Income Math, and how to jump tiers

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Judging__Eagle
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Income Math, and how to jump tiers

Post by Judging__Eagle »

In a game system that I'm playing in, the "income" that a character recieves per month is very crucial, since they count as resources that are used for character abilities.

So, some 'incomes' are:

Gathered Goods (things that a "Life Skill" would provide, stuff like Animals if you're a hunter; or animal skins, and leather, if you're a tanner, allowing you to make you're own goods; Life skills can also be used in-game to pick up objects that are recognizable to a person with that skill (so, some things will not be seen by a character, unless they have Herbalism 3, or Hunter 1, or whatever).

Silver (any Life Skill can give silver Income): Silver is alright, most people use it to either.... make silver weapons. But mostly, to buy material from the other types of economies. Very few people who are considered 'powerful' own a lot of silver. They do however carry a lot of the other economies.

Mana (you get a certain amount per month; and you expend 1 mana every time that you cast a spell. The Manas have 6 different flavours (Fire (red, duh)/Earth (brown, duh)/Water (Green?)/Air (Blue!); and Essense (White) and Void (Black) ).

[Access to the Mana Economy: Everyone can get access. It costs 5 points to read/write, and then 5 more for Awareness 1 (the ability to see, and pick up mana, understand a spell being cast, see a mage with mana on their person, or enchants cast on a target.

It's also very important to get access to this economy.

Every spell in the game relies on Mana to be there, not just a spell caster. A player with no spells, but with a tier or two in an element, and some mana, can very easily approach an other mage, and give them two mana; one to cast the spell, and the other to pay the mage.

However, nearly all of the time, a mage will do it for free. It costs them nothing, and it makes sure that the next time you see them in a fight, that you will try and help them.

Spells range from healing hitpoints, repairing broken gear; crowd-control, blinding, mind control, hold person-type effects, teleportation only to pre-known locations. So, it's got a pretty wide list of abilities within it's repetoire.]


Psychic States (there's a 'psychic' system; it's a "tree" with a central point; and several 3-5 Tier branches radiating from it, some of the abilities have dual pre-requisities. However, there are only 36 Psychic Abilities, and each one always costs the same as any other Ability (10 pts). Once per game 'session', you can spend one state, and then recover all of your states back up to full; this takes 10 minutes per state that you recover; while 'some' people have the maximum amount of abilities (they have all 36 abilities); I don't think any of the, give up 360 minutes in a stretch in order recover all of their "Psychic States".

[Note: this is a fairly non-transferable power, as it costs more in order to access the "Psychic Economy"]

Equipment: You can engage in unarmed attacks, and grappling; but a bastard sword is going to have more reach on you at every instant. Weapons and armour are very handy to have. The 'scaling' is in terms of damage, not To-Hit.


Alchemy: this is the big one. For the amount of resources that it takes to get 1 Mana per month; you could get 1 type of Alchmical Ingredient via Geologist, or Herbalist. Some Ingredients however are rare, and need things like "Blood of a [Something]", or "Drowned Man's Hands". So you can't actually 'mass-produce' every recipe.

Now, the tricky thing is that 'some' Alchemical Recipes can be used to make Mana. The trade-out that can result from an Alchemist's recipe is 5 (or a max of Base 5; as the Alchemist skill only has 5 ranks to it).

Right now, the 'return' rate is 5 Primal Mana, for the 'cost' of 2-4 In terms of Alchemy ingredients.

For True Mana, the return rate seems to be 5 mana, for every 4 you put in (the cost can go down over time though, two of the 4 ingredients can be mass-produced, and you only have to pay for them only every few batches).



Basically, I found a way to make a lot of currency in this system.

I'm going to use this to get access to one of the 'final' currency systems in the game; magical equipment.

Apparently, you can use either alchemical products, or stored psychic power, or mana; to make typically mundane items into more powerful ones.

I know that right now, in game, there is a character whose mana income is fairly high; but most people don't have that sort ability. Even people who have been playing for a few years (the bulk of the characters in-game are between 100 and 400 points; some are literally in the 900+ point range though; this is an exception, not the norm).

Maybe I'll try to see how the 'item making' rules in this game work. It's a pretty low-powered game, so you don't see many magic items made by players. Most of the magic items were found.

I'm going to talk to all of the players with this skill, and see how it works, and what you need to do in order to make items in the game.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Meikle641
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Post by Meikle641 »

I'm finding this mana resource very interesting. What game system is this?
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Judging__Eagle
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Post by Judging__Eagle »

It's for a larp called Epoch actually.

Mana is represented by 6" cotton cloth squares filled with birdseed, and held together with hockey tape (the group rents a Boy Scout camp; and the site has a very strict "do not disturb" policy; even dead fall is not allowed to be gathered; so the 'packets' have to biodegradable).

In order to 'get' any income, you need a related skill.

For Mana, it's the related "Tiers" in an element. The Primals go to 5 each; and the total amount of True ranks is based on your total amount of Primal Ranks.

For silver, or gathered goods, it's related to your related Life Skill (s). Alot of people pick up all sorts of Life Skills.

To get alchemy ingredient income (Ores or Flora) you need LS (Geologist) and LS (Herbalist). Since you don't get "Income Ore", but rather "Income: 'this specific ore' ", you can potentially earn the materials to make up to 9 batches of most alchemy recipes per month. You don't even really need to make 9 batches of anything a month anyway; so you can stockpile materials that you don't use.

The 'most' mana that people can get for their Primal elements is 10 of each type (the Income skill for any one type of Income is capped at x2 your skill ranks in a skill).

If you blew 5 points getting a specific trait at character creation, you can get up to 15 (the trait allows you to recieve buy enough of the income skill to get up to x3 instead).


Each element has its own colour:

Fire - Red
Earth - Brown
Water - Green
Air - Blue

Essence - White
Void - Black


Basically... you make ranged touch attacks; which sheilds can block, or you make a melee touch attack; then 'expend' the spell.

Out of the bulk of the spells 3 are actually "direct damage" spells. Fire, Water and Void have "damage" spells. Everything else is either a CC, Buff, Curse, De-Curse or flat out 'die' spell (if used well); some are also "transport" spells, and are very handy.


With 5-10 spells for each Primal Element; and 10 for both of the True Elements; there are 20-40 Primal Element spells; and an other 20 True Element spells. Making 'damage' spells as obviously not the main focus of the spell system in the game. Which is fine by me. I actually like that 'damage' is the real of weapon users; and Magic is used to make a combat easier to manage.

The spells themselves will, for the most part, not kill anything. There are 2 actual insta-kill spells in game; and most people won't use them because 1) other people will seriously just get together and kill you if you ever start attacking 'anyone' (there is no 'enforced' law; the players in-game determine what they will do in a situation; it's basically a massive semi-democratic anarchy, with groups that work together because otherwise things would be much worse
2) you don't really need to 'kill' something with a spell; you can seriously just 'entrance' a target, and they will helpless walk towards your outstretched, pointing finger, until you lower your arm; at that point any one on your side can just slit their throat. Most elements have a very strong CC ability; some have some very good CC abilities.


More on Life Skills: Flavour; but able to do things in game that would suit your character

Some Life Skills are purely for flavour (Life Skill (Candymaker) comes to mind; but even then, you can use it to make silver income, so it's not completely useless) but can be used in game to justify you being able to do something.

I've got Life Skill (Vivisectionist) and Life Skill ("Interrogator") on my character sheet; so my human Fighter-Alchemist-Earth Mage can start cutting up killed enemies or monsters in order to get blood out of them, or body parts, or whatever they can get from a body. With alchemical ingredients being stuff like "Blood of a Serpent", "Hands of a Drowned Person", or "Blood of a Faun, Orc or Dwarf" or "Demon Bones"; it's sort of useful to have a skill that you can declare in-game that you will use to do something.

Some people have a skill called "Knockout" where if you strike the target on the back; they have to act as if they are KO'd for ... I think like 10 minutes (maybe 5). At that point people can just easily kill the target. It only applies to humanoids though. So some players have Life Skill (Lore of Magical Beasts) so that they can KO a beholder, and LS (Animal Lore) so that they can KO giant snakes or rats. Some people have LS (Etymology) so that they can deal with insects.


In any case, with my current character; I'm trying to see if a build that I have never seen in game (Warrior-Alchemist-Mage) is viable.

I plan on relying on my Alchemy to do the 'heavy lifting' in terms of generating Earth, and Void Mana. The trouble is that they both share ingredients; meaning that I won't be able to make large amounts of both. However, I want to farm out the ingredient gathering to other players.

If they know that if they give me 1 X, I'm willing to give them 2 Earth Mana; then they actually make a profit in terms of how much they spent to get that much mana.

Normally it costs:

1 (Earth 1)
4 (Income: Earth Mana 2)

or 10 build to get a single mana; and then 4 more for every 2 more mana that they want to get.

While my method costs:

1 (Life Skill (Geologist, or Miner) 1)
2 (Income: _____ 1)

or 3 points total. Each 2 more mana costs the other person only 2 points; meaning that they're getting their mana at a discount from now on.

I keep some of the mana for myself as a service charge; since I had to actually brew the alchemy (which takes some down time); know the recipe (who only 1 other person in the whole club seems to know; it's very uncommon); know how the ingredient list for the recipe; and have an alchemy kit capable of making the recipe.

I'm not sure if many people will bite; but the newbies are a good place to Tap; as are the Higher tier people who really do want more mana; and are at their cap.

I plan on sitting on the bulk of the Mana that I make in this method; and storing it. Hopefully with a large enough amount, I can start making some magic items. Since it's all earth mana that I'm stashing... it will probably be items that make me tough; or burrow into the ground, ideally; a magical suit of armour that I can just touch mana to and repair for more than normal (Normally, a single Earth mage with 5 Tiers can add a max of +10 more hp to a suit of armour; +30 if they have two or more people that they can borrow Tiers from and now have '15 tiers' in Earth).

An other idea would be to have an item that gives me a threshold (it's 'like' DR; except that if the enemy swings high enough; you take full damage; so a Threshhold of 10 means that you laugh at 10 or less; but take 11 or more, if hit for 11 or more damage); since there's an Earth spell that grants a threshhold.

An other idea, would be to buy mana from other people, with my earth mana; and then render down the other mana, in order to start trying to learn the recipe for other types of mana. I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd like to try it out.
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gilli1211
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Post by gilli1211 »

You involve a good thinking here and i know the output of what u think will be the good one.
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