A gold piece doesn't buy what it used to


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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So a ring of sustenance would easily buy you a car? A really nice one?


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If cars were available in the same universe that rings of sustenance, I should think so.

Imagine how useful such a ring would be to some sort of elite special forces team. I could easily see the Ministry of Defense buying them by the caseload if they were available.

I suspect there wouldn't be as much demand on the civilian market, but a high-powered law firm might find the ability to work six more hours each night (six more billable hours) would pay for a itself within a year or two.

Silver Crusade

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I've been debating introducing differing rates of exchange to my campaign world for a while.

Just having paper money and a country that considers metal currency to only be worth what it weighs (and will arrest you for trying to use it), has caused a lot of issues as is.

I admit, part of me wants to see what would happen in a world where a gold piece has different buying power in different kingdoms.

Like '1gp in Richmanstopia will buy you like...a coffee. Whereas in Poorass it gets you like 150lbs of groceries, a night's stay in the best inn, and a new set of shoes and armor.'

And then watch as Adventurers serve as the unknowing servants of the god of market economies, and as they go about, they spread the glories of mutually beneficial economics and opportunity costs.


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Spook205 wrote:

I've been debating introducing differing rates of exchange to my campaign world for a while.

Just having paper money and a country that considers metal currency to only be worth what it weighs (and will arrest you for trying to use it), has caused a lot of issues as is.

I admit, part of me wants to see what would happen in a world where a gold piece has different buying power in different kingdoms.

Pretty much the same thing that happens in real world economics. By which I mean, everyone kind of nods off about fifteen minutes into the lecture and then hopes to hell they can find some appropriate notes for cribbing before the final.

I've seen systems like this tried, and indeed I believe it was an official part of the old 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. Different countries used different types of money, and the paper currency used in Yang was a curiosity in Wu, and indeed Chen was primitive enough that they didn't even mint coins. At the same time, if you tried to buy something in Yang using an actual silver coin, they would look at you in approximately the same way you'd be looked at today if you wandered into Target and offer to trade two chickens for a shirt.

It never added much to the gaming experience. In a realistic world, someone else has already identified the arbitrage opportunity, so you can't really make much profit over your transportation costs moving coins from Ruritania to Narnia. And at least at my table, the game is about heroic deeds of derring-don't, vanquishing princesses, rescuing monsters, and so forth, not about trying to figure out the best way to unload a cargo of yaks and a case of silver ingots.

Lantern Lodge

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Personally I assume that the coins in Pathfinder are not actually solid bullion; they just bear an official stamp that means "this coin contains the appropriate amount of pure metal for its notional value." Of course such coins can be shaved, clipped, counterfeited, &c; I assume the assorted world powers in Golarion take at least the kind of precautions against such shenanigans that 10th century European powers did (milled edges, hard-to-reproduce stamps, &c).

The reason PF coins are so heavy at 10 grams is that using lighter, smaller coins as actual money is fiddly and difficult. 10g is about the weight of a modern 2 Euro coin or American half-dollar, which are both huge classy coins that you couldn't lose if you tried. (This is why the Susan B Anthony silver dollar was phased out; it looked and felt too much like a quarter, but had four times the value.) If you assume that the PF coins are mostly base metals with only an appropriate coating of precious metal, it's likely that they are about the size of 2 Euro coins, as well. Who here actually considers coins smaller than quarters (or Euro-quarters?) to be real money? Yeah, I didn't think so.

For historical comparisons, Orfamay pointed out the 4.5g Roman solidus, but solidi were really too valuable to be used for everyday expenses (at almost 150,000 antoninani when they were introduced, and only increasing from there as the antoninanus was increasingly debased). They were generally only used for international trade, for which they traded at weight, just like any other bullion. The argentus was created at roughly the same time, a less-debased silver coin which was officially worth 1/10 of a solidus (sounds familiar?). In addition, the solidus replaced the aureus, which was standardized by Julius Caesar at a little over 8 grams and worth 25 silver denarii, closer to the PF size. (This was before the denarius and the related antoninanus were so absurdly debased.) Later gold coins (English and British sovereigns) were mostly minted in this same 7-10 gram range; US Gold Eagles (worth $10) were about twice this weight.

The guidance I've always received for actual values is to think of 1sp as basically equivalent to a US dollar, with the caveat that food and lodging are considerably cheaper in a medieval economy than in modern times, and the wealth distribution curve is a lot steeper. So if you want to tip the porter for lugging all your crap up to your room in the inn, a couple of cp is appropriate (maybe 10% of his daily wages).


Paul Zagieboylo wrote:


The reason PF coins are so heavy at 10 grams is that using lighter, smaller coins as actual money is fiddly and difficult. 10g is about the weight of a modern 2 Euro coin or American half-dollar, which are both huge classy coins that you couldn't lose if you tried.

That's funny, I'd argue exactly the opposite -- that you need to use substantially smaller than 10g coins as real money because to do otherwise is fiddly and difficult. American half-dollars are almost extinct precisely because they're so difficult to use, and 2 Euro coins, while not extinct, are certainly much rarer than the smaller and more convenient denominations. I get pairs of single Euros in change at stores much more often than I get the double Euros.

If you want to argue that a coin as large as a gold piece, which has an effective buying power of a hundred dollar bill, should be large and classy, I can't really argue with you (although, as you point out, the solidus was even more valuable and much smaller). But in Pathfinder, the simple copper piece also weighs ten grams and is the size of a half-dollar,.... in fact, it's even larger than the gold piece due to metal density.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
At the same time, if you tried to buy something in Yang using an actual silver coin, they would look at you in approximately the same way you'd be looked at today if you wandered into Target and offer to trade two chickens for a shirt.

I'd look at you crazy.

There's no way a shirt is worth two chickens. One chicken would suffice!
(I own chickens: fresh eggs are amazing, and if you're offering up two oviparous aves for a shirt, you're undervaluing their ovum!)


Draco18s wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
At the same time, if you tried to buy something in Yang using an actual silver coin, they would look at you in approximately the same way you'd be looked at today if you wandered into Target and offer to trade two chickens for a shirt.

I'd look at you crazy.

There's no way a shirt is worth two chickens. One chicken would suffice!
(I own chickens: fresh eggs are amazing, and if you're offering up two oviparous aves for a shirt, you're undervaluing their ovum!)

Who said anything about laying chickens? I'm talking about the into-the-soup-pot type here.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Who said anything about laying chickens? I'm talking about the into-the-soup-pot type here.

Might need to be three or four. They're kind of a pain to de-feather. They'd also have to be of sufficient weight to even bother with.

We did the whole "turn the roosters into dinner" thing when we got our first batch of chicks. I think of the six or seven birds we got rid of (on account of them not being hens) only two ended up in the freezer (note: one rooster did find a new home where his cockiness was desired).

Ever since we've gone with pre-sexed birds to avoid the hassle.


In my version of Golarion, the Bank of Abadar issues letters of credit. Such letters can be assigned to a specific individual or to "the bearer". For a 10% fee, you can get an official certificate that entitles the person named on the letter to the amount of the bond, redeemable at any Bank of Abadar. (Redeeming the note is also subject to a 5% transaction fee.) It's also possible to withdraw against the bond; the Bankers will adjust the note accordingly. These letters of credit have both mundane and magical anti-forgery devices built into them, making them difficult (though not impossible) to forge. They can be issued in amounts up to 1,000 gp.

This is based on the real-world Knights Templar and their role as proto- international bankers in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Lantern Lodge

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Not entirely sure why so many people think bronze has less worth than copper. It made better weapons and armor than copper, and tin (bronze being a combination of tin and copper) during those times was much harder to come by. If you did introduce bronze as a currency, it would belong between copper and silver O.o

Silver Crusade

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As a Certified Public Accountant, I declare this thread best thread of the first week of June 2014. It has everything: monetary history, theoretical economics, and unplucked chickens. :-)


In my homebrew world the miner's guild has a thing going with the bankers guild to 'mint' gemstones to a specific value (which generally just keeps the 1-10 ratio going) for things over 1gp in value.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
Personally I assume that the coins in Pathfinder are not actually solid bullion; they just bear an official stamp that means "this coin contains the appropriate amount of pure metal for its notional value."

I handle this by assuming that once you get past small transactions, merchants really are verifying the weight with a balance.

This is also how I handle the odd coincidence of all coin-minting nations making coins of exactly the same weight. Galtan coins might be larger than Taldan coins. Or, more relevantly, the ancient Osirian coins you just hauled out of a tomb were minted when the 'pound' hadn't been invented yet. Something that costs '50 gp' doesn't actually mean 50 coins, counted by hand. It means 'one pound of gold'. That could be 50 perfect Taldan coins recently stamped by the Church of Abadar. It could mean 30 ancient coins minted to a different standard, but preserved in a tomb for thousands of years. Or it could mean 55 well-circulated Andoren coins that have been shaved.

Lantern Lodge

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Orfamay Quest wrote:

American half-dollars are almost extinct precisely because they're so difficult to use, and 2 Euro coins, while not extinct, are certainly much rarer than the smaller and more convenient denominations. I get pairs of single Euros in change at stores much more often than I get the double Euros.

Huh. When I was in Greece a few years ago I constantly got the huge 2 Euro coins. Which threw me for a hell of a loop, because as an American I'm not used to coinage actually being worth money, and I was living in Qatar at the time (where the coins really aren't worth anything and no one uses them), so looking at a handful of change comprising maybe a dozen coins and realizing it was worth about $15 inspired some cognitive dissonance. At least those big bi-metallic suckers are attractive and obvious; they actually make decent souvenirs, which I'm sure drives EU monetary regulators crazy.

The half-dollar is nigh-extinct because it's not a very useful increment between the quarter and the dollar. $2 bills and $50 bills are essentially extinct for the same reason, and $10 bills are becoming increasingly uncommon too (at least, the cafeteria at my office never seems to have any). Except, of course, at casinos, where $50 bills and especially half-dollars are extremely common because of the advantage (from the casino's point of view) that they're kind of hard to spend anywhere other than the casino itself. If quarters were redesigned to be the size of half-dollars (and soda machines across the country were universally retrofitted to accept the new ones), I think people would be a lot happier to use them; even quarters are too easy to lose at the bottom of your pocket.

Orfamay Quest wrote:
If you want to argue that a coin as large as a gold piece, which has an effective buying power of a hundred dollar bill, should be large and classy, I can't really argue with you (although, as you point out, the solidus was even more valuable and much smaller). But in Pathfinder, the simple copper piece also weighs ten grams and is the size of a half-dollar,.... in fact, it's even larger than the gold piece due to metal density.

My point was that I feel like the given uniform weights for PF coins suggest that they are not solid bullion, even copper pieces. I would assume they're mostly nickel, coated with pure metal; or, more fancifully, bimetallic coins (like the double Euro) with a core of pure metal surrounded by a ring of a sturdier base alloy to resist clipping and sweating. (C.f. Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, which uses standard-sized gemstones encased in glass spheres as money.) So copper pieces aren't larger than gold pieces (for the same weight), they just contain more pure copper, while gold pieces contain a fairly small amount of actual gold.

At 9 grams each, I agree they would be pretty aggravating to carry around in very large quantities, but the world assumption is that only adventurers would actually need to do that anyway. Even well-to-do townsfolk would manage with just a pouch containing 20-30 cp and 5-10 sp at a time (think $50-$200, which is what most middle-class Americans carry today) and maybe an emergency gold piece stuffed in their boot, with the remainder of their coined wealth stuffed under their bed, or behind a fake flagstone in their hearth, or whatever. This pouch weighs less than a pound and contains plenty of money for even a fairly significant grocery run and a visit to the tavern. If I'm trying to buy five pounds of flour, a dozen eggs, five candles, and two tankards of ale, neither the chandler, the barmaid, nor I want to be fiddling with dime-sized coins to do it. If you've ever worked in a diner, how many of you have discovered a dime out of your tip stuck to the table because it landed in a puddle of coffee? That doesn't happen to bigger thicker coins; they're easier to pick up.

Villagers and rural peasants, of course, only keep coinage for the purpose of paying taxes (in jurisdictions where paying taxes in kind isn't allowed), and generally don't carry more than a few copper pieces.

Larger purchases that actually do require hundreds of platinum pieces would presumably be transacted in chests, notes-of-credit against major organization treasuries (kingdoms or major churches, typically), or solid bullion, and would in any case be attended by well-paid guards during the actual transfer of payment and goods. This doesn't happen often enough for the inconvenience to become a problem.

The Exchange

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sowhereaminow wrote:
As a Certified Public Accountant, I declare this thread best thread of the first week of June 2014. It has everything: monetary history, theoretical economics, and unplucked chickens. :-)

Yeah! I like the way this thread roams - directionless, wild and free, like a mustang. Or a tumbleweed. Or a hobo!

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

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Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
and $10 bills are becoming increasingly uncommon too (at least, the cafeteria at my office never seems to have any).

This is the fault of ATMs. If you run a business that takes cash, you get a lot of payment in $20s, since that's what people are most likely to have. If the purchase was less than $10 (or between 20 and 30 and so on), you give a 10 in change. Cash registers generally run short of $10s.

So yes, it's because its at an awkward gap between the $5 and $20, but the effect is magnified by ATMs.

Silver Crusade

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I still have a deep love for $2 US bills, even though I never spend them, and keep getting told they're 'counterfeit' when I show them to people.

What has to be remembered is that as useful as arbitrage rates would be, in a standard medieval world they don't come up as much due to limitations on movement.

Its also why goods were always a more tradable resource (goods for goods in foreign ports, and then sell them back home).

Cementing my status as a jerky DM, I do occasionally pay out the monetary portion of treasure in 'trade goods' like coffee, wheat and beans. It has the sad effect where a party will leave behind 500gp worth of wheat (or uh...500,000lbs). Since trade goods are expended on a barter basis, you can actually get 1:1 trade ratios by RAW, until that is, you try to turn them into currency.

I think my love of trade goods as a DM and a player is why no DM has ever allowed me to play in a Skull and Shackles game, for fear I'd turn piracy and plunder into a game of resale of furniture and holds overloaded with livestock (a pig's worth /3/ gp!) and bags of beans.


The ATMs around me (and the self-checkouts at the grocery store) spit out $10s rather than $20s. Me: "$60 cash, plz" ATM: "Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat" Me: "Tens? Really?"

The Exchange

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Me: "Tens? Woo-hoo!"

I'm not rich enough to carry around a big roll of the Benjamins, so it boosts my self-esteem to have a roll of the Jeffersons. ;)

Movin' on up - to the East Side...


Draco18s wrote:
The ATMs around me (and the self-checkouts at the grocery store) spit out $10s rather than $20s. Me: "$60 cash, plz" ATM: "Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat-Blat" Me: "Tens? Really?"

Lucky you. Mine today went.

Me: "100 € cash, please."
ATM: "Ba-Zinga!"
and I received a beautiful single 100 Euro note.

Cafeteria absolutely LOVED me for it :(


Shoulda asked for 90. Never ask for an amount that equals a denomination you can't spend.


Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:

American half-dollars are almost extinct precisely because they're so difficult to use, and 2 Euro coins, while not extinct, are certainly much rarer than the smaller and more convenient denominations. I get pairs of single Euros in change at stores much more often than I get the double Euros.

Huh. When I was in Greece a few years ago I constantly got the huge 2 Euro coins. Which threw me for a hell of a loop, because as an American I'm not used to coinage actually being worth money, and I was living in Qatar at the time (where the coins really aren't worth anything and no one uses them), so looking at a handful of change comprising maybe a dozen coins and realizing it was worth about $15 inspired some cognitive dissonance. At least those big bi-metallic suckers are attractive and obvious; they actually make decent souvenirs, which I'm sure drives EU monetary regulators crazy.

The half-dollar is nigh-extinct because it's not a very useful increment between the quarter and the dollar. $2 bills and $50 bills are essentially extinct for the same reason, and $10 bills are becoming increasingly uncommon too (at least, the cafeteria at my office never seems to have any). Except, of course, at casinos, where $50 bills and especially half-dollars are extremely common because of the advantage (from the casino's point of view) that they're kind of hard to spend anywhere other than the casino itself. If quarters were redesigned to be the size of half-dollars (and soda machines across the country were universally retrofitted to accept the new ones), I think people would be a lot happier to use them; even quarters are too easy to lose at the bottom of your pocket.

That was one thing that caused culture shock. When I was with my wife's family in Europe, her family was absolutely shocked that I kept my coins loose in my pocket instead of a special pouch on my wallet. But, of course, we don't have special coin purses on wallets in America, because the coins honestly don't matter that much. The quarter is the largest denomination coin in major circulation in the USA, and that's about a tenth of the value of a 2 Euro coin--which does see plenty of use.

Yes, America has a dollar coin. However, it only receives any use at all because the government keeps trying to push people to use it. We usually receive them in vending machines if, say, you insert a $5 bill and ask for change. But people hate them. Although everyone will accept a dollar coin, nobody wants them. Why? Because we still have a dollar bill, and paper money is just that much more convenient.

I look at Canada and Europe and their lack of small denomination paper currency and weep for them. Nobody wants that money in a hard, heavy coin. Nobody. Saves wear and tear? Sure. Cheaper in the long run? Perhaps. But we don't care.


Every time I go to the US, I wish there were more dollar coins. Carting a wheelbarrow of quarters about to work coin-operated machines gets old very quickly. It's not as bad as it was 10-20 years ago as more things accept credit cards, but still pretty sad. And your credit card operators don't use chip-&-PIN either (or pay-by-bonk, last time I was there).

In the UK we have £2 coins, worth £3.38 at the moment. That's a whole 13.44 quarters. Means that you can park your car without a detour to the bank to get another shovelful of iron discs.

And don't get me started on US state sales taxes added at the till and the resulting mountain of worthless 'pennies'. Or the asinine way that all US paper money is the same size and the same colour, just inviting mistakes.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Mudfoot wrote:
Or the asinine way that all US paper money is the same size and the same colour, just inviting mistakes.

I vaguely wonder if we could sue the Treasury under the Americans with Disabilties Act for making a currency that isn't usable by the blind.

The Exchange

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Speaking as an American, I'd say that what we really need is a currency that is less easily usable by the stupid. ;)


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Ross Byers wrote:
Mudfoot wrote:
Or the asinine way that all US paper money is the same size and the same colour, just inviting mistakes.

I vaguely wonder if we could sue the Treasury under the Americans with Disabilties Act for making a currency that isn't usable by the blind.

been done under a 1973 law, the suit was won in 2002 and as of last year, developed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, there is an app for that. If you don't have phone which can use the app, the Treasury can send you a bill reading device when they get around to finalizing the design (expect it 2025). Plans are also underway that when the next major revision of the currency takes place in maybe 5 decades it will include some tactile feature to be determined. The ADA is only about 25 years old so it might take a while for the government to get around to it.


Historically gold was typically worth 10-20 times as much as silver. Not just in medieval times; in classical Greece it was typically a 20-1 ratio, falling to 10-1 during the influx of Persian gold in the later classical era. More recently 'Gold standard' economies, and holding of bank reserves in gold, lead to gold value inflation, which we still have currently.

D&D/PF wages tend to be inflated by comparison to medieval Europe, but not always wildly different from Classical-era; for long periods a silver coin was indeed the standard daily wage of a heavy infantry soldier such as Roman legionary or Greek hoplite. Some prices though are wildly inflated, and could typically be divided by 10 or converted to silver for a more historical feel.


Wrong John Silver wrote:
Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:

American half-dollars are almost extinct precisely because they're so difficult to use, and 2 Euro coins, while not extinct, are certainly much rarer than the smaller and more convenient denominations. I get pairs of single Euros in change at stores much more often than I get the double Euros.

Huh. When I was in Greece a few years ago I constantly got the huge 2 Euro coins. Which threw me for a hell of a loop, because as an American I'm not used to coinage actually being worth money, and I was living in Qatar at the time (where the coins really aren't worth anything and no one uses them), so looking at a handful of change comprising maybe a dozen coins and realizing it was worth about $15 inspired some cognitive dissonance. At least those big bi-metallic suckers are attractive and obvious; they actually make decent souvenirs, which I'm sure drives EU monetary regulators crazy.

The half-dollar is nigh-extinct because it's not a very useful increment between the quarter and the dollar. $2 bills and $50 bills are essentially extinct for the same reason, and $10 bills are becoming increasingly uncommon too (at least, the cafeteria at my office never seems to have any). Except, of course, at casinos, where $50 bills and especially half-dollars are extremely common because of the advantage (from the casino's point of view) that they're kind of hard to spend anywhere other than the casino itself. If quarters were redesigned to be the size of half-dollars (and soda machines across the country were universally retrofitted to accept the new ones), I think people would be a lot happier to use them; even quarters are too easy to lose at the bottom of your pocket.

That was one thing that caused culture shock. When I was with my wife's family in Europe, her family was absolutely shocked that I kept my coins loose in my pocket instead of a special pouch on my wallet. But, of course, we don't have special coin purses on wallets in America, because...

Depends what you are used to I guess, a £1 note would throw me horribly, notes should be for decent amounts, the £5 should probably be replaced by a coin eventually, shrapnel-nuggets-notes is the proper structure of money, you miss out the nugget stage. (Slang 'shrapnel' is 50p and less, nugget is £1 and £2 coins aka beer tokens)


Mudfoot wrote:
In the UK we have £2 coins, worth £3.38 at the moment. That's a whole 13.44 quarters. Means that you can park your car without a detour to the bank to get another shovelful of iron discs.

Philadelphia recently installed new parking meters (one every 5 spaces or so and any of them will work, as they print out a wiget you put on the dashboard) that accept dollar bills.

Ironically, said bill acceptor doesn't work in the rain. The water collects on its underside edge and the machine will reject wet bills.

I complained to the city once and the reply was along the lines of "yeah. we know. we knew before we put them in. but it was still the best one we reviewed."

I can only imagine some of the others.

The Exchange

Ross Byers wrote:
Mudfoot wrote:
Or the asinine way that all US paper money is the same size and the same colour, just inviting mistakes.

I vaguely wonder if we could sue the Treasury under the Americans with Disabilties Act for making a currency that isn't usable by the blind.

Only if i can sue cigarette manufactures for going by color so much when i cannot see it. Damn co workers keep mixing them up when i am the ONLY one there that cannot see the colors......

The Exchange

Lincoln Hills wrote:
Speaking as an American, I'd say that what we really need is a currency that is less easily usable by the stupid. ;)

Most of those are using credit cards or EBT, the coin of choice among the useless in my area


cnetarian wrote:
These nominally gold coins might be, in metal terms, mostly lead with a significant amount of copper, more than enough tin to be worth mentioning, probably enough silver to worth smelting the coins down, with just a smattering of enough gold so that calling them gold coins doesn't force the gods to act.

Reminds me of a story where 'pure gold' coins had such a high brass content, the main character drilled holes in them and used them for bushings.

Shadow Lodge

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I like the idea of there being lots of different coins with different rates of exchange, but it's always seemed to be a little too much trouble.

Ross Beyers wrote:

I handle this by assuming that once you get past small transactions, merchants really are verifying the weight with a balance.

This is also how I handle the odd coincidence of all coin-minting nations making coins of exactly the same weight. Galtan coins might be larger than Taldan coins. Or, more relevantly, the ancient Osirian coins you just hauled out of a tomb were minted when the 'pound' hadn't been invented yet. Something that costs '50 gp' doesn't actually mean 50 coins, counted by hand. It means 'one pound of gold'. That could be 50 perfect Taldan coins recently stamped by the Church of Abadar. It could mean 30 ancient coins minted to a different standard, but preserved in a tomb for thousands of years. Or it could mean 55 well-circulated Andoren coins that have been shaved.

Sounds like a good idea - turning cp, sp, and gp into abstract measures of value rather than actual coins allows you to introduce currency of varying values without actually changing the math of the game economics.

Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
So if you want to tip the porter for lugging all your crap up to your room in the inn, a couple of cp is appropriate (maybe 10% of his daily wages).

The party goblin recently tipped a stable boy with a gold piece. He went from being "the pet" to "sir" pretty quickly.


There was an old article in Dragon Magazine #167 ("Just Give Me MONEY!",p.62) that discussed currency and addressed the problem of having to haul so much money at higher levels, and how gold would be devalued since so much of it would have to be needed. It talked about changing the standard to silver coins, and made the priority of coins platinum>gold>electrum>SILVER>bronze>copper. It had such a big influence on me that I changed my own homebrewed world to this system. The article also talks about the different real world and fantasy currencies, as well as their values and weights, as well as gems and jewelry. This is a must read for anybody interested in coinage in their worlds, and I would highly recommend it.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:

If cars were available in the same universe that rings of sustenance, I should think so.

Imagine how useful such a ring would be to some sort of elite special forces team. I could easily see the Ministry of Defense buying them by the caseload if they were available.

I suspect there wouldn't be as much demand on the civilian market, but a high-powered law firm might find the ability to work six more hours each night (six more billable hours) would pay for a itself within a year or two.

Two hours of sleep per day... It would be a real hit among workaholics all around the world.


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Drejk wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:

If cars were available in the same universe that rings of sustenance, I should think so.

Imagine how useful such a ring would be to some sort of elite special forces team. I could easily see the Ministry of Defense buying them by the caseload if they were available.

I suspect there wouldn't be as much demand on the civilian market, but a high-powered law firm might find the ability to work six more hours each night (six more billable hours) would pay for a itself within a year or two.

Two hours of sleep per day... It would be a real hit among workaholics all around the world.

AND never having to break for lunch. Indeed, keeping your diet becomes a breeze!


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I solved this problem by just assuming they're mining all of the gold, silver, copper, and platinum from the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Also, to add to it, I did actually introduce levels of currency...

Copper-based: The commoner currency; equal to about 1 USD. Lower denomination of tin coins, which are not found in dungeons due to having too low a value for most people. Anything of lower value than tin is pure barter. Used by most people.

Silver-based: Business currency; equal to 10 USD. Used by businesses when they wish to trade between each other.

Gold-based: High-class currency; equal to 100 USD. Commonly used by businesses and the wealthy, as well as most adventurers.

Platinum-based: Nation-level currency; equal to 1000 USD. Typically, this is the coinage that national budgets are expressed in and which is spent by nations on major expenses.

Marks of Credit: International currency; Over 1000 USD. This is the currency exchanged between nations, typically, and only exists for those times when the amount of platinum involved would be impractical to exchange.


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MagusJanus wrote:
I solved this problem by just assuming they're mining all of the gold, silver, copper, and platinum from the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Or the quasi-paramental plane of Precious Metals.

The Exchange

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Drejk wrote:
Two hours of sleep per day... It would be a real hit among workaholics all around the world.

As well as parents of infants. ;) And college students (No more ramen noodles - and, for those so inclined, six more hours of binge drinking before your next class!)


Lincoln Hills wrote:
Drejk wrote:
Two hours of sleep per day... It would be a real hit among workaholics all around the world.
As well as parents of infants. ;) And college students (No more ramen noodles - and, for those so inclined, six more hours of binge drinking before your next class!)

Well, this is where the cost comes in. Assuming 1cp = $1, a ring of sustenance would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in todays currency. Not many college students would be able to afford that. A lawyer that charges $500/hr could buy the ring and it would pay for itself in about 500 billable hours of work, which would mean the ring could probably pay for itself in about a year.

But if you're only making $25/hr at your current job, that would mean about 10,000 hours to pay for it. I don't care how much of a workaholic you are, the ring isn't worth it.


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Honestly, who wouldn't want 6 more hours every day? Add in the benefit of never needing to eat or drink and these things pay for themselves pretty quickly. I never question it when a party shows up all equipped with Rings of Sustenance and Handy Haversacks.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:

Well, this is where the cost comes in. Assuming 1cp = $1, a ring of sustenance would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in todays currency. Not many college students would be able to afford that. A lawyer that charges $500/hr could buy the ring and it would pay for itself in about 500 billable hours of work, which would mean the ring could probably pay for itself in about a year.

But if you're only making $25/hr at your current job, that would mean about 10,000 hours to pay for it. I don't care how much of a workaholic you are, the ring isn't worth it.

This is a world where street gangs jack laywers for their rings of sustenance.


Gregory Connolly wrote:
Add in the benefit of never needing to eat or drink and these things pay for themselves pretty quickly.

If by "quickly" you mean "over the course of 40 years," then yes.

If you never cook for yourself, you'll cut that time in half, give or take (this is based on the fact that I generally buy lunch for ~$10 including drink and buying your own materials and cooking generally costs around $3 for the same meal).


Gregory Connolly wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:

Well, this is where the cost comes in. Assuming 1cp = $1, a ring of sustenance would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in todays currency. Not many college students would be able to afford that. A lawyer that charges $500/hr could buy the ring and it would pay for itself in about 500 billable hours of work, which would mean the ring could probably pay for itself in about a year.

But if you're only making $25/hr at your current job, that would mean about 10,000 hours to pay for it. I don't care how much of a workaholic you are, the ring isn't worth it.

This is a world where street gangs jack laywers for their rings of sustenance.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Obviously, the world we live in isn't such a world, because those rings don't actually exist. If you think that $500/hr is an unreasonable rate for a lawyer in the real world, though, you've not worked much with high-end lawyers.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Gregory Connolly wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:

Well, this is where the cost comes in. Assuming 1cp = $1, a ring of sustenance would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in todays currency. Not many college students would be able to afford that. A lawyer that charges $500/hr could buy the ring and it would pay for itself in about 500 billable hours of work, which would mean the ring could probably pay for itself in about a year.

But if you're only making $25/hr at your current job, that would mean about 10,000 hours to pay for it. I don't care how much of a workaholic you are, the ring isn't worth it.

This is a world where street gangs jack laywers for their rings of sustenance.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Obviously, the world we live in isn't such a world, because those rings don't actually exist. If you think that $500/hr is an unreasonable rate for a lawyer in the real world, though, you've not worked much with high-end lawyers.

He means the high-end lawyers would be mugged for their rings.


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That or rings would not necessarily belong to their wearer, as employer's would find it profitable to purchase rings of sustenance for their employees.


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I looked it up. Today, gold is selling for ~$40 (US) per gram. So at an approximate value of 1 GP = $100, that would be a 2.5 gram coin. That's the size of a modern US penny. If you're buying the "Campaign Coins", a "1" value coin is about about that size. An old english silver penny or gold shilling was, I believe about 1.7 grams. So if you accept the 1 GP = $100, you can set the size of your coins at ~2.5 grams (180 per lb, instead of 50), and the value of gold matches the real world.

As for the value of gold pieces: For an investment of 19,640 gp (~$2 million) I can build a palace. This sounds about right. OR I could found a chain of taverns, generating useful income OR I can buy a Trident of Fish Command.

So, I want to know: When the party wizard decides to get rich(er) making magic items. Who is buying them?


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pachristian wrote:
So, I want to know: When the party wizard decides to get rich(er) making magic items. Who is buying them?

Adventurers, dragons, and the like.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Generally, a PC crafter doesn't make a profit making magic items: crafting an item costs half its market price, and PCs sell items for half their market price, because they're adventurers, not shopkeepers.

But yeah, the people buying them are the same people who buy expensive things in the real world. Rich people, governments, large organizations, and individuals who can get the bill footed by one of the above.

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