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We all know that in-game economy is a can of worms. Ye olde magic shoppe, weapons worth king's ransom...
What if we split resource pool used for equipment and treasure?
Equipment pool would be a resource that a character could invest in items and would represent personal attunement to items, technically inherent bonuses, but still separable from the character and renewable. This thing would be new WBL and work with magic item rules.
Treasure would be material wealth that would work with gold a character cna find and allow the PCs to purchase things like castles, consumables and living necessities, helping to create a somewhat believably working system.
Thoughts?
You mean something like saying that... in order to use the benefits of a magic item, a character would have to form a special connection with it, like attuning his own aura to or interweaving it with the one of the item, and since that is slightly changing your aura slightly, you can only link yourself to a limited number of items, depending on the strength of your aura (level) and the strength of the items?
For example... if you're a third level character, you only have 30 "aura link points", and while a +1 weapon would use like 5 of them, a +3 flaming weapon would use up 20...? (Random numbers... they would have to be chosen proportional to what fractions of WBL your magic weapon would normally take).
If your train of thought runs into that direction, I'd like to jump up, because that's an interesting approach with potentially severe consequences.
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What you propose creates two different sets of bookkeeping that will make most GMs cry. That's certainly no reason not to do it, just an up-front observation.
At least one designer I've read has pointed out that the treasure system is explicitly a PC-reward mechanic. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in separating it into PC-improvement versus PC-cash is that the current system allows for inequitable trades - and that's a feature, not a bug. If the party wants to spend lavishly on a fighter to make sure they can keep up with the Wizard's damage output, they can. A personalized system makes it more equitable, but reduces player options.
The 800-gp gorilla in the wealth system is currency. As the Spanish could tell you, finding a mountain of money is awesome - right up until you add it to the economy. By all rights, the Church of Abadar (or your mercantile God of Choice) should be pulling their hair out when adventurers come back from the dragon's lair, because gold is going to take a massive devaluation hit. A realistic economy would see towns that hosted large numbers of adventurers suffering from runaway inflation as the supply of gold easily outstrips the value of the town's goods & services and will continue to do so as the party continues adventuring.
All that being said, there are a couple of questions that need answering in a system that makes equipment intrinsic:
1) Extraneous items: Bill the Fighter has found three +1 Ranseurs. Bill uses a longsword and really likes his longsword. Presuming we will, at best, find one more PC who can use the weapon, what becomes of the other two?
2) Re-purposing money: If money is not meant to improve the PCs capabilities, what's it there for? I think this is, honestly, a fascinating question and one that can take the game in all sorts of directions; however, those directions are interesting to me and about half a dozen other people in all the world. If you've got a table full of economic historians, go nuts!
3) PC wealth vs. Local Wealth: A functioning economic system would need to restrain PC wealth to a level that did allow them to outstrip the local or national economy. That makes it harder to scale - one presumes that, at some point on a progressive scale, the PCs will still have more money than the king. We can abate some of that by changing the rewards plot-giving NPCs hand out (land versus cash, other items of value), but it's going to take a holistic approach that looks at the whole 1st-20th progression to keep PCs from being able to buy and sell the local Baron.
It’s a separation of monetary wealth from game ballance.
I propose characters having another resource that they track themselves and acts as enchantment. It could be strictly wealth by level, it could even be different for different clases, so that the party actually doesn't have to pump money in their fighter to keep up an perhaps create a feeling of inequal partnership. The player would manage it himself, just like skills or whatever and invest the points in items or to himself (depends on whether we want these things to take up slots and so on). And the management could be in tens, not thousands.
Monetary value of things could then be brought more into line with the other tools which could even do something about those ridiculous crafting times and economics. Lower treasure values, less book-keeping IMO (and no problems with party feeling under/overpowered because of the overflow/lack of items). If the magic items were more in line with adding features (to which you have to attune to anyway), their value in gold could be relativised and the ability to create inequitable trades is not lost. With lesser treasures there would no longer be the need to have ridiculous amounts of gold in game anyway.
to answer those points
1.) The items themselves would require slight tweak – the +1 are comming from PC’s investment to the weapon (attunement, training, whatever) so the weapon would be just magic (which is a feature to it’s own, being unbreakable by mundane things, passing DR etc.)
2.) Money could be just optional really. Their usefullness is great in case that you want to play a game like Kingmaker whenever you want to manage a fort or a guild is obvious. Tracking them if you run something like the Fellowship of the Ring is just dumb and could easily be handweaved, which current system doesn’t allow at all, since you need to track treasure for magic items.
3.) I view Gold pieces more as a manner of measurement. They could be even and abstract representation in manner similar to hit points representing hit points. At certain level the PCs will indeed be able to call upon resources equal to those of a king. Be it allegiances, land ownership, or plannar allies probably. Gold represents overall value of what PCs own, but it’s split to two rather inequal things – personal posessions (immediately at hand, directly influencing combat effectiveness ) and general posessions that have certain effect, but it’s mostly a story element. Now have a party where one player hoards all gold to consumables and magic items and one purchases a house from the very same amount of money (if they receive equal treat ment). The one with the house nerf himself combat wise without much gain in case the party travels far abroad and you as a GM actually have to take into account for that in combat once such self-nerfs start to mount. We could even have things like simplified economics option that would just give DM a guideline that a PC on level X could generally call upon Y resources and can obtain items like blah blah blah out of thin air in any community that can reasonably have them (treating them as regularly purchased). Such an option would certainly be welcome by some groups that don’t want to bother with value (DMs could interact with this simply via events like „poverty“, where the PCs wealth is treated as some levels lower in case that they failed in quests and so on).
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It’s a separation of monetary wealth from game ballance.
I propose characters having another resource that they track themselves and acts as enchantment. It could be strictly wealth by level, it could even be different for different clases, so that the party actually doesn't have to pump money in their fighter to keep up an perhaps create a feeling of inequal partnership. The player would manage it himself, just like skills or whatever and invest the points in items or to himself (depends on whether we want these things to take up slots and so on). And the management could be in tens, not thousands.
Monetary value of things could then be brought more into line with the other tools which could even do something about those ridiculous crafting times and economics. Lower treasure values, less book-keeping IMO (and no problems with party feeling under/overpowered because of the overflow/lack of items). If the magic items were more in line with adding features (to which you have to attune to anyway), their value in gold could be relativised and the ability to create inequitable trades is not lost. With lesser treasures there would no longer be the need to have ridiculous amounts of gold in game anyway.
We're only retaining the ability to make unequal trades if I could take some of my enchantment pool and enchant some of your stuff. Personalizing the treasure system potentially removes one of the economic fundamentals from the game - interaction.
1.) The items themselves would require slight tweak – the +1 are comming from PC’s investment to the weapon (attunement, training, whatever) so the weapon would be just
magic (which is a feature to it’s own, being unbreakable by mundane things, passing DR etc.)
This will probably require a fundamental rethinking of treasure dispensing. Remove the "+1" from my statement and we still haven't solved the problem: party finds 3 magic ranseurs, party can use one, what do we do with the other two so that party does not feel they've gotten a useless reward? If attunement worked on a point system, you could give "magic" items a certain number of aura points of their own that could be siphoned out. Those numbers would then be plugged into your calculus of how many points each PC would get intrinsically.
2.) Money could be just optional really. Their usefullness is great in case that you want to play a game like Kingmaker whenever you want to manage a fort or a guild is obvious. Tracking them if you run something like the Fellowship of the Ring is just dumb and could easily be handweaved, which current system doesn’t allow at all, since you need to track treasure for magic items.
Fellowship-style games certainly point out the big hole in the treasure system: if the reward system presumes that redundant items can be sold to improve the party in other ways, this breaks down in stories that isolate the players from points of sale. Without a money system, or perhaps a wealth score as pobbes noted, how do the PCs acquire consumables and mundane gear?
3.) I view Gold pieces more as a manner of measurement. They could be even and abstract representation in manner similar to hit points...
I think an abstraction is possible, though tying it explicitly to level is probably ripe for abuse. One of the points of placing treasure is so that players get their small endorphin hit of "I found something cool and now it's MINE!" Too much abstraction and you've removed that from the game. One of the reasons I think the wealth score works in D20 Modern is that Dungeon plunder is seen as somewhat archaic: If you bust the crack dealers, looting them runs a bit against modern sensibilities (police takings clauses notwithstanding). How do we abstract the wealth system, but maintain it in such a way so that players feel they get a reward for dispatching the bad guys?
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Well yes :) Parting wealth and equipment (= encounter ballance) would free the wealth to be as abstract as the players need and let the world work somewhat more smooth than when you have items worth several tens of thousands gold pieces (value for game ballace purpose only) breaking into turnips/wheat/ox economics. Creating a somewhat working system where working and singing for money still makes somewhat sense would be a first step and then after exploring the possibilities making a brief summary where the PCs could in two or tree sentences summed up what they should be generally able to afford (and allowing to switch between simplicity and complexity as needed.)
1.) Wealth score could be based on a crafting skill/profession/0,5 x sleight of hand/whatever, couldn't it? Allowing the Bard to aid his haggling via diplomacy with a synergy bonus perhaps could keep such things in check.
2.) and 3.) What I meant is to give a PC something like WBL worth of equipment points that may be spent on "magic items". A PC buys a masterwork item and then adds those bonuses that are important as needed from this pool. Magic items could then be just doing something unique, like making a character invisible for a time, and serve as an item you can attune to instead of the standard mwk item. It wouldn't matter much that they are less common for mechanics don't depend on them. Another possibility is to leave items completely in PC hands with a limit they can spend on stat boosting and some overflow they may use for things like ring of sustenance. Treasures then would be non-magical wealth.
All in all a shift of focus from acquisition of items on player deeds wouldn't hur, would it?
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We're only retaining the ability to make unequal trades if I could take some of my enchantment pool and enchant some of your stuff. Personalizing the treasure system potentially removes one of the economic fundamentals from the game - interaction.
I may be misunderstanding you here. If you mean that I can't overstep my equipment value then I'd see that as positive thing as the player can't pass his own power level because DM accidentally handled him an item that is way too powerful and he also can't be under the level unless he willingly leaves his pool unused fr no gain. What I meant with trades that aren't equal is that in the city you can buy a sword able to produce a flaming effect for X and and then being able to trade it for something worth X+2 just because the buyer has some need for the sword and is willing to cough up more money.
... This will probably require a fundamental rethinking of treasure dispensing. Remove the "+1" from my statement and we still haven't solved the problem: party finds 3 magic ranseurs, party can use one, what do we do with the other two so that party does not feel they've gotten a useless reward? If attunement worked on a point system, you could give "magic" items a certain number of aura points of their own that could be siphoned out. Those numbers would then be plugged into your calculus of how many points each PC would get intrinsically.
Well, cutting the treasure to more portable and manageable level is sort of a goal for me. Treasure distribution would indeed need to be reworked. In abstract sense the PC on level 1 could have wealth for some basic equipment (mundane, none of those eqiipment points yet) and perhaps a flat or house if wealthy (can be a trait or feat) and on level 20 the wealth could require his own citystate or empire for wealthy ones. Wealth then would be set to allow such things. To get to those ranseurs - they've found treasure. When they come to a larger city they may have the ranseurs reforged to swords or poles made to quarter staves. Depends on how available magic items are in the world. In a low magic world where creation of the item from mundane is an epic deed and reforging is the only way to get a weapon (think Game of Thrones where Valyrian steel blades are all reused because the way they were made is long forgotten), then the players are probably overjoyed. Incase that the magic is common, then they probably don't mind selling the weapons for something else, for the weapons are just another form of treasure. Either way I don't think I'd feel cheated.
Fellowship-style games certainly point out the big hole in the treasure system: if the reward system presumes that redundant items can be sold to improve the party in other ways, this breaks down in stories that isolate the players from points of sale. Without a money system, or perhaps a wealth score as pobbes noted, how do the PCs acquire consumables and mundane gear?
If the Fellowsip-style game used the abstract wealth option the PCs could get something like this: Adventuring gear (prepacked bag, 4E already has that), set of mwk tools and three consumables of your choice (more/less could be aggreed upon at the start of the game). That's it. You may find another, or replace them or exchange them for another automatically in a "town" (be it elven shelter, a caravan you meet and so on).
I think an abstraction is possible, though tying it explicitly to level is probably ripe for abuse. One of the points of placing treasure is so that players get their small endorphin hit of "I found something cool and now it's MINE!" Too much abstraction and you've removed that from the game. One of the reasons I think the wealth score works in D20 Modern is that Dungeon plunder is seen as somewhat archaic: If you bust the crack dealers, looting them runs a bit against modern sensibilities (police takings clauses notwithstanding). How do we abstract the wealth system, but maintain it in such a way so that players feel they get a reward for dispatching the bad guys?
Please note that I mentioned wealth abstraction to be optional. I'd like to have wealth system working normally with gold pieces. Let's say that PCs manage to get their hands on a warship on level 10. 25000 gp worth of treasure just for the ship. That's five times the amount of wealth per encounter for that level under current system. The PCs may feel pressed to exchange the ship for equipment to stay competitive, but is that necessary? And what if they pull that off at level 6? Wealth either becomes a burden or is handed out for equipment anyway. Does the DM really have to ballance this?
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Well, first zmar about the wealth score based on crafting or conning skills. The system breaks down where people receive treasure. Unless treasure can never be converted into currency, it is difficult to make treasure worthwhile against different wealth scores. If there is a flat bonus from treasure, it gives significantly more buying power to characters with an already high wealth score, and significantly less wealth to those who start lower. If you let treasure take you to a certain wealth level, you are giving more to the poorer characters and less to the wealthier. Also, I have always rewarded players with cool magical abilities based on player deeds, but I find this an exception rather than a solid basis for a rule.
Well, in games where treasure acquisition is important the PCs won't be probably using abstract wealth system anyway, but carry on...
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Frankly the PCs are better off raiding for Resources. Tell some Merchant that your PCs will go and secure a square mile of Forest and have him send out Woodsmen and Wagons to chop it down and cart it off for firewood. They get 10% market value on completion.
Firewood Value = 10gp/acre of light forest
x640 acres per square mile = 6400gp
10% = 640gp
12,800,000lb Firewood provides fuel for 1,280 people for a year and constitutes 5,715 wagon loads of firewood. So all up this takes 50 wagons and drivers and 100 woodsmen 114 days to harvest and haul. Let me guess: not interested in guarding a square mile of Forest for 114 days? Planning to eat your food raw huh?
I think a huge part of the probem is that the value of high end magic items is way out there.
Normal sword(10 gold)
Masterwork sword(300 gold)
+1 sword(2000 gp)
Now next to it you have a +5 sword(50,000gp)
The +1 sword works just fine for most people. Hell, most people would be happy with a masterwork sword. Just just can't see the demand being there for something that costs 5000 times the prices of the normal item. At the high end of the game the difference between +1 and +5 is like 30% of your total damage, yet it is 50 times the price. I just have a hard time seeing that the demand a +10 sword would justify the price.
Magic items could then be just doing something unique, like making a character invisible for a time, and serve as an item you can attune to instead of the standard mwk item. It wouldn't matter much that they are less common for mechanics don't depend on them. Another possibility is to leave items completely in PC hands with a limit they can spend on stat boosting and some overflow they may use for things like ring of sustenance.
I really like this direction, but it has a few problems that come to mind immediately. If you're still using magic items as a reward system, players will still run into rings of invisibility, even if they need to spend a different "attunement" resource to use them. While that new resource system can be used as a balancing mechanism in place of monetary value, why shouldn't the ring still be valuable? If anyone with an appropriate attunement pool can use it, then there's going to be demand for it among those people.
The other option is to obviously make magic items entirely crafted by the players within some defined limits, which has all sorts of potential to aggravate the christmas tree effect and lead to ever more precisely optimized characters. Those problems aside though, the real issue is that you lose the "treasure as reward" feel, the excitement of running across new and diverse magic items, often with unexpected powers, and you lose out on one major motivation for characters to go adventuring in the first place.
I think the first option is still better. My solution would be to simply play up the limited market for magical gear. How many adventurers are there who actually can use rings of invisibility? If that number isn't very large, how likely are shops that specialize in what is a really a tiny niche of the economy? If those shops don't exist, then your only option for trading out treasure is actually finding other adventuring parties.
To prevent characters from feeling cheated by worthless gear and to avoid the aforementioned Fellowship problem, you could offer some sort of repurposing method for magical gear. Say, some sort of ritual that allowed players to change one kind of magical ability into something of a similar power level? You could then limit the list of what these transmutations could accomplish to still make questing for items beyond the basic lists (or finding them randomly) more exciting and compelling.
Or, you could use them as a justification for consumable items. You can break the underlying enchantment down to make potions or scrolls. I like the idea of making limited amounts of consumable items as a basic class feature of the caster classes, while using a different limited resource than gold. Something like a very limited form of alchemist extracts perhaps. Breaking down extraneous magic items would allow them to expand on those limits temporarily.
There is something to this idea but go back to the fantasy novels of the early days like Sprange LeCamp, Howard etc the good magic items become infamous or famous and give their possessor a certain prestige.
So the ring of Ebon shadowform (ring of invis)?
While there are rumours that there were as many as 100 rings were created during the Reign of King Anband III(the Window Peeker), many have been lost to the ages. Five are known of or rumoured of within Kingdom - the Most famous being with Yvess the Sorceress, otherwise know as Yvess the Cruel.
Characters wanting specific items need to beg, borrow, buy, steal or kill to get them from specific places or people.
Now Yvess the Cruel is likely pretty hardcore... what if someone had a map and some concrete legends leading to one of the other rings that presumably doesnt have an owner?
Bingo! Adventure...
You could probably do away with creation rules as they exist right now pretty easily under this sort of system. Then you could go back to storyline/quest based creation systems that would make that whole train of thought way more significant. The 5 great swords of Sargon were each crafted from the bones of the different dragons he slew and then enchanted by consecration in the five streams that flow between the planes, that sort of thing. Then players who want specific items can either go for the historical route and track down such a sword via myth and legend and slaying ancient tomb guardians, or get to dragon killing and extraplanar stream bathing to make their own.
Either way, the limitation on character power remains consistent and magic items can live comfortably outside of the spellcasting and economic systems and have a strict basis in the rules. Magic item creation becomes the purview of questing and storytelling, offering plot hooks without seriously disenfranchising players (not to mention shifting that power away from spellcasters).
Edit: Oh hey! Even better, this totally allows for magic item fluff to vary easily between various genres of fantasy. If it's high magic these rituals can be pretty easy. For worlds with strong gods, maybe a blessing by a priest is all you need. For dark and gritty worlds, maybe nothing will do but human(oid) sacrifice.
Plus, if we quantify the bonuses you're supposed to be getting from magic items with some sort of "attunement" system (along the lines of 4Es boons and inherent bonuses), you could then reflavor those abilities to exist independent of items as talents characters possess, sort of like flexible class abilities. Your fighter is just so damn tough he doesn't need to sleep more than a few hours a night or eat for weeks on end instead of wearing a ring of sustenance. You could capture a sort of Iron Heroes feel that way.
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There is something to this idea but go back to the fantasy novels of the early days like Sprange LeCamp, Howard etc the good magic items become infamous or famous and give their possessor a certain prestige.
So the ring of Ebon shadowform (ring of invis)?
While there are rumours that there were as many as 100 rings were created during the Reign of King Anband III(the Window Peeker), many have been lost to the ages. Five are known of or rumoured of within Kingdom - the Most famous being with Yvess the Sorceress, otherwise know as Yvess the Cruel.
Characters wanting specific items need to beg, borrow, buy, steal or kill to get them from specific places or people.
Now Yvess the Cruel is likely pretty hardcore... what if someone had a map and some concrete legends leading to one of the other rings that presumably doesnt have an owner?
Bingo! Adventure...
Or you just flicked through the Books of Skelos and chanced insanity or worse.
I think a huge part of the probem is that the value of high end magic items is way out there.
Normal sword(10 gold)
Masterwork sword(300 gold)
+1 sword(2000 gp)
Now next to it you have a +5 sword(50,000gp)The +1 sword works just fine for most people. Hell, most people would be happy with a masterwork sword. Just just can't see the demand being there for something that costs 5000 times the prices of the normal item. At the high end of the game the difference between +1 and +5 is like 30% of your total damage, yet it is 50 times the price. I just have a hard time seeing that the demand a +10 sword would justify the price.
Exactly. Without bonuses the magic would be a bit more manageable IMO.
Aside from that I was toying with the framework now not the details. The attunement goes only for the bonuses, while the other abilities are still more or less obtainable for gold (and perhaps limiting them to a set amount on items - no flaming frost acid vorpal handaxe that could be bought for money, these things are stuff of lesser artifacts - perhaps within PC crafting limit, but not for sale). I aggree that keeping items market within, say, 3000 gold is what I'd like. Other items would have to run under different rules. Here's the area that still needs a lot of thinking - high level items.
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We're obliquely doing something like this with an artificer breaking down unused magic items and converting them to useful ones. It's a 3pp class, which is largely broken (but I'm not the DM who allowed it or the player of the artificer).
I think there should be some loss of value (5-10%) in the conversion process, but when a 4th level artificer can create a scroll of any 4th level spell with no chance of failure, item conversion is far from the biggest problem with the class.