The idea is really very simple. Basically, you assume that PCs have basic adventuring gear. Clothing, bedroll, a couple of days worth of food; I’ve never really believed that PCs should have to purchase this stuff separately. You can charge PCs for this stuff if you want to, but I generally don’t. It’s more flavor than anything else, as I see it.

What about specific bits of adventuring gear that could affect the outcome of an encounter, puzzle, trap, or what-not? That’s where the Gear Pool comes into play. Basically, at character creation, players can spend however much gold they want on their Gear Pool; each gold piece equates to one gp worth of Gear. Then, later on, when a character needs, for instance, fifty feet of rope and a grappling hook, you deduct the cost of the needed items from the Gear Pool. You assume that the character had the foresight to buy this stuff while he was out preparing for the adventure, even if the player did not. After all, the character would know better what he needs for adventuring than the player would, wouldn’t he?

Material components work in the same way. Gold is spent to acquire a Component Pool, and when a character needs a costly material spell component, he deducts the cost from his Pool. Thus, casting identify causes you to deduct 100 points from your Materail Pool. Simple.

Replenishing the two Pools is just as simple. Any time the characters are in a town or city, or any other place they’d get gear, they can add gold to their two Pools. Certain treasure hoards might also contain Gear Points or Component Points.

The limiting factors are pretty much what you, as the DM, want them to be. I generally wouldn’t allow large items (like a 10-foot pole) or weapons (like a longsword, though I might allow a dagger or quiver of arrows). I would probably also disallow magic items. Finally, I might require a PC to justify certain items. For instance, a PC might not have any particular reason to have bought a spyglass, or might not have been somewhere recently where such an item would have been available. As with any house rule that allows the PCs this much leeway, DM discretion is advised.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2004 at 1:29 pm and is filed under House Rules. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.