Suggestions for Lifestyle Options

[Bjorn Oathensworn]

I know it already says that individual chapters may have their own things- but I would love to suggest an idea for everyone:
Long term lifestyle purchases.

Offer a minor benefit at a much higher cost that is active always- for example, maybe for 50 gold, you can buy a house and from now on, you can double the effects of resting or something like that. Or maybe you can "start a farm" for a large amount but from now on the cost of "well fed" is reduced by half.

It's still in concept, but I think it's something that could be interesting, especially for those of us whose character is built on the accumulation of profit. (I'm not a fighter, I'm a shop keep and diplomat, for example).

 

[ecrath]

A house could even give a discount for lifestyle expenditures.

 

[Shen [he/him]]

Personally, I dislike the idea of needing to "re spend" coin for something a character may already have. To even extrapolate on that, I feel a lot of this section comes from a DnD mindset that adventurers are out roughing it/camping the majority of their life, when in my experience that is rarely true. Characters tend to own homes, property, businesses etc where realistically most of the lifestyle things are things which characters should be affected by normally.

Let's say, a character owns a Stone 3 room home that is well furnished - they need to pay extra to be well rested. Or a character who runs a tavern or bed and breakfast which is of moderate+ quality... needs to pay extra to be well rested or well fed?

While I recognize that such may not be the normal in every chapter, but in the four I have played in it just seems like a coin tax on top of whatever was necessary to acquire that milestone that additionally seems to create false inflation by spending coin. Allowing wealthy characters to gain even more bonuses and advantages over characters that aren't.

Alternatives I could foresee; use Mundane Equipment to grant Lifestyle bonuses.
First, why I am not a fan of mundane equipment, so this suggestion I hope makes more sense. As currently written, Mundane Equipment (I Feel) is largely RP focused and firmly does something already done by Professions. Spending CP to make Horseshoes (the cited example) may be of value for a specific plot point... but equally both making and using Horseshoes are a profession in which one could make Silver or CM. But Spending CP to make them, awards you benign item that then doesn't "do" anything. An entire bag of Horseshoes don't hold a static value or importance mechanically - you spent precious and limited CP to make a RP item that an appropriate profession, already does in background RP.

Instead, Lifestyle bonuses could be attributed to Mundane Items. Setting them aside as "Casual thing random person 48 does" Versus "This thing that a trained crafter can do". The character spends their limited CP to make tagged items that when consumed/used provide a bonus. These bonuses are now associated to character development/growth/xp and prevents wealthy characters from just getting buff because #reasons, and higher level characters (whom are also typically wealthy) now has a choice. Spend a CP on mundane equipment to get the well fed buff, or spend that CP of a Crafting ability.

Now the drawback of such an idea is that we already have a crazy amount of things one can do with CP already, but all of those items "do" something for their xp investment. Mundane Equipment I suspect will always fall short because it forces a Smith to choose "Armor master" or "mundane stuff". The Smith, is also Profession: Smith - so they already "make tools and horseshoes, and sell them for 1s per day"

Don't get me wrong, I think there is going to be a fair bit of usage for mundane equipment from the plot perspective. But I very much dislike associating mechanical advantages to simply paying coin at logistics. Chapters can use more inventive and story driven methods to return coin to the chapter's bank and likely do it in a method that has a lot less OOG potential issues.

 

[tieran]

Personally, I dislike the idea of needing to "re spend" coin for something a character may already have. To even extrapolate on that, I feel a lot of this section comes from a DnD mindset that adventurers are out roughing it/camping the majority of their life, when in my experience that is rarely true. Characters tend to own homes, property, businesses etc where realistically most of the lifestyle things are things which characters should be affected by normally.

Let's say, a character owns a Stone 3 room home that is well furnished - they need to pay extra to be well rested. Or a character who runs a tavern or bed and breakfast which is of moderate+ quality... needs to pay extra to be well rested or well fed?

While I recognize that such may not be the normal in every chapter, but in the four I have played in it just seems like a coin tax on top of whatever was necessary to acquire that milestone that additionally seems to create false inflation by spending coin. Allowing wealthy characters to gain even more bonuses and advantages over characters that aren't.

Alternatives I could foresee; use Mundane Equipment to grant Lifestyle bonuses.
First, why I am not a fan of mundane equipment, so this suggestion I hope makes more sense. As currently written, Mundane Equipment (I Feel) is largely RP focused and firmly does something already done by Professions. Spending CP to make Horseshoes (the cited example) may be of value for a specific plot point... but equally both making and using Horseshoes are a profession in which one could make Silver or CM. But Spending CP to make them, awards you benign item that then doesn't "do" anything. An entire bag of Horseshoes don't hold a static value or importance mechanically - you spent precious and limited CP to make a RP item that an appropriate profession, already does in background RP.

Instead, Lifestyle bonuses could be attributed to Mundane Items. Setting them aside as "Casual thing random person 48 does" Versus "This thing that a trained crafter can do". The character spends their limited CP to make tagged items that when consumed/used provide a bonus. These bonuses are now associated to character development/growth/xp and prevents wealthy characters from just getting buff because #reasons, and higher level characters (whom are also typically wealthy) now has a choice. Spend a CP on mundane equipment to get the well fed buff, or spend that CP of a Crafting ability.

Now the drawback of such an idea is that we already have a crazy amount of things one can do with CP already, but all of those items "do" something for their xp investment. Mundane Equipment I suspect will always fall short because it forces a Smith to choose "Armor master" or "mundane stuff". The Smith, is also Profession: Smith - so they already "make tools and horseshoes, and sell them for 1s per day"

Don't get me wrong, I think there is going to be a fair bit of usage for mundane equipment from the plot perspective. But I very much dislike associating mechanical advantages to simply paying coin at logistics. Chapters can use more inventive and story driven methods to return coin to the chapter's bank and likely do it in a method that has a lot less OOG potential issues.

Thanks much for the feeedback!

A couple of things jumped out to me here that I want to address.

Firstly, a good portion of your concerns with the Lifestyle mechanics seem to revolve around the names of the abilities. While you can certainly draw some parallels between the named asset tag that you purchased for a house in which you roleplay that your character becomes well-rested and the Well Rested ability, I’d posit (and I’m largely guessing here) that if "Well Rested" was named "Nap Activated Recharge Prowess" a lot of that concern would go away. While the options presented mesh thematically with a lot of the purchasable asset tags and there is definitely a very easy parallel to be drawn between the two, I think it’s largely one of flavor as asset tags provide no Rules codified benefit.

In regards to a potential Lifestyle/CME overlap, I think this just moves the potential “bonus for characters with in game wealth” to “bonus for high level characters” and that is not an improvement. A lot of the changes to 2.0 were to move from “high level characters do it better” to “high level characters do it more.” Adding an ability that will largely go unused (I suspect) until you have “extra” xp to devote to it pushes us in the wrong direction in that regard, I think. It also largely limits bonuses to the crafters themselves, which negates its usefulness as both an open to all/most ability and as a coin sink.

Create Mundane Equipment is absolutely RP focused, but not duplicative of Professions, from a Rules perspective. Professions provide 1 silver piece or 1 crafting material per purchase. Any additional benefit granted is purely from a Plot standpoint and can (and does) vary wildly, not just from chapter to chapter, but between individual plot writers/marshals. CME is intended to codify a process that currently been used in variable ways over the years to give a framework across the Alliance for those things to happen. Additionally, as CME, creates a tagged item, that item would (and should) have a set CP value based on the CP/CM put into its creation.

 

[Muir]

My biggest concern is that while these do seem like a way to get coin back into logistics' hands, they also smell a bit of pay-to-win. Having no overall level cap or functional limit to number of MIs already creates a situation where the characters with greater resources can hang around indefinitely, giving them more ways to get power that use coin they likely have little other use for seems like it might exacerbate that problem.