Did I make the roll too easy?

[JMISBEST]

I've a question about my 1st Drinax Campaign from 3 and a bit years back, but thinking back I'm rightfully worried and I'm worried I made the roll too easy. What do you think?

It was after Game of Shadow and Sun and The Pcs had 2 ID's or 1 Pirate and 1 Privateer arranged for their Privateer ID's to rescue Krond, Brell, Rhoda Voidborn, The Duke's Niece, The 2 Noble Born Captains and 2 1st Officers or 1 each for The Ship carrying The Duke's Niece and the 1 escorting The Duke's Niece, Captain Lenat, 17 noble born officers and 6 noble born ordinary crew members

Not to mention they officially recovered and returned The Cr 100,000,000 Ransom for The Duke's Niece, The Cr 60,000,000 Ransom for Krond and Cr 4,000,000 each for The 17 noble born officers, The 6 noble born ordinary crew members The 2 Noble Born Captains and 2 1st Officers and recovering The 8,000 ton Ritchey

They then tried to convince The Duke of Tobia to give Drinax The 8,000 ton Ritchey as A Reward, I ruled they needed A 14 or higher, The Noble Pc had Persuade /3 and A +2 SS DM and rolled A 9+5 or 14 and passed. So tell me do you think that I make the roll too easy?

 

[PsiTraveller]

Short answer: Yes. Absurdly easy. A single roll to get an 8000 ton ship?

And your rewards are overpowered by a factor of about 100. A 100 million Credit ransom? Who has that kind of money? Oleb has to sell artwork to get the Harrier halfway repaired and you are dealing in 100 million in rewards and 128 million for everyone else?

I have said this many times. Put away the Dilettane book. The portfolio rolls make you think everyone is a multi millionaire. Your campaigns are so over inflated with money nothing makes sense anymore.

Drinax has 40 000 people crammed into a museum City floating over a wasteland. They are nobles, but do not have off-world estates. If they did, they would not be living on the Floating City. They have fancy titles and a fake economy with no real cash moving around. They have no Jump capable ships. From the adventure: Section 9 page 12 of the first edition, page 236 of book 1 of the 2nd edition:


Hence, the Dragon Fortress. It’s Drinax’s first and last resort
against an Asimen revolt. Prior to the discovery of the Harrier
and the whole grand plan to rebuild the Kingdom through
strategic privateering, Drinax had no jump-capable ships of its
own – the Aslan saw to that. They had suits of TL15 battle dress
and plenty of firepower, but no way to reach other systems.
Their only visitors were the occasional tramp trader, bargain
hunter, or traveller seeking the fabled high-tech sages of the
Scholar’s Tower.

The ‘invasion’ of Asim involved hiring a few free traders, with the
elite Hawk Warriors crammed into the cargo holds like cattle

So in the campaign storyline the Drinaxians had to hire free traders. They had no ships of their own. In your campaign they have enough money laying around to pay 260 Million in ransom. That's almost enough to buy a Mercenary Cruiser, or 6 Free traders.

So yes, your roll was too easy. And your math for the roll is way beyond anything in the adventure.

 

[M J Dougherty]

You made the roll, and everything else, far too easy. As others have said, you seem to have worlds changing allegiance on a couple of skill checks, and vast quantities of money handed out at any excuse.

Getting an 8000 ton ship should be the payoff for multiple adventures with major difficulties, a great deal of planning and a lot of risk. And even then it's a very big reward.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Portfolio roll results are a rare thing.

I'm curious though. You never talk about Travellers that are awesome medics or Engineers. I have yet to hear from you about how many 1,001s of diseases have been cured by your players, or about how much successful J-Drive repairs have been made to help speed across the Universe to save on light-years or light-decades.

 

[Anonymous]

Engineers and medics? The damn middle class, thinking they're important just because they have some money. True nobility is unimpressed by these dressed-up peasants.

 

[PsiTraveller]

The issue in all the games JMISBEST plays is that every character is a Dilettante. Page 41 of the Dilettante book (1st edition) has every Dilettante character has a portfolio roll instead of a wealth roll. Rolling high numbers on the Portfolio roll will give a character millions in value. This will give a big monthly income.

Rolling 12's 68% of the time will result in game skewing portfolios worth hundreds of millions.

 

[Anonymous]

It is an official rulebook. A player should be able to use it if they want, otherwise why buy the things? A group should find a way. Not all problems can be solved by throwing money or minions at them. Anyway the important thing is to have agreement if it’s used or isn’t.

One thing Pathfinder does is to limit organised play to a subset of their books. I don’t really like it, but I understand why it is done, and organised play is not a requirement. In any case, even if the book is not used, you still gain the art, fiction and ideas from it. So even if the fillet ante is not allowed, one can still buy it for the safari yacht deck plans. It just becomes a much more expensive book of plans, or maybe a GM resource.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I agree that the book is there to be used. The issue is how to handle the wealth, otherwise it can blow a game out the airlock. Having infinite wealth with no mechanism or plot device to make the game not about wealth results in an endless scenario of "win" for the players with no challenge. The book itself warns of this on page 3.

However, unless carefully anticipated, the addition of a dilettante
with bottomless pockets can throw an established campaign on
its ear. Some thought should be given to change the characters
objectives, so that their motivations are not simply based on
becoming wealthy or owning their own ship.
Before a Referee allows one of his players to run a dilettante, he
should look at the Portfolio rules in Chapter 3 to get a grasp of
how much money might come into play and the Entertainments
and Equipment in chapters 5 and 6 to see how to soak it up.

So running a Drinax campaign where the start of the adventure is a semi functional thousand year old Commerce raider is at odds with the question of a scenario of 268 Million in reward money being offered. If Drinax has that much money laying around why not fix the Harrier at the beginning of the campaign?
The issue for the described campaign in this and several other threads, is that the influx of massive money has not been balanced by anything that requires something other than money to solve it. The characters/group have incredibly large fleets, massive incomes and can hire a solution to any problem. An 8000 ton ship was gained from rolling a 9 on 2D in this scenario. As Mr. Dougherty points out, this is far too easy, especially with loaded dice at the table.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Anonymous]

Oh no, someone lost 10% of their 100 million. Looks like they only have 90 million left. However will they survive?

 

[Galadrion]

The common problem in all of the scenarios (scenaria?) JMISBEST posts is that he (as game master) has allowed too much money in the hands of the players, and then posed no problems which money could not (trivially) solve, and then wonders why his games provide no challenges. It really is that simple. "Okay, guys, here's a bag full of hammers. And a bunch of nails to solve. Um, why aren't my nails causing any difficulties?" He then brings these "issues" here, asks why he's having problems, and completely ignoring it EVERY. TIME. HE'S. TOLD. THE. BLOOMIN'. ANSWER.

 

[M J Dougherty]

I wonder if these are really questions, or are they ways of saying 'look at my awesome success' without actually coming out and saying 'let me tell you about my character'.

It does seem like answers are simply ignored, except where the question is immdiately revised so the answer no longer applies.