I've seen basically the same thing in my games, but as has been mentioned many times you are penalized for doing so in the worst cases and come out neutral in the best cases, assuming you don't have WBL gentleman's agreements or DM fiated benefits for doing so or whatever. Ideally, the rules should actually incentivize doing things like that, because many players do it anyway and you shouldn't ever punish players for doing something flavorful and reasonable that most players like to do, any more than you should take penalties for flavorfully describing your sword swings or for assuming that hitting someone from the high ground is advantageous to you.wotmaniac wrote:Maybe I've just had a really weird and anomalous experience with this game.
In 17 years of playing, I have yet to see a group of players not use part of their resources on "character development" stuff (hence why I don't see this problem). Not just that, I've seen it done at every single level of play. Whether it be hiring body guards (for extended use -- not just one-off), raising armies, building/maintaining keeps, developing agriculture and other resources, building churches, etc., etc., etc., this kind of stuff has happened in every single game that I've ever been a part of.
What gives?
Of course, there does seem to be the issue of player-DM trust. If the DM has fostered the environment in which the players believe that they have no hope of survival/success without sinking every single copper piece in to the power of their equipment, then of course this is going to happen.
Once again, this seems to go back to the issue of setting expectations.
As well, turning gold into personal power being strictly mechanically superior to turning gold into fame, lands, worldbuilding, etc. means you have to account equally for both "I want my +X super sword" characters and "I'm building an orphanage" characters with your wealth and economic rules, which is more work and can be harder to balance, whereas if you can ensure that either (A) you use different resources for both, like gold vs. souls in the wish economy, or (B) both give comparable advantages, as in the suggestion that having a keep or temple gives mechanical benefits commensurate with having a fancy sword, it makes the rules easier to design and makes players happy.
Whether you agree with the specific implementation of this in the wish economy or not, the basic ideas that, first, decoupling wealth from personal power is desirable, and second, players shouldn't be punished for doing fluffy worldbuilding stuff, are sound ones. Any rules to that effect are going to have some problems, but any such rules are going to be better than the existing system where your character might want to donate gold to the poor or hire bunches of soldiers but would be better served simply buying another +1 on his artifact sword. If players are going to do the fluffy stuff regardless, the rules should work with them rather than against them.