Suggestion for new HL Pathfinder capability

[Fnordboy]

I've been finding a little bit of difficulty with HL's implementation of money tracking, specifically with gems and jewelry. It's my players' common habit to sell their coinage for valuable gems to reduce encumbrance. But HL does not track gems, jewelry, or art as valuables. Any suggestions on how to get a good workaround?

[chiefweasel]

We use Bags of Holding.

[Mathias]

The second item available for purchase on the gear tab is "- Custom Gear -". Purchase one of those, enter "Diamond" as the name, "500" as the price, and leave the weight blank.

[Fnordboy]

Hmm, using your example... will the 500gp value of the Diamond be represented in the total money that the character owns?

[Mathias]

You can purchase the custom gear for whatever price you want to enter - that will make it subtract from your cash. That price won't be transfered to the final item however, so you'll have to enter it again - I've put that capability on my to-do list.

[Haligon]

Entering gems/Valuables as new equipment into the editor is a pretty trivial task, and particularly worth the effort if you have wizards who need to keep track of expensive spell components (Diamonds, Onyx, Ruby Dust, etc).

[Fnordboy]

You can purchase the custom gear for whatever price you want to enter - that will make it subtract from your cash. That price won't be transfered to the final item however, so you'll have to enter it again - I've put that capability on my to-do list.

Hmm,
So using the following example: I have a character with 10k gp. He wants to reduce the encumbrance and make it easier to shop, so he purchases (10)1k gems. So I create 10 custom containers labeled "gem" and purchase them for 1k each. But here's the catch... Does HL know that these gems should output to my character's money?

On another note, it would be fabulous if the Money container could be selected and added multiple times, so that each instance of the Money tracker could be placed in a separate container, such as a safe, home, hero, bag of holding, etc...

[Matt Droz]

Hmm,
So using the following example: I have a character with 10k gp. He wants to reduce the encumbrance and make it easier to shop, so he purchases (10)1k gems. So I create 10 custom containers labeled "gem" and purchase them for 1k each. But here's the catch... Does HL know that these gems should output to my character's money?

On another note, it would be fabulous if the Money container could be selected and added multiple times, so that each instance of the Money tracker could be placed in a separate container, such as a safe, home, hero, bag of holding, etc...

Looking at it from a roleplaying perspective, it shouldn't count as money. Not all merchants will take gems as payment (since not all merchants could appraise the correctly and gems are easier to counterfeit than legal coin). The PCs may need to sell the gems before the go see their local blacksmith/items dealer.

[Fnordboy]

Looking at it from a roleplaying perspective, it shouldn't count as money. Not all merchants will take gems as payment (since not all merchants could appraise the correctly and gems are easier to counterfeit than legal coin). The PCs may need to sell the gems before the go see their local blacksmith/items dealer.
Hmm, good point, that! Except it's still frustrating not knowing at a glance at what my approximate "liquid" assets may be.

[Mathias]

Hmm,
So using the following example: I have a character with 10k gp. He wants to reduce the encumbrance and make it easier to shop, so he purchases (10)1k gems. So I create 10 custom containers labeled "gem" and purchase them for 1k each. But here's the catch... Does HL know that these gems should output to my character's money?

No, HL doesn't know those are cash.

If you want to simply avoid the encumbrance from cash, there's a "No Coin Weight" option among the optional rules.

On the purchase dialog, note the "Number to Add" and "Stack" options - once you've selected "-Custom Gear-" as the thing you're going to purchase, switch the "Stacking Behavior" to "Add New Stack" and the "Number to Add" to 10 - that way you don't have to retype "Diamond" 10 times.

On another note, it would be fabulous if the Money container could be selected and added multiple times, so that each instance of the Money tracker could be placed in a separate container, such as a safe, home, hero, bag of holding, etc...

This would not be fabulous to program, I'm afraid. The money container isn't actually where the money is recorded - its only function is to look up the cash that's recorded on the Hero and report it to the user. Changing the entire mechanism for how the character's cash value is recorded in the files would be quite a lot of work.

Then, you'll run into other problems - what if a character wants to purchase something, spending 500gp from their bank supply and 500gp from their cash on hand - how does the purchase dialog ask the user to set that?

[Fnordboy]

\This would not be fabulous to program, I'm afraid. The money container isn't actually where the money is recorded - its only function is to look up the cash that's recorded on the Hero and report it to the user. Changing the entire mechanism for how the character's cash value is recorded in the files would be quite a lot of work.

Then, you'll run into other problems - what if a character wants to purchase something, spending 500gp from their bank supply and 500gp from their cash on hand - how does the purchase dialog ask the user to set that?

I bow to your wisdom good sir! Thank you for the in depth reply, I enjoy learning the backend of the mechanics.

I guess if I absolutely HAD to know the cash value of my jewelry at a glance, I guess I could just nominate my (cp) tally towards jewelry.A crude hack, but sufficient to solve that issue. It would be more practical to consider gems, artwork and jewelry as goods rather than coinage, purchase them via custom container, and be done with it.

Sorry for the waste of time, and thank you again for the time spent on the reply.

[Mathias]

Yesterday evening, Rob and Colen gave me a good idea for this.

I add a new field to the hero to store the total value of all objects marked as valuables - in the editor, when you're creating a new piece of gear, there will be a checkbox to mark it as a valuable (I'll create a "- Custom Valuable -" item for the gear list which is "- Custom Gear -" with that box checked). Everything marked as a valuable will add its value to that field on the hero, and then I can modify the total cash display to also display that total.

This may not make it into the next update, but it's on my to-do list.