On the crafting side, let him do it by the rules (strictly) and he will soon realise the profits aren't all they are cracked up to be.
On the XP front, keep the action moving and he won't want for it with all the foes that APs stuff down your neck. There are ways to break the game, what your player wants to do isn't one of them. Remember RAW is your friend here.
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No, that's absolutely the wrong way to handle this sort of guy. The right way is "You encounter nothing." meanwhile have a cool encounter for the rest of the party. Wash, rinse, repeat.He isn't being a jerk. He wants to try and get gold and xp. Let him try. The woods are dark and dangerous, and adventurers are delicious.
Could not disagree more. He isn't being a jerk. He doesn't know. He thinks this is a video game, he wants to play it like a video game, have the wizard wander out in the woods, roll the random encounter dice and let what happens happen.
He needs to learn this is a team game, and that he needs his party and that the GM isn't going to save him from himself when he enters cheat codes.
When you do things, things happen. You can't tell the player how to play the character, and if you prevent him from doing things, he'll feel like you are cheating him.
If you say "Ok, you want to go on a boar hunt alone. Let's go. You go to the woods alone (roll dice) and X wanders up"
Player "I was hunting boar!?!"
"Well, this place has random encounters, and you encountered X while you were looking for a boar. Roll initiative."
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Huh...I thought it was gaming. My friends must all be jerks...I didn't say not to play the game as written. I just said to talk about things out of game instead of resolving them ingame. You just want to argue with me I think.
Yes and no. I think a lot of your assumptions (and many other peoples, not just you) on the game are based on your table, where you seem to think what I consider normal consequences for player decisions are GM fiat and being mean.
While the GM should never be out to get players, the GM should always do what they think will happen based on what is going on in the game and what the players do.
If a player wants to go off into the dangerous woods alone to hunt boar, the way they learn that is a bad idea isn't you saying "no". It is you saying "yes" and things happening that make them realize "Oh, that is a bad idea."
Saying no is more of a fight with a player than saying yes.
No, that's absolutely the wrong way to handle this sort of guy. The right way is "You encounter nothing." meanwhile have a cool encounter for the rest of the party. Wash, rinse, repeat.He isn't being a jerk. He wants to try and get gold and xp. Let him try. The woods are dark and dangerous, and adventurers are delicious.
"Ok, so you're in the middle of the woods. Any ranks in survival? Any tracking skills? Nothing? Ok, you stay there all day and don't find anything."
He's not being a jerk, per se, or at least isn't from what I've read. He just has a different notion about how the game works. Talking to him is the best solution, as always.
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No, that's absolutely the wrong way to handle this sort of guy. The right way is "You encounter nothing." meanwhile have a cool encounter for the rest of the party. Wash, rinse, repeat.He isn't being a jerk. He wants to try and get gold and xp. Let him try. The woods are dark and dangerous, and adventurers are delicious.
"Ok, so you're in the middle of the woods. Any ranks in survival? Any tracking skills? Nothing? Ok, you stay there all day and don't find anything."
He's not being a jerk, per se, or at least isn't from what I've read. He just has a different notion about how the game works. Talking to him is the best solution, as always.
And to be clear, this isn't what I would advice for any new player who started. This guy went to the messageboards and ran into all our optimizer friends looking for tricks, loopholes and exploits. Saying no to him will likely lead to him being mad you are using "GM Fiat" against him.
How is he going to argue against literally following the directions in the AP on how to handle random encounters?
He is under the misconception that the people on the optimization messageboards are not talking out of their...uh...rear ends. This is how you show him that if he wants to be that guy, things happen. It isn't unfair, it isn't cruel, it is showing him that he needs to play well with others to succeed by letting him see what happens when he tries to solo the game.
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Ciretose, MrSin,
Girls girls, your both pretty (jk, just trying to defuse the tension :-) seriously though you're both right. The OP should begin with an open dialogue about the difference between a table top shared storytelling experience (liken it to writing a novel together) and video powergaming, if he refuses to get the point THEN move on to in game reality checks and LTDFWTM. Personally though I would jump on the opportunity to use him to start a Sandpoint Devil sidetrek. Also I would totally move to story based leveling instead of experience based, I started doing that about two years ago and have never enjoyed the game more.
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Here's another thing to the OP: Do not be passive aggressive with the player.
Just tell him straight up that if he intends to just sit around crafting magic items he is going to run out of money very fast with nothing to show for it but a bunch of magic items that he can sell for practically no profit. You need to remind him that he is currently in a nice but rather Podunk town that does not have nearly enough wealth or mercantile traffic to justify him crafting magic items to sell as though they were hot cakes.
Then, if he insists on crafting magic items, fine. At least you warned him.
Edit: Keirion beat me to it.
As for the experience grinding idea, I haven't run RotRL myself, so I don't know anything about it, but if the party has made any enemies during the course of their adventuring, splitting the party is a bad idea. Either his character gets offed, being all alone, or the rest of the party may have an encounter without him. In the second scenario, they'll probably garner more xp if they survive than he'd get on his own and will also quite possibly resent him for not being there when they needed him.
However, it is undesirable to allow this to become adversarial between GM and player. GMs always "win" such contests, if they really want to, but then everyone loses. Some players do need to be educated that RPGs are not like computer games, but it is better to do in conversation out of game, if at all possible. In game, if said education is via GM smackdown, the player will most likely (and understandably) take it personally. Better to point out some of the numerous rocks in the road for this plan of action and allow reassignment of feats if the player wants to go another way instead than to punish the player just for trying something.
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I solved this in my group with two simple statements:
1) I'll be leveling you up at the appropriate times in-story, so we won't be tracking individual XPs.
2) I'll make sure that you as a group generally obtain appropriate wealth per level.
2a)If you find some exploit that gives you extra money, I'll deduct that from random treasures to keep you at appropriate wealth per level.
2b)If you decide to give 5000gp to the little old lady that runs the orphanage, I'll generally add the 5,000gp to treasure found - eventually.
2c) If you try to bias things so that your personal PC has more wealth than the other PCs, I'll do a bunch of extra work to make sure that those lower on wealth get items only they can use, or they receive individual awards from specific NPCs, until things balance out - and I'll be grumpy from having to do the extra work, and I won't have as much time to spend making balanced encounters that are actually fun to play. So please don't go out of your way to make the DM grumpy.
Okay, so statement 2 isn't quite so simple to explain - but it's really easy to understand. A simpler phrasing:
2alt) For the game's math to work, I'll be keeping you all at appropriate wealth per level. Don't try to break the game, and in return, I'll make sure you find "appropriate" wealth even if you overlook something or you give away wealth to NPCs during role-playing.
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Sounds to me like this player is new-ish to tabletop games and hasn't fully grasped the concept yet. Something you might remind him if he is an avid WoW player is that WoW was built specifically so that every player could reach max level through solo play. Pathfinder is designed to be a group experience. If he wants to spend his time killing boars to get XP, let him try. But eventually he might piss off the other players and they will just leave him in town while they are off to do something as a group.
Boars in the the episode are worth 7xp a piece. So grant him that much. He might kill 1d6 a day, so 42 EXP max. He is then out of town for that day and out of your hair. 42 EXP is not a lot in the whole scheme of things. Roll 1d6 and multiply that times 7 for the EXP for the day. Now you are both happy. 42 EXP max a day while in town is nothing, and he wont be that far ahead of the leveling curb. You don't even need to play out the combats if you don't want to. It will help move things along.
A question I would be asking is why would a wizard go hunting for boars. A ranger makes sense, give the wizard EXP for studying in the library or something. Or give him bonuses to his knowledge skills for doing so if you don't like giving out bonus EXP.
Item creation takes time, and an initial capital investment. If this player is holding gold so he can make 10%, it is like putting it in a stock or something. The player will be holding onto materials rather than items which might be more useful to him. His power level is not increased by holding gold, only by having items meant for higher WBL.
Player can't buy the necessary materials.
So after that, the player wants a new way of getting materials. So you create a new method for the player to "disenchant" items. So he can take existing Magic items and follow the reverse process to get the build price in materials back. Say he has a 1k item, he could spend 1 day to get 500g worth of material. Maybe allow him to get his trait bonus for 600g, now he is still making a "profit" and has something else to do in his downtime (2k item would take 2 days for 1200g materials). Now it takes twice as long to make items, second artificial cap.
Now the vendor is back in stock, so the player buys more stuff. Well over time the vendor can order more and more materials from his profits. Now the player can buy more and more, but the vendor has decided that this business is so lucrative, he wants in. He hires another wizard to create items for sale. Now the supplier is a rival and will not sell to the player any longer.
Now the player is forced to find a new supplier, creating another artificial shortage of materials. Third artificial cap.
Maybe the vendor hires the player and pays him x% of the production cost. This give the player some extra revenue which you control.
You as the DM create the game world and interpret the rules. If a player wants to kill boars, let them. If he wants to make a profit, let him. You control the loot he gets so you control his wealth to begin with. If he wants to spend his time making items, sounds like a good way to spend downtime. Making 100g per day sounds pretty lucrative, but he might find less treasure in the future.
If the player is trying to be the best of the best, remind him that unlike a video game encounters will scale. Just because you are level 5, does not mean you wont face an Ancient Red Dragon. It just means you should probably run away. If he wants to out level encounters, not sure how he is going to do it in a game which is designed to adapt to the players current level of skill.
Let's see...
From what I've seen of RotRL he is unlikely to get much downtime for crafting, it's a fairly "urgent" AP time-wise - I'd just politely point out that the main plot develops independently of how the party is coming along and if they're dragging their heels then the odds are pretty good that they'll encounter the BBEG at say, level 12 instead of 19.
I did something similar to my party (though I implied the urgency of the AP in-game via NPCs, journals and the like instead of OOC). That lit a fire under my party's ass for sure - no 15 minute adventuring day there.
If anything they're slightly overextending themselves to make sure they get things done as fast as possible - Killing every enemy in Fort Rannick in a single encounter for instance ^^
That's just me and my party though, YMMV.
I don't necessarily think the crafting is the biggest issue here though - I feel like this is a player who has extensive experience with computer games but minimal experience with tabletop (VTT or plain) and thinks he can apply the same principles to both. I'd politely point out that there are significant differences, and that he should endeavor to 'play' the game, not 'game' it.
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He wants to risk his live to earn 600xp by killing a boar? I rolled for you on the Sandpoint Hinterlands Encounter Table and he runs into 3 rat swarms. That's a CR 5 for a 5th level wizard. On the plus side, if he wins it means he gets 1800 xp.
He wants to make 10% profit on magic items, instead of making magic items for himself and his party with a 50% discount? And he spent 2 feats and a trait to do that?
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@ Cintra Bristol
I like this. I may just have to adopt this at the start of next game. I'll add in the fact that Ultimate Campaign says that using item creation feats will put their WBL about 25% higher than normal for their level, so that will be a benefit for burning a feat slot on item creation feats.
@ Kudaku
They just finished Burnt Offerings and there's a bit of downtime before The Skinsaw Murders starts up. I gave them a month.
@ the David
The trait actually belongs to another player. He was going to have the player sell stuff for him.
@ everyone
Thanks for all your input, I think I know how I'll handle him for the most part. I'll let him have his cake and possibly even eat it, but I think he'll start to notice over time how inefficient it all is.
PS: oh, and someone said that it sounds like he's new to table top gaming. He actually has more than a couple campaigns of 4e under his belt. I'm sure that explains a lot for many of you.
Actually, random encounters can be a load of fun.
So next week the guy wants to do it again, and the party splits up because we weren't all interested in random encounters. Que two random encounters, one with a collasal worm(which involved a speak animal conversation(which involved "Do you speak baleen?", because someone joked it was a landwhale) and my character ended up soloing two creatures I knew nothing about because I was stuck in an obscuring mist. Lots of fun and heroics, two very different styles between the group that wanted to joke and the one that wanted a dark fantasy.
Was nice because the GM was prepared for a random encounter in case it happened, and everyone had fun and joined in on the socializing and joking around while we did our own thing.
Anyways, the point is you can make them fun. You can run them as a solo gig on a day less people show up(side quest!), or you can tailor them to the player, or just have an impromptu fun. Works better in a sandbox than an AP though. "Okay, you spend the next month hunting boars. Here's your xp" could be pretty boring. On the other hand having a short adventure Sunday after you play on Friday where the guy solo's boars using MMO mechanics with lots of lampshading and references could be loads of fun, or even "everyone goes into the forest... but then this happens!" could turn into an adventure.
Its not for everyone, but it can turn into a fun moment. The same GM in the example also had tables for what houses we were looting and was crazy prepared and ready for impromptu moments because it was a sandbox game. A GM running an AP and not interested in moving much around is probably not so prepared.
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@ the David
The trait actually belongs to another player. He was going to have the player sell stuff for him.
I'm not sure you understood what I was saying, so I'll try to explain it once more.
He wants to make a profit of 10 gp, on something that cost him 50 gp, while he could effictively get something for 50 gp that is worth 100 gp. He is wasting his time and money on a stupid scheme by losing 40%!
On a related note, don't ever lend him money!
I'm not sure if this had been brought up, but Sandpoint is a pretty small village when it comes down to it. They're not going to be able to afford to buy pointless magical items from a Wizard.
As for the XP thing, random encounters exist. Whenever the Wizard goes "I wanna hunt boars!" Random encounter the experience, sometimes he'll find his boars, sometimes he might find the Sandpoint Devil or Black Fang the Dragon who lives in the hinterlands.
@ the David
The trait actually belongs to another player. He was going to have the player sell stuff for him.I'm not sure you understood what I was saying, so I'll try to explain it once more.
He wants to make a profit of 10 gp, on something that cost him 50 gp, while he could effictively get something for 50 gp that is worth 100 gp. He is wasting his time and money on a stupid scheme by losing 40%!
On a related note, don't ever lend him money!
Nonsense. By that logic no one should ever sell anything. A profit is a profit.
Have you considered using the business downtime rules for his enterprise instead of the purchase / sale prices? It seems optimistic to assume that there's always a buyer available for whatever item he brews up on his spare time.
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@ the David
The trait actually belongs to another player. He was going to have the player sell stuff for him.I'm not sure you understood what I was saying, so I'll try to explain it once more.
He wants to make a profit of 10 gp, on something that cost him 50 gp, while he could effictively get something for 50 gp that is worth 100 gp. He is wasting his time and money on a stupid scheme by losing 40%!
On a related note, don't ever lend him money!
The guy's actually loaded IRL.
And I think there may be a miscommunication here. He's earning 10% PROFIT. Not revenue. He's not earning 10 gp for something that cost him 50 gp to make (a 100 gp item), he'd be making 60 gp, a 10% profit.
If he is investing 50 and deling for 60 isent that 20% profit?
And if i get it rigth it meens that he( and his buddy that can sell the stuff) can make 1000 gp in 10 days or 3000 in the month Down time you gave them. If he was crafting for the team it wut be a discount of 15000(500 pr Day) on weapons and wonderous items in the same time, yes?
Edit: spelling and sorry is on the phone.
Edit2: and days wasted on crafting for 100(or possibly 50) gp shared with a friend, is days without boar hunting.
If he is investing 50 and deling for 60 isent that 20% profit?
And if i get it rigth it meens that he( and his buddy that can sell the stuff) can make 1000 gp in 10 days or 3000 in the month Down time you gave them. If he was crafting for the team it wut be a discount of 15000(500 pr Day) on weapons and wonderous items in the same time, yes?
Edit: spelling and sorry is on the phone.
Lol yep, 10% of 50gp is 5gp so he'd be earning 55gp for something that took him 50gp to make.
He'd make more gold out adventuring and finding random treasure from the campaign than he will from sitting down all day every day doing nothing but crafting at that 10% profit margin. I'd make THAT very well known to him since there is a WBL table that AP's adhere to.
When you said the dude had a trait that allowed him to sell at 10% above market value, that pretty much told me what I needed to know about the player.
Just tell him that you have no desire to run a game of "Merchants and Markups" and that if he intends to play a character who spends all his time making stuff and selling it on the open market, he can find a new GM who wants to run that sort of game.
When you said the dude had a trait that allowed him to sell at 10% above market value, that pretty much told me what I needed to know about the player.
Just tell him that you have no desire to run a game of "Merchants and Markups" and that if he intends to play a character who spends all his time making stuff and selling it on the open market, he can find a new GM who wants to run that sort of game.
Totally disagree here. That's a stance I'd never take with a player and/or friend. It's basically a last resort to me. Keep it civil and keep communication open with the player, that's your best way of going about it, not being passive aggressive. Just my 2 cents though. Others may disagree with me and agree with the above quoted post.
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Magic item creation:
Honestly, with the limited time frame RotRL is on, I say this won't be a big problem. Make sure to give other players something fun to do and opportunities for profit while he's crafting.
On boar hunting:
I second ciretose's proposal of random encounters. HOWEVER, I think it is important to _tell the player beforehand_. If he says "I want to go into the forest to hunt boars", tell him "Okay, but the forests are dangerous and you are an alone mage. I'm not going to pull punches on you".
And if he encounters something you realize he won't be able to take, like 6 boars, tell him "You feel that this encounter is overpowering to you - you might want to consider running".
That way, he'll soon that boar hunting isn't always a good idea, but he can't really be mad at you for setting him up or going after him specifically, especially with the "double warnings".
ub3r n3rd, well, I've never been accused of being passive about anything. I believe in nipping bad ideas in the bud, and this, in my experience, is virtually certain to be a bad idea. In my experience as a GM and a player, a player who attempts to so blatantly exploit the crafting rules is almost certainly going to have expectations about how long they can spend crafting, when and where they can sell stuff and how much the rest of the party is going to have to accommodate their crafting needs.
Perhaps I am more blunt than most folks, but I would tell any player, and I would be more forthright and up front with a "friend", that this sort of thing isn't conducive to the style of game that I run, and I don't want to deal with a player complaining that they have taken feats and traits that have become useless because they can't spend weeks of downtime utilizing them while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
It's literally not the kind of game I run. So if you want to play that sort of character, knock yourself out. But find another GM.
The whole "sell for 50% of base price" is essentially the PC taking whatever it is they have to a pawn shop. IF (which you're not) you were running a game set in a major business area that had plenty of down time between adventures I could totally see the PC having his own shop where he could potentially sell his wares at around the same price as all the other merchants. You're not though, so do what everyone else said and let him know that.
As for WBL... I'm not terribly attached to it to the point where I'd delete appropriate wealth from encounters just to keep it where it "should" be. It's a nice guideline, but if they end up over a bit it doesn't seem like it would be the end of the world. Could be fun for you as you could throw out buffed encounters or play what you have without having to hold back.
As for the idea that he wants to grind XP, are you 100% sure he's not just messing with you and you took the comment seriously? Along the same lines that kind of thinking is why I prefer just not tracking it and just leveling whenever it is appropriate story wise.
ub3r n3rd, well, I've never been accused of being passive about anything. I believe in nipping bad ideas in the bud, and this, in my experience, is virtually certain to be a bad idea. In my experience as a GM and a player, a player who attempts to so blatantly exploit the crafting rules is almost certainly going to have expectations about how long they can spend crafting, when and where they can sell stuff and how much the rest of the party is going to have to accommodate their crafting needs.
Perhaps I am more blunt than most folks, but I would tell any player, and I would be more forthright and up front with a "friend", that this sort of thing isn't conducive to the style of game that I run, and I don't want to deal with a player complaining that they have taken feats and traits that have become useless because they can't spend weeks of downtime utilizing them while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
It's literally not the kind of game I run. So if you want to play that sort of character, knock yourself out. But find another GM.
We'll agree to disagree on the way to handle this sort of player. I'm much more tactful when it comes to how I approach my players/friends and gaming.
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Magic item creation:
Honestly, with the limited time frame RotRL is on, I say this won't be a big problem. Make sure to give other players something fun to do and opportunities for profit while he's crafting.On boar hunting:
I second ciretose's proposal of random encounters. HOWEVER, I think it is important to _tell the player beforehand_. If he says "I want to go into the forest to hunt boars", tell him "Okay, but the forests are dangerous and you are an alone mage. I'm not going to pull punches on you".
And if he encounters something you realize he won't be able to take, like 6 boars, tell him "You feel that this encounter is overpowering to you - you might want to consider running".That way, he'll soon that boar hunting isn't always a good idea, but he can't really be mad at you for setting him up or going after him specifically, especially with the "double warnings".
This. There is nothing wrong with being direct with your players and pointing out the dangers that their characters would know about. You should definitely tell the player out-of-game that his character probably would find it unwise to go tramping off alone in the woods to hunt boar...or anything really. After all, he's playing a wizard with high Intelligence and probably decent Wisdom. He's not a ranger or a druid. He's not role-playing an intelligent Wizard, he's meta-gaming.
Heck, at the very least he KNOWS that there are goblins out there! Goblins that he knows are vicious and would probably happily attack or ambush a wizard out by himself and cut his character to ribbons.
Heck, at the very least he KNOWS that there are goblins out there! Goblins that he knows are vicious and would probably happily attack or ambush a wizard out by himself and cut his character to ribbons.
I don't know about that... if I were a goblin and my friends and I decided to jump some dude in the middle of the forest and then he wiggled his fingers and a fiery explosion happened, I'd probably reevaluate our plan.
We'll agree to disagree on the way to handle this sort of player. I'm much more tactful when it comes to how I approach my players/friends and gaming.ub3r n3rd, well, I've never been accused of being passive about anything. I believe in nipping bad ideas in the bud, and this, in my experience, is virtually certain to be a bad idea. In my experience as a GM and a player, a player who attempts to so blatantly exploit the crafting rules is almost certainly going to have expectations about how long they can spend crafting, when and where they can sell stuff and how much the rest of the party is going to have to accommodate their crafting needs.
Perhaps I am more blunt than most folks, but I would tell any player, and I would be more forthright and up front with a "friend", that this sort of thing isn't conducive to the style of game that I run, and I don't want to deal with a player complaining that they have taken feats and traits that have become useless because they can't spend weeks of downtime utilizing them while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
It's literally not the kind of game I run. So if you want to play that sort of character, knock yourself out. But find another GM.
And yet somehow I am the go-to GM with my gaming groups, and I am always the first one contacted when a new game opportunity is available... Hmm... it's almost as if some people can talk to each other directly without making it personal.
We'll agree to disagree on the way to handle this sort of player. I'm much more tactful when it comes to how I approach my players/friends and gaming.And yet somehow I am the go-to GM with my gaming groups, and I am always the first one contacted when a new game opportunity is available... Hmm... it's almost as if some people can talk to each other directly without making it personal.
You both agreed to talk about it, just in different ways. No need to attack each other over agreeing right?
You both agreed to talk about it, just in different ways. No need to attack each other over agreeing right?We'll agree to disagree on the way to handle this sort of player. I'm much more tactful when it comes to how I approach my players/friends and gaming.And yet somehow I am the go-to GM with my gaming groups, and I am always the first one contacted when a new game opportunity is available... Hmm... it's almost as if some people can talk to each other directly without making it personal.
Seems like I'm not the one attacking here, or at least it certainly feels like I'm playing defense. It's Mr. Tactful above who seems to be doing the attacking. ;-)
Seems like I'm not the one attacking here, or at least it certainly feels like I'm playing defense. It's Mr. Tactful above who seems to be doing the attacking. ;-)You both agreed to talk about it, just in different ways. No need to attack each other over agreeing right?We'll agree to disagree on the way to handle this sort of player. I'm much more tactful when it comes to how I approach my players/friends and gaming.And yet somehow I am the go-to GM with my gaming groups, and I am always the first one contacted when a new game opportunity is available... Hmm... it's almost as if some people can talk to each other directly without making it personal.
Not trying to offend ya AD, just saying that different people take different approaches and sometimes being as blunt as you put forth can offend people. I'm not offended, just trying to have a conversation. I can disagree with you and you with me and I'm not trying to start a fight which is why I said we can agree to disagree. No name calling was applied or intended, but sometimes the text doesn't really tell you what someone is saying as really most of human communication is nonverbal. I apologize if you took offense.
I would use both approaches. Talk and in-game consequences.
“I wasn’t really wanting to play a shop keeper sim, it is supposed to be more of a knight errant group. But if you really want to do that I will try to work around it.
Ok, while the craftmeister is making the robe influence the noble commissioned, the rest of you are approached by a seedy looking guy that says he has a urgent job for you…”
My guess would be that after a few times of being uninvolved with the rest he will grow out of it. Even if he makes more money and is safer (lower xp) most will find it kinda boring.
I would use both approaches. Talk and in-game consequences.
“I wasn’t really wanting to play a shop keeper sim, it is supposed to be more of a knight errant group. But if you really want to do that I will try to work around it.
Ok, while the craftmeister is making the robe influence the noble commissioned, the rest of you are approached by a seedy looking guy that says he has a urgent job for you…”
My guess would be that after a few times of being uninvolved with the rest he will grow out of it. Even if he makes more money and is safer (lower xp) most will find it kinda boring.
Since this is almost certainly going to be the long-term result of the experiment, I'm fine with the player learning the lesson, but I've got more interesting things to do as a GM than teach this particular lesson. Again. Another GM can do it this time. I'm fine with that.
I apologize if you took offense.
Ah, the classic non-apology apology. Perfected by politicians around the world. Thanks at least for taking the effort to trot it out uber.
I'm not offended, I never get offended on these boards.
Amused? often.
Perplexed? Sometimes.
Irritated? Rarely
In game and in real life I'm a pretty direct and straightforward dude. Everyone says they really appreciate it and love how they don't have to wonder about what I mean because I say exactly what I mean.
Are they sincere? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not.
Huh... you know all of this talk about Merchants and Markups kinda' makes me want to play a Recettear type game. That might be fun in a sandbox style.
Huh... you know all of this talk about Merchants and Markups kinda' makes me want to play a Recettear type game. That might be fun in a sandbox style.
Makes me think of an Exalted game I'm in. The GM never ran it before so thought it would essentially be high powered DnD with us wandering around and getting in adventures... he tried to make that happen for a while until he realized that he would never get a combat because our party has literal god tier social skills. It's now mostly us sitting around plotting how to destroy our rivals economically or how to subjugate cities through silent bureaucratic coups. You can actually get a lot done in a four hour session if three hours of it aren't combat.
I apologize if you took offense.Ah, the classic non-apology apology. Perfected by politicians around the world. Thanks at least for taking the effort to trot it out uber.
I'm not offended, I never get offended on these boards.
Amused? often.
Perplexed? Sometimes.
Irritated? RarelyIn game and in real life I'm a pretty direct and straightforward dude. Everyone says they really appreciate it and love how they don't have to wonder about what I mean because I say exactly what I mean.
Are they sincere? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not.
Not from me it isn't. If I apologize I apologize, I never tell someone I'm sorry or that I do so if I don't mean it. So take it as it was intended or not, that's up to you. *shrugs*
Anyhow, glad you didn't take offense we can carry on with other parts of the conversation now and move on to giving our own forms of advice to the rest of the forum world out there.
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If he is investing 50 and deling for 60 isent that 20% profit?
And if i get it rigth it meens that he( and his buddy that can sell the stuff) can make 1000 gp in 10 days or 3000 in the month Down time you gave them. If he was crafting for the team it wut be a discount of 15000(500 pr Day) on weapons and wonderous items in the same time, yes?
Edit: spelling and sorry is on the phone.Lol yep, 10% of 50gp is 5gp so he'd be earning 55gp for something that took him 50gp to make.
He'd make more gold out adventuring and finding random treasure from the campaign than he will from sitting down all day every day doing nothing but crafting at that 10% profit margin. I'd make THAT very well known to him since there is a WBL table that AP's adhere to.
Yes, you're right. i was thinking 10% of the total price of the item, 100 gp.
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As for the idea that he wants to grind XP, are you 100% sure he's not just messing with you and you took the comment seriously? Along the same lines that kind of thinking is why I prefer just not tracking it and just leveling whenever it is appropriate story wise.
Yeah the idea was so absurd to me and he sounded so ridiculous that at first I thought he was joking. But...you have to meet the guy. He wasn't. I can't think of any other way to put it.
He says he plans to just keep making magic items so he can sell them for profit. I pointed out that he can only sell them for half the market value, which is exactly how much it costs to create one, resulting in a profit of nothing.
The player you describe is a problem, and I don't support his behavior, but the above drives me nuts every time I see it.
The RAI behind selling items for no more than half their market value is based on (a) the assumption that you're selling the item to a retailer who needs to make his own profit and (b) the item you're selling is most often second-hand.
If you craft a brand-new item yourself and sell directly to a consumer rather than a middle-man retailer, it's insane to believe that you can't sell it for the full market value. NPCs don't get to make more money than PCs for doing exactly the same work.
Not allowing PCs to sell newly crafted items directly to consumers for full price requires bizarre assumptions about the economy, like "All NPC crafters are members of the Crafters's Guild; no PCs are ever permitted to join, and PC crafters have to pay crimimally high taxes and fees on all crafted items sold because they aren't Guild members. This is the law in all lands and cultures throughout the game world."
Ok, so I'm running Rise of the Runelords for some first-time Pathfinder characters and for the first time ever I've had to be that jerk-wad GM that nay-says something simply "just because." There's a wizard in the party that is focusing on item creation and at 5th level he took both Craft Wondrous Item and Craft Magic Arms and Armor as his two feats. He says he plans to just keep making magic items so he can sell them for profit. I pointed out that he can only sell them for half the market value, which is exactly how much it costs to create one, resulting in a profit of nothing. He pointed out that he has a campaign trait that allows him to sell stuff at 10% higher the value it would normally sell for, meaning he'd earn 10% of his crafting in profit.
At this point I took him aside and revealed a bit "behind the curtain" so to speak, explaining what the Wealth By Level guidelines were. He didn't seem convinced. I'm trying to be a fair GM, but this guy plays this game like its a videogame, asking why when they have a day or two of downtime, why he can't go out in the wilderness to kill boars all day long to earn what he non-ironically calls "some phat XP-age."
Could I have handled this better? Has anybody run into this before? Any advice?
"Ok, you spend 3 weeks in Sandpoint trying to sell that hat you crafted while your bodies went off and got two levels."
Relixander:
If a DM disagreed with my gaming style and did something like that, it'd feel kind of like a passive aggressive way. I know I'd never do it that way to a player and I don't think any of my players would appreciate it.
That kind of nit-picking I think is far worse than right out telling.