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<blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6572908" data-attributes="member: 2011">In the real world, would you offer $1 million for a mid tier $4000 motorcycle that you needed at that time? Or would you first offer $10,000 or $15,000? If the owner refuses the $10,000, then you negotiate up. You don't throw away $990,000 just because. That's borderline insane. Players will go way out of their way to roleplay the motivations of their PCs to the nth degree and then turn around and have their PCs throw away a fortune on a whim.The other aspect of it is &quot;How does the farmer cart away 200 pounds of coins without this cart and mules?&quot;. Does he bury it and hope this vast treasure is still there when he gets back? Stuff like this is ludicrous because the players and DM are not thinking about what is actually happening.My point is that at many tables, because players talk gold pieces and do not talk dollars, many if not most of them are totally clueless as to how much money they have, how much something is worth, and how much they should be spending for a given item or service.As a DM, I often convert gold pieces to dollars in my head before I assign a treasure. That way, I have a fairly decent handle on how much I'm actually handing out and not being too stingy or too generous. I've been at tables where the DM has an NPC merchant say &quot;I'll give the five of you 100 GP each to get back my cart load of stolen goods&quot;. That's $50,000. The goods had better be expensive (e.g. silks, tapestries, etc.) to be handing out this level of cash. Say that it is a cart of ale. The cart is only worth 15 GP and at 1 SP per gallon for ale (about half the price PCs would pay for it), the merchant would need 4850 gallons of ale on the cart (18 tons of liquid alone, let alone the weight of the casks) to break even. Granted, a merchant might just want revenge or some such, but again, the amount of money the NPC is willing to spend based on his motivations should be in a reasonable ballpark, and not ludicrously out of whack.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KarinsDad, post: 6572908, member: 2011"] In the real world, would you offer $1 million for a mid tier $4000 motorcycle that you needed at that time? Or would you first offer $10,000 or $15,000? If the owner refuses the $10,000, then you negotiate up. You don't throw away $990,000 just because. That's borderline insane. Players will go way out of their way to roleplay the motivations of their PCs to the nth degree and then turn around and have their PCs throw away a fortune on a whim. The other aspect of it is "How does the farmer cart away 200 pounds of coins without this cart and mules?". Does he bury it and hope this vast treasure is still there when he gets back? Stuff like this is ludicrous because the players and DM are not thinking about what is actually happening. My point is that at many tables, because players talk gold pieces and do not talk dollars, many if not most of them are totally clueless as to how much money they have, how much something is worth, and how much they should be spending for a given item or service. As a DM, I often convert gold pieces to dollars in my head before I assign a treasure. That way, I have a fairly decent handle on how much I'm actually handing out and not being too stingy or too generous. I've been at tables where the DM has an NPC merchant say "I'll give the five of you 100 GP each to get back my cart load of stolen goods". That's $50,000. The goods had better be expensive (e.g. silks, tapestries, etc.) to be handing out this level of cash. Say that it is a cart of ale. The cart is only worth 15 GP and at 1 SP per gallon for ale (about half the price PCs would pay for it), the merchant would need 4850 gallons of ale on the cart (18 tons of liquid alone, let alone the weight of the casks) to break even. Granted, a merchant might just want revenge or some such, but again, the amount of money the NPC is willing to spend based on his motivations should be in a reasonable ballpark, and not ludicrously out of whack. [/QUOTE]

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