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.
See the latter part of this message, following your enumerated list of problems with changing the price list.
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.
If the bard has any sense, he'll do the peacock display when it's appropriate or advantageous to do so, and not at other times. Getting respect is fine, but when the primary effect of that respect is going to be that the bard loses a lot of extra money, then he'll probably learn to live with five minutes worth of disdain in order to conduct one transaction while passing through town. After all, what does he care for the opinion of this cultural Philistine, who wouldn't be able to properly appreciate the subtleties of the bard's artistic performance anyway? If I'm only passing through town with a brief stop for supplies, I want the shopkeeper's grain, and as much of my own money as I can retain, more than I want his respect.
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 was actually speaking of my PC at the time; he doesn't routinely carry all his money with him because it would be silly to do so.
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.
Liquid assets are more versatile than magic items, so I always try to keep as much cash as possible, though I've certainly turned some of my gold into magic items. But even if I'd turned all of it into magic, I don't take all my magic items with me wherever I go. In some of the well-patrolled cities our group visits, it's not lawful to carry most weapons around. Quarterstaves and maybe a dagger, you'll be fine. +1 keen longswords and +2 flaming warhammers, not so much. So the magic weapons are generally not with us in town. Ditto the fancy armor. There may be magic items appropriate for at-home or in-town use that I wouldn't bother taking on a short wilderness trip.
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.
There you go. Smart shoppers -- in fact, shoppers with any common sense at all, once they've realized how the pricing system works -- will routinely find ways to avoid making themselves look like rich marks. They don't wear their best clothes for travel, they don't carry huge coin purses openly into every merchant shop they visit, and they don't deck themselves with magic items from head to toe before trotting off to the local farmers market to buy bread and cheese.
The innkeeper assesses people for a living, but for what you've been describing, he's making his assessment based on a quick first impression and probably very little time to gather information. The bard, perhaps simply by virtue of being an adventurer and therefore on the move all the time, is a savvy traveller who has had scores of innkeepers, merchants and so forth try to bilk him out of extra money for routine things. He knows how to avoid being taken for too much money. He'll pay more than the locals, but not a great deal more.
Experience has taught him that haggling will only go so far; best to do whatever can be done to lower the merchant's initial estimate of the bard's wealth, then haggle down from that lower starting point. After all, maybe he really is rich, but how long would he stay that way if he agreed to pay whatever these greedy merchants asked?
As with the innkeeper who assesses people's personalities for a living, this isn't a special skill that an individual character must train himself to use (though such complementary skills as Bluff, Disguise or Perform(Acting) could certainly help), it's something he'll automatically acquire as part of the traveller's lifestyle.
Yes rude works both ways, but the PC is the one who wants something. The shopkeeper is doing fine without the PC.
Maybe, maybe not, but the PC is apparently worth ten local sales -- more, if the shopkeeper is only losing one item and getting the usual price for ten of that item. They
both want something, or there'd be no basis for trade.
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.
Ever try having a game without NPCs? I imagine it would be a very short game. Oh, you can get through a session or two with nothing but monsters, but ultimately there will have to be other people to interact with. NPCs are indispensible -- we are hired by them to clear their land of monsters, we hire them to carry our equipment and maintain our keeps, we are robbed by them, we fight them, we learn from them and on occasion we marry them.
The DM participates in the game through NPCs, to a greater extent than he does in other ways. Drawing maps, writing background history and planning an adventure is a lot of work, and vital to the game, but none of that is interactive. Once the game gets going, the NPCs are what allow the DM to really join in.
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.
1. Correct.
2. I may have to , but only if I agree that the current starting amount is correct in proprotion to the price list. For now, let's agree that I'd have to re-examine the starting gold amounts.
3 & 5. I think magic should be fairly expensive, so I'd take a look at this, but there's a good chance I would leave this as is.
4 & 6. Reducing the cost of ordinary mundane items and
not making these two adjustments would certainly give the PCs more buying power, but I don't see this as a problem unless it gives them so much extra buying power that they can now afford to purchase significantly more magic items than they could before; that's easily prevented by not making magic any cheaper than it is right now, and by having the DM regulate the availability of such things.
7. Sure. Everything I said above about 2 thru 6 is subject to testing. Hey, if I thought this would be an easy, one step process, I would have simply announced that I had singlehandedly fixed the D&D pricing problem and posted my masterful solution at the beginning of this thread. I don't have a complete solution. I'm still analyzing the problem. Frankly, I don't ever expect to see a complete solution, but I am hoping that some changes can be made to reduce the problem. Make sure the discrepancies are smaller, or come up less frequently, that sort of thing.
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.
That's true, but it may be possible, for example, to choose one set of base assumptions, and the numbers implied by those assumptions, as the price list for an imagined "default" setting (some specific region of Greyhawk, most likely, if this sort of thing ever appeared in a WotC book) and then provide a simple mechanic and some explanatory text to describe how to modify the price list for different regions.
DC system or not, in order for this to work you'd have to provide the price list for, say, 14th Century Italy and show DMs how the list could be quickly tweaked in order to convert the figures to something appropriate for...I don't know, 16th Century Japan or 12th Century England.
In order to keep things as simple as possible, this would probably involve the use of a small number of "key" goods and services, whose index values the DM would work out according to the instructions given, and then the other values on the list would fall into place based on the indexed keys, sort of a tricke down economics effect.
Which goods and services are "key?" Dunno, and that might have to vary somewhat as you change from one region/time period to another, but ideally most of the key items would appear on the lists for most regions/time periods (that is what would make them "key" items, after all.)
Would this be a universal system, accurately adaptable to any region or historical period? That's be nice, but within the limits of the simplicity required for gaming, it's probably impossible. If it works for several of the more common settings, that would be enough. Not that many D&D games are set in Mesopotamia or the Aztec lands.
Okay, the last few paragraphs above are all so vague they don't even deserve the term "vaporware". I don't claim to be describing a system here, just brainstorming for possible features to be included in a system that may exist at some point.
Are you going to be around at Gen Con? I'd love to speak with you for a while, it would be cool.
Sigh. I've been playing this game off and on for 25+ years, and I have
never made it to Gen Con. This isn't going to be the year where that changes, either.
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