Damon Griffin said:
What I'm saying is that the existing price list should be corrected, so that it will be a representative list of average prices for goods and services. I don't believe it accomplishes that goal in its present form.
I don't think i've made my point very well. Representative list based upon what? History? What time period and what region?
Making a list that is representative of one of these place/times by default makes a list that less representative of other places. If you made a new pricing list based upon Italian 14th century prices, you've really messed up anyone playing in a different place/time. Perhaps more than the current list, perhaps not.
Internal consistancy as mentioned by Agback is a more serious issue. However even that concept of consistancy comes from a hsitorical place or time. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're playing an Aztec based DnD game, the lists are totally useless.
This is the primary reason for my DC idea. It allows the DM to modify the item lists according to different reasons. Economic, time/place, whatever reason you need.
Unless he's recently been robbed. Or the DM hasn't been keeping up with the recommended resource totals. Or he's paying massive amounts of tuition to a bardic college somewhere.
Abberations are still aberations, even with good role-playing reasons. The game is designed to support an assumed amount of wealth. PCs are rich in DnD. If you don't like that as a DM you just rule 0 and go from there. But when speaking of the game, we have to use the base assumptions for meaningful conversation.
Even if he does have the whole 450gp with of goods with him, some of it will almost certainly be in the form of small, easily concealed items like potions and gems or possibly even platinum coins; your NPC should not be able to assess my net value on the basis of things he can't see. Your NPC doesn't have access to a DMG table that tells him that "by the rules" my character ought to have 450gp on him.
To continue your role playing idea... that bard is part of a society, even though he may not be part of one particular locals's society. He'll more than likely use some of his wealth in demonstration so that other people will give him the time of day. He'll know that when you look like you have some amount of wealth, you get more respect (even as a stranger) than you do if you don't have any wealth.
Also, it does not follow that a character will take everything he owns with him when he travels. This is especially true of higher level characters, who mave probably started to acquire treasure in the form of artwork, valuable mundane commodities like fine wine or bolts of silk, and perhaps land or other property. I don't carry all my cash with me when I travel because it would be silly to do so
You'd carry a lot more of your money with you if you couldn't access a bank in every town or if you had no creditcards. Generally PCs are wandering heroes for a great part of their carreer, and a significant portion of their wealth is on their person if for no other reason than one: it's safer there.
-- I want to limit my possible losses if robbed, and in any event what use would I have for 10,000gp in the wilderness? It'll be safe in the chest in my room at my patron's villa until I return.
more than likely, you'd turn that 10k into something useful (magic) rather than leave it sitting around. PCs may have stashes of cash as you describe at various points in their carreer, but those are usually converted into something that helps them survive.
Omniscient NPCs...Joe, I really must never run a PC in one of your games. Word may get around eventually, but only if the bard stays around long enough. You've been arguing that the inflated prices make sense for PCs who are just passing through; the all-seeing, all-knowing merchants spot an easy mark the instant he arrives in town, accurately assess his net worth based on a gaming rulebook none of them has ever seen, and charge him several times what any local would have to pay for the same item.
The innkeeper assesses people's personality for a living. Also, unless your bard is deliberatly attempting to obscure his wealth by staying in the worst places possible. He's probably already staying in an 5sp-2gp a day inn. Even when he's just passing through, where he's staying is an indicator of wealth. Smart shopkeepers find out that information quickly. Smart shoppers find ways of not telling.
Having been thus fleeced, the PC immediately leaves town. No one had time to gather any information about him, but then no one needed to. The NPC merchants simply "knew" what he could afford.
Rule 0 the idea of "tourist price" for situations where you think it doesn't fit. It does fit a lot of situations, probably more than it doesn't, and its a passingly good apology for the pricing in the PHB.
Actually, I can see that, but if you accept the PHB price list as valid, then you and I differ on what counts as acceptably close. I can expecting to pay an increase of 25% to 50% on many items as a matter of course (possibly more for some items, maybe a little less for others), and that I could be thought rude if I try to bargain for less. I cannot see that it's be legitimate to consider me rude for refusing to pay ten times what the locals do, for anything. Rude works both ways.
Yes rude works both ways, but the PC is the one who
wants something. The shopkeeper is doing fine without the PC.
Not really seeing the difference here. If I know what the car is worth, based on book value less depreciation, I'm not going to give the dealer many thousands of dollars more than that, just because I can figure out a way to make the payments.
Ok i'll break the anology down better.
1. PCs don't have access to book value information. If they try to ask the locals, the locals are only going to give them the inflated price because that's what they're going to be charged.
2. Imagine that you couldn't find a car dealer that would sell to you for less than the "thousands of dollars more" than you're willing to pay. If you can't find an alternative (which is the first thing people try to do) you will end up paying that price. It's like getting food at one of those all-day concerts all the time. There are no legal alternatives.
Yes, I have to have a car. But I don't have to singlehandedly pay for the dealer's personal vehicle in order to get one. He has to make a profit to stay in business, but if I feel like he's taking unreasonable advantage of me, I'm not doing business with him.
Again, if every other merchant is going to offer you the same price, you'll eventually have to if you really need the item. You may expect a Big Mac to cost $.99 cents, but if you're trying to get one in Hawaii, you have to expect differently.
I'll pull out one final India story. When there,Ii got giardia and had to visit a doctor. I got a docter visit and 14 days worth of two different antiboitics (one was Cipro) for $20. And I was still probably paying twice as much as an Indian. Now why are you paying so much for your doctor visits? Its because you don't have a choice, just like most PCs. The reasons for not having a choice are different, but the outcome is similar.
Hey, maybe I should play with your group after all, because I've always wanted to try a game that was run by an AI supercomputer. We still play the old fashioned way, where the PCs are characters run by the human players, and the NPCs are characters run by the human DM.
Mearly pointing out that the times where a DM has to make rolls for NPC-NPC interactions are rare, and they are only done because of the eventual effect the outcome has upon the PCs.
A game designed to tell a group of players that they are the only people in the world who matter, and that they may therefore do as they like with no fear of moral consequences, is going to produce a large crop of serious sociopaths.
Without the PCs, its really hard to have a DnD game. They are the focus of the game world. They are the reason why everyonce can play the game. The DM is just as important, because he's equally important in the creation of the game.
Hence the recommendations at the beginning of this thread to change the price list.
Rule Zero means if you find something in the book that makes no sense to you, you don't have to spend time and energy trying to explain that rule, you can just toss it out and replace it with something that does make sense to you.
Agree 100%. Now on to your idea of changing the price list.
Problems i see with that are:
1. You need to decide upon the technology level and relative place/time comparison upon which to base your new costs.
2. You'll have to proportionally change PC starting gold.
3. You'll have to change spell componants costs proportionally to maintain balance of cost/effect.
4. You'll have to make new levels of expected PC/NPC wealth.
5. You'll need to change item creation rules to reflect this new economic balance.
6. You'll need to change the expected treasure per encounter to match the new basis.
7. Unless you did something simple (like changing GP into SP, which is perhaps the easiest thing) you'll need to playtest to make sure that things have the balance people are expecting out of 3e.
Its much less effort to assume the PCs are being overcharged, and that the DnD base world has a larger amount of specie than the historical medieval period than it is to make all these changes.
And to bring the argument full circle... the pricing of the items is fine as is. They don't reflect a funtioning economy because they don't have to, they are only there to drain PC resources. If you want to try and make them "more realistic" by changing base prices all you may succeed in doing is making the prices more realistic for one particular place/time in the historical period.
Even if you simply try to balance out the numbers (As Agback noted about internal consistancy), you're simply going to make a set of base assumptions that suits you more, but is still based upon a particular set of place/time assumptions.
For a long time in mesopotamia, building wood was almost as valuable as the noble metals. If I use your new lists, or if i use the currant lists, this fact won't be included.
If I use a DC pricing modifier system I can do it on the fly.
Are you going to be around at Gen Con? I'd love to speak with you for a while, it would be cool.
joe b.
