Buying Things

As the players come into town with their new-found wealth, I recommend letting them get about the business of buying things.  For myself, having created a very deep list of items that can challenge the pockets of nearly every character, "market day" is something of a rest.  Players ask many questions about what something is, or what use it serves, or how many are available, but for the most part the equipment list provides its own entertainment.

I am, as explained, in the process of putting this table into a book, so that it's much more than a list of items with their costs, but we need not go into this side project at the moment.  Instead, allow me to be tiresome, as I address various rules and the philosophy behind them, within the game experience.

This should be evident, given how it affects video game mechanics, but the process of spending money to purchase material things is a form of character advancement, separate from the advancement associated with experience levels.  Advancement through the purchase of armour reduces the chance of the character being hit, and so it increases the character's ratio of hit points against enemies.  This is, essentially, giving the character MORE hit points.  Superior weapons, in turn, increase the amount of damage done to opponents ... which gives the enemy LESS hit points.  Therefore, to maintain the game's challenge, effort must be taken on our part to ensure that the character's advantage, and the enemy's disadvantage, adjusts marginally.  And I mean that: marginally.

A lesson to be learned is that cost is not a sufficient obstacle against the acquisition of things that can be purchased.  Plunder is defacto a result of adventuring; the DM can deliberately reduce the amound of treasure found, but in reality this merely kicks the can down the road.  Sooner or later the player will have enough money to buy anything that's wanted.  And this is even easier if the whole party pools their money and chooses to buy the most effective equipment for each player in turn, making sure the fighter gets the best armour and weapons ... since in the short run, that improves everyone's survival, and the accumulation of more treasure.

It's possible that Gygax and crew understood this; and that they saw that the way to stave off the purchase of the most expensive items was to use player death as a balancing factor.  Characters won't "eventually" buy the best armour if the character is dead.

The problem is heightened when magical items are put up for sale.  Since the accumulation of treasure is inevitable, so long as the player continues to survive, then even items that cost tens of thousands of gold pieces will come into reach.  After all, we want players to survive; and if they're capable of planning and balancing the odds right, they will survive, they will buy whatever they want and that will destroy the challenge of the game — as powerful magic items of all sorts dwarf experience gains.

I find myself wrestling with words here.  Whether or not the campaign rewards experience for gold pieces, it's understood by players that gold is a part of what they seek when they adventure.  If we follow the structure to be found in official game modules, we're speaking of an awful lot of treasure; many thousands per person per adventure.  Where magic is for sale, this quickly transfers into mass buys of potions, scrolls, wands, magic armour and weapons, whatever the players wish.  One adventure dangerously overtips the game in the player's favour ... and that distorts, or rather weakens, the overall value of the game itself.

Even if we suspend the buying of magic items, there are still details like flasks of oil, holy water, plate armour and so on to consider.  What is to stop the player from purchasing with 10,000 g.p. a thousand vials of holy water, carefully transferred to metal jugs, so that gallons can be splooshed upon the lich we know is down below.  With characters who have accumulated ten levels over a lengthy campaign, having a six-figure number of gold pieces is normal.  Why not, at 11th, when one cannot possibly handle a well-run lich, simply have everyone in the party accumulate 8 gallons of holy water with 10,000 gold?  The take is sure to be at least double that amount when the treasure is counted.

And so, as I say, cost is not an obstacle.  It's a speed bump.  The proper obstacle to the accumulation of wealth is mass ... how much can be carried, how much can be stored, where can it be stored safely, how much can be practically transferred into the desired commodity and finally, how much can be effectively employed at any one time.

If the vial is elemental to the holiness of the water, and the water cannot be removed from the vial for more than, say, 20 seconds without destroying its inherent properties, then 10,000 gold's worth of holy water exists as a thousand vials, which cannot all be opened simultaneously, or at any great speed.  If the plate armour is heavy, and cannot be worn without reducing what else the character can carry, while slowing the character down in a fight, then the defensive benefit on one front is weighed against the offensive loss on another.  If a magic sword cannot be purchased, nor any improved variety of plain sword, except perhaps one that breaks less, than a better sword must be found.  And if the character has enormous piles of money, then all that money must be made inconvenient by placing it in a bank, or in goods so heavy — such as a castle — that it cannot be stolen.

Encumbrance is the critical element of discipline in the game's structure where the accumulation of wealth and power occurs.  The more one has, the greater imposition encumbrance makes upon the character.  The word literally means, "an obstacle, a burden or an impediment."  It doesn't matter that players don't like it; they're not meant to like it.  They're meant to fucking hate encumbrance, to despise it, to lay awake nights grumbling against it, as they invent ways to reduce its grasping, troublesome, crippling effects.

Secondary to encumbrance is time.  Wealth has a physical presence; that presence must be located somewhere in the game world.  All of it, unless it's so little that the players are not benefitted by it, cannot be perpetually carried around with the character.  This means that some of it must be located at a distance, where it's inconvenient to the players right now, so that it takes time to re-acquire it.  And time costs.  Players eat, and food goes bad.  Items age and go weak.  Complex items accumulate weak points and break.  Rooves fall in, foundations crack.  If medicines have an expiry date, why not potions, or holy water?  Combustibles sometimes, over time, combust..  Every month, wages deplete the kitty.  There's nothing time cannot destroy.  Time sucks.

It's not necessary to steal money from players.  That may happen, and eventually I'll figure out a fair way to impose that possibility ... but the harder truth is that the maintenance of wealth costs wealth.  As does the protection of wealth.

And so, let the players get about the business of buying things.  Decide what they can buy, and how much, and say nothing of how they're digging a hole for themselves.  Buying things is fun.