D&D price lists

[Damon Griffin]

Let's not forget a few things:

1) The D&D world features many things that our real world does not. Like magic. Things which are expensive in real life can be quickly Fabricated. Magic can also make crops more productive, and weather control can really keep the risk out of farming. Many clerical spells can keep people healthy where they might not ordinarily be, which increases productivity.

Increased productivity, increased crop yield and fabrication will tend to reduce prices, not increase them, so while you have made a true statement here, it's not an argument that supports the use of an inflated price list.

2) The fact that large amounts of gold can be found at all will drastically change an economy. When a town has access to adventurers, prices will go up. Alot. All that money funneled off the dungeon chumps will go to those servers and store owners. Which will filter down. Trickle down economy, perhaps. Inflation for sure.

Again, true statement, but it assumes that large amounts of gold are steadily available. Prices should fluctuate as you've described if and when a large amount of cash is introduced into a smaller local economy; the standard across-the-board prices for goods and services in the DMG should not assume this is going on everywhere all the time.

3) Ease of use. This is a game, after all. A totally accurate economic system might not be too fun.

This argument is specious, at least in part. The main complaint is that prices are too high. Lowering prices across the board does not complicate the system. Sadly, the prices don't appear to be consistent, so changing all 'gp' references to 'sp' will not give a correct result for everything. However, this only means that the problem is a bit harder to correct initially; once the corrections are made, the system won't be any more complex than it is right now.

The valid (non-specious) part of your third point is that the system would be made more complex if it took variable price fluctuations into account when adventurers show up to dump 70,000gp into an economy that normally produces 2500gp worth of goods and services per year for the entire village or town.

That part of the system certainly would have to be kept as simple as possible -- unrealistically so, I'm sure -- for ease of use, as you've pointed out. It would still be better than the current system, which entirely ignores the fact that prices will vary, and sets the regular prices far too high for over 99% of the population.

 

[Agback]

Let's not forget a few things:

1) The D&D world features many things that our real world does not. Like magic. Things which are expensive in real life can be quickly Fabricated. Magic can also make crops more productive, and weather control can really keep the risk out of farming. Many clerical spells can keep people healthy where they might not ordinarily be, which increases productivity.

I haven't forgotten those things. It is just that the price lists don't reflect them. For example, most manufactured items are way too expensive: fabricate would either leave the price unchanged or reduce it.

2) The fact that large amounts of gold can be found at all will drastically change an economy. When a town has access to adventurers, prices will go up. Alot.

Indeed. But a few minutes of thought show that the relative price changes would not produce anything like the pattern seen in the PHB price lists. And the inflation would pretty quickly spread to wages.

3) Ease of use. This is a game, after all. A totally accurate economic system might not be too fun. "I'm using my 'Instant Calculate Interest' skill to befuddle the Mutant Teller!"

Speaking of trying to befuddle an argument, would you like to explain how having different prices in the price lists would make the game more complicated? You don't have to have a detailed and 'totally accurate' economic system to avoid obvious stupidity.

Regards,

 

[Agback]

Re: Re: D&D price lists

And you think that most medieval peasants could do these things?

Feed their children and heat their homes? Of course I do.

Most peasant families did not starve to death, and most peasants did not die of cold every winter, or get annually replaced from warmer climes.

Besides which i've read histories that detail the ways that peasants fed their children and discussed the fuels they used to heat their homes.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Damon Griffin]

Re: Yes, it's whack!

Yes, prices are all out of whack. So are weights. Handaxes do not weigh five pounds, nor two-handed swords 20+. Surely something better could be done, but (for whatever reason) it never has been.

I don't know if 3e does this, but I believe earlier editions of the game took the position that the weights of various items were a measure not only of the item's actual weight, but also its bulk. Bulky or oddly-shaped lightweight items would take up a greater portion of a character's total encumbrance allowance than compact lightweight items, but the simplest way to reflect this was just to list the item as being heavier than was actually the case.

But I'm sure it's true in many cases that the designers just didn't have any idea what a given object was likely to weigh, and didn't bother to find out.

Personally I've always been a little bothered by the notion that all wood is assumed to have the same weight, density, hardness and so forth; and the same is true for stone. While I do not expect the game to give stats for 20 different kinds of each material, it would not have been unreasonable to expect perhaps three categories of each, covering such widely different woods as balsa, birch and teak; or such stones as pumice, limestone and marble.

 

[sithramir]

Re: Yes, it's whack!

Yes, prices are all out of whack. So are weights. Handaxes do not weigh five pounds, nor two-handed swords 20+. Surely something better could be done, but (for whatever reason) it never has been.

Um, yes they do. I own a longsword and a 2-handed sword both weighing respectively almost 5 pounds and i think 19 pounds. Real weapons are not light. THATS why it hasn't been changed

 

[Planesdragon]

Um, yes they do. I own a longsword and a 2-handed sword both weighing respectively almost 5 pounds and i think 19 pounds. Real weapons are not light. THATS why it hasn't been changed

The real weapons are fairly light--well, the ones that survive to modern times, anyway. Where were yours made? Are they originals, reroductions, modern comparisons, or stage blades? (I've seen examples of each of the four--and they all have fairly wildly different qualtiies.)

Also, swords tend to be off-weight--while a 5 lbs. box is nothing, a 5 lbs sword is almost unusable. Be sure to check the weight with an adjusted scale.

 

[herald]

Planes Dragon is right. There is only two reasons swords are made these days for the most part. They are decrative or they are for stage combat. Stage combat swords are much heavier than the swords that they are modeled on.

 

[Archade]

Edward III's son, the Black Prince had a "sword of war" roughly equivalent to a Bastard Sword that weighed 5 lbs.

A German Zweihander (three-handed sword) measuring 6 1/2 feet in length, that is kept at the Tower of London museum weighs a whopping 9 lbs.

However, I do agree that in an abstract game like D&D, a greatsword weighing 20lbs does deal with the issues of "bulk". In fact, back in AD&D times, good Mr. Gygax said that weights were set with this in mind. While D3E does not make any such statement, I'm sure this is a carryover.

On the other issue of wages, I think that D3E is very close to a medieval (12-15th century) economy of 1sp per day in common wages, a chain shirt's cost, a longsword's cost, etc.

Things tend to break down when you introduce magic. The high prices are set to keep magic exclusive from commoners, experts, and low-level characters, otherwise we'd be playing in Zanth, not Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms.

Take a well-off merchant or craftsman, who makes 3sp per day. Let's assume half his income is spent on food, lodging, and creature comforts. That gives him an extra 4gp per month.

- He could afford to have a 1st level cleric cast cure light wounds on his little Timmy who fell off the roof while clowning around at a cost of 10gp, but it would hurt.

- Saving for two years, he could afford an Everburning Torch for 90gp, which would save him a fortune and a bunch of back pain in firewood.

This is not unreasonable.

Also keep in mind, players are *prevented* from dumping 75000gp into the local village economy, as (a) the village can't buy anything that expensive, and (b), they don't have total assets valued that high that adventurers would want to buy!

Sure, we're dealing in large sums of money, but during the 14th century, do you know what the ransom was for the King of France?

 

[Archade]

Edward III's son, the Black Prince had a "sword of war" roughly equivalent to a Bastard Sword that weighed 5 lbs.

A German Zweihander (three-handed sword) measuring 6 1/2 feet in length, that is kept at the Tower of London museum weighs a whopping 9 lbs.

However, I do agree that in an abstract game like D&D, a greatsword weighing 20lbs does deal with the issues of "bulk". In fact, back in AD&D times, good Mr. Gygax said that weights were set with this in mind. While D3E does not make any such statement, I'm sure this is a carryover.

On the other issue of wages, I think that D3E is very close to a medieval (12-15th century) economy of 1sp per day in common wages, a chain shirt's cost, a longsword's cost, etc.

Things tend to break down when you introduce magic. The high prices are set to keep magic exclusive from commoners, experts, and low-level characters, otherwise we'd be playing in Zanth, not Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms.

Take a well-off merchant or craftsman, who makes 3sp per day. Let's assume half his income is spent on food, lodging, and creature comforts. That gives him an extra 4gp per month.

- He could afford to have a 1st level cleric cast cure light wounds on his little Timmy who fell off the roof while clowning around at a cost of 10gp, but it would hurt.

- Saving for two years, he could afford an Everburning Torch for 90gp, which would save him a fortune and a bunch of back pain in firewood.

This is not unreasonable.

Also keep in mind, players are *prevented* from dumping 75000gp into the local village economy, as (a) the village can't buy anything that expensive, and (b), they don't have total assets valued that high that adventurers would want to buy!

Sure, we're dealing in large sums of money, but during the 14th century, do you know what the ransom was for the King of France?

 

[Damon Griffin]

I've taken the view that the prices listed are what general traveling PC would pay, not what a member of the community would pay. Something akin to a "tourist" price. The people the PCs are buying from know the PCs have wealth and they're simply not going to let the PCs have a product for the same price that they'd let their neighbors get it for.

This would not a bad way to handle it, so long as the following questions could be satisfactorily answered:

(1) How do the NPCs know how much money I have? I'm a total stranger, just arrived this morning. Do all NPCs have some kind of virtual feat that lets them assess my total net worth on sight? Can I wear a Hat of Disguise in order look like a local and get lower prices?

(2) Why are all NPCs, even kindly Lawful Good types, assumed to be horrible price gougers? Apparently everyone I run into not only recognizes me as a fabulously wealthy PC, but agrees that I should be grossly overcharged for everything as a result.

(3) How was the inflation value set, and why does it never change? I mean, these NPCs have supposedly set higher prices to take advantage of my great wealth -- but I'm going to be expected to pay those same inflated prices whether I'm a 1st level sorcerer with 150gp worth of cash and equipment, or a 20th level fighter/wizard with 100,000gp in cash, equipment and magic items.

(4) What values do the NPCs themselves use? You'd think the DM would be given this information, if not the players. If the DM wants to have the PCs hire themselves out to a local landowner to track down and kill a marauding monster, and the landowner agrees to pay their basic expenses (not spell components, but food, lodging, replacement arrows and such), how much is this going to cost the NPC?

(5) What if I, as a PC, want to sell something? In most cases I cannot expect to get the full listed value, since I'm selling a previously owned item, which the buyer may be planning to resell. Let's say I might expect to sell a weapon or set of armor for up to 50% of its standard market value as long as it's in good condition. If I use your system, I don't have any idea what the standard market value is, only what the greatly inflated tourist price is. I can't very well try selling a 100gp composite longbow, expecting to get as much as 50gp for it, and have an NPC merchant respond "Are you crazy? That's at least 5 times what the thing would have been worth NEW!"

(6) Your tourist explanation doesn't take Crafting into account. If I want to contruct a bow, I'm not some ignorant yahoo who just walked in off the street, I'm a skilled bowyer who knows exactly what it takes in terms of time, effort and material to craft a bow. I have to buy materials equal to one-third of the market value. Is this one-third of the NPC's "true" market value or one third of the inflated "tourist" value? Shouldn't be the tourist price, I'm making it myself and I know how to do that. But it can't be the NPC price because that price isn't given anywhere.