The Gaming Den

Crissa wrote:You know why WoW has grey loot?

Because it turns out people actually enjoy seeing random junk in with the little numbers.

-Crissa

Heh, WoW's loot system has more realism than 4e's loot system. Personally, I think the WoW devs should take a hint from the 4e developers: monsters should only drop green or rarer items, and they should be custom-tailored to the individual player. No more farming raids for items! Monsters will just drop them so you don't have to try!

Neeeek wrote:
It doesn't waste anyone's time. The guy doing the calculating does the calculating, the only thing anyone needs to worry about is the end result, which takes literally seconds to disseminate.

Why do you assume that the action can't continue over there while I'm adding over here? It's a really dumb assumption.

No it isn't. See a lot of PCs will wait on the results of that calculation because it lets them buy shit. So instead of just leaving town on the next quest, they have to wait until that calculation is done, because they get a cut of that shit, and that extra gold may make the difference between buying a +2 sword or buying a +3 sword.

Basically those little calculations double the time required for those downtime shopping excursions where everyone passes around a DMG and peopel figure out what magic items they want to buy. Those take long enough if you ask me.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Voss wrote:
Except for people who actually do that and enjoy it. But naturally, since it isn't your experience, it doesn't exist.

Well sure, but that's one guy out of the entire group. The rest of the PCs and the DM are sitting there bored wasting time while the one guy crunches numbers.

Because those PCs are never happy with the DM just eyeballing the cost of all the random shit. They actually want to tabulate it all for the official worth, and that's wasting everyone else's time. Most people come to adventure in dungeons and to roleplay, not to add up a big column of numbers to try to gain more gold. That style of play can be better left to Diablo 2.

OK, seriously, what kind of brain-dead, functionally retarded morons do you game with? Seriously, that 'calculation' takes maybe five minutes. Maybe. Less if someone keeps track as you go, and seriously, if there is somehow a lot of work in basic addition and multiplication, the moron can do it between sessions.

You're making a big issue out of something amazingly trivial.

Voss wrote: OK, seriously, what kind of brain-dead, functionally retarded morons do you game with? Seriously, that 'calculation' takes maybe five minutes. Maybe. Less if someone keeps track as you go, and seriously, if there is somehow a lot of work in basic addition and multiplication, the moron can do it between sessions.

You're making a big issue out of something amazingly trivial.

Not really, unless you've got the prices memorized. But try adding up the cost of.

12 suits of chainmail (5 of them MW)
5 suits of plate mail (2 of them MW)
6 longswords (2 of them MW)
3 masterwork greataxes
2 +1 daggers
1 suit of chain +1
1 ring of protection +1
2 gloves of dexterity +2
2 amulets of natural armor +1
1 suit of MW full plate.
boots of elvenkind
one spyglass
6 alchemists fires
4 tanglefoot bags.
4 ornate chairs and a dining room table.

And so on and so on.

Because that's the kind of lists you're going to be looking at, and taht takes some extensive cross referencing of the PHB and the DMG.

Here's what I do:
Masterwork armors*75
Masterwork weapons*150
Ignore the nonmasterwork cost of light PHB armors and nonexotic weapons
Weapons: Bonus squared times 1k per weapon. Group likes for easy mental math.
Armors: same deal as weapons, but half as much
+AC item: Bonus squared times 1k
+stat item: bonus squared times 500
Just leave alchemicals on sheet.

I'd have to check the spyglass and furniture.

90 seconds to total it up max.

ubernoob wrote: 90 seconds to total it up max.

Well your'e faster than all the PCs I've seen then.

Seriously, I don't know what to say. You're telling me it's not a problem. And Maybe it's not for you, but it's been a problem for some of my PCs.

That much I know for sure, because I was there and it took forever.

What ubernoob said. Its a basic combination of grade school level skills: addition, multiplication, memorization and the ability to flip open a fucking book. If your players really have problems with it, its time to take them to a hospital. I'm not kidding.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

ubernoob wrote: 90 seconds to total it up max.

Well your'e faster than all the PCs I've seen then.

Are your PCs third graders? It's multiplication, squaring, and adding. 3E has very easy formulas for any nontrivial cost. Even for my dumbest friend (capped at trig) I've never seen more than 4 minutes on buying/selling numbers. Being a third grader is pretty much the only valid complaint.

ubernoob wrote: Are your PCs third graders? It's multiplication, squaring, and adding. 3E has very easy formulas for any nontrivial cost. Even for my dumbest friend (capped at trig) I've never seen more than 4 minutes on buying/selling numbers. Being a third grader is pretty much the only valid complaint.

Cross referencing is more the case. They don't know the prices by heart like you do. So everything on that list is something they have to look a price up for. Also they aren't content to just take the price of MW armor, they will look up chain mail first, then add masterwork to it.

Same with magic items too. They want that extra armor cost in there too.

If you're anal enough to pick up every piece of equipment you find to sell, then you're going to get as much value out of it as you can.

You don't need trig to play D&D. I'd have quit a long time ago if that were the case.

What, do you never check wealth by level? Do they know you won't try and follow the chart? You game with people you like to be around. That stuff I omitted sets you back completely negligible amounts. At its peak you lose 20% of your wealth. That's only getting masterwork chain shirts ever. Tabulate to see if you're close to WBL between sessions. If you aren't tell the DM and (s)he will correct it.

Are your players too stupid to do that? It's a game. Get to playing it.

In this one game that I play, I keep track of the loot as we pick it up and note its value in a column next to it. When it comes time to split loot at the end of the adventure, I add & divide, no problem.

sigma999 wrote:You don't need trig to play D&D. I'd have quit a long time ago if that were the case.

Taking trig senior year (two whole years after I took it) was just to indicate the math stupid level.

I check wealth by level.

.. and then ignore it.
I go by item bonuses, damage output, options granted, and RNG as much as possible.

sigma999 wrote:I check wealth by level.

.. and then ignore it.
I go by item bonuses, damage output, options granted, and RNG as much as possible.

I was assuming RC played a RAW game, not a tome game. Today we had a new character join a 6th level group. Not a TOME game (I'm the only one that's read it). I just suggested a TOME inspired houserule and used TOME formula to grant wealth. Took me all of 5 minutes to make the sheet. Nobody could tell objectively that it was 90% ad hoc and not RAW.

ubernoob wrote:What, do you never check wealth by level? Do they know you won't try and follow the chart? .

Honestly not really. In time for making adventures I don't have time to go through and audit every PC's items and tabulate it. I hate that accounting bullshit.

Now, it's pretty easy to try to calculate how much wealth I'm giving out in an adventure, so long as PCs don't try stuff like looting everything to try to "create" more wealth.

I've got an idiot proof solution. Before your next session tell your players the following:
No more piddly shit. Only loot big stuff. Out of the game feel free to check if you match wealth by level. If you are grossly outside the chart tell me. I'll fix it. As an added bonus, I won't make you keep track of piddly shit like amunition either. Just stop with the piddly shit. Seriously, anything under 100 gp is not worth the time to add up and sell.

ubernoob wrote:I've got an idiot proof solution. Before your next session tell your players the following:
No more piddly shit. Only loot big stuff. Out of the game feel free to check if you match wealth by level. If you are grossly outside the chart tell me. I'll fix it. As an added bonus, I won't make you keep track of piddly shit like amunition either. Just stop with the piddly shit. Seriously, anything under 100 gp is not worth the time to add up and sell.

Or heck, just tell your players that if they want to unload silver forks and the like that they'll be able to do so at a rate of 100GP a month in a small town and 1,000 GP a month in a big city, and only if they set up a business of doing so.

I think the best model I've seen so far is in A Knight's Tale with the late Heith Ledger. He wins a prize like a gold knight figurine that is a work of art and then he has his blacksmith chick cut off the right amount of gold from it so he can pay his bills.

PCs shouldn't be business mogels. They seriously should say "Crap, what are we going to do with a ten bolts of silk and spices from the Underdark? We can't buy feed and lodging with that?"

The great treasures of Egypt and Rome ended up looted and melted down, so I don't see why fantasy markets need to be as robust as modern ones.

Personally, the reason I've disliked 4e is because it seems every other round I'm adding a list like uber's for the attack value.

Gone are the days when I can guess ahead of time, because everyone's throwing around ±n's to each other and the opponents and then they all need to be added (or not added) together.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:Personally, the reason I've disliked 4e is because it seems every other round I'm adding a list like uber's for the attack value.

Gone are the days when I can guess ahead of time, because everyone's throwing around ±n's to each other and the opponents and then they all need to be added (or not added) together.

-Crissa

Idea for simplifying 4E:
Don't roll a d20. Like, ever. Flip a coin. Heads is the result good for you.

Thoughts? It seemed to be the goal.

I think K has a good angle. Its not terribly realistic to expect to just walk into town and sell the random collection of shit the PCs will have. The only reason people make such a big deal out of it is the magic items = gold deal. Take that out and it'll fix itself for most people.

For anyone else just use the Exalted resources system. Your wealth is ranked from 0 to 5 with 0 being destitute and 5 being Bill Gates. You can buy anything with a cost of less than your resources. Anything with a cost equal to your resources you can get but your resources is reduced by one.

A lot of the solutions given here to packrats in 3e sound very similar to the 4e solution to me. No gold for non-masterwork items in 3e is little different to no gold for mundane armour in 4e.

Crissa wrote:You know why WoW has grey loot?

1. So that people will grind for bigger bags.
2. So that people are encouraged to intersperse grinding with trips to town to sell greys.

3. So that magic items of whatever color actually look impressive. If everything you get is top tier, nothing looks "good" it all looks "expected."

-Username17

So what is 4e's excuse for not having them?

I like this one method a player of mine suggested. He took the Leadership feat, and asked for a black market cohort. With every adventure, he would take everything that could be physically removed from the location and dump it on his cohort. The cohort, by his request, was someone who had the entire suite of skills needed to sell anything in a reasonable amount of time, no matter how useless or hot it was.

I ran the game using AE rules, and they have a class that's even more skill-based than the rogue, which this cohort was. As a result, the party got everything they wanted sold and could have almost any item they desired, wholesale