Magic has a price...

[Dell]

Some people want to put prices on the magical items - these are my suggestions for the prices to use.

Potions: Around 200-300 gp for each potion, I'd say.
Scrolls: 100 gp per spell level.
Rings: 1,000 - 3,000
Wand/Rod/Staff: 2,000 - 5,000
Weapon: 1,000 per +, extra 1,000 for each additional ability.
Armor: 10X cost of non-magical armor of same type, extra 2,000 per each +.
Shield: 500 per +

The miscellaneous items you can't really put a generic price on - there's so many of them, and they range so widely. Of course, we don't know what the value of things would be in the game world. There's only 2 magic items that we've ever gotten sale prices for. Ross sold some dwarven magic chainmail for 300 gp, and the Alchemist offered us 500 gp for the potion of flight. Not a lot to go on, although we can safely assume that Ross got screwed on that deal.

[liato]

That's a good start. We'll mainly be using this for figuring out treasure splits.

It should probably be geometric growth instead of linear growth for items with power levels. It's going to be much rarer to find a +3 sword than a +1 sword so the price should reflect that. I like most of your numbers I just adjusted the growth rate.

Her would be my revised chart:
Potions: 200 - 300 gp (flat 100 gp if unidentified or a healing potion)
Scrolls: 100 gp for level 1. Doubles each spell level thereafter. (i.e. 100 gp, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800, 25,600 for level 9)
Even at this rate Fireball and lightning bolt only cost 400 gold. Spells over level 3 are very powerful and the costs should reflect that. Even at 400 gp I'd carry around a mess of fireball scrolls.

Wands/rods/staff: 2,000 to 5,000 sounds okay.

Weapons: Base cost of 2,000. 1,000 doubling for every + (i.e +1 = 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, 16,000). +2,000 for every special ability. (I'd say a +5 sword is easily worth 18,000)

Armor: 10X cost is a good base. +2,000 doubling per plus sounds good again. +2000 for each other ability (38,000 for +5 plate mail would be an easy purchase decision)

Shield: Base: 1,000. +500 per plus doubling

Rings: 1,000 to 5,000. Rings of protection should start at 1,000 and double like all the other items.


My guess is that these prices are still very low. I mean is there any item that you wouldn't purchase at these prices?

You forgot about a 3rd magic item we actually bought. Remember the green chalk? How much did we pay for that? Wasn't it at least 1,000? And it was just chalk.

[Ginger]

We should probably differentiate scroll prices based on whether we have the spell in our spell books or not. A fireball scroll is worth less than a lightning bolt scroll which is worth less than a Protection from Normal Missiles scroll.

[liato]

It is worth more to us if we don't have it, but that's true of all items. And only magic user spells need to be written anyway. This chart would work for cleric spells, too.

This is more of a generic chart we can use for splitting loot. +1 leather armor is more valuable to me then +1 platemail, for instance, but our prices don't need to reflect that.

[Dell]

The absolute values aren't as important as the relative values, in my opinion. There's no reason to try and set accurate market values for them, because we're not buying them. Sure, it costs a few thousand to buy a scroll from the Silent one, and who knows what magical armor or weaponry would go for on the open market.

According to the DMG, Plate Mail +5 would sell for 27,500. The Serpent Staff you have, by means of comparison, goes for 35,000, your rod goes for about 20,000 - 25,000. While I don't think the prices that we'll get will be anything similar, I think that we should keep close to the same ratios. More plusses, while much rarer, are not that much more useful - a natural 20 still hits you (well, most of the time) and a 1 will still miss whatever you're swinging at.

So the geometric increase is definitely excessive, especially when weapons and armor are among the weaker items available.

We can always have the items appraised by someone, and use those figures when we divide the loot. That makes the DM do all the work, which sounds like the best solution to me. Plus, we know that the item can be cashed in right away, with no looking for a buyer.

[Ginger]

The primary purpose of evaluating the cost of these items seems to be in handing out cash payments for them to people who don't get a draw in the magic item lottery. As such, you'd think we'd want them to be on the low end of the scale.

[Dell]

We can use the XP value listed in the DMG for all the magic items. That's fast, fair, and doesn't require any kind of judgment on our parts - we just go to the book and see what it says, and go by that.

Just to show what our current items would be worth in this system:

Dell -
Lion Figurine: 500
Dagger +1: 75
Dagger +2: 200 (not that I have one)
Longsword +1: 400
Scroll of Protection vs. Lycanthropes: 1,000
Potion of Fire Resist: 250
Amulet of Prot. from Good: ??? (not listed)


Liato:
Snake Staff: 7,000
Paralyze rod: 3,500

Raven:
Plate +1: 800
Shield +1: 250
Longsword +2: 800
Pearl of Wisdom: 500

Winthrop:
Ring of protection, +1: 2,000
Wand of finding people that don't like you: 2,000

Anyway, these seem like fair numbers to use - we'll just try to keep the totals even when we distribute the goodies.

[liato]

I think we should go with something like my original post. There are just set items for categories of weapons.

Since we divide the loot before it is identified usually we can't use another system very well. And since it is for paying NPCs primarily we're providing them a pretty serious service if we identify it for them which means we can scale the costs down.

Something like:
scrolls = 200
potions = 100
weapons = 5000
armor = 10,000
misc = 8,000


We can adjust the prices up or down but we don't need to worry about what the actual item is this way. And it's super simple.

[Dell]

Them values is craaazy! Way too much for weapons and armor.

After we killed Gador and took his stuff, Garvin was satisfied when we assessed all the magic items at 1,000 gp each - potions, scrolls, armor, everything. Garvin is the greediest hire we've had to date, so if it satisfied him, it should be good enough for anyone.

[liato]

Fine with me.

I'd make potions and scrolls half that.

potions & scrolls = 500 gp
Everything else = 1000 gp

[Ginger]

I would go with something more like 500 per item. If anyone complains, we can just tell them that the only magical thing we've sold was magical dwarven chainmail, which we sold for 400 GP to a dwarf, so that's not an unreasonable rate.

[Dell]

500 it is. Everyone happy with that? Does Frank like it?


Now let's move on to related business - what do we pay the hirelings, anyway?

I recommend a 3-tiered system.

Apprentice Member (0-5,000 xp): Take recovered funds, divide by the number of participants in the adventure. Apprentice members get 50% of this amount, the other half goes into the company fund to pay for their room and board, medical care, training, etc. Each apprentice will be assigned a "mentor" and should obey that mentor's instructions.

Junior Member (5,001-10,000 xp): Same process as above, but recieves 75% - remainder going into fund.

Member (10,001 xp and up): Recieves 100% of cut.

Senior Member (by election only): Get 90% of cut, remainder goes into company account. Have first choice of magical items, have access to company account, get to vote on which jobs or missions to take on next.

Seems simple, but fair. The PHB recommends that henchmen should get smaller cuts, as they are being told what to do by the PC's... the free training will be a plus as well. It's more lucrative than guarding a caravan for ten gold a day, regardless.

Hirelings are generally salaried employees, but I'm sure a hired bunch of mercenaries would naturally expect to take any plunder they found for themselves - after all, we do. But hiring a squad of men to live in Blue Sun Hall and guard it while we're away, that would be on a salary basis.

[Ginger]

I really like that idea, but I would tie it into skills instead of xp. You can't go around asking an NPC how many experience points they have. For clerics and magic users, they become a junior member once they get second level spells, and a full member once they get third level spells. For fighters, they should become a full member once they double specialize. (I would skip the intermediate step.) Multi-classed characters we can deal with on a case by case basis.

This way best tracks how useful people are in the party. Fighters aren't that helpful until they become double-specialized, and after that they're very helpful. Likewise, spell casters won't really earn their keep until they reach 5th level. Since they level up more slowly, they'll be at a lower paygrade than people they start with, but they'll get to use our spellbooks, which will make all of the difference.

[Dell]

That's a good point - the free training and access to all our collected spells will be a big deal for any apprentice mages we hire on. And the expenses of being a mage mean that they get a really good deal out of joining, so they'd be more likely to want to chip in, where the fighters would want to reach their payout sooner.

What about thieves? For full membership, we can use the point at which their backstab does triple damage, but should we do a junior level for them too?

[Ginger]

Well, we don't have to worry about a lot of classes because we just wouldn't hire them. It's extremely unlikely that we'd hire another druid. They generally aren't the adventuring type, and we don't really need another one. We also won't likely hire a thief. Dell is a level 6 thief and can handle all of that stuff quite well.

The only people we need to actively recruit are melee fighters and clerics. Even if Garvin, Al and Frank stay on permanently, we could always use a new melee fighter or cleric.

[Dell]

ArrowGuy said:

We also won't likely hire a thief. Dell is a level 6 thief and can handle all of that stuff quite well.

Dell was actually planning on hiring a wizard apprentice and a thief apprentice. That way, when stuff goes missing he can blame it on his assistant.

[Ginger]

Well, another way we can do it is to let members hire apprentices as they want to, and pay them out of their own share. In that way, I could loan my apprentice my extra magical items as I gained more powerful ones, maybe giving him them as he earns his keep, and pay him with training and such.

[Ginger]

Let's try to make a list of free perks people would get for fighting for us.

1. Free training. Magic user spells, cleric spells (depending on the deity), weapon proficiencies, appraisal, wound binding, horsemanship (once one of us learns it).

2. Spell book access. A mage would get all of our spells, appropriate to his level. We don't yet have anything so valuable that we wouldn't want to share with anyone.

3. Free lodging. We've got a secret mountain lair, how cool is that?

4. Free experience. We do more before 8 AM than most people do all day. Liato has gained 3 levels while we've been fighting with the Pelorites. A level one hireling would gain levels very quickly.

5. Free equipment. We can easily outfit all of our hirelings with plate mail.

[liato]

I'm pretty confused on this.

When I suggested a share system you said:
"Dell is worse off under this system than the current one, so he votes against it.

He likes the current system, where every hireling deal is negotiated independently - we might find someone dumb enough to work for six silver a day at some point."

And now you suggest a share based system.

Apprentice = 2 shares
Junior = 3 shares
Member = 4 shares
Senior Member = 4 shares - 10% + not very well defined bonuses.

First of all, the system scales very poorly. 4th and 7th level get paid the same? Or even worse, 4th and 9th?

Plus the first 2 tiers take about 4 adventures to cover. Why even mess around with that?

You should be either a member or a non-member. If you are a non-member we negotate a rate for you, probably something around 1/2 share if you are low level.

Once we decide we like you we offer you the chance to buy into our ressurrection fund. That costs 10% of your take and entitles you to be ressurrected and have access to the group house/boat, etc... That 10% should be almost exclusively for those purposes. Everyone should be responsible for their own room and board, their own training, etc... That's why the fee is cut to 10%.

There's a clear advantage to being in the company and we don't have to have any weird rules about how to pay people.

If we're going to have weird rules about how to pay people, I think the shares system under the "member policy" post is a much better one.

I also would like to keep the group size to between 6 and 8.

Right now we have:
Dell
Winthrop
Raven
Frank
Liato
Al?
Garvin?

Assuming Al and Garvin don't stay that gives us 5 members.
We need 1 more cleric (hopefully garvin), 1 more fighter (hopefully Al) and one more cleric or fighter (I'd say cleric).

I don't see a need for a bunch of apprentices running around. Either it feels like the people are playing more than one character or the GM has to be too involved in the party. Dana already has 3 characters in the party to speak through. Pretty soon he'll outnumber us.

[Ginger]

I think that a share system based on experience points or levels won't work. It's just too dependent on out-of-game knowledge. I like pegging rewards to skills/abilities because it's obvious to all, and best tracks actual worth. Melee specialists have a dramatic jump at level 4, and then don't improve much until level 7. Clerics and Mages don't improve much at the even levels, but improve a lot at the odd levels.

Since classes improve in power unevenly, we should reward them unevenly.

[Ginger]

I think that we should settle on 8 people in our permanent fighting group. We 4 PCs, two melee fighters and two clerics. Al, Frank and Garvin could fill those slots, or we can fire the greedy bastards and start afresh. If we get another PC, which Dana suggested may happen, he'll hopefully pick one of those two classes.

I strongly suggest that we spend some time tracking down our former colleagues to get their items and re-enlist them. If we do get any of them, we'll have to re-adjust our other people accordingly.

[Dell]

liato said:

First of all, the system scales very poorly. 4th and 7th level get paid the same? Or even worse, 4th and 9th?

That's right. That's part of the beauty of the system. After 4th or 5th level, the character is capable enough to, at least theoretically, adventure on their own, or find a group of their own. So for an NPC to stay with us at that point, we would either have to split fairly with them, or get so much treasure that a reduced split from us would be better than a full cut in some other adventuring group.

Besides, basing things on character level benefits Liato for having a class that advances quickly, and punishes Dell for being multiclassed... so clearly I can not choose the glass in front of you.

Plus the first 2 tiers take about 4 adventures to cover. Why even mess around with that?

It was essentially supposed to act like a 90 day probational period. If the apprentice sucks, we can cut them loose, no hard feelings, and we haven't lost too much.

But I like Raven's idea better - each member can have or not have hirelings as he chooses, but they're his responsibility - so they only have to bargain with him, not the company as a whole. And when the member thinks his hireling is ready, he can propose that he be allowed to join the company. Or he can break off and form his own Blue Sun franchise, or whatever. Plenty of options.

Once we decide we like you we offer you the chance to buy into our ressurrection fund. That costs 10% of your take and entitles you to be ressurrected and have access to the group house/boat, etc... That 10% should be almost exclusively for those purposes. Everyone should be responsible for their own room and board, their own training, etc... That's why the fee is cut to 10%.

I've gone back and forth on the resurrection fund, and I've concluded that it sucks. If you want to be resurrected, either save enough money to get it done on your own, or have valuable magical items that can be sold to finance your revival. Hell, if we really like you, we can take it in credit - you miss out on treasure distribution for X amount of dollars.

There's a clear advantage to being in the company and we don't have to have any weird rules about how to pay people.

"If you die, we'll bring you back," isn't one of the best advertising slogans I've ever heard.

I don't see a need for a bunch of apprentices running around.

We came into this temple with FIVE orcs. How many of them are alive now? And how many of us would have died if the orcs hadn't been there for the Wraiths and Spectre and tentacles and Clerics and Winthrop to attack? Having a lot of low level cannon fodder around is a wise strategy. Besides, when they die... we don't have to pay them ANYTHING.

[Dell]

ArrowGuy said:

I think that we should settle on 8 people in our permanent fighting group. We 4 PCs, two melee fighters and two clerics.

More clerics are always a good thing. Is the priest of Wee Jas busy?

[Ginger]

Actually, I don't really like the "each of us has an apprentice" plan.
1. Do you really want Frank to have a couple of thugs who are loyal only to him accompanying us? Or guarding the loot while we sleep?
2. Do you want to be in trouble and have the only available fighter not come to your rescue because he's Winthrop's bodyguard, and isn't paid to protect you?

I think that plan could work well if our core group was less highly specialized, but the only guys who really need an "apprentice" are Frank, Al and Garvin. We really don't need another bow specialist, druid, mage or thief.

[liato]

Wow, Dell, you are chaotic.

We need a ressurection fund because different people, fighters for example, are more likely to die and shouldn't be penalized for that since they are dying to keep other people from dyingl. Of course that will all change with the no res fund system.

"Gee, I would step in front of that giant who is about to hit you, Dell, but I might die and that will come out of my salary. If you die, on the other hand, it comes out of your salary which is good because you'll be forced to sell your magic items. Okay, Dell dies. What's the going rate for magic items we decided? 500 gold pieces. So I get to buy 10 of Dells items from him for the 5,000 gold it costs to rez him. And since he's dead I guess I get to pick, right?"

So go ahead an explain the advantages of this system again to me?


I think there should be more party members than NPCs so I'd say 7 at most unless we get another PC. PCs should outnumber Dana.

I don't like the idea of hiring personal henchmen unless they are just porters or shield bearers. It's too much like playing two characters at once.

It might be a good idea for the party to hire a combat porter. We could then yell for him to get out magic items and shields that we need or to bring stuff from one person to the other. He could run around with berries healing people or in extreme cases drag people out of combat. He could watch our horses. But he would not be expected to fight or do anything dangerous.

[Ginger]

Well, since all of the guys we'll hire start at first level, they'll basically be glorified porters. Until they get to third level, a cleric's primary job will be staying in the back and healing us once we've slaughtered the bad guys. Once they've hit third level, they should be able to run around the battlefield a bit to help the guys in the frontline.

Fighters also can't really start acting as a tank until they reach level 4. Do you remember how much Frank sucked back then? Once you get to level 4, you can double specialize and you'll probably be able to get your strength up to 16 or 17. Low level fighters will guard the support guys, try to fill in gaps in our defenses while we regroup, or hold up tower shields.

[Ginger]

I also fully agree that people should not pay for ressurection out of their own pockets. If it costs me 7000 to raise me from the dead, I will be much, much less likely to help people out in a pinch.

[liato]

My problem with adding more hirelings is that the players end up with more than one character. I don't like that much. You end up with stuff like happened last time where Dell and Huxley have a conversation in James' head.

Most websites and guides suggest that people should only run one character at a time.

I think the reason we feel like we need so many people is attacking enemy bases and if you do that you really want to bring some sort of army. Of course that was more true when we were lower level. You can't really have an army of level 7 characters so we'll start to get some real advantages now.

For example, the gnoll stockade should be much easier now, right? Heck, if we came back and did the temple of Nerul that we are in right now it would be a lot easier since several people have gone up at least one level.

So I think it would be good to have a porter or two, but not really fighting type guys. People who will be willing to work for a daily wage. There are all sorts of little things that we could have them do.

Set up the camp site, keep watches, carry useful items into combat so we don't have to carry them. When Raven drops his bow and runs into combat one of them could pick it up. Or they could carry extra arrows. They could manage the potions for us. Basically anytime Dana says, "you'd have to search through your backpack" they could do that. We could also use them to haul loot out. We really flirt with encumberance issues and it would be nice to have someone just dealing with that stuff.

[Dell]

liato said:

Wow, Dell, you are chaotic.

We need a ressurection fund because different people, fighters for example, are more likely to die and shouldn't be penalized for that since they are dying to keep other people from dyingl. Of course that will all change with the no res fund system.

It's more fun to be chaotic.

Okay... we don't have a resurrection fund system now, do we? Not really. Company funds are supposed to pay for it, but we don't have enough in the Longspear account to cover the cost (appx 6000 gp needed) for even one person getting raised. And as far as Frank knows, if he dies, he's done for. Same for Garvin - because we've been repeatedly telling them these things. Al may be screwed if we don't get out of this temple soon...

Anyway, I don't see how not using a system that we don't even have yet will change anything.

[/quote]
"Gee, I would step in front of that giant who is about to hit you, Dell, but I might die and that will come out of my salary. If you die, on the other hand, it comes out of your salary which is good because you'll be forced to sell your magic items. Okay, Dell dies. What's the going rate for magic items we decided? 500 gold pieces. So I get to buy 10 of Dells items from him for the 5,000 gold it costs to rez him. And since he's dead I guess I get to pick, right?"[/quote]

That sort of behavior would be more based on alignment than any sort of mid-combat cost-benefit analysis. And no, the party wouldn't split up the dead person's belongings. We would sell the magic items for cash, and use the cash to raise them from the dead. Or we would barter the items to the clergy to get them raised. The 500 gp per magic item system is only for asessing total haul value for paying the hirelings, nothing else. And if we're going to bargain with them individually, then we don't even need to do that.

So go ahead an explain the advantages of this system again to me?

Everyone gets to keep the money that they have, and can spend it on whatever they want. The advantage is freedom. I thought this was an adventuring company, not Blue Sun/Blue Shield insurance. What's more likely, the situation you proposed, or this:

"Well gang, Member #7 is dead. We can spend company funds to have him raised, or... we can have an extra 1,000 gold each to spend on loose women and alcohol. How do you vote?"

Rationally, there are very few reasons to pay to raise another character from the dead. You might do it if they'd be hard to replace (due to high level, social connections, or what have you) and you might do it for in-character reasons. ("I've travelled with Raven for a long time, and he's a spiffy guy - can we bring him back?":) If you were Lawful, you'd do it if there was a company agreement to do so... but as a company, we ain't all that lawful.

So from Dell's POV, it only makes sense that you should have to spring for your own revival. Would you rather be dead?

We can handle them all the way we did Winthrop's revival, since that's as much of a system as we've used before - the raising costs come off the top, then the remainder is split. The revived character's share of that adventure's loot is their raising cost - in other words, you don't get any money off the adventure that killed you. But you don't have to be dead, so yay for you. It's the way we handled the one previous case, so it's at least got precedent going for it.

I don't like the idea of hiring personal henchmen unless they are just porters or shield bearers. It's too much like playing two characters at once.

That's essentially what Dell wants - a 1st level mage is nothing but a scroll with legs. He'll carry Dell's heavy junk so Dell isn't encumbered, and can run faster. Running faster is important to Dell.

It might be a good idea for the party to hire a combat porter.

We need Sherpas.

[Dell]

liato said:

My problem with adding more hirelings is that the players end up with more than one character. I don't like that much. You end up with stuff like happened last time where Dell and Huxley have a conversation in James' head.

It was excellent, too, I might add. Those two really don't get along...

For example, the gnoll stockade should be much easier now, right? Heck, if we came back and did the temple of Nerul that we are in right now it would be a lot easier since several people have gone up at least one level.

For the gnoll stockade, we can hire mercenaries - they're not too expensive. Of course, they wouldn't share their plunder with us, but we won't share ours with them, so it's only fair.

I really like the porter idea, but I have to say that a 0-level porter is going to have morale so low that there's no way he'll stick around when combat starts. Don't give him anything to valuable to hold, is what I'm saying.