D&D 5E What's the point of gold?

[Sailor Moon]

Of course, we also know that there was wiggle room. Like the sword, all kinds of weapons evolved from tools, and their original forms are only slightly less dangerous than their martial descendants.

So a woodsman's axe is only single bitted- it can still kill. Ditto the mason's picks, hammers, and the like.

But the patrolling lawmen of yesterday were like those of the modern age. My buddies who play baseball and softball don't carry bats in their cars' cabins but in their trunks- they could be considered deadly weapons; trouble on a traffic stop- so I wouldn't be surprised to find city watchmen asking pointed questions of men carrying small axes or hammers who didn't look like laborers...

Danny,

Are you having conversations with yourself again?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Always.

I just wanted to make sure that that point was made while ensuring that it was understood that I was not forgetting that aspect of the law.

 

[Riley37]

Shadowrun has listed prices for items, and I know that there are some items that people tend to buy whenever possible (Smartlink and a Suprathyroid Gland), but the game lacks codified classes or an expected wealth progression, so it's not a direct comparison.

Not direct one-for-one, no, but you've given us a useful point for comparison.

First, in that legality and availability vary by location and affect price. What you can buy in a mall in Seattle, and what you can buy in the literal underground of Seattle, are different; and what you can buy in Shinjuku, or in Guadalajara, are also different. SR has rules for adjusting the *actual price paid* from the nominal base price.

Second, in the equivalents of Big Six.
(1) Shadowrunners want an action booster: wired reflexes, synaptic booster, or the magical equivalent, sustainably-cast Increase Reflexes. Acting only after the opposition has acted three times is generally for chumps.
(2) ???
A weapon, but that varies perhaps more in SR than in D&D: katana, firearm, Focus weapon...
(3) Profit!
(4) Shadowrunners want some kind of damage-soaking ability. There's a long list of specific means to this end, but most PCs will have at least one of them, on a built-in, always-on, passive basis; and reinforced bones are AFAIK a go-to method. Scratch ten shadowrunners hanging out at a bar, and I bet that seven or more were wearing Armor Vest. (Assuming it's the kind of bar which doesn't welcome customers while they're wearing a full battlesuit.)
(5) Shadowrunners want improved senses. Eye implants are a common go-to for one's Perception dice pool.
(6) Shadowrunners don't want to be tracked down and positively identified. Expendable "burner" perscomps, loaded with fake SINs, are about as universal as Armor Vest and eye implants, or maybe more so. Not to mention masks.

 

[CapnZapp]

So what's stopping someone from using the 3.5 MiC or SRD, as Hussar pointed out, price lists for the items which are printed in the 5e DMG? That also would hardly take any time and one of the options is freely available.

Let me inform you that this is grossly underestimating the work needed to calibrate the price lists for 5e. Thank you.

 

[CapnZapp]

And this rolls right back around to a point I made a long time ago in this thread.

Fungible magic items have HUGE setting implications. Now magic is so common that it's used for advertising? Spreading word around town helps you in that town, sure, but, beyond that town? How long is that bard going to have to stand on a corner spreading work that you're selling a magic sword that only three people in the town could possibly afford, even if they actually wanted to buy one? How often are itinerant, vastly wealthy, "adventurers" passing through town to be able to hear/see your advertising and take you up on it?

These are huge setting changers. I don't want magic reduced down to bloody sky writing air elementals. It's fine for a joke setting, but, not something I want to run. It also means that there are enough high level casters running around that doing something like that is actually an option. Again, fine for 3e style demographics, but, again, you're now forcing everyone playing the game to follow your play style. Every town has to have multiple high level casters according to the demographics. Not what I want.

You could simply have said "I don't like it".

Then, you could have continued "...but if other people do, I hope WotC will cater to their needs too. Good luck"

See, the point here is, what caters to the broadest play styles. By catering to the "I want a price list" crowd, everyone has to play D&D like it was 3e/Pathfinder. Every world has to work that way, because of the presumptions in game world design. Leaving the price list to each DM, with everything from "No, you can't buy magic items" to "Magic items are up to the DM" allows everyone to have their cake.

No.

Here, you try to make a rational argument why it is in everybody's best interests to deny a significant group of D&D players their playing style.

Not only is that a miserly, ungrateful, attitude to have, but it is also completely unfounded.

See, the DMG is already printed. The pricing mechanisms you are so afraid of isn't in there. No matter what happens, noone will force you to use them when they arrive.

So your position boils down to "I wish that others should not get what they want simply because I don't like it".

Yup, those that want the price list have to do some leg work. True. The 5e DMG does include some guidelines, but, they're pretty basic. Then again, what's stopping you form using the 3e price lists? Last I checked, the Hypertext SRD was still going, so, those price lists are still completely accessible. Why can't you use those? It's not like price lists don't exist anywhere.

Let me inform you that this is grossly underestimating the work needed to calibrate the price lists for 5e. Your suggestion simply doesn't work.

 

[pemerton]

That said, don't tell me there is nothing to use gold on... you're only limited by your imagination and yours and your DM's willingness to create a story that is more than just combat. If just combat is all you want, keep playing 3.x and/or 4e, those were great systems for gearing up and combat heavy games.

<snip>

5e is a different flavor, a different style, and currently it provides gaps and wiggle room for DM's that 3.x and 4e never did.

I don't think it's helpful to denigrate other editions so as to promote 5e.

I can't comment on 3E, as I don't know it all that well, but 4e easily accommodates non-combat oriented uses of gold. There are guidelines for correlating money expenditure to bonuses on skill checks, in the DMG 2 and also (via the hireling rules) in MME.

If your 4e GM didn't use those rules, or forced you to pay a 'combat heavy game', that's a GM issue. It's nothing to do with the rules or lack of 'wiggle room' in the system.

she's not buying the potion with gold coins which she gained when she fought packs of kobolds, driving them from the outskirts of Verona so that humans can re-settle the area, is she?

you can run all kinds of action filled campaigns without much treasure at all.

I think separating treasure acquisition from loot gained via adventuring is an important step in taking D&D beyond its classic dungeon-crawling origins.

4e made this easy within a very structure framework, because there is no necessary connection between collecting treasure parcels and looting defeated enemies. (There are no AD&D-style treasure tables, monsters do not have treasure entries, etc.) Treasure can be gained in the form of gifts, blessings, etc without having to change anything about the system or its expectations.

5e has a very non-structured framework, but seems likewise to make it easy to decouple treasure acquisition from looting for those who want to.

I think 5e's lack of structure, compared to 4e, probably makes it harder to formalise rules that correlate money spent to mechanical bonuses. Whether that's a strength or a weakness I'll leave for others to debate!

 

[pemerton]

Actually I think I he did. At least roughly. I recall it being mentioned in the books how the mithral shirt was worth more than the entire shire. That's an idea about a price

It was Gandalf who made that observation. Gimli described it as 'a kingly gift'.

How much would a noble in France be expected to pay for a finger bone of a saint in the 13th century? You have the entire Internet at your fingertips. Give me a price. Come on, it should be easy.

Page 184 of the book chapter that [MENTION=221]Wicht[/MENTION] linked to upthread states that

when Count Odo of Champagne in 1033 sacked and burned Commercy, amidst the booty was the arm of St. Pantalon . . . this sacred booty might be treated exactly like other spoils — the arm of Pantalon, for example, was subsequently sold to Abbot Richard of St. Vanne in Verdun for one
silver mark.​

So the going price looks to be in the general neighbourhood of 1 gp! (Allowing that a mark is somewhere between 10 and 20 shillings.)

 

[S'mon]

And from scholagladiatoria comes this video:
[video=youtube;9rp3nve9CJk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rp3nve9CJk&sns=em[/video]

From the notes to this video:



Emphasis mine.

As pointed out in the video, not only was this English law, but also French.

He also noted that many people might OWN weapons bigger than a dagger or knife, but they were not allowed to bear them as weapons. Instead, they were like hacksilver or baat: inheritances, repositories of wealth- a substitute for money.

The Roman Empire had laws restricting the carrying of weapons as well- you had to be a free citizen of the Roman Empire. "Barbarians" were not permitted to carry OR buy weapons within their borders, and those caught selling to them risked their lives to do so.

I guess we're interpreting the same sources differently - the English city carry law you quote allows for a lot of exceptions (eg anyone entering or leaving the city - which would cover most adventurers), and in the later Roman empire pretty much every non-slave permanent inhabitant was a citizen.
Even today in England, which has some of the most repressive laws in all human history, I've just been out and about this morning with a 4' staff of chestnut wood that could give anyone a good crack - entirely legal since it's my 'walking staff'.

 

[pemerton]

I guess we're interpreting the same sources differently - the English city carry law you quote allows for a lot of exceptions (eg anyone entering or leaving the city - which would cover most adventurers)

I also think there must be doubts about the degree of enforcement of those sorts of laws, given the relatively weak extent and capacity of the administrative apparatus of government when compared to such contemporary states as the UK, the US or Australia.

 

[Riley37]

I think separating treasure acquisition from loot gained via adventuring is an important step in taking D&D beyond its classic dungeon-crawling origins.

Yes. Such yes. "Some men rob you with a six-gun, others with a fountain pen."

If you WANT to stay right in the middle of the murder-hobo kill-and-loot stereotype, fine.

And if you'd rather measure your success by other means, such as how well you protected a peasant village from bandit raiders, or how many new spell formulae you've researched, or how effectively you deterred the rise of Tiamat, or how well you earned the gratitude of Lord Cupcake, then there's other options under the 5E umbrella.

I'm not here to judge.