House Rule - Acquisition Tests

[The Hive Mind]

House Rule: Acquisition Rolls

We all love acquisition rolls, so when the time comes for you to partake in such delights you have a number of options before you.

Shop ‘Til You Drop

Each Explorer in the party may continue rolling for Acquisitions as many times as they want—up until they fail a roll, at which point that Explorer must stop. Players cannot spend Fate Points for re-rolls here, but they can spend a single Fate Point to increase Profit Factor by 10% for the duration of their shopping spree. This process’s in-game duration equals the highest time requirement among the purchased items, plus one day for each item acquired after the first: so if I acquired three items which would normally take one day, 1d10 days, and one week to get, respectively, I take the longest of the three (one week) and add one day for each of the other items, for a total of nine days. Each individual Explorer can make a run of purchases using these rules, plus a run for the party as a whole for shared items like spaceships or ship parts. This system represents shopping until you run out of money, the local merchants run out of stock, or you risk destabilizing the regional economy and decide to quit before there’s a revolution.

Reduce permanently the Profit Factor of the group by .5 point (or 1 if the Explorer fails a Commerce Test to realize he/she have been cheated/overcharged) for each 3 successful Acquisition Tests. Maximum Profit Factor loss using this option being capped at 2, so the Explorers could make 6-12 Acquisition Tests before your personal coffers and access to the House Atreides fortune become cut off by the High Factorum.

Bargain Hunting

The Explorer rolls a single Acquisition, no more, without specifying what they want to buy. Fate Points may be spent for +10% or for a re-roll. The Explorer then consults the equipment listings and chooses a single item which they could have acquired through the normal Acquisition rules using that roll. So if your in a settlement of ten thousand people, my Profit Factor is 50, and I roll a 40, then I could choose to buy enough Average items (Ordinary +10% in a settlement whose population is between ten and one hundred thousand) to outfit a division of two to five thousand individuals (-20% quantity modifier), because the required modified profit factor (50% base +10% availability/population -20% numbers) is less than or equal to my roll. Alternatively players could buy a single scarce item of common quality with no additional modifications to the item without needing to roll any dice. Determine time normally for this purchase. In addition either the Quality/Craftsmanship of the item being purchased is then automatically lowered by 1 Step when using this method, or the amount of time needed to find an item of Common or higher Quality is increased by +50% of base time. You may be willing to spend only so much money, but finding a bargain takes far more time if you want an authentic bargain, as opposed to cheap and right now.

Let the buyer beware.

If you fail an Acquisition roll, the GM can offer you the item you wanted, but with strings attached. Maybe it’s a recently stolen item which will draw local or intergalactic law enforcement’s interest. Maybe the vendor wants a special favour done before she agrees to sell. Maybe the item wasn't quite what you expected: it has a flaw in its construction which gives it an unfavourable quality like Unwieldy, or a hit to its craftsmanship rating. Or maybe, in the case of really big purchases like void ships or corporations or unique treasures, it’ll permanently impact your finances, resulting in a permanent loss of 1d5 Profit Factor. One of the players might also have a fun suggestion for a complication which the GM will like. In any case, the GM will tell you what you’re getting into, and it’s your explorer’s or your party’s decision whether to take it or leave it.

Attracting unwanted attention

When characters throw a lot of money around, people are going to notice, this does not affect those 'bargain hunting', but if a player decides to 'Shop til they drop' there can be consequences.

For every acquisition roll made in excess of the first  there is a 10% accumulative chance the player has attracted some unwanted attention, the details of this can be from being attacked in the street or Hab block, to being pick pocketed, there lodgings robbed and the loss of a random item, to the weight of a powerful administrator taking note of the House of Atreides and levying some large fines or requesting favours. You have been warned.

[The Hive Mind]

1. Ship Points and Profit Factor: 10% of total Ship Points value is burnt/deducted from Profit Factor.

Ideally I want it so that players will require a number of ships to be able to even think about starting certain objectives in the campaign but they won't have the resources, (ie. Enough food to last the journey, spare parts to handle repairs in deep space and enough fuel to make the return trip.)

Ships are rare and in high demand in the expanse, with practically no large ship yards in the expanse and port wonder being the last call for state of the art facilities, the amount of rogue traders and naval forces all vying for this limited supply, means that demand is high. As with all major objectives, players must spend profit factor to make profit factor. I am removing the one ship per session from the acquisition section and simply replacing it with the simple system of; if the players want a ship they are going to have to sacrifice for it. With their almost unlimited funds they could afford to make their own shipyard and produce them in time but that is an achievement based route which will pay off in a many years time, whilst well worth the effort, as the rules stood I did not want my party returning to drydock at every opportunity to buy a new ship plus I wanted to keep my players out in the void for long periods of time, making returning to civilisation a special event to be cherished and looked forward too, so if they want a ship now they must pay for it and be prepared to hand over a sizeable chunk of their dynasty in promisary notes, percentage of future profits and using up valuable influence favours to wrestle the ships away from other rogue traders and naval fleet pursers.
Simply deduct 10% of the completed ships SP value from the player's profit factor.
ie. Mihail wishes to buy a new Dauntless class light cruiser, it has been stripped of all of its weapons and only has essential systems, it has a SP value of 55 so if the group wishes to buy this ship they must hand over 6 points of Profit Factor to purchase it. (I always round up the cost.) This will also make commerce skills alot more valuable to the party giving opportunities for a good haggler to drive the price down and get a better deal by reducing the cost of burnt profit points.

2. Components. 1:1 SP value to burnt Profit Factor.
Standard components I run the basic way as listed above but archeo and Xeno tech, if I ever make any available will be set at a minimum of a 1:1 ratio of burnt profit factor to ship points value. It says quite clearly that entire dynasties fortunes have been made on the finding of one or two of these and as the demand will be even higher it merely represents their value. If players can gain multiple profit factor for salvaging archeotech they should expect to pay even more for purchasing these super rare and valuable components.

3. Availability.
Components and Munitions can be run a number of ways depending on what is being asked for but ships in the expanse are a different matter, I am generating a finite number of ship dealers with which to have my players interact with belonging to the various factions and then a definitive list of what ships they currently have in stock, then make them take the standard influence/acquisition roles to see if the trader is willing to part with them to the party, failure would indicate they are in reserve for more influential rogue traders of members of their affiliation group. ie. (criminal, underworld,navy etc)

The ability to interact with each dealer would be based on the groups current standing with that particular dealers affiliation, ie. A renegade group of pirate players are not going to be able to purchase a ship from a Navy dealer and vice versa, this does allow the players the opportunity to use intermediaries which should be established in a role play environment but I would still make them burn profit establishing this NPC as a front for their operations to make purchases on their behalf. Players with exceptional standing with a dealers affiliation should probably be given a discount for above and beyond reputation which can be taken from the burnt profit points.

What ships are available by dealer type is pretty much up to you but a mercantile dealer won't have combat ships available and a pirate won't have fresh off the line navy ships available, just like a blacklisted rogue trader won't be able to buy goods from port wonders mercenary guild, but I like to have my players have a fixed list of what is available and what is not, ie. their is a reserve fleet Grand Cruiser for sale in the Navy Yard on Port Wonder but it is and I quote "in reserve for "special" customers only and not for the likes of you.". If nothing else it just adds another level of things the party must add to it's to do list.

If players want free ships that do not require any burnt profit factor then tell them to capture them in space, making them work for it is always my preferred option forcing them to use well thought out tactics instead of a blow everything up approach.

4. Influence.
The kind of funds available to players certainly opens alot of doors but should never open all of them without more than just a standard dice roll. Role playing should always have the highest effect but as profit factor also represents a groups influence be sure to impress upon them that favours represented in this way are not unlimited, a group can choose to burn profit factor to call in favours to secure a deal when needed, granting a bonus or complete success at your discretion. (ie. Alexis wants to make a trade deal with some ministry officials, she just happens to be owed some favours from a ministry official, A player can burn 1 Profit Factor points for a +10% bonus to the role and ask this official to put in a good word and grease the bureaucratic wheels or burn 3 Profit Factor points and have the official take care of everything but the official will say quite clearly that this means the debt is paid in full and not to bother them again.