Overpaying due to "too good" a roll on acquisitions.
On buying an item the final cost is determined after the Lifestyle roll, Momentum spends possibly reducing the cost.
If the costs are reduced to NULL then no roll of Earnings plus Influence Bonus dice is necessary. The item is simply bought.
But if there is still a remaining cost of, for example, 1. Then the player would need to spend cash and roll the PC's Earnings dice plus his Influence Bonus (if any). Those dice are read as damage dice: 1 and 2 are worth their numerical value, 3, 4 and 5 do nothing, and 6 is worth 2 cash but always costs 1 Asset to be paid by the buyer.
In our case the cost were reduced to 1, and the roll of Earnings 4 and Influence Bonus of 1[DSD] resulted in 1, 2, 2, DSI, DSI. That would pay for a cost of 9, but the two DS-Icons demand spending 2 Assets.
Our problem with this: If you have a high Earnings Rating or a high Influence Bonus or even both (Earnings 5 plus 4[DSD] Influence Bonus for example), then you are WORSE off in buying low cost items than someone with low Earnings Rating and without Influence bonus, because more dice mean more chances for rolling DS-Icons and therefore mandating spending assets.
In the case above spending just 1 asset without rolling the Earnings and Influence dice would have been better, than to roll with a solid Earnings Rating and Influence bonus.
Now our question:
If you roll the cash roll - Earnings plus Influence bonus - do you have to apply ALL the rolled results to the remaining cost to purchase an item?
If only a cost of 1 remained, could you choose not to apply the DS-Icon result (worth 2 cash, but damanding 1 Asset) to this purchase?
Comment:
The acquisition rules are a major point of confusion and frustration in our group. Even buying quite low-cost items often leads to mandatory spending of Assets, while not a slngle Asset is ever gained during play.
We are playing the Dark Symmetry Campaign as Luna PD cops. Those PCs don't get to earn any kind of Assets (as opposed to normal Freelancer jobs which usually have the payment in Assets negotiated).
Buying low-cost items and rolling DS-Icons on our dice has brought the PC group to next to null Assets available. That makes trying to purchase anything in the future even harder.
Did we understand something wrong?
Is there a way this is supposed to work differently?
Is in the Dark Symmetry Campaign somehow some kind of "side earnings" of Assets necessary to keep the PCs able to even buy low-cost stuff?
As I said, the acquisition rules are THE single point of frustration in the MC3 rules for us.
