On character wealth an d game balance

[Obormot]

I want to write a book, and you want "quick pointers". I'll try.

Oh, don't get me wrong — I far prefer the book to the quick pointers; I just didn't want to demand too much.

Thanks for this! I have to digest what you've written here and see if I have anything useful to say in response...

 

[Obormot]

Ok, some questions / thoughts...

... dividing the gold and platinum columns of the treasure types by 20.

Why 20 and not 10? Is it because of electrum...?

Given the wealth = XP assumptions ...

So, about that... I'm planning to run a campaign that uses the "XP for GP" approach. (It won't be quite the same as the way old-school D&D did it, though the basic idea is the same.)

Suppose I made the change you describe. Would you say I should award "XP for SP", then? (i.e. adjust the conversion rate to compensate) Or...?

... the rest of it ...

Wow, this is really valuable stuff.

Ok, so one thing that immediately occurs to me is to try and approach this from another angle: to ask, "what spells and magic items and so forth break these assumptions"? You listed mount; some others are well-known (e.g. fabricate); a more comprehensive list would be useful, I think! It would be easier, as a short-term solution to some problems, to modify spell lists than to modify the game's economic modeling system (though the latter is anyhow desirable).

Personally, I'd pay $69.95 for a book that actually did this right. I might pay even more if it had a really good abstract system for running dynastic play at different levels of granularity - ei, how much income does a PC get from the properties he owns. Pathfinder's Complete Campaign had some pretty cool rules along those lines, and I've seen bits and pieces here and there that were really cool, but I've never seen a designer really put all of this together.

I, too, would pay that much for such a book. No question.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

My standard response is that D&D is not now and never has been even REMOTELY a viable economic simulator. IMO people shouldn't try to make it one. RPG's are not designed by people like Milton Friedman or Alan Greenspan because roleplaying economics with any accuracy - IME - makes a game insufferably dull and tedious. Clearly it bothers some more than others and I truly wish them luck making viable game world economics and the looting of tombs and dragon hoards by teams of Conans work seamlessly. Seems to me the issue arises when trying to force PC's to fit the world economy as if they were normal people. If you simply focus on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting (without being out of control) and IGNORE the real effects that they would have on an economy and the real restrictions they'd face in that economy then the game will go smoothly and the economy can be ignored unless the DM, for whatever reasons, WANTS to make it an issue. The game is supposed to revolve about the experience of the PC's after all.

How a peasant actually earns money, how much money he earns, how much money it takes to collapse a local economy, etc. These things just don't matter - unless the DM insists that they do. Players don't much care if the economic model actually works and makes sense - until the DM has it affecting their PC's. And even then it doesn't have to really work out mathematically and sociologically. The only part that matters is the UTTERLY superficial part that the players/PC's see and interact with. You don't need to establish WHY a backpack costs 2 GP, it just does. The players will not care unless they find that their newly created PC can't afford one. And then it only matters until they come back from the first adventure with 100 gp in their pocket to spend on more stuff.

When a PC has 50,000 gp and finds he has nothing to spend it on because the only things that valuable are magical items is that supposed to be a valid knock against the never-has-existed economic model of the game or a challenge for the DM or player to figure out something else viable to do with it? Like build a castle, a merchant empire, a small city, a small country (from a bankrupt king who wants to sell it and become an adventurer himself)...

Making a D&D economy make sense is missing the point. IMO.

YMMV

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, some questions / thoughts...Why 20 and not 10? Is it because of electrum...?

The relative value of silver to gold fluctuates based on how easily one or the other is mined. Depending on the era, silver might be worth 1/10th of gold or 1/12th of gold or 1/20th of gold. Gygax assumed 1/20th which I think it is pretty reasonable over fairly long periods, and certainly reasonable if you have dwarves with advanced mining techniques and something like a global economy that D&D typically has. So I tend to stick with 1 g.p. = 20 s.p. Feel free to use any conversion rate you like though, as long as you are consistent about it.

So, about that... I'm planning to run a campaign that uses the "XP for GP" approach. (It won't be quite the same as the way old-school D&D did it, though the basic idea is the same.) Suppose I made the change you describe. Would you say I should award "XP for SP", then? (i.e. adjust the conversion rate to compensate)

I would. If you don't, what you probably need to do is convert the peasant economy over to gold pieces as more and more modern systems are doing. That is, a peasant earns about 1 g.p. per day, so that you get conversions like 1 g.p. ~ $50, and copper and silver coinage is just 'small change'. You'll probably find though that if you do this, you need some sort of lightweight container of more value. Gygax used gems and jewelry, but you might end up with mithril coins or orichalcum coins or whatever.

Ok, so one thing that immediately occurs to me is to try and approach this from another angle: to ask, "what spells and magic items and so forth break these assumptions"? You listed mount; some others are well-known (e.g. fabricate); a more comprehensive list would be useful, I think! It would be easier, as a short-term solution to some problems, to modify spell lists than to modify the game's economic modeling system (though the latter is anyhow desirable).

Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Teleportation Circle, etc. You'll need some combination of changing the economics (material components), changing the effects of the spells, and perhaps changing the rules of reality in subtle ways to introduce unexpected costs to using magic (the magical equivalent of pollution, radiation, etc.).

Equally importantly, you'll need to take a really hard look at how the game prices magic items. The balance tends to be really bad even from a dungeoneering perspective, but look out for 'discounts' on the price of something based on the idea that if it doesn't help you in combat, it's not that valuable. For example, watch out for the price of skill boosting items. Consider the effects of something like a Ring of Craft X +10 if you assume that skill turns into value. How fast would such an item pay for itself?

 

[Grogg of the North]

My standard response is that D&D is not now and never has been even REMOTELY a viable economic simulator. IMO people shouldn't try to make it one. RPG's are not designed by people like Milton Friedman or Alan Greenspan because roleplaying economics with any accuracy - IME - makes a game insufferably dull and tedious. Clearly it bothers some more than others and I truly wish them luck making viable game world economics and the looting of tombs and dragon hoards by teams of Conans work seamlessly. Seems to me the issue arises when trying to force PC's to fit the world economy as if they were normal people. If you simply focus on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting (without being out of control) and IGNORE the real effects that they would have on an economy and the real restrictions they'd face in that economy then the game will go smoothly and the economy can be ignored unless the DM, for whatever reasons, WANTS to make it an issue. The game is supposed to revolve about the experience of the PC's after all.

How a peasant actually earns money, how much money he earns, how much money it takes to collapse a local economy, etc. These things just don't matter - unless the DM insists that they do. Players don't much care if the economic model actually works and makes sense - until the DM has it affecting their PC's. And even then it doesn't have to really work out mathematically and sociologically. The only part that matters is the UTTERLY superficial part that the players/PC's see and interact with. You don't need to establish WHY a backpack costs 2 GP, it just does. The players will not care unless they find that their newly created PC can't afford one. And then it only matters until they come back from the first adventure with 100 gp in their pocket to spend on more stuff.

When a PC has 50,000 gp and finds he has nothing to spend it on because the only things that valuable are magical items is that supposed to be a valid knock against the never-has-existed economic model of the game or a challenge for the DM or player to figure out something else viable to do with it? Like build a castle, a merchant empire, a small city, a small country (from a bankrupt king who wants to sell it and become an adventurer himself)...

Making a D&D economy make sense is missing the point. IMO.

YMMV

To springboard off of this, in the current campaign I'm running one of my current players grilled me for a long time on why someone in the setting (a jungle frontier city known for mining) would want to be an adventurer. I gave various reasons as to why someone would want to give up the safety of home and go out exploring the great unknown but I was getting very close to throwing my hands up in the air and saying "It's a game! Don't over think it!"

 

[Celebrim]

My standard response is that D&D is not now and never has been even REMOTELY a viable economic simulator.

So your standard response is to thread crap all over the place when the topic isn't something you like.

Your subjective standards as to what play should be and what sort of play is enjoyable can be whatever you want.

But, to begin with, you are objectively wrong that this sort of stuff doesn't have an impact on play regardless of what sort of play you are talking about - even kicking down the doors, killing the monster, and taking their stuff. I didn't come to these conclusions because 30 odd years ago I set out to create an economic simulation that would satisfy Milton Friedman. I came to these conclusions because when I didn't pay attention to these things, I notice the issues didn't go away, they just distorted play in various ways both subtle and profound. It's not like my 12 year old or my 15 year old self had a lot of formal training in economics and I was trying to apply economics to the game just because I adored economics. This sort of thing comes up repeatedly as a practical matter. Leaving aside the simulationist aspects of it, it's part of such ubiquitous and important gamist problems as, "non-spellcaster's can't have good stuff." It's part of what's behind things like the Christmas Tree problem, and ubiquitous problems like lack of game balance and thematic problems like the mundanity of magic. In 1e, it was part of what was behind issues like, "Why can only NPCs have good stuff?" This thread began as a conversation of how economics impacted game balance for crying out loud, and as soon as a PC realizes that he can potentially leverage economics to gain advantage it becomes a problem.

It's not something that DMs inflict on players because the DM is 'insisting' on something. More often, it becomes an issue because the player starts insisting on something - like "Can I take these silver coins and make jewelry out of them, and if I do, how much is it worth?", or "Since I can't afford the thing I want right now, how much money will I earn if I invest my money in a business while we go on the next adventure?" or, "As long as we are buying a ship and sailing it to City-Over-Sea, why don't we fill the hold with trade goods and try to turn an extra profit or at least pay for the cost of the crew?" My thoughts on this grow not mainly out of my own desires and interests in the game, but 30 years DMing players that are often highly active and proactive in their propositions and interaction with the world. It's not a matter of me 'wanting' to make them an issue, so much a matter of having the issue forced upon me and realizing that the game gave me vastly too few tools to deal with those sorts of questions in a good way. The answers that I'm giving now are the result of 30 odd years of trial and error in trying to find good answers to the questions players pose.

Even something like the wages of peasants aren't something that matters just because "DMs insist on it". In fact, the wages of peasants are or were considered such an important aspect of play for a player, that they are addressed in the rules for taking character classes in 1e. They don't become important just because DMs insist on inflicting unwanted fiddly details on players. They become important the first time the player of the 10th level fighter says something like, "If I improve my serfs lot in life, can I collect more taxes from them?"

My thoughts on this aren't 'utterly superficial' because I don't demand that my players interact with the world in utterly superficial ways. Or just maybe, I'm not the one that is making the game not revolve around the PC's but in fact empowering them, rather than assuming that the PCs are just going to robotically follow a script of which dungeons are to be looted next.

Declaring that game is not intended to be an economic simulation is as ridiculous as claiming it's not intended to be a combat simulation or a simulation of exploring dangerous sub-surface ruins. Economics have always impacted play in some fashion and have always been built into the game in some fashion, from 1e's assumption that wealth was how you kept score and tracked success, to 3e's assumption of wealth by level that started this conversation.

The thing here that isn't 'making sense' is you. I could care less about the chip you have on your shoulder about this topic. It's ridiculous to make a statement like "When a PC has 50,000 gp and finds he has nothing to spend it on because the only things that valuable are magical items is that supposed to be a valid knock against the never-has-existed economic model of the game or a challenge for the DM or player to figure out something else viable to do with it? Like build a castle, a merchant empire, a small city, a small country (from a bankrupt king who wants to sell it and become an adventurer himself)...", and then not expect that to have some sort of model underneath it if it is both to empower the player to make meaningful choices and be interesting in play. Did it ever occur to you that the only things valuable being magical items is a side effect of focusing all the economic detail on magical items and not on anything else. It's not enough to hand wave all these things and problems away because there is nothing 'simple' about focusing on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting, and 'keeping the PC's experiences' interesting in the context of out of system and unsystematic rulings is just other words for railroading the game according to the DM's narrative preferences. Basically, your 'answer', such as it is, to questions like, "How do I go about building my own castle, merchant empire, small city or small country, and if I build my own castle, merchant empire, or small city, what happens next?", is "Whatever the DM thinks is interesting."

If you don't get the point, just shut up. And if you are going to be all passive aggressive and insulting, don't think ending it with "YMMV" makes it all better and start feigning how you polite you were with your insinuations and thread crapping. Even if I was wrong about all these objective matters, it still wouldn't give you the right to come around and tell everyone how their subjective preferences for play should be the same as yours.

YMMV.

 

[TwoSix]

Personally, I'd pay $69.95 for a book that actually did this right. I might pay even more if it had a really good abstract system for running dynastic play at different levels of granularity - ei, how much income does a PC get from the properties he owns. Pathfinder's Complete Campaign had some pretty cool rules along those lines, and I've seen bits and pieces here and there that were really cool, but I've never seen a designer really put all of this together.

ACKS is probably the closest thing out to what you're looking for.

 

[Celebrim]

ACKS is probably the closest thing out to what you're looking for.

Thanks. Just added it to my 'wishlist' on RPGNow.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

So your standard response is to thread crap all over the place when the topic isn't something you like.

Thread crap? No, just a different perspective than yours.

Your subjective standards as to what play should be and what sort of play is enjoyable can be whatever you want.

Didn't I say that? I believe I did say that. I was trying to say that by putting IME and IMO in there more than should have needed to be. Guess I just need to do that at the end of every sentence next time.

In any case, except for where my conclusion actually differs from yours about how to approach that it looks like we're in agreement.

But, to begin with, you are objectively wrong that this sort of stuff doesn't have an impact on play regardless of what sort of play you are talking about - even kicking down the doors, killing the monster, and taking their stuff. I didn't come to these conclusions because 30 odd years ago I set out to create an economic simulation that would satisfy Milton Friedman. I came to these conclusions because when I didn't pay attention to these things, I notice the issues didn't go away, they just distorted play in various ways both subtle and profound.

And my experience differs, as I indicated. And I didn't say it doesn't have an impact on play. What I was saying, if I may rephrase, is that detailed economics are not necessary for the game to run, and run well. Players don't need a working model of economics. They mostly just need answers to, "Where can I sell this?" "Where can I buy that?" and "Is there more for my PC to do with money than just buy more gear?" You don't need real economics to come up with those answers. As I noted, that is problematic for some - that when you look below the surface it doesn't work. The point is that for THE GAME to work you don't need economic rules under the surface that do more than superficially give the appearance of an economy for the players.

This tread began as a conversation of how economics impacted game balance for crying out loud, and as soon as a PC realizes that he can potentially leverage economics to gain advantage it becomes a problem.

Or an OPPORTUNITY...

More often, it becomes an issue because the player starts insisting on something - like "Can I take these silver coins and make jewelry out of them, and if I do, how much is it worth?", or "Since I can't afford the thing I want right now, how much money will I earn if I invest my money in a business while we go on the next adventure?" or, "As long as we are buying a ship and sailing it to City-Over-Sea, why don't we fill the hold with trade goods and try to turn an extra profit or at least pay for the cost of the crew?"

And the DM simply making up an answer out of thin air that doesn't conform to a viable economic model won't work? Seems to me that the game has ground on through several editions over 40 years doing exactly that.

My thoughts on this grow not mainly out of my own desires and interests in the game, but 30 years DMing players that are often highly active and proactive in their propositions and interaction with the world. It's not a matter of me 'wanting' to make them an issue, so much a matter of having the issue forced upon me and realizing that the game gave me vastly too few tools to deal with those sorts of questions in a good way. The answers that I'm giving now are the result of 30 odd years of trial and error in trying to find good answers to the questions players pose.

It's been 40 years for me - not that seniority means a thing here - and it demonstrated to me that pulling numbers out of thin air when players need those answers works just fine.

Even something like the wages of peasants aren't something that matters just because "DMs insist on it". In fact, the wages of peasants are or were considered such an important aspect of play for a player, that they are addressed in the rules for taking character classes in 1e.

I would say "important aspect of play" is rather too strong a characterization. IF a PC reached the appropriate level (and most didn't and still don't under 1E if one can put any stock in forum polls which is about the only source of data on 1E gameplay these days), and IF they chose to establish a stronghold/temple/whatever then, yes, the PC could collect taxes that varied by the PC's class. And unless the PC rapidly grew that stronghold into a serious city-state or nation-state those taxes are hardly critical to the PC. At that point a fighter would be spending, what? 25,000gp or better to advance to their next level? If he somehow instantly grew his stronghold to a population of 10,000 paying 7 sp each then the 3500 gp he'd take in from taxes isn't chicken feed - but if that fighter lord goes adventuring he'd be bringing home better profit than that (one would hope), and the taxes would be quite sweet icing on that cake. If the PC actually "retires" at that point with his instant-10,000 population stronghold then 3500gp per month is some pretty serious partying funds. And again, the economic explanation of HOW the peasants produce that cash is hardly needed for the game to continue on. The PC gets the tax money and the game rolls forward.

They don't become important just because DMs insist on inflicting unwanted fiddly details on players. They become important the first time the player of the 10th level fighter says something like, "If I improve my serfs lot in life, can I collect more taxes from them?"

And the DM can't simply answer "Yes" or "No" without a mathematically functional game economy in place to establish that the DM has the power and privilege of just making it up?

"Yes. You can collect 1sp more per month per peasant if you spend 1000 gold."
"No. The 7sp per month listed for fighters collecting taxes from their stronghold citizens is to be considered optimum and peasants would be quite satisfied with that. MAYBE the peasants will accept a raise in taxes, depending on how you actually decide to improve their lot. Tell me what you actually do, then we'll try it and see how the peasants react..."

See? That's not difficult to do is it? And still no economic model needed.

Declaring that game is not intended to be an economic simulation is as ridiculous as claiming it's not intended to be a combat simulation or a simulation of exploring dangerous sub-surface ruins.

How is that ridiculous? Haven't you been talking about how badly it works AS an economic simulation? And doesn't that extend at least back across your 30 years of experience with the game? And if Gygax DID intend it to be a viable economic simulation then that is something I'd be quite happy to learn more about. Got any references for how he intended the economy to work other than by DM fiat glossing over any actual details?

Economics have always impacted play in some fashion and have always been built into the game in some fashion, from 1e's assumption that wealth was how you kept score and tracked success, to 3e's assumption of wealth by level that started this conversation.

I agree - although even for 3E that level of "building in" is still completely superficial. 3E's take on it has a few more numbers, but is no more viable as a working economic model than 1E ever was. I don't have a 3.5 DMG but 3.0 is going to be the same. In the just over a staggering half page on the topic of "Economics" it even answers the core question of the thread - how much does a peasant earn?

A common laborer earns 1 sp a day. That's just enough to allow his family to survive, assuming that this income is supplanted with food his family grows to eat, homemade clothing, and a reliance on self-sufficiency for most tasks (personal grooming, health, animal tending, and so on).

That's mostly a section dealing with simple coinage though (and notes that PC's - and those they interact with - are going to deal mostly in gold). But following sections include all of two paragraphs on taxes, one on moneychangers and two on supply and demand. Mostly it comes down to, "These are elements of economics. Use these as a DM to effectively MIMIC something that looks like an economy." Combined with limits on community cash and selling power a DM then has tools to demonstrate to PC's that they can't dump too much loot into a small community and will have to spread it around. No rules about what happens when they DO drain an entire community of its funds limit. That's left for the DM to adjudicate when and if it's deemed necessary to do so. The interaction the PC's have with the economy has been satisfied and the players are typically content to move on. If the DM wants the situation to be a bigger issue they can make it so, but rules for it aren't needed. Certainly not unless players want to fully manipulate the economy rather than just interact with it on a general consumer level. Even if they do that, if the DM UNDERSTANDS something of economics they can continue to have the game world behave as if there WERE a viable structure to it beyond PC's usual superficial interaction. Actually having that underlying structure still isn't needed.

Again, if any DM really wants that working economy for whatever reasons then good luck with that. Really. We should all game on and be happy. But I think my point is still valid - you don't need a demonstrably working economy and the game has always managed without it, sufficing with the mere appearance of one for most purposes. Maybe it managed VERY BADLY at times, but that doesn't mean the game need grind to a halt without it either.

The thing here that isn't 'making sense' is you. I could care less about the chip you have on your shoulder about this topic.

Why would think I'm bent out of shape about this? I'm not. I am not upset that you want an economic model for D&D. I don't insist that everyone else toe MY line - although I would suggest that it seems YOU do. Do what you like. PLEASE. Be the Adam Smith of D&D and many happy returns. I simply have the shocking gall to believe that SOME people might be interested to have it pointed out that their game can run just fine without detailed economics.

Did it ever occur to you that the only things valuable being magical items is a side effect of focusing all the economic detail on magical items and not on anything else. It's not enough to hand wave all these things and problems away because there is nothing 'simple' about focusing on keeping the PC's experiences in the game world interesting, and 'keeping the PC's experiences' interesting in the context of out of system and unsystematic rulings is just other words for railroading the game according to the DM's narrative preferences.

It's been enough for ME to handwave these things for decades without railroading.

Basically, your 'answer' such as it is, to questions like, "How do I go about building my own castle, merchant empire, small city or small country, and I build my own castle, merchant empire, or small city, what happens next?", is "Whatever the DM thinks is interesting."

Yes. And?

If you don't get the point, just shut up. And if you are going to be all passive aggressive and insulting, don't think ending it with "YMMV" makes it all better and start feigning how you polite you were with your insinuations and thread crapping. Even if I was wrong about all these objective matters, it still wouldn't give you the right to come around and tell everyone how their subjective preferences for play should be the same as yours.

I'll just quote this part and leave it here.

YMMV.

And does...

 

[Greenfield]

In a feeble attempt to defuse a discussion that's likely to get MODded...

In our game our Paladin of Freedom was looking for information on the local ruler, a man known to be a Necromancer. He was thinking of trying to overthrow the ruler.

He stopped and asked a peasant farmer's opinion of the ruler: Was he oppressive, cruel, greedy or evil? Did the people live in fear of him and his undead minions?

The man answered and gave an obviously Reader's Digest version of his opinion, knowing as he did that peasant farmers *always* say that they love their noble rulers, at least when talking to strangers. Yet, over all the man was truthful: Yes the undead scared him. The monsters who lived around the valley, who the undead were tasked with stopping, scared him more. No, the lord wasn't cruel or evil, though he really was an iron-fist type when it came to keeping order. His laws and rules weren't arbitrary, etc.

The Paladin thanked the man and gave him a reward for his time and trouble. 100 gold pieces.

The bounty just about knocked the man off his feet. That gift, so minor to an 8th level PC, was close to two year's income for the farmer, and his "income" usually came in the form of goods and services he bartered farm produce for. Actual coin, in such volume, was something that peasant farmers just don't see.

In an actual agrarian-based medieval setting, an awful lot of the economy was handled on credit and barter. There simply wasn't enough gold or silver available to handle most day to day business, particularly at the low levels.

A farmer has "income" a few times a year. depending on the climate and region he might get two crops in a year. He'll split his fields into four, with one laying fallow, and the others chosen so they don't all come to harvest at the same time, so he can spread the work load across more time.

Even so, other than minor day-to-day stuff like selling eggs, butter and milk, or garden vegetables, he had almost nothing to sell for most of the year.

Generally this meant that he either did for himself and his family, bought on credit, or did without.

Rents and taxes were paid on the "quarter day", which meant March 15th, June 15th, September 15th and December 15th. Often they were paid with a share of a crop being harvested, or the promise of a share when one was.

There was a debate at the table about whether the farmer would be wise and hide his sudden surplus away for a rainy day, or would he venture into town and spend like a drunken sailor. With the understanding that the latter would likely get him accused of theft, withholding on taxes (three copper on the gold was common), or just killed and robbed.

This put the Paladin in the uncomfortable position of possibly getting the helpful peasant imprisoned or killed.

The difference in scale is that sharp.

Note that, IRL, a wealthy merchant or even a minor noble might have buttons of silver and/or pearl that were worth more apiece than a peasant would see in half his life. The wealth gap between the Haves and the Have Nots was even more pronounced than it is in America today. Except then it was the upper 3 to 5 percent, not the one percenters.

The lack of a real middle class, particularly during the dark ages, made that gap all the more visible.

In our game settings we presume a fantasy time setting when there is a middle class, and when people aren't serfs (essentially slaves) bound to the land. Social climbing was legal and possible, unlike the real world of the middle ages.

In this framework, PCs are essentially social climbers, people who left the farm or the work house to try and better themselves. The basic "starting money" they equipped themselves with at 1st level may have been theirs or their family's life savings.

So, is the economy broken? Of course. Neither Gygax nor those that followed after appear to have been very concerned with designing a viable economy. That wasn't their focus. As a result a lot of players and DMs have to sort of look the other way and say, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain". They have to pretend that the oddities and impossibilities simply aren't really there.

Consider this: In 4th ed it costs as much, in material costs, to craft *anything* as it sells for at full market price. That means that no one can make a living. The only thing that keeps the economy turning at all is that PCs go out, loot places, and sell the stuff for a fraction of its actual value.

If not for adventurers, the economy would stagnate, civilization would crumble and people would starve.

Now *that's* broken. D&D 3.5 is a cake walk by comparison.