D&D price lists

[jgbrowning]

Joe, your examples of varying historical prices are interesting, but they primarily show the effect of inflation, or rather devaluation of the currency. They don't really show how much of these goods the average person could afford, or how the relative price differences between goods changed. Agback's assertion that relative price differences (within a specific predetermined time frame and culture) don't vary much more than 40% means that we *can* come up with a price list that is better balanced.

Inflation and devaluation have a lot to do with the prices i listed, but what i can't show is how the prices vary rapidly within a short period of time, because I didn't want to take that long. The graphs (although it tended to move upward generally), look alot like the below....
----------/\--------
-----/\--/--\----/\-
-/\--/--\/----\--/--\
/--\/----------\/----

over just a period of a decade. The %40 is probably not an unreasonable number, but the price fluctuations were much greater than that for some things. And I'm sure that the presance of magic would alleviate a lot of the uncertainty involved with mostly agrarian economies which causes these yearly, even mothly drastic price fluctuations, but even then perhaps not, if an equal amount of magical energy were put into destroying the magic that stabilizes.... but that's another discussion..

Also, given the nature of transportation during our period, distance from a source of raw materials, or from a source of knowledge about how make an object from those raw materials is also important. I suppose you could make an assumption that every selling locale has an averaged market accessibility, but that seems like a big task.

Noting that a pig is 2.5 times more expensive in London vrs Glouchestershire is useful, but I don't know that that relationship provides us with much knowledge outside of that particular area. I'm sure none of us have the time to really check on every priced item in the PHB to see what the relationship between that items historically and the other items in the same period. I'm not sure that that price comparison holds true for Nuremburg and bavaria.

I'd love to get my hands on something like that. I'd buy it in a heartbeat because it would prevent these discussions because we'd have a shared pool of knowledge about which to argue.

My primary arguement is that, even if Agback is correct is his assertion, that assertion is based upon one small locale, or a collection of small locales which i would hesitate to call representative of the period.

Having the ability to modify prices based upon local, time period, infaltion, war... etc are the reason for my DC system. I think making the prices "fit" a more realistic setting is important enough that I put quite a bit of effort into it.

The existing list is FAR from perfect.

For helping a DM make a realistic setting, 95% agree. But for helping the DM run most DnD games, it's probably fine.

We don't need to have a perfect economic system to play D&D - it's only a game after all. But it should be feasible to come up with a list that is much better balanced that the current one without too much effort, and without overly disturbing the balance and playability of the game.

I guess I just don't think that changing the base prices is that big of a deal. I'm opposed to creating a new set system of prices, I'd much rather have a system that lets me change existing prices as I think is necessary, based upon a set process.

It could be something as simple as Agbacks 40% up or down idea. That's an elegant solution. Or someone doing price lists based upon set assumptions would be another good solution.

I, however, think that changing the price list, in general, to suit an individual's idea of what's "more realistic" isn't really needed. I mean, the realistic estimate of CC Paterson in "Silver Stocks and Losses in Ancient and Medieval Times" of all of England having only 300 tones of silver (a 14 meter cube) would utterly change DnD fiscal concepts. Also by the end of the 13th century, silver output for all of europe was approcing 50 tons a year. I'm not certain what time period would be the better one to chose to model the new prices over.

I think the price lists could be made more realistic for one time/place, but i don't think that necessarily makes it much more realistic than what we currently have for other places. I'm leaning towards the "It's broke, but not broke enough to fix" idea. IE. it works for PC interaction, which is what it was designed for, but it doesn't work for a historical economy. If we fixed it, it could work for both, but only for one period/place and it would still be about as useful for all the others as the currant one is.

However, I'd be interested in seeing other peoples attempts at price correction. I have a good library, but I'm certain there are books out there that would force me to change my mind and always welcome reading suggestions.

edit: tried to fix the graph

joe b.

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: Re: Re: Yes, it's whack!

*shameless plug*

Maybe you should take a look at the Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects d'art (RPGNow.com) which handles lots of different types of wood, stone, metal, gems, and a few other "throw-ins" with Hardness, modifiers to Craft DC, weight, and hp/inch.

It also has a re-work of the Craft system to make things a little more... well... realistic (NOT perfect, but a big change from the conventional D&D system) in terms of both price and speed of creation (do you really think a 1" platinum sphere takes 1000 times as long to create as a 1" copper sphere because it costs 1000 times as much? The core rules do...).

Not a perfect solution to the problems cited here, but does at least try to take a couple of steps along the path.

--The Sigil

I'd second this. Its worth having and is a good read.

joe b.

 

[Conaill]

One quick fix that came out of an older thread on this topic (can't find it anymore, unfortunately) is to multiply all wages by a factor of 5. Won't affect the PC's, except when it *really* matters (like when they actually do want to start hiring mercenaries etc.) but at least it allows the common peasant to have an occasional drink in the local inn. Abject poverty may be historically realistic, but it's not really what most of us have in mind when we're playing D&D.

 

[Conaill]

Re: Re: Re: Yes, it's whack!

It also has a re-work of the Craft system to make things a little more... well... realistic (NOT perfect, but a big change from the conventional D&D system) in terms of both price and speed of creation (do you really think a 1" platinum sphere takes 1000 times as long to create as a 1" copper sphere because it costs 1000 times as much? The core rules do...).

Could you tell us a little more about this? I don't really see anything wrong with the Craft skill mechanism, except that the long crafting times make it very impractical for adventuring PCs. [Mind you, this is talking as someone who is playing a tinker gnome alchemist who does a LOT of crafting in-game, so I know what I'm talking about...]

BTW, a platinum sphere takes just as long to craft as a copper one, because you pay separately for special materials. Some (like mitral and adamantium) take longer to craft because they're harder to work with, but the "platinum sphere" argument is just a straw-man.

 

[jgbrowning]

One quick fix that came out of an older thread on this topic (can't find it anymore, unfortunately) is to multiply all wages by a factor of 5. Won't affect the PC's, except when it *really* matters (like when they actually do want to start hiring mercenaries etc.) but at least it allows the common peasant to have an occasional drink in the local inn. Abject poverty may be historically realistic, but it's not really what most of us have in mind when we're playing D&D.

That actually sounds like a pretty good idea.... hurm I'll have to think on it while more.

joe b.

 

[The Sigil]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Yes, it's whack!

Could you tell us a little more about this? I don't really see anything wrong with the Craft skill mechanism, except that the long crafting times make it very impractical for adventuring PCs. [Mind you, this is talking as someone who is playing a tinker gnome alchemist who does a LOT of crafting in-game, so I know what I'm talking about...]

BTW, a platinum sphere takes just as long to craft as a copper one, because you pay separately for special materials. Some (like mitral and adamantium) take longer to craft because they're harder to work with, but the "platinum sphere" argument is just a straw-man.

My pleasure...

Here is how the Craft skill works when creating an item, as found in the SRD...

1. Find the DC listed here or have the DM set one.

2. Pay one-third the item's price in raw materials.

3. Make a skill check representing one week's work.

If the check succeeds, multiply the check result by the DC. If the result times the DC equals the price of the item multiplied by 10, then the character has completed the item. (If the result times the DC equals double or triple the price of the item (multiplied by 10), then the character has completed the task in one-half or one-third the time, and so on.) If the result times the DC doesn't equal the price multiplied by 10, then it represents progress the character has made this week. Record the result and make a check for the next week. Each week the character makes more progress until the character's total reaches the price of the item multiplied by 10.

For the sake of argument, let us say that crafting a sphere has a DC of 12 and that the craftsman can "take 10" and get a result of 18 (that's a 1st level craftsman with masterwork tools, 4 ranks in craft, and Skill Focus: craft and a 10 Int - surely not out of the ordinary). There's step 1.

Let us further assume that the 1" sphere of copper costs, say 100 gp (perhaps high, but just for sake of argument here - it could just as easily be a 10" sphere of copper). Then the 1" sphere of platinum costs 100,000 gp (platinum being 1000 times as valuable as copper).

The craftsman sits down and goes to work on the copper sphere. He has to pay 1/3 cost of the copper sphere in materials - 33 gp. We'll assume for the moment he has that much available. That's step 2.

Now, let's do step 3. He works for one week and takes 10 for a result of 18. Thus, the amount of work he completes that week is 12 (DC) times 18 (skill check) or 216.

How much work does he have to do to create the copper sphere? The market cost times 10 (100 gp times 10 is 1,000).

So at 216 per week, he completes the sphere in just under 5 weeks.

Now, platinum isn't really much harder to shape than copper (DC 12 again - just melting and pouring takes little work). So our friend the craftsman sits down and pays the 33,333 gp needed for materials (ouch).

He then goes to work on the sphere... and makes progress equal to 216. However, this time, he needs (100,000 gp times 10 or) to get to a million, not a thousand, to finish. Thus it will take him 4630 weeks to finish (right around 89 years) according to the Core Rules.

-----

The problem is that in the Core Rules, the amount of time it takes two equally skilled craftsmen to create items of equal DCs scales linearly with item value and does not account for the intrinsic value of the material that goes into the item.

There should be (at least) two different "costs" associated with an item - the "material cost" of what goes into it (platinum vs. copper) and the "time cost" of the labor.

My system works on that premise. Creating an item takes an amount of time that is a function of item weight (the amount of material you have to shape), complexity (the DC), and the maker's skill to compute the "labor cost." The "labor cost" is then added to the "materials cost" to get the final cost.

Thus, if it takes 5 weeks to create a sphere (regardless of material), and the craftsman expects to receive 1 gp per day for his wages (per the core rules) and decides to charge double the cost of raw materials to recoup his material investiture, we get the value of a copper sphere as 33 gp times 2 (recouping materials) plus 5 gp (1 gp per week for five weeks of labor) or 71 gp. The platinum sphere, by contrast, is 33,333 gp times 2 (recouping materials) plus 5 gp (labor)... or 66,671 gp... not the 71,000 that simply "transmuting copper to platinum" would lead you to guess.

The main problem with the core rules as written is that even with an Epic-skilled Craftsman (take 10 check result of 100) it would take decades to craft valuable items - for example, a longsword made of diamond (DC 15 for a martial weapon, let's double that to 30 because diamond is so tough to work with - assume one diamond weighs the same as a coin - there are 50 coins to the pound times four pounds so 200 coins' worth of diamonds, each diamond is worth 5,000 gp so we have a value of 1,000,000 gp for the diamond longsword - so it requires 10,000,000 units of Craft labor - the epic craftsman only does 3,000 units of work per week - 100*30 - so it takes him a mere 3,333 weeks or 64 years to fashion a longsword of pure diamond). Even more to the point, an artisan with a Craft check of 1,000 (beyond godlike) can't finish the task in less than 6.4 years.

The core rules also have the silly side effect of the following:

If two items have equal values, but one has a higher DC to craft than the other (i.e., is more complicated and harder to make), that actually leads to the item with the higher DC being finished FIRST!

Example:

Item A has a value of 300 gp and a DC to create of 10.
Item B has a value of 300 gp and a DC to create of 20.

Craftsman C can get a 30 on his Craft check.

When working on Item A, he completes 30*10 = 300 units of work per week. Because he needs to do 3,000 units of work total (item value of 300 gp times ten), he finishes in 10 weeks.

When working on Item B, he completes 30*20 = 600 units of work per week. Because he needs to do 3,000 units of work total (again, 300 gp times 10), he finishes in... five weeks?

So an item that is *twice* as hard to make gets finished in... *half* the time?

The Craft skill in 3.0 is a good idea until you look at how it really works. Then it just looks silly.

--The Sigil

 

[MaxKaladin]

Some points:

1. It seems to me that this whole "Tourist Price" thing could be easily solved by having an internally consistent set of prices and modifying them. The DMG already provides a set of rules for upkeep. Assign a price modifier ranging from +0% to +500% or something based on what level of upkeep the PC pays. Then charge that much extra for stuff he buys. That way, the PC who just escaped from the slave pits, has nothing but a loincloth and is trying to scratch together enough cash for a sword by unloading ships at the docks gets charged less than the PC who happens to be the third in line to the throne and has 50,000gp for pocket change as well as an entorage of 50 servants. To use some extremes, that is.

2. If you want to get down to it, tourist prices don't cut it either, really. Say you're an American in India. You probably get charged a different price than someone from Britain or Canada or Australia or France. I keep hearing about how Canadians abroad like to display a Canadian flag so people know they're not Americans and thus treat them better. So, it then seems reasonable to ask if the PHB Tourist price is the Canadian tourist price or the American tourist price.

3. I think its important to have an accurate idea of how much it costs for more or less regular folks to buy this stuff. One big reason is that PCs, in my experience, have a tendency to buy property and hire NPCs to do stuff for them. This tends to make them locals, if well-off to wealthy locals, somewhere and it means they have to know how much its going to cost them to support those employees.

4. Its true that you're never going to find a representative historical period. There was all kinds of fluctuation going on. It should, however, be possible to assemble a set of prices to serve as the baseline that represents some sort of reasonably stable economy without labor surpluses or shortages and without drastic raw-materials problems like the wood shortage in mesopotamia you mentioned. Then you can let people modify to represent conditions in their campaign.

 

[Damon Griffin]

Re: Yes, it's whack!

Maybe you should take a look at the Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects d'art (RPGNow.com) which handles lots of different types of wood, stone, metal, gems, and a few other "throw-ins" with Hardness, modifiers to Craft DC, weight, and hp/inch.

Oops. How embarassing for me. I actually have that product already. I bought it at the same time as MMS:WE and a handful of others from RPGNow, about 30 days ago, and it's one of the ones I haven't gotten around to actually reading yet.

I did glance quickly though it and all the other e-books I bought at that time, and now that you mention it, I do remember seeing individual writeups for many different materials there. And the prospect of an alternative to the existing Craft system was a major selling point for me.

Compared to regular print books, which stare back at me from the shelves, it's harder for me to remember which e-books I've bought. They're all together in one directory on my hard drive, but how am I supposed to remember what's in stb200.zip?

 

[Conaill]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yes, it's whack!

Now, platinum isn't really much harder to shape than copper (DC 12 again - just melting and pouring takes little work). So our friend the craftsman sits down and pays the 33,333 gp needed for materials (ouch).

He then goes to work on the sphere... and makes progress equal to 216. However, this time, he needs (100,000 gp times 10 or) to get to a million, not a thousand, to finish. Thus it will take him 4630 weeks to finish (right around 89 years) according to the Core Rules.

Except that costs for special materials do not affect the crafting time for the base item. It's not stated in so many words (and definitely not under the Craft skill ), but this is pretty clear from the Special Materials section.

It may need a little common sense interpretation, but I've never met a DM that ruled it any other way. I stand behind my earlier statement that the "platinum sphere" is just a straw man argument...

The core rules also have the silly side effect of the following:

If two items have equal values, but one has a higher DC to craft than the other (i.e., is more complicated and harder to make), that actually leads to the item with the higher DC being finished FIRST!
[...]
So an item that is *twice* as hard to make gets finished in... *half* the time?

Well, that part I've explained several times on thses boards, and actually makes a lot of sense. In fact, you own system works almost exactly the same!

Pick two items from your own list that have the same market price, but have a different difficulty level... which one takes longer to make? I bet it will be the easier one. If the *harder* one would also take *longer* to make, obviously it would have to have a much higher price than the easy one! The only way you could have two items with equal market value but different DC is if the higher DC one took less long to make.

The confusion lies in the fact that D&D start with a table of market prices for standard items. This is entirely practical in a game where 99% of the players simply dont care how something is made and how long it takes to make it. The problem is that they then needed a simple method to "reverse engineer" the crafting process to match the list price.

In reality, the time to craft is obviously not determined by the market price. Rather, it is the market price which is determined by the time to craft, using a formula such as

Price = Effort * Time

...just as in your own method. However, if you have to deal with a table of fixed market prices, and you want to reverse engineer how long it takes to craft an item with a certain DC, This formula turns into:

Time = Price / Effort

It all makes sense, as long as you look at it the correct way, i.e. backwards!

 

[Agback]

I'm wondering if perhaps when making the lists, the prices used for research were from drastically different periods. Probably, mail was proportionally more expensive early on its usage.... hrm.. interesting thought.

That is an important factor. When I was doing my research on mediaeval prices (from sources available on the 'Web) I found that after I corrected for the inflation of silver plate armour came out much cheaper than mail. The explanation turned out to be the prices I had for mail came from the Twelfth Century, a time when metallurgy was little-developed and iron goods were expensive, whereas the figures I had for plate armour were from the second half of the Fifteenth Century, by which time metalwork was being done with improved techniques and had generally halved in it real price (ie. price compared to labour).

But if you are talking about research done in compiling the D&D price lists, I doubt there was any.

Regards,



Agback