So, I have an idea for an encounter coming up I could use some advice on hammering out mechanically. The idea is that the PCs will be visiting a casino soon which a dragon blooded human sorcerer runs on dehalf of their draconian ancestor, laundering and collecting money for their hoard, and knows stuff about the local underworld they want to learn. They have a special artifact built into the walls of the place which projects a magical effect over the casino: Anyone who steals from the House (be it money, drinks, information, etc) is logged as “owing” twice the value of what was stolen to the artifact, and the sorcerer owner can “extract” what is owed from debtors as long as he and them are inside the casino.
Do you think this could translate to a direct damage attack, where the casino owner “extracts” health equal to what is owed to directly hurt the PCs? Perhaps the cost of a Cure Wounds potion could be used as the basis for a conversion rate. I have decided already it should work proportionally, ie each hit point becomes more valuable the less you half, and the final hit point of a character is priceless, so he can’t automatically kill with this. So, ideas, feedback?
Well don't know if this will help at all but for the retraining rules getting 1 hp is worth 10 × your level × 3 gold, assuming you are below your maximum cap for hp.
I was thinking this too, but then i realised that higher level characters could steal more than lower level characters without fear of retribution.
A 1st level character who steals 300gp would lose 10hp (likely close to 100% of their health). A 10th level character who steals 300gp would lose 1hp (more like 1% of their health).
The increase in character hp along with the increase in hp worth would mean the conversion rate kinda scales the wrong way (if you get my meaning)
Mechanically, I don't believe there is any way to take a hit point from one person and give it to another (there are spells that do this on a very temporary basis, i.e Vampiric Touch, but a permanent transfer is a totally different thing.) I don't have any clue how one would price such a thing.
Beyond that, while I might well consider the final hitpoint I have priceless, the 'worth' of it to someone else certainly wouldn't be. If such a mechanic existed where 1 hit point could be transferred to another, I would expect the 'price' would vary quite widely, and in some circumstances a person might well be willing to sell their last hit point. And of course you are talking about items of value that have not easily established price as well particularly your information category. If I 'steal' from you the knowledge that their is a drought in the western kingdoms, that might we worth millions if I am a grain merchant or something, but not worth very much at all to a common adventurer. The value of it will also depend on how well known it is (and will become.) If everyone knows something, its value is zero.
You super detector is a big problem as far as I am concerned as well. You seem to present it as absolutely infallible at detecting any theft. That is hugely powerful (and likely deterrent enough to prevent theft without a retribution mechanism.) If the characters know of this ability they it probably doesn't matter much about the mechanics of the retribution mechanism, because very few parties are going to try and steal from a casino if they know that they will automatically be detected if they do so. If they don't know the consequences, and you are permanently taking away their hit points they are probably going to not be at all happy with your game.
If I wanted to set up something with the feel of what you have I would model it on the geas spell. Rather than being an 'auto-detector' I would have the entrants to the casino swear an oath promising they won't do things during their stay (having a few loopholes would add to the fun in my opinion) and if they violate their promise they begin taking penalties like the geas spell and those penalties wouldn't go away etc until the owner of the casino was satisfied by their restitution.
You could use the blood money spell as the basis of the extraction. Maybe the artifact allows the sorcerer to use this spell using hp and str stolen from the debtors. Additionally, since it's an artifact it could break the normal limit of the spell which prevents you from using it to create magic items.
No one messes with the business any more since the last person to rob it was found the next day, badly injured and paralyzed (Str=0).
If adjudicating this on the fly (for some reason) I'd probably do:
W | W = Expected Character Wealth (or possibly the character's wealth)
T | T = Total/Max HP
M | M = Multiplier for balance reasons
And then for each point of HP I'd cost it at M*W/T Gold for it. This means that each subsequent HP is worth more and possibly a lot more.
Say you have 37 HP and your expected character wealth is 6,000. I'd expect that to buy a point of HP from such a character you'd have to give them 6,000/37 gold is a mere 126 gold. So maybe we decide a multiplier of 10x is in order; resulting in 1260 gold.
Now that their max HP is 36, the next HP would be 166 gold to buy from them, the multiplier making that 1660.
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I'm not sure what a reasonable cost would be, but consider that some items grant you a feat and these are often around the 4-10k range; I'd compare how what it costs your character based on how much HP Toughness would get you. At level 10, Toughness gets you 10 HP So consider that 1 HP should cost somewhere in the 400 gold range when you're level 10, but toughness grants only 3 HP at level 3, so maybe it would instead cost 1300+ per HP at a low level.
This makes sense because gaining life has less effectiveness each level, since each level you had more HP to begin with. (If you have 10 hp and gain 5, you gained 50%. If you have 50 and gain 5, you've gained 10%)
If it's your last hp? Priceless. (Or possibly 1,000 to 25,000 gp.)
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I would think it would be more like (100/level)x3
So to a level 20 character, who has a lot of hit points, they would be worth 15gp. But to a level 2 character, who has few hit points, they would be worth 150gp each. This seems to(sort of) follow the law of supply and demand. Of course, I just made this up, so it is probably wrong.
Also, if you are 1 hp away from the true death, that 1 hp is priceless, and if you have 100hp, then 1 hp is "meh".