I'm in complete agreement. That is what I was trying to get at when I mentioned, in my well analogy, that the depth of water in the well may vary, sometimes for reasons far beyond your control.
I'd also agree that in non-heortling cultures wealth might best be handled a little differently. However, amongst Heortlings as I read the background--and I may well have mis-interpreted it--there is almost no _private_ property. When you get more cows, your bloodline is wealthier. If everyone knows that most of their wealth is due to you, certainly they'll be more willing to make commitments when you ask, whereas for Bryggi bent-bow they may not.
I don't think you can fit wealth to a neat exponential curve, because there is combination of factors at work, including total resources, how effectively those resources can be exploited, how well the results can be traded, and how willing your blood are to assign a fair part of the proceeds of all this to you.
For example, you are a half carl, and your blood has some minimal number of skinny cattle, and you bring home three fat new cows. Wow, big increase in wealth! Except that your family traditionally has limited grazing rights in the better pastures, because it never needed any, and cows like this can't be sent to forage in the hills, so you need to bribe, errr I mean gift, the chief into giving you some better grazing land. Oh, and your cousin is ready to be married, and with these cattle maybe she has a chance of marrying a full carl, so your grandmother's great grandchildren will be carls-- lord knows the way your going you won't have kids--so maybe that is better than keeping them at all....and your wealth barely moves.
On the other hand, you come from a wealthy bloodline, close to the chief. You are already a warrior of some repute, arms well clad in silver. You bring home three fat new cows. Your uncle decides that you are in fact the future for your kin, holds a feast and lets everybody know that you have his backing in all you do, and a favor to you is a favor to him. And your wealth goes up quite a bit.
Those are just a pair of examples to show how the same influx of capital to two different wealth scores may not increase the lesser wealth by more than the greater wealth.
In short, I think trying to fit wealth to a nice simple exponential curve is a daunting prospect, because really you would have to factor in several conditions at once. You either have to do a lot of die rolling, or use a lot of fixed augments, or have a hellishly complicated table. Plus, it makes it too easy to be a munchkin (I know there is a break point in my wealth boost by keeping 2 cow and 4 sheep from our raid, so I'll give the other 1 cow and 13 sheep to the chief....).
I think a series of rules of thumb from experienced narrators would
be a more useful tool. I'm not an experienced narrator, but
something along the lines of:
-if it is less than half your wealth, it helps not at all (it is
"pocket change")
-if it is less than your wealth, and you make a succesful simple roll
with an appropriate ability (know domestic animal for cows, or boast
for the booty from a raid as examples) you can cement a point of
wealth.
-if it is more than your wealth, you can cement +1 or more wealth,
depending on the narrators whim.
(I'm not suggesting these should be the rules of thumb, rather something along these lines would seem useful by my lights)
--Bryan
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