What do you consider a fair “salary” for a PC is? If they are going out into the wilderness on a mission on behalf of an organization, how much should they get paid per job, not counting whatever they can loot from the dungeon?
What do you consider a fair “salary” for a PC is?
What do you consider a fair “salary” for a PC is?
depends. You should always try to make sure they have enough gear when they set off from town. But if stuff happens, just let it happen. They can always hunt for food, or come across some mad men in the woods who is willing to share some food if they go get a shiny ring at the bottom of a lake.
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That changes from group to group. If the conversation at your table often turns to questions about how to earn enough coin to buy some thing, then by all means, give them the opportunity to earn coin.
But consider non-coin pay options, too:
“Do this job for us, and we’ll give you a letter of recommendation to the Duchess Across the Sea!”
“Retrieve the McGuffin from the crypts below the city, and we will let you join in the ritual to raise the ancient one!”
If you offer a cash reward, consider making it reidiculously generous, and let consequences follow from that:
Does the employer actually plan to pay out?
Do the employers represent some hidden organization with an ambiguous agenda?
Will the sudden riches make the PCs a target of someone else?
Will new opportunities arise in the fiction for the newly wealth PCs?
Turn it around on the players. “So, you’re neck deep in the Bog of Intractable Snakes. What did the guild leader promise you to get you to come to this awful place?”
IME, the commission for a dungeon crawl tends to be less than the secondary wealth the PCs accumulate through Treasure Rolls anyway, so I think it’s more interesting for an employee to offer them something other than wealth that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to get otherwise. And even if they’re getting paid in coin, fair salary depends on the nature of the job.
If I had to put a quick and dirty price tag on it, though, maybe take the most dangerous monster that the employer thinks the PCs will face, multiply its maximum damage by ten, round to the nearest pretty number and pay that to each PC. So stealing a pair of magical toenail clippers from an ogre that does d10+4 damage might net the PCs a cool 150 a piece, plus whatever happens to fall out of the back of the dungeon truck.
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I am aware that there’s other types of rewards possible, but I’m looking for something that will fill in a blank in this situation:
When you post an in-character session recap online, upload a new or updated map, or a pertinent piece of new in-game information revealed by you while acting as the GM, choose one of the following:
• You reflect on what you’ve learned; mark XP
• Your report allows you to draw a salary from the guild; gain coins equal to ________
• You plan ahead as to what should be explored next and send scouts; describe a detail, dungeon site, rumor, or region that you discovered, and add it to the map
• You earn the respect of your peers; take +1 forward to Recruit
For that, I’d just say d10*10. It’s not much, but I think it’s the right sized carrot for encouraging record keeping while not giving too much to the player with more time on their hands, and it feels about in line with the rest of the list.
As a point of reference, the services price list in book includes:
* Escort for a day along a monster-infested road: 54 coins
You could use that as a baseline… 50 coins (or 1d10 x 10) per day of adventuring?
How about level x 10? Or 3d4 x 10? I want them to stay hungry and not get complacent.
Peter J I’d say look to existing moves. Carouse tells you that you get +1 to do it per 100 coins spent. It’s not unreasonable to give them 50 per player up front. You can decide amongst the group whether anyone thinks to try to get another 50 after, and whether or not an after action report will grant additional rewards (another 50 is not unreasonable, with both of the additional 50s being optional whether they are per player, or per group)