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 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 give 10k AND make you act like a total asshat, in fact it break 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 thing that break WBL. Do the math, two bad things do not make a good thing. Also it 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 dosen't matter cause the Binder is bound (oh oh) in chain and the bandit 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. Also, 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)