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Elvenoutrider
2016-10-03, 11:13 AM
Hi all, so I'm running a pathfinder game and a new player has joined us. He has rolled a vigilante and made himself essentially Bruce Wayne. He is wondering if given his side business, he can have an extra slush fund to work with and im wondering if pathfinder has a mechanic in it somewhere for having extra wealth for being a rich character. I don't want this to get too overpowered but I want him to feel rich. I gave him some extra gold to start with and had his company supply the ship the party is using. They are currently away from his home city and are on an island and will be there for at least 8 sessions (as many real timeweeks) so I have some time to figure this out.

Has anyone dealt with this before, and if so how did you do it and how did it work.

Telesto
2016-10-03, 11:24 AM
When my characters were rich, all of them were rich. But part of the backgrounds for Pathfinder has an extra 900gp, I think, for a wealthy character. Honestly I'd give him a home base with the expenses covered, whatever business he has and let it bring in a low income, etc.

In recent history the wage gap has increased substantially, so rich is now in terms of thousands and milions of multiplicities compared to normal. There used to be concepts of taxes and some wage equality with the difference being in the tens to hundreds of multiplicities.

Most things in the era where these games typically take place aren't going to see the kinds of profits that PCs pull in, let alone what we think of as rich.

The tens to hundreds of gold his character would pull in being wealthy should be chump change compared to being a PC. Even the Deck Of Many Things sees wealthy (noble) as being an estate and 10k in money to your name.

Geddy2112
2016-10-03, 11:35 AM
If you want rules to managing business and all the nontypical adventure stuff, check out the downtime rules (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/downtime). It covers the lions share of this. You can also have craft/profession be rolled from time to time, but they don't make money on the same scale.

Extra gold for starters is usually therich parents (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/social-traits/rich-parents) trait, and there is actually a prestige class (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/n-r/noble-scion) that is all about being a rich person.

You can always dock the player's general wealth by level-most adventures become filthy rich when they are finding +3 magical weapons and armor on the reg, along with potions, scrolls, what have you. Keep track of how much you are giving the party, and then if they come up short from the island adventure hand them a ton of gold as a "dividend" from the company, parts of ownership, what have you.

Unless the players start high level, I tend not to allow characters to be rich businessowners. That said, high level characters are very wealthy due to adventuring being insanely lucrative. If they are high level, you could say that instead of being adventurers to X level, they owned/ran business and worked, and got wealthy that way.

Make a lot of their assets locked up, so without a serious amount of effort, they can't liquefy their assets and start using wealth to break the game. Likewise, large companies have large capital expenses, so their profits should not be that high. If the character leaves, then somebody had to act as owner/operator in their stead. Likewise, just because they are CEO/owner, the board of executives or whoever is acting in their stead might lose money, or prevent payout/dividends. Bad things can happen, but be careful running roughshod over their business or interests-some broken parts or bad weather is one thing, but the company being burnt to the ground by raiders or run into the dirt by acting CEO is poor form if they are away and can't stop it. Do be careful not to make them center of attention, and either get the other players ownership in the company, or make the player that is owner/CEO a distant type. Maybe they sold their share to go do adventuring stuff.

Another good option you are already using is intangible wealth and clout. Things like access to ships, not keeping track of petty expenses(inns, ale, food) and X amount of fee to pay for collateral damage, bribes taxes, etc. These things are just covered as the player has enough wealth where they don't have to worry. The noble scion PrC has a lot of rules for this.

TheCountAlucard
2016-10-03, 11:50 AM
Having a lot of money is a lot less advantageous if magic items aren't assumed to be common enough to be bought and sold in open markets with pieces of shiny metal.

icefractal
2016-10-03, 06:15 PM
The RAW way to do this is to use the Downtime rules. With the right strategy (run lots of separate small businesses, not one big one), and by funneling your profits back into more growth, you can, within a year or less, have a massive income that dwarfs anything you get from adventuring. Leadership will speed this up further. In the interest of balance, you probably shouldn't use this to buy magic items for yourself - not direct-power ones anyway, it's a great chance to buy the cool-but-nearly-useless stuff.

The homebrew (but simpler and probably more balanced) is something like the Landlord feat from 3.5. Just give him a pool of extra money which can't directly be used for personal gear but can pay for bribes, transportation, emergency help, housing, etc.

One thing to consider though - while obviously a character who has this as part of their concept will have non-money reasons for adventuring, make sure the rest of the party also does. If Axebeard Beardaxe is just adventuring to get funds so he can open his own pub, and he becomes friends with Bruce Wayne, that might be a very short adventuring career!

Dragonexx
2016-10-03, 06:45 PM
There have been various homebrew methods of handling this. One which I use is the Wish Economy. Basic concept is that magic items are divided into lesser, moderate, and greater categories. With the fact that genies (and various other creatures) can use wish to create arbirarily large amounts of gold and lesser magic, higher level creatures have little to no interest in anything that can't be wished for. Thus you can't purchase moderate and greater magic items with gold. In it's place are various magical substance that can't be wished for and are difficult to obtain, like astral diamonds, raw chaos, planar pearls, souls, elemental gems, ect. Thus players can have large amounts of gold, and dragon hordes can actually be the kind of things you'd need a a team of carts and horses to haul back, and can actually be spent on stuff like castles, funding kingdoms and domains, and other stuff that has little impact when you're adventuring.

Here's an article about how economies and money might work in D&D: Treasure and the World (https://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Book_of_Gears_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Treasure_and_the_World)
And here are the compiled rules for the Wish Economy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53704).

I think there was some more stuff I wanted to say, but I can't remember. I'll edit it in if I do.

GungHo
2016-10-05, 03:48 PM
Hi all, so I'm running a pathfinder game and a new player has joined us. He has rolled a vigilante and made himself essentially Bruce Wayne.
Of course he did. That was the opening example. They should have just called the class "The Batman". I'm awating for an Apache Chief archetype.

Honestly, reigning in rich characters is a lot easier than dealing with the alternative monk and druid bumbfight options that try to live in the same space. Rich characters can be denied some resources or limited in how they can really affect things by setting up social restrictions of having lots of wealth but being unable to bring it all to the table at all times. For example, with the vigilante, his wealth is only really accessible to his social identity. His vigilante identity has limited access to that because otherwise it's too easy to make the connections, even in a society that doesn't have Quickbooks. You don't have to deny him access to resources all the time. But, you can deny him access to resources at the right time, because if he goes and buys a really awesome swordstaffbow that shoots batarangs and tries to use it as a vigilante, the guy who made him the swordstaffbow is gonna have to be trusted to not squeal and that guy's retainer may not be cheap. If he squeals, then the social identity is going to have to spend some resources to rebuild himself and may even lose some assets to enemies (or worse, Hugh Manatee is going to kidnap the vigilante's pet pseduodragon, Alfredo)

However, it's hard to make up the difference with intentionally poor characters that do things like take vows of poverty that make it hard to shore up what they can bring to the table through gadgetry because they literally can't take it. Someone else has to help them along and make up the deficiency.

Dragonexx
2016-10-07, 07:01 PM
Found the other parts of it:

The Economicon (https://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeonomicon_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Economicon) and the other part of wish economy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=354300#354300) (the part I intended to link to before).:smallredface:

Afgncaap5
2016-10-07, 10:20 PM
I think my favorite way of giving this to a character is actually using the "Wealth Score" from the d20 version of the Trinity games (Adventure!, Aberrant, and Aeon/Trinity). Basically, you have a score that fluctuates with time (and the use of Profession checks) and it's used for off-screen purchases. It basically turns wealth into a narrative issue instead of a mechanical one.

So, if your players suddenly *need* to get across the continent by tomorrow...

Rich Character: I'll have a few words with the chaps at the mage's guild. I'm sure some gold could persuade them to lend us a carpet for the weekend.

*Rolls a 24*

Rich Character: Good news! A carpet for each of us, and a mage named Skylark Thunderbeard to keep an eye on us and make sure that we don't fall off overnight. Buy some snacks.



Or if your players know that there's a secret back room at a tavern where the local crime lord runs a gambling den and holds special meetings.

Bartender: Don't know what you're talkin' about. No one goes back there.

Rich Character: Oh, surely there's SOME way we could get in?

*Character slides some coins onto the table, but rolls a natural 1. The Bartender glares at the platinum coins*

Bartender: Get out!

Rich Character: Get... out? Do You Know Who I Am?!

Bartender: OUT!


So... it's a reasonable way to make a character be able to make quick purchases without really hurting the economy of the game too much. It's more a tool for altering how scenes progress than anything that causes power-shifts.

Satinavian
2016-10-08, 04:56 AM
It can be done, if the player is reasonable. A rich person who uses wealth for Fluff only is never a problem. D&D economy is utterly ridiculous anyway and should never be focus of the game. Under those circumstances you can give him as much background money as you both think fits the role.

If you have the other kind of player who will try to use the wealth according to money is power and the bad rule system, don't allow it. It is not worth the effort to come up with complex rules trying to limit the impact of his wealth in a game that has wealth per level guidelines when you know he will try to look for loopholes.

Mastikator
2016-10-08, 06:28 AM
He could be wealthy without having a huge amount of disposable income. He might own several estates that cost him nearly all of the money he makes from his side business and you only give him with the stipulation that he's not allowed to sell them, but he is allowed to use them as head quarters, storage and resting places. Make the estates look pretty, maybe give him contacts within industry and wealth and he might feel super wealthy without it being game breaking.

In fact you might argue that he doesn't use his wealth for RP reasons, he doesn't want his vigilantee secret identity to be found out because that would put his vast amount of wealth in jeopardy.