Investments

[Kalrik]

So, one of my characters got clever and picked up on an aspect of my game I hadn't fully accounted for. I mentioned that there was a halfling house that specialized in investments. Sly dog knew we were leaving the city for an extended amount of time and invested 1000 gold with this brokerage.

I've pounded my head against the wall trying to figure out how to manage this investment. I dont' know if I should just slap on an percentage rate and calculate his return based on time invested. I figure i'll roll my good vs evil dice and see how his investment fares, but the broker easily sits at a +21 to his profession: investments broker, he is damn good at his job.

Any thoughts or comments would be appriciated.

[Harperfan7]

A halfling investment house sounds like a scam to me.

Catch my drift?

[Keld Denar]

Unless its a bank backed by a government or temple (and even then, coups/deicide happens), all investment carries risk. Nothing is ever a "sure thing", and losses happen, no matter how good the invester. Maybe the invester funded a merchant's ship who normally is sucessful, but a freak storm/pirates/seamonsters caused the ship to be lost. The players entire principal is lost, but you as the DM gain a powerful plot hook in the sense that if the guy wants his money back, he's probably gonna have to FIND it and rescue it. Charter a fast boat and go buckle some swashes!

[WinWin]

Set him up. Have the investment broker promise fantastic returns...

And spring a plot hook. Perhaps an urban advanture featuring a thieves guild, a wererat den, kenku, mindflayers or whatever. The player still gets the returns, but actually earns them on an adventure.

As levels increase, the returns offered by investmenst are less likely to destabilise the game. The Halflings might even be able to act as a magical item broker on occasion, or get hold of hard to find or exotic equipment for the party.

[Derthric]

First figure out which way you are going to go with it, success or not.

1000 gp isn't a whole hell of a lot when thinking of massive financial expenditures. You could afford a few horses with a cart or a small, small bit of land. So his return may not be as great depending on how you have your economy set up.

If its very cosmopolitan with large numbers of people banking then a simple percentage would work. If not then figure out what type of company would 1000 gp mean a lot to. Perhaps a stake in a possible gem or metal prospect claim or a small bit of land would work better for the amount and for possible future hooks.

[Iferus]

I'd say you roll 2d10 - the first is the increase in wealth and the second is the decrease. You can rationalise this as the the broker taking his share in the profit. (let him explain all kind of fees for the work he's done, that'll be fun).

Also, you could say the money has increased by x amount, but it cannot be withdrawn at this point in time. Doing so would cripple the investment.

[Ranos]

For a proper scam, you start by giving him returns. Good, solid returns. As he gets more confident, he'll invest more and more, until one day, he starts thinking "Hey, if I got that much from 1000 gp, how much would I get if I put in all of my 10000 GP ?". And that's when all the money disappears.

Course that's not necessarily fun for the PCs, but hey.

[Calmar]

A halfling investment house sounds like a scam to me.

Catch my drift?

Halflings are generally a peace-loving down-to-earth lot, they won't likely hornswoggle you.

It's the greedy, dishonest gnomes who'll rob you without hesitation and pity.

Besides, the business shouldn't prove too profitable in any case, because your game is likely more about exploration and adventure than brokering and investment...

[Thespianus]

You can also incorporate the investment in the plot: If they do X, the investment increases due to improvement in trade in commodity A, but if they do Y, the investment goes down due to a shortage of trade in commodity B..

That way, their actions in the plot has "real world" implications beyond the normal scope of "saving the princess", or whatever.

[jpreem]

Jep, you could do some Casino Royale kind of stuff.
Like Le Chiffre. ( short selled some aeronautics companies stock and then tried to blow up sayd companies prototype airplane)
Your characters invests in some venture and then he can go on an adventure, diplomatic mission or whatever. To protect his investment, to sabotage concurents, to spread rumors or advertise. To sweet talk lords for monopoly or trade embargos. To start a war so that his investment in a weaponsmith workshop would pay off :D

[Telonius]

but the broker easily sits at a +21 to his profession: investments broker, he is damn good at his job.

Any thoughts or comments would be appriciated.

In that case, he beats the market by quite a bit, but brokerage fees eat up a good portion of it. Also, the kingdom doesn't differentiate between earned income and capital gains when it calculates tax.:smallbiggrin:

[kamikasei]

Would simply giving the PCs a reasonable return on their investment be out of the question? Or is the issue not one of wanting to deny them this source of wealth but to find a way to tie it in to their adventures somehow?

[Megaduck]

If you want to keep things simple, just go with a percentile. I think however you'd be wasting a great opportunity if you did.

Player choice should have consequences, and the more interesting the consequences the better.

Perhaps the investment saves the halfling business and now they're part of a giant trading house that the PC owns half off. Maybe they come back later to help with some quest, or they entire halfling clan now considers the PC one of their own and the PC now has contacts and intelligence sources in every city in the hemisphere.

I'm also going to have to strongly disagree with Harperfan7. Any play style that is rewarded will be continued, those that are punished will be stopped. DM's that continually have NPC's scam, cheat, or take advantage of the PC's are reinforcing the notion that the PC's are the only real people and everyone else is just something to hit with a sword.

[Lysander]

Investing involves choices based on risk vs reward. So the halfling should allow the player to pick how his money is spent:

A) Invest the money in some reputable local businesses that are basically guaranteed to provide profits, but that will only produce a return of about 2d4% a year. Giving your player 50gp after a whole year won't break your game.

B) Invest in a long shot gamble with a new business venture. The halfling says there's about a 10% chance of making 10,000gp but a 90% chance of losing everything.

C) Invest in a dangerous business (like escorting rare goods through bandit infested lands or buying a share in a treasure hunting expedition) that is likely to fail unless aided by the PCs. With their help it will probably prove very profitable.

That way your players get to decide what they want to do. It can either be a stable but minuscule investment, a wild financial gamble, or a quest.

[Keld Denar]

IF you are really good with numbers, just take the earned profits out of his WBL. WBL is simply a tool used to gauge the relative strength of the PCs vs appropriate CR encounters. If, between levels 5 and 6, the player would have earned 100g in interest, just reduce his income from loots and treasures by 100g, so that when he hits level 6, he'll be spot on for WBL, but will still feel like he earned money. If you are really good, you can do this without the player even knowing. He gets his fun, you maintain game balance. Everyone wins!

Its not easy to balance WBL though, since PCs will often not distribute loot in an even fasion. Just keep it in mind though.

[braxsus]

Without stating what specifically was invested in. and not stating which level of risk was chossen...go with this

Annual returns

Skill Roll
01-05 Loose 100%
06-10 Loose 50%
11-15 Loose 25%
16-20 Loose 10%
21-25 Break Even
26-30 Gain 10%
31-35 Gain 25%
36-40 Gain 50%
41-45 Gain 100%


RISK
High (-15 to DC)
Medium (-10 to DC)
Low (-5 to DC)

Add situational bonuses for world events..Famines, Wars, New mineral mines found, peace treaties open up trading , change of governement through conlfict)

Oh, and don't forget to deduct the Investment fees

[Vantharion]

I would run with Braxsus on the skill roll to see the return.
If it's a REALLY good return, have it involve an adventure to claim it.
Such as the Halfling house doesn't usually do that good, and the government got involved and claimed it, and then the players have to run through Corrupt government officials/thieves to get the money back.
If it is REALLY too much money to give to your players, morally put them in a place where they get a nonmonetary reward, such as choosing to GIVE some of the profits to the halfling house because of famine/disease/problems. (Alignments may vary)
Don't let your player bully you straight into abusing the world, it is fun for them for a little bit, but then it falls apart pretty quick.

tl;dr: Challenge your player to make him earn his money, if it's too much, give him somewhere to harmlessly drain some of the excess.

[Another_Poet]

Many of the above posts emphasise having something terrible happen, and then using it as a hook. While that's possible (investment DOES carry risk), no banking house would rise to prominence unless it had a fair level of security and intelligent investment decisions. In a magic fantasy world that means magic fantasy security, and divination-guided investment decisions.

I would just ask him whether he wants to put his 1000 gp in a low-risk certificate of deposit (let's say 2% interest, no risk of loss) or a high-risk venture (medievalish worlds don't usually have stock, per se, but you can invest in a mercantile venture). If he chooses the high risk venture, secretly roll a d100. on 1-30, he loses the money. On 31-70 he earns a 3% return. on 71-100 he earns a 15% return.

After that fun little minigame is over, talk to him out of character and tell him you like the creativity, but you're at a bit of a loss as to how to set up detailed financial investment scenarios, and would prefer for him to make money by slaying monsters and stealing loot in the future.

If he really wants to keep investing, I would just have a pack of 52 playing cards behind the DM screen. Every time a PC makes an investment, deal out 1 hand of poker with their GP as their available betting chips. The poker hand is an OOC mechanic (like dice rolling) that is used to resolve the in-game investment. Whatever they won/lost at that one hand of poker represents one year's investment results. (Or one month or whatever.)

Unrealistic but at least it's fun and easy to run. You warned him to stop investing!!

[Bagelz]

RISK
High (-15 to DC)
Medium (-10 to DC)
Low (-5 to DC)


Thats not quite how risk vs reward works.
I personally would just roll a (1d12-5) % apr (-4 to +7) for medium risk, 1d20-8 % for high risk

[Emmerask]

It takes some time until he gets his profit so after 3-6 month let him get his 30% profit, during that time he will have made 100.000gp in monster slaying so who cares :smallwink:

[braxsus]

Thats not quite how risk vs reward works.
I personally would just roll a (1d12-5) % apr (-4 to +7) for medium risk, 1d20-8 % for high risk


The objective was to have a SIMPLE way deteremine an Investment bankers abiltity to accurately invest money without getting overly complicated.

But I'll throw something to gether and put it in home brew that will balance Risk, Reward and Skill checks..

[arrowhen]

I'd give a tidy return on the investment to encourage them to make larger and riskier investments, which I'd use as adventure hooks.

Then I'd buy the player a beer to thank them for handing me such an easy way to involve them in adventures.

[braxsus]

An easy adventure hook is to be an Active investment partner in a Merchant ship..Buy goods, charter ship, escort to foreign port..

[Another_Poet]

The objective was to have a SIMPLE way deteremine an Investment bankers abiltity to accurately invest money without getting overly complicated.

Like the poker hand.

It's easy, It's fun, It's unpredictable.

Poker hand: the mechanic of a new generation.

[Person_Man]

I would let him roll an Appraise check or something similar to see how well it went. The guy put aside 1000 gp for some extended period of time when he could have spent in on stuff. That kind of long term thinking should be encouraged. It will need to include a % chance of failure, but if he rolls high, he should get a decent return.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Stable ROI is boring!

Have the Halfings invest in Dragon Futures - hedging against a dragon-attack on a nearby settlement. Then see if they'd like to manipulate that market for their own benefit :smallamused:

Seriously though - don't make "safe bets" profitable in D&D. If safe bets exist, treasure hunting becomes much less attractive.

If you don't want to rook the PC out of his money, attach strings to it - maybe the Rich & Powerful of the town take an interest in the new investor, or the king seizes the trading house's treasury to fund a war (it happens!).

[Lord Loss]

Make it a scam, and make the PCs hunt down the Halflings to get their money back. Then throw them a curveball. The Halflings were forced to do so
by greedy and corrupt government officials and if they don't give them 1000 GP every (month? week? day?) their famillies will be killed...

[Kalrik]

Wow, all these replys were great! Ok, so after reading everything I have some ideas.

The PC became obsessed with a napkin written bard that was the head of a small time thieves guild. Bard dies, PC is devistated, evil gm reanimates bard in evil ritual as a vampire. Now PC is bent on saving bard and is investing to earn the money for a resurrection spell. I'm running Pathfinder and am strictly adhearing to the spell as written. A 10,000gp diamond is very hard to come by.

So it would be fun to manipulate this PC even further by having the vampire "buy out" the investment house. If I dont' use it as a hook, the investment broker's average result will be a 31 profession: investor, meaning in a week he earns 31 gp. A month nets 124gp which is rather substantal when one thinks in non adventurer terms. Decide how much that 1000gp investment is of the brokers total investments and give the pc his cut. I completely forgot about the city taking its taxes too.

[Dr.Epic]

A halfling investment house sounds like a scam to me.

Catch my drift?

They sell water to fire elementals.

[braxsus]

Posted in Home brew


Profession: Investment Merchant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9014752#post9014752)

[Lysander]

So it would be fun to manipulate this PC even further by having the vampire "buy out" the investment house. If I dont' use it as a hook, the investment broker's average result will be a 31 profession: investor, meaning in a week he earns 31 gp. A month nets 124gp which is rather substantal when one thinks in non adventurer terms. Decide how much that 1000gp investment is of the brokers total investments and give the pc his cut. I completely forgot about the city taking its taxes too.

You actually just earn half of your profession check. So each week the broker earns about 15gp for himself, presumably skimmed off the top of a larger sum of everything he's earned for his clients (or even if they lost money he no doubt still gets paid).

Just remember not to feel rushed. Investments usually don't triple in value overnight. If the player asks how his money is doing it's perfectly fine to say that's its still just at 1000gp and will likely remain in that range for several more months if not longer. You don't really need to worry about this for many sessions if you'd prefer not to. While this is a great opportunity to introduce a quest, I think that realistically playing out the investment is also fun with some mundane 7% annual return on investment. If the PC earns a little money without physical danger just think of it as a bonus for good roleplaying.

[CapnVan]

I'm also going to have to strongly disagree with Harperfan7. Any play style that is rewarded will be continued, those that are punished will be stopped. DM's that continually have NPC's scam, cheat, or take advantage of the PC's are reinforcing the notion that the PC's are the only real people and everyone else is just something to hit with a sword.

While I'd certainly agree with you that "DM's that continually have NPC's scam, cheat, or take advantage of the PC's" aren't getting the most out of the possibilities, having it happen on occasion isn't a problem.

Which is more "real"? Interacting with NPCs in such a way that the PC can't be certain of what the outcome will be, or "Find NPC with high profession score. Insert cash. Wait. Withdraw cash+earnings"?

[arrowhen]

Any play style that is rewarded will be continued, those that are punished will be stopped. DM's that continually have NPC's scam, cheat, or take advantage of the PC's are reinforcing the notion that the PC's are the only real people and everyone else is just something to hit with a sword.

While I totally agree with your second sentence, I cannot disagree strongly enough with the first. If I ever suspect that a GM is "punishing" or "rewarding" my playstyle, I take that as a challenge to not only continue playing that way I'll not only continue to play that way but immediately redouble my efforts along those lines. That's because I'm at least 20% immature contrarian bastard.

But since I'm also 80% decent, rational human being, I'll also ask the DM in question in private, after the session why he* feels he has the right to "reward" or "punish" his social equals in a supposedly fun social activity. After that, unless I get a good answer that leads to a good discussion, I'll politely quit the game and go play with grownups instead.



(* I say "he" because in my nearly three decades of playing RPGs, I've never encountered a female GM who acted this way.)

[NotMe]

If you only want to handle the mechanics of it randomly then I would suggest choosing between high, medium or low risk.
High risk results in a percentage return of (+d100-d100) + profession check - % fee, medium (+d20-d20) + (profession check/2) - %fee, and low (+d10-d10) +(profession check/4) - %fee. A negative return represents loss of capital.
While the percentages are rather high by modern standards, I'm assuming that this is a medieval type fantasy world, with no or few internationally agreed trade treaties, less stable central government, and slow movement of information, thus the higher risk and reward.
If you then want to incorporate adventure hooks or just generate explanations for the the investment performance then you can either be guided by the dice (e.g. a result or 90 + check of 40 could be an amazing opportunity to gain a local shipping monopoly in an area, with the minus roll representing the success of other merchants and government in breaking the monoploy), or can control the results according to the needs of the campaign.

[Psyx]

I refer you to 'The Merchant of Venice'

This isn't the real world. Investment in this era requires risk. The money is essentially going to be loaned to somebody else. The halflings don't have to fleece the player (although they could: If halflings have a solid reputation, it's a great cover for a scam), their client could.

If you want to be random, then maybe 1d12% 'up', -1d10% down. So invest long enough, and you'll get a decent return. Kinda.

There is no such thing as free money.

[hamishspence]

Maybe other people could invest in adventurers? With them delving, and bringing back gold, jewellery, and not-so-useful magic items,

and the adventurers being fitted out by the investors, and being able to request hard-to-get items and other kit, from them?

[Megaduck]

While I totally agree with your second sentence, I cannot disagree strongly enough with the first. If I ever suspect that a GM is "punishing" or "rewarding" my playstyle, I take that as a challenge to not only continue playing that way I'll not only continue to play that way but immediately redouble my efforts along those lines. That's because I'm at least 20% immature contrarian bastard.

But since I'm also 80% decent, rational human being, I'll also ask the DM in question in private, after the session why he* feels he has the right to "reward" or "punish" his social equals in a supposedly fun social activity. After that, unless I get a good answer that leads to a good discussion, I'll politely quit the game and go play with grownups instead.



(* I say "he" because in my nearly three decades of playing RPGs, I've never encountered a female GM who acted this way.)

I think you're being mislead by the terms "Reward" and "Punish" to imply a sadistic DM that toys with his players.

How about we change the terminology to "Succeeds" and "Fails".

Any play action that is successful will be continued, any that fail will be stopped.

[Lysander]

I refer you to 'The Merchant of Venice'

This isn't the real world. Investment in this era requires risk. The money is essentially going to be loaned to somebody else. The halflings don't have to fleece the player (although they could: If halflings have a solid reputation, it's a great cover for a scam), their client could.

If you want to be random, then maybe 1d12% 'up', -1d10% down. So invest long enough, and you'll get a decent return. Kinda.

There is no such thing as free money.

Investing isn't really free though. He now has to go without 1000gp of equipment for the time being. It probably won't make a difference but who knows, maybe he'll die because he was lacking some crucial potion he could have otherwise bought. The profits he'd get in any realistic investment will be tiny compared to any loot he'd find anyway. So every 12 months he usually but not always gets about 50gp for free. Eh.

Besides, if in game time the campaign doesn't fast forward over several years he might never actually get to use his profits. In that case he's effectively flushed 1000gp down the toliet, even if roleplaying wise it's still his to enjoy in his retirement.