Buy Big with Capital - an alternate mechanic for grand purchases (by Cdru)

GURPS does not provide proper guidance on how to handle large-scale purchases by characters without either GM fiat or giving them a large pile of cash (which they may end up spending on personal gear instead, and can otherwise involve extremely large, hard-to-track numbers). It also doesn't properly emulate situations in fiction where a characters can own certain extremely expensive assets (such as a spaceship), yet still struggle to make everyday purchases. While a few Pyramid articles handle it via advantages, the issue is that this requires spending character points, poorly handles purchases made after character creation, and also puts plot protection onto the asset.

Here, a ruleset is presented for an alternate pool of resources just for these purchases, which runs parallel with normal money spent for personal equipment, but is kept entirely separate. This allows GMs to control purchases by player characters (so that they can't spend resources for large-scale purchases to buy lower-scale assets) and also simplify accounting (as many of these purchases can involve extremely large numbers that can get confusing to track). It's meant to be usable in most campaigns, whether the characters are simply buying vehicles for their daily commute or hiring an entire private army 

CAPITAL RULES

Every player character has a resource called Capital, representing resources that can be used to make large-scale purchases (such as vehicles, armies, and houses), but not personal equipment and individual hirelings, and is an abstraction of allocated budget (if working for an organization or managing it), ability to get loans, connections, favors from powerful people, and so on. The common theme is that the source either directly refuses to allocate resources for personal purchases, or the character is forbidden (by the law or source) from using the resources in this way.

A single point of Capital is worth 50% of the standard starting wealth for the campaign TL (at TL8, for instance, a single point of Capital can buy things worth $10k), and characters begin with 5 points of Capital, with their Wealth multiplying this as usual for starting money. If they want to start with extra Capital, 1 Capital costs 1 character point. GMs are encouraged to modify these values as appropriate.

Player characters earn Capital in the course of play when the GM awards them, typically due to obtaining access to the right resources. Jobs don't usually provide Capital as a salary, but the GM may declare that certain jobs have Capital as part or the whole of salary. Typically, such jobs would be associated with extreme levels of Wealth and/or Rank, or the fact that they allow the character to obtain great social influence. 

Independent Capital costs 5 character points per level. Each level grants a monthly income of Capital equal to 1/5 (that is, one fifth) of the Capital that the character would start the campaign with at their level of Wealth.  

By default, anything purchased with Capital can be maintained for free, including any consumables that it requires (such as fuel for vehicles or ammo for troops). However, if the asset is in a situation where it's unable to get easy access to maintenance and supplies (such as vehicles operated in remote territory or unfriendly areas, troops on a mission, or a house in a war-torn city), the owner will need to obtain the logistical capacity to maintain and deliver supplies to the asset (whether via paying for it or doing a quest, as appropriate), though it still won't result in any periodical costs. GMs are encouraged to change this if they want to focus more or less on logistics.

If the price of a desired item falls between the usual dollar-based values, round to the nearest full value (for instance, if a point of Capital is worth $5k, and the player wants to buy something worth $7k, it costs 1 capital), and if the item's value falls in the exact average, round down the price. The minimum price is 1 Capital 

Capital can be separated into multiple pools that can only be used for specific purposes, are not able to be converted between each other, and may have different character point and/or dollar values for each point, as well as how many points each character starts with. Here's an example:

-Standard Capital is used to buy vehicles, homes, mounts, and similarly expensive things that aren't personal gear or hirelings.

-D-scale Capital (10x dollar value over normal Capital) is used in Mass Combat to hire/raise logistic forces and fighting forces.

-C-scale Capital (100x dollar value over normal Capital) is used to buy expensive vehicles like spaceships, giant mecha and naval craft (like ships and submarines), finance large construction projects (like ziggurats and skyscrapers), and is also spent for Realm Management and Boardroom and Curia organizations.

-M-scale Capital (1000x dollar value over normal Capital) is spent for Realm Management and Boardroom and Curia organizations at large scales (where the values of many things are expressed in millions).