D&D 5E Who else uses silver as the currency denominator rather than gold?

[S'mon]

In some medieval countrys in RL history every able man had to own a sword

That's pretty unusual since swords are great sidearms for daily carry, but generally not great on the battlefield. Normal expectation was more you had to answer the levy with arms - spear shield & helmet probably most common. Linen gambeson if you were keen on not dying.

 

[Lanefan]

Fighting =clubs & staves are apparenly free, rather incredibly.

Nothing incredible about that provided there's any woods, forest or seashore nearby. I've picked up some mighty fine staves off the beaches around here, for example; and if I break one I always know where to find a whole lot more.

 

[S'mon]

Nothing incredible about that provided there's any woods, forest or seashore nearby. I've picked up some mighty fine staves off the beaches around here, for example; and if I break one I always know where to find a whole lot more.

I doubt your stave does as much damage as a steel-tipped spear, unlike the 5e staff.

 

[clearstream]

In all my vanilla campaigns I tend to use silver as the coin base, and I use historical accurate conversion ratios.

1 Gold = 20 Silver = 240 Copper

Since gold is rare and copper coins to minor, I do not have to use the conversion often anyway.

The easiest way to use this is just say Silver instead of gold for the PHB tables. But mostly I do my own equipment lists anyway and decide the value of things so the relation does reflect e.g. work needed to put in the manufacturing of items or availability of items (handmade <-> quasi industrial manufacturing of items), and also the relation between the value of items has to be fitting e.g. if a dagger costs 10 silver, a long sword might be 75 silver or so.

Most humanoid mobs and some others drop some silver coins, determined mostly random.

Do you do something similar for a better make believe?

For one campaign I gave coin minor magical properties. One property for gold, one for silver etc. The idea was that in a magical world a thing would need to be a bit magical to be enduringly valuable.

 

[Coroc]

A sword costs 10gp or 15gp in every D&D edition I can recall. That's a nice new 'long' sword.

Daggers tend to run around 2gp most eds - and that's a combat dagger (may even be throw-weighted), not a
simple peasant knife (1e gave separate stats for knives, d3 instead of d4). Fighting =clubs & staves are apparenly free, rather incredibly.

I find the D&D numbers are generally not *that* out of line with 1gp = $100 or £100,
1 sp a daily subsistence wage for one adult (eg a castle servant) and 5 sp a good
peasant income, enough for a farmer to support a family.

Classic Moldvay & Mentzer D&D tended to have the most plausible mundane equipment prices,
assuming a ca AD 1450 type setting - platemail 60gp, sword 10gp, set of arrows 5gp. Arrows are a bit
of a bete noire for me - IRL the arrows often cost more than the bow, but some editions give
you 20 arrows for 1gp! They should be similar to javelin cost.

You are right, I did exaggerate a bit. I give you a real game example:

In my current GH campaign set historically comparable to 1550, just without gunpowder

a dagger is 10 silver a great sword is 100 silver and a full plate (AC19) is 800 silver

With my exchange ratio that would translate to 1/2g 5g and 40g respective.

It is not a huge factor but it is a factor between these and PHB prices.

I took into account that all sorts of plate armor at that time period would be produced in quasi industrial quantities but otoh it still has to be fitted to a person.

In that setting you cannot buy chainmail anymore. The manual labour to create it would make it to expensive. A standard wage for an unskilled labourer would still be around 1 silver a day, and that is also the amount needed for basic living (food, drink, lodging)

 

[Coroc]

That's pretty unusual since swords are great sidearms for daily carry, but generally not great on the battlefield. Normal expectation was more you had to answer the levy with arms - spear shield & helmet probably most common. Linen gambeson if you were keen on not dying.

You also got this one right in England e.g. people had to have a bill or a longbow and be trained with their weapon. The thing with the sword was in Norway (which funnily results in numbers of a certain type of sword from a certain age in Norway surviving until today since at that time every one and their mother had this kind of sword at home and so many bladed heirlooms were created).

But also a longbow or a bill were not for free but available for a reasonable price.

 

[Ancalagon]

Another thing to remember is that gold is worth more today, compared to silver, than it used to.

Historically, gold was worth 10-15 time silver (by weight). Today however, gold is worth 1269 $ per troy ounce while silver is about 16.75$ an ounce - a 75 fold difference.

A 10$/hour, 8/hour per day job is therefore worth, in today's terms, a little under 5 silver *ounces* per day (in 5e, a laborer is paid 2 sp/day), or (at a coin weight of 4.5 g/coin) 33 sp/hour. If we express this in gold, this is 0.063 troy ounce of gold, or 0.43 gp, which is much closer to the D&D laborer pay.

Interestingly, this tells us that perhaps today it's not so much gold that is worth "too much" but silver that is worth too little

 

[Arnwolf666]

I use 1 sovereign= 20 shillings
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 florin = 2 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence
1 half penny = 2 farthings
4 farthings = a penny

where 1 sovereign = 1 ounce of gold and 1 shilling = 1 ounce of silver and 1 penny = 1 ounce of copper

Hope that helps.

 

[neogod22]

I use 1 sovereign= 20 shillings
1 crown = 5 shillings
1 florin = 2 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence
1 half penny = 2 farthings
4 farthings = a penny

where 1 sovereign = 1 ounce of gold and 1 shilling = 1 ounce of silver and 1 penny = 1 ounce of copper

Hope that helps.

No, that's super confusing. Lol

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

 

[Arnwolf666]

snowflake All currencies used to be like that ;-)