Talk:Manny Green, the Twisted Tycoon (3.5e Vestige)

What?

Holy Molly! You just broke the frigging economy, 10 grands with no real efforts every day at level 7 is kind of silly. In fact it would be very silly still if it was level 20, or double that. In fact it silly at any given point point in the fucking game. Also that rifle has no range, no critical, no ammunition capacity listed (or which type of ammunition it uses) and deal an insane amount of damage. That's like 5 medium greataxe, much stronger than a Sniper Rifle, Portable Railgun or even a Portable Howitzer, it is only narrowly beaten by the Siege Cannon but immediately trump it by a factor of two when within 20 ft. In fact I made a rifle that could be a useful template, an Elephant Gun, which is fairly similar to a large caliber hunting rifle (because it is, well mine is a carbine). --Leziad (talk) 01:07, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, I haven't decided exactly what kind of gun Manny's rifle is; I just know I want it to be a large rifle. When I decide exactly what gun it is, that'll define the range, critical, ammo capacity, etc. I just read the elephant rifle page, and that is my top choice right now, but I'm still looking over the firearms. I do want it to deal a huge amount of damage, though, as it's supposed to be able to devastate even the beefiest of characters. However, I wasn't exactly sure what level Manny would be available at, and, yeah, character level 7 is much too low for the sort of damage I want Manny's rifle to do. I'll have to raise the vestige level and/or tone the damage down. Though last I checked, using ranged weapons in close-range combat is kind of risky.

Also, Manny's influence is intentionally cumbersome and prone to getting you in trouble. Seriously, he tries to make you dominate and/or slaughter anyone with magic healing powers. Including clerics and paladins. Binders have a poor enough relationship with organized religion as is... I'll let you do the math. --Luigifan18 (talk) 03:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the crux of your problem is "vestige gives you money" and "holy shit WBL broken". -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Manny's a businessman. I want him to pay binders for serving him. (Though, I had a bit of a hard time deciding how much he'd pay; my first impulse was 5,000 gp, but I figured that wasn't enough.) --Luigifan18 (talk) 03:44, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Yep, echoing Eiji. How the hell does he give you money anyway? He doesn't exist anymore. Manny isn't a business man, Manny is dead, he has no money. It only a 'vestige' of him that left, an echoes, vestige have no agenda. Their influence is that, it a vestigal influence of their power. Well back on the rifle, 4d12 isn't a 'large rifle', the sniper rifle and elephant gun are stated at 4d6, this is about twice as strong and four time as strong within 20 feet. Both of those, have drawback and require feat expenditure to use properly. This one, as far as I know, has none. Imagine the utter nightmare of fighting a guy getting iterative attacks with that thing, dealing about twice as much damage as people who expended feats and stuff to be good with their high quality firearm.

Then the vestige gives 10k AND makes you act like a total asshat; in fact, it breaks the WBL on the condittion that you act like a massive asshat. This is not a balancing factor, I dislike things that force you to act like an asshat. I dislike things that break WBL. Do the math, two bad things do not make a good thing. Also it's absuable as shit, like seriously, imagine a bunch of bandits capturing a binder and forcing him to bind Manny over and over again. The influence doesn't matter cause the Binder is bound (oh oh) in chains and the bandits are rich as fuck. Oh, by bandits, I mean, player characters. --Leziad (talk) 03:51, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't spell it out on the page 'cause I didn't think I'd need to, but what money Manny has as a vestige, he only has 'cause binders gave him that money for bonuses on their binding checks. It is entirely possible for him to run out, and in that scenario, nobody can get money by summoning Manny until somebody pays him again.

And Manny's rifle will have most of, if not all of, the limitations of whatever firearm I decide it's going to be, which right now is either a sniper rifle or an elephant gun. I haven't finished that feature yet, calm down! --Luigifan18 (talk) 04:24, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah, good. I suppose then that since he gets this money from binders (even though he doesn't exist by definition), one just needs to figure out how much cash he does. A simple thing for DMs. Just determine all the binders in the world and for sake of ease, estimate how much money they have given him, account for different currencies, taxes, variances in economic systems, etc. And do this. Across the entire multiverse. No problem for the DM at all.

Or we can say, "effectively he has unlimited cash".

That one ability is so bad, so absurd, I literally haven't even seen the rest of the vestige. That one ability is hilariously broken. It's technically even broken if it was only 1 gp due to its unlimited nature, but the fact that it is 10,000 gp just multiplies the brokenness to the point of satire. The WBL is crying. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 06:01, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey, I wanted to make sure the process of forming a pact with Manny would be unique, since he was a businessman in life and would approach forming a pact like it was a business deal. In fact, I made the binding DC rather high in order to encourage paying Manny to get a bonus on the binding check. Do you have a better idea for how to handle it? --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, actually. Though I think the issue of having monetary effects is a slippery slope, if you're going to do that I suggest you think in terms of discounts rather than gaining money. You are le expert businessman and all. Say that you got 100g off any purchase of 101g or higher (so you're not getting things free, this is the way you get unlimited loops). You can keep the pay to lower the binding DC thing, and probably lower the numbers there a bit. 10k is a lot of money, and this is basically a consumable resource, so we're looking at what's good for consumable resources at the level you'd get him. I forget when 4th level binding is available: 7th? 8th? Find the WBL of that and go say... 10%, maybe 5% of that to figure what is a reasonable budget for a consumable resource such as lowering the binding DC. This way you don't have to worry about "how much cash does Manny have?" That cash is just gone, which isn't an issue in the long run and doesn't require one to think outside the scope of the party.

Whatever you set the numbers to, you'll want to avoid anything being free to avoid unlimited anything. You could do it by percentage too, like 25% off all purchases, but if you do that be careful. All binders will bind this whenever they go shopping, and I don't think that's a good idea.

One other thing you can do is that the more money you donate, the stronger effects become. Say you've given 500gp to Manny, your "material component". Thus your gun fires bullets anywhere up to a value of 500gp. You may want to cap it so someone doesn't nova, sink all the money they can into a single bind, and then walk around shooting unlimited +5 vorpal exploding nuclear death bullets every round for 24 hours. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 00:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I like your idea of powering up the rifle, it's very cool. And the idea of novaing is actually one I support; Manny would dearly want to be able to kill absolutely anyone who he considered to be a threat to his interests. (I haven't written up the legend yet, but trust me, he was a murderous bastard. He had a Hydreigon and would try to feed people to it, for Christ's sake!) However, I upped this to a level 5 vestige because the rifle's damage was a bit too hardcore for character level 7. --Luigifan18 (talk) 04:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

>_>------------------------...

Novaing is a bad thing. You should not be proud of that. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 07:36, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

This rifle deals more damage than a frigging siege weapon, double that of a Advanced Cannon within 20 ft. --Leziad (talk) 07:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

So? That's kinda what it was meant to do. Manny's main nemesis, Annie Belnades, is Made of Iron to a degree that borders on Super Toughness, and can easily heal herself to peak condition unless exhausted or unconscious. (Granted, her healing powers take a bit of time to work and run off her vitality, so overusing them tires her out, but still, she's amazingly hard to kill.) So Manny wanted his main weapon to be able to wipe even her out. Which basically translates to "ludicrous damage". --Luigifan18 (talk) 02:22, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

(revert indent)

Alright, so he want to kill someone with lotta hit point. That his intent. Fair enough. However that rifle deal too much damage for any man-portable weapon, given you can probably full-attack with it. It just deal too much damage, this is to the point where any DM seeing those number would laugh and never allow the vestige. Even in high powered game, this is problematic as you gain a firearm vastly vastly more powerful than the magical gears other players invested in. Say I am playing a fighter, using an elephant rifle (which I invested a feat to use properly), Eiji is playing a marshal with two colt pythons (which he invested two feats to use properly), UK is playing a warlock who deal about 5d6 at this level (investing many class level). Then the binder player show up, bind a vestige (and get paid), gain a massively overpowered gun and proceed to shoot the cleric.

The binder essentially invest nothing, therefore it is natural that they gain inferior abilities to the classes that actually invested permanent resources. --Leziad (talk) 03:00, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Gotta say, with the gun damage being so over the top, it just smacks of special snowflake fan wank, and your justifications seem flimsy at best.

Oh, and the excessive links. I can do it too. Er... you know we're all aware of the site, right? It does nothing for us. You have reached maximum overmeme saturation. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 03:10, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Backstory

As a teaser for Manny's story, I'll reveal this much; he's very similar to Lysandre from Pokémon X & Y. Only instead of going completely omnicidally bonkers, Manny just became utterly cynical and selfish. --Luigifan18 (talk) 02:15, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Toxic Influence

Here is the tale of party in a land far away in the past far away. It started with a part of six:

Crying Owl, the Neutral Evil Tiefling Rogue.

Faith Manchester, the Neutral Good Human Cleric.

Ysmir, the Lawful Evil Giant Wizard.

Sol-Eiji, the Chaotic Neutral Plushie Sorcerer.

Eleonor Silvermoon, the Chaotic Good Elf Ranger.

and finally Manny Green, the Pokemaster

The tale start in the Drunken Vestige Tavern, where our adventurers first band together. Their job is simple, for a good amount of money they are to track and kill a lich. Eleonnor will act as tracker, Crying Owl will provide stealth, Manny will provide minion, Soleiji and Ysmir will provide arcane spell support, a good aligned cleric, Faith is hired to handle turning and divine spell support. A single day in the adventure and Manny and Faith enter conflict, when during his ceaseless attempt to employ her she reveal that she refused to be paid for her service, the debate heat up and the party has to split them. During the second day he again enter conflict, this time with Eleonor, when she revealed she had limited healing abilities and thus he attempted to blackmail her into working for him. Sadly she was an elf, and used her elven instinct to elf herself out of the blackmail.

While other party member enter in conflict, like Crying Owl and Faith or Ysmir and Eleonnor they all understand that their job is worth more than the money they will receive. The lich need to be put down. However Manny has no such limitation, he is so extremely greedy and selfish that he is causing trouble with pretty much everyone. A week in the job, he notice Ysmir possess some lesser artifact beans that heal anyone who eat them, he attempt to purchase, but Ysmir refuse. They are later stolen and the Giant has a good idea on who did it.

After stealing from the party, entering conflict with party members again and again, everyone is getting tired of his shit. However thing get especially when their cleric, the only divine caster they had and the only person who could turn undead is found dead and partially eaten. The party close to the lich by now, decide it is in their best interest to smply raise her from the dead and settle things later. Sol-Eiji use a scroll of True Resurrection he kept for emergencies, Manny immediately attempt to buy the scroll which Sol-Eiji simply use and prance away. This marks him as an enemy. When interrogated Faith has no idea who killed her, there was simply a loud bang.

The part confront the Lich, using their combined might and tactic they overcome it. With no one dead, but many wounded and out of resources. The party decide to immediately turn against the Pokemaniac that made their journey so much more difficult, and he is slaughtered by the mostly evil party.

The problem with influence that is so nefarious is that you will be harmful to the party, even if you bring a lot of powerful abilities to the table. No party would put up with a Binder under Manny's influence. Of all the sample character, most of them had some way to use healing. Some of them also violated other clauses of his influence, such as not accepting payment. If an article encourage a behavior that make it so much harder to play in a group game then that article should be revised. Especially when the article double down on enforcing said behavior. Many of the other vestige in the sample party also had similar influence, Ysmir has you treat everyone as tools, Crying Owl has you disobey and twist orders. Those are not as problematic as they are vague, and most of all their binding DC are lower (even Ysmir who is 8th level). --Leziad (talk) 04:16, 15 December 2015 (UTC