Scrounger and Reverse Engineering

[HumbleGamer]

Quote:

You are able to reverse engineer items into formulas more effectively than most. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Crafting checks to reverse engineer a formula from an item. Additionally, if you get a critical success on your Crafting check, you can opt to not only create the formula but also reassemble the original item at the same time, leaving you with the formula and the item instead of the formula and raw materials equal to half the item's value.

Shortly, the formula value is equal to half the item's price.

Reverse Engineering allows the character to retain the whole item and also the formula, which is worth 1/2 of the item, on a critical success.

Using Reverse Engineering on items with a lower level than yours is probably going to a critical success most of the times.

This would allow a character to have an indefinite number of formula, he may sell on the market.

While on the one hand it's true that he wouldn't be able to sell the same formula over and over in the same city, it's also true that:

- He could sell that specific formula for a lower price. For example:

1) The item costs 1000
2) The formula costs 500
3) Selling the formula would result into 250g
4) The Character might sell it initially at 250g, then drastically lowering its price.

- He could sell that specific forumla in different cities during his travelling, or even through magical travelling ( this really helps when spells like teleport, shadow walk and so on kicks in, so around lvl 9/11 ).

So, how would you keep this under control?
Even doing it a single time per item ( every single city ) would result into a huge profit in a relatively short amount of time.

[beowulf99]

Simply put, don't allow your players to sell formulas they reverse engineer. This can be easily explained as the locals not trusting a relatively unknown, or known for other reasons, person to sell them reliable formulas, or they have ample access to whatever formulas they may want from more reliable and well known sources.

And indefinite is a stretch given that Reverse Engineering an item takes the same amount of time as crafting said item, so 4 days minimum. Then copying the formula also uses the Craft activity, so 4 more days for each copy.

So assuming that your party has indefinite amounts of free time to spend on crafting, sure they could hang up their adventuring hats and go into the formula business.

The same could be said for running around crafting high level gear and spending extra time to lower it's cost at each opportunity.

[HumbleGamer]

Seems kinda forced, especially considering that at some point the characters will be lore/skill experienced that they'd get a "name" or even their own "brand".

To quote the CRB

Quote:

Trained bartend, do legal research

Expert curate drink selection, present minor court cases
Master run a large brewery, present important court cases
Legendary run an international brewing franchise, present a case in Hell’s courts

Even starting by lvl 7, they might be part of something renowed, and while what you say might be true if they keep going with their business, in every single AP players might find formula they can decide whether to sell or not.

So not allowing them to sell Self Engineering formula and allowing them to sell what they instead found as a loot would be unreasonable to me.

Also, once it's known that the formula are reliable ( it's like buying cd keys from 3rd party stores ), the majority of consumers would be delighted to buy formula from them, so it's something that even the DM would find difficult to justify the more the game proceeds.

Would be like saying that they don't buy any formula you sell because reasons, though it might be the only one way to keep learn income balanced.

[breithauptclan]

beowulf99 wrote:

So assuming that your party has indefinite amounts of free time to spend on crafting, sure they could hang up their adventuring hats and go into the formula business.

The same could be said for running around crafting high level gear and spending extra time to lower it's cost at each opportunity.

Yup. And at that point they would become NPCs that retired from their adventuring days.

If they wanted to still be player characters at the same time, I would run the selling of formulas like any other Earn Income activity. They are spending time finding buyers for the formulas, competing with other formula sellers, creating formula copies, filing taxes, buying supplies and storefront space, and defending themselves from litigation by patent trolls.

[Cordell Kintner]

Basically: Players should not be allowed to get around Earning Income by manipulating feats. If they want to make money there's already a system in place for that. If they don't want to do that, they can go plunder some more ruins instead.

[Aw3som3-117]

breithauptclan wrote:

beowulf99 wrote:

So assuming that your party has indefinite amounts of free time to spend on crafting, sure they could hang up their adventuring hats and go into the formula business.

The same could be said for running around crafting high level gear and spending extra time to lower it's cost at each opportunity.

Yup. And at that point they would become NPCs that retired from their adventuring days.

If they wanted to still be player characters at the same time, I would run the selling of formulas like any other Earn Income activity. They are spending time finding buyers for the formulas, competing with other formula sellers, creating formula copies, filing taxes, buying supplies and storefront space, and defending themselves from litigation by patent trolls.

This ^^^

We oversimplify selling things so it doesn't take up too much in game time. Same with crafting, performing, and other earn income activities. I mean, some GMs might be okay with it, but I wouldn't hold it against someone who just says "You can do that, but I'm going to rule it as an earn income activity."

Personally, after thinking about it for a bit I think I would say something like: "You can do that, but we're going to call it an earn income activity and, you know what, for your creativity and the feat cost I'll say that you can use the rewards for an activity one level higher than the DC."

[SuperBidi]

I hardly see a big market for Formulas.
Formulas is a simple system because PCs won't find a teacher or research for months. But it's quite unrealistic to learn weaponsmithing with a book. In my opinion, the people interested in Formulas should be very rare.