I really like downtime and business management, but other people are not me and probably won't appreciate that being the core system.Sure. But based on my experience in Pathfinder Society (which I believe to be widespread based on forum posts at the time) the vanity options were quite popular. And for those who don't want it, they can ignore it or stockpile it for free raise deads. Or use it as an economy to manage retraining.
Also, a lot of adventures won't have downtime breaks so having item exchanges requiring downtime will put an additional penalty on parties on top of them being unable to access crafting and the like. A good GM could just be sure to give their players the items they need (which is what many GM's ultimately opt), but as others have said, those GM needs to be taught what items and rewards are necessary/fun/fair.What I would envision is something like this:
LARGE SUMS OF GOLD AND MAGIC ITEMS
Expensive magic items are typically custom made due to the limited people who can afford them. However an enchanter is able to live a very comfortable life off the production of magic items, even if they only sell a handful of them across their entire lives. Given this, the expensive materials required to create magic items and the years of study necessary to gain the knowledge, enchanters are seldom motivated to lower the prices of their goods to make them more affordable.Given the above, there are very few people who are willing to buy magic items that they haven't specifically commissioned. Most of the time it will be a city or country's leaders (whether they be nobles, politicians, religious leaders or even the town mayor) who are willing to purchase such items and then hold onto them for many years or sell them to a merchant for a fraction of their true value. However given the expense of such items, these leaders are loathe to actually pay in gold as it would quickly pauper them. Instead they typically take magic...
That does solve the problem of runaway cash piles from loot and it solves it in a similar way to just making sell rates be 1/10th their base value.
Also, if I may speak towards your fighter-with-greatsword example:
I think the fighter finding two good greatswords is not the problem. The problem is when the fighter finds a good greatsword and a good bow and sun glasses that makes him immune to blind effects and a good magical sleeveless shirt that shows off his muscles just right. You end up with a situation where the "natural" loot from an encounter or adventure distorts a player's power by a significant amount larger than that of his fellows. Under the current system (1/2 value sells), the difference between a random party member and my hypothetical lucky fighter is much lower when compared to the 1/10 item sale system of starfinder or a system where selling magic items is difficult/impossible.
Maybe that is a lesser evil though.
I really like downtime and business management, but other people are not me and probably won't appreciate that being the core system.Sure. But based on my experience in Pathfinder Society (which I believe to be widespread based on forum posts at the time) the vanity options were quite popular. And for those who don't want it, they can ignore it or stockpile it for free raise deads. Or use it as an economy to manage retraining.
Also, a lot of adventures won't have downtime breaks so having item exchanges requiring downtime will put an additional penalty on parties on top of them being unable to access crafting and the like. A good GM could just be sure to give their players the items they need (which is what many GM's ultimately opt), but as others have said, those GM needs to be taught what items and rewards are necessary/fun/fair.What I would envision is something like this:
LARGE SUMS OF GOLD AND MAGIC ITEMS
Expensive magic items are typically custom made due to the limited people who can afford them. However an enchanter is able to live a very comfortable life off the production of magic items, even if they only sell a handful of them across their entire lives. Given this, the expensive materials required to create magic items and the years of study necessary to gain the knowledge, enchanters are seldom motivated to lower the prices of their goods to make them more affordable.Given the above, there are very few people who are willing to buy magic items that they haven't specifically commissioned. Most of the time it will be a city or country's leaders (whether they be nobles, politicians, religious leaders or even the town mayor) who are willing to purchase such items and then hold onto them for many years or sell them to a merchant for a fraction of their true value. However given the expense of such items, these leaders are loathe to actually pay in gold as it would quickly pauper them. Instead they typically take magic...
I like this. Using a meta-currency like "downtime points" to handle the trade in magic items, land deals and such would definitely be preferable to gold, at least for me.
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Also, if I may speak towards your fighter-with-greatsword example:
I think the fighter finding two good greatswords is not the problem. The problem is when the fighter finds a good greatsword and a good bow and sun glasses that makes him immune to blind effects and a good magical sleeveless shirt that shows off his muscles just right. You end up with a situation where the "natural" loot from an encounter or adventure distorts a player's power by a significant amount larger than that of his fellows. Under the current system (1/2 value sells), the difference between a random party member and my hypothetical lucky fighter is much lower when compared to the 1/10 item sale system of starfinder or a system where selling magic items is difficult/impossible.Maybe that is a lesser evil though.
Well, the GM still has to do some work. If one party member is getting a disproportionate share of the rewards, part of the GM's job is to make sure other people in the party get their fair share too. Even if running out of a module, you can replace one item with another, or just change the magic sword into a magic flail.
Well, the GM still has to do some work. If one party member is getting a disproportionate share of the rewards, part of the GM's job is to make sure other people in the party get their fair share too. Even if running out of a module, you can replace one item with another, or just change the magic sword into a magic flail.Also, if I may speak towards your fighter-with-greatsword example:
I think the fighter finding two good greatswords is not the problem. The problem is when the fighter finds a good greatsword and a good bow and sun glasses that makes him immune to blind effects and a good magical sleeveless shirt that shows off his muscles just right. You end up with a situation where the "natural" loot from an encounter or adventure distorts a player's power by a significant amount larger than that of his fellows. Under the current system (1/2 value sells), the difference between a random party member and my hypothetical lucky fighter is much lower when compared to the 1/10 item sale system of starfinder or a system where selling magic items is difficult/impossible.Maybe that is a lesser evil though.
True enough. It can be hard to see who is ahead and behind, though.
There is also an issue of a character falling behind in gear strength because they were frivolous with their cash and consumables vs. those players that saved every penny.
I will say that making fair adjustments can often end up taking more than trivial amounts of work.
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I remembered the exact game I was thinking of:
Spellbound Kingdoms.
That is a game where every item has a separate wealth level and a quality level. Wealth level is a measure of availability while quality is a level of efficacy.
In that system, players have the option to invest their gold in a business or something like that which gives them reliable access to items of certain wealth level (I believe they have access to 2 items equal to their wealth levels and then two items for each level bellow that). The wealth level system is neat because it could give item-based classes like alchemist (or maybe something like an "engineer" or "artificer) access to a reliable pool of items and also gives the GM new ways of "attacking" their characters socially.
I am not sure if something like this fits Pathfinder but that is a REALLY cool system in my opinion.
I don't think it would mean moving the sun and moon to implement in some form with 2E (or even added to Starfinder) since we already know the game has item levels as a mechanic.
Well, the GM still has to do some work. If one party member is getting a disproportionate share of the rewards, part of the GM's job is to make sure other people in the party get their fair share too. Even if running out of a module, you can replace one item with another, or just change the magic sword into a magic flail.Also, if I may speak towards your fighter-with-greatsword example:
I think the fighter finding two good greatswords is not the problem. The problem is when the fighter finds a good greatsword and a good bow and sun glasses that makes him immune to blind effects and a good magical sleeveless shirt that shows off his muscles just right. You end up with a situation where the "natural" loot from an encounter or adventure distorts a player's power by a significant amount larger than that of his fellows. Under the current system (1/2 value sells), the difference between a random party member and my hypothetical lucky fighter is much lower when compared to the 1/10 item sale system of starfinder or a system where selling magic items is difficult/impossible.Maybe that is a lesser evil though.
I find it so much easier and more fun to offload that GM work into the level up process with minimal non-level-granted superior equipment.
Building 'gear power' into levels as an option allows for a very different narrative, where the pursuit of wealth is far more easily discarded because it doesn't make you stronger (except in the political sense)
This is not something that I would particularly care for, but it does seem pretty easy to do. As I have said before, people have done exactly this kind of homebrew stuff before and I think it would be good to see this as a possible modular system either in the core rules or in a "Dungeon Master's Guide" style book.
If the game had a wealth module like the ones I described before, you could just always set the player's wealth level to their character level (and just assume that characters are being rewarded by bureaucrats, thieves guilds, or karma for their deeds of daring do).
If you don't want equipment as something to keep track of at all, here is how I am guessing you could do it without changing the game balance:
All players can attune some weapons to act as +X weapons (not exact numbers: +1 at level 3, +2 at level 7, etc. ; maybe at level 7, a player could have one weapon "attuned" to +2 and then two others "attuned to +1)
At certain levels, players just get signature magic items of a given level or spell-like abilities replicating magic items of a certain level.
You drastically reduce the game's expectations of gold rewards, and have gold only being used for basic weapons and consumables.