Need advice on a class feature I am making

[thecrimsondawn]

I dont want to go into too many details since its in the drawing phase atm, but I want to give this archetype a way to make more gold then the normal wealth limit of the party - but not by too much. For the most part - it will be taking key components from various monsters and using another class feature to turn them into something more useful that can be sold. The fork in the road for me right now tho is balancing this thing.

At first I was thinking, CR in gold, but that does not balance well at all - its a useless amount. Since this was a flop I was thinking maybe various subtypes would be worth more, such as a dragon being worth more then an animal for example. This makes logical sense, but would require a lot of data entry - each that would need to be balanced, but I have not dropped this idea yet either.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or even an approximate number of encounters per level to help balance the gold gain?

[thecrimsondawn]

So here is what Ive got so far.
All parts weigh 1/10th the weight of the monster in question.

Humanoid, Animal, Undead, Vermin = CR in gold each. (very common, minor essence)

Aberration, Construct, Monstrous Humanoid, = twice CR in gold each. (semi common, impure essence)

Fey, Magical Beast, Ooze, Plant, = 4x CR in gold each (average rarity, difficult survivability)

Outsiders = 5x CR in gold each (due to their otherworldly essence)

Dragons = 10x CR in gold each (in addition to their normal parts)


In the event a creature shares 2 or more types, take the better of the 2 in terms of cost.



How does this look in terms of balance, taking in the perspective of how many things you need to kill to level?

[Florian]

Tipp: Check out the Monster Hunter´s Handbook and the "Harvest Part" feat, as well as the feats chains that start with it.

[thecrimsondawn]

Tipp: Check out the Monster Hunter´s Handbook and the "Harvest Part" feat, as well as the feats chains that start with it.

An interesting feat, but sadly that gold amount is psudo wealth, not usable for anything outside of crafting things. Its not really increasing the wealth level outside of the wealth that can already be gained by crafting and selling items.

[Wasum]

10x CR?

So when you kill a legendary dragon at level 20 you find around 150.000 gp AND 200 gp in dragon parts?

The amount you propose has no relevance for the game at all. I would look at CR*50 and multiply this by a factor based on how rare the creature is - from 0 over 0.5, 1.0 to 1.5 or something.

[thecrimsondawn]

10x CR?

So when you kill a legendary dragon at level 20 you find around 150.000 gp AND 200 gp in dragon parts?

The amount you propose has no relevance for the game at all. I would look at CR*50 and multiply this by a factor based on how rare the creature is - from 0 over 0.5, 1.0 to 1.5 or something.

Ya.. its not really match up well, no matter what I try. Its not so much about how rare something is as much as how useful to this class it will be, but I may just need to drop this idea since I am really getting no useful ideas that are both helpful to the player and balanced at the same time.

[Remuko]

For high CR (10-20) CR3 seems to work out to a decent chunk of GP without being too strong. Its a pretty piddly amount at low levels though. So maybe go with your idea of certain rarer monster types using a different formula? Like a CR20 Dragon would use CR3 which would be 8000 GP. Not a lot but its a nice little chunk that would be noticeable, imo. Figuring out how to make it work at lower CRs or with other creature types Idk.

[thecrimsondawn]

For high CR (10-20) CR3 seems to work out to a decent chunk of GP without being too strong. Its a pretty piddly amount at low levels though. So maybe go with your idea of certain rarer monster types using a different formula? Like a CR20 Dragon would use CR3 which would be 8000 GP. Not a lot but its a nice little chunk that would be noticeable, imo. Figuring out how to make it work at lower CRs or with other creature types Idk.

The largest factor is how many monsters players will be fighting between each level. I cant have the bonus gold equal or surpass the party wealth by too much ya know. I dont know how it is for other games, but we have about 5 to 6 encounters per level, but each encounter tends to be rather large - 10 to 15 monsters or so on average for our party size. 10 to 15 extractions of gold 5 times is a huge deal, even at smaller amounts. Then there is the fact to consider that different group sizes will encounter different monster quantities.

Its looking like a fun idea for the mindset, but in practice seems to fail on a few levels as is.

[Remuko]

Yeah that complicates things.

[thecrimsondawn]

Ok new plan!

I think I will go with a downtime replacement option instead, using survival instead of a profession check. It will be a superior method of gaining gold, perhaps equal to the skill unlock of profession, giving gold per day, but restricted to various listed environments to give the DM more control should they feel its getting out of hand. Will most likely add a scaling penalty for consecutive days spent harvesting an area, but then the new question is, how much land will be covered during a search?
Im also thinking that with this method, I could do a partial downtime type of deal much like how crafting works, giving a small gold amount related to a portion of the skill check of herbs and what not found during the trip.