Thinking of something strictly for a modern/urban fantasy setting.

So one of the things I really liked about d20 Modern (way back in the day), it had an abstract d20 system for making purchases, representing the ability for characters to use credit and other means to buy items while shopping. As you purchased items, you lost your bonus to your d20 roll and it was more and more difficult to buy items. Additionally, items with a DC equal to your bonus you could easily buy with no change.

I'd love to have a feature like this for my modern/urban fantasy setting. I don't want to keep track of money, credit cards, bills, etc. It could also represent purchasing or gaining funds from legal/illegal means (i.e. credit card fraud, like in Supernatural). Has anyone come up with a cool system using the narrative dice to represent buying items, besides the Negotiation and Rarity levels? I'm sure this narrative dice system could support something very interesting.

It sounds like you're describing the Obligation system from Edge of the Empire , which would be easy enough to port over. In this case, the character could buy items on credit for, say, 1 Obligation per 100 currency or some such. They then can buy that Obligation down by paying the debt off with adventure funds. At the beginning of each session, you roll a D100, and if it's equal to the character's current Obligation or lower, bad things happen (debt collectors, credit score drops, legal papers are filed, whatever seems appropriate for the size of the Obligation).

There has been some discussion of this in the “social status and wealth” thread.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/267428-social-status-and-wealth/

1 hour ago, Forgottenlore said:

There has been some discussion of this in the “social status and wealth” thread.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/267428-social-status-and-wealth/

Hmmm, that topic has more related than I thought. I only read the initial post by the OP, and it wasn't what I was looking for.

Something like a Wealth Point System would be good... nice and abstract that can rely on the narrative dice to play stuff out. I think I'd keep something similar to the rarity system (0-10), and have a Cost Point for each item. So if your wealth level was 4, and the item you're looking for has a Cost Point of 4 or lower, you could get it no problem. Roll for other ones and lower wealth point for each difference? I don't know. Just need to tinker with it a bit more.

Yeah, I definitely think something like that is the right direction. But I’m still not quite sure how to handle monetary rewards for adventures in such a system. If you just hand out wealth points as treasure, you’re really just using money and rounding to the nearest $10,000 (or whatever), which doesn’t feel right. It also doesn’t allow for much in the way of bargaining with whoever is sending you on a quest, which it seems every player always wants to do.

I don't know if it's good for EVERY setting. I think it only works well in a Modern setting, maybe sci-fi too. I think if I were doing a Fantasy setting, I'd have gold pieces, etc. in it.

How about this:

Introduce a new mechanic called Wealth, measured with the characters Wealth Rating. The WR has a range between 0 and 10. Once per session a character can acquire a single piece of gear with a Rarity (adjusted by Rarity modifiers for the location) up to their Wealth Rating.

If a character wishes to acquire a higher rarity item they need to make a Negotiation skill check with a difficulty equal to the difference between their WR and the Rarity of the item. With an appropriate explanation and the GM’s approval a different skill may be used. If the character succeeds on the check then reduce their Wealth Rating by 1 and they receive the item.

Edit: eg a character with Wealth Rating of 4 needs an item of Rarity 6, that requires a Negotiation Check of Average Difficulty. If successful they would reduce their Wealth Rating to 3 and acquire the item.

To increase a characters Wealth Rating will usually be the result of the gm rewarding the character for completing a milestone within the story.

I think for a balanced system the starting Wealth Threshold would be dependent on the Archetype of the character, mostly starting at 2. Change it down for an increase in xp -1/+5xp, -2/+15xp. or change it up for a decrease in xp +1/-5xp, +2/-10xp, +3/-20xp, +4/-30xp, +5/-45xp.

If balance is less of a problem then just figure it out as a group.

Edit:

You could probably have a few talents that tie into this as well.

Something that reduces the difficulty of checks for higher Rarity items.

Something that gives you a boost dice or two for interacting with NPC’s of the same Wealth.

Something that allows you to ignore a Setback or two on checks to interact with NPC’s of very different Wealth

Something Ranked that gives you $50 for every Wealth Rank at the start of every session. Ranks increase that by another $50 per Wealth Rank (ie 1 rank of talent with a wealth rank of 4 gives you $200, 3 ranks of talent gives that same character $600)

That's very close to what I was working on, which makes me think I was on the right track. Mine was called Resources instead of Wealth, but same mechanical thing. Although for my setting, a Negotiation roll is always required, any significant purchase will reduce Resources, and Resources will naturally deplete at a rate of one point per story (not per session). The only thing I'm still trying to figure out is how to allow characters to pool their resources if they choose to.

This was a method I planned to trial for narrative wealth, similar in theme to the discussion.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k1tFmVmHJgqKPtblfwRb2bAsGb3ovl7HHn2-Ozr6neE/edit?usp=sharing

The bottom line is, what does a good or bad result mean? I could see negative results on a Wealth roll meaning a character is temporarily in debt, or is asked to do a favor as a condition to making the deal. I'm less convinced about a Triumphant haggle.