Gold or Silver Standard?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Speaking only for myself-- but at the same time, I suspect, for 95% of the PCs out there-- I adventure to accumulate power.

Damn. I always hoped you did it to rescue the world from demons, devils and lich kings! Well, at least that's what I do (except I haven't had to go up against lich kings)

I think in a PoL setting, the typical adventure goal is to ensure that his personal PoL can continue to shine. Wealth doesn't help you if the Ogres come to burn down your village!
(Though this doesn't mean it isn't also about power or egoistical need - off course you'd be the best to hold all power, since that would make everyone safe. And not seeing your village burned by ogres certainly helps yourself a lot, too.)

 

[Rouens]

My group uses Gems as standard treasure, it's easier to carry and very valuable.
Won't work for all. But if I have to choose between coins, I rather have a realistic silver standard, but don't skimp on trade goods that's even more realistic to carry around. I mean those orc raiders are probably going after stuff they can use instead of "useless" gold. Though they could think: "It's shiny, nice". Gems and jewelry are even more realistic to steal then anyways.

 

[jester47]

Speaking of a Gold Standard in D&D makes me want to make a joke about a certain political figure being my DM, but this is politics and a no no.

In truth I think silver is best. Vikings loved hacksilver. Silver is in all the best westerns (the movies not the hotels). The best betrayals always involve silver, never gold. Who fights wars for platinum? If you price everything in silver gold becomes like it is today, valuable... There should be a reason everyone wants gold: because everyone HAS silver.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So why not remove the "gp" conversion altogether and employ a simple process? Doing so with also maintain a more realistic "economy" for the PoL setting - one that is separate from the PC/hero economy.

Wasn't that something you could do in Dungeon Siege? That's so video-gamey!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

At the risk of getting off topic a bit, for what I consider a pretty good example of a medieval economy, watch Rob Roy (1995). (It's also a kickass movie in its own right, of course.)

You get to see an economy in action from peasant to noble. The peasants deal in live animals. The nobles deal on the strength of their signature (signed notes) and their wealth is contained primarily in land.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Damn. I always hoped you did it to rescue the world from demons, devils and lich kings! Well, at least that's what I do (except I haven't had to go up against lich kings)

Do you do that at 1st level, or do you accumulate the power you need first?

More power = bigger good deeds.

I think you had sort of a knee-jerk reaction there to the phrase "accumulate power."

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The problem is that for there to be a real trade in magic items, there needs to be both sufficient magic items to sustain the trade, and sufficient buyers. That works in a cosmopolitan setting such as Planescape or the Forgotten Realms. In a points-of-light setting... not so much.

Now, PCs should certainly be able to sell magic loot. But in most cases, they should not be able to get anywhere near the purchase price of a new-made magic item.

Agreed. I'm thinking either 1/3 to 1/2 tops. What would be preferrable is something that lets you leach the power out of an existing magic item to fuel the creation of something else. Perhaps you destroy the pick, but in doing so enable the creation of a +1 weapon of another variety or something. What I'm really getting at is there needs to be a way to transform unwanted items into wanted items. Either via selling and buyi8ng what you want, rituals, commissioning the creation of something, etc.

Modern players aren't interested in counting the output of flour mills, sure, but that doesn't mean they have no interest in things like castles and armies. They just want an NPC vizier to take care of all the fiddly details. D&D could quite easily support spending money on such things, so long as a) players don't have to sweat the details, and b) there's something interesting to do with castles and armies once you've got them.

I disagree that many are even interested in that. WOTC has done a fair amount of research into what sells. notice how there were very few supplements on raising armies, running towns etc... Heroes of Battle and Stronghold Builders were about it. Most of the books out now are about impriving YOUR character, not their hordes of mooks no one wants to fiddle with in the first place. The game has changed a lot since D&D was barely anything more than an excuse for your army's leaders to go get more loot to build a better army.

Its a special type of player thats interested in that. There needs to be a way for joe average hack and slasher to turn wealth into something USEFUL for their character, as opposed to whores and million gold piece frilly hats.

 

[jester47]

I will side with China Mieville on this one: Adventurers are in it for the money and the expereince.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Weapon proficiencies (and related feats) should be greatly expanded so that fighters don't become bound to one particular weapon.

Restrict them to type (slashing, bludgeoning, piercing, or ranged), sure, if you want to.

Throwing away magic battleaxes because you took Weapon Focus in dwarven waraxe is not conducive to "cool!" play.

From what we know however, thats not the direction they are going. They indicated that a spear fighter, a sword and board and a 2 handed axe fighter will all have a very different feel, and draw upon different powers. Unless the fighter can easily swap their specialties, weapons outside their focus wont do them much good.

 

[Lackhand]

So, factoid for those who want to pursue this currency step for themselves (I'm considering it).

As of last friday, copper traded at 80 pounds of copper to one pound of silver, and silver traded at 54 pounds of silver to one pound of gold.

Allowing silver to inflate in price relative to copper (since elves use so daggum much of it in their art, spells consume some of it, &c) it's pretty reasonable to cast 100 copper coins to the silver coin, and 50 silver coins to the gold coin.

I suggest holding the value of the copper piece as constant between the 3.x economy and this putative silver-based economy, thus allowing a direct translation, 1 gp = 1 silver coin.

If you want to keep the currency names the same, I suggest you call this silver coin the "guild piece", allowing 1 gp to stay 1 g.p., just using a different acronym

Also humorous is that the new golden coin has the purchase power of exactly one 3.x potion. Coincidence? Probably. So?