Taxes and selling magic items (house rule pondering)

[blargney the second]

I'm looking at tweaking some of the kingdom building rules to achieve a few effects.

1) Selling magic items. It feels weird to me that the rulers can sell a shop owner's magic items at full value to raise BPs. I've been reading other DMs' advice that the math can get out of hand pretty quickly, so there's some rebalancing I'd like to do.

2) Taxation. The default implementation of taxation edicts leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed. It also seems like that the heaviest tax brackets should cause some unrest.

Proposal: In addition to the Economy/Loyalty effects of the various taxation levels, they also impose a sales tax on magic item sales. At the higher levels, it can be a monthly source of unrest. Here's a possible tax table to accomplish this.

Taxation levels:
None. +0 Economy, +1 Loyalty, 0% of income from sale of magic items.
Light. +1 Economy, -1 Loyalty, 10% of magic items.
Normal. +2 Economy, -2 Loyalty, 20% of magic items.
Heavy. +3 Economy, -4 Loyalty, 30% of magic items, +1 Unrest per month.
Overwhelming. +4 Economy, -8 Loyalty, 40% of magic items, +2 Unrest per month.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about this idea!
-blarg

[wraithstrike]

Even without selling magic items the BP can get really high. All they have to do is know which buildings to build. My players never sold items to raise BP, and had a crazy amount of BP.

[tarcandor]

blargney the second wrote:

I'm looking at tweaking some of the kingdom building rules to achieve a few effects.

1) Selling magic items. It feels weird to me that the rulers can sell a shop owner's magic items at full value to raise BPs. I've been reading other DMs' advice that the math can get out of hand pretty quickly, so there's some rebalancing I'd like to do.

2) Taxation. The default implementation of taxation edicts leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed. It also seems like that the heaviest tax brackets should cause some unrest.

Proposal: In addition to the Economy/Loyalty effects of the various taxation levels, they also impose a sales tax on magic item sales. At the higher levels, it can be a monthly source of unrest. Here's a possible tax table to accomplish this.

Taxation levels:
None. +0 Economy, +1 Loyalty, 0% of income from sale of magic items.
Light. +1 Economy, -1 Loyalty, 10% of magic items.
Normal. +2 Economy, -2 Loyalty, 20% of magic items.
Heavy. +3 Economy, -4 Loyalty, 30% of magic items, +1 Unrest per month.
Overwhelming. +4 Economy, -8 Loyalty, 40% of magic items, +2 Unrest per month.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about this idea!
-blarg

interesting idea, going to keep that in mind. I'm not yet at the kingdom building phase (still running book 1). My planned experiment for keeping the system in check: do not tell the players which building does what. I'm going to let them decide what they want in their town, without telling them the cost, benefits and drawbacks of each building. There's going to be an NPC advisor to keep things within limits, so the development of the town should be completely based on roleplay and campaign logic, not about min-maxing the system.

[M P 433]

We're starting book 3, and I've found that the "selling items" phase is essential to build BPs in the early going, and we've agreed to not exploit building a district just to maximize item sales.

@tarcandor: We're playing our game as you're thinking and it works. My players do not get info on what a building does, only the cost and building requirements. They love not knowing what each building does until after they build it and feel it more captures the feel of starting a kingdom. They build what they think the town needs and get an idea off what they build what should go next. I use the NPCs on the council to give an annual or bi-annual assessment of what they think the place needs. It was very slow going at first because the economy was sluggish, but they figured it out, much like novice rulers might.

For game terms, I've declared that magic item sales aren't the cause of the influx of BPs, and it makes no sense the kingdom would "steal" the profits of the shopowner, as it looks on paper.

Rather, the party has a unique shop or building that brings in a lot of traffic and interest (all our buildings that generate magic items have a background). Travelers coming to invest in rare elven furniture may spend money in taverns, or donate to the temple, etc., and the kingdom benefits. To give randomization to the mechanics behind the attention of these particular buildings, we use the item economy rules as written, but again I prefer to reword what it actually represents. Of course, there's only so much money that comes in, so the limited sale per district represents this mechanic.

As to taxation, unrest can quickly decimate a kingdom, as it adds to the DC of all rolls, and a random event can jump this higher. You may want to add a Stability penalty instead.

[LordClammy]

I had a similar thought but went at it a little differently. here is what I did:

based on tax level this is how much the kingdom taxes magic item sales (numbers are in BPs):

based on taxes: Minor/Medium/Major
None: 0/0/0
Light: 0/.5/1
Normal: 0/1/2
Heavy: .5/2/4
Overwhelming: 1/4/8

this has worked out great without breaking my economy.