I was considering making a character with a local affiliation (10 RPs) and local reputation (7 RPs) to qualify for a resource score better than B0.
So, Rps spent on other than gear divided by 15, rounded down is the resources score. That means a character lays out at least 15 rps to get resources of B1.
If I read the tax rules right, if the person fails a resource test they are taxed.
If they are taxed, their resources score drops to B0 and is depleted - meaning they have to advance it as an attribute to go back to B1.
Am I reading that right? 15 rps for a stat that has a 50% chance of getting reset to B0 every time you use it?
Yikes.
Not sure a player has a lot of reason to do B1 resources. It’s B2 or B0.
Rolling 1D Resources is tough. Get Help from your friends (or a loan). Look for Advantage dice. Spend Artha. It’s only a 50/50 shot if you don’t do anything to change the numbers.
One resource is tough, one resource is the reason people need to work. In order to feel better you should hunt down cash, circle up wealthy patrons, and find other ways to (temporarily) boost your resources until you get enough tests to raise it to something respectable.
I’ve also moved these posts to the BWG Character Burner subforum and out of the thread it was attached to since the previous thread was from 2007.
There’s working carefully and linked tests too. But you need a difficult test to advance it.
Your option there is going for an Ob 1 test and dropping Persona which isn’t so great as they are hard to earn!
The real trick to playing with resources is cash and funds. If you start to consider such things as the “real” resources system and treat the character’s personal rating as an incidental thing that accompanies it you’ll start to think in a different way. These need to be introduced into the game by seeking out treasure or asking for money from NPCs who want things. Try to lobby for advantage dice by throwing a piece of gear into the bargain this effectively treats the item as cash.
Try to only ever intend to get stuff you really want, you want to be gunning for something that can let you accomplish a belief so you can get a persona point.
To build on what Guy said: Cash on Hand and Funds can be obtained through non-Resource tests, too. Make a deal with somebody that if you return his stolen geegaw he’ll reward you. Make a Circles test to find somebody who will give you a job. Test Scavenging to find junk to Mend and sell at market.
One of myy favorite scheme to raise cash-on-hand (which my players have actually tried): recruit a bunch of orphans to act as criers promoting a “clinic” (actually a crudely assembled shack that the party built themselves in the front yard of one of the PC’s cousins), use one of the PC’s B2 Surgery to treat a bunch of minor injuries and ailments, and then rampently overcharge for this service. They succeded at everything up to the final (untrained) Haggling test to sell the patients on the (exorbinant) price. After this plan failed, they returned to their old stand-by of killing cultists and taking their stuff.
Maybe something i didn’t get but, how does it advance after the first successful test? From my comprehension of the rule in the BWG book p.40, it takes 1 routine 1 difficult and 1 challenge to advance an exponant 1 skill/stat/attribute.
It takes two of the three until you get to 4 at which point routine tests stop counting. Additionally, resources zero advances to one with any successful test, regardless of difficulty.
Specifically, the chart on page 41 is the Ob to Dice mapping for how hard things are, the table on page 42 shows the breakdown of how many tests of each type you need.