Game Economy

[SkullThrone]

Just wondering if this bothers anyone else...

I guess I assume that the D&D economy functions similar to the feudal system of Europe, with a middle class of artisans...This seems to work well until you throw magic items into the game...it's apparent in any online game once you get past a given level x lower level items have essentially no value.

I guess I assume it takes a weaponsmith at least 3 days to make a sword, even if they have apprentices that can do this as well they'd make what 10gp a day? Then hear come the PCs and even if you use 20% resale, they may have a +2 item in there, selling to 1,000gps (that'd be about a 1/4 of the years work), not to mention if the PCs were to actually buy something he had...and he were to make 5,000gp on a sale.

This really goes crazy if a paragon level party brought their loot to town, it'd be like an MMO where the higher level characters don't even bother selling items, they just sprinkle it over the ground, because they wouldn't want to carry them, and no one in a typical town would have the funds to buy them...but realistically it's be like 50% of the town just won the lottery and the chaos would ensue once the party left town.

I realize the "its a game"...but I try to put value on things, typically like $0.50 per copper piece, this makes silver $5.00 (a decent typical currency), and a gp is $50...breaks down pretty easy meals may be $5 for breakfast, $10 lunch, and $20 dinner for those middle class artisans, willing to eat out every meal. Which is fine, because they probably make between $150 and $250 a day.

I tend to use this model for cost of items at inn or vendors around town. Daggers then cost $50 (1gp), and swords run $750 (15gp). Obvisously magic items at their listed prices are insanely expensive, a 5th item is listed at 1,000gp or $50,000 (that's like a new car...I guess that's imaginable), level 10 is up to 5,000gp or 1/4 million dollars...after that it just gets crazy ridiculous.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[ninefold_one]

Hey fellow Minnesotan...

I agree with you that game economy doesn't necessarily work well when you add magic items to the mix. Realistically no vendor operating in anything less populated than a city should even be able to afford to buy one piece of magical loot off the player's wagon. Unfortunately I haven't studied economics and cannot come up with a better alternative. I think WotC came close when towns had a GP Limit. But even then... Who are they going to sell to?

I think that realistically magic items should end up as trophies and real player wealth should come from the work he does whether it be crafting, working a job, or whatever. But I digress.

As to your dollar model I do like the conversion. It makes a lot of sense and fits in with my view of dollar equivalency in the gold piece.

 

[surfarcher]

In my campaign the world has a wealth of magic and almost every home will have a low level ("Level 0") magic device of some kind.

But higher level magic items are rather rare... Finding someone with the liquid assets to buy one from the PCs at 20% will be a tall order. Increasingly so as the party they levels.

Enter stage right - the party Artificer...

Basically buying and selling magic items will be very, very poor option for my group. They will prefer to transfer enchantment and create magic item.

 

[SkullThrone]

In previous versions it seemed like the town Alchemist/Magic Shop owner would quickly amass more gold than the entire town combined, 4e doesn't seem very different, but at least previous additions forced characters to pay for training an such, 4e has no major gp expense for players.

I've fixed this in past versions, by essentially redoing the value of magic items, in 4e at least they only have 30 price points to map so this would be fairly simple. Then I suppose there are the consumables to map to as well, but even still mapping 60 current values with 60 new values isn't that hard...has anyone done this, or come up with a simple scheme to do this.

If items were brought down to not completely blow the economy, I suppose platinum would have to come down to 10gp, rather than 100gp. Treasure would probably scale by tier as well.

Does anyone have some good expenses to tack onto the players? I'm thinking about having them train for levels...like 50gp x level...any others?

 

[willows]

The error you're making here is assuming a middle class of artisans that stops at middle class.

I think that in order to make the economy make sense, you need to posit that artisans are in fact the wealthiest class; bureaucrats and logistics people are the middle-class, followed by farmers &c. The artisans are actually the people who make any kind of meaningful decisions about how places run, so you'll end up with a culture where the mystical ateliers and fine couture studios are built in the most desirable locations in town, and the working classes basically exist to provide the upper class with raw materials.

You might stratify or subdivide the artisans by the sorts of items they make and/or giving them level caps. Also, some artisans may get by transforming raw materials (fibers, ores, uncut gems) into prepared materials (starweave cloth, advanced metals, runejewels or whatever) for other artisans to incorporate into projects.

Maybe the one artificer in a village can only make wondrous items up to level 5, but in a big city you can head out to the fashion district and get magical clothing or armor, or head to the steel boutiques for some weaponry, or consult an alchemy sommelier for some potions.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Hey fellow Minnesotans!


Yes, so much that for my home brew campaign I reworked the GP limits into the 4e world.. the discussion if over in this thread here

One of the main factors in this development was looking at how early societies dealt with 'money', which had more to do with land and nobility than it had with merchants. So the intent was to set up rules that allow the players to surf between the barter economy of the masses and the silver piece economy of the minor nobles.. and the gold piece economy of large nation-states.

Another factor was to build in plot hooks. The PC wants to get item X? well find who has it or can make it.. then work to convince them to trade

Instant plot hooks!

 

[Reydragk]

While I understand the urge to make the in-game economy "make sense", I feel like it requires a pretty huge overhaul. If you revise the price-points for items, you then need to revise the amount of gold handed out per level to scale with that, and even with revised scaling I can't imagine that paragon characters would be anything less than filthy stinking rich.

If you do, however, come up with a system that works, I'd be interested. One of my players REALLY wants to try to set up a business in our campaign, and I hate to just tell him straight-up NO, but without a reasonable economic infrastructure I have no idea how to handle it rules-wise.

 

[Reydragk]

grr. sorry for the double post, the previous post didn't appear to have posted, and I had clicked a link while it was in the process of posting, so I typed it up again, thinking that it hadn't finished.

 

[marli]

using the old 2/3E rule of thumb about each level is 50% rarer then the one below and the magic item rarity means that although a magic shop owner might buy an item at 2000 gold and sell it at 10'000 gold that would happen so rarely that a few factor com into effect.
1) does he have that much cash, he will have to borrow from all and sunder(some at rip off rates) to buy your item.
2) he may sell it to adventurers at 10K but to get his money back to pay the interest he will most likely sell it to a bigger trader maybe at 5K or 7K. (who has to ship it to somewhere there is enough rich buyers..via more traders) by the time it returns adventurers the profits have been well dispirsed.
3)after he pays the average 1-2K in interest he racks up trying to find a buyer he isnt exactly super rich. the chance of an item of that value coming through his village again is near to none..

as an example.
in medieval time about 2-5% of people lived in urban areas.
vilages were about 200-400 people.
in a kingdom off 100K there would be 300-350 vilages.(0.33%)
about 3000 level 5 characters exist in this kingom (3%)

the chance that a level 5 character entering your village today is about 1% IF EVERBODY traveled EVERYDAY.
and does he have anything to sell? will you make a profit on it anyway?

you wont see an item sold by a 5th level character for 5 years!

so i think 4E economics are not that far out.

 

[SkullThrone]

Too many good replies to quote anyone, thanks all...

In the past my reason for redoing the entire game economy was that my characters were setting up a magic shop or their unused items, so I needed to calculate how many customers would come in able to buy their items. I worked out a very complex system (as a teenager) that worked, but at this time I'd never even had a real job, and had no idea how things really ran...so even if I new where it was I doubt I'd want to use it.

That said it actually did make sense within itself, so if you accept the assumptions I know it produced a reasonable system for driving customers, based on spending advertising dollars and up keep on the store. It did add a dimension to the game that was very fun to have.

Now, my goal is to preempt some of the problems (least they are too me) that nearly all PnP and online games have, which is at any level beyond the starter ones, the base currencies in the game become useless, as all purchases are made on such a grand scale that characters get to the point that they "may" bend over and pick up a platinum piece, but would not do so for a gold...in these scenarios the player has no more relation to any townsfolk, as the worst item the PC has on their character would care for the villagers entire extended family for generations.

I like the discussion though, I have not read everyones reply yet...been scrambling in and out of the office here trying to get the kids to bed.

Hail to all my Minnesota brethren!