Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[Hussar]

That's not really a problem. He may not have any particular use for the gold, but having it isn't making things any less fun for him. On the other hand, if the player who's interested in nationbuilding has to make his PC severely underpowered by the party's standards in order to nationbuild, that's not gonna be much fun for him.

Sort of. The problem is, nation building is a very solo activity. If John wants to build a keep, fine, but, what do the other 4 players do in the meantime. Building a castle without magic takes years. So, does John retire his character in the meantime? After all, it would be a pretty strange thing for John to go off and adventure while his castle is being built.

All that kind of stuff is extremely campaign specific and I'm not sure if the DMG is the best place to deal with it initially.

To be fair though, I'd LOVE to see some rules and ideas for how to make this work in a campaign.

 

[DevoutlyApathetic]

That would be AWESOME.

This is 4th edition, regardless of what they look like they'll be monsters if we fight them.

 

[Lancelot]

I'm liking what i'm seeing, particularly the relative rarity of magic items (compared to 3rd edition) and the "20% resale value". Looking through a typical 3e module, it gets a bit silly.

A typical 10th level module might have 6x bugbear guards (Ftr 3, each) in an antechamber, guarding a wizard 11 and a cleric 11 in the next room. The number of magic items on these creatures alone is going to be ludicrous... and largely pointless. At the end of the battle, the Wands of Identify come out, and it'll be: 6x sword +1, 6x chainmail +1, 12x CMW potion, +2 headband of intellect, +2 periapt of wisdom... etc, etc.

And then my players begin with the comments: "You know, one day I'd really like to find that factory where they're mass-producing magical swords for the mooks", "Groan - we've already got all the +2 stat buffers... why couldn't he have a headband +4?", "Well guys... nothing exciting, as usual, but the total resale value is 33k, so how about we buy a...".

No piles of low-level magic items for the mooks/minions? Good.
No Bags of Holding filled with dozens of unwanted +1 weapons for resale? Good.
Ritual mechanisms available for those DMs who don't want "Magic Item Shops"? Good.
Finding a magic item becomes exciting again? Great!

 

[A'koss]

Sort of. The problem is, nation building is a very solo activity. If John wants to build a keep, fine, but, what do the other 4 players do in the meantime.

You've never fast-forwarded a campaign before? Typically when I ran games where you would have some of the PCs engaged in long-term projects on the side, you just move the campaign forward in chunks. Perhaps just one or two adventures happen during the time these projects are being developed.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Well, that economy section is:
- easy to adjudicate.
- easy to change if i want to.
- spells out that "you change it if you don´t like it".

3 out of 3. Well done, WotC.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I would be very surprised to find a player who couldn't find some way to spending his hard-earned gold in the game.

After all, PCs had been doing it right up until 3e...

Yeah, I bought magic items with it. In 2e, we had a couple of DMs who were absolutely dead set against us buying magic items. Our money just piled up until the first chance to blow it on something we didn't want. We'd just hand it to whoever wanted it.

I think someone attempted to shake us down for money on the road once and asked for some stupidly high sum like 20,000 gp each. We asked them what types of coin they wanted it in.

 

[inkmonkeys]

In fact, I bet that would make an excellent campaign idea

I'd play it.

 

[AtomicPope]

I probably shouldn't admit this, as it is quite simply badwrongfun, but I never paid one lick of attention to the 3.X wealth per level chart. I just gave PCs what I wanted to give them when I wanted to give it to them.

Mostly it worked out. Mostly.

Agreed.

The thing about 3e is Magic items never really added up. Any stat boost item was worth way more in terms of usefulness. For a Pally a Cloak of Charisma:
1) Boosted All Saves
2) Boosted their Smite "to hit"
3) Boosted their Lay on Hands

That's a hell of a lot for one item. But then there are "schtick" items like the Lyre of Building which are hardly ever used in an adventure yet cost a fortune. If the cost of items doesn't really add up then "Wealth per Level" isn't a good balance.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So, the only thing one is supposed to really spend gold on is magical items.

Aw, come on. The article clearly stats that you will use the money to by your character his own castle.

And, here's an important part: That NPC who is carrying around that Level 6 item... can he use that? I mean, if that NPC can't use that item, then I question why that guy has it in the first place.

Um... why wouldn't the NPC be able to use the item? It's just as easy to add the item's bonuses and features to an NPC as it is to a PC. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Fitz

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You've never fast-forwarded a campaign before? Typically when I ran games where you would have some of the PCs engaged in long-term projects on the side, you just move the campaign forward in chunks. Perhaps just one or two adventures happen during the time these projects are being developed.

This is rather off topic, but I actually have never done that. Almost all my adventures have some built in time limit and are a series of adventures tied together in a campaign that last 10-20 levels worth of time.

So, magic item creation has never really been an issue for any of my campaigns. Any player who tried spending that much time to do "out of game" activities like keep building, magic item creation, and the like were yelled at by their party members for wasting time when their enemies were getting away or while the villain had the mayor prisoner and might kill him at any time or when the evil cult might destroy the world.