Gold or Silver Standard?

[JoeGKushner]

Another thread talking about currency made me wonder... should gold be the standard in a POL setting?

I say no.

Right now, copper pieces make about zero sense since most things are priced in gold, especially from an adventurer's point of view.

Silver standard would allow other types of metals like bronze and electrum to be added while making things like platinum and gold 'real' treasures.

Opinions?

 

[simply not edible]

I don't see this having any effect whatsoever.

Smaller currencies will always be useless to high-level adventurers. Changing teh standard currency will do nothing to change that.

What the "standard" is doesn't matter from a mechanical pint of view. It could be enriched uranium cores, and the game won't change one bit fom it.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Silver standard would allow other types of metals like bronze and electrum to be added while making things like platinum and gold 'real' treasures.

I'm not sure bronze is a good idea as a coinage (tin is cheaper than copper, so it would actually be worth less than a copper piece; plus there's always a problem when alloys are uses as coins, since you can never be sure how much of each metal are in the coin).

But in general I see your point.

It might be also be worthwhile to space out the value between silver and gold a bit. D&D assumes a 10:1 valuation, but right now (in the real world) it's currently 55:1. You could make more use of trade bars, or "bits" and "coins", where a bit is 1/8th of a coin. The standard currency could be silver bits, while a gold bit is actually worth 8 silver coins (64:1). A single gold coin would then be worth 512 s.b., enough to live comfortably for weeks or months (depending on your lifestyle).

(You'd have to assume that a "coin" is about the size of a Spanish doubloon (with a diameter of at least two inches) and easily cut into eighths at your local blacksmith)

I find this math easy, but those of you more used to a metric system would probably have issues trying to count in powers of two, unless you're a computer person.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I say the "standard" should be tiered. Heroic at silver, paragon at gold, and epic at platinum. This is to say, that a heroic might get 100 silver as a good reward, a paragon 100 gold, and an epic 100 platinum. The exchange rate and item pricing should take this into consideration to build the system so that the math works out. That way you don't have to just start counting up higher and higher numbers and maybe those different metals will actually mean something.

My 15th level 3e game uses things like adamantine bars for currency.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Smaller currencies will always be useless to high-level adventurers.

I just want to point out that this is a 3-ism. 4E doesn't seem to have assumed wealth levels. You could play a 20th level Paladin who still uses the same longsword he had at 1st level and has tithed all his money to the church; in which case every s.p. counts when he can't rely on charity to get him dinner.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Also copper and silver may be worth more in a PoL world, perhaps the mining of gold or simply the fact that gold is worth so much ad thus is horded/protected and rarely used means copper and silver have a more prominent place.

We could have adventures where at the first say 5-levels copper-rewards make common sense and can actually afford things like room and board, sharpening of weapons/repairs, etc.

Silver would be for more higher adventures things you would find raiding a large pirate encampment or thieves-guild or given as reward from a rich-baron.

While gold would be something you found amongst a Dragon's horde, or given to you by a King from the Kingdoms treasury.

 

[simply not edible]

I just want to point out that this is a 3-ism. 4E doesn't seem to have assumed wealth levels. You could play a 20th level Paladin who still uses the same longsword he had at 1st level and has tithed all his money to the church; in which case every s.p. counts when he can't rely on charity to get him dinner.

I see your point, but I believe that, even with less emphasis on magic items, there will still be lots of those in the game. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a WBL-table in the new DMG just as there was in the previous one.

But, of the things hereabove, I'd say that it might indeed be more viable if the conversions were larger than 10:1. This would at least give the smaller currencies a longer lifespan. (Should have thought of that myself!)

 

[Gargoyle]

I've always preferred a silver standard in my campaigns, to keep gold more rare and valuable, and to make copper pieces worth something.

But in the long run, it really doesn't matter much, and I rarely changed it from the official rules...too much trouble. So whatever it is in 4e, I'll probably use.

 

[TwinBahamut]

...should someone be making a "Cross of Gold" speech right about now?

I like the idea of gold being more rare and valuable.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

This is a 3e-ism but I actually found the economic portion of the Dungeonominicon over at the old WoTC boards very useful. It made very good points based on the structure of wealth and magic in 3e, now 4e is probably going to change a lot of those but it still provides a basic framework that can make the upper end of the economic "system" make at least some sense.

High-end magic items had ridiculous prices in gp in 3e, I mean once you got past the first couple + equivalents you're talking about hundreds of pounds of gold. Yet with various conjuration, creation, or summoning spells raw materials of any kind become trivial past a certain level. Want platinum summon a djinn and have it provide, bind a lantern archon and produce potentially thousands of everburning torches, etc. Now if you follow this logical course simple specie currency is purely a artifact for the unwashed masses. Above a certain level it becomes worthless since characters of that level can effectively have as much as they desire via magic.

What this means is while there can be a trade in high-powered magical items they can't be bought for anything so crude as a raw material beyond a certain level. Beyond 15,000gp you can't buy it with gold or silver or even platinum. It takes souls, or gems useful as spell components, or weird planar currencies based on things like raw chaos, bottled pain, high level scrolls, etc.