D&D 5E High Level Shopping

[CapnZapp]

Edit: The correct resources link is
https://www.enworld.org/resources/high-level-shopping.1511/download



---
I have just uploaded High Level Shopping to the downloads area.

High Level Shopping

You can find the file here in the downloads section. Please use this thread for comments:
5E - The many and fabulous bazaars of Port Nyanzaru - and beyond

 

[SubDude]

Why silver piece pricing?

 

[dave2008]

Why silver piece pricing?

That is the standard he uses (and so do I). Just swap out sp for gp and your good to go.

 

[SubDude]

That is the standard he uses (and so do I). Just swap out sp for gp and your good to go.

Ok, why use a Silver Standard?

(Feel free to point me to an existing discussion.)

 

[Coroc]

Ok, why use a Silver Standard?

(Feel free to point me to an existing discussion.)

It is historically accurate and makes much more sense. If you want to place your campaign in a distinct epoch concerning tech level and realistic pricing and economics - comparable to RL medieval Europe then silver based pricing always is the way to go. Also encumbrance of a fortune is more realistic with gold being worth much more than in raw. A realistic approach is 1g=20s=240c.
Replace all gold in the PHB with silver 1:1

 

[Quartz]

There are some good things there. I like your sets of items. I did spot a couple of issues: you have an Ioun stone give a +1 Proficiency Bonus - that's already in the DMG - and some items (e.g. the magma one) need charges applied.

The leather armour that's the first item looks very cool, but I would suggest Resistance instead of DR 5. KISS applies. DR 5 makes the wearer basically immune to mooks.

 

[dave2008]

Ok, why use a Silver Standard?

(Feel free to point me to an existing discussion.)

I know @CapnZapp has discussed this is what he uses in other threads, but I don't know if he said why. Maybe he can chime in. Personally I use it for basically the same reason as noted by @Coroc mentioned.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I also use a silver standard more for evoking a feeling than any concern about reality.

With whatever our standard is, we think of it essentially as being like dollars. They are our baseline. If you use gold standard, the gp is like having a dollar and all costs are based off of it. But doing that means all silver pieces are like dimes and all copper pieces are essentially pennies. And in terms of giving out treasure, finding a giant sack of pennies in some treasure hoard kinda blows. Who is going to actually want to bother picking them up? I mean if you were to break into someone's house and see a giant water cooler bottle that was filled with nothing but pennies... yeah, it might seem kinda(?) worth taking... maybe(?)... but based upon how unwieldy it would be to lug that thing around, all for an undetermined amount that you'd have to spend a long time counting... it probably isn't worth it. Spend a couple hours counting out 2000 pennies for what is essentially 20 bucks.

And on top of that... the next (and only) coin up from the gold standard is the platinum piece, and that's worth... $10. Again, it just doesn't seem all that exciting if you find pp, especially considering many old school DMs I don't think tend to drop platinum pieces into hoards in any great amount. So yeah, okay, you end up finding a couple tenners in a satchel. That's... fine.

But... if you drop down to the silver standard, the appearances are reversed. Copper pieces now have a seeming worth of 10 cents each. They still have a bit of function in your economy and feel okay to grab because a mere ten of them get you to your baseline. And then on top of that, gold pieces are now worth $10 bucks each, and DMs are more conditioned to drop sacks of them around... so you'll usually find larger piles of gold than you would piles of platinum in a gp standard economy. So for gold we're talking a really good haul! And finally, platinum? One platinum piece is worth $100! Think about how you feel when you have a one hundred dollar bill in your pocket? That's how it feels to have a platinum piece. At this point now, even finding a half-dozen lone coins is a windfall. It makes every platinum coin special.

Now of course... not every table will necessarily get that evocation of feeling that strongly even if you switch over, because it really comes down a lot to how the DM runs their economy at the table. But even at the barest minimum... having two larger coins over your standard and only one under just gives the appearance of more worth than one over and two under. No matter how your DM runs it... any coin worth 1/100th of your standard is just gonna feel kinda lame.

 

[77IM]

Looking at the prices of "goods and services" and the daily wages of hirelings, it seems to me that a gold piece is worth around $100, making a silver piece about $10, and a copper piece roughly $1. The prices don't quite line up with modern day currency, because the relative values were slightly different back in pseudo-medieval times, but it's usually close enough to get a good feel for how much a coin is worth. For example, if the mayor is offering the group 150 gp to clear out a den of kobolds, that's roughly $15,000 -- a pretty hefty sum for a day's work, offset by the risks involved. A guild fee of 1 gp is like a $100 fee, which is kinda steep, but not absurd. Bribing a guard 10 gp is like slipping them $1,000, which is enough to make many people look the other way. Etc. Also, it conforms to the PHB description of how common coins are -- gold coins are themselves rare, but silver and copper are common, which is like real life ($100 bills are much less common than $10 and $1; actually I think the $20 is more common than the $10, but it's close enough).

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

Have a look at Terry Pratchett's discworld:
Gold is very special and no everyday currency,
and if some gold appears, everyone's after it.