What in the rules stops someone from choosing precious ingots (or similar high value items) as their starting items?
Say a PC loses a character and rolls up a 5th-level monk. For his permanent items, he chooses 6 level 0 common silver ingots. At the next settlement he sells them for 600gp, far above the expected treasure for a 5th-level character. Since he's a monk, he can go a while without much gear if need be.
I get that a GM could simply say no, but I'd prefer a rule for things like Pathfinder Society or RAW-heavy games.
Many of my players in the playtest did similar: took the most expensive item available on the appropriate list and sold it for half value to buy consumables & trinkets with the gold.
As for trade items where you get full value, yeah that's messy, but I'd say if it fell within the normal treasure values, it should be okay. You simply found the same amount of loot more piecemeal.
But finding "level appropriate by value" vs. "level appropriate by what's available" are two different things. Just because something's available to purchase as a level 0 item (minimal crafting) doesn't mean it's a level 0 treasure (falls within the gold parameters).
In PFS/RAW games, the Lump Sum value on Table 10-10 seems as high as one could go with currency, which those ingots effectively are. Trying to bypass this through trickery won't win you any allies.
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Well PFS has you covered, the small number of options that do start you above level 1 give the lump sum for starting above level 1.
As for item selection, it is not a player choice, it's a GM choice.
You should work with the new character’s player to decide which items their character has. Allow the player to make suggestions, and if they know what items they want their character to have, respect their choices unless you believe those choices will have a negative impact on your game.
As for item selection, it is not a player choice, it's a GM choice.
You should work with the new character’s player to decide which items their character has. Allow the player to make suggestions, and if they know what items they want their character to have, respect their choices unless you believe those choices will have a negative impact on your game.
Whoah! That's...
...different.
Totally news to me!
That changes everything.
Holy shit. I know some people who are really going to blow a gasket about this.
So many overworked GMs who I now have to tell have MORE work to do. :P
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As for item selection, it is not a player choice, it's a GM choice.
You should work with the new character’s player to decide which items their character has. Allow the player to make suggestions, and if they know what items they want their character to have, respect their choices unless you believe those choices will have a negative impact on your game.Whoah! That's...
...different.
Totally news to me!
That changes everything.
Holy s~#*. I know some people who are really going to blow a gasket about this.
So many overworked GMs who I now have to tell have MORE work to do. :P
If those GMs feel overworked they can just decide to allow the player to choose whatever they want, or they can just let the players make their list but have it be subject to the GM looking it over afterwards.
The GM can just look over the list for anything especially egregious (like 5 silver bars, or an elvish weapon being selected by a hobgoblin character without explanation) and query or veto those things, but in most cases the players would get whatever they like as long as they are reasonable.
Most of the time as a GM I look over all of the player characters before letting them in the campaign(it's good practice to know the PC's really well so you can fit them into the world and the adventure anyway) so it doesn't really add anymore work for me.
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I wouldn't really say it changes that much. Rule zero is always in effect, and this kind'a codifies it for the ones who want page numbers.
