Equipment Overhaul Add-on/Supplement || Wealth Point System

Rules Discussion House Rules
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I made this…

It’s a compilation but also a revamp of sorts to the many Wealth/Item based rules I’ve made and shared.
Things like the Durability system are there, but the Wealth Point system is also listed here. Revamped yet again for like the third time.

Other things the community has made are there but I made sure to credit them when possible. (I might have unknowingly put in things I thought were my ideas there but actually aren’t)

The things shown there are meant to be a supplement and add on of sorts to @TrinitysEnd’s Equipment Overhaul homebrew but it only turned out that way by accident. Having both would be good but only having Wealth Point or Equipment Overhaul on its own will be just fine.

While the Equipment Overhaul did stuff that I liked and helped some of the problems the original rules had, I felt there were still more that could use some tweaking.

So I did, and then I realized it would go great with Equipment Overhaul so here we are.

  • There’s rules for a more balanced Unarmed Fighting and Improvised weapons there
  • Durability system for games
  • Complex af wealth point system that replaces wealth levels (again)
  • revamped feats and a new one
  • revamped disarmed (also again…)
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As the person who made the Equipment Overhaul (EO), I feel I should chime in here. First of all, you do bring along some ideas I had been bouncing around and ultimately cut from the EO, particularly things like Clunky, Impaired, and so on. However, I feel I should explain my reasoning on why I cut it and why, even though I think some of these options are neat… that they aren’t good mechanical things to include.

To start, I’m going to go with Chapter 1, you introduce 7 new properties. This is good and neat, but four of these properties are Negatives. This is not good. The more negatives available, the more people can lower the price of things. Well, for someone running 0 Agility non-initiative focused builds, Non-Maneuverable is basically just “My Armor is cheaper” stack it with Impaired because often someone else can roll the perceptions for the group and might as well add Slow as it’s rare for someone to need to don/doff armor, especially when the cost of Slow can offset the cost of Sleep-able (one of the few instances someone would be out of armor). Resistant is a neat option, but your pricing of 2-4 WL increase for it is not. This is expensive and, unless you pick Precise or Forceful, mostly useless. In fact, I’d suggest not allowing them to pick Precise and Forceful and limiting it to the options of the Energy Resistance feat.

Continuing passed the Armor properties and onto the weapon properties. Charge is fine, but is from other discussions, but the other three options need to be remade or removed. Point Blank is horribly worded and makes it better than any Melee weapon as you now no longer suffer ANY disadvantage while in melee range. Clearly not your intent, but your phrasing makes it that way. I suggest rewording it to be clear that it does not suffer the disadvantage penalty for firing while in melee… only while the target is another in melee range of you. And not just all disadvantage. Moving onto Reloading, this is neat in concept, but ultimately the rigidity of it flounders and provides little in actual use. It’s a far less punishing version of Delayed Ready on top of being oddly fixed at three attacks. As it is now, it’s not negative enough to be a -1 cost. Maybe a flat 0 cost change. And lastly, Unconventional is interesting in concept but ultimately limiting in actuality. Limiting not in mechanics (though it does do that) but in narrative. It is an unnecessary feat tax where self-limitation, one of OL’s key pillars, is working fine. If someone isn’t skilled at swinging around a pot and pan as a weapon to defend yourself, you as a GM should not be afraid to say “Yeah, that’s going to be one disadvantage.” This is also why I don’t fully address the disparity of non-disarmable weapons all that much as just because everyone can have it, doesn’t mean everyone is proficient in them. On top of that, they still need to draw an unarmed strike like any other weapon.

I don’t have much to say on chapter 2. It could be interesting for groups that desire it though I feel it could be better detailed or more examples. Also to point out that Craft Mundane in EO was baked into the Knowledge Feat and the perk Artisan.

Chapter three I mentioned above slightly, but I don’t think the problem that has been debated is much of an actual problem so long as players follow Self-limitation or you as a GM enforce this limitation. If your players keep trying to exploit this area of supposed weakness by making it so every character they make has some form of CQC, then I would suggest talking to the players. That said, your weapon use for unarmed is something that’s been suggested countless times in the discord. That you can pay for a more efficient unarmed attack. This and even the WL0 Unarmed attacks needing to occupy 1 or 2 of your 20 equipment slots are limitations that already exist on top of the aforementioned self-limitations. However, your handling of Improvised weapons is a direct feat tax and limitation that should be handled narratively through the systems OL already features. These alternate rules should be a last resort against exploits as they instead punish fun, silly, and interesting builds as you force a required 3 Might and 2 Feat points into their build, even if the pie throwing Clown wants to go Agility as they are throwing them.

I’m not going to comment much on the Wealth Points. Mostly just that it’s not something I’m interested in and won’t have much to test or say on the balance.

In conclusion, this is a good start, but the problems in this really outweigh the good. There’s potential under it all and can really be cleaned up, but I feel requires looking at more than the thing being made at one moment. A focus on how this can be used and what other systems OL has to handle this behavior should be looked at first rather than solving one smaller problem with what may end up being a much larger one. I hope you don’t take this criticism too harshly, but I wanted to come in and inform you on some of the problems I could see just at a single read at 3 in the morning. I’m happy to help provide further advice if you need it as well. But for now, the main issue was that this doesn’t seem ready for play yet due to several glaring issues that can be fixed, but might not be a happy end for all the pieces in it.

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Firstly thank you for taking your time to feedback.

My main intention when posting my homebrew is always for people to criticize them.
Though it always pains my heart to read all the flack people have to write about my homebrew (which is all the time), I’m a hardened professional (or at least I’d like to believe) and I’m aware that these are not personal attacks nor do I think of it as any other sort of childish thoughts like that.

Instead I’ll act like an adult and take your criticism, give it some thought, and change my work as I see fit!
Look forward to it maybe? But keep your expectations low… Heh…

Most of the stuff I made here were written long long ago, and have never been revised.
The armor and Wealth Point system are the ones that are actually new.

So believe it or not, we’ve been playing with these house rules for quite some time now, and since my group never encountered any problems with it, I thought I’d share it with everyone.

Now the reason I italicized playing is because…
We technically never used many of these rules before…

I should also mention my players are below average in terms of brains. They aren’t the usual super smart people we think of when we hear people refer to TTRPG players.
They only embody the chaotic aspect of a player.

Point Blank and Reload are weapon properties I can think of right now.
Made them since I started playing, but my player saw it and blatantly ignored it.

Reload is supposed to be an alternative to Delayed Ready because I never really liked the property and believed it to be something so disabling that it should be a -2WL reduction.
Point Blank was something that I thought was a cool and unique idea.
(I think it was in Advanced Open Legend. Something I made a long time ago that really sucked. It should be posted in the community.)

The thing about my table and my players…

Firstly my players.
When it came to properties, they avoided adding penalties to their equipment like the plague because limitations SUCK for him. (I only have 1 player)
I could turn the Slow property a -9WL adjustment and he still would never use them!

The problem with most of my rules is that they never get used at my table. My players are very unexperimental and just sticks to what they know works.
Agility based builds with Destructive Trance. All day, every day.
So when I post them, believing them to be okay (because if my players don’t use them, that means they never saw any potential exploits, which means it MUST be okay!)
But then I remember that he’s an idiot… Like me.

And as for the table, I as a GM don’t really give the players that much freedom over their equipment. Past character creation, every item from then on is handed out by me and I take measures to ensure they would not be too weak or too strong.
In the instances I do allow them so much control as to even allow their own SPECIAL properties for their equipment, I put a lot of penalties like:
“It’s gonna cost +2WL higher than normal!”, or “It’ll take (Item Wealth Level x Item Wealth Level) days before I can finish this item you commissioned me to craft for you! And I’ll need you to gather the materials for me!”

Your criticism here seems to assume that I allow my players creative freedom over what they can purchase whenever they are given the chance. That’s how you do it at your table but that’s not how I do it in mine.
Oh and you’re also assuming my players actually know how to create their own items lol but I’m the only one in the group who knows stuff like that because my party is illiterate lol! … :frowning:
That’s how I read it anyway…
However your criticism with the new properties, especially the Armor ones I will take heavily into consideration.
Though you seem to have missed that Impaired also nerfs the wearers ability to use Ranged Weapons and other Ranged stuff. It’s not just a perception hindrance.
Point Blank I thought I worded well enough… (Grants you no penalty when attacking in the person right in front of you!) It’s actually a weaker version of a weapon that has both a melee and ranged category, and there’s no difference but… I digress, what do I know?
As for Reloading…

I gotta confess, whenever I post these homebrew I actually intentionally leave out some rules I know for sure is just gonna recieve criticism.

In the original version of the Wealth Point system, I had an armor property called… I forgot what it was called but basically for a -2WL reduction, your armor bonus doesn’t aply when you are hit with a certain attack type.
Very bad.
Reloading is the same thing, In the original copy of the rules, Reloading isn’t just a static 3 attacks, you can reduce or increase the penalty by making the reload time longer or shorter, but it was confusing and bad.

Finally, in regards to narrative limiting, and the Unconventional property.

I already mentioned this, but my players really hate limitations. So of course they never have and never will practice self limitation. They will always do everything they can to get every advantage and mitigate any penalties. Munchkins basically… Max-Maxers.
They have a single track mind with the game and narrative and story stuff are something they always ignore…
When it comes to items they only want one thing. A dual wielded sword that has Deadly 3 and Unfailing. Maybe +3 to Agility too…
As an example, my players will always go for either Alteration and Entropy for extraordinary as they provide the most amount of Banes and Boons. And whenever they are asked why, they always simply shrug.
Don’t give advice about this btw, this topic was already discussed some time ago, and I’ve already long since dealt with the problem. And by me, I mean us (him and I) we reached a compromise!

We are childhood friends and we know each other very well. Of course I’ve already talked to him many times about his behaviors, but he’s never shown any desire to better himself and who am I to force him? We’re here to have fun, so It’s often me who has to end up fixing his problems. Instead of encouraging him to self limit, my rules are there to let him self empower himself. You mentioned the example of playing as a clown who throws pies as his weapons. Something my player will never dream of doing as he believes melee is superior to range because dual wielding advantage hurr hurr. But if he wants, I’ll allow and make an exception to the Unconventional property rules for him, for free.

What do I know? I’m making excuses when I should be working on that Wealth Point System patch already!

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It seems more it is you assuming many things about all of this. The criticism is based on balance. At looking at the system as a whole and how all the parts work together. At the ability for others to use this system effectively in their games.

The reason for posting Homebrew to share with others is the possibility of others to be using it. To help build up the community. Hence why you get feedback.

The place that Trinity is coming from is having several people, not just the ones at her table, actually using the rules, and getting feedback. She runs a large world with several GMs and players, and has gotten to see how things work for everyone. I’m not sure if that is the case for the equipment specifically yet, they can certainly say more on that part, but the overall experience at homebrewing, and messing with the system and seeing how it works across a broad spectrum of players.

It’s great to be able to play with your friend, and that you both get to have fun. Fun is an important factor, and should be there.

However, there is a stark contrast between 1 player and a table of multiple players. With 1 person, you can tailor everything to them (as you mentioned in your post). With multiple players you have to handle things differently. This will also affect how you approach your homebrew, if you are using 1 player as your reference point.

Your posts all mention “my players” throughout (emphasis for the plural), which can be quite misleading to others. I read the post very differently from you have a single player, to having more than 1 at the table with you.

It seems odd to make all of this, and then essentially not use it, since you are the one that is giving the player exactly what you want to give them anyways. It also seems counter to the “self empower” you mentioned later?

I love your enthusiasm and desire to tinker. You have some interesting ideas from several of your posts.

The thing that seems to stand out to me is your implementation is often through a micro lens without taking as much consideration to the macro, to how those changes have a butterfly effect onto others (general comment overall, not about what you’ve posted just here).

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Yeah, I’m a bit of a hypocrite, said I’d act like an adult but ended up acting like a child and being defensive.

While I was writing in a hurry because my next session was coming up and I had to rebalance the homebrew immediately, this is no excuse for what I believe now in hindsight to be a really bad response.

I really am a rather inexperienced GM and having never been a player before means I lack the knowledge to view things properly when writing certain things. In short I lack the ability to empathize with players because I have never been one.

Maybe I should try looking for a group and playing with other people for a change.
I’ve always wanted to be a player since I’ve been a GM from day one.
My players (I always refer to the 1 player I have as players 'cuz of insecurity, makes me feel better referring to him in plural. It isn’t a typo or grammar issue :wink: ) know that being a GM is hard and much prefer simply making my work harder rather than potentially receiving the same treatment from me when he GM’s…

With quarantine going on I really have no excuse anymore not to start looking for a group.

Yeah… I think It’s about time, lol.

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