Dark Sun economy

My group is starting up a new Dark Sun campaign--1st time in that setting for us!--and we want to embrace the scarcity of resources and difficulty of survival (travel, etc.) that the setting offers. Our DM has already told us he's going to implement Fixed Inherent Bonuses and reduced rewards.

Nevertheless, we would love some feedback on ideas on how to make the currency work in this regard: how often and what kind of rewards should be offered beyond the advice in the Campaign Setting book? For even the monetary rewards there suggest that after a few encounters, our heroes will be aswim in cash compared to the rest of the citizenry. For example, for a party of three, the DSCS suggests three magic items (removing only parcel 1) per level: that's one per character per level! The gold and item rewards, too, seem to go very far in setting the characters heads and shoulders above the average citizenry, which is exactly the sort of exceptionalism we would like to avoid.

Furthermore, we would welcome any additional suggestions for how the brutal climate of the planet could impact characters, beyond the scant travel and survival day advice and rules offered in the DSCS.

Many thanks!

When I ran DS(best setting ever) I made arms and armour degrade so PC's had to keep buying more. Another way I stumped spending was typically they were finding metal currency that people avoided and sorcerer kings wanted to know where it came from. Other than that could always make survival days cost increase by more you buy supply and demand.

Thanks for the response! It's not so much that we want to be "stumped" in spending cash or have that cash diverted into imposed upkeep "taxes." I guess what we're looking for is a formula, if anyone has worked one out, for reducing the coin and magic item flow into the pockets (and use) of the characters. Something playtested that has worked for their group. You know, something like divide cash rewards by 100 per tier or something and reduce magic item rewards to one tangible item and one alternate reward per group per four levels or something like that. We'd like a system that make rewards meaningful, and grabbing several hundred gps every encounter (thousands plus at higher levels!) reduces that greatly.

darkbard said:

Thanks for the response! It's not so much that we want to be "stumped" in spending cash or have that cash diverted into imposed upkeep "taxes." I guess what we're looking for is a formula, if anyone has worked one out, for reducing the coin and magic item flow into the pockets (and use) of the characters. Something playtested that has worked for their group. You know, something like divide cash rewards by 100 per tier or something and reduce magic item rewards to one tangible item and one alternate reward per group per four levels or something like that. We'd like a system that make rewards meaningful, and grabbing several hundred gps every encounter (thousands plus at higher levels!) reduces that greatly.

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Ah whelp can't help you there sorry. Only thing I could suggest is trial and error

You could have two separate economies:

Survival-day economy. Survival days are all that count. Big-deal things like whoop-tee-doo +n magic items don't trade for meaningfully more than adequate mundane counterparts (and aren't generally offered for sale unless the DM decides to throw something in as a plot point).

Transcendent economy. Metal coins, magic items, forbidden secrets, ancient relics. Sorcerer Kings, their minions, adventurers, the Veiled Alliance, and a few other accumulators of personal power and pursuers of shadowy global agendas care about (and consistently recognize) this stuff and are able to acquire and keep liquid meaningful quantities of it.

PC will have a foot in each economy - they need to survive, like everyone else, and they're habitual accumulators of personal power.

Have you downloaded the Ashes of Athas campaign for 4E?

If not, head to [MENTION=11365]Alphastream[/MENTION] 's website and use the contact form there to ask for the adventures. I'm downloading them as I type this so have yet to read them but I imagine there are a lot of good ideas in those adventures that are worth stealing.

In our 4e Dark Sun campaign, the amount of coins we found as treasure was negligible until the characters reached Paragon tier.
Of course we also used inherent bonuses, so there was little need for cash.
In early adventures we were happy to be rewarded with things like mounts, fruits (aka potions), rituals (& ritual components), metal weapons (or implements), and favours (very important!). Our DMs also liked to hand out 'alternative rewards', as they're called in the Dark Sun campaign setting, i.e. non-transferable 'enhancements' for characters. IIRC, on average, as a party we found one or two magic items per adventure.

Tony Vargas said:

You could have two separate economies:

Survival-day economy. Survival days are all that count. Big-deal things like whoop-tee-doo +n magic items don't trade for meaningfully more than adequate mundane counterparts (and aren't generally offered for sale unless the DM decides to throw something in as a plot point).

Transcendent economy. Metal coins, magic items, forbidden secrets, ancient relics. Sorcerer Kings, their minions, adventurers, the Veiled Alliance, and a few other accumulators of personal power and pursuers of shadowy global agendas care about (and consistently recognize) this stuff and are able to acquire and keep liquid meaningful quantities of it.

PC will have a foot in each economy - they need to survive, like everyone else, and they're habitual accumulators of personal power.

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Some thoughts as I think aloud:

I have been thinking about two separate economies! But wouldn't metal coins and items (like weapons and armor) be better placed in the "survival day" economy? After all, the common populace would find these items of immense, life-changing value, and, as such, these items would have universal buying power.

If I were to follow the DSCS suggestion, for a group of three first-level characters, a level's worth of rewards would be thus, removing the first and last parcels:

Party Level 1 Total Monetary Treasure: 680 gp (down from 720 after having removed parcel 10); parcels 1 and 10 removed for Fixed Enhancement bonuses; parcels 2 and 4 removed for smaller party size.


3 Magic item, level 3

5 200 gp, or two 100 gp gems, or two potions of healing + 100 gp
6 180 gp, or one 100 gp gem + 80 gp, or one potion of healing + 130 gp
7 120 gp, or one 100 gp gem + 20 gp, or one potion of healing + 70 gp
8 120 gp, or 100 gp + 200 sp, or one 100 gp gem + 200 sp
9 60 gp, or one potion of healing + 10 gp, or 50 gp + 100 sp

Maybe simply cutting the non-magic item rewards by 10 would work. This would mean characters can expect a level 3 magic item and 68 gp over the course of advancing to level 2.

Similarly, the same group would expect one level 8 item and 340 gp rising from level 6 to 7. Maybe this would obviate the need for two separate economies, and, as characters rise beyond early heroic levels, that rising (though still much reduced) gp rate can be further divided into some coin rewards, favors, access to rituals, etc.

Whaddya think, folks?

Well, I just did now! Thanks!

darkbard said:

Some thoughts as I think aloud:

I have been thinking about two separate economies! But wouldn't metal coins and items (like weapons and armor) be better placed in the "survival day" economy? After all, the common populace would find these items of immense, life-changing value, and, as such, these items would have universal buying power.

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IDK, the non-metallic alternatives in Dark Sun seem adequate for survival purposes. Magic items get very expensive very fast for being only marginally better than ordinary weapons. You could certainly trade a +1 sword in the survival economy, but it probably wouldn't buy you many more survival-days than a regular sword (and it'd probably make you look pretty desperate).

Maybe simply cutting the non-magic item rewards by 10 would work. This would mean characters can expect a level 3 magic item and 68 gp over the course of advancing to level 2.

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In the 'separate economy' model, you could place gold (or platinum or astral diamonds or Spican flame gems or unicorn rainbows or whatever), it just wouldn't have the theoretical astronomical buying power in the more bartery survival economy, most of the time.

Of course, there could be a cross-over between the two economies in major centers of civilization where the very-rich-in-both-economies do business.