I feel like the potion (supplies) economy is not quite where it needs to be right now. This isn't so much an issue of "I want my bloat back!" as it is a problem with the fact that quests give out heaps of gold but few actual supplies. At present, it feels like the supply reward for quests lie solely in gold, to the point where my werewolf consistently had well over three thousand gold and... literally nothing to spend it on. What this generally means is that the primary way to get actual supplies is through other PC's, and the only way to get potions from PC's is through brewing. This isn't so much an issue when you're a Sanctuary PC and you can just holler for the nearest brewer over the sending system, but it's practically crippling for any concept who isn't in Sanctuary -- especially if they stand against Sanctuary as any kind of villain.
Perhaps certain people disagree with me, but I don't think this is in any way ideal. Brewing is neither interesting nor fun. The extent of dynamism and roleplaying it brings to the server is dubious at best. Most transactions start with a "I need x of y" and end with a "that'll be xyz coins, please," and there are very few variations. Even if you're the only brewer on the server, you're never allowed to inflate your prices because people translate their OOC entitlement to certain 'standard' prices that have been unchanged throughout the server's history to their characters' actions. This leads to outright hilarious situations where players stonewall brewers because they want what they believe to be a fair and standard price for their potion supplies.
For those who are outside of Sanctuary -- and especially those who are hostile to it -- this creates a frustrating situation where you have a bloat of gold and literally nothing to spend it on. For quests, this tends to create a great sense of tension where you rarely have more than the necessary amount of supplies to get through without dying, assuming you have a mediocre group for the content. And that's great! It's brutal. It's post-apocalyptic. It's survivalist. But that sense of tension and worry is quickly shattered when people are unloading thousands of coins on potions to whatever brewer happens to be in service at the time, just a few areas away from the struggling wildlings and criminals.
This is further exasperated by the frustrating tendency for set items to be a prevalent quest reward (particularly on the harder quests), which is an awful way of saying "thanks for doing this quest, here's something you can't use and probably never will instead of potions."
I don't necessarily know what the solution is -- I know the idea of getting rid of brewing entirely or increasing the supply rewards on quests are both undesirable -- but it seems wholly unreasonable that you have to pester your divine friends OOCly to take Brew Potion so that your group can keep up with the supply getting churned out by the friendly neighborhood potions brewer.
Here are a couple potential ideas:
- Access to cheaper potions in shops scattered around the Underdark There aren't many shops, to be frank.
- More explorables with potion prices that are greater than the 'standard' brewing price but lower than the incredibly large price in most shops
- Implement a more dynamic and widely accessible gathering system that is available to most non-Sanctuary PC's.
- Make brewing more accessible to spellcasting PC's without having to invest a feat that everybody is reluctant to take; make the feat confer a bonus to brewing instead of allowing access to it
I would love to hear other suggestions and thoughts on the matter.
Well.. Instead of use poison for (the sorc perk) witches, maybe brew potion? Maybe that's something that could help?
Remove feats as a necessity and replace it with a new EFUSS skill called "Artifice". When you go to brew a wand or potion you have to make a check which can fall into four ranges. Failure, underwhelming brew, standard brew, and superior brew. Failure fails to brew the potion/craft the wand and incurs a small xp loss but no gold loss. Underwhelming brew incurs an above average XP cost and an above average gold cost. Standard has the same xp cost and gold cost as artificing does now. Superior has a reduced gold and xp cost.
I know it is less expensive to go to PCs, but potions are still available throughout the Underdark from NPC merchants. You can find some very nice supply if you look in the right places. I agree that there could perhaps be more, but I doubt anyone honestly goes through the trouble to find all the merchants already out there (especially when it costs more gold and time). You can also just rob other PCs, lots of outsiders have hoards of potions doing this.
This:
QuoteI know it is less expensive to go to PCs, but potions are still available throughout the Underdark from NPC merchants. You can find some very nice supply if you look in the right places. I agree that there could perhaps be more, but I doubt anyone honestly goes through the trouble to find all the merchants already out there (especially when it costs more gold and time). You can also just rob other PCs, lots of outsiders have hoards of potions doing this.
Or, you could hire a fence or smuggler (edit: or promise not to eat them in return for their services) - your last PC had a certain PC ally who would have been happy to acquire potions on your behalf. Rogue fences have access to cheaper NPC potions.
I've played a fair share of brewers, and it seems to me that the power hit that giving up a feat is a bit overstated for some and understated for others. As a non-human cleric who gets hit the hardest it is a third of your feats (which is ouch) but for humans and wizards it's not that painful considering the boon to your ENTIRE faction even when you are not online, and that it can endear you to basically the entire server because of the service you offer. (Which I have seen a few times playing a ooze cleric who had "good guys" praising and offering tithes to ghaunadaur for bottles.)
Summing it up, I would say my main points are
The XP hit can be hard on active high level brewers What if plantable reagents (say fire lichen for endure elements, blue cap spores for healing, etc.) could be consumed from your inventory to negate the XP drain from brewing. This would make farming more prevalent and might bring conflict between the usually non combative brewers/alchemists.
Entirely an ooc problem is the assumption of prices, for people to call grifting on a 60 gold cure serious pot as opposed to a 50 because a brewer three months ago left up a flyer with that price is a bummer. I think one of the drawbacks of making a brewer is that the prices basically are universally set from the beginning, and those prices are near rock bottom in the way of personal profit. Remember that npc merchants are sometimes selling those same bottles for over 80 gold, so anything under that should be seen IC as a discount.
I think brewing should remain a feat, not a skill because it really is specialized crafting. There are alternative ways to make potions and similar without the feat using efuss. It is can be risky to get there, but it is possible. You take the feat so you do not have to take that risk.
There was a perk in efu:a lowering the cost of brewing by a third. I am not sure how clerics should work with a perk system being so versatile already, but that just popped into my head as a thing that existed.
Maybe something that gives you a chance of a free extra bottle if you brew a stack of 8-10.
I almost never get a chance to quest, but I've found the newer quests seem to give a high volume of consumables/potions as opposed to gold. Am I wrong?
I dislike turning back to players the responsibility for this, but after requesting too many changes from the mechanic side, I've noticed that there are some things that should be considered at the side of the playerbase. It's more about a change of playstyle than anything:
- Wildlings have easy access to herbalism peaceables and to the needed reagents (herbs, which are better to make stuff than shards) to make a lot of stuff related to the same effects of potion brewing. I know, the main hub might have some access too, but it's not as easy as it might be to a group that is composed chiefly by druids, rangers and the like. Not to mention the possibility of dealing with the Stewards.
- It's possible to establish a trade with people from Sanctuary through posters. There might be some smugglers willing to make extra cash with you, even more if you announce that you'll paying more than others.
- If you are a big villain that has issues with both wildlings and people from Sanctuary, now that's where your trouble grows. Even with a decent potion supply, you'll suffer if you don't manage to make connections (I know that really well). Monster PCs might be your best friends there. I remember of getting a lot that I needed from goblins and kobolds in some of my witches.
- And last, but not least: leave the witch perk in peace! That use poison is cool! If you want to change something, make them cast bestow curse and contagion earlier!
Let me toss this out there, let people chew on it.
Automate the process entirely. Throw a few NPCs in the main areas who exist entirely to brew, trade x gold for x potions, vary the prices each reset.
The whole reason we switched to a gold economy was to promote player economics.
Automation of these things is no better then just dropping tons of potions, literally. Some would say the merchants that already exist sell these potions... yeah at 500-600% market value, but that's what we got. It is the automated version. The fact that the potion prices are so abhorrently high in these locations is to promote the PC merchant. Both the legal and the less savory varieties. This is a good idea.
The issue at the core of this seems to be the decreasing population of the server, the expanding server watering down the density of players, and a lowering of non hostile interactions between these groups. This has the effect of assigning your party via your demographic, regardless of how much sense it makes (because those are the players you can interact with on your home turf); and reducing the productivity of any PC brewer.
So as Brewing becomes less and less popular among the player-base, fewer and fewer can reap the rewards. This tends to put more power the hands of the few with a brewer and levels, which in turn supports groups that are in power and aggressive, staying in power. The question comes down to, at what point does the density of the server get too low to support PC to PC economics?
What I don't like about this is that there's nothing stopping people from making alternative characters who specialize in crafting things then selling those things at base cost to all their OOC buddies and the in-game allies of their main. Truth be told I'm not even sure what was wrong with supply drops in earlier chapters. Sure the more experienced players were able to hoard massive caches of potions and wands, but that's what punishing spice is for! ;^]
Add a second feat which modified or removes the experience cost, if you are level 7 or higher. This way higher levels can brew potions without giving up their precious XPs which are worth a lot more at higher levels. It could be linked to something like say, skill focus: lore. Brew potion is still a regular prerequisite.
As a thought experiment: Increasing player density in conflict neutral areas is probably the simplest suggestion, in terms of design. But that would mean unsettling the peace within upper and drawing back in the various lairs/lowers/stewards towards that centralized locale, or some rearrangement that created the main hub in at another acceptable traveling point. As this isn't going to happen without Sanctuary being severely undermined (which may or may not be a positive thing), I'll put forward some other options.
~ Create alternative hubs between the various groups that allow a merchant PC the ability to function there without costing an arm and a leg for anyone that wants to walk through. Maybe a free-market bizarre somewhere in the under-dark that doesn't assail a curious druid with TECH or Thralls, that also provides resting communication and quests. (maybe allow it to be reached from multiple points of the server) i.e. an alternative gathering hub for the non-upper factions that is powerful enough that it can remain alive and neutral to upper authority.
~ Add more consumables to quest rewards, specifically healing.
~ Create an Alternative to brew-potion, or like suggested above, universal brew potion and let brew potion act like a Skill Focus in that script. I would suggest allowing more then just cleric sorcerer and wizard to be involved in such, however it might be designed. Or have brew potion function like a scripted PERK that makes potions made +1 or 2 CLs higher then the normal.
~ Allow factions to gain favor that provide then the essential potions, even if in small quantities. In this way any group the Dms deems as powerful would be able to generate these potions through behavior appropriate to their faction. Nothing wrong with letting a faction guy sell off some potions to his starved buddies, who may or may not want to get in on that action themselves.
~ Downgrade the difficulty of quests, and the effectiveness of all potion based spells. The most drastic suggestion, but if potions were minor buffs, and the game was playable without them, then it would function just fine. Spells would need to be likewise reduced, which may require a drastic increase in duration. Probably too much work.
~ Create more realistic NPC merchant prices. I've been told in the past this is nearly impossible to balance because of hardcoded base prices. But its been many years since I've needed to talk about those. You can add a simple 20 coins to the cost of the typical PC purchase, with low appraising adding up maybe another 20 coins. That would allow pcs to drop gold into oblivion for their more expensive cache.
~ Make potion xp costs scale with level of the character and the level of the spell. So a level 10 wizard wouldn't be spending as much of their extremely valuable exp points as a lower level character. All activities with EXP cost become exponentially more expensive to continue at the upper end of the level scheme. Honestly... It would be better to REMOVE the exp cost for these practices entirely. Let it be driven by gold. The exp cost is superficial or Really expensive, and even that depends on how much someone quests. That's basically an artificial variance in real-cost to the player. Drop it to encourage more high level merchant/shop-keeps to continue their practices.
Thats all I can think of off the top of my head.
ONE MORE!
Redesign Alchemy and Herbalism to be less of a dangerous jack in the box that only a few people enjoy, and turn it into a more common practice / common knowledge alternative to brew potion.
Maybe quests sometimes drop herbalism and alchemy components which (using a forum list) could be saved or spent to create the item. Maybe a herbalist can do Goblins and Kobolds once, and get some basic herbalism supplies that allow him to make say 10 cure light, or 3 cure mod, or 1 cure serious. Or add a charge to some goblin made item. Or 2 bull strengths.
Maybe the process costs gold? Maybe you can trigger a creation script for say Cure Serious, and spending gold into the mix creates more of said items. In this way you could create whatever loot the Dms wanted to be available in the world at that component level, but they couldn't get all of it. Thus PCs that are collecting all the parts can try their luck being sales men. (this actually gives you far more control over the actual value of a gold piece, which would need to be re-considered)
The biggest difference this would have from the current system is that the list of what you could make would be made publically known, posted on the forum maybe, and probably wouldn't summon a balar on your ass. Alchemy could be served for the crazy experimentation if you wanted that. However so many people have complained over the years about how much this system can alter the balance of the game. You could redesign it to add back in that balance. Let the Fighter make items if he's a herbalist.
I would consider limiting the Caster level / number of charges / number created by the class / total skill / of those involved.
QuoteAllow factions to gain favor that provide then the essential potions, even if in small quantities. In this way any group the Dms deems as powerful would be able to generate these potions through behavior appropriate to their faction. Nothing wrong with letting a faction guy sell off some potions to his starved buddies, who may or may not want to get in on that action themselves.
This is already in place for some factions and for all of Upper Sanctuary through the new baubilium favor vendor. Maybe extending it to other factions would be a solution.
For healing specifically (and this is totally self-serving because it's the only thing I actually know about on this server) - I'd suggest removing the cooldown on herbalism-brewing serious curing. It takes enough resources to warrant the price and, while they could be "mass produced", it'd take hours to gather the materials to make as many as a cleric could make in one rest and a trip to the House of Trade.
Baubilium is not a resource common enough to count.
I personally believe that a total revamp of herbalism / alchemy so that they cover potions and wands (and even scrolls, imbued gems, etc) would be absolutely amazing. It doesn't even need to be nearly as advanced, and other items could certainly be in the table of rewards, but I think that having characters go out and gather plants, minerals, gems, and other things in competition is far superior to the current state of affairs.
To be more clear, I wouldn't remove the current brewing / wand making system, but rather have an additional means created. What I think would be the best way to accomplish this would be to create the new system and provide a range of success levels ( I believe KOP suggested something similar) within the alchemy / herbalism reward tables. A player might craft nothing and have a failure, a single charge imbued gem, a 5 charge wand, or a 25 charge wand. That would all depend upon their success in the attempt. Some thing for potions and the level they are created at. I believe healing potions can be made at level 3, 6, and 10 for example.
This would also allow more variety in brews and wands, opening up some of the spells above level 3 for example (not all obviously, or even most, but some aren't a bad idea) and also allow for custom potions / wands to be made. Some of those old potions with a "unique power" on them for example.
If an alchemy or herbalism revamp were to occur. It would need to be far easier to use and those uses should be public knowledge. Think of it like brewing or wand crafting, everyone knows how its done, but may not be able to do it themselves. I would be nervous about the total extinction of underdark plants in this suggestion.
Another way to decrease crafter disparity without knocking balance off kilter is to allow all casters to brew by default without feats. However, each craft requires you make a save of some sort where the higher the save the lower the cost. But it'll always be significantly more expensive than someone brewing with feats. Example: Endure Elements might cost 30 and 5 xp to someone with the feats. But those without have to pay anywhere from 38-50 and 10-25 xp per. (Just a rough estimate of numbers because I can't find a price chart for EFU)
I really dislike the over reliance on brewers in EFUR. The way the setting/factions are setup it encourages the "who is going to play the brewer" mentality for every group or faction.
More supplies in quests and less gold is the obvious solution.
I would like to speak of the amount of nerfing that alchemy and herbalism have gone through. I do not know of the abuses people speak about since I started hearing about the issue because I was rarely part of groups that did it with success. Yet, I fail to see how the nerfing has really improved this awesome system.
One of the "nerfs" I dislike the most is how reagents are absurdly heavy and end up messing all the inventory. Take inventory tetris to a whole new level now. Have you ever wondered why granny walks around encumbered so often? Well, now you know. It would be good if you could stack groups of reagents instead of having to deal with that mess that becomes your pouches.
Not to mention all the secrecy, the high danger of practicing it, the difficulty to gather and keep reagents, all this makes harder and harder to develop enough knowledge, even more if you consider that most characters will probably live less than enough to even actually really master anything. I am afraid that most successful alchemists are probably the result of meta knowledge accumulated through several characters (but this is a guess, not actually something that comes from actual knowledge, so I might be wrong here).
My bet is that alchemy and herbalism were made harder and less profitable through the years mostly because of the more powerful things you might be able to do with them. Although, along with these things, you also made the more ordinary things as harder.
I honestly love player driven economy, as my first experiences with RPGs were in worlds that economy had played a main role in the definition of the server's society. I think that persistent merchants that could be rented might make some things better to deal with. Chiefly, by improving the exchange of reagents without the need of being encumbered to carry what you might desire. It also might bring more importance to gardens and incentive the trade of herbs. You might also keep alchemical goods open to be bought even if you aren't around.
Another thing that I would like to see, maybe, is the possibility of you actually being allowed to pursue the documentation of your recipes instead of having to keep them all secret or stuck in the mind of a PC who spreads that knowledge through oral tradition only. I think that it would be nice to plot on stealing a known alchemist's book of recipes to have access to their secrets, but I am hardly sure of how this could be implemented although.
So, yeah, my guess is that the issue is not with potion brewing. It's more about having two systems that might create similar things at different risks/ rewards. If alchemy and herbalism produced similar things at less danger/ difficulty and throw away potion brewing completely we could maybe have a hint of solution here.
First off I would just like to say I think that there being less of a supply bloat and a lot more reward in the form of gold is excellent. More gold to throw around not only on supplies, but to push plots/agendas too, post bounties etc. It also means a lot more interaction with PCs be it a brewer who you need potions from or an assassin who you have hired to murder political figure number 7.
I do think the brewing system need revamping entirely and I like the suggestion about there being an EFUSS skill for this. Do away with the XP penalty entirely, really don't think its necessary at all. Have 3 tiers of potion brewing which could be based on spellcraft/efuss skill where you can make a dissipating brew on a low roll, standard brew on successful roll or those who have taken brew potion get a significant boost to their roll and if they roll very high a chance to brew potion with higher CL. Keep a fixed price for each potion then a dedicated brewer can yield better results. An alternative idea if you don't like the idea of different CL/dissipating brews you could introduce something like the old minor perks and maybe give brewers a small chance to create an extra potion when brewing say stacks of 5+ (with Brew Potion feat) or have it so potions brewed grant a random additional beneficial effect to reward dedicated brewers. But essentially with this system any caster could brew without investing a feat unless they want to dedicate themselves to the craft.
In terms of alchemy, having explored it very thoroughly I know you can pretty much create any potion already out there that you can brew. That's not to say its easier to achieve and you would have to invest ample amounts of time to even get close to understanding how to achieve this result. Also because of the continued nerfs to the system it without giving too much away I can say that the work involved to produce these results has reached a stage where it is far too tedius and time consuming to pursue this as an avenue in place of brewing.
I am currently playing a monster PC and generally I have not seen an issue with obtaining supplies or gold. (But gold is certainly more readily available). For supplies such as haste/displacement etc.. you do need to seek a PC brewer out unless you want to pay bloated prices from NPCs. So it would be nice to see more brewers out there and I think abolishing the need to take the feat and working it into the EFUSS system would be great, but I imagine that this will be no simple task and a DM is going to have to spend quite a bit of time setting this up.
One thing that would be nice to see however is on some of the more challenging quests to see more uncommon potions drop such as:- Haste/Displacement/True Strike/Improved Invis/Freedom Of Movement. Perhaps added to loot table of quest that PCs don't do often or the option more challenging parts of quests.
Personnally I toy with the idea of making most potions and trinkets dissipating, to put everyone at near equality each reset & various other reasons, with the counterpart of spawning more in quests for instant use (or other in quest methods)But don't worry it's mostly me myself and I.
We probably could use more expensive costs of brewing in terms of coins (so that npc merchants compete with pc merchants, and drain a bit more coins for equal/less profit), and maybe less in terms of XP (but that's actually very minor unless lvling to 10 is your main objective). Or simply make the quator haste/ displacement/blur/CSW not brewable, like shield, or much more expensive.
Or we could lower the overhaul difficulty to make potions not needed and very not accessible for everyone. Because there's the spiraling up effect (hard server -> consummable -> good merchanic player beat it more easily -> increase difficulty -> etc.) that gets in every now and then. But that's very tedious work and culture change, although elders say efu1 was quite a challenge tackling umber hulks with a stick. Who now is afraid of an umber hulk?
Quote from: Letsplayforfun;432400Who now is afraid of an umber hulk?
Umberhulk Behemoth or Stalker?
Pretty afraid.
Quote from: Letsplayforfun;432400Personnally I toy with the idea of making most potions and trinkets dissipating, to put everyone at near equality each reset & various other reasons
Dissipating potions and wands are already part of the issue at hand ;)
NPC's that sell dissipating potions for a lower cost would help a bit on the issue of reliance on brewers, and curb some of the gold from quests by premeditative costs. Not the high end potions, but rather the quote unquote, essentials -- like healing potions. Something that pretty much anyone in a party will use liberally in a quest or event.
Quote from: Vagrant Savant;432413NPC's that sell dissipating potions for a lower cost would help a bit on the issue of reliance on brewers, and curb some of the gold from quests by premeditative costs. Not the high end potions, but rather the quote unquote, essentials -- like healing potions. Something that pretty much anyone in a party will use liberally in a quest or event.
I like this idea a lot. Maybe if something like it were at a neutral but accessible location like the Mound.
If the issue here is the fact that some factions/ groups end up having a personal brewer, I guess the solution is not upon making potion brewing harder or to nerf it (I have got enough dire wolves in herbalism, thanks). The brewer already invest a feat on it, so does XP and coins.
Putting what I have said in my last post in a different way and considering everyone's suggestions since it, I think that it would be good that the brewer could keep a shop, with different options of places available, one more Upper oriented, another more Lower oriented and a third in the wilds, maybe at the Mound.
This way, it keeps the potions somewhat restricted to the groups that frequent that area and allows the brewer to reach people even without being around.
Dissipating potions in bulk -- whether buying, creating, or finding them -- run into the issue of unexpected server crashes and emergency updates. I'm dubious about them being the answer.
A quick thought of what if the feat gave a +1 or 2 to alchemy and herbalism?
Quote from: Pandip;432422Dissipating potions in bulk -- whether buying, creating, or finding them -- run into the issue of unexpected server crashes and emergency updates. I'm dubious about them being the answer.
It'd be part of their "discount" nature, I imagine. If one's planning on running a quest, or gearing up for a quick attack and finds their gold-to-potion ratio imbalanced, it's a disposable remedy. As dissipating potions are now, even, one doesn't hold onto them in the same bulk as one'd do with regular potions -- since they're never meant to replace the real stuff.
^ So, you don't have to farm for 4 months to gain supplies and gear for one DM event / quest / other major occurance , then redo it all, essentially?
I tend to agree with Blue41.
Have NPCs be the "dispensers" of potion.
I'm all for Player driven economy, but not for "comoditized" goods such as potions, where the price isn't elastic at all - due to player OOC expections creeping in.
It would only be interesting, in my view, if all potions were coded as "unique power" to bypass the extreme rigidy of NWN's preset potions. Have crafters be able to create high quality, low quality, poisoned, etc - a wealth of potions where the buyer doesn't explicitly "know" what to expect.
Is it snake oil? Can I trust this merchant? What is his reputation?
We'd then have price elasticity due to product heterogeineity/risk. This would lead to a much more engaging player-driven economy where the transaction becomes a tool of storytelling.
...But realistically, I don't think it's worth the manhours, coding wise - when the energy could be invested in other aspects of the server.
Most of this was already covered here -
http://www.efupw.com/forums/showthread.php?98316-The-balance-of-a-proactive-world&p=409639&viewfull=1#post409639
[hide=""]The supply level - It's well understood that EFU:M had what would be considered a "supply bloat". Potions were all over the place and it was not uncommon for mechanically sound players to have large amounts of them at any point. The setting prior had somewhat less than EFU:M (EFU:A) and maintained a nice balance I believe, in general. I cannot fully comment upon the first origination of the underdark, but it appeared to be rather similar to our current situation (other factors, however, were different I think, and we'll discuss those below.
Overall, I feel as if the current setting is lacking in both amount and variety of supplies found. It relies far too much on an apparent emphasis on player trade and quite simply punishes those that desire to wander, explore, and seek as hobbies. This has caused a vastly reactive and frightened slew of characters, and while that itself is not an inappropriate thing, I feel like it -is- when created by a simple lack of something that should probably be somewhat more commonplace via npcs, treasures, etc.
My suggestions would be to -
- Simply increase -and- add variety (many types of potions almost never appear in random loot tables anymore) to "treasure" rewards all around. You will not be encroaching upon the world of bloat anytime soon, but instead will be allowing more exploration, questing, travel, wandering, and whatever else you might call things that are leaving the "haven". This itself creates more interaction, more proactive characters at earlier levels, and overall helps the world move without DM interaction. There is a huge amount of stuff out there to be discovered, and I've been fairly surprised by the amount of people telling me that they've never seen something before when I myself only recently returned.
- Alternatively, add in "random" merchants of the npc variety that sell potions, wands, scrolls, etc - Effectively custom shops with a pricing level at about double or less of the "standard" pc pricing level. NPC shops with other things in them / that buy things from players simply overcharge by a huge and stupid amount. They are never used and it is really a waste. These merchants could travel upper/lower/mur, possibly make sendings about their intention to trade at certain locations for said amount of time, etc. They could come and go just as the random areas might now, though obviously would want to be less secretive ( in general) than those. A few might send notice to pure rogues only, or to stewards only, but the point remains the same. [/hide]
I love having loads'a money to push my plots. Hiring assassins, hiring spies, hiring mercenaries, and investing. All of which are huge for battles and plans. I have felt the potion crunch and I have to say that it:
1. Places more value on magic users
2. Places more value on each item
3. Creates a decision between supplies and gold manipulation.
The bad thing about is that it:
1. Leads to one person having a gigantic supply if they are a bandit.
2. Takes time to recover from a big expenditure of specific magical items/artifacts
I do like the system having coin, coin can do more than a potion. However I would like to see more magical items/artifacts to be found and used.
This is a difficult issue. I may attempt to apply some bandaid solutions but am not really satisfied with any of the suggestions proposed in this thread.