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I'm dabbling with redesigning the currency system to make it work a bit better with my tastes. Trying to avoid the issue of higher level players going "Copper, bleh just toss it." because its worthless in their economy unless you have wagonlonds of the stuff.
The main issue I'm having is with things like armour, weapons and other base items. A lot of the cheaper stuff is fine copper and silver prices can easily be adjusted. Magic items even more so because they're value is basically a "we think its worth this' so you can just convert relative values. For example if an item is worth 100,000 gold and you rebalance things so a gold coin is worth 53 times more than you just divide 100,000 by 53 and there you go. I am not putting gold at 53 times more that's just an example number.
However as i said things like plate mail which had real world equivilents is where I'm having the most issue. So does anyone know of a good source for realistic pricing of real world items in a Midieval period?
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I'll take look for the silver Standard thanks.
That's precisely why I want to find an alternate option so they'll get copper and still like it.
The only way you can actually do this is to not have prices increase at all with level, meaning a +5 Holy Avenger Longsword costs the same as a non-magical Longsword. Otherwise, copper and silver pieces will always become irrelevant at some point, much like most people don't really pay attention to pennies and dimes.
The Ars Magica game might be a useful source, fairly sure the people working on it had more of a thought for history than Gygax.
If you want to make treasure values a bit less crazy at higher levels (the equipment of a 20th level character is probably worth more than the GDP of some of the campaign-world's countries), reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials by a factor of 10 and the market price of magic items by a factor 100 might be a good start. Starting wealth at 1st level is likewise reduced to 10% of "normal" and treasure award values are likewise reduced by to 1% of "normal."
Note that one benefit of reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials is that the Craft skill is more useful. Instead of needing months or years to make masterwork* weapons and armor (especially if made of adamantine or mithral) without using shortcuts like fabricate, the timeframes are much more reasonable: about a week to forge a sword or one month for a suit of full plate. You can also have all special materials (not just dragonhide) modify the market price/cost of raw materials, but not affect the time needed to manufacture.
The campaign world also doesn't have to deal with literally wagon-loads worth of coins and other treasure floating around in all of the monster lairs and dungeons. 3.x/PF in some respects is still dealing with complications from the old 1st Ed AD&D paradigm of "1 experience point gained for every 1 gp found/looted."
*- a character taking 10 with a +10 Craft check modifier (the minimum needed for the DC 20 to craft masterwork items) only generates 20 x 20 sp = 400 sp = 40 gp per week; a masterwork longsword (315 gp) would take 8 weeks (8 x 40 gp = 320 gp) and a suit of masterwork full plate (1,650 gp) would require a little over 41(!) weeks to create using the Craft skill
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The Ars Magica game might be a useful source, fairly sure the people working on it had more of a thought for history than Gygax.
Ars Magica, even with the greater amount of historical research, really has two economies. The "mundane" economy (money and treasure) is more or less treated as background/flavor for the most part. The "magic" economy (books for magi to study, invested items, raw vis) is pretty much dependent on the covenant/improvements to the covenant, created by the magi, or provided as a story reward. Of the two, the "magic" economy is the more important and also the more abstracted.
The bigger difference between the various flavors of D&D/PF and Ars Magica is that in Ars Magica "adventures" are not the primary way characters improve. Ars Magica emphasizes practice, study, and formal training to gain experience each season instead of exploring "dungeons" and fighting "monsters."
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If you want to make treasure values a bit less crazy at higher levels (the equipment of a 20th level character is probably worth more than the GDP of some of the campaign-world's countries), reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials by a factor of 10 and the market price of magic items by a factor 100 might be a good start. Starting wealth at 1st level is likewise reduced to 10% of "normal" and treasure award values are likewise reduced by to 1% of "normal."
Note that one benefit of reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials is that the Craft skill is more useful. Instead of needing months or years to make masterwork* weapons and armor (especially if made of adamantine or mithral) without using shortcuts like fabricate, the timeframes are much more reasonable: about a week to forge a sword or one month for a suit of full plate. You can also have all special materials (not just dragonhide) modify the market price/cost of raw materials, but not affect the time needed to manufacture.
The campaign world also doesn't have to deal with literally wagon-loads worth of coins and other treasure floating around in all of the monster lairs and dungeons. 3.x/PF in some respects is still dealing with complications from the old 1st Ed AD&D paradigm of "1 experience point gained for every 1 gp found/looted."
*- a character taking 10 with a +10 Craft check modifier (the minimum needed for the DC 20 to craft masterwork items) only generates 20 x 20 sp = 400 sp = 40 gp per week; a masterwork longsword (315 gp) would take 8 weeks (8 x 40 gp = 320 gp) and a suit of masterwork full plate (1,650 gp) would require a little over 41(!) weeks to create using the Craft skill
I'm considering that one to be honest. The silver standard basically just renames gold to silver and would have the same issue with two currencies essentially becoming useless. However I saw a post about someone just pulling everything down by 10 e.g. 10 gold becomes 1, 1 gold becomes 1 silver, 1 silver 1 copper and everything 10 copprs or less 1 copper. This is everything treasure rewards, starting gold, prices and the like.
It does seem appealing though i've not had a chance to look into it heavily as it would still retain adventurers are vastly wealthy but copper and silver are not so devalued in comparison to high level gear. Yes your sword costs a thousand gold but that pile of silver and copper is not instantly worth ignoring. Because they are comparitively worth more now. 100 copper = 1 gold bah not worth it normally but if 1 gold is a significant part of the price of better armour, lodging or hiring people to build your castle it suddenly becomes more worth considering
It also means adventurers aren't driving a humans bodyweight in gold coins up the person buy and selling gear and seems a bit more sensible currency when even the most expensive items are tens of thousands of gold to the average economy compared to hundreds or for mythic millions.
I guess I just don't like the massive jumps from mundane to adventuring. You can hire an experienced lawyer for half a year just for the price of a +1 sword or full plate and it gets worse from there.
Even if you pull the prices for most things down and leave NPC's the same it' work better for me. That sword and armour now cost 150 + 200 for 350 gold. Still insanely expensive for most people but not as bad as before. Heck it explains how your starting character earnt X amount of gold to start with before their adventuring career. A brawler starting with 160 gold as a teenager seems especially odd when you consider a trained hireling (caravan guard, mercenary) gets 3 silver a day which also has to cover expenses. Keep that wage the same while reducing starting gold and costs so they've now saved up 16 gold and are buying much cheaper starting gear.
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you want to make treasure values a bit less crazy at higher levels (the equipment of a 20th level character is probably worth more than the GDP of some of the campaign-world's countries), reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials by a factor of 10 and the market price of magic items by a factor 100 might be a good start. Starting wealth at 1st level is likewise reduced to 10% of "normal" and treasure award values are likewise reduced by to 1% of "normal."
Note that one benefit of reducing the market price of mundane equipment/special materials is that the Craft skill is more useful. Instead of needing months or years to make masterwork* weapons and armor (especially if made of adamantine or mithral) without using shortcuts like fabricate, the timeframes are much more reasonable: about a week to forge a sword or one month for a suit of full plate. You can also have all special materials (not just dragonhide) modify the market price/cost of raw materials, but not affect the time needed to manufacture.
The campaign world also doesn't have to deal with literally wagon-loads worth of coins and other treasure floating around in all of the monster lairs and dungeons. 3.x/PF in some respects is still dealing with complications from the old 1st Ed AD&D paradigm of "1 experience point gained for every 1 gp found/looted."
*- a character taking 10 with a +10 Craft check modifier (the minimum needed for the DC 20 to craft masterwork items) only generates 20 x 20 sp = 400 sp = 40 gp per week; a masterwork longsword (315 gp) would take 8 weeks (8 x 40 gp = 320 gp) and a suit of masterwork full plate (1,650 gp) would require a little over 41(!) weeks to create using the Craft skill
I'm considering that one to be honest. The silver standard basically just renames gold to silver and would have the same issue with two currencies essentially becoming useless. However I saw a post about someone just pulling everything down by 10 e.g. 10 gold becomes 1, 1 gold becomes 1 silver, 1 silver 1 copper and everything 10 copprs or less 1 copper. This is everything treasure rewards, starting gold, prices and the like.
It does seem appealing though i've not had a chance to look into it heavily as it would still retain adventurers are vastly wealthy but copper and silver are not so devalued in comparison to high level gear. Yes your sword costs a thousand gold but that pile of silver and copper is not instantly worth ignoring. Because they are comparitively worth more now. 100 copper = 1 gold bah not worth it normally but if 1 gold is a significant part of the price of better armour, lodging or hiring people to build your castle it suddenly becomes more worth considering
It also means adventurers aren't driving a humans bodyweight in gold coins up the person buy and selling gear and seems a bit more sensible currency when even the most expensive items are tens of thousands of gold to the average economy compared to hundreds or for mythic millions.
I guess I just don't like the massive jumps from mundane to adventuring. You can hire an experienced lawyer for half a year just for the price of a +1 sword or full plate and it gets worse from there.
Even if you pull the prices for most things down and leave NPC's the same it' work better for me. That sword and armour now cost 150 + 200 for 350 gold. Still insanely expensive for most people but not as bad as before. Heck it explains how your starting character earnt X amount of gold to start with before their adventuring career. A brawler starting with 160 gold as a teenager seems especially odd when you consider a trained hireling (caravan guard, mercenary) gets 3 silver a day which also has to cover expenses. Keep that wage the same while reducing starting gold and costs so they've now saved up 16 gold and are buying much cheaper starting gear.
Generally speaking, messing with the game economy is a rabbit hole you don't want to dive into: Every 'fix' you make tends to 'break' something else and create unexpected issues in an attempt to 'correct' something that doesn't actually impact gameplay significantly (You won't find anyone claiming the D&D/PF economy is good or even makes sense, but it works fine for adventuring gameplay and that's what really matters).
For example, the suggest 10% mundane / 1% magical pricing creates a situation where the masterwork cost of an item is more than a +1 enchant (for a weapon, 20g for the +1 enchant but 30g for the masterwork quality), and cloaks of resistance will become common starting gear (only 10g!) for adventurers, as will some other 'cheap' magic items.
In the end, players still won't care about silver or copper: To be honest, after a few levels they cease to care about gold and are only excited about significant piles of gold (when you are in mid levels and looking at items worth 10k-20k, a handful of gold coins isn't really much more significant than a handful of silver or copper). At best, you are just delaying the inevitable...
Generally speaking, games like this tend to fall into one of the following categories:
- a) Money is important because you can purchase useful things, which typically means prices have to go up exponentially to keep things balanced (better items need to be a lot more expensive to keep players at the 'expected power level'), meaning smaller amounts of cash become less and less significant - OR -
- b) Money isn't important because you can't buy useful items and players will ignore dragon hordes because its just not significant (true D&D5 story, but this also applied in the 3PP 'world's largest dungeon' D&D3.x adventure where there was no actual economy at all (no merchants/vendors) so anything you find but don't use will just be left there)...
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Also, keep in mind that the handful of 'useful' expensive mundane items are essentially 10x their current price in the proposed system (10% of normal cost, but only 1% of normal income):
- The ubiquitous Mithril Shirt is now 110g, which is now essentially the price of a +3 chain shirt (10g shirt + 15g masterwork + 90g +3 enchant = 115g).
- Mundane Full Plate is now 150g (the equivalent of 15,000g), or nearly as much as a +4 armor enchant (160g).
- Alchemist's Fire is now the equivalent of 200g per vial, which is kinda hefty...
You could try pricing them like magic items, but then you have a '11g mithril shirt vs a 10g chain shirt' problem...
I am not sure how this problem can be solved with the current wealth by level scale, which matches up with the scaling price of magic items. Mundane items top off at a far more reasonable rate.
You would need to come up with some non-monetary currency (automatic bonus progression, "personal essence", etc.) to properly regulate the availability of magic items without an exponential scaling of character wealth in terms of physical coinage.
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I am not sure how this problem can be solved with the current wealth by level scale, which matches up with the scaling price of magic items. Mundane items top off at a far more reasonable rate.You would need to come up with some non-monetary currency (automatic bonus progression, "personal essence", etc.) to properly regulate the availability of magic items without an exponential scaling of character wealth in terms of physical coinage.
Unfortunately, this approach runs the risk of making money completely irrelevant to the PCs if they actually accumulate wealth that they aren't concerned about where their next meal is coming from: You'd have to somehow keep the PCs broke if you want them to really care about the SPs and CPs, which can get very annoying for the players if they aren't on the same page (Think 'Space Western' shows like Firefly or Cowboy Bebop where the protagonists just can't ever get ahead).
I am not sure how this problem can be solved with the current wealth by level scale, which matches up with the scaling price of magic items. Mundane items top off at a far more reasonable rate.You would need to come up with some non-monetary currency (automatic bonus progression, "personal essence", etc.) to properly regulate the availability of magic items without an exponential scaling of character wealth in terms of physical coinage.
Unfortunately, this approach runs the risk of making money completely irrelevant to the PCs if they actually accumulate wealth that they aren't concerned about where their next meal is coming from: You'd have to somehow keep the PCs broke if you want them to really care about the SPs and CPs, which can get very annoying for the players if they aren't on the same page (Think 'Space Western' shows like Firefly or Cowboy Bebop where the protagonists just can't ever get ahead).
One problem at a time.
If you can afford to buy a +5 sword, then mundane expenses are no longer meaningful. So the first part of the solution is to ensure that you spend something other than cash for magic items and services.
Once you have done that, you don't have to hand out as much monetary treasure, and you can make income from adventuring and routine living expenses closer together. In that case, it would take a lot less of an unfortunate turn of events to deplete the savings of the PCs.
Generally speaking, messing with the game economy is a rabbit hole you don't want to dive into: Every 'fix' you make tends to 'break' something else and create unexpected issues in an attempt to 'correct' something that doesn't actually impact gameplay significantly (You won't find anyone claiming the D&D/PF economy is good or even makes sense, but it works fine for adventuring gameplay and that's what really matters).
For example, the suggest 10% mundane / 1% magical pricing creates a situation where the masterwork cost of an item is more than a +1 enchant (for a weapon, 20g for the +1 enchant but 30g for the masterwork quality), and cloaks of resistance will become common starting gear (only 10g!) for adventurers, as will some other 'cheap' magic items.
Considering that weapons and armor must be masterwork before they can be given that +1 magical enhancement, it's not an "either/or" as you are stating for all cases.
And is it really "game-breaking" if some characters can choose to spend most or all (remember, I also said to reduce starting wealth to 10% of normal: that's 17.5 gp on average for a 1st level cavalier, fighter, or paladin; most other classes start with less) for a cloak of resistance +1? They get +5% on their chance to make saving throws, but don't have much in the way of armor and weapons. Some consumable and inexpensive magic items become a bit more common; but, as the Eberron setting demonstrates (or Starfinder), this is can actually help in making the campaign feel more "real" instead of trying to reconcile the ubiquitous magic used and experienced by the PCs with trying to keep it rare/almost non-existent for the "normal" setting society.
Also, keep in mind that the handful of 'useful' expensive mundane items are essentially 10x their current price in the proposed system (10% of normal cost, but only 1% of normal income):Basically, by the time the PCs have enough cash for consumables or precious materials, they probably will be high enough level that either they don't really want them anymore (for the consumables) or are already invested in another item (for the armor).
- The ubiquitous Mithril Shirt is now 110g, which is now essentially the price of a +3 chain shirt (10g shirt + 15g masterwork + 90g +3 enchant = 115g).
- Mundane Full Plate is now 150g (the equivalent of 15,000g), or nearly as much as a +4 armor enchant (160g).
- Alchemist's Fire is now the equivalent of 200g per vial, which is kinda hefty...
You could try pricing them like magic items, but then you have a '11g mithril shirt vs a 10g chain shirt' problem...
Again, you say that like making special materials that grant more powerful effects than magic abilities (mithral increases the maximum Dex bonus, reduces the arcane failure chance, halves the weight, and reduces the armor category for everything but proficiency) more expensive than basic magic items is somehow bad. The reason most PCs run around in mithral armor is that mithral is extremely powerful from a game mechanic standpoint.
As far as masterwork full plate (165 gp) being more expensive than a +3 chain shirt (115 gp), most PCs would avoid wearing full plate vs. a +1 chain shirt in a normal campaign (1,650 gp vs. 1,250 gp) even though the total AC is no longer better.
I would also classify alchemical substances as mundane equipment; they are listed as equipment and not magic items, after all. Yes, this makes some potions and wands cheaper than alchemical weapons and tools; but allowing easier healing and more use of consumables at low levels is actually a good way to help combat the "15-minute adventuring day." Alchemical substances can still be useful for PCs that can't activate spell trigger magic items.
Specific corner cases (sunrod vs. everburning torch, for instance) can be addressed on an as needed basis.
The whole point of the "reduce non-magical items and starting wealth to 10% of normal; reduce magic item prices and treasure awards to 1% of normal" is to lessen the extreme wealth floating around in possession of PCs/NPCs, as well as in hoards and monster lairs, in the campaign world relative to normal items and the rest of society. "Where did this small band of goblins get all of this gold?" "How does a single ogre mage have enough wealth to buy everything for sale in an entire small town?"
If magic becomes more common/less expensive relative to normal items, then that is a secondary effect,
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The issue is that in an attempt to 'fix' (or really just delay for a while) a 'flavor' issue, you are introducing both 'mechanical' and 'flavor' issues:The whole point of the "reduce non-magical items and starting wealth to 10% of normal; reduce magic item prices and treasure awards to 1% of normal" is to lessen the extreme wealth floating around in possession of PCs/NPCs, as well as in hoards and monster lairs, in the campaign world relative to normal items and the rest of society. "Where did this small band of goblins get all of this gold?" "How does a single ogre mage have enough wealth to buy everything for sale in an entire small town?"
If magic becomes more common/less expensive relative to normal items, then that is a secondary effect,
- Mechanical: Heavy armors (and some of the mediums) aren't affordable for several levels, making low levels tougher for many builds (one suit of masterwork full plate armor is a little over the expected total wealth of a 6th level character).
- Mechanical: Non-magical consumables are really expensive to use.
- Mechanical: With mundane crafting basically taking 1/10th the normal time, is it now far more profitable than going on risky adventures for 1/10th the normal loot?
- Flavor: With cloaks of resistance so cheap, are they now 'standard issue' for all non-peasants?
- Flavor: Why are your foes so poor compared to the rest of the world? Remember, 3rd level PCs should only have around 30g of wealth/gear, which means they've only doubled their starting funds (assuming the PFS 15g standard) after two levels of deadly work, indicating fairly little loot was recovered.
- Flavor: Do dragon hoards even exist? Do dragons sleep on a pile of Copper Pieces (back in D&D3 ('Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil' I believe), I actually LOL'd when we defeated a dragon and discovered its hoard of copper pieces).
The D&D/PF economy has never really made sense, but it never claimed to be an economy simulator: It's only purpose is to allow the PCs to sell their loot and buy what they actually want so they aren't 100% dependent on the adventures to provide their equipment (having played a D&D2 thief who couldn't get a ring of invisibility until we reached the point where everything could detect invisibility anyway, I definitely appreciated this change in D&D3).