Torches are a pet peeves of mine, they should have more rules on them; like protection from beast to hold animals at bay. 
D&D 5E silver standard
Torches are a pet peeves of mine, they should have more rules on them; like protection from beast to hold animals at bay.
Make a Charisma (Intimidation or Animal Handling) check to scare off the beast. You have Advantage for wielding fire.
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The original "large, fantastic dungeons" were still made up of a bunch of 10x10 corridors and 20x20 rooms with an orc and a chest - just a slew of them strung together. I'm not sure whether the orc-stink or the torch-smoke would kill you first, though.
Marty Lund
The room is a lot more problematic than the corridor. I've been in plenty of caves which make a 10'x10' corridor look like a ballroom, and yet people regularly used torches in them, sometimes even for miles of cave
Wik
First Post
Regarding torch smoke: I think people are letting what they read get in the way of real-world experience.
How much fumes does a torch emit? Having lit a few, they let out a small amount of smoke, but not a terrible amount - provided the torch is well made, and not some molotov cocktail type torch.
I am an apprentice carpenter by trade. In the last few days, we've been laying down sand and foam for an interior concrete job in a basement. This basement consists of a 20x30 room and three 10x10 rooms attached by a narrow hallway (which is basically not even studs at this point). The rooms are divided by concrete dividers about four feet high.
While laying down sand, we had to compact it so that the concrete we put in wouldn't compress the sand and make cracks. So, we bring in a machine to do this. We ran this machine for well over an hour before someone went "wait a minute. We don't have windows cracked, we're in a basement, and the last time we did this job in this room, it was out in the open. We could get carbon monoxide poisoning!".
So, after an hour, the machine's shut down, and the foolish carpenters catch their breath outside. Net damage? I had a slight headache and three baby birds in a bird nest in one of the rooms are now TWO baby birds. And one of them seems to have an inner ear problem or something.
In other words, in the same-sized rooms, a machine that produces a nice amount of CO1 didn't kill some (admittedly foolish) carpenters after an hour. A torch, which produces a small amount of C02, is definitely NOT going to kill you before the ork stink.
How much fumes does a torch emit? Having lit a few, they let out a small amount of smoke, but not a terrible amount - provided the torch is well made, and not some molotov cocktail type torch.
I am an apprentice carpenter by trade. In the last few days, we've been laying down sand and foam for an interior concrete job in a basement. This basement consists of a 20x30 room and three 10x10 rooms attached by a narrow hallway (which is basically not even studs at this point). The rooms are divided by concrete dividers about four feet high.
While laying down sand, we had to compact it so that the concrete we put in wouldn't compress the sand and make cracks. So, we bring in a machine to do this. We ran this machine for well over an hour before someone went "wait a minute. We don't have windows cracked, we're in a basement, and the last time we did this job in this room, it was out in the open. We could get carbon monoxide poisoning!".
So, after an hour, the machine's shut down, and the foolish carpenters catch their breath outside. Net damage? I had a slight headache and three baby birds in a bird nest in one of the rooms are now TWO baby birds. And one of them seems to have an inner ear problem or something.
In other words, in the same-sized rooms, a machine that produces a nice amount of CO1 didn't kill some (admittedly foolish) carpenters after an hour. A torch, which produces a small amount of C02, is definitely NOT going to kill you before the ork stink.
Modern torches made of fabrics and kerosine-type fuels are vastly less hazardous and than the medieval standard or random cloth dipped in pine tar / resin. That stuff is nasty. Burning tallow is gross too. It's like carrying your own personal grease-fire everywhere you go - best for use in very well-ventilated areas or rather spacious chambers with very high ceilings.
It's not the CO2 that'll get you first from an olde tyme torche, it's the horrible acrid smoke from burning tar or tallow. It's probably more hazardous than than Orc funk but not quiet so vile as that of a Trog.
Marty Lund
Wik
First Post
You know, I have to disagree here. I think you're taking one specific torch from one specific era, and saying "yeah, that's how they all were, and it was awful".
Ancient peoples were pretty clever, and there was a specific need here for a torch. I'm not saying people took torches indoors all the time, and when they did, it certainly wasn't pleasant. But we can point to ruins that show tar stains on the ceilings, as well as caves. So we know it happened from time to time.
Smoke raises. If the ceiling's fairly high, you'll be fine. And no one's bringing a torch into a place where the fire is in danger of touching the ceiling.
A point on the subject that I don't think I've seen yet for the reason to switch to a silver standard is one of emotion.
To me... finding GOLD should be awesome. A treasure chest filled with gold coins should make my heart go aflutter. And by some chance I find a PLATINUM piece? At that point, I want to feel like I've won the freaking lottery.
But that doesn't really happen when gold is the standard coin and by which every part of commerce is judged. Does having a dollar bill in my wallet make me feel like I have something? Nope. A $10 bill? Yeah... now I have some cash. And a $100 bill in my wallet? Yikes, that's an AWESOME feeling.
If you make silver the standard... then the silver piece becomes the emotion equivalent of the one dollar bill. It's the standard denomination by which all purchasing occurs. If you then find a satchel of gold pieces... suddenly all that GP is like having a stack of tens. And in those rarest of instances you find like eight PP in a lair somewhere? That's like finding eight hundreds lying around. You feel like you are now flushed with money. It's a much better feeling. Plus the added benefit of all those copper pieces now being the emotional equivalent of dimes, rather than pennies. Copper pieces in a gold standard economy are useless. If you find a chest of them in a dungeon, you leave them there because they're not worth taking. After all... if were to break into someone's house and found a water jug that was full of pennies, are you really gonna grab that thing over the rest of the stuff worth carrying? I don't think so. Piles of copper in a gold standard economy is the dragon just dumping his change on the floor when he comes home.
To me... finding GOLD should be awesome. A treasure chest filled with gold coins should make my heart go aflutter. And by some chance I find a PLATINUM piece? At that point, I want to feel like I've won the freaking lottery.
But that doesn't really happen when gold is the standard coin and by which every part of commerce is judged. Does having a dollar bill in my wallet make me feel like I have something? Nope. A $10 bill? Yeah... now I have some cash. And a $100 bill in my wallet? Yikes, that's an AWESOME feeling.
If you make silver the standard... then the silver piece becomes the emotion equivalent of the one dollar bill. It's the standard denomination by which all purchasing occurs. If you then find a satchel of gold pieces... suddenly all that GP is like having a stack of tens. And in those rarest of instances you find like eight PP in a lair somewhere? That's like finding eight hundreds lying around. You feel like you are now flushed with money. It's a much better feeling. Plus the added benefit of all those copper pieces now being the emotional equivalent of dimes, rather than pennies. Copper pieces in a gold standard economy are useless. If you find a chest of them in a dungeon, you leave them there because they're not worth taking. After all... if were to break into someone's house and found a water jug that was full of pennies, are you really gonna grab that thing over the rest of the stuff worth carrying? I don't think so. Piles of copper in a gold standard economy is the dragon just dumping his change on the floor when he comes home.
pukunui
Legend
You make some excellent points there. Perhaps I will go with the option of just converting all (or most) gp prices into sp prices (so 10 gp = 100 gp). I'd already sort of started doing that with my last campaign, where I kept telling them they found x gp in mixed coins and such.
aramis erak
Legend
Current estimates of silver reserves are about 530,000 tonnes, while gold is about 55,000 tonnes. That's under 3000 cubic meters of gold, and about 51000 cubic meters of silver. An olympic swimming pool is a MINIMUM of about 1355 cubic meters - and new standards (2004 onwards), 2500 cubic meters or more. You cannot fill two of them with the world's total gold. (Which, by the way, means that Middle Earth of the PJ Movies has, just in Smaug's horde alone, more gold than the entire modern world.
Given the 110 coins per kg of D&D5e coins, the total coinage of gold, assuming only 12kt (to double the available volume, and thus only have 55 coins per kg of gold), there would be only about 3 million coins total in the world. and about 29 billion coins worth of silver.
Oh, and note: over half of the gold and around half of the silver ever mined has been mined since about 1800...
That's why many of us find it silly. The coins are WAY too big (measuring with the heaviest in both current and historic circulation), and are undervalued by a lot. (Historical silver pennies of 1 dwt were about 291.6667 to the modern pound, about 0.9 fine; the gold penny was 12-14kt and the same 1 dwt. A copper coin of 1 dwt would have been worth about 1/80th of a penny.)
Historic british rates:
Gold, 18kt 12x to 20x comparable siver weight at 0.9 fine
Silver at 0.9 fine worth between 50 and 100 x the weight of copper.
Platinum almost unknown; priceless.
Modern rates, just for comparison:
Gold $1134.70/ t oz or $56/dwt
Platinum $1012.00/ t oz or $50/dwt
Silver: about $15/ t oz or $0.75/dwt
Copper: about $2.27/ lb av or $0.0078/dwt.
And we're talking 5.8dwt coins. So, given today's spot prices (from kitco silver's pages) a ...
Copper Piece should be about $0.045
Silver Piece should be about $4.35
Gold Piece should be about $324.80
Platinum Piece should be about $290.00
We can excuse platinum - in a medieval setting, it's extremely hard to work, and almost unknown.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/248991/world-mine-reserves-of-gold-by-country/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/273649/silver-reserves-of-countries/
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