[Gatejammer] Finality: Brainstorming

[virgil]

For the White Spider, chosen and recognized is a grey area for them. Forced to make a decision, they'll prefer chosen.

The details on how the economy of Finality works was left rather vague at best, so any economically oriented faction is guaranteed to be hit-and-miss. Whatevs. I am guessing the other two, after excising all but intent and leaving enough hints on MO, work?

[Username17]

Interesting. So Finality has the fiat currency thing going on, and the people issuing the currency have enough clout to make it stick... in Finality. How universal is that? Does the 'Daxall Dollars' problem still exist, or is there cultural acceptance of the idea of fiat currency? Also, how is the currency secured? What measures exist to stop counterfeiting?

Not exactly "fiat currency" yet, that is a later step. Right now you have something more like the Knights Templar Letters of Credit. You can deposit things into the Bank of Finality, and the Bank will issue you letters of wealth that you can trade in at a later date or sign over to other people. Also you can get loans from the Bank of Finality, which are in letters of wealth rather than actual piles of things. And you can trade those back and forth as a convenient currency. Meanwhile, the Bank is doing fractional reserve accounting, where they are issuing letters for more wealth worth of physical stuff than actually exists, which as long as it takes some non-zero amount of time for people to ask to trade the letters back in for real stuff they can keep that up indefinitely.

So basically, the Bank is "creating" wealth by printing up these letters. There's one person with a pound of gold, and he deposits it into the Bank and gets a 50 gp letter from the Bank. The Bank then issues a 50 gp "loan" to someone else, but they don't give them a physical lump of gold, they give another letter. And then either of the people can turn the paper in for physical gold, and the physical lump is physically there for the Bank to make good on it. But in the meantime, there are two letters out there that can be traded around town for goods and services worth 50 gp. So even before the borrower "repays" the Bank, there is simply more tradeable wealth in circulation than hard metal in vaults. And after the loan is repaid, the letters are still out there in circulation.

The big innovation from there is the issuance of smaller "bearer contracts" which are just drafts that can be traded back for gold or silver at any point in the future by whoever happens to be holding them without requiring them to be signed over by previous owners - making them less secure but more convenient for trade. These bearer contracts then become the preferred medium of exchange, because they are easy to buy things with but less safe from pick pockets than a letter of wealth. It's not a green back, because it is still exchangeable for metal at the Bank. But it increases GDP versus exchanging metal for goods and services directly because the Bank can and does issue more of it than actual metal that actually exists.

Also, general 'interaction with the Wish economy' issues. Ok, so it's not feasible to replace the Gold economy with the Wish economy because:
A: Enslaving 1000 Efreeti does not produce enough wealth to comfortably sustain your population, because you've got an awful lot of people, and many of them have better things to be doing.
B: Enslaving 1000 Efreeti does produce a war between you and the City of Brass, which is a planar city of 4 million, and probably not a power you want to mess with, since a plurality are Efreeti, who are considerably more dangerous than the average citizens of your city.

Also C: While the rules don't specify any upward limit on how often or how much in total the power of Wishes can be drawn upon, the rules also don't specify any limit to how much wealth you can pull out of a gold or gem mine. It seems entirely likely that there actually is some aggregate limit to Wishing, and whether that limit is comparable to a solar farm, a fishery, or a vein of ore is something that even the Efreet Sultan may not know.

Given that, at what extreme does the exchanges occur? Which goods, in particular, are more feasibly Wished into existence instead of imported, and who controls those particular channels?

Wishing is most suited for replicating perishable goods that are native to areas far enough away on the portal nexus that you can't transport them to Finality without them going bad. It's literally the only way to get these things in the Acheron watershed.

-Username17

[Username17]

So my former roommate was pitching an idea for a faction based on nativism, which seems like the kind of thing that one would expect to exist. The thing is that while such a faction could genuinely appeal to people in the world, it's never going to get any traction with players of the game. The players have a very good chance of playing characters who are not locals, so any "Acheron for Acheronians" position is always going to be discrimination against members of the player's perceived "in group", and will thus be distasteful.

The comparison point is the Humanis Policlub from Shadowrun. It doesn't matter how reasonable or not they sound to people in the game world, to the players they will always be cartoonish villains because "metahuman" is a player character option and thus "humans only" is discrimination against the player's in group.

Now, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. While Planescape tried to sell each of the factions as player character factions and thus failed when many of them were incompatible with adventuring, that doesn't have to be the case. It's entirely possible to have one or more "antagonist" factions, whose purpose in the story is to be foils to the players and provide sources of villainy and propositions to oppose. It would be nice if such factions had messages that had the potential to resonate with people (and thus weren't cartoonishly incapable of attracting foot soldiers in the first place), but also were clearly "wrong" in such a manner that the players wouldn't be divided as to whether or not to support them (so: not White Wolf antagonist factions).

So perhaps a Nativist Faction wouldn't be a bad idea. It just would have to be saddled with enough villainous baggage that the players would feel good about smacking their dudes around.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Does an antagonist faction necessarily have to be someone you feel good about smacking around? You can wring a lot of character out of PCs who must smack the Nativists for the greater good while nevertheless being sympathetic enough to their fundamental concerns that they really wish they didn't have to. Most people will feel bad about forcing other to people to make sacrifices for strangers (assuming they don't automatically paint Nativists as wholly evil for opposing the in-group, which is less interesting but still perfectly functional), and also feel bad about enforcing those sacrifices. And that kind of moral conflict makes settings more interesting.

[Username17]

Does an antagonist faction necessarily have to be someone you feel good about smacking around?

Basically yes. If you have a group who is dedicate to oppressing the in-group of the player characters, they will be structurally the villains every time they show up. Any attributes you give to them will be therefore presented as bad by association. So anything which is good that the antagonist faction does will be perceived in a negative light.

So Mage: the Ascension is anti-science propaganda. The group which is oppressing the in-group is pro-science, therefore the message of the entire game ends up being that "science is bad".

While it's possible to create a complicated scenario where the villains are actually good and sincere people who have irreconcilable differences with the protagonists but are nonetheless able to team up on other issues, that's really hard. Usually it just ends up being a muddled message where the fiction takes on decidedly ugly overtones and ends up implying that feeding the poor is actually villainous or something.

-Username17

[virgil]

I could definitely see a Nativist faction having traction. As for it being supportable by the populace at large while still being villainous enough for players to not feel too uncomfortable about fighting them, that's easy in Finality. It's in the Acheron watershed, so the natives are fiends; so major political advocates with emotional investment in the cause are going to be literal devils, but it will also be infernal planetouched, bladelings, orc and goblin petitioners, and maug.

One could also look toward a Nativist faction be more toward keeping the living out of the afterlife; so only fiends, petitioners, and undead deserve respect.

[Chamomile]

Is Acheron still the afterlife in Gatejammer? I'd kind of assumed that turning planes into planets meant that the distinction between prime material planes where mortals are born and outer planes where they end up when they die was basically gone.

[virgil]

We're still keeping afterlife worlds, and is in fact one of the more proactive talking points for the Speakers of the Dead. As to whether Clangor specifically is an afterlife world, that can be debated.

[Endovior]

Okay, so it's gold-backed paper instead of fiat money. Got it; the economics of that are quite straightforward. That doesn't quite answer my cultural questions, though... which are pressing in a city that does as much trade as Finality.

Assume that I'm a Halfling merchant, and I've come to Finality as part of some complex planar trade route to drop off a load of spices. I don't have time to hawk my wares in the market, instead I go through a broker, like most of the outplane traders. This season, my broker's not especially liquid, and he wants to pay with a letter of wealth, redeemable only at certain banks in town, instead of with chunks of metal, which are good everywhere. Why would I let him get away with it, aside from "I got bargained down to accepting paper instead of coin"?

As presented, it seems to me that a letter of wealth purportedly worth 50 gold would actually be worth somewhat less than 50 gold, simply on account of the legwork necessary to head on down to the banking district to cash it in. The only place where it's sort of a useful service is with large transactions, in which the sums make conventional currency too cumbersome to deal with (and too attractive to thieves, at that). It seems like there's not much reason for people who have moderate amounts of money to deal with the bank... and good reason for the people who aren't currently dealing with the bank to not take the bank's notes at face value. There's a critical threshold of acceptance beyond which things start working out, but until that point gets reached, there's a lot of cultural inertia against the proposition.

[Whatever]

Why would you want to leave with gold, when you can buy something here that's worth more back home? I mean, we're already talking about a merchant. And if there's something in Finality that you'd like to buy, then why not take the convenient paper note?

[Ancient History]

It depends. Historically speaking foreign merchants arriving in a city to trade would sell or barter everything non-essential, fill up the hold with whatever they could sell back at home, then ship off. Or they would accept the letter of credit and ship off because either a) there was a local office at home that would accept it (Knights Templar), or b) there were other merchants back home that would accept it at face value (US Dollar). In a very real way, it depends on how trustworthy the bank is and how widespread their business is.

Even if you did get paid in hard coin, the situation isn't necessarily much better - different cultures had different weights and purities of metal and there was often distrust accepting foreign coinage. D&D waves a magic wand about that mostly, unless you're playing the most truly anal games of Greyhawk & Forgotten Realms in the universe, where the sadistic gamemaster pays you off in the special bronze pieces that are only currency in that once fantasy country made of suck and awesome. So while you could argue for greater real-world granularity in money matters, effective to play there's no difference between "gold notes" and "gold coins" aside from some fiddly bits involving how much a character can carry. Finality's letters of credit are accepted in most major cities and large towns because it's a major multiversal finance and commerce hub.

[Vebyast]

There are also the planar currencies to think about, things like Souls and Condensed Hope. Those hold off the paper requirement for large transactions for a while, since you can carry around a lot more souls than you can gold. There might also be much more arbitrage going on, possibly meaning that the variability in currencies is considered much more precisely.

[virgil]

River Acheron

While most known for the city of Finality on its shores, the Acheron watershed spans a half dozen worlds on its own. The River of Pain gets its name from the fact its waters are agonizing to the touch. Even fog from it will make the skin itch. The equivalent of a flask's worth of thrown water, or a round of exposure, deals 1 nonlethal acid damage. In the case of total immersion, it will inflict 2d6 nonlethal acid damage per round.
Starting at the source, and moving downstream...

Charon A tumultuous water world orbiting the binary stars of Helios and Demeter, with a few scattered islands. One of which is where it forms a river that feeds into and begins the River Acheron itself. From what settlers have ascertained, there is no native sapient life, and the fauna is that of acid-resistant or immune aquatic beasts.

Erebus
A sunless place of everlasting mist, which is the world of the dead. Any light in Erebus covers twice the normal radius. The River Acheron slows intensely, its flow taking a full three Planar Standard Days before emerging out of the crater of Cumae in the wastes of Clangor. Snow covers the ground for all but four months each year, during which, the trees and plants experience a supernatural bounty that remain pallid and ghostly. Large caverns are scattered throughout this world.
Petitioners All petitioners have Cold Resistance 10, darkvision 90', and DR 10/wood. Those without the benefit of a funerary rite universally take the form of a human commoner with the petitioner template.
Erebus is a watershed hub, as the River Phlegethon and River Styx also pass through elsewhere on this voidwise world, but they are separated by continents.

• Necromanteion The capitol of Tartarus, its ziggurats flanking the river and ruled by the Triumvirate; the Lord of Mazes, the Lord of Swarms, and the Lord of Justice. The primary natives are giants, lillend, and naga; petitioners are afforded no rights, and are in fact the primary currency of Necromanteion. Agriculture is a very close second, and used to be the most important export to the economy during the Age of Mists. There is also a thriving informant market of using beggar petitioners in the halls and alleys of the ziggurats for their commune power.
  Asphodel Meadows A small state with numerous fields of ever-blooming flowers, this is where all of the drugs of Tartarus are harvested and processed in a dedicated cavern before being shipped to Necromanteion for its share in the agricultural business. Here live drug-hazed petitioner laborers, dryads, treants, and similar entities.
  Fortunate Isles An incredibly deep cavern system, with an entire ocean and its own island network and white flames burn at the tips of stalactites to provide illumination through the complex. This, and others like it, is where the dead subject to funerary rites awaken. Each island is in eternal spring and laden with fruit-bearing trees and small game to hunt, and visitors must tread cautiously, for these are the homes of heroes who feel they deserve the retirement.

Clangor The site of Finality, orbiting the blue star of Avalas. Finality itself sits in the middle of a largely barren landscape, with the River Acheron going right through it. Down the river, it splits off a tributary that gates to the planet Nishrek. The main river itself will continue going downstream to the next world on its travel, Hammergrim.

• Grashmog The capital city of Maglubiyet's powerbase, this cold retreat is known for being especially battle-ready, its gate to Shetring for recruiting and training soldiers to go down the mountain river that feeds into Acheron for their war upon Nishrek. Grashmog is an Olfaction City; meaning the construction and weather patterns quadruple the ranges of scent (able to pinpoint out to 20')

Nishrek Closer to the star of Avalas, Nishrek is a hot, dense, and small world. The poles are temperate, but the equator is a large band unlivable by the natives due to the temperature dropping as low as 45 Celsius in the winter. There are four major cities for travelers to take note of, orcs being the dominant sapient life for the planet, with ogres being a distant second.

• Rotting Eye Capital city of Gruumsh's power base, visually dominated by the Iron Fortress. The arenas, both formal and impromptu, are legendary in the Avalas system; as many fights have the participants blessed by Gruumsh to have intense damage reduction and spell resistance (described as quick healing) just to prolong the battle. It is a city of Murderous Intent; constructed such that if ever damaged by a foe, you gain the Favored Enemy bonus (as a 1st level ranger, stacks with the feature) against that foe's type for 1 minute.
  White Hand The largest city, due to it being part of the Styx watershed. The River of Blood forms a tributary in Avernus that merges with Acheron before depositing into the great lake of Red Hook. The city has been attempting to deal with a growing gang, known as the Black Hand, attempting to forcefully teach literacy in Dark Speech.
  Three Fang This community hosts the largest concentration of ogre magi on the planet, and is known for its three great spires with neither door nor window or even ground floor. The only way in without teleportation is to seep through the minute cracks. Except when necessary or within one of the three spires, every single native ogre mage takes the shape of a specific stone giant known as Tartalo. In fact, a major export from Three Fang is magic rings and various single-use magic items that create illusions or polymorph effects dedicated to creating the image of or turning others into Tartalo's image. It is a Spired City, so only creatures with a maneuverability of Good or better can fly in the city, and any attackers in the city suffer archer attacks every 10 minutes.
  Fleshslough This mighty hill is where dishonored orcs and other exiles go, and boasts more than a few undead that died ignobly in battle from a failed attempt at betrayal. Rumours speak of the hill being a burial mound for a forgotten brother to Gruumsh, but the dungeon below is spoken of in whispers.

Hammergrim Orbiting the white dwarf of Thuldanin, Hammergrim is a cold and dry world (only 30% of the surface is water). There exist pockets of arctic-adapted beasts along the equator, but most of the life is below the surface near geothermal deposits. Dwarves and duergar are the dominant life for this planet, with more than its fair share of medusae and at least one illithid city.

• Hopeglimmer Acheron itself is entirely underground, and is claimed by this dwarven city before continuing on toward Lendor; which also has a gate to the Mines of Marsellin and Mechanus. Hopeglimmer is particularly known for its Isolated Architecture; colors and shapes and terrain are irregular to the point that even allies are treated as enemies for determining flanking.
  Lower Fleche The duergar capital, continually brokers trade with illithids and mind flayers, and trains spies.

Lendor Orbiting the violet star Tintibulus in the Octahedron Nebula, Lendor is a world of extreme weather due to its 96 hour days.

• Patterned Web A theocracy to Wee Jas, numerous towers topped with colorless fire are built around the bridge crossing the River Acheron. Rubies are prized here, and only allowed to be worn by full spellcasters. As it is a rune-built city, all of the inhabitants gain Fire Resistance 10.
  Obsidian Spire The famed city of wizards, with libraries and research facilities with no match. The magic is so thick and permeating, any person within the city limits gains the benefit of arcane sight.

Ocanthus The final destination for the River Acheron is a voidwise realm. There do exist stars in the sky, even a sun, but their light can only be seen by those with darkvision. The water of the river forms into an ice slurry before it goes over a two kilometer high waterfall. The air is thick, but the gravity is light, which creates a dangerous cloud of ice shards from the waterfall that can dangerously slice a man. This is known as the bladeling homeworld.

• Zoronor At the top of the waterfall, surrounded by the Blood Forest, is the City of Shadows. The Vault of Voices is a great iron vestibule in the center of town, palatial in appearance, with a ring of eight statues of fallen bladeling heroes. In reality, these are sleeping amnizu sent by Prince Levistus; they will awaken when the bladelings are firmly behind the baatezu cause.
  Cabal Macabre Another city dedicated to the worship of Wee Jas, built around a well sized for a titan. In fact, it is guarded by stern female titan known as Sudbe. This is a Necromantic City, where at least 75% of the population is undead, all Necromancy effects are at +4 caster level, and every day spent inflicts a negative level (heals undead 5HP).

Wreychtmirk
A gas giant orbiting the star of Avalas, there are several cloud cities on the surface. There exist five moons, two inhabited, the distance from the warmth of Avalas offset by their travel through Wreychtmirk's magnetic field. The cloud city of Xxx has gates to each of the two inhabited moons, Shetring and Scourgehold, as well as Finality itself.

[Parthenon]

The White Spider is a lot better, but there is a huge disconnect between the goals of the Tetra and their actions- why is it that the are obsessed with fear?

Maybe if it was specifically stated that they think the best way to change peoples behaviour is through fear of negative consequences- the stick is always better than the carrot- so they are in favour of punitive punishments, in favour of conquest to reduce other people thinking Finality is weak and so on.

That way people who are obsessed with fear in particular latch on to the Sign of Tetra as an excuse to scare people rather than the other way around.

The Muse of Belphegron- I have to be honest here- I don't give enough of a shit about economics in the setting to want to work towards reducing the gold standard as one of my ideals. And there are enough people who still think the gold standard is in use and their paper money is directly worth an amount of gold that the whole thing could start some violent real-world arguments.

The psychopomps is interesting, and makes me wonder about some of the standards of the setting- how much do people on the Prime Material plane know of the other planes and how much trade is there between them? And then with the general attitudes of Finality, to what extent do people think that people who are born in Finality are better than those who aren't? Is it a case of if you weren't born within hearing range of the big clock tower of the Old Town then you aren't a true Finalitian? (what is the word? Finnish?) Does everyone try to keep their own racial culture or is there more of a Finality culture?

[Username17]

I like those world writeups. One thing I'd like though is to have some actual afterlife worlds in the Acheron Watershed. Being able to dock at the Necromanteion of Hades seems like a no-brainer for a thing you can do from the River Acheron.

Of course, D&D's Hades is incredibly uninteresting, being a giant empty gray expanse that serves no real purpose other than to be a place you can have the Blood War rage forever without breaking anything anyone cares about. The actual Greek version where it gets to be "not winter" for three months of the year is a lot cooler.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

The actual Greek version where it gets to be "not winter" for three months of the year is a lot cooler.

I see what you did there.

[virgil]

I like those world writeups. One thing I'd like though is to have some actual afterlife worlds in the Acheron Watershed. Being able to dock at the Necromanteion of Hades seems like a no-brainer for a thing you can do from the River Acheron.

Easy enough to change Charon to an afterlife world, or even add another world to the River. We need to come up with some guidelines on how afterlife worlds work, however. Do they need to be connected to a planar pathway, petitioner only, have gates to the Core Worlds, be deeper into the void or more grounded in the galaxy at large, etc? As Finality has a lively soul trade, I'm presuming we are letting the dead various forms when they manifest in the afterlife; petitioners, veins, outsiders (after some processing from petitioners), et al?

[hyzmarca]

Three Words: Hades Real Estate Corporation.

The Afterlife as a for-profit venture where your ultimate fate is determined by the size of your wallet.

[Username17]

The afterlife wants to have many traits. The first is that getting raised from the dead is "better" than simply respawning in the afterlife. That implies to me that respawning involves you showing up naked at a random part of the world you're sent to, with a significant delay. Of like, years. Long enough that you could speed the process up with resurrection even if it takes you a couple of years to get it together.

Secondly, while it's pretty cool if major badasses like Dracula simply "come back" every hundred years, it would be fairly stupid if everyone did. So most people definitely shouldn't have the capability to get out of the afterlife worlds on their own. And those who do, should probably require some significant amount of time before they can pull it off (so that "rescuing" people from Duat is a thing that can happen).

But yeah, the idea that you could ritually burn stuff so that it spawns in the afterlife with a departed ancestor is pretty cool. And I could see a thriving economy in "Hell Money".

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

If being ceremonially buried with your arms and armor meant they appeared with you in the afterlife, it would explain both why there are tombs full of magical gear dotted about the D&D world and why stripping your defeated enemies of everything they own is seen as a good and noble thing to do.

[Username17]

If being ceremonially buried with your arms and armor meant they appeared with you in the afterlife, it would explain both why there are tombs full of magical gear dotted about the D&D world and why stripping your defeated enemies of everything they own is seen as a good and noble thing to do.

That works. If you ceremonially bury something with a dead body, a copy of it shows up with them when they spawn, but only if it's still there in however many decades it takes for them to spawn. And if someone removes those grave goods, they vanish from the outworld. And since people spawn and respawn in the afterlife, the stuff also vanishes and respawns when and where they do - but only if it's still buried with them at the time.

Thus, looting the tombs of great heroes is considered a fucked up thing to do, because you might be making a great hero instantly naked in the afterlife. Also, you can totally cheat people by selling them the projections of grave goods that are going to vanish and respawn elsewhere at some point in the future.

I imagine Astral Projection is basically the same concept. You ritually bury yourself and send a projection of yourself to some afterlife.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Well, there's three things with the D&D afterlife:

* Continuation of consciousness - your ka, soul, mind, informational construct, &c. go somewhere else upon death.

* Entanglement - your ka still has some connection with your mortal remains, and things that disrupt your remains can affect your ka

* Infovores - your ka is still part of the supernatural ecosystem and can be corrupted (undead), or devoured (demons, devils), or captured (necromancy!).

So on the one hand, being buried in a pyramid with masses of grave goods does indeed make you a big shot in the afterlife - on the other hand, the better preserved you are, the easier you are to bring back as one of the undead. If you want to go to Happy Fun Time afterlife and stay there until the cycle turns, you'll opt for cremation; otherwise you might start putting payments towards your "retirement" early in life, setting up a crypt in a secure necropolis so that you can enjoy some small creature comforts when you die. That could be big business.

[virgil]

Thus, looting the tombs of great heroes is considered a fucked up thing to do, because you might be making a great hero instantly naked in the afterlife. Also, you can totally cheat people by selling them the projections of grave goods that are going to vanish and respawn elsewhere at some point in the future.

Do we really want to encourage the kind of Gygaxian-behavior that will create? It wasn't fun when drow gear evaporated outside the Underdark, and it's not going to be any more desirable knowing your loot may or may not be Hell Armor that can vanish on a whim. Since looting ancient crypts is a time-honored D&D tradition, do we want to go out of our way to socially (in-game) discourage players from their expected rights?

I think it might be better if the gear duplication is permanent, and would be about as abusable as the profession skill for elves. Grave goods still has value as a process in the setting, and making a crypt withstand robbers for the first seven years before the petitioner comes out is going to inherently keep protecting its contents past that point. You could even make the argument that higher level people take longer to respawn in the afterlife, giving some teeth to true resurrection, while also encouraging a longer-lasting tomb as befits their level.

[Endovior]

I'd suggest that grave goods shouldn't vanish outright... it'll just stop respawning if removed from the tomb. So stealing the grave goods won't necessarily deprive a ghost of their cool stuff, but if the ghost then proceeds to respawn for whatever reason, then they lose their loot.

Notably, this would support viking funerals as also being a useful burial custom... sure, your grave goods are less guaranteed to you than if they were in a tomb, but you do get to have them once, at least... and you avoid the risk of some necromancer fucking with you.

[Username17]

There's a couple things: first, while Drow equipment evaporation was insulting, it was primarily insulting because the explanation made no sense. There's clearly a demand for super awesome equipment that lasts for one adventure and then goes away. It's not only a staple of serial storytelling in general, it has clear utility in terms of balancing the game over time. A temporary item boost can be given to a character who is underperforming right now, but the fact that it is temporary means that it sunsets automatically and the player doesn't lord it over the other players as their skill improves. A temporary boost can feel awesome without devaluing other boosts down the line or causing an escalation crisis.

Yes, it can be frustrating to treadmill temporary items, and "gaining" a bonus you already had for the third time stops feeling like an accomplishment. But temporary boosts certainly have a place in the game.

And temporary boosts that are limited in time rather than use neatly sidestep the biggest problem that D&D has with temporary items: potion hoarding. Most AD&D parties end up with a solid page (or more) of various wands, potions, staves, and gems that they never end up using. The very open ended nature of D&D encourages people to hoard these items for some imagined future necessity and they end up never being used. Many levels later, there end up being piles of scrolls of low level spells and shit that frankly aren't worth the action it takes to get them out of a bag. And this is a tragedy.

Setting up boosts to be "use it or lose it" from the beginning is a good way to get people to actually fucking use them. Which is about infinity times better than what they are currently doing, which is not using them. Seriously, count up how many charged items you've found that produced marvelous effects and consider how many you've actually used up - it's a fucking disgrace.

But anyway:

I think it might be better if the gear duplication is permanent, and would be about as abusable as the profession skill for elves. Grave goods still has value as a process in the setting, and making a crypt withstand robbers for the first seven years before the petitioner comes out is going to inherently keep protecting its contents past that point. You could even make the argument that higher level people take longer to respawn in the afterlife, giving some teeth to true resurrection, while also encouraging a longer-lasting tomb as befits their level.

A scenario like this makes every tomb into a time vault - something that is supposed to be opened at some future point. In that case, each tomb would be set up like a time capsule, a vault whose purpose is to release its treasures to the worthy. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it implies that you have to create a plot element like a "Great War" or something that made people lose contact with a bunch of these tombs so that there are still "forgotten tombs" all over the place.

In that scenario, the normal way of the universe is for people to pass great treasures to their great grandchildren, duplicating and reduplicating the treasures on outworlds in century long cycles where each generation opens the treasures of their great grand parents while protecting the treasures of their parents and grand parents in vaults for their children and children's children to open up again. The system remained stable (or mostly stable), with half the capital goods buried in the earth at any given time until the Core Worlds got overrun by the Hordes of the Abyss and for a century or more demonic cults cavorted and devoured their way across the lands of a hundred worlds, building nothing and leaving only tears and ruins in their wake.

Then, with the power of the Demon Lords fading for reasons, it comes time to reconquer a lot of territory that had fallen into disuse and had many generations worth of tomb vaults left unopened and forgotten.

-Username17