Money - How to handle it

[Johannes]

Money can be unbalancing.

If your world offers both, superpowers and normal Heroes with low point levels, how do you balance the Power?

 

One char buys laser eyes, the other OCV for a rifle form the store.

 

I don't want to ask a clear question because i'd like a more general discussion.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

I suppose that's a matter of how much money they have on hand. I can take away a rifle with a scope. It'd take a bit more effort and plot to justify gouging someone's eyes out.

[Jaxom]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

Well, nominally you make a decision up front about whether or not you are using money and then apply it to your whole universe. Normally this means that in higher power games you choose not to use money and make everyone pay for all the powers they are going to want.

 

If you are going to mix high and low power levels then I would tend to opt for the high-power regime and give the lower powers more points to allow them to go out and buy some interesting gadgets.

 

Anything less is going to make it impossible for you to distinguish between the two as a person operating on the money system could, in theory, go out and buy himself a high-tech lab and build a full suit of power armor and thus wind up in the high-power regime.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

I wouldn't mix pay-points-for-powers and pay-money-for-powers in the same game. That just sounds like a way to make some players unhappy.

 

On the other hand, someone here once wrote about the benefits of paying points for something in a Heroic game. The character in question had paid points for a pair of pistols, which struck the other players as a waste of points. However, as the game went on, they noticed that whenever this character lost his guns, he seemed to already have a replacement pair waiting at home. If they had to travel to another country, the other characters were forced to run around scrounging up whatever weapons they could find on the black market, whereas this character, somehow, had a contact which had procured a pair of guns ahead of time.

 

If you were running it like that, that a character would buy his or her "signature equipment" with points and then almost always have it, but be forced to deal with in-game availability for other items, it might work.

 

Ahem.

 

Having said that, my take on money in a Superheroic game is that having it, purchased through the wealth perk, lets you do all the things which money can do that aren't easily represented in game terms.

 

The character can afford nice clothes, hire a limousine, get reservations at nice restaurants, mingle with high society, donate money to charities, drive around in a really fancy car, take month-long vacations at a whim, that sort of thing.

 

Zeropoint

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

If I was to mix superheroes and heroes in a single game, with some characters who rely on buying stuff interacting with those who don't...

 

I'd just stat up the ability to get hold of restricted and expensive mundane tech as a power.

 

That "150pt" Hero is actually a 350 point superhero... with an approximately 160pt (heavily restricted) Variable Power Pool of mundane technology.

 

So he can actually buy a small tank, or a rocket launcher, or whatever.

 

Possibly a smaller power pool and more characterisitics and martial arts if necessary.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

Well, I'm generally all-or-nothing; someone who has a gun saved up his XP to buy it, with the rationale for adding the power being that he went out and bought the gun, plopping down however much money and XP simultaneously.

 

This is kind of like the Two Faces of Batman (pardon the sub-pun). In his own book, Batman is a heroic-level character who spends money on his stuff. When he pals around with the Justice League, he's a superhero who has purchased all his gear with points.

 

It's kinda like genre enforcement. Some conventions of the genre just have to be there for consistency's sake and to keep the theme up. For instance, a tiny little domino mask, or a pair of glasses and a new hairdo completely conceal secret IDs; that's just how superhero universes work. Similarly, whether you do heroic (cash for stuff) or superheroic (points for stuff) should be uniform across the campaign.

 

 

Tangential Story:

I broke this rule once. Some fool (You'll see why I call him this in a moment) was playing a fairly standard energy projector ... flight, forcefield, multipower with a few slots (I can't recall the special effect). But the player was a bit of a gun-bunny. He loved guns.

 

Now, he wasn't a gun expert. He couldn't field-strip one, give statistics, draw them, give trivia like countries or origin or anything like that. He just liked guns and the idea of playing characters who shot things with guns. I'm reasonably certain that his D&D wizards crafted pistol-grips for their Wands of Magic Missile, but can't prove it.

 

So, two games in, he decides he wants a gun because, apparently, playing the character he built wasn't interesting without ... a gun. So I let him get a gun, without paying points, mostly because I'm amazed that he wants a 1d6+1 peashooter when he's got a 12d6 Energy Blast. And I'm even more amazed when it takes just-shy-of-shouting from the other players to get him to do anything than shoot the pistol!! He even stopped flying, because he was too enamored with the idea of standing there like a frickin' cowboy and shooting things.

 

Thus, fool.

 

We now return to your regularly scheduled thread.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Money - How to handle it

 

If it were a 350pt Super and a 350pt Super I'd make them both pay for the powers (the gun wielder will most likely have a Focus Lim).

 

If it were a 350pt Super and a 150pt Normal, the normal has access to standard mundane weapons listed in the book (or some premade list), anything "custom" made will look it, and be priced for it, but won't actually be more powerful - it'll still be a variation on a standard weapon from the book (just look cool). The Super is mostly likely prepared for these kinds of attacks anyway, thus there's not too much of an issue that I see.

 

If they were both PCs I'd wonder what the premise of the game was that mixed these power levels. Usually when I mix they are of the same Type (w/ Supers one may be 350 another 450) and closer in level.

 

I'd take it on a case by case really...