D&D 5E How do you handle the "economy killing spells" in your game?

Oofta · May 30, 2019

WaterRabbit said:
But isn't that is exactly the question? Probably the best test would be to have a group of players charged with defending a site and seeing what they come up. Because they are players they are limited to published spells and items. So "anti-invisibility" areas aren't something possible in the rules, but hallowed areas would be. Give them a budget and see what kind of defenses they can build. In my opinion, to build defenses to handle the types of threats represented in a normal game world is going to be cost prohibitive compared to the methods that are necessary to defeat them.

This is probably why they haven't released the mass combat rules yet. It would be interesting to try and build a "tower defense" game just using the published rules to this point. But I don't think the rules are really robust enough to handle this situation. Back in AD&D we did run similar types of tests and found that castles were generally useless against monstrous and magical threats.

How much flexibility do you give them? Can they "invent" weapons like my net throwing ballista? Create new rituals? Special wards against specific types of magic?

The way I run it the printed rules aren't all inclusive, they include rules for PCs. But it's going to vary widely by campaign and preference. I warn people that they may not be able to teleport wherever they want, that some walls may be warded against spells that bypass them.

Unless magic is new or extremely rare there will always be some sort of countermeasure built over time. The romans used what we would consider short swords until they started fighting enemies that used cavalry and they started carrying spears. Armor slowly got to the point where stabbing someone didn't do a lot of good so people switched to knocking them down or focusing on bludgeoning them to death or having a lot of power focused on a very small point. Then firearms came along and armor fell out of style because it wasn't worth the cost until fairly recently (for most soldiers anyway, there have always been exceptions).

My point is that magic wouldn't be "disruptive" unless it was only introduced recently.

Ultimately though most people just accept some things about D&D that don't really make a lot of sense. Yes, there are orcish hordes, but where do they come from? From the mountains? Okay, what did they grow to eat? How are there viable populations of dozens of different intelligent humanoid races, especially if they're constantly trying to kill each other off?

How much any of that matters, or how much it affects your particular taste is going vary pretty dramatically from campaign to campaign. I try to keep things logical, but I also just hand-wave some details. I want castles so I assume they're worth building. I'll come up with details of why when and if it matters.

Oofta · May 30, 2019

WaterRabbit said:
Also, your $400 to 1 GP is definitely an outlier as it is generally more a $1 to 1 GP ratio. A single gold piece in your campaign has tremendous buying power. A single haul of gold from an ancient dungeon would definitely ruin any economy you had and kill any nation (much the way Spain fell into economic disaster).

While I agree that $400 to 1 GP is out of line, $1 to 1 GP is too far the other way. Just looking at common goods, that would make a set of clothing 50 cents. A bucket would be a nickel.

Prices in the PHB may not make a lot of sense and I'm sure someone else has done the math but I think of a GP as being roughly equivalent of a 20 dollar bill.

Beleriphon · May 30, 2019

Oofta said:
While I agree that $400 to 1 GP is out of line, $1 to 1 GP is too far the other way. Just looking at common goods, that would make a set of clothing 50 cents. A bucket would be a nickel.

Prices in the PHB may not make a lot of sense and I'm sure someone else has done the math but I think of a GP as being roughly equivalent of a 20 dollar bill.

Going with roughly $1600 per ounce, and a gold being fifty coins per pound regardless of denomination (I think that's a 5E standard, but I might be mistaking it with 3E) that leaves us with about $500 per gold piece. So your typical suit of plate is $750,000 or you know the cost of a brand new Bugati Veyron with all of the bells and whistles, or a run down hobo shack in Vancouver, BC (actually, that would be a steal of the hobo shack in Vancouver, totally worth the teardown the build costs, flip that sucker for 4000 gp).

I think the best cost my be looking at the value of a silver piece, since it usually hashes out better for easily comparable things like food, and then scaling up to gold pieces.

On Fabricate, why not have a wizard turn out quantities of high carbon bar stock steel? Or huge sheets of steel ready to be turned into weapons or armour by smith? They could in theory churn out vast quantities of wire coils to make mail hauberks.

Oofta · May 30, 2019

Beleriphon said:
Going with roughly $1600 per ounce, and a gold being fifty coins per pound regardless of denomination (I think that's a 5E standard, but I might be mistaking it with 3E) that leaves us with about $500 per gold piece. So your typical suit of plate is $750,000 or you know the cost of a brand new Bugati Veyron with all of the bells and whistles, or a run down hobo shack in Vancouver, BC (actually, that would be a steal of the hobo shack in Vancouver, totally worth the teardown the build costs, flip that sucker for 4000 gp).

I think the best cost my be looking at the value of a silver piece, since it usually hashes out better for easily comparable things like food, and then scaling up to gold pieces.

On Fabricate, why not have a wizard turn out quantities of high carbon bar stock steel? Or huge sheets of steel ready to be turned into weapons or armour by smith? They could in theory churn out vast quantities of wire coils to make mail hauberks.

Why are you assuming that gold has the same value as it does in the real world? I start with some basic goods and services from the PHB to work out a ballpark.

I agree that we probably shouldn't have a GP standard, a SP standard would be more "realistic". But in a game with dragons why do you assume that alchemists aren't occasionally successful at transmuting lead to gold?

Dausuul · May 30, 2019

Beleriphon said:
Going with roughly $1600 per ounce, and a gold being fifty coins per pound regardless of denomination (I think that's a 5E standard, but I might be mistaking it with 3E) that leaves us with about $500 per gold piece.

We aren't trying to exchange D&D gold for real gold (if we could, I'd retire tomorrow). The whole point of estimating a conversion rate between gold pieces and dollars is to get a sense of the purchasing power of a gold piece. If your conversion rate says that a loaf of bread costs $20, it's not telling you anything useful.

Oofta · May 30, 2019

Dausuul said:
We aren't trying to exchange D&D gold for real gold (if we could, I'd retire tomorrow). The whole point of estimating a conversion rate between gold pieces and dollars is to get a sense of the purchasing power of a gold piece. If your conversion rate says that a loaf of bread costs $20, it's not telling you anything useful.

Other than that for that price it should be a really awesome loaf of bread. Or you bought it at Trader Joe's.

Tony Vargas · May 30, 2019

Gold has greatly increased in value because (to oversimplify) central banks went off gold/silver standards to fiat currency. Modern production has really changed the relative value of a lot of basic goods (and for that matter services), too. I can't think of a valid way to get what 'prices in D&D mean' to map to familiar mediums of exchange, today.

Relative prices within that context are potentially meaningful. The price list says a meal costs so much and a suit of armor so many times that. That says something. Put it all together and still probably doesn't say anything coherent, but it's the most you can reasonably shoot for.

Mistwell · May 30, 2019

Oofta said:
Other than that for that price it should be a really awesome loaf of bread. Or you bought it at Trader Joe's.

What has happened to your Trader Joes? It's a DISCOUNT market, not a high price market! They not have the lowest prices, but they have on average lower prices than most supermarkets on most items. Are you thinking of Whole Foods?

Beleriphon · May 30, 2019

Oofta said:
Why are you assuming that gold has the same value as it does in the real world? I start with some basic goods and services from the PHB to work out a ballpark.

I agree that we probably shouldn't have a GP standard, a SP standard would be more "realistic". But in a game with dragons why do you assume that alchemists aren't occasionally successful at transmuting lead to gold?

I'm not suggesting that gold be world what it is in reality, for comparative purposes. I supposed I'm more poorly point out that gold pieces aren't a good starting point for most stuff, in a cheeky way that didn't quite come across. Even realistically using a silver standing shouldn't matter, since we'd be better served by figuring out what the relative cost of items are like food, and comparing roughly to modern values of similar items. Most common stuff every day stuff is priced in silver. If we look a the cost of a meal at an inn and the cost of a meal at a fast food restaurant, we're getting a reasonable comparison of purchasing power. Gold pieces can be extrapolated from there, and so can copper pieces.

On that note, I actually don't think its unreasonable to assume a PC could buy a suit of plate mail for their 1500 gp, or a small farm.

Still, what about wizards turning raw ore into high quality homogenous alloys in usable billets?

Oofta · May 30, 2019

Beleriphon said:
I'm not suggesting that gold be world what it is in reality, for comparative purposes. I supposed I'm more poorly point out that gold pieces aren't a good starting point for most stuff, in a cheeky way that didn't quite come across. Even realistically using a silver standing shouldn't matter, since we'd be better served by figuring out what the relative cost of items are like food, and comparing roughly to modern values of similar items. Most common stuff every day stuff is priced in silver. If we look a the cost of a meal at an inn and the cost of a meal at a fast food restaurant, we're getting a reasonable comparison of purchasing power. Gold pieces can be extrapolated from there, and so can copper pieces.

On that note, I actually don't think its unreasonable to assume a PC could buy a suit of plate mail for their 1500 gp, or a small farm.

Still, what about wizards turning raw ore into high quality homogenous alloys in usable billets?

Well, having 1 price list for all items across all cultures is always going to be problematic, especially considering the inconsistencies of armor and weapon types. On the other hand if plate mail isn't "expensive enough" maybe that's because there are too many wizards casting fabricate.

As far as the fabricate, I posted long ago that I saw a lot of issues, especially depending on level of technology and how you define "raw materials". Do you need high quality steel? Does it need to be properly hammered into plates or do you just need iron ore, a source of carbon and some other trace metals? I lean towards the former, which along with the expertise of how to make the armor (which takes a master armorer level of expertise) I just don't see it happening all that often.