY want to play that kind of game. If they do, you should probably become absolutely draconian on encumbrance and crafting times and the like. The idea here is that making it rich by salvaging acid or poison or trap parts or whatever is not supposed to be fun to play—it's not very adventurous, and it's not the way the game was designed.
But in certain limits it can be fun. In second edition some monsters had valuable parts, they where in the MonsterCompendium entries.
It was really the icing on the cake when you had slayed a dragon to get its skin, claws teeth. it was the ONLY way to get a dragon hide armor.I still feel a little bit cheated when a PC wears dragonhide without slaying a dragon ;-)
Ok they want to make some money out off the acid pool ..fair enough adventurers always need money..point out to them that selling the location of the acid pool to the local alchemists guild is probably a good idea..they might not make a lot off cash on the deal but they could bargain for discounts on alchemical items..
Any thoughts on this?
Actually it'd be fun to take this to its logical conclusion.
In any given city it's unlikely that there're going to be 60000 flasks available. So after the first week of looking, the adventurers are probably only going to be able to find a couple of hundred flasks available for 3cp, and by that point merchants will probably be selling them for 1gp (supply and demand.)
But lets say they continue looking since at that price they can still make a profit. Suddenly the flasks start hittin 5-8 gp a piece and people are buying them in a speculative bubble, not to mention flask crafters are likely making them a little lower quality to meet the demand which leads to more breakage in transport. Now suddenly blacksmiths realize their forges can be used to heat and blow glass too and they stop making weapons, armor and general tools because they're caught up in the tulip bulb style frenzy. That in turn has some interesting consequences when you consider they make things like like horseshoes, nails and hammers.
Then suddenly the adventurers return to town and try to offload their acid, only to discover that no one wants it any more: peasants and commoners don't have a use for it, and why would you risk destroying a flask that expensive by breaking it in combat? The value of their acid itself let alone the flasks also drops because the market is glutted.
So there's no market for their product and a few of the local shopkeeps are helping people realize that the adventurers are the ones that caused the bubble. By which of course I mean the speculative investments that led many locals to blow their life savings in flask "investment". That inturn leads to some clever bard to equating the adventurers to a flawed bubble in glass and a terrifying escape the city adventure as the frenzied mob descends on the inn they're at and tries to burn it to the ground with them still inside.
I say let them do it. The humor value is too precious. (Imagine the party trying to off load the acid cheap (5gp) just to get rid of it and having the locals pour it out to sell the flask.)
My advise is this:
If you don't like that type of game, then talk to the players.
Otherwise, if the players are having fun, and if the only reason you see it as a problem is that you are trying to preserve some artificial "standard" of wealth, then let them have their fun.
I played in a game where my character was a merchant by trade. By the time I was 2nd level, I had convinced all the other players that selling wine was great fun. A large portion of the campaign from that moment on was devoted to what we were doing while we were transporting wine from 1 city to another.
Sure, most people wouldn't enjoy that type of campaign, but WE enjoyed it. The point I'm trying to make is that if your players are having fun, and you don't mind, then just let them enjoy selling acid. Don't ruin their fun if the only reason you want to stop it is because the book says they should have "X" wealth. Don't let anyone tell your group what the "right" way to play the game may be. Only put a stop to it if YOU stop having fun because of it.
Of course, thats doesn't mean that selling acid for profit has to be easy. Breaking vials could destroy the cart they are using to transport the acid, monsters could attack the party, thieves could try and steal their product, tax collecters might want a cut of the profit, and maybe a black dragon found that particular pool of acid very thirst quenching and is angry at the party for stealing his beverage.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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My advise is this:
If you don't like that type of game, then talk to the players.
Otherwise, if the players are having fun, and if the only reason you see it as a problem is that you are trying to preserve some artificial "standard" of wealth, then let them have their fun.
Bless your heart, Jason. I was trying to articulate this point, and you did a much better job than I could have. Either standard of wealth, or a designer's claim as to how the game is "supposed" to be played. (Although Dungeon Grrrl maks a good point regarding solution concentrations, too.)
I particular, I think talking through the situation and reaching an understanding about the style that people want to play is a far superior solution than a passive-aggressive "death by a thousand cuts" routine to make the "acid-sales team" campaign really hard. (Oh, and folks, if the players are the sort of people to get excited about running a merchant-based campaign, telling them that you're going to be enforcing all the minutae of the game system, like encumbrance and such, is going to sound like a promise of candy.)
Unless you also deal with stoppers and breakage when characters are brewing magic potions, there's no justification for doing so with acid.
No (al)chemistry needed -- just say the acid's diluted and pin the maximum profit they can make at half the cost of making the trap (maybe more than half if they successfully use an alchemical kit to purify it themselves).
I like this idea.
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The players who are into salvaging acid pools and the like are generally the same who like the pointless activity of smashing barrels in computer games for a few odd silver or a hunk of cheese.
There's a sense of high adventure built into D&D and Pathfinder that was implemented in the first editions decades ago. Finding ways to bend the rules, abuse the rules, and seeking loopholes to exploit wealth are the antithesis of fantasy gaming.
Play what you like, but if I'm ever in a game where the details of barley harvesting becomes paramount to getting on the adventuring trail, where an acid pool generates more excitement than the promise of undiscovered lore in an ancient tomb, and where my players are such carrior scavengers that they're dismantling traps to sell for spare parts, I'll close up my books and find some more exciting players.
A large number of posters here, incl. kenmckinney, dm_wellard, and petrus amongst many others have the right idea, imo: take the consequences of their actions to their logical conclusion, and use common sense.
How they will find 60,000 flasks, acid-proof stoppers, etc. are all perfectly valid questions for a GM to ask their players. As is making it difficult to get the acid out of the pool without hurting themselves. And the time it will take to do that. All it takes is one smart wandering monster to walk in and bull rush the party member doing the acid collection into the pool to show the party members why this kind of thing may not be a great idea.
At the same time, I don't punish ingenuity; if the ranger-wizard-arcane archer in my party wants to harvest weird minerals and monster body parts to beef up his spell component pouch rather than have him buy a new pouch every month or so, great! If he does a really good job harvesting, maybe the gp's worth in stuff he harvests will equal the material component cost for creating a magic item. He still needs to make appropriate skill checks, etc. He can sell some for a profit too. But he also knows that the party needs to get here or there before the big bad takes over the world, and isn't going to spend two weeks harvesting bug goo, etc.
There's a difference between ingenuity and the players just f**king with the GM because they feel like being cheeky or "cheating" to get a lot of money. The former should be cautiously encouraged; the latter is easily discouraged by attention to verisimilitude and playing out consequences. "But the rules say I could do it!" is an argument best answered by throwing a d30 very hard in the direction of the arguer. Or by calmly explaining that common sense, let alone Rule Zero, trumps the equipment cost list in the middle of the book, your choice.
...Another way to handle it is to make the harvesting of such materials dangerous. Have the Pcs make Dexterity checks each time they gather acid to avoid taking damage. Assign chances for large revisions of acid they're carrying around to break during combat or other misadventure so that they'll destroy nearby gear or hurt them. Make them EARN their 9.97 gp...
Well I certainly think that James in on the right track, the way I would specifically handle this issue of the acid pool is to make it take time. Lets say that this acid pool was discovered on the characters family homestead instead of in a dungeon. Its reasonable to think that just like a well or pit of tar, a business minded character might want to leverage this feature for cash. But just because he makes the initial investment of buying a CRAP-TON of chemically inert flasks to store the acid in doesn't mean he has a buyer!
If anything its going to take a lot of time to bottle that stuff up and move it to market and even then its only going to sell if priced right. It might go somthing like this...
Player: "Well, we have some downtime, right? I'll go to the city of Magnimar and buy the flasks, come back, bottle it, and go back to sell it at the market bizarre."
DM: "Sure, roll your profession (merchant) skill, and determine the silver you make on this weeks work".
Player: "HEY! That stuff sells for 10gp a bottle, why did I only make 3gp for the week?"
DM: "firstly, you don't have a store front or people to manage a store where they can sell your acid vials. You are a wholesaler who is offering these vials to alchemist shops, thieves guilds, etc. So the price is marked down. Second, there are other acids on the market, so you need to price competitively to even get anything sold. Third, you haven't found a huge demand for this stuff. Only so many people need acid vials. If you make a diplomacy check next time, you can get a synergy bonus to your next Profession roll. Also, you might want to think about trying Riddleport."
An interesting exercise to be sure.
Let us say you can gather 60,000 flasks - at a purchase cost of 1,800 gp - you still have to transport them. An *empty* flask weighs 1 1/2 lbs, so they have to move 45 TONS of glass to the pool. You then have to figure out how to fill those flasks without dissolving your hand once you get it there. Resist energy takes care of this problem, provided you have access to enough castings of this do to so. Let us be reasonable and assume that it takes 1 minute to fill each flask. You will be there filling flasks 10 hours a day for 100 man-days' time. Assuming 4 persons working constantly for 10 hours, that is still 25 consecutive DAYS of time spent doing nothing ... but filling glass flasks full of acid.
Each flask, mysteriously, in game terms loses weight when filled with acid, making the only concern that of transporting the 45 TONS of acid-filled fragile flasks.
A wagon is pulled by two horses, qualifying the horses for the "favorable conditions" and "drag load" elements of encumbrance concerns. Let us presume heavy (but not combat trained, as they cost more) horses are used.
A heavy horse has a 20 Strength and is a Large quadruped, giving it a carrying capacity three (3) times that of a 20 Strength humanoid of Medium size. Light load: 399 / Medium load: 798 / Heavy Load: 1,200. The PCs are slave drivers, pushing their beasts of burden to the maximum limits, so they load each wagon's pair of heavy horse to the maximum possible limit. Which is to say 24,000 lbs' encumbrance capacity per wagon (12 tons), less the 400 lbs' of the wagon itself.
The haul needs 4 wagons each with 2 heavy horses just to haul the flasks up and back. In addition to the flask cost of 1,800 gp you also need 4 wagons (140 gp) and 8 heavy horses (1,600 gp). So far, you have invested 3,540 gp. You have only 1,100 lbs' remaining "encumbrance" room for each wagon, dropping to say 900 after accounting for each teamster and that teamster's personal gear. 900 pounds will go fast when accounting for proper feed quantities...
Now, this assumes that the characters have a clear path of travel the entire way to and from the acid pool. Wagons do not go up mountains, through forests, across rivers and so on without one. We do not know how far the small caravan must travel each way. We do not know about wandering monsters that like snacking on large, tasty horses - and there are VERY likely to be at least a few. We also do not know the party's composition.
Nor has any one been hired to - in modern terms - be each wagon's teamster. That's 4 more mouths to feed and heads to guard. They must be paid for their work. If they cotton to how much money is being strapped into the wagon they're driving - let alone how dangerous each wagon's 22,500 pounds of acid (2,250 flasks) is to their continued well being - that is an issue to be dealt with.
As posted above, this can be an excellent source of adventure.
Circling back ...
You have to spend 25 days "on site" to fill the 60,000 flasks. That's 25 days' food you have to either transport or magically provide. Let us use a simple calculation of 2 1/2 days each way to and from the pool, for a 30 day round trip. Using Survival to forage for food is not presumed, as this makes the trip twice as long ... not the best case scenario when transporting 45 tons of acid. At reduced speed, the caravan can cover 24 miles per day. If the path is "clear enough", but not actually considered a road or trail, that can get as low as anywhere from 6 miles per day to 18 miles per day. Thus the pool is presumed to be anywhere from 15 to 60 miles each way from where the acid is going to be sold.
Party resources will be tied up, especially the cleric and wizard, as they will be providing magically created food and water as well as the necessary resist energy spells for everyone.
Let us presume that a "cookie cutter" party of 4 5th level characters is attempting this [Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue or Bard]. They have two create food and water spells available per day and an unlimited supply of potable water (create water and purify food and drink orisons). They can "self feed" themselves with the two spells - they cannot do it with one. All they need to have sufficient water storage capacity is, for the sake of simplicity, a barrel per each wagon. That's another 8 gp to the cost, leaving 870 lbs' capacity on each wagon - quite a bit less when you factor in 31 gallons of water per barrel (call it another 250 pounds), leaving 620 pounds 'available space' on each wagon. The barrels do not necessarily have to be filled to capacity, but it does keep things simple ... say, in case of fire and/or acid spills.
To 'generate' enough resist energy spells requires a total of 8 2nd level spell slots from the cleric and wizard together per day. They are going to be short 2 per day unless the wizard also prepares 2 3rd level spell slots with resist energy.
With the cleric and wizard at a complete loss of 2nd and 3rd level spell slots every day for the 25 days' time to gather all that acid, wandering / random / stalking critters could prove extraordinarily dangerous to the 4 characters, 4 teamsters and 4 heavy horses...
8 tents add another 80 gp to the 3,548 already spent for a total of 3,628 gp. 2 tents per wagon reduce available 'space' to 580 lbs.
"Reasonable gear" includes 1 coil of hemp rope [1 gp, 10 lbs], 2 bedrolls [2 sp, 10 lbs], 2 winter blankets [1 gp, 6 lbs], 7 days' firewood [7 cp, 140 lbs], flint and steel [1 gp], 2 hooded lanterns [14 gp, 4 lbs], 60 pints of oil [6 gp, 60 lbs] and 2 water skins [2 gp, 8 lbs] for each wagon. This adds, rounding very up 102 gp for a total "start up cost" of 3,730 gp. This leaves 354 lbs "available weight" fore each PC riding beside a teamster on the wagons.
Being very generous, let us assume that the listed pay rate for a skilled hireling is sufficient to entice four teamsters to wrangle the wagons and heavy horses. Tack on another 36 gp for the basic labor rate.
No one likes to eat magical mush and drink water for a full month in pseudo-medieval life, so it is recommended that be addressed in the form of perhaps a barrel of ale per wagon [10 gp / 300 lbs - although most of this weight can be divided between literal water weight and "spare weight" from the PC], bringing the start up cost to a total of 3,806 gp.
Presuming that the characters can return the four wagons with teamsters and horses alive - and not a single broken flask - they can then turn around and sell their 60,000 hard-won flasks of acid. Assuming you stick to the "sell anything you find for half market" rule, that's still an impressive 300,000 gp before expenses. Profit: 74,048.5 gp per each character.
That much money WILL attract attention - and it will be heavy. Now they have to move around (assuming that they are paid in gold) 1,481 lbs of gold... a bit more when they sell off the 8 horses and 4 wagons. Let us assume a bit of splurging, partying and "having fun" - they clear all that work with 74,000 gp apiece.
Now they have to survive muggings, pick pockets, outright assaults, tax collectors and the local nobility exerting their 'take' on the situation. Money that big in one spot will collect a great deal of interests ... likely from sources far out of their league.
A source of adventure at the ready! :)
Okay, first figure out how big a surface area one vial of acid covers. Let's say 10 square inches.
Now calculate the surface area of a Medium adventurer. Google tells me that's roughly 2,615 square inches.
So if immersed in acid as strong as that in the Pathfinder Core Rules, a typical person would take 261d6 of damage. Per round.
So obviously, the acid that sells for 10gp per 1 lb flask is HUGELY CONCENTRATED. By professional alchemists. No player would EVER expect to take two hundred dice of damage from immersion in a pool of acid. But if it's as strong as the Acid (flask) entry, that's what happens.
Just show them the math, and ask if they really think your 10d6 (or whatever) pool of acid is strong enough to be worth raiding.
OK, the "I'm not a chemist" thing came up earlier in the thread.
Well, I am a chemist and deal with acid every day.
And the sort of acid used in fantasy RPGs that eats through metal in seconds and so on would, as Dungeon Grrrl said, have to be very concentrated. If an alchemist distilled it properly (and thats what Alchemists are for) you might get 1 pint of acid for every couple of gallons or more of "naturally" occuring acid. Acid in pools would be very dilute...or a more of a salt. It will corrode metal if exposed, but won't eat through an inch of steel in 12 seconds.
Some organic acids WILL eat through flesh, but they are hazardous to handle and use. (Trust me, I've been on jobs with acid spills and you don't want to be in an enclosed area when some HCl, even a small amount, gets spilled on certain surfaces...)
So, that's how I handle Fantasy RPG acids. They're specially prepared to be handled by adventurers and such, but need to be manufactured, hence the cost.
In other words, you need 5 gp of raw acid material to make 1 - 10 gp acid flask...
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Also, if PCs are significantly into the idea of looting things like trap parts or monster poison glands or acid from acid pools, you really should ask them if they REALLY want to play that kind of game. If they do, you should probably become absolutely draconian on encumbrance and crafting times and the like. The idea here is that making it rich by salvaging acid or poison or trap...
This is basically how I discourage it. I have a couple regulars who would be more than glad to say that their character spends 6 months running a business selling flasks of acid, then resumes his adventuring career with a huge chunk of gold afterward.
I'm willing to let him to it, but I warn him of two things to keep in mind:
1 This won't be happening off-screen. Every night will have a portion dedicated to him (by himself) role-playing through the running of a business. He'll be expected to keep records of sales, report taxes to the government, negotiate for large-quantity deals with primetime customers, and more. The other part of the night will be the rest of the group adventuring, unless they agree to take an extended vacation. At this point, peer pressure from the group usually kicks in or they give us from risk of falling several levels behind the others.
2 The world will continue to move on around him. Plot won't stop for his side business, and by the time he turns his attention back to the campaign there may well be not campaign to turn to, or the plot they were involved with may have resolved.
Agree with many of the posts here.
As GM, my response to the players in question would be:
"Nothing is ever that easy."
Traps and rooms built with such extravagant materials certainly highlights that there is indeed a market for such. If there's a guild force with the personal resources & desire to send hit-men on people muscling in on their market, then that shows you have a group with the resources to both purchase and distribute your windfall. Also, the Craft skill is amazingly versatile, when there's more readily available acid they'll just make alchemist's fire.
I have an even better idea than slapping your players upside the head for the 'audacity' of selling valuable materials in a market that's already proven it has the supply/demand to pay for all those +2 swords and scrolls you find. If it's high volume like iron or acid, then abstract the process to everyone's comfort zone (some like to keep track of tax records) such that sell X amount per week/month. Make up reasons why it's not in a lump sum; market demand, extraction time, etc.
Then, after they've earned enough to equal the normal reward for an encounter, have them get into a low-to-no-treasure fight. It could be one of their many enemies from their adventuring, bandits, rampaging ankhegs, or even those guild assassins that so many of you claim are running around. It's just like your standard encounter, only you give the treasure before the fight rather than after.
Once this 'business' has earned the value of that acid vat, or likely a percentage of it (operating expenses), then it's empty and the party goes back to their usual wandering ways.
You guys way over think this. Let them go to all the trouble of getting the acid to mark and as soon as they try to sell it the first buyer notices that this is water.
Explain that 'magical acid' from enchanted pits turn to normal water after X hours when removed from their source. Where X= the number of hours to bring to market. Have a phone handy to get a picture of his/her face.. lol.
So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.
Consider a common glass flask, 3 cp value
Consider The same flask filled with acid is 10 gp. that means one pint of acid is worth 9.97 gp.Consider a modest 10 ft. cube acid pool. that's 1000 sq feet of acid.
Now according to onlineconversion.com the pool of acid 1 000 cubic foot = 59 844.155 844 pint [US, liquid]
That means your average 10 foot pool of acid is worth 596,646 gp + 23 cp
What's to prevent greedy players from purchasing 60 thousand flasks and sell the filled flasks for 300,000 gp profit or so?
I just want place interesting environments for my party, I don't want to need to resort to complicated economics around supply and demand to keep them from getting obscenely rich.
Best I can figure is to say that large quantities of acid are typically of a less dangerous variety (something like real world hydrocloric acid) as compared to something more dangerous (like sulphiric acid) in thrown flasks. Using the lesser acid would deal 1d3 points of damage with a throw, making them not an effective weapon, hence not worth harvesting.
Note: I don't purport to be any good at chemistry, but to my mind alchemy should work on very different principals anyways.
Any thoughts on this?
Well, for one thing it is boring.
Jimmy runs up to Ralph, Greg, and Sally: Hey guys let's go check out this temple there's supposed to be a mummy.
Ralph: Nah, you guys go on, I'm going to go to the acid pool today and collect flasks of it.
Ralph heads down to the glass shop. "I would like to purchase 1,000 empty flasks"
Shopkeeper: "I have 12, that will be 26 silver"
Ralph heads to the acid pool he has to cross a bridge guarded by a troll
Troll: If you want to pass the troll, you have to pay the troll.
Ralph: No problem mister troll here's 5 GP I'll have more for you when I come back, Enjoy this fried chicken
Troll: Be safe RalphMeanwhile back at the temple, Jimmy, Greg, and Sally have...
I poo'd a little.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Amusing answer.
DM: Ok, you sell your first flasks of Acid to a group of young scruffy adventurers.
Players: Cool! Money for nothing! Ok, we'll go harvest the rest.
DM: *sigh* Ok, after 6 months, and expences and upkeep, you have 70K GP each. Roll for initiative.
Players: What?
DM: Oh, that's right, they get a surprise round, everyone make a DC 30 save vs deep slumber.
Players: $^#$^#$#$#$^
DM: When you wake up you've been robbed, all your gold is gone. At your feet is an empty acid flask.
Player (psion): I use postcognition, what happened?
DM: Remember those scruffy adventurers your sold the acid to? Well, while you were selling acid, they were out adventuring. Then it hit them that you each could have made at least 70K GP from selling acid to others. They'd picked up a few levels, you know, adventuring and decided to come back and rob you.
;-)
If the players suddenly realize that that acid is worth an assload of profit, why penalize them? No, let's spend an entire thread thinking of ways to penalize the players for being ingenious and spotting economic opportunities created by game design.
How about we just not insult the players? Let's make this screw-over simple.
Player A: "Hey, I just realized that acid flasks net nearly a 10 gold profit over empty glass flasks and look at this huge pool of acid!"
Player B: "Oh man, we could be rich!"
DM: "Rocks fall, everyone dies. Roll new characters."
Player C: "..but we are in the middle of an open field..."
DM: "Rocks. Fall. Everyone. Dies."
If the players suddenly realize that that acid is worth an assload of profit, why penalize them? No, let's spend an entire thread thinking of ways to penalize the players for being ingenious and spotting economic opportunities created by game design.
There have been several responses on the problems with turning the acid pool into a large amount of profit.
Some of it very pertinent, like where are you going to get 60 000 empty flasks, transport them, sell them at 10 gp when you have just put a glut of them on the market, etc..
Some have suggested that it should be pointed out to the players that they, as the GM, do not consider this type of activity as very adventuresome and to either put the idea aside, or roll up new characters as the old ones are now merchants and the GM doesn't feel up to making exciting bookeeping adventures.
Yes, some have suggested hammering the players.
Some have loved the idea and suggested ways to turn it into an adventure in itself.
In conclusion, I would say that your statement is inaccurate and does not seem to contribute in a positive way to correct the issue you seem to be having with the thread.
I don't think that penalizing/killing the players for playing savvy marketeers is a good idea. Its sort of mean and detracts from the game. But also, this is not a computer RPG where you can have collected 100,000 potions of healing or vials of acid, go to the nearest general store, and cash it in for 75,000gp. Like james said, greedy PC's will try to sell everything that is not nailed down so they can purchase magic weapons when they reach the nearest large city.
When a player wants to sell a farm/cave/galleon/pool of acid/golden calf/etc and would result in them attaining more gold than their wealth by level, its up to gm to say "its not that simple" or "its going to take you a lot of time to do this, so you may want to scale it down a bit." As GM you should consider what are pitfalls to get-rich-quick schemes, and apply them for players who still want to go ahead with their plans. Don't punish them just for being entrepreneurial, but consider the players plans as an opportunity for a side adventure with its own dangers and pitfalls. If you don't have the energy to make rulings on the spot, throw in caveat like "all of the wagons you would be hiring are booked for the next few days,, you may want to handle this when you get back from Dragon Bones Cave."
I've been thinking since yesterday about a possible optional rule for the money making mechanics of the profession skill.
Spend Money to Make Money
Players who want to invest their gold into business ventures can sometimes use it to increase the size of their returns. If the player invests 100gp in their business, they change the economy of scale on their gold pieces per week to 10s of gp per week. If they invest 1000gp, them they shift the economy of scale to 100s of gp. This means to make back their investment they're result must be 20 or higher. If the roll fumbles, something catastrophic has happened to the character's business as all of his investment is gone. Other consequences might apply, as the character's business partners might believe that the they are owed money for lost revenues.
While usually an expenditure of actual gold pieces, the GM may rule that the character can leverage an asset to count as the investment. If perhaps the character owns sailing ship and attempting to make money transporting goods, the ship itself might count as some or all of the investment. If the profession roll is a fumble, whatever the character leveraged is lost. The GM decides what level of investment an asset counts for. It may not be based on the actual gp value of the asset itself, but the help that asset can provide. A small ship for example might cost over 1000gp, but the area the sailors are working in is poor or less populated, the ship might only count as an investment of 100gp.
So, I've got a problem on my hands, perhaps others have experienced this also.
Use the game mechanics to squash the problem. Figure out the cost of the acid pit as if it were a trap. Cost of trap = CR x 1000gp (mechanical). Cost of raw materials of trap = 1/3 final cost of trap. Therefore, value of acid in trap is probably less than 1/3 the final cost of said trap.
It's like beating up an Iron Golem. You're left with a lot of iron, but it's not worth the full value of an Iron Golem.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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This is a tangent, but hopefully not too distant a tangent.
As designers, the Paizo development team needs to make baseline assumptions about generic parties who participate in their adventures:
- The party is well balanced. There are going to be some front-line combatants, and some healers, etc.
- There are 4 PC's. (Or 6, or whatever party size the adventure expects.)
- They can get through 5' wide passages and maneuver through dungeons. (So, no centaur PCs.)
- They don't have any reason to avoid any given adventure hook. (They're not wanted criminals, for example.)
Those are necessary assumptions, but breaking them is fun! I've played in an all-clerics and all-rogues campaigns, to great success. I've played in convention modules where the party operated under a vow of silence, or everyone played an ogre. It's common to have a PC with an over-riding goal (I'm the scion of a royal family, kicked to the streets by the wicked vizier's men; my sister was stolen by slavers in Vudra, and I've come to find and free her; my name is Inigo Montoya...) that short-circuits any expansive pre-written adventure path.
Wealth-by-level is just another of those assumptions about generic parties. The developers set a baseline amount of high-priced combat equipment that characters are presumed to own, based on party level. You are no more required to keep the campaign within "wealth-by-level" guidelines than you are required to keep the party balanced among classes.
WBL is a useful metric when discussing game system mechanics or writing generic-party adventures. But if your real-life party decides to make campaign-specific decisions that alter wealth-by-level, there shouldn't be some decree stopping them.
(What if the party is underfunded? Do they consequently get more loot? If so, what has anyone to fear from rust monsters and disenchanters? "Yeah, they'll destroy this magic sword, but wealth-by-level guidelines will make up for that the next time we find treasure.")
This is a tangent, but hopefully not too distant a tangent.
As designers, the Paizo development team needs to make baseline assumptions about generic parties who participate in their adventures:
- The party is well balanced. There are going to be some front-line combatants, and some healers, etc.
- There are 4 PC's. (Or 6, or whatever party size the adventure expects.)
- They can get through 5' wide passages and maneuver through dungeons. (So, no centaur PCs.)
- They don't have any reason to avoid any given adventure hook. (They're not wanted criminals, for example.)
Those are necessary assumptions, but breaking them is fun! I've played in an all-clerics and all-rogues campaigns, to great success. I've played in convention modules where the party operated under a vow of silence, or everyone played an ogre. It's common to have a PC with an over-riding goal (I'm the scion of a royal family, kicked to the streets by the wicked vizier's men; my sister was stolen by slavers in Vudra, and I've come to find and free her; my name is Inigo Montoya...) that short-circuits any expansive pre-written adventure path.
Wealth-by-level is just another of those assumptions about generic parties. The developers set a baseline amount of high-priced combat equipment that characters are presumed to own, based on party level. You are no more required to keep the campaign within "wealth-by-level" guidelines than you are required to keep the party balanced among classes.
WBL is a useful metric when discussing game system mechanics or writing generic-party adventures. But if your real-life party decides to make campaign-specific decisions that alter wealth-by-level, there shouldn't be some decree stopping them.
(What if the party is underfunded? Do they consequently get more loot? If so, what has anyone to fear from rust monsters and disenchanters? "Yeah, they'll destroy this magic sword, but...
While agree with you in principle, Chris, in practice I can tell you that I have seen what a sudden spike in wealth does to a game. Wealth and attribute scores are the two variables that most determine the over all "power" of a given adventurer. Tactics and clever adventuring also play their role, but wealth has a direct effect on the numbers a party can throw out. Those number result in the GM having to up the ante with the CR of the encounters he throws at the players, which them translates into more XP, which then translates into more levels and more numeric bonuses. I have seen this happen time and time again. Gold, like XP, speeds up the advancement of the characters.
GM's need to be aware of wealth, and the speed at which the players are attaining it, if for no reason other than knowing what kind of encounters they will be able to overcome through shear gold expenditure. Gold is also one of the rewards of the game. If you make too easy to accumulate then you change expectations of the game.
That's not to say that if you run a monte-haul campaign that you are having badwrongfun. A monte-haul campaign is about playing at the extremes, extreme wealth and extreme challenges. If you are not watching player wealth, however, your campaign might become a monte-haul campaign right under your nose and you will be struggling to either scale up all the encounters or be trying to pull it back down to earth. Both of which can be a pain.
That's what wealth by level is about. Its guideline to say "the CR system expects this amount of wealth on a given adventurer. If they have more or less, you can expect the challenge to be adjusted accordingly."