IT'S NOT OVER YET!

[Anastasia]

Okay, midweek stuff!

1. Arena. Gate/Rat/Drac, what day can you get together with me to do stuff. I'm off this weekend so I have pretty much all day Saturday if that helps.
2. Nikkolai, you were talking about shifting Nikkolai or maybe even a new PC. Are you serious about that at all?
3. Eva's gear. You guys were talking about splitting it up, so this means I should lay down some sort of coherent policy of dead PC belongings.  I'd prefer it if you guys don't turn dead PCs into free loot farms. I won't stop you, but I will adjust party wealth gains to compensate for gear being bandied about. Fair warning. If you want any of her gear, post here and then add it to your sheet.

[Sierra]

2. Not my character, but I feel inclined to chime in since Mari's spent the most time talking to him. Will wait for Zeph to speak before going into detail, but it does seem like someone's taking Mari's comments way too seriously (Zeph, you honestly thought she was trying to start a fight? I thought I'd made it clear that's something she tries to avoid.)

3. I took Eva's boots since no one objected (and the entertainer's outfit, but that's trivial and not really useful; it just seemed appropriate since hey, Eva was trying to get Mari to dance). Most of the gear can get donated to charity or something if that's what the good-aligned characters want. Mari isn't really down with turning a dead friend's possessions into a goldmine. She'll take what's useful or has sentimental value but otherwise wants to avoid feeling like a vulture. Actually, she'd probably like it better if anything really important (mainly the guitar) winds up in the same place as Eva's body.

[Dracos]

1. can we aim for 'anytime this week on the normal game start time?'  Saturday is potentially bad for me (Gming), tomorrow isn't and really the normal time slot is workable for a quick hour of stabbing things.

2.  I suspect zeph is hearing a lot of nos and it probably is coloring his view a bit (I know I've ribbed him a bunch).  I think nikki is a workable character definitely and it'd probably be premature to toss him away, Zeph, but you may want to hammer out a more fun way (for you) of playing him.

3.  Yeah, talked a bit with Dune before this as I saw it definitely happening.  Rat does have a point that unless these items are monetized they don't have a great effect...  But they always inevitable become so and really a 5000+ gp item of wonder is still quite a valuable prop at this level (1/6th your net wealth) and generally little 'advantages' are always nice as long as they're taking up an unoccupied spot.  I think dune's take of having it just act as an advance on future 'neat items' he may leave for you is a good one.  Stuff that's non-magical (And really we should carry more emotional/narrative nicknacks.  Taking the entertainer outfit is a clear awesome example) really shouldn't count much on it.

A Whole Bunch of Gaming Theory Garbage to Follow.  Please Collect Fire Vests.

I'm glad Dune's keeping on eye on it, as getting far ahead of wealth per level often can lead to it being really challenging to create dangerous 'but not that dangerous' encounters (Things that aren't tissue paper but also don't slam us for MaxHP+10 by accident).  I think Dune generally likes starting at exact WPL and generally rising about 5-10 percent above it over time (but trying to not go far there).  That's my observation though, dune may aim lower.  It's generally best, aside from from balancing tweaks, when players aren't more than a small percentage (10-15 or less) different in wealth (When they reach 100 percent difference, it's an absolute balancing nightmare for everybody).  the best state being that everyone is pretty close wavering around the current 'bar' that the GM feels comfortable with for how much item power the players have.

At present, we're all about 10-25 percent above average power level for a cast of level 8 D&D characters (generous dice rolls combined with very experienced twinking and pulling from high powered splat books).  To me this means dune can expect us to generally trounce over EL -(anything) from ourselves, spend probably about 10ish percent resources for EL+1,EL+2, find EL+4 fairly dangerous (but consistently beatable), and any EL above there will have very good odds of player death (I'd bet on the enemy to kill someone), even though it will still be almost sure win all the way up into the EL+7 in most cases.

Here's my hypothesis/suggestion of random ideas:

All of us should generally 'aim' to keep 500-2000 of chump change around.  How we've been rolling so far is that minor expenses in this range are very common and they likely will continue to be.  That's really no problem as long as we know it's coming and play along with the narrative Dune's giving us there.  Almost all of us are doing it right now.  This is not real 'wealth'.  It really shouldn't even be considered spendable on long term items at all ("Yeah, you can buy that superrad item...but now how do you afford your share of the place to SLEEP? or food?")

Everyone count up all permanent items that give a 'boost/ability' (Primarily just the magic ones) and sum their cost (GP only).  Add all gold above 2000.  Just note down on your sheet as "Persistent Wealth".  Anything that's change or doesn't give a meaningful bonus shouldn't really count here  (So Boots of +10move/+5 skill get added, Entertainers Outfit, Reading Books of Super Magery, role playing crutch of crotchetness, etc do not).  If you lose items, sacrifice equipment, etc they get removed from here, but this is the stuff that honestly almost never does anything but go up and represents a good measure of a character's real equipment wealth.

Dune can then use this to quickly eyeball at any time the amount of meaningful persistent wealth held by the party versus both the expected and each other.  No the value shouldn't necessarily be the same for everyone, some may need a bit more to keep up, others a bit less, but it can be a valuable easy glance tool for helping to balance wealth and help dune to identify where folks are versus each other.  

Basically with the above, we continue doing whatever we want, but it's self balancing.  If one of us loots stuff from a dead party member, they get the benefits of the items immediately, and dune gets a measure that hey this person just hopped ahead, so I probably shouldn't plan for a neat item that aims their way immediately.  It also gives a quick 'fairness' measure when two people want an item to help: Who's currently ahead on the persistent wealth?

Anyhow, random theory, but I think it'd do our game well to apply it :)  What do the others think?

[VySaika]

Re: Arena - Thursday I have Persona and the weekends do not exist for me, but I can swing either Fri or next Mon around our normal start time, yeah.

Re: Eva's gear - Adail will take the wand of cure light(as I was wanting to grab that in chargen anyway but Drac beat me to it and without it we have roughly 0 healing) but that's it.

[Dracos]

Friday Friday...  So rocking to be...

Friday, Friday...  We'll stab them, you'll see...

:)

*dodges*

[Carthrat]

I think we should just disassociate wealth from power, and this can be done by not having items over a certain price generally avaliable. It stops the inflation problem and allows pretty much any NPC we meet to be kitted out with a fairly realistic gear without dramatically inflating our power every time.

[Dracos]

On face that seems sensible...but they are, eventually, available.

And if we've a stash of +2 swords to hand in when that happens or a pile of gold, it means we will almost always buy them whenever they are available.  If they're very rare, it means its all the more likely we'll grab one just because who knows when the next +4 macguffin will arrive?

I don't think that necessarily changes much in that sense regardless, and I'd frankly tend to dislike the 'you don't like this doohickey you found, well, there's good odds no mage will have any other potential interesting swaps because these doohickeys are rare'.

I dunno.  Mayhaps if twined with a general difficulty turning gear into gold (Which seems a more effective direction than the reverse).

Actually, yeah...  How about instead of 'you can't buy stuff'.  Have stuff  be buyable.  Whatever.

But have a little or no market for reselling magical items.  So once in a while we get to pick something from a selection, usually, it doesn't matter if our opponents are wearing 27000 gp of magical equipment, they may only go for 270 gp in resale.  lots of excuses to justify this kind of thing (Merchant and black market stranglehold on legal commerce.  Powerful wizards liking to hedge demand for new services).