D&D 4E A COMPLETE solution for low magic games and the economy of 4e

[Daniel D. Fox]

Preface -

I run a low-magic game where grain dictates the prices on items. A great amount of influence came from Grain Into Gold, a suppliment I recommend any worldbuilder adopts.


Arms and Armor
Listed below are the links to Armor and Weapons, with a pricing structure adopted to where DMs can sell, distribute and/or allow players to purchase improved-quality items that confer bonuses to hit and criticals without having to heavily houserule passive bonuses by level. Armor and weapons are divided by material type (feel free to ignore the additional HP by shield quality type). You'll note there is a common convention by material type used for Light and for Heavy armors. Similarly, Weapons adopt the same naming conventions for material used for Heavy armors. Prices are fully worked into the listings in the spreadsheet. Note the tabs at the bottom of the page; it has all weapons from PHB and Adventurer's Vault listed with appropriate prices (shuriken are missing, but I treat them as daggers in my game):
http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/f/Armor_WeaponsFinal.xlshttp://deismaar.pbwiki.com/f/Armor_Weapons.xls


Equipment, Houses, Tools, Clothes, Horses and Foodstuffs
I've also attached a spreadsheet with every item you could possibly think of for a player to purchase, and listed salaries for common professions. This is ripped directly from Grain Into Gold. Salaries help establish a modicum of understanding how much "gold is really worth" to the average player:
http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/f/CommonSalariesAndEquipment.doc


Rituals for Item Creation
Additionally, listed below are two rituals (rites) players can use to craft arms and armor, repair their equipment and craft trade goods.

Craft Trade Good (Level 1 Rite)

Planking the final board, you begin sanding the oaken table. Your apprentices are boiling the oil and mineral spirits, ready to polish this exquisite gift for the duke.
Level: 1
Time: Special
Duration: Permanent
Component Cost: Focus worth 360 gm, plus 1/3rd of the item's cost in materials
Special Key Skill: Moderate Endurance skill challenge at your level, Easy Endurance skill challenge at lower levels
A single trade good is created over a period of days. You can only craft items equal to your level, however you can craft lesser trade goods if you so choose. Your level determines the quality of the trade good, in accord when the trade good is used to augment a skill challenge. Note that all items fall under the following levels - 1, 3, 8, 13, 18, 23 or 28 (e.g if you are 7th level, you can only craft trade goods of 3rd level or below).

To determine the number of days that is required to craft, take the total cost of the item and divide by ten. For every three apprentice craftsman, you may reduce the amount of time by one day. For every two journeymen craftsmen, you may reduce the amount of time by one day. For every master craftsman, you may reduce the amount of time by one day. In the case where items cost less than 1 gm, assume you can craft 10 of these trade goods unless the DM arbitrates otherwise.

You must utilize your Endurance for a moderate skill challenge for items at your level, and Endurance for an easy skill challenge at lower levels. This equates to four successes before 2 failures. For any failures beyond 2, you must spend an additional day and spend 1/5 the item's cost to continue crafting the item.

Additionally, you can repair most trade goods successfully by spending 1/5th the items cost during an extended rest.

Focus: A set of Trade Tools worth 360 gm.

Craft Arms and Armor (Level 3 Rite)

Working day and night, you finally complete your work. Raising the masterwork steel blade into the light, it reflects the guttering fire from the hearth along its keen edge.
Level: 3
Time: Special
Duration: Permanent
Component Cost: Focus worth 1032 gm, plus 1/3rd of the item's cost in materials
Special Key Skill: Moderate Endurance skill challenge at your level, Easy Endurance skill challenge at lower levels
A single weapon or suit of armor is created over a period of days. You can only craft items equal to your level, however you can craft lesser arms and armor if you so choose.
Note that all arms and armor fall under the following levels - 1, 3, 8, 13, 18, 23 or 28 (e.g if you are 7th level, you can only craft arms and armor of 3rd level or below).

To determine the number of days that is required to craft, take the total cost of the item and divide by ten. For every three apprentice craftsman, you may reduce the amount of time by one day. For every two journeymen craftsmen, you may reduce the amount of time by one day. For every master craftsman, you may reduce the amounf of time by one day.

You must utilize your Endurance for a moderate skill challenge for items at your level, and Endurance for an easy skill challenge at lower levels. This equates to four successes before 2 failures. For any failures beyond 2, you must spend an additional day and spend 1/5 the item's cost to continue crafting the item.

Additionally, you can repair most arms or armor successfully by spending 1/5th the items cost during an extended rest.

Focus: A set of Arms and Armor Tools worth 1032 gm.

Enjoy!

 

[Alex319]

Interesting. So under "Craft Trade Good," what are the "levels" of the trade goods because I don't see any.

Also, the current setup allows you to effectively convert (10/3) gm worth of materials into 10 gm worth of goods per day, resulting in a profit of (20/3) = 6.67 gm per day, assuming success on all skill checks. This is less than what most of the craftsmen make in the "salaries" section. Is this intentional?

The rules for using extra craftsmen seem weak - so if I am creating a 100 gm suit of armor, it takes 10 days, but if I have a master craftsman helping me it only goes down to 9 days? That doesn't seem like much of a gain - it makes more sense that if I have two people instead of one, it should go (close to) twice as fast.

 

[crazyred]

Very cool! Thank you!

 

[Revinor]

Is min level a level required to use the item or to craft it ?

Why execution axe is twice cheaper than greataxe ?

Am I correct that after you are getting attacked by 6 orcs with battleaxes, you just pick the trash, sell it and buy yourself mithril greatsword? Or get few studded leathers and trade them in for full plate made of mithril ?

How the superior mithril sling looks like?


Finally - what you are trying to achieve with those changes ? Because 'realism' or 'simulation' is nowhere close, there is NO WAY that items requiring 28 lvl person to create and giving +6 bonuses are only 3-4 times more expensive than medicore stuff made by 1st level goblins. It just doesn't compute.

Only thing you will possibly achieve is to turn players into trash collectors and getting them equipped with best possible to buy stuff at the end of the first session. They will end up with HUGE amount of gm and you will control items by cutting the availability, because money will never be a problem. Unless you go with your simulation further and make that nobody wants to buy anything under +6 from them, because it is crap (and it is with those prices), but then from the very definition you are changing the prices (somebody will buy greatsword +1 from them for 0.001gm). \

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Is min level a level required to use the item or to craft it ?

Why execution axe is twice cheaper than greataxe ?

Am I correct that after you are getting attacked by 6 orcs with battleaxes, you just pick the trash, sell it and buy yourself mithril greatsword? Or get few studded leathers and trade them in for full plate made of mithril ?

How the superior mithril sling looks like?


Finally - what you are trying to achieve with those changes ? Because 'realism' or 'simulation' is nowhere close, there is NO WAY that items requiring 28 lvl person to create and giving +6 bonuses are only 3-4 times more expensive than medicore stuff made by 1st level goblins. It just doesn't compute.

Only thing you will possibly achieve is to turn players into trash collectors and getting them equipped with best possible to buy stuff at the end of the first session. They will end up with HUGE amount of gm and you will control items by cutting the availability, because money will never be a problem. Unless you go with your simulation further and make that nobody wants to buy anything under +6 from them, because it is crap (and it is with those prices), but then from the very definition you are changing the prices (somebody will buy greatsword +1 from them for 0.001gm).

The minimum level is required to craft it on the player's end.

An executioner's axe is handled how tools are; innately, tools are better-suited for trades than for war. Thus, it is a superior weapon (as only someone that's canny, or strong enough to swing it can use it as a weapon). Some of the weapon's prices are based on pure panache; others on the material type. As in the instance of a superior mithril slingshot, there is obviously some suspension of disbelief that has to happen. However, there was a necessity to create quality subtypes for ease o fuse.

And yes, players could technically pick up the trash axes and resell them. However, weapons only resell at 1/3rd their value at the source for raw materials, or can be dealt with through a fence or merchant that purchases used weapons at 1/2 the price. However, the likelyhood of the players findiing a master craftsman who works in mithril is slim, especially at lower levels (in my game). I use the level requirements for crafting as a template for distribution of quality of weapons. Finding a craftsman that works in steel is likely to be a task unto itself (inevitably unfolding into an "adventure", since my game world revolves around establishing contacts to get what you need).iv

I defined the cost by quality based on a +70gm mechanic. I justified this by the average wage a soldier makes over roughly 7 days. Plus, I didn't want to jack the prices up super high, as flooding the market with more coin so players can purchase awesome arms and armor makes it far too easy for them to buy up sundry goods in massive wholesale (which is the complete opposite of what I was trying to achieve and as I see it, one of the outstanding issues with D&D throughout its various iterations). 70 was my magic number, pulled straight from my keister -working well enough to make it hard to get great items, but not so high as to be unattainable and imbalancing the price of foodstuffs.

What I achieved in my game was an economy driven by grain. Grain as a basis for living justified the prices for every item in the list. As I looked at salaries (and took some huge leaps of assumption based on the cost of living), a normal craftsman will likely have to tuck away gold for months before he can ever buy a sword, much less other luxury goods. My approach was simple - create costs for items based on pseudo-reality that makes sense once a DM dumps the common tropes associated with the D&D world. Meaning, there are no vast mounds of treasures, much less dragons to guard them. There are certainly ruins, and heck - there are certainly treasures of antiquity and historic civilizations. But I don't scale treasure distribution by level, as my players and I make some far different assumptions about levels and how the world works. That''s an entirely different discussion, but works out extraordinarily well with the rules posted above.

And regarding your opinion about the first sessions? Nope, uh-uh. We've been using these same rules back since 2nd edition. We have a very strict approach and application of these rules. Since we've been using them, I've never had a band of players collect inordinate amounts of "trash". People do keep the items if they can carry them, in order to refurbish them into new weapons under the Craft Arms and Armors rite.

4E afforded worldbuilders such as myself a great level of elegance to fully integrate these rules into a low magic setting. While they might not work as "well" for people who're using the uneven and silly treasure distributions by monster levels (ala Diablo at the table), it works very well in low magic settings if throw out a lot of the assumptions D&D makes in the books. And the best part? You don't have to shove a square peg into a round hole using these options. They're extremely flexible and scalable.

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Interesting. So under "Craft Trade Good," what are the "levels" of the trade goods because I don't see any.

Also, the current setup allows you to effectively convert (10/3) gm worth of materials into 10 gm worth of goods per day, resulting in a profit of (20/3) = 6.67 gm per day, assuming success on all skill checks. This is less than what most of the craftsmen make in the "salaries" section. Is this intentional?

The rules for using extra craftsmen seem weak - so if I am creating a 100 gm suit of armor, it takes 10 days, but if I have a master craftsman helping me it only goes down to 9 days? That doesn't seem like much of a gain - it makes more sense that if I have two people instead of one, it should go (close to) twice as fast.

Levels of trade goods I am stil working on, but they'll confer circustance bonuses when used in conjunction with Skills and Skill Challenges (better, stronger rope assures easier climbing, for instance).

I missed spelling out 2 core assumptions -

1 All items, including arms and armor, can be returned and sold to a craftsman at 1/3 their value in raw material.

2 Used items can be resold at 1/2 their value to fences, collectors or other people of interest.


Good note about craftsmen. Ideally, I want the player to spend an extra 1/5 the additional cost to "hasten the time it takes to craft I'll likely standardize this somewhat, based on your suggestions. So, this means if a player wants to create something fast, he'll spend 2/5ths the cost instead of 1/5 to craft it normally.

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[Alex319]

While we're on the topic of crafting and trading, you might want to check out my new thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...ading-business-rules-d-d-d-d-4th-edition.html

It's still a work in progress, but it has a lot of new ideas that might be worth adapting in order to make a more "realistic" economic system.