ADVENTURER’S LUCK question

[Arakor]

Yhea I'm kinda confused about what he's saying as well.
Maybe he's implying some GM's aren't letting players use their stake % in gearing up before the adventure ends, that they are being forced to save?

Bingo!

In a way, that's what I'm seeing when a GM says that the characters automatically take the Prudence hit.
It seems to imply that the GMs are forcing the characters to move x% into their stake before they're allowed to do anything in Downtime.

As a player, I would resent that. Surely it's up to me whether I want to move money into my stake or whether I need to use all of it to pay for something specific to my character progression.

[Grimace]

To me stake is just a place to hold already taxed coin.  A place to save up cash for those big ticket items.

IMO you may spend your after prudence coin or put it in stake for future purchases.

I would have much rather seen a system where you calculated the daily cost of living and then multiplied it by x amount with x going from higher to lower on the prudence scale.  This way the downtime of one day only takes x*daily cost of living and a week would take 7 times that.

Adventure happens more money added to the pot.  Have 1 month downtime pay your prudence for 30 days.  Rinse and repeat.  This will give a GM more control over the money as they set what the daily cost of living is.  If the GM thinks characters are too rich, have an extended downtime.

If the players don't have the cash they can supplement it with working during downtime.  If the players spend all their cash and cannot work to pay CoL then their either go into debt with a steep interest rate or if the GM wants to be really harsh, they loose a 1 point from a physical stat because of malnutrition/disease. 

[Crafty_Alex]

Looking at the note in the Haggle description about the default %50 cut in resale value, that only seems to apply to gear. Treasure items such as gemstones and trophies would arguably seem to default to their listed values when it comes time to convert them to coin.

A gem whose only use is to convert to money is, in essence, money...just like a gold coin equaling 20 silvers is still money in a silver economy. Each of the Adventure Companion's settings include a segment on currency to demonstrate how systems like this can be created and used. In Epoch, a largely "pre-coin" setting, there are all sorts of equivalencies of for valued and rare materials that form the "silver" of the world's barter system. In Cloak & Dagger, silver exists (even though it's rarely made from silver), but other valuable trade goods like spices are essentially a different unit of the same coin.

[Crafty_Alex]

I would have much rather seen a system where you calculated the daily cost of living and then multiplied it by x amount with x going from higher to lower on the prudence scale.  This way the downtime of one day only takes x*daily cost of living and a week would take 7 times that.

Adventure happens more money added to the pot.  Have 1 month downtime pay your prudence for 30 days.  Rinse and repeat.  This will give a GM more control over the money as they set what the daily cost of living is.  If the GM thinks characters are too rich, have an extended downtime.

If the players don't have the cash they can supplement it with working during downtime.  If the players spend all their cash and cannot work to pay CoL then their either go into debt with a steep interest rate or if the GM wants to be really harsh, they loose a 1 point from a physical stat because of malnutrition/disease. 

Yeah....about that - it's a loser. Because we get into - what does it cost to live for a day? In what Era? (Primitive Eras don't have fancy hotels or anything...). And you're calculating days in every downtime. It would not be hard, for example, for have a party who adventures once then goes 6 months without earning new coin. Do they go into debt? Do they get kicked out of those hotels? Our goal was do de-complicate "non-action"/Downtime as much as possible. And then there's the issue of characters willing to live on gruel and sleep in barns to keep every coin in their giant hoard of gold. Sure, it could be balanced out, sorta, but the thing is we didn't want the focus of the game being on micromanagement of one's personal life - we wanted it to be focused on the adventuring part.

[Grimace]

I would have much rather seen a system where you calculated the daily cost of living and then multiplied it by x amount with x going from higher to lower on the prudence scale.  This way the downtime of one day only takes x*daily cost of living and a week would take 7 times that.

Adventure happens more money added to the pot.  Have 1 month downtime pay your prudence for 30 days.  Rinse and repeat.  This will give a GM more control over the money as they set what the daily cost of living is.  If the GM thinks characters are too rich, have an extended downtime.

If the players don't have the cash they can supplement it with working during downtime.  If the players spend all their cash and cannot work to pay CoL then their either go into debt with a steep interest rate or if the GM wants to be really harsh, they loose a 1 point from a physical stat because of malnutrition/disease. 

Yeah....about that - it's a loser. Because we get into - what does it cost to live for a day? In what Era? (Primitive Eras don't have fancy hotels or anything...). And you're calculating days in every downtime. It would not be hard, for example, for have a party who adventures once then goes 6 months without earning new coin. Do they go into debt? Do they get kicked out of those hotels? Our goal was do de-complicate "non-action"/Downtime as much as possible. And then there's the issue of characters willing to live on gruel and sleep in barns to keep every coin in their giant hoard of gold. Sure, it could be balanced out, sorta, but the thing is we didn't want the focus of the game being on micromanagement of one's personal life - we wanted it to be focused on the adventuring part.

Understood.   Really I accept the automatic hit to coin.  I even think my players have accepted it, though begrudgingly.   

[Grimace]

BTW feel free to lock the thread as it's original topic was answered. 

[Eärendle]

Happiness!

Bingo!

In a way, that's what I'm seeing when a GM says that the characters automatically take the Prudence hit.
It seems to imply that the GMs are forcing the characters to move x% into their stake before they're allowed to do anything in Downtime.

As a player, I would resent that. Surely it's up to me whether I want to move money into my stake or whether I need to use all of it to pay for something specific to my character progression.

This strikes me as meta-game thinking and would completely negate the mechanic. Your (ie Arakor's) prudence is what allows you to save your pay check for big ticket items in real life in addition to avoiding the smaller daily over-indulgences of eating in restaurants, buying dvd's of movies that you could Netflix, or starting a Hordes army when your Warmachine one is still in blisters.

Your character's prudence needs to be separately established in order to be effective. It determines whether you buy the inn patrons a first, a third, or a twelfth celebratory round after the adventure and whether you over-tip the waitress. It keeps you from lavishing your new wealth on old friends and relatives as well as any expenses not represented by the purchase of an item or in-game benefit.  The player would almost never choose to limit his own long-term buying power thusly but the character certainly might. (Technically, the player does make the choice when setting Lifestyle values.) Consider how many lottery winners bankrupt themselves in just a few years. Likewise, although I couldn't find a clip, the "give us your coins" scene from A Knight's Tale provides a good example.

@Grimace - The system you describe sounds nifty. I can foresee using different values based on location (districts within a city or the capital versus the borderlands) or by circumstance (festival days make inn space scarce, war causes rationing). The Crafty version is less granular which might make it seem a harsher penalty but it is intended to motivate the adventurers to keep adventuring. Alternatively, you could certainly raise the base added to stake value to 50% and reset the increments to 2-3% if it better suits your group.

Hmm, Alex got here first but this is my view.