D&D 4E 4E Item price parity.

[Blackeagle]

Very bad use of logic and wikipedia there to say what you wanted

Evidently I didn't write that clearly enough for you to see what I was agreeing with you.

I've edited it a bit to try to get my point across better.

D&D is very different from this, so Yeah, the 3gp from then was worth about 3000gp in the d&d Gold coin based economy.

Which was exactly my point. D&D hands out gold like candy and has to raise the prices on everything to compensate.

 

[KKDragonLord]

OOoops, very very sorry
i hate when that happens

 

[Kzach]

D&D is very different from this, so Yeah, the 3gp from then was worth about 3000gp in the d&d Gold coin based economy.

And yet, despite this, I still fail to care.

 

[Thasmodious]

As a suggestion... give every starting character a suit of armor appropriate to them, a melee and ranged weapon of choice (which includes a rod/staff/orb)... then make the prices whatever you want and watch it _never matter again_.

This.

The point is, wasting time, pages and complexity on something that will matter for 10 seconds while already doing paperwork (building your character) and then never matter again is pointless. Make it simple and move on. Keterys's simplification here is even better. Just have everyone start with basic gear + adventurers pack and don't sweat it. You basically never buy mundane armor again anyway.

This seems to be a recurring (and good) design philosophy in 4e. Simple things to get to the adventuring. Any group that wants a "better" economy system can make one up. Clearly, if you are wanting "better" or something you like from another game you are experienced enough to take care of it yourself without needing the game books to do the work for you. I happen to really like that approach. Simple system - houserule anything you or your group feels is more important. Mundane equipment for my group isn't. After starting gear, I always just charged them a weekly or monthly "upkeep" fee from their gold which included room, food, replenishing basic gear like rations and ammo, etc. The only time resource management of basic gear became important was on lengthy wilderness treks, when food or water or shelter would become a concern.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Hi!

I've DM'ed for 28 years and I agree with those, that beyond the initial outfitting of the PC, the prices never come up again. Mostly they find or make their own after that.

One HUGE reason, at least for me, is that the lower price means the resale value is also low and PC groups who love to scavenge looted armor will not be "insta-rich" anymore reselling a few suits of ordinary plate.

Now they can ignore mundane items they already have and truly go for the "treasure" and I don't have to worry about outfitting my bad guys with plate that may fall in their hands and give them inappropriate amounts of gold.

Primarchone

I agree. There have been times where the encounters I've made had the NPCs carry little to no gold, yet the PCs stripped every bad guy naked and sold ALL their crap for half price and bought whatever they wanted anyhow.
The price change only makes it harder to Min-Max the system.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

How hard do you think making full plate is then?
i can tell you, a lot more, lot more work and time too
and it needs some mad skills to fit the person who will use it.
by the end of the dark ages only 6 places in europe (and the world) were known to have crafters good enough to make them.
A fully plated knight and warhorse cost enough to equip 100 soldiers.

so yeah, if they still make plate out of steel, it should be a bit expensive.

End of the dark age?

Plate armor is common from the 1300s up, not the dark age.

At its height, it was affordable enough, and mass produced enough, that you could have several thousands of warriors on a battlefield wearing it without the kingdom going bankrupt. I'm not saying it was cheap by any mean, but neither is 50gp in 4e D&D.

Earlier or later than the golden age of plate armour, it's rarer and more expensive, of course.

But it's silly really. D&D forces types of arms and armour to coexist in the same time frame that never did in the real world.

In practice, it wasn't more expensive for a crusade era knight to acquire chain mail than it was for his hundred years era counterpart to acquire plate.

The prices are all right for what they are trying to achieve, which is balance. In D&D, people able to create a suit of plate are plentyful enough that this is what the suit is worth. Now a magical suit of armor, on the other hand...

 

[vazanar]

I like the knights tale idea. The initial plate is sort of a mishmash or old family set. The first magical plate the character gets isn't so much magic as properly made full plate, which in POL setting would probably be equivalent to finiding someone to do a "magical" ritual.

 

[drjones]

d&d economy just became completely unbeliavable and that tends to ruin things to my group, who is interested in at least some consistency.

I think you meant to say 'd&d economy became completely unbelievable in 1974'

Unless you are messing with balance in other ways saying 'plate costs 1,000 times more than leather' is just saying 'noone ever wears plate in my game' because giving plate as loot will vastly over-wealth the characters allowing them to buy magic leather many levels over their level with the cash from one suit of magic plate below their level.

 

[KKDragonLord]

Originally Posted by Mal Malenkirk
End of the dark age?

Plate armor is common from the 1300s up, not the dark age.

Sorry, i meant the middle ages
either way, some pieces of Plate began to be worn around the 13th century but was only around the late 14th that the Field plate armor was developed

here is a list of what parts where developed when
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Components_of_medieval_armour


here its shown that transition to plate occurred slowly through the centuries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour

and here is a much more accurate source for pricing of plate armor
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm#expense_b

cool stuff really, learned some things myself

And drjones if you go back to my posts you will see how i deal with it in my games, and its not as you are saying.
Specially since i have been quoting ad&d prices from the very beginning

Seriously, hello people, remember 3.5? Leather armor was 15gp and full plate was 1250gp you could buy 100 sets of leather armor with the money from a single plate. Magic items were a whole different story, as they always were and always will be, i even said that.

 

[Oliviander]

Simulation of economy

D&D is not an accurate simlation of a medieval economy?

I, for one, am shocked!

Actually 3.5 was a very realistic simulation of an economy at least until
characterlevel 10. I once did calculations on income according to the profession, craft and other skills and even including all phb spells up to level 5 and I found there is only 1 spell that was really overpowered in this range.

Assuming that there are only few Characters in a world above level 10 it is also a good assumption that they will not affect the picture as a whole, in spite of being very powerful.

BTW the economically broken spell is Cure Disease