Hoarders (mod for EE)

[temnix]

Slightly improved and fixed

1. Summary
2. Compatibility
3. The golds and how they work
4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order
5. The budget review
6. Buying at stores
7. Getting others' gold
8. What they spend it on
9. What Charname can spend it on
10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere

1. Summary. In Baldur's Gate 2 why do the companions of Charname allow him to scoop up all of the 15,000 gold pieces they all earned in dangerous adventuring and spend on a personal cause - either vengeance or rescuing a friend, where the money does not even bring the friend back but only buys transportation to the place the friend may be? Don't they have their own ideas for that plunder? Even Harper do-gooders like Jaheira could probably buy a number of people from slavery with that kind of money, or do something else with it. Yet they all obediently play Charname's little game and pour out their purses into a common pot from where he - really, the player, out of character - reaches with an exclusive ladle? Is this a role-playing game or a 5 year socialist plan?

With this mod private property sets its iron heel in Faerun. Party characters will now split any gold found, awarded or obtained from buying items to fill their separate purses, with no privileges whatever for Charname. They are not necessarily selfish now, but they have purposes apart, and if Charname or another character wants someone else's money for a special purchase, he needs to persuade or intimidate the other character into agreement. This is not a hopeless proposition, but it is difficult. In conversations the speaking character only has his own purse, light or heavy, to set against any requirement to pay, and in the case of sailing to Byzantium, I mean to the asylum, someone in the party needs to have 15,000 gold of his own, or the journey will not happen. This character will, in effect, be bankrolling the expedition. What is more, the collector needs to hurry up with the gathering, or private purses will be emptied to buy improvements for their owners. Charname or indeed whichever party member wants to pay the Shadow Thieves so much should not be lazy or slow, otherwise the party may end up scouring Amn, looting the dungeons, doing the quests, and all of this wealth will be happily spent by the others, each on his own articles of interest. The BG2 premise is only an example, though. Whichever game the module is installed for, these interactions around money are going to happen often enough, especially when one of the characters feels he must absolutely bang together enough money for something expensive that is being sold, like a robe of an archmagi et cetera. They can be role-played in many ways.

I made this mod because one of the main attractions of real, tabletop fantasy play is the winning of treasure. There are some games that do treasure more vividly and attractively than Dungeons&Dragons, like Stormbringer, but in D&D, too, coin is important, if rather abstract, and when money is won, it is split. Much of the satisfaction of victory comes from this, and contention also. What to do about a gemstone too expensive for local buyers? Who ought to carry it and for how long? And so on. This module goes some way towards recreating this interaction and making characters, in effect, act independently instead of being marionettes in a bland overhead-view wargame. This is not my dream system. Some features I hoped for were impossible, others had to be made very differently. For example, the Infinity Engine turned out to be incapable of simple division, so the original idea to distribute plunder in equal shares had to go. I resorted to a "pecking order" distribution, based on proximity to the party leader, but this turned out to be fun in its own right.  

2. Compatibility. This module is only for the Enhanced Editions. I should also mention that because the class title on the character record sheet is the only place in the interface where additional information can be shown (by replacing the class name), other mods' custom class titles, given with the one and only available opcode, are going to be overriden.

@DavidW provided some important code and gets my thanks.

3. The golds and how they work. First, a few words about the composition of the gold system in the Infinity Engine. In all these games there are actually three golds. First, there is the gold piece item, the one most often found on corpses, sometimes in chests. It is an item whose description pic, I bet, is rarely seen and whose drop-down sound has never been heard, because as soon as it is clicked, it disappears and a corresponding amount of units is added to the the party purse. Second, there are private purses of all creatures. These are usually empty, but companions come into the party with some chump change in them, and as soon as they join, they drop their quarters into the same party purse, which is very nice of them. When they leave or are ejected, they depart without claiming any portion of the budget, which is very nice of them also. A creature with gold in the private purse will drop all of it in the form of gold pieces upon dying. Finally there is the great and all-powerful purse of the party. This idealized pool can hold any amount of wealth without encumbrance or taking up any space in the inventory. This is the only "gold" that is considered by shopkeepers, and money for sold items increases the party purse. Quest rewards usually also flow into the party purse directly.

4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order. The new system changes the role, if not the functioning, of all three golds. The gold piece, in any amount, is now called Plunder. It represents discovered cash of all sorts pending for distribution in the party. As before, it will fill the common purse when clicked, but the six or fewer private purses are its ultimate destination. Private purses represent the money a character owns completely and can spend without restrictions. They are used to pay in conversations and to buy improvements. As for the party purse, it is now only a junction, the low table on which plunder and money gotten from anywhere is spread before it is sorted out to the characters. Whenever the size of the party purse reaches 100, distribution begins automatically, just not in a fight. Gold is handed out in 100-point installments: the party purse shrinks by 100 and the private purse of a character swells by the same amount. The party leader, who is not necessarily Charname, always gets the dibs. If there are more than 100 units in the party purse still, the next, second, character receives another hundred, then the third and so on down the line, restarting from the leader again when the tailing character in the party has received his share. This continues until nearly all of the party purse has been distributed. Money under 100 gold pieces remains there, to be added for distribution the next time.

Because money always comes from the top, it clearly pays to roost up there. Not only is the party leader always privileged, but there is intentionally a slight delay in distribution for lower-rank (rather, lower-file) characters. When money is plentiful, the party's winnings number in the thousands and handout rounds flicker past, everyone gets a good share to enjoy, yet the top characters' is still somewhat better, and the characters in the end of the party fall behind considerably. This should create some interesting party mechanics, as everyone will "want" to be in the front positions at least when the roar of battle stops. Partly the trickle-down is deserved, because front positions tend to be more dangerous. This is no voodoo economics, though: when there is little money to go around, moving up may be the only way to snatch a hundred. Example: a party of six has sold a few swords and had picked up a little Plunder before and now unties the strings on 1350 gold in the party purse. This is enough for two complete distribution rounds, after which everyone would enjoy 200 gold for the private purse, if life were fair. But reality bites, not bidens, and the playing table is more likely to be skewed in favor of those on top. The leader will claim the final hundred as well. 50 gold will remain in the party purse until the next time. Had there been only two-three hundred to distribute, the underdogs would have had to climb up to get anything, and they will need to indeed if the party never earns big or makes only small and slow sales.

All characters are entitled to a share except those who are dead or panicking at the time of the distribution. Even incapacitated, confused or held characters will still have the money set aside for them, but not cowards or corpses. Another way to exclude someone from participation is to seal him off in a bubble of Otiluke, where he can watch despairingly and bang on the force wall as outside yellow metal dances into others' palms. This can even be done to the leader, but, of course, requires involvement of a wizard. Distribution is generally fast, yet, for techical reasons, faster for a fuller party than a smaller one.

With all this irregularity and jostling it is important to know just how much money everyone has ended up having. For this characters receive a special ability called Review Budget. If someone in the party does not have this ability, make another party member use it, and the first one will learn.

5. The budget review. This button will display the current size of private purses.

The roll call also proceeds in the top-down order. On this screenshot it is displaying results that correspond more or less exactly to characters' position in the party. Xzar is higher and richer than Imoen, and Imoen is ahead of Ajantis. The party leader has already responded that he has got 1200 gold stashed.

You should get a replacement font, too. The standard font is just ugly.

The purse size is also shown on the character record screen.

 

Don't be surprised that the sum is different, this is from another saved game. On the upper left is an unfortunate artifact of using the title for info display - the class name is replaced there also. Can you live with that? The inventory page likewise shows the purse size on top:

Below you see a couple of other things: Plunder, the undistributed money on the right, and Gold - a special and separate item, to be discussed in a moment.

The tokens on all these pages are not updated dynamically. You need to use the Review Budget ability to refresh information there. The messages will also be emptied on game load, use RB to fill the tokens in again.

6. Buying at stores. While the private purse is what counts for quests and dialogues, shopkeepers still look into the party purse. As soon as the party acquires any money, however, it will be spread out to personal use. How, then, is anyone to buy anything from a store? Here you need to give up on the notion of the player controlling everything that happens to this group of travelers from above the clouds, an "omnipresent authority figure" that thinks it has the right to pool everyone's resource and dispense them at whim. The characters are alive and real. Or they ought to be alive and real. They have their own plans and purposes, and likewise they don't have others'. You must give up on the idea of absolute necessity "for the group," because there is rarily such a thing, and think of necessity for each character. What does this character want to buy, for whom, why and how much does he need? Then proceed to direct this character to gather that much money out of his own private purse, which he can always do, and from the private purses of others, which is difficult.

Money appearing in the party purse on the overhead map will be gone in a flash. This does not happen while the store screen is open. Therefore, you need to sell something of value without exiting the screen, enough for the needed amount to materialize in the party purse, draw on this resource for the purchases and leave. Gather things that store value: gems, wands, other expensive articles. Keep them on hand until it is trading time. The content of private purses can be entrusted to a character, just for the purpose of making important deals, ones that will benefit the whole party, in the form of conditioned money. Gold (the item above) is that conditioned money. It is only there to exchange for store credit, you are not allowed to use it for anything else, like making a payment in a conversation, nor can you stuff your own purse with it.

To get store credit, get Gold and sell Gold. Yes, Gold can be sold. I will explain shortly how a private purse can be converted to Gold.

Any store that buys anything will buy items in the "gold pieces" category. This includes Gold and Platinum. The normal price of 1 item of Gold is 2 gp, so in theory you get more than your money's worth, but in practice stores buy items at half price at best, hence 1 gp per 1 unit of Gold. Selling 1000 Gold will increase the party purse size by 1000. Still, there may be special stores and friendly merchants who will give a better price, and you can try to get more credit for your Gold there.

Gold has no weight, but it does take up inventory space. One slot can hold up to 1000 pieces.

7. Getting others' gold. As already said, the Gold item represents money from a private purse given for the purpose of shopping. Naturally, it can be simply sold without buying anything, and then, exiting the screen, distribution will pick up and stuff the proceeds around the private rat holes. This is possible but isn't likely to benefit the character, unless he is very clever about party position and who will get how many hundreds. But how does a private purse's units become Gold? For this all characters receive a second special ability - Fundraiser.

Fundraiser, another ability that characters can teach each other if need be, is on the left, Review Budget on the right. Used on oneself, Fundraiser always converts the character's private purse into Gold, but it is a matter of chance and persuasion with the others in the party.

• Good-aligned characters are the most willing to surrender their wealth but resist strongly requests from evil companions. Charisma helps to win them over.
• Neutral characters mildly resist everyone. The applicant's Charisma is also helpful.
• Evil characters strongly resist everyone and very strongly - good characters. Both Charisma and Strength can play a role, however.

If a request is refused, this character will not countenance any more pleas for the next 12 hours (using the "long," 360-second hour measure). Fundraising becomes something of a minigame, as it may be better to involve another party member, with a different alignment and more influential statistics, in the asking to lower the risk. It may also become a race against the clock. Can money be squeezed out of the character before he spends it all? The most radical and sure way of getting the entirety of a character's private purse is to kill him. He will drop the contents on death - but only as Plunder, and the gold will be distributed among the remaining party members. Somebody will have to do the killing, of course, and that someone could be killed too to send his purse into lotto as well, and so on, with the remaining members' shares growing all the time, together with paranoia. "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" or the Joker coming out of the bank robbery by himself, take your pick for allusions. What will not help to get the money is to kick the character out and have him rejoin. Private purses of characters are now emptied permanently when leaving the party. This could and should lead to situations when a troublesome or useless companion is retained only for the sake of the greenback-stuffed mattress he sleeps on, and the others look for ways to part the two.

8. What they spend it on. Adventurers don't simply stuff the world's value into private purses as bottomless as a bag of holding. They are not offshore capitalists. They do better: they spend their earnings on self-improvement. As soon as a character other than Charname gathers enough gold, personal upgrades become available. Characters are not in a rush to spend, and there is randomness in this, but if money is available, they will usually buy something in a matter of hours. What they can buy depends on their class. The following improvements are bought one at a time in the order that is written. The first improvement the character can afford and qualifies for will be bought.

• Arcane shortcuts: -1 to casting time. Wizard, sorcerer, bard. 5000.
• Rites of undertaking: +3 to turn undead level. Cleric. 4000.
• Acupunctual stabber: +1 backstab damage multiplier, up to x5. Thief. 5000.
• Street academy T: +10% to all thieving skills. Thief. 4000.
• Street academy B: +30% to Pick Pockets and +20 to Lore. Bard. 4000.
• Steadier hand: -1 to THAC0. 4000. Fighter, paladin, ranger.
• Hidden plating: -1 to AC. 3000. All classes.

Multi-class and dual-class characters will pick abilities for all of their classes in the same top-down order. Thus, a fighter/mage/thief with 4000 gold in the purse will buy Street academy during this check but nothing when the next opportunity flutters by, unless he replenishes his private purse before. Because the Armor Class improvement is the cheapest and available to all, party members will almost always improve their AC when they have some money to their name. This is fine by them. But if they decide to gather money for a bigger improvement, fundraising will be in order.

Money spent on improvements is permanently gone from the game world.

A cleric buys Rites of undertaking:

9. What Charname can spend it on. Everywhere in this mod Charname is in exactly the same position as the other party members, with no special rights, except with regard to improvements. This is a little different between games. In Icewind Dale there is no protagonist, so all of the characters will make purchases at will - an original completely player-independent party. I don't think there is a mechanic quite like that in any game. In Baldur's Gate there is a protagonist who will instead receive the option to buy them from the Special Abilities bar. When money is available and the chance to improve comes about a message will be shown and buttons will appear on the bar. Clicking one will dismiss the others until the next time. Here are all of the improvements available for selection, an illustration. In reality no character is eligible for all of them at once, nor can there be two uses of an option (the screenshot is somewhat bugged).



10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere. In addition to gems and other expensive items a strategically thinking character may want to keep for exchange  ("We must get a better price for this necklace, a better price!") value can be stored as Platinum. These coins are worth 20 gold pieces each so that the party is guaranteed to get 10 gp at an ordinary store when selling. Many stores carry some number of these, and all stores that buy anything will buy them. Although one still loses money by investing in Platinum, these coins are not legal tender, like gold represented by Plunder, and can be kept in the inventory until they are needed without companions crying that they must get a share now.



Locked caskets will also be found at many stores. These small boxes, which one must open first, contain random treasure, often platinum, and sometimes nothing. They are a lottery of sorts, but unopened they cost a fair bit for their light weight. They may be better suited for keeping around for when one needs something to get store credit, buy gear on the same screen and avoid the egalitarianism of Plunder distribution.

Download

Edited February 23, 2021 by temnix

[Guest seden]

What about inventory use ?

As seen in one he screen it could quick get out of hand with 100iu per attack.

As it is, I'll dismiss them all before money enter, then make change to platinum and done.

 

NPC use of money, would quick lead to overpowers areas, backstage as exemple, max is 5x at level 20.

If the mod add another 5 ?

 

Idea Is good losing that money is after relationship the main cause of team failures.

Add that we have shared accord base process who even if successful, wont necessarily get the tied requirements. Ex with a local alt school who used said process (open forum in case) along the kids parents.

Two days, quite some efforts in preparation then support, success !

But, most conditions would either require more from parents or more workers, are skills dependants or tied to kids numbers.

Final, failure out of of a few misc, as brainstorming with skilled people is a great process, so existing events could be improved.

Long term (took 3years) most employees took leave as both time and efforts had gone Haywards by increments.

No big surprise, looking back to the game then mod, equipment access out of looted will be heavily limited..

Good idea but limited pro vs defaults.

Tbs, shame most misc release don't get exposure..

 

[Necromanx2]

I tried this in BGEE and when I use the Review Budget ability it causes the gold display to error.
It works when you start a game, but once I use Review Budget it displays an Invalid code from that point on.

[temnix]

I'll have a look at this some time later.

[temnix]

I looked at the mod, and it performs as it should, just as it did during my testing. Originally I tested for BGEE 1, and now for 2. What you perceive as a bug is probably no number showing on character pages after a reload. That's the way it has to be, unfortunately, as I mentioned in the description. The game keeps the score of personal money, but the tokens have to be refilled with the Review Budget ability. I did tune up the mod a little, though, to make space for some special script and conversation situations when an NPC takes party money. I also made an allowance for a hypothetical situation when a script rather than a conversation deducts party money (like in my mod "The 1000"). I don't know of any situations like that in the straight games, but if it happens, the party leader's purse will answer for those deductions. The download link has been updated.

I can't make out everything Seden objected there, but there are natural limits on all of the improvements. The backstab multiplier can't go beyond x10, but here it's limited to x5, AC can never be better than -20 and so on. As for balance, consider that improving, say, AC by a point costs 3000 gold. Pushing it down to -20 will cost nearly as much as the whole value of treasure of a game like BG1, and that assumes the main character can even get that amount just for himself, which isn't realistic unless one plays solo and spends money on almost nothing else. But it's still possible for obssessed players to "beat the system" and WIN, I'm sure.

Edited February 20, 2021 by temnix

[temnix]

It looks like @Necromanx2 was right, there was a problem with displaying the purse size for the head character. I reuploaded the file, or take just this file for override.

TITCH1_#.SPL

Edited February 23, 2021 by temnix