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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Damon Griffin" data-source="post: 995020" data-attributes="member: 3568">Those resource totals, like everything else, are only guidelines.  There are any number of good reasons why a character might not have access to the recommended amount at any given time.The PHB price list should merely indicate an average or typical price for the goods and services listed, but there is a reasonable limit to how much those prices can vary, and on what factors the variance can be based on.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.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.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.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 -- 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. 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.  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.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.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.  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.  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.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. 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.I have now changed my shirt.  The new one features Pinky and the Brain, and reads "Isn't it about time you started seeing things my way?"  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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