D&D 4E 4E Item price parity.

[tallyrand]

Also remember, that even the Fighter does not begin play proficient in Plate armor, they will have to burn a feat before they can get full benefit from it.

Think of the starter 50gp plate armor as the suit the dude started with in "A Knight's Tale" a source of both protection and mockery. Plain unadorned iron wrapped around his body. The real price of high value plate armor comes from artistry and adornment (at least in 4e now)

 

[KKDragonLord]

the armor from "A knight's tale" was field plate armor, easier to make, a lot less protection and developed earlier than the full plate, "adornments" such as gooves from gothic plate made the FPs very superior than unadorned ones, since it pratically eliminated the Plates vulnerability to Maces and hammers by creating structural reinforcements that spreaded the impact of such strikes and prevented the armor from chafing and the metal plates from bending.
Field plate was inferior but certainly still worth more than 10 lanterns

 

[Alratan]

Historically, acquiring a suit of full plate mail was winning the lottery for the lucky looter.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The armour listed in the 4E player's handbook is "Plate Armour" it makes no attempt to pretend that it is "Full Plate".

What most people think of as "Full Plate" is Joust armour, which was a SPORT and while it was a dangerous sport, the armour was designed to do its best to make sure nobody got hurt. (much like wearing american football padding today) Real combat was a much lighter, cheaper affair (field plate). More like rugby.

I expect adventurers wear the lightest most practical fighting plate they can get their hands on.

Fitz

 

[KKDragonLord]

Wrong Fitz
While the plate from 4e can be and probably is field plate

Field plate cost was around 2000gp in ad&d (the most historicaly accurate version of D&D), that is still a lot more than 10 lanterns

Joust armor is Joust Armor, Full Plate is Full Body Plate, covering every part of the body while allowing mobility and fighting capabilities. And Yes, they Were used in Real Life Combat.

lol, "american football padding"

In either case, some sport competitons had rules that said that the winner would get the losers armor, in those cases, they generally charged a Ransom for the armor which was a lower cost than making a new one.

Sport competitions had both Joust matches and Sword matches, and the armor used on each were different kinds.

 

[Engilbrand]

Seriously. Does it really matter? It's not our world. It makes sense that their world would have a lot more people able to do a much better job for a lot less. Boom. Done. Nothing special. This is the sort of rules lawyer crap that detracts from the game.

Player who just wants to have fun- "I have 100 starting gold. I'm going to get some plate, adventurer's stuff and a maul."
DM who gets off on "realism" in D&D- "You can't."
Player- "Why not? I would have 5 gold left over."
DM- "No. I decided to make the prices more realistic. After all, [insert 10 minutes worth of crap from Wikipedia as a reason that the player's stuff would actually cost 5382 gold, rather than 95 gold.] So you see, it makes it all a lot more realistic, and that means more fun."
Player- "Have fun playing with yourself. Later."

 

[KKDragonLord]

Engilbrand, if you had read my posts (instead of what you wanted to read in them) you wold see that this is not the case of my game, none of what you said.

also, i find it hard to believe that a few of you dont stop to consider that before 4e we used to play rpgs with more realistic prices and it worked fine. I am sorry if you feel offended when i say that My game is not like a videogame or a computer game, but more like a role playing game, and my job is to make a belieavable world so that my narrative has consistency.

 

[keterys]

In theory, it doesn't matter what you set the price to, since PCs aren't supposed to get money from selling nonmagical treasure (it's a rule, though the DM can override it obviously)

Going to town with 47 longswords, 18 chainmails, 6 plates, and 22 heavy shields is now something we can officially ignore, right next to bathing, toiletry, common diseases, food poisoning, etc.

 

[Blackeagle]

For those complaining about how plate is underpriced, according to Wikipedia, "A typical suit of full plate harness cost around 1 pound sterling in 14th century England". At that time, one pound sterling was equivalent in value to three nobles, which are gold coins weighing about a third of an ounce, just like D&D gold pieces. So the proper historical gold piece price for a suit of armor is 3gp.

Of course, the real problem here is not really that plate is horribly overpriced at 50 gp, it's that everything in D&D is overpriced compared to historic values. Plate may still be underpriced compared to the inflated prices of other things in D&D.

 

[KKDragonLord]

Very bad use of logic and wikipedia there to say what you wanted

you did see the part where it specified that only high paid mercenarys and Landed Nobles could afford Plate

Also, 20 days of service from a men at arms was very expensive and he didnt get 1shilling every day of his life, only in planned battles.


also at that time, gold pieces were Very rare, only becoming a little more common a century or so later and the most extreme example of gold coins use was Spain, which at its peak had about 1million silver pieces and a few hundred thousand gold coins in TOTAL circulation throught the richest metalist Nation of the time. In 4e the players are expected to get a few million gold pieces at epic level play.

In England Silver was the most common currency and the legal basis for sterling frm the XIV century to the XVIII century so the absolute majority of people didnt even get to SEE a gold piece.

D&D is very different from this, so Yeah, the 3gp from then was worth about 3000gp in the d&d Gold coin based economy.