Why murder HOBOS?

[tussock]

See the dichotomy illustrated by these two quotes is what I'm talking about.

Tome threads assume you're dropping the 3.5 Wealth by Level rule and moving onto some sort of wish economy function to deal with the exponential wealth sources that the game otherwise provides by various emergent functions.

In the standard game, wall of iron mining is non-functional, if you have more than your WBL the DM is supposed to take some of it away, either by breaking, stealing, taxes, off-screen raids, or whatever, and stuff like castles counts toward that. There's just huge infinite power money-killing karma hits anyone who gets rich early, by the rules.

There are lots of ways to house rule that away, and I assume everyone does in some fashion. But by the book you either have like a million gp invested in a castle or you have a massively better set of adventuring gear, and you're only allowed either at very high level because you can swap between the two as desired.

Thus the threads on how you can't have doors made of adamantium in modules because the PCs should give up the plot, tear them loose, and go home with the incredibly valuable doors to exchange for extra character power. And then the DM should steal it because it's too much and they didn't level up yet. Rules, mang.

--

History:

in 1st edition, you get XP for portable treasure; coins, gems, jewellery, and magic items, at least as much as you get from monsters (more XP for selling magic items instead of keeping them). But you can't buy magic items with it, so you know, castles, taverns, whatever, why the hell not, at least after you fill up on henchmen.

It's even a function of some classes that you get extra features for building one eventually, thematically typed for each class. Solid game, really.

2nd edition gave no XP for items (because XP REALIZM arglebargle), making it take longer to level up and thus find even more items. Also gave basically nothing to do with wealth, so everyone hoarded items, like hundreds of the fucking things at high levels tucked away in portable holes.

3e eliminated the 2e glut by letting you trade up, so everything becomes magic items you are using right now, including the scenery. The emergent play was literally mining the descriptive text for character power upgrades. With 3.5, instead of level-by-wealth rewards, they use wealth-by-level limits. PF is just 3.5 with some rules missing.

4th edition codified that as only magic items could trade for magic items, and even then quite poorly, but it doesn't function without resorting to literal wish lists, and the world does not functionally exist outside combat scenes so castles don't even.

5th edition mostly works like 2nd edition, only with even more blowjobs for the DM, because Mearls.

Just, use the 1st edition rules. XP for treasure, not for business or money loops. Items by adventure only (to find components if making), PCs want to adventure, they accumulate wealth, and give them more rewards once they have a bit backed up for building castles, guildhalls, wizard towers, or grand temples with it.

[Iduno]

Anyway, by Level 10 a PC party is well on their way to becoming one of the driving military/social/economic powers in the land. So again, why murderhobo? It connotes poverty and PCs are fucking RICH, at least transiently, even if they do ALWAYS choose to spend ALL of that money on magic items, a Level 7 party leaving a Level 7 dungeon probably has enough found loot on them to feed 7,000 peasants for seven years. That is not poverty, even if you're going to spend it all on magic items.

I just saw a quote on Narcos "I'm not a rich man, I'm a poor man with money."

The characters start on the outside of society, and society doesn't want to let people in just because they brought back a bag of treasure from the woods; we only have their word on who they killed to get it. Likewise, the established rich would have every reason to keep out newcomers. You can't become a landowner if they want to keep you from owning anything of longterm value.

It might be an interesting game, with the right players, where the characters are trying to earn social mobility. You'd just have to create a system that allowed for scorekeeping on that front (with appropriate challenges, of course).

[Chamomile]

Unless the power to level up is something that only the PCs have unlocked, it's difficult to imagine society making a habit of trying to reject people who've already got through the lethal gauntlet of wilderness challenges to become level 7 from joining their upper class.

[Iduno]

Unless the power to level up is something that only the PCs have unlocked, it's difficult to imagine society making a habit of trying to reject people who've already got through the lethal gauntlet of wilderness challenges to become level 7 from joining their upper class.

You'd want to be ruled by someone who got their position through mass murder/genocide and tomb-robbing, assuming they weren't saying that to cover up something worse?

[Chamomile]

If I'm a level 2 Expert, I doubt I'd be consulted.

[Omegonthesane]

Unless the power to level up is something that only the PCs have unlocked, it's difficult to imagine society making a habit of trying to reject people who've already got through the lethal gauntlet of wilderness challenges to become level 7 from joining their upper class.

You'd want to be ruled by someone who got their position through mass murder/genocide and tomb-robbing, assuming they weren't saying that to cover up something worse?

All positions of power throughout history have been established through mass murder and genocide. All upper classes are formed of mass murderers and the descendants of mass murderers. And that's how it works in the real world where you don't gain hit dice for committing mass murder.

[hyzmarca]

Anyway, by Level 10 a PC party is well on their way to becoming one of the driving military/social/economic powers in the land. So again, why murderhobo? It connotes poverty and PCs are fucking RICH, at least transiently, even if they do ALWAYS choose to spend ALL of that money on magic items, a Level 7 party leaving a Level 7 dungeon probably has enough found loot on them to feed 7,000 peasants for seven years. That is not poverty, even if you're going to spend it all on magic items.

I just saw a quote on Narcos "I'm not a rich man, I'm a poor man with money."

The characters start on the outside of society, and society doesn't want to let people in just because they brought back a bag of treasure from the woods; we only have their word on who they killed to get it. Likewise, the established rich would have every reason to keep out newcomers. You can't become a landowner if they want to keep you from owning anything of longterm value.

It might be an interesting game, with the right players, where the characters are trying to earn social mobility. You'd just have to create a system that allowed for scorekeeping on that front (with appropriate challenges, of course).

The difference between a poor man with money and a mass murderer with money is that the poor man is much less likely to kill the rich old money aristocrats for insulting him, while the mass murderer has almost certainly killed people he liked more for lesser crimes.

These days, in modern Western countries, murdering people for minor insults is considered socially unacceptable. This is an extremely recent phenomenon, and at all universal. Indeed, there are still cultures today where not murdering people over minor insults, even people who you nominally have a duty to care for, would result in you becoming a social pariah.

In societies with strong dueling cultures, social mobility is more limited by the fact that only rich people have the free time to practice swordsmanship, and the money to hire good instructors.

[kzt]

These days, in modern Western countries, murdering people for minor insults is considered socially unacceptable. This is an extremely recent phenomenon, and at all universal. Indeed, there are still cultures today where not murdering people over minor insults, even people who you nominally have a duty to care for, would result in you becoming a social pariah.

Actually, it's only most parts of Western countries. For a counter example, rappers. You can be a rich and successful rapper, but if some jackass insults you in a bar the culturally expected response is not to sue him.

[Ice9]

If I could spend a couple grand to get a dufflebag that could hold a dozen full dufflebags, I'd wonder "why bother?" I mean it'd be only for the interdimensional aspect, not because it is actually that useful to me.

Are you kidding? I'd call $2k for a Handy Haversack a ridiculous bargain.

[deaddmwalking]

Judging by the costs in the PHB, it looks like 1 GP would be roughly equivalent to $10 today. Ie, a 2 GP Backpack is probably $20. And that's conservative - while you can get a basic backpack for that much, a ruck sack is going to cost $50-$200. You could go up by an order of magnitude (1 GP = $100) and that's probably closer to current products.

So a Handy Haversack might cost $20k or even $200k.

I'd agree - at $2k it'd be a bargain. I'm plenty sure I could get my money back just by saving on baggage fees at airports.

[erik]

I don’t fly enough for that to help. And TSA would probably either empty it out or steal it since they don’t have astral scanners.

I suppose just loading crap in would save me some fractional mpg on my drives, and I could carry around my kids super easily C3PO style like I’m Chewie. But with my luck it’d rip and I’d be left with two kid-halves or something else bad.

For the most part I just don’t need to carry a bunch of shit around. If I need stuff I put it in the back of my car which has ample storage.