Post by kalbaern on Nov 5, 2013 13:24:09 GMT -5
Treasure and Stores? Shouldn't we be building dungeons and stuff already? Nope. Why you wonder. Because when we start adding actual areas/maps to test and explore into our module, we're going to want to put loot and stores into many areas. Having the bulk of your loot and sold items premade will help tons in that regards.
One thing that players really dislike is being told after the fact, "sorry, you can't have that item, its not allowed here". So we need to figure out what we will and won't allow as well as what if any adjustments to pricing we'll use.
Creating and using a seperate module for loot and items will also go a long, long, long ways to managing your module resources. You'll be able to create stores and treasure containers in this module and then copy/paste them into your Master Module. This will keep the pallettes in your Master and later Hosted Modules nice and clean.
Make a Treasure and Store Module
To make this module, just copy and rename your Master Builder Module. EX: If your Master Module is named "Dungeons of Doom Master", open it in the toolset and select "Save As" and make the new name "Dungeons of Doom Treasure and Stores".
If you've any maps or scripts in the module, delete all but a single map for testing and remove any scripts, encounters, creatures, etc... so as to start with a clean module.
Economics 101
Before you begin making custom loot and items for sale, consider the economic scale in your module. Should PCs be finding or buying enchanted gear at 3rd level or 10th on average? Will they hit 40th in a week, two weeks, months or years on average? All this is affected by the items you'll have as found loot and bought from merchants.
Exploits
One thing that catches many builders by suprise is how easy it is to inadvertantly create a Buy Low - Sell Higher exploit. It generally doesn't take an asstute player long to notice such opportunities and it only takes a couple folks abusing the system to have serverwide repercussions. So how do we prevent it? First we need to understand how Appraise Checks work.
Appraise Checks
If any of your merchants will allow an Appraise Check against themselves to determ buying and selling prices, its important to make sure that every merchant in your module sells items for no less than 60% higher than the single highest buying merchant will pay. When an appraise check is rolled (when you open a merchants store screen), both the NPC and the PC will make an Appraise Skill Check. NPC's appraise plus a d20 vs PC's appraise plus a d20. The higher result determines what if any change in pricing occurs. If the NPC beats the PC by 10pts, then they'll charge an extra 10% on sales and pay out 10% when buying. By default, Bioware caps the max differences at + or - 30%. This means, that in a few extremes a high Appraise Skill PC can sometimes buy something and resell it to the same or another NPC for a small or even large profit if you don't pay attention to guidelines you'll set for buying and selling. 60pts. That's the gap you need to maintain.
If the lowest mark up a single merchant uses is 100%, then to prevent exploits, you need to make certain the buying percentage for NPCs never exceeds 40%.
My own setting preferences are to set most merchants to pay out at around 30-40% of an items toolset value and a few select merchants will pay 50-60% for certain items only, while all merchants have a minimum mark up of 120% and most actually start at 150+%.
What will you allow and Restrict
What enchantments, enhancements, feats, skill boosts, etc... you allow on items found/bought in your module will greatly affect how fast folk not only progress, but often how they do or what classes/races become predominant.
Examples:
A - Cheap Armor and Weapons with enchantments can mean that fighter types don't really benefit much from travelling with casters. Why split your loot with them if you can just buy enchanted weapons and armor and travel without their spells enhancing you?
B - If healing supplies are too expensive, it makes life tough on everyone and most especially the newer PCs/players struggling to adapt to your module and its rules.
C - Items with permanent haste and various feats can rapidly upset a module or at a mimimum require a builder to take steps to counter them. One common "glitch" with encounters is having them spawn in invisible. This most commonly happens when a hostile creature spawns in too close to a PC. The game engine will forgo transmitting or retransmitting appearance data to players in favor of running the combat AIs. Hasted PCs make it harder to prevent this. Lets not forget what haste does either. It grants an extra attack per round and increases AC by +4. That means that at whatever level range PCs can get these items, we now need to scale encounters upward significantly harder to provide a challenge. If we don't, suddenly, most foes are mowed down without effort and XP and Loot gains sky rocket. Items with feats or too high of a skill boost have an impact as well. Why "invest" points in or take feats you can simply purchase?
Pricing
Pricing of goods should also reflect how abundant wealth is in general (from exploring/killing/quests) and if coin is easy to come by, then inflating item prices is reasonable. You also need to consider which if any purchases or sales will use appraise checks and whether crafting of items will be less expensive than buying them from a store.
Assuming appraise checks are being used, here's the guidelines we use here:
- No merchant pays better than 40% if they buy most items.
- Specialist merchants pay 50% (only buys one item type generally).
- Lowest selling markup is 130%.
- Crafted potions, wands and scrolls are flagged as stolen to prevent make/sell high exploits (our base costs IG are much lower than most PWs however).
- Weapons, armor, etc... that can be both crafted and bought have a minimum mark up of 160% (our IG custom crafting uses 130%, I.e., you save 30-60% by crafting items).
In addition to the above mark ups we inflate prices manually on many items based as follows:
+1 Enchantment/AC/Ability 1000gp*
+2 Enchantment/AC/Ability 3000gp*
+3 Enchantment/AC/Ability 6000gp*
*Each instance is increased this amount. I.e., if an item has +1 STR and +1 AC, the additional mark up is 2000gp.
200gp per bonus skill point
The above are merely our own preferences, yours may vary.
Why all this work?
Once you've begun bloating your item pallettes in this module with all your variants and varieties of cool custom items and loot, you'll see just how fast resources can get sucked up. Never fear, this is why we've created a seperate Loot and Merchant Module to begin with.
Whether you use a "chest" or a "store" for your treasure system and all the stores for merchants won't add to resources or inflate pallettes in your Master and Hosted Modules. Create them here, fill them, then save your work. Place your merchant stores and treasure chests (if using a chest based system for loot) in small groups on a map. Then highlight and copy them using CTRL+C, close this module and open your Master Building Module, then paste them into their respective maps. Ideally, your Master Building Module should have one map for holding stores and another for treasure. Because all the information is stored in the inventories of these stores and chests, it needn't ever exist on your Master Building pallettes. Only items you'll have created by scripting functions or items found in the inventories of your NPCs need ever be on your IG pallettes.
One thing that players really dislike is being told after the fact, "sorry, you can't have that item, its not allowed here". So we need to figure out what we will and won't allow as well as what if any adjustments to pricing we'll use.
Creating and using a seperate module for loot and items will also go a long, long, long ways to managing your module resources. You'll be able to create stores and treasure containers in this module and then copy/paste them into your Master Module. This will keep the pallettes in your Master and later Hosted Modules nice and clean.
Make a Treasure and Store Module
To make this module, just copy and rename your Master Builder Module. EX: If your Master Module is named "Dungeons of Doom Master", open it in the toolset and select "Save As" and make the new name "Dungeons of Doom Treasure and Stores".
If you've any maps or scripts in the module, delete all but a single map for testing and remove any scripts, encounters, creatures, etc... so as to start with a clean module.
Economics 101
Before you begin making custom loot and items for sale, consider the economic scale in your module. Should PCs be finding or buying enchanted gear at 3rd level or 10th on average? Will they hit 40th in a week, two weeks, months or years on average? All this is affected by the items you'll have as found loot and bought from merchants.
Exploits
One thing that catches many builders by suprise is how easy it is to inadvertantly create a Buy Low - Sell Higher exploit. It generally doesn't take an asstute player long to notice such opportunities and it only takes a couple folks abusing the system to have serverwide repercussions. So how do we prevent it? First we need to understand how Appraise Checks work.
Appraise Checks
If any of your merchants will allow an Appraise Check against themselves to determ buying and selling prices, its important to make sure that every merchant in your module sells items for no less than 60% higher than the single highest buying merchant will pay. When an appraise check is rolled (when you open a merchants store screen), both the NPC and the PC will make an Appraise Skill Check. NPC's appraise plus a d20 vs PC's appraise plus a d20. The higher result determines what if any change in pricing occurs. If the NPC beats the PC by 10pts, then they'll charge an extra 10% on sales and pay out 10% when buying. By default, Bioware caps the max differences at + or - 30%. This means, that in a few extremes a high Appraise Skill PC can sometimes buy something and resell it to the same or another NPC for a small or even large profit if you don't pay attention to guidelines you'll set for buying and selling. 60pts. That's the gap you need to maintain.
If the lowest mark up a single merchant uses is 100%, then to prevent exploits, you need to make certain the buying percentage for NPCs never exceeds 40%.
My own setting preferences are to set most merchants to pay out at around 30-40% of an items toolset value and a few select merchants will pay 50-60% for certain items only, while all merchants have a minimum mark up of 120% and most actually start at 150+%.
What will you allow and Restrict
What enchantments, enhancements, feats, skill boosts, etc... you allow on items found/bought in your module will greatly affect how fast folk not only progress, but often how they do or what classes/races become predominant.
Examples:
A - Cheap Armor and Weapons with enchantments can mean that fighter types don't really benefit much from travelling with casters. Why split your loot with them if you can just buy enchanted weapons and armor and travel without their spells enhancing you?
B - If healing supplies are too expensive, it makes life tough on everyone and most especially the newer PCs/players struggling to adapt to your module and its rules.
C - Items with permanent haste and various feats can rapidly upset a module or at a mimimum require a builder to take steps to counter them. One common "glitch" with encounters is having them spawn in invisible. This most commonly happens when a hostile creature spawns in too close to a PC. The game engine will forgo transmitting or retransmitting appearance data to players in favor of running the combat AIs. Hasted PCs make it harder to prevent this. Lets not forget what haste does either. It grants an extra attack per round and increases AC by +4. That means that at whatever level range PCs can get these items, we now need to scale encounters upward significantly harder to provide a challenge. If we don't, suddenly, most foes are mowed down without effort and XP and Loot gains sky rocket. Items with feats or too high of a skill boost have an impact as well. Why "invest" points in or take feats you can simply purchase?
Pricing
Pricing of goods should also reflect how abundant wealth is in general (from exploring/killing/quests) and if coin is easy to come by, then inflating item prices is reasonable. You also need to consider which if any purchases or sales will use appraise checks and whether crafting of items will be less expensive than buying them from a store.
Assuming appraise checks are being used, here's the guidelines we use here:
- No merchant pays better than 40% if they buy most items.
- Specialist merchants pay 50% (only buys one item type generally).
- Lowest selling markup is 130%.
- Crafted potions, wands and scrolls are flagged as stolen to prevent make/sell high exploits (our base costs IG are much lower than most PWs however).
- Weapons, armor, etc... that can be both crafted and bought have a minimum mark up of 160% (our IG custom crafting uses 130%, I.e., you save 30-60% by crafting items).
In addition to the above mark ups we inflate prices manually on many items based as follows:
+1 Enchantment/AC/Ability 1000gp*
+2 Enchantment/AC/Ability 3000gp*
+3 Enchantment/AC/Ability 6000gp*
*Each instance is increased this amount. I.e., if an item has +1 STR and +1 AC, the additional mark up is 2000gp.
200gp per bonus skill point
The above are merely our own preferences, yours may vary.
Why all this work?
Once you've begun bloating your item pallettes in this module with all your variants and varieties of cool custom items and loot, you'll see just how fast resources can get sucked up. Never fear, this is why we've created a seperate Loot and Merchant Module to begin with.
Whether you use a "chest" or a "store" for your treasure system and all the stores for merchants won't add to resources or inflate pallettes in your Master and Hosted Modules. Create them here, fill them, then save your work. Place your merchant stores and treasure chests (if using a chest based system for loot) in small groups on a map. Then highlight and copy them using CTRL+C, close this module and open your Master Building Module, then paste them into their respective maps. Ideally, your Master Building Module should have one map for holding stores and another for treasure. Because all the information is stored in the inventories of these stores and chests, it needn't ever exist on your Master Building pallettes. Only items you'll have created by scripting functions or items found in the inventories of your NPCs need ever be on your IG pallettes.