Hi there,

I am new to this forum. I was wondering how people manage throne earnings in line with experience. The passive monthly payment system in many of our campaigns seems to be lacking some as there is a lack of adventure downtime. The current issue is that players can reach rank 5 or 6 through playtime without ever making it to payment day. A single mission often takes between 3 & 5 4-6 hours and often connects straight into related goals. i Was wondering if other Game Masters have this issue and how they handle the handing out of thrones.

My thanks in advance,

Tobias

Well, I haven't HAD that particular problem yet- in that enough time passes by the time the players heal after a mission, or trough warp-travel (or last time, simply waiting patiently for an event) that six months have passed since they started.

I have a problem more so with handing them Extra-thrones from the Inquisition. I usually give 200 at the start of a mission and another 200 at the end. One of my players, an untouchable assassin, wants to buy an Eviscirator and (despite spending some thrones here and there) has already managed to save up the 750 gold necessary. (Its a shame its going to a cost a LOT more if he intends to get it trough the Black Market, the Holy Ordos doesn't give its weapons to just anybody...)

But back to the main topic- Just stretch out the time between the missions and while the players rest up and milk that warp travel for as much time as you can get out of it.

Edit- to explain a bit more: extensive healing takes a lot of the time, at rates going around to 3 points of critical damage per week on an average character. Travel times, in between hives (let along space travel) also takes time. And I can't imagine a mission taking just 5-6 hours to complete- often missions involved hunting out cultists, rooting out cultists, recovering a number of artifacts or following several leads.

If you've read the Einsenhorn books for example, it takes him a few years to go trough a single case if you factor in all of the waiting, the travelling, the side-tracking, etc etc.

Saldre said:

This times a hundred.

The incomes in the book represent the worth of the individual character and the sorts of things they can be doing in their spare time (which they DO have: if your games are over in a matter of hours game-time then you need to address the pacing of your sessions). However it also says that the players higher ups may give them access to specific equipments, arms, transport, safe houses and credit accounts for the duration of a mission. As such if characters are asking after certain gear that you think would be beneficial and in-keeping with the plot of the campaign, feel free to have it given to them after a short wait (it might take a week to set up an armoured civilian vehicle as transportation through a rough area of a hive). If you do this you should remember to take gear back off the characters at the stories resolution or instead demand they pay for damaged or lost items.

I use the Warp travel timeframe to draw things out as well as little side missions...As for the payment vs rank....simple

1) They get the max basepay at rank 1 to start with...paid each month ( IE whenever I say as GM its been a month )

2) As far as how fast they advance in the rank charts...simple..Use the corruption and insanity rules ALOT more often....that WILL slow them down dramatically because it will cost them 100xp per point of either Corruption OR Insanity to be removed...A good maniacly GM can keep his players entertained even while they get stuck with a good bit of corruption and insanity points...but try to give them a "break" before they would crest each major area in each ( before first each test for mutations or malignancies )

The reason you stick them with events that will give them a good chance of picking up some CP and IP points is simple..it drives home the game dynamics ( your supposed to every so often anyway..it isnt called the grim dark future for nothing ) AND it STOPS and fast/power-levelling....dead in its tracks....simple reason...ALL the XP they spend to remove the several CP and or IP they gained during a session to avoid becoming messed up and subsequently killed by their Inquisitor for falling to chaos will NOT count towards the level XP spent for rank increase...So if you give a good long adventure and say they each get 1000XP for the particular session after everything is accounted for...ok.thats perfectly fine.... They are gonna have to spend a few hundred XP to remove the 2-4 points of corruption and or insanity that they earned as well over the session....leaving them with half ( or less ) of that to spend on actual rank progression

3) As far as how much they get paid.....i give them a range of between 10-20% more thrones at each actual rank they achieve ( based on how well they play the character according to whats expected from their Inquisitor and how successful they are at doing as the Inquisitor orders to achieve the goals set them )

4) As a further measure of delay for them..while i will let them use higher rank skills and talents to buy if they have the raw XP values...i will NOT let them actually "gain" the rank until they pay for it in additional XP ( thereby gaining the extra cash ) The rate is as follows

rank1 Free

rank2 1000xp

rank3 1000xp

rank4 2000xp

rank5 2000xp

rank6 3000xp

rank7 3000xp

rank8 4000xp

NOTE: These XP costs do NOT count towards rank progression at all ....they are simply to denote the amounts of time the PC has dedicated to getting the necessary skills and information filed and sent to the Inquisitor ( Reports,questionaires, verifications of action, etc...etc.. ) to show the Inquisitor that the PC is ready for the next rank ( This is done via the cell team leader and ONLY when the team leader says they are good since the team leader MUST vouch for the PC under them to the Inquisitor in order for the Inquisitor to even consider looking at the papers given them ..and then only when the Inquisitor has the time )....

With this system it is NOT necessary to keep 2 separate tables of XP....not at all..you simply have them pay up the required amount of XP if they want access to more money and better access to higher level equipment that they can requisition for use in missions....I restrict items availability to them in markets etc and request forms by its availability ratings wherever they are at...at rank one..basically only abundant and common level gears and equipment are found ( unless they have barter and do well with it and get lucky if a shopkeeper has anything rare etc.. ) As they progress in rank the availability opens up to them more and more. This makes it worth their time to save up the XP and pay to get the new ranks and dramatically slows their progression down from each one

Taken to note i do give higher than average XP for missions etc....i have awarded up to 1500XP in a single session before ( long session -10hrs with alot accomplished in mission goals - alot of it being bloodless intelligent solutions and clever RP and use of PC skills/talents ) and they did Not even get to use ANY of that on skills...they used it to advance to rank 2 and get rid of the 2 CPs and 3 IPs they earned during play BUT they had alot of fun doing it and i dont get any complaints..lol

I also use warp travel to stretch out Campaign Time, with a 'typical' voyage taking 2-4 months (and the PCs getting paid Sidereal). I use the standard pay rates from the Rulebook. Even with padding from space travel, there is no way a PC can survive solely on official income for any signifigant length of time, so my players loot like crazy.

Thanks very much for the help. I think i will take use of using CP and IP to mitigate the experience gain speed which will help a lot in stoping players leveling to fast. The use of loaned equipment to give players gear advances and then using warp travel to fluff out income should help me balance the wealth between where the characters are and should be between adventures.