| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
because the NPCs use their treasure! Ooooh, scary. :sOooooh shiiiiieet~~!!! Monsters who use items, rather than rupture into shinies upon defeat?! Forget about vital-striking Witchfires, no this -THIS- is the terror of the deep-darks of the world!! What possible chance could any adventurer have against monsters who are not comically swollen piñatas?!!?
This just went to the top of my "If I were going to get a tattoo" list. :P
I kind of want to run Wrath of the Righteous with some heavy editing by yours truly (basically killing the mythic taint with sacred fire).Sounds cool. I -would- ask what your thought is on Mythic, having not really read through it myself, but I'm guessing "killing the mythic taint with sacred fire" is not code for "giving the mythic writers a backrub".
-Nearyn
The sense motive is strong with this one. :3
Skullgirls Encore is just the name of the current version of the game (you know, the one you have on Steam). They had to change the name as if it were a different game because of some problem with their old publisher. I don't remember the details, but it got so bad that SG was unavailable at Xbox Live at one point.I want Xrd so badly! Bring it to Steam you monsters! Also, what's Skullgirls Encore? I just got Skullgirls on Steam and it comes with Endless Beta, but I've not heard of SG:E. :oNow I wanna play UMVC3...I wonder if it's on Steam. >_>It isn't. Nor will it ever be. Marvel pulled the distribution rights from Capcom, which is the main reason we never got a balance patch after the release of Ultimate (IIRC, you can't even buy DLC in PSN/Xbox Live anymore)...
Well... I guess I'll just have to keep playing Guilty Gear Xrd and Skullgirls Encore.
Bummer. I really want to get into Skullgirls. I've logged all of maybe 15 minutes on it. :(
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
monsters using the treasure in their treasure allotment to their advantage isn't even really a problem, as a player, it would motivate me to kill the enemy wizard faster so their familiar doesn't blow through the charges of that shiny wand i intend to loot. plus, it kills immersion when the monsters simply explode into gold coins like swollen Diablo style pinatas.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
because the NPCs use their treasure! Ooooh, scary. :sOooooh shiiiiieet~~!!! Monsters who use items, rather than rupture into shinies upon defeat?! Forget about vital-striking Witchfires, no this -THIS- is the terror of the deep-darks of the world!! What possible chance could any adventurer have against monsters who are not comically swollen piñatas?!!?
I kind of want to run Wrath of the Righteous with some heavy editing by yours truly (basically killing the mythic taint with sacred fire).Sounds cool. I -would- ask what your thought is on Mythic, having not really read through it myself, but I'm guessing "killing the mythic taint with sacred fire" is not code for "giving the mythic writers a backrub".
-Nearyn
Why are we still debating monster wealth? I already told you all how it works!
Bummer. I really want to get into Skullgirls. I've logged all of maybe 15 minutes on it. :(Skullgirls Encore is just the name of the current version of the game (you know, the one you have on Steam). They had to change the name as if it were a different game because of some problem with their old publisher. I don't remember the details, but it got so bad that SG was unavailable at Xbox Live at one point.I want Xrd so badly! Bring it to Steam you monsters! Also, what's Skullgirls Encore? I just got Skullgirls on Steam and it comes with Endless Beta, but I've not heard of SG:E. :oNow I wanna play UMVC3...I wonder if it's on Steam. >_>It isn't. Nor will it ever be. Marvel pulled the distribution rights from Capcom, which is the main reason we never got a balance patch after the release of Ultimate (IIRC, you can't even buy DLC in PSN/Xbox Live anymore)...
Well... I guess I'll just have to keep playing Guilty Gear Xrd and Skullgirls Encore.
You really should dedicate more time to it... It's a really, really good game... One of the best modern fighting games. And I don't say that lightly.
Valentine, Cerebella and Peacock FTW! And soon... Beowulf!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Aha! I actually played Skullgirls a ton. Ms.Fortune is da bomb though. Between Omnomnom 27 hit comboes and Wolverine references, whats not to like?!
i used to love playing a 3.5/pathfinder hybrid, until i realized, that savage worlds has a faster and smoother system and realized, that most Pathfinder APs can be run using a Savage Conversion without the majority of the filler, and get the story and danger across more smoothly
in fact, savage worlds, you could build a party of 4 melee characters with a D12 fighting and through different choices of edges and hindrances, make all 4 melee characters feel unique
as well, you can take a party of 4 characters with the arcane background edge as well as the bolt, blast and healing powers, and through trappings, choice of backlash and choice of restrictions through hindrances, make all 4 mages feel like very different characters. even though they each have 10 power points and the same 3 powers
i still look to pathfinder's community for adventure ideas, campaign conversion seeds or NPCs to propose to my Savage Worlds Storyteller because many of the NPCs or adventures could be applied to savage worlds by trimming the fat down to the important essence
pathfinder has great concepts for Adventure Paths, but too many rules and too much crunch to really make the story work, if there was a way to get the pathfinder adventure paths or even golarion, eberron or forgotten realms converted to savage worlds in a way that didn't require me to buy 6 books per adventure path, i would actually play the material. it isn't that converting pathfinder to savage worlds is hard, it is that it is expensive to do due to the price of pathfinder material compared to savage worlds material. if only there was a way for fellow reborn savages like myself to enjoy the wealth of pathfinder storylines without having to abandon our pet system. a form of pre written conversions in a form of mutual contract between pinnacle and paizo
i mean, both could benefit from licensed savage conversions of Paizo's APs because both would be getting a cut, and savage worlds is steadily growing in popularity where i live, i wouldn't say it outstrips pathfinder, but where i live, a lot of people have went savage because pathfinder is just too complicated a system and is too slow paced to really tell its own stories due to the sheer amount of rules for it that exist.
monsters who are not comically swollen piñatas?!!?
Aw, maaaaaan. I thought I'd made something original. :/
Well "your combats" and "monsters directly from the book" may not be the same thing so that may have been miscommunication.It could be, but I run monsters straight out of the bestiary most of the time.
-Nearyn
In that case we will have to agree to disagree. Yeah yeah, I know you stated that already. :)
That reminds me of when I was running Flight of the Red Raven for my brother and his friend and rolled a random encounter of 12 wolves. Humorously that fight actually did end pretty quickly because the psychic warrior had learned crystal swarm via a feat so my brother's PC drew their ire and she came up and sprayed the wolves. Didn't kill them but scared the crap out of them and made them run away.Heh, animals :P
Would you recommend Flight of the Red Raven?
-Nearyn
Overall, yeah, I'd say so. It was fun and the two players were having so much fun that we ended up playing a 12 hour marathon without realizing it (we started the module at 8pm, finished at 8am, then crashed). Beware though, because the NPCs use their treasure! Ooooh, scary. :s
The BBEG, a "monster" even uses a masterwork hammer and potions. D:
It's pretty cool though. I want to try running a few other modules in the near future (just been so busy working). I kind of want to run Wrath of the Righteous with some heavy editing by yours truly (basically killing the mythic taint with sacred fire).
I was thinking about getting that one. Thanks. :)
you can't buy a belt with +4STR +2DEX.Why can't you? EDIT: Besides being above the gp limit of a metropolis, I mean.
Why isn't a 22000gp magic item withing the base value of a metropolis? Even the "worst" metropolis' statblock (of Chessed) i have seen has a base value of 25600gp.
Anyway what i was saying is that this belt is a custom magic item item so you can't use the 75% chance rule in order to buy it. You can't get it randomly generated as loot. You can go to an NPC and try to order it but now we are getting into DM territory.
Dude, you literally said that you can't go out and buy used wands period, not that they can't be randomly generated.
Changing what you're arguing about when you realize it isn't working out for you is dishonest. Cut it out.
You're reading selectively, and generalizing where I was being specific.
The example that started this all was a guy going up to the DM and saying "I want to buy a wand with X charges."
You can't DO that. That's what I said. I admit it!
You can attempt to "buy a Wand". If the DM wants to roll for how many charges are remaining in that wand, that's fine. But the tables in the PFSRD are for fully charged items at lowest caster level, etc. He's in no way obligated to do so for you.
His reply was, well, then I'll ask for a wand of CLW with 1 charge, then a wand with 2 charges, then a wand with 3 charges. Those are all different items and they have a 75% chance EACH of appearing when you roll. In short, he's purely metagaming to get around the restriction he doesn't like, by assuming some small city has a 75% chance of any and every Wand type of every charge level from 1-50 floating around.
And I said, no. There's a 75% chance of there being a CLW wand available, and the DM may want to roll for how many random charges there are...but is perfectly RAW to rule that only fully charged Wands are available for sale.
The PC demanding a wand with x charges is the PC demanding a custom item, and you don't roll for custom items. The DM can roll up items with multiple uses (certainly possible to roll up swords with multiple enhancements, for instance), but those are the uniquely available toys guaranteed to be there. From a game mechanic viewpoint, there is no difference between a PC ordering a wand with 10 charges and a PC ordering a fully charged wand that uses 5 charges per spell, and cutting the cost thereby. They are the same thing.
If you want custom items outside core, you have to ORDER them. That's it, that's all. Just because you sell a wand with 18 charges doesn't mean a wand with 5 charges that you can just afford is available for you, and you can't 'keep rolling until I get one.'
==Aelryinth
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That reminds me of when I was running Flight of the Red Raven for my brother and his friend and rolled a random encounter of 12 wolves. Humorously that fight actually did end pretty quickly because the psychic warrior had learned crystal swarm via a feat so my brother's PC drew their ire and she came up and sprayed the wolves. Didn't kill them but scared the crap out of them and made them run away.Heh, animals :P
Would you recommend Flight of the Red Raven?
-Nearyn
Overall, yeah, I'd say so. It was fun and the two players were having so much fun that we ended up playing a 12 hour marathon without realizing it (we started the module at 8pm, finished at 8am, then crashed). Beware though, because the NPCs use their treasure! Ooooh, scary. :s
The BBEG, a "monster" even uses a masterwork hammer and potions. D:
It's pretty cool though. I want to try running a few other modules in the near future (just been so busy working). I kind of want to run Wrath of the Righteous with some heavy editing by yours truly (basically killing the mythic taint with sacred fire).
If you rewrite WotR like that, you should document it since going by the popular opinion in it's forum section people will kill for that rework. I certainly would.
makes one wonder why adventurers ever leave towns when they can generate neigh infinite amounts of wealth by simply asking the shop keeper if he has this or that magical trinket on hand.I'm a little confused as to how being able to buy items equates to infinite amounts of money. Since you buy at market price and sell at pawn price, doesn't that kind of mean that you need to go out and get loads of shwag to come back and buy goodies?
my PCs tend to gank any low level commoner stupid enough to have 1000s of gp worth of magic hanging out in their shop waiting for those nice adventurers to buy them for market price.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
my PCs tend to gank any low level commoner stupid enough to have 1000s of gp worth of magic hanging out in their shop waiting for those nice adventurers to buy them for market price.makes one wonder why adventurers ever leave towns when they can generate neigh infinite amounts of wealth by simply asking the shop keeper if he has this or that magical trinket on hand.I'm a little confused as to how being able to buy items equates to infinite amounts of money. Since you buy at market price and sell at pawn price, doesn't that kind of mean that you need to go out and get loads of shwag to come back and buy goodies?
And they deserve it too.
The rules for magic item purchase in town do not specify that items bought at market are fully charged, as far as I can see. In fact I would argue the default assumption is that most items that are bought and sold are used ones, for all the reasons brought up in this thread about adventurers finding and selling them, etc.
IMO then, the right answer to the question of a player asking for 1 charge, then 2 charges, then 3, etc., is to simply roll only once for the requested wand and then randomly determine how many charges the item has if it is available at all, just like any other time you find a wand.
If you want to be nice, you could house rule that common commodity wands like cure light wounds can always be found for sale fully-charged, or whatever, but I don't see any rules reason for that to be true by default.
(Note also that the rules for purchasing magic items are explicitly called out as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, and GM discretion is mentioned much more forcefully than in most places in the rules. In other words, players shouldn't necessarily come into the magic item purchasing system with the same expectations that they do with other parts of the rules.)
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
makes one wonder why adventurers ever leave towns when they can generate neigh infinite amounts of wealth by simply asking the shop keeper if he has this or that magical trinket on hand.
I'm a little confused as to how being able to buy items equates to infinite amounts of money. Since you buy at market price and sell at pawn price, doesn't that kind of mean that you need to go out and get loads of shwag to come back and buy goodies?
my PCs tend to gank any low level commoner stupid enough to have 1000s of gp worth of magic hanging out in their shop waiting for those nice adventurers to buy them for market price.
Heh. Heh-heh. Hah. Hahahah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH~! HOOOOOOO~! Man, what a stupid group of PCs. Wow. Heehee. Hooo~!
Thanks for the laugh! That was amazing!
Really, it's like they want the GM to destroy everything they've ever loved . It's kind of beautiful in it's own way.
And they deserve it too.
Eeeeheeheeheheheheh~! Yes. Deserve "it", they do, and, you know what they say, about reaping and sowing...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
we're talking generating those items, Ashiel, not the elementary math of figuring the cost per charge. I'm not being deceitful, I'm being quite direct. Trying to shuffle the argument off into 'it's this easy to calculate land' is more properly being deceitful. Do not make unfounded accusations like that, please.
The randomly generated treasure tables for towns do not include variant items. It's really quite simple that way. They most CERTAINLY do not include "I want a CLW Wand with 5 charges." At the very, very best and loosest interpretation, you see if the Item is available at all, and then you RANDOMLY see how many charges it has.
I'mma stop you right there.
I totally see where the miscommunication is coming from.
You're saying "the rules say you can acquire a magic item of up to X-value with % success, but don't allow you a method to generate specific charges of wands" which, after a fashion, is true.
The problem is this:
At the very, very best and loosest interpretation, you see if the Item is available at all, and then you RANDOMLY see how many charges it has.
This is false; as you've correctly pointed out, there are no rules on any sort of random generation tables to perform this function.
What they are saying is "the rules say you can acquire a magic item of up to X-value with % success, hence you can ask for a wand of B of Y-value (and thus by definition acquire a wand of less than full charges)" which is totally legit.
It just so happens that the method you find the value of a given wand is by how many charges it has compared to the total, hence the
See, Aelryinth, you're looking at it as the inverse of how the actual function goes, and stating that it doesn't work that way (which is absolutely correct), but that's because they use the statement of the inverse as a short-hand for the actual process, which is expressly covered by the rules.
The argument you have to be able to win to get the 'check for multiple charge levels' thing to work is that a wand of hold person (8 charges) and a wand of hold person (11 charges) are fundamentally different items in the sense that the 75% rule is talking about. I don't think you can make that argument in good faith.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The argument you have to be able to win to get the 'check for multiple charge levels' thing to work is that a wand of hold person (8 charges) and a wand of hold person (11 charges) are fundamentally different items in the sense that the 75% rule is talking about. I don't think you can make that argument in good faith.
They are different items in the same way a luck blade with 0, 1, 2, or 3 charges are different items. Now what's really going to blow your mind is caster level variance.
Take potions for example. A potion of shield of faith has a value ranging from 50 gp - 1000 gp. Your average small town (1,000 gp limit) has roughly 60 different potions of shield of faith at various caster levels (75% chance equates to roughly 3 of each item on average).
Then that same town has up to CL 10th potions of invisibility and roughly 30 different potions of invisibility.
That same town has roughly 12 CL 5th wands of fireball with 1-4 charges remaining, and roughly 6 CL 10th wands of fireball with 1-2 charges remaining.
That very same town has elixirs of vials for sell as well. The sort that give +10 bonuses to a skill for 1 hour, again with an average of about 3 each between restocks.
And the town has roughly 3 cloaks of resistance and quickrunner's shirts for sale.
Etc, etc, etc.
Minor magic items, especially consumables are not rare, nor are they intended to be. They are staples of the world itself. They can in many cases be the reason you do not need a dedicated party member playing a healbot. There is a wide trade of these things, especially these things that run out of batteries.
my PCs tend to gank any low level commoner stupid enough to have 1000s of gp worth of magic hanging out in their shop waiting for those nice adventurers to buy them for market price.
So what you're saying is your world doesn't make any sense. I mean, if the shopkeepers aren't actually prepared for would-be thieves then it doesn't matter if you have one magic item or thirty in the shop the PCs are going to take them (if the PCs are douchebags).
But the thing is, I'm pretty sure robbing a magic item artisan is a dangerous and incredibly stupid idea. Remember, the magic items that you can find are for an entire settlement. There's not one little shop that just has magic junk hanging on the wall (unless you want it to, I guess) that trades all the magic items. There are multiple dealers throughout the entire settlement with differing amounts of items.
Then there's the fact that anyone with the good stuff (especially permanent magic items) is going to have that junk guarded, and I don't mean by a couple of guards, I mean with magical wards. Your common garden variety artisan with Craft Wondrous Item can create resetting sentient magic traps. If you walk into the den of a dealer of magical potions, swords, and gizmos, and you start causing a problem it's likely that the entire building is about to make an attempt on your life that makes the Taxi Cab trick in Heavy Metal look like child's play.
And if you are high enough level to take said items despite the defenses, that loot didn't mean anything anyway. And you're probably playing an evil game. And you're now in a completely different adventure (trying to rob/sack a city) and the adventure changes appropriately.
The availability of wands and/or potions has 0% effect on how likely PCs are to turn into actual murder hobos and try to steal magic items. But if the GM has put even the slightest hint of thought into how he himself would protect the magic items he wished to sell, it would quickly become apparent that Grand Theft Magic is not the game you want to play.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you can Roll % for all posible wands with all thier posbile charges, then even a small and poor town have several dozen of thousans of GP in the form of wands.
Are you saying that RAW is silly sometimes? Who knew?!
Now, excuse me while my ice elemental dies of exposure to cold....
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(Or a succubus dies from disease...) >.>
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That small poor town has a base value of 1000 gold, which means it has a 75% chance of having at least one copy of every 3rd level scroll and 2nd level potion in existence. If you do the math, that is A LOT of money tied up in consumables.
The 75% rule exists purely as a convenience so GMs don't have to roll up every single item for a settlement. Don't expect it to make sense.
I would say you can buy partially charged wands.
The issue is that they would be used.
So you are going to a used magic item shop. That kind of market can be sketchy.
"Yeah this wand has like 7 charges!" - lemon
"This belt of disguise has only one disguise. But! It comes with an auto lock method to prevent it from falling off!"
Not that clear that it is indeed raw.If you can Roll % for all posible wands with all thier posbile charges, then even a small and poor town have several dozen of thousans of GP in the form of wands.Are you saying that RAW is silly sometimes? Who knew?!
Now, excuse me while my ice elemental dies of exposure to cold....
Are you saying that once you spend a charge of a wand it's physically impossible to sell it?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would say you can buy partially charged wands.
The issue is that they would be used.
So you are going to a used magic item shop. That kind of market can be sketchy.
"Yeah this wand has like 7 charges!" - lemon
"This belt of disguise has only one disguise. But! It comes with an auto lock method to prevent it from falling off!"
Honestly I don't really see how that sort of thing is going to be sketchy for long. Pissing off your customers by vending them cursed items and such in a world where an identify spell costs 10 gp is probably about as bad an idea for a vendor as stealing is for a consumer.
For example, most pawn shops are legit. Most places that sell used merchandise are legit. If they aren't, you can be certain that someone is going to find out quickly and they will lose sales.
Now wandering merchants or black market dealings might be a little different, especially if they're selling at below market prices. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is (peddling stolen merchandise, cursed or quirk items, etc), but that's more of a mini adventure than usual.
That small poor town has a base value of 1000 gold, which means it has a 75% chance of having at least one copy of every 3rd level scroll and 2nd level potion in existence. If you do the math, that is A LOT of money tied up in consumables.
The 75% rule exists purely as a convenience so GMs don't have to roll up every single item for a settlement. Don't expect it to make sense.
Well it's a myth that communities are filled with dirt poor citizens. Money flows around a lot. There's a reason why community centers are objects of desire to evil forces and would-be conquerors. There's a lot of people in a given population center.
In a small town has 1,100 people on average. If all of them are just peasant commoners with no ranks in a craft or profession skill (which they aren't, but we're lowballing here) then every week the town is generating 5,500 gp worth of income or 22,000 gp worth of income each month. In a year's time, the 1,100 commoners would collectively produce 264,000 gp worth of wealth.
Now of course, this is lowballing it because we're assuming that the average small town has nothing but untrained dweebs (like a bunch of slacker teenagers). Craft/Profession are class skills for commoners so assuming average stats and 1 rank invested in a thing, our result shoots up to 369,600 gp. Masterwork tools brings it to 422,400 gp / year.
Of course still, this is also lowballing it because not all the citizens are going to be 1st level commoners. Some might have some more levels. A 3rd level adept is all it takes to anchor the creation of wondrous items to a town as a profession, that or any gnome.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm saying that you can't expect/demand to find a wand with the exact amount of charges to fit your WLB (or whatever money you have)100% true.
It can happen, but there is nothing in the rules that say you will find them (or even roll % for it).
Mostly false. There's a 75% check.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
my PCs tend to gank any low level commoner stupid enough to have 1000s of gp worth of magic hanging out in their shop waiting for those nice adventurers to buy them for market price.makes one wonder why adventurers ever leave towns when they can generate neigh infinite amounts of wealth by simply asking the shop keeper if he has this or that magical trinket on hand.I'm a little confused as to how being able to buy items equates to infinite amounts of money. Since you buy at market price and sell at pawn price, doesn't that kind of mean that you need to go out and get loads of shwag to come back and buy goodies?
Yeah see, the problem with this is that you're assuming the shop owner is a commoner. In my campaigns anyone who buys or sells magical items are strong enough to have the items they are buying and selling; for example, in one setting I'm working on all of the really large and important magic item shops are part of a chain of stores called the Magic Mart. These stores are ran by the simulacrums of Magic Mart, a level 20 wizard lich. He is not a guy that you can just casually mess with. Need to protect that bottom line, after all.
I would say you can buy partially charged wands.
The issue is that they would be used.
So you are going to a used magic item shop. That kind of market can be sketchy.
"Yeah this wand has like 7 charges!" - lemon
"This belt of disguise has only one disguise. But! It comes with an auto lock method to prevent it from falling off!"Honestly I don't really see how that sort of thing is going to be sketchy for long. Pissing off your customers by vending them cursed items and such in a world where an identify spell costs 10 gp is probably about as bad an idea for a vendor as stealing is for a consumer.
For example, most pawn shops are legit. Most places that sell used merchandise are legit. If they aren't, you can be certain that someone is going to find out quickly and they will lose sales.
Now wandering merchants or black market dealings might be a little different, especially if they're selling at below market prices. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is (peddling stolen merchandise, cursed or quirk items, etc), but that's more of a mini adventure than usual.
That small poor town has a base value of 1000 gold, which means it has a 75% chance of having at least one copy of every 3rd level scroll and 2nd level potion in existence. If you do the math, that is A LOT of money tied up in consumables.
The 75% rule exists purely as a convenience so GMs don't have to roll up every single item for a settlement. Don't expect it to make sense.
Well it's a myth that communities are filled with dirt poor citizens. Money flows around a lot. There's a reason why community centers are objects of desire to evil forces and would-be conquerors. There's a lot of people in a given population center.
In a small town has 1,100 people on average. If all of them are just peasant commoners with no ranks in a craft or profession skill (which they aren't, but we're lowballing here) then every week the town is generating 5,500 gp worth of income...
You're being VERY simplistic on the economics there, Ashiel.
Like you said, money flows in a circle. A pays B, who pays C, who pays D, who buys from E, who gets from F, etc. It's the same 100 Gp, but it LOOKS like 3000 gp changing hands.
The actual production of the community is probably much, much less, i.e. the gold piece limit. Those who can create wealth from 'nothing' (extractive industries like mining, hunting, fishing...and making magic items!) are the only ones who are actually 'making money'. Everyone else is being paid by what the first economy produces (i.e. things for services).
Because that gold is spinning around so much, moving even a little into or out of the economy can have an outsize effect on it, as people stop spending and liquidity drops.
So, the true gold value of that town is way, way less, and no, I don't think an average small city is going to have a 75% chance of each of 1-50 chgs wands of every level 1 spell. I really don't.
==Aelryinth
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I seriously think Nicos (and Aelriynth, and a few others) wants to ensure martials do not get nice things.
When you take away the default assumptions of the availability of consumable items, they increase the necessity that PCs must absolutely have full-casters in their groups to succeed. In standard Pathfinder, a clever party of martials and/or 2/3 casters can convert treasures into problem solving consumables.
Don't have a cleric? Well a potion of lesser restoration and delay poison are 50 gp. You get cursed? Well potions of remove curse start at 750 gp and go to 3,000 gp. Same with heroism for those adventures later on when you really need to share the buffing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have no problem with individual potions and rolling for them, so please keep your opinions about what I think to yourself. It's insulting. It's the same thing as me saying "I think Ashiel just wants to cater to spellcasters and make the game easier for them." It's not complimentary, it's based on a hostile opinion of the poster who disagrees with you, and it's probably flat out wrong.
So, stop it.
If they want special stuff, ORDER IT. It's not 'right there', but it can be there in a day or two, as long as anyone who can make it is around.
I.e. treat it like any other custom item you want.
Just don't cater to the minmaxer who wants immediate gratification by leveraging wordage into cost savings for himself on the instant.
==Aelryinth
Like you said, money flows in a circle. A pays B, who pays C, who pays D, who buys from E, who gets from F, etc. It's the same 100 Gp, but it LOOKS like 3000 gp changing hands.
The actual production of the community is probably much, much less, i.e. the gold piece limit. Those who can create wealth from 'nothing' (extractive industries like mining, hunting, fishing...and making magic items!) are the only ones who are actually 'making money'. Everyone else is being paid by what the first economy produces (i.e. things for services).
Except it actually produces material of value because costs are assumed in the check which all feed back into the ever growing machine. Remember that when you use your check it assumes profits with expenses covered already.
One farmer produces 5 gp worth of wheat. The baker then produces 5 gp worth of baked goods. It's not the same gold pieces, an increase has occurred because the farmer made 5 gp and then the baker made a profit of 5 gp.
The miner mines 5 gp worth of iron, then the smith makes 5 gp worth of profits from that iron.
Well it's a myth that communities are filled with dirt poor citizens. Money flows around a lot. There's a reason why community centers are objects of desire to evil forces and would-be conquerors. There's a lot of people in a given population center.In a small town has 1,100 people on average. If all of them are just peasant commoners with no ranks in a craft or profession skill (which they aren't, but we're lowballing here) then every week the town is generating 5,500 gp worth of income...
5500 gp per week is very low.
If you take every wand from 1 to 50 charges, that's 1275 charges. Multiplying by 15 gp per charge, that's 19,125 gp worth of wands just for 1 type of 1st level spell. If you multiply by the 75% chance of each type wand appearing, that's 14,344 gp of just 1 type of wand floating around the town.
So it would take roughly 3 weeks of economic activity to produce just 1 type of 1st level wand. Now considering there are probably over 100 1st level spells in the Pathfinder system, it's pretty silly to suggest that small towns can really have that many partially charged wands floating around.
It gets even more absurd when you consider what the likely rate of turnover is in terms of inventory given the default assumptions of wealth and level distribution of characters. We're talking about businesses that would have to be maintaining more value in inventory than they are likely to move in 20 years of business. (And amusingly it gets even sillier every time a new book comes out...)
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Minmaxer
[min-maks-ur]
noun
1. someone who plays the game in a way I don't like
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm saying that you can't expect/demand to find a wand with the exact amount of charges to fit your WLB (or whatever money you have). It can happen, but there is nothing in the rules that say you will find them (or even roll % for it).
Just to clarify, you are saying the following is not true?
The number and types of magic items available in a community depend upon its size. Each community has a base value associated with it (see Table: Available Magic Items). There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale with little effort in that community.
(Found here.)
Because that's the implication of your statement.
Of course you can't fit your WLB or whatever money you have.
You can have a 75% chance to find an appropriately-valued magic item, which includes wands at reduced charges, as defined by Charges, Doses, and Multiple Uses:
Many items, particularly wands and staves, are limited in power by the number of charges they hold. Normally, charged items have 50 charges at most (10 for staves). If such an item is found as a random part of a treasure, roll d% and divide by 2 to determine the number of charges left (round down, minimum 1). If the item has a maximum number of charges other than 50, roll randomly to determine how many charges are left.
For an item that's worthless when its charges run out (which is the case for almost all charged items), the value of the partially used item is proportional to the number of charges left. For an item that has usefulness in addition to its charges, only part of the item's value is based on the number of charges left.
Hence, if a wand with an explicit charge number is a is valued within a community's base value, there is a 75% chance that said wand is available.
This is due to the nature of abstraction.
For some (like Aelrynth*), this is immersion-breaking. This is understandable.
The problem, however, is that by denying this abstraction, you are fundamentally changing the rules for your own preferences. This is, of course, okay for individual games. That's not really the point, though, as the rules support the abstraction for ease of game play.
It's the same reason we use hit points, AC, the common tongue, and a constant gold/silver/copper standard wherever you go. It makes the game playable more than immersive.
(Of course, the rules mostly support a viable world in and of themselves, with it's own rules and elements strictly and niftily defined, but there are those rare points where the rules just go, "Aguuuuuhh-...duh?" instead.)
At any rate, it's pretty conclusive: this is how it works. You may choose to change things and alter how it works for your game (or insist on reading English in a very nonstandard way), but that's your option.
* As shown by:
You're being VERY simplistic on the economics there, Ashiel.
Like you said, money flows in a circle. A pays B, who pays C, who pays D, who buys from E, who gets from F, etc. It's the same 100 Gp, but it LOOKS like 3000 gp changing hands.
The actual production of the community is probably much, much less, i.e. the gold piece limit. Those who can create wealth from 'nothing' (extractive industries like mining, hunting, fishing...and making magic items!) are the only ones who are actually 'making money'. Everyone else is being paid by what the first economy produces (i.e. things for services).
Because that gold is spinning around so much, moving even a little into or out of the economy can have an outsize effect on it, as people stop spending and liquidity drops.
So, the true gold value of that town is way, way less, and no, I don't think an average small city is going to have a 75% chance of each of 1-50 chgs wands of every level 1 spell. I really don't.
If they want special stuff, ORDER IT. It's not 'right there', but it can be there in a day or two, as long as anyone who can make it is around.
I.e. treat it like any other custom item you want.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcept that this is actively prevented by the rules here.
(When an item is created, it is fully charged.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's the same 5 gp, you're doing it backwards, and ignoring cost of materials.
The farmer made 5 gp of wheat, and sold it for 5 gp. The merchant recoups his money by charging for a service, and charges 10 gp for the bread made out of the wheat, so he can then spend 4 gp on living expenses and 5 sp on a new pair of shoes and squirrel away 5 sp to get a new roof...which he also has to pay someone for.
The farmer, in turn, has 5 gp, period. He spends it on exactly the same things as the baker, modified by circumstance. He may have to pay for new wheat seed, if he doesn't set some aside himself, but he effect took something out of the ground and sold it for money. extractive industry, creating money. Mining does the same thing.
Just like if you take gold out of the ground and get paid, the value of that gold is exactly the amount of labor and upkeep required to bring it out of the ground, because the gold paid to the miners the miners turn right around and pay for food, equipment and all the good stuff.
I got a masters in Economics, so you're on my ground here, Ashiel. And do keep in mind I'm shooting down your 'creates 000's of gp' argument here, which implicitly seems to say they could then spend all that money on magic items...which is totally untrue. Buying magic items tends to remove gold from play for the town, because magic swords don't make more money, and aren't usually that liquid to be traded. Tying up 1000 gp in a sword is 1000 gp that is not flowing around the rest of the town. Especially if you can't sell the thing right NOW.
meh.
==Aelryinth
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
actually, that 5500 GP per week from a community of untrained commoners isn't literal gold coins, but the income they produce in the form of trade goods per week by taking 10 on untrained profession checks. an untrained teenage housewife and apprentice isn't making a literal 5 gold coins per week in the sense of cash, she is sewing 5 gold coins worth of cheap clothes per week to use for her family or trade among her peers or canning 5 gold coins worth of cheap jelly per week. being trade goods, they are considered to be equivalent to gold coins for the purpose of trade, but in reality, they aren't proper gold coins, but product.
If they want special stuff, ORDER IT. It's not 'right there', but it can be there in a day or two, as long as anyone who can make it is around.
I.e. treat it like any other custom item you want.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcept that this is actively prevented by the rules here.
(When an item is created, it is fully charged.)
Exxxxcept you can make a wand that uses multiple charges per casting, which in effect allows you to make 1, 2, 5, 10, 25 and 50 charge wands, shrinks the price proportionately, and is also part of the rules.
So, yeah, a 7 charge wand I want I want isn't likely. But if you want to commission it, a 5 charge wand is perfectly doable, using 10 charges per casting.
But is one just going to be sitting around for sale? No, it's a non-standard item. Commission it.
==Aelryinth
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have no problem with individual potions and rolling for them, so please keep your opinions about what I think to yourself. It's insulting. It's the same thing as me saying "I think Ashiel just wants to cater to spellcasters and make the game easier for them." It's not complimentary, it's based on a hostile opinion of the poster who disagrees with you, and it's probably flat out wrong.
So, stop it.
Hahahahaha. Go ahead, say that. Everyone knows outright that it's wrong. Everything that everyone says is broken about anything that I have ever advocated has been in support of martials. Consumables, not only being RAW, help martials. Getting your inherent mods? Helps martials more than casters. Simulacrum is OP? Hell yeah, here's an alternate version I recommend to make casters less bonkers. Please do, I want to see you do it. I'll go dig up a ton of my posts where I'm talking about the core martials being good (barbarian, paladin, ranger) and worthwhile and showing mechanical evidence as to why they are worth having.
For the record, I do not have a hostile opinion of you. In fact, I said to a friend of mine who also frequents these boards that most of the time you were pretty on the level about things. What I do dislike about a lot of your posts is the blatant dishonesty where you claim a thing works a certain way and just keep repeating it without citing anything and lately you have done this more and more frequently, which has has progressively driven my average opinion of your posts down because I don't like being lied to and I dislike it when I see people lying to other people.
It's not my idea of fun to see you post something and know I'm probably just going to end up rolling my eyes back in frustration because you're making unfounded claims again. I used to look forward to reading your posts even back on GITP (unless there's another Aelryinth). I remember that long ago you used to actually reference stuff.
If they want special stuff, ORDER IT. It's not 'right there', but it can be there in a day or two, as long as anyone who can make it is around.
I.e. treat it like any other custom item you want.
It's not a custom item.
Just don't cater to the minmaxer who wants immediate gratification by leveraging wordage into cost savings for himself on the instant.
==Aelryinth
Cost savings? It doesn't make it cheaper, it just means you find it more often. That's obvious enough.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
the only thing really cheaper about it is the fact you don't need to worry about the excess charges you don't intend to use on low level buffs intended to improve martial performance.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If they want special stuff, ORDER IT. It's not 'right there', but it can be there in a day or two, as long as anyone who can make it is around.
I.e. treat it like any other custom item you want.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeexcept that this is actively prevented by the rules here.
(When an item is created, it is fully charged.)Exxxxcept you can make a wand that uses multiple charges per casting, which in effect allows you to make 1, 2, 5, 10, 25 and 50 charge wands, shrinks the price proportionately, and is also part of the rules.
So, yeah, a 7 charge wand I want I want isn't likely. But if you want to commission it, a 5 charge wand is perfectly doable, using 10 charges per casting.
But is one just going to be sitting around for sale? No, it's a non-standard item. Commission it.
==Aelryinth
I would like a citation for wands that use multiple charges.
I am looking for it and all I see is
To create a magic wand, a character needs a small supply of materials, the most obvious being a baton or the pieces of the wand to be assembled. The cost for the materials is subsumed in the cost for creating the wand: 375 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster. Wands are always fully charged (50 charges) when created.
The creator must have prepared the spell to be stored (or must know the spell, in the case of a sorcerer or bard) and must provide any focuses the spell requires. Fifty of each needed material component are required (one for each charge). Material components are consumed when work begins, but focuses are not. A focus used in creating a wand can be reused. The act of working on the wand triggers the prepared spell, making it unavailable for casting during each day devoted to the wand's creation. (That is, that spell slot is expended from the caster's currently prepared spells, just as if it had been cast.)
Crafting a wand requires 1 day per each 1,000 gp of the base price.
Item Creation Feat Required: Craft Wand.
Skill Used in Creation: Spellcraft, Craft (jewelry), Craft (sculptures), or Profession (woodcutter).
and
A wand is a thin baton that contains a single spell of 4th level or lower. A wand has 50 charges when created—each charge allows the use of the wand's spell one time. A wand that runs out of charges is just a stick. The price of a wand is equal to the level of the spell × the creator's caster level × 750 gp. If the wand has a material component cost, it is added to the base price and cost to create once for each charge (50 × material component cost). Table: Wands gives sample prices for wands created at the lowest possible caster level for each spellcasting class. Note that some spells appear at different levels for different casters. The level of such spells depends on the caster crafting the wand.
Activation: Wands use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a wand is usually a standard action that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. (If the spell being cast has a longer casting time than 1 action, however, it takes that long to cast the spell from a wand.) To activate a wand, a character must hold it in hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures) and point it in the general direction of the target or area. A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole.
A charged item that used more than one charge would be a wondrous item I believe, not a wand.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I got a masters in Economics, so you're on my ground here, Ashiel.
Too bad you don't have a masters in physics so you can tell me how crazy everything else is.
In Pathfinder it most definitely is not the same 5 gp because it's not an economics simulator and never has been and probably never should be. When you make a Craft or Profession check you literally produce some measure of gain because they assume your result in GP is profits. Which means that those professions that are creating the base money are feeding the machine.
If you have 30 untrained miners, they produce 150 gp worth of value per week. Which lays the groundwork for other professions that create things from the ore acquired. They purchase their materials (trade goods) and then produce further profits. But each time there is a profit gained which means new worth is being produced, even if the new worth is not explicitly in increased mass (in much the same way that a wizard can simply take 1,000 gp worth of gems and turn it into 3,000 gp worth of gems).
The average cost of living is 10 gp / month. 50% of what the average person makes using untrained craft checks. That includes common taxes, which means that a % of that amount is going towards nobles who are going to then use large quantities of that money to pay guards and live extravagant lifestyles.
Is it a perfect map of reality? No. But then again, neither is anything in this game.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You can't point those rules and demand that you create "x" or "y" item, or actually you can but that is not indicative of a nice player.
A nice player doesn't demand anything. However there is nothing different from creating a magic item by the rules and the GM allowing it than there is buying the APG and having the GM allowing items out of that. Likewise, consumables are not custom magic items.
We all know that everything is within the purview of the GM. How the GM chooses to wield that power is the scale on which he or she is weighed.
Likewise, I find you guys' stance on this to be very verisimilitude shattering. To think that every magic item on sale is somehow brand new would mean that there are just millions of magic items out there floating around because all those items you purchase in population centers are fresh off the presses rather than being lots of used magic items being traded around with a smattering of new ones joining the mix occasionally.