I was in a session this week where some of our party was thrown into jail. The captain of the guard told us it would be 100 GP to bail them out and no roll was high enough to persuade the captain to let them out. Since we found out we were not getting "paid" by the person that hired us to get into the predicament that got them put into jail, we laughed and said, "well, I guess we're continuing on without you." No-one was willing to give up gold knowing what a pain in the arse it is to get more.
The lesson there is to demand payment up front for any adventure, so we have some spending money for bribes, bail, etc during that session.
In the AL sessions I have played the DM has allowed the gold rewards to exist during the module in order to cover expenses like these. The modules weren't written with the new system in mind so it isn't reasonable to have the players pay from their very limited gold resources to cover in module costs that are predicated on receiving a gold reward in the module.
There have even been a couple of times where the DM allowed the in module gold to be used to purchase spell casting services if we were in a town, needed the spell and it fit with the module plot line.
Of course, we didn't get to keep any of the gold so the end result was that the module played more or less as originally intended and the players didn't lose what is now a much rarer resource.
Well the AL season 8 changes killed our Out of the Abyss campaign. The group had missed it and we decided to go back and play. The group was between levels 7 & 9 and had 1 magic item (the named sunsword). We were just about to get to the section of the module where we would start getting additional magic items, then season 8. We tried for a bit longer, found a cool magic item no treasure points, game over. So now the good news, we're starting a non-adv league game.
XGE tells me that my rogue with guild artisan: alchemist tools proficiency can make a vial of acid, antitoxin, or 1 flask of alchemists fire during a long rest for half the cost in raw materials. This contradicts crafting rules of $5/day downtime. Which is great because I can actually use them on the run rather then spending all my Tp on consumable one use weaponry. (The cost of spell components like prismatic sphere come to mind).
Turn all my tier 1 points in for medium armor (half plate) sell it for 375 gold.
Turn my tier 2 points in for full plate, sell it for 1000g each time.
Wait till tier 3 to actually spend treasure points, since I cannot use tier 1 and 2 due to money needs.
Problem: Cheaper to sell half plate and use money to buy tier 1 spell scroll, than to use treasure points to buy scroll
You do realize you can't sell full plate at full value but half price, which would net you 500gp not 1000.gp.
Well 2 things.
1 They changed what you can buy since then
2. Half Plate cost 750gp so half sell is 375gp. Full plate is 1500 (I thought 2000) so 1/2 price is 750gp. I had 1/2 price in mind when I listed the above, but was just wrong on full plate normal cost.
The Robe of Useful items is the premium choice for optimizing gold. Because specific patches are not included in any module, the contents of the robe are complete (i.e. they could be excluded if SPECIFICALLY listed in a treasure stat block but AL guidance says explicitly that items that have value that are magic still exist and can be claimed as treasure - for example, a set of plate mail +1 still is unlockable even though the plate mail has value beyond the +1 in normal TCP conversion). One thing that happened quite a bit because of this ruling was people taking their DM experience rewards who had run the modules with a robe of useful items (I believe there are 4) and took the robes as treasure for tier 1 characters. You can likely trade a good uncommon item to get a robe through the magic item trading forums.
Ultimately, the handling of Gold was short sighted and done horribly. The game designers assumed more gold than this will allow fundamentally changing the game. The fact that the setting is still the realms is worse - the average shopkeeper will earn 10X what a 10th level character can earn (based on Greenwood's feedback). There be more money in selling brooms than killing dragons.
Rather than give the characters things to spend gold on and put limits on how many potions you can use in a day, their solutions was to go overboard then double-down on it. On the plus side, Paizo is seeing a huge spike in players in Pathfinder!
I honestly don't know why anyone would choose to play a wizard in AL, other than purely for role-playing reasons. They are seriously ****** compared to other spell classes by the need to find/buy/transcribe spells. I've haven't seen a wizard at any of my tables this season.
I honestly don't know why anyone would choose to play a wizard in AL, other than purely for role-playing reasons. They are seriously ****** compared to other spell classes by the need to find/buy/transcribe spells. I've haven't seen a wizard at any of my tables this season.
If you have an active AL scene in your area, it's not that hard to buy spell scrolls. Every couple months one of the stores in my area hosts an epic (DDEP) which usually includes Fai Chen's faire. Also lots of adventures have (had? I'm not sure how this works with the new rules) spell books and scrolls listed as treasure.
I agree that I don't want to play a wizard in season 8. The lack of gold really makes me not want to play any spellcaster because they all have to buy components (I think clerics have this the worst). I doubly don't want to play a wizard with the added cost of transcribing spells. It's a huge expense by season 8 standards just to "unlock" one of the coolest wizard features.
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In the AL sessions I have played the DM has allowed the gold rewards to exist during the module in order to cover expenses like these. The modules weren't written with the new system in mind so it isn't reasonable to have the players pay from their very limited gold resources to cover in module costs that are predicated on receiving a gold reward in the module.
There have even been a couple of times where the DM allowed the in module gold to be used to purchase spell casting services if we were in a town, needed the spell and it fit with the module plot line.
Of course, we didn't get to keep any of the gold so the end result was that the module played more or less as originally intended and the players didn't lose what is now a much rarer resource.
Well the AL season 8 changes killed our Out of the Abyss campaign. The group had missed it and we decided to go back and play. The group was between levels 7 & 9 and had 1 magic item (the named sunsword). We were just about to get to the section of the module where we would start getting additional magic items, then season 8. We tried for a bit longer, found a cool magic item no treasure points, game over. So now the good news, we're starting a non-adv league game.
XGE tells me that my rogue with guild artisan: alchemist tools proficiency can make a vial of acid, antitoxin, or 1 flask of alchemists fire during a long rest for half the cost in raw materials. This contradicts crafting rules of $5/day downtime. Which is great because I can actually use them on the run rather then spending all my Tp on consumable one use weaponry. (The cost of spell components like prismatic sphere come to mind).
Is this a correct interpretation?
You do realize you can't sell full plate at full value but half price, which would net you 500gp not 1000.gp.
Well 2 things.
1 They changed what you can buy since then
2. Half Plate cost 750gp so half sell is 375gp. Full plate is 1500 (I thought 2000) so 1/2 price is 750gp. I had 1/2 price in mind when I listed the above, but was just wrong on full plate normal cost.
The Robe of Useful items is the premium choice for optimizing gold. Because specific patches are not included in any module, the contents of the robe are complete (i.e. they could be excluded if SPECIFICALLY listed in a treasure stat block but AL guidance says explicitly that items that have value that are magic still exist and can be claimed as treasure - for example, a set of plate mail +1 still is unlockable even though the plate mail has value beyond the +1 in normal TCP conversion). One thing that happened quite a bit because of this ruling was people taking their DM experience rewards who had run the modules with a robe of useful items (I believe there are 4) and took the robes as treasure for tier 1 characters. You can likely trade a good uncommon item to get a robe through the magic item trading forums.
Ultimately, the handling of Gold was short sighted and done horribly. The game designers assumed more gold than this will allow fundamentally changing the game. The fact that the setting is still the realms is worse - the average shopkeeper will earn 10X what a 10th level character can earn (based on Greenwood's feedback). There be more money in selling brooms than killing dragons.
Rather than give the characters things to spend gold on and put limits on how many potions you can use in a day, their solutions was to go overboard then double-down on it. On the plus side, Paizo is seeing a huge spike in players in Pathfinder!
I honestly don't know why anyone would choose to play a wizard in AL, other than purely for role-playing reasons. They are seriously ****** compared to other spell classes by the need to find/buy/transcribe spells. I've haven't seen a wizard at any of my tables this season.
If you have an active AL scene in your area, it's not that hard to buy spell scrolls. Every couple months one of the stores in my area hosts an epic (DDEP) which usually includes Fai Chen's faire. Also lots of adventures have (had? I'm not sure how this works with the new rules) spell books and scrolls listed as treasure.
I agree that I don't want to play a wizard in season 8. The lack of gold really makes me not want to play any spellcaster because they all have to buy components (I think clerics have this the worst). I doubly don't want to play a wizard with the added cost of transcribing spells. It's a huge expense by season 8 standards just to "unlock" one of the coolest wizard features.