Chapter 8: Money and Equipment
Image taken from the Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants and Magic
Besides being heavily into dark magic stuff, another pet focus of the Tomes series was highlighting the stress points of D&D’s fantasy economic systems. Although discussed in other chapters as well, this is the first one that really touches upon this topic in-depth.
We first start off with an overview of equipment as it stands in 3.5, specifically
Weapons. The authors note that they’re more or less fine with the diverse assortment of weapons in 3.X and don’t see the need to rebalance them, but they do have an issue with 3.5 introducing the concept of variant sizes for weapons. For example, a flail designed by halflings and other Small creatures is going to weigh less and do less damage than one designed by humans or ogres. The Tomes pretty much move back to 3.0’s simplification, and also adds in some restrictions to prevent
Hulking Hurler cheese, such as not being able to use weapons that are larger than the character or that are too heavy to lift as a light load.
The section then moves onto bows. In the original 3.X rules, bows had composite versions which basically let you add a certain amount of Strength to damage rolls, with higher effective Strength being more expensive to craft and purchase. The authors describe this as “dumb,” saying that this made such weapons very cost-prohibitive to use effectively for orcs, giants, and the like. The alternative fix is that composite bows could still be made with a certain Strength requirement, but their cost would remain the same. The limiting factor is that bow-making civilizations only really make what is practical for the realistic Strength ranges of their people. Bows also have alternate ranges based on the intended size of its wielders.
Thoughts: First off, I disagree with the initial statement that 3.X weapons are more or less balanced with each other. Besides the existence of the Spiked Chain, there were definitely weapons that saw more use at tables due to practicality. Crossbows were notoriously weak in comparison to bows, while rapiers and scimitars were the preferred choice for crit-fishing builds given their high threat range. The return to simplification is a common complaint, and one that future Editions moved back to, treating weapons wielded by larger-than-Medium races as effectively unique equipment (albeit with its own can of worms). The Tomes have a step in the right direction, but it feels that it’s more of a patch than a fix, and ironically the “can’t wield weapons past a certain size/weight” does punish martials who already have things hard enough in this ruleset.
We continue to see some obfuscated meta-discussion by the authors. While they do go into detail about what they don’t like about weapon sizes, they don’t really talk about why strong bows being more expensive is dumb in and of itself when other gear made for large/strong races also gets price hikes. The 3.X rules already make armor for larger creatures more expensive, something that the Tomes don’t really change or address. One could logically assume that a bow made for a frost giant would require stronger materials in order to support the increased draw strength, so why is one form of expense an ill-designed decision, and the other not? Additionally, the reduced range on bows for smaller creatures is also a punishment. The increased bow range and removal of expense for higher Strength scores not only reinforces players to not pick halflings, goblins, and other small-sized races for archer builds, it encourages them to pick options such as Goliaths and Half-Ogres instead.
There’s some talk about making magical ammunition cheaper and more easily recoverable, along with new weapon materials for necromantic weapons. For the latter, we did talk about Boneblades in the Prestige Classes section, but we also get Blood Steel (+2 damage on a hit) and Black Steel (adamantine that has Ghost Touch and Wounding properties at no additional cost, but cause Wisdom drain when wielded). I don’t have strong opinions on these overall.
We move onto
Armor, which has a much more significant rules overhaul. The authors note that most armor types are passed over in favor of just a few, so they created a set of new rules to make armor of all types more broadly appealing. We first start out with advice on not mixing and matching incompatible-sounding armor types and qualities, such as not applying Mithril to plate armor. Ironically, the Tomes’ take on Armor Non-Proficiency adds in some punishments not in the original 3.X rules, such as reduced movement in non-proficient armor if its armor check penalty exceeds the wearer’s Base Attack Bonus by a certain amount, and that armor of more unique and exotic origins (such as extraplanar types) require training in it for a day in order to gain proficiency. But there is one boon the Tomes grant to dextrous armor-wearers: they increase the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armor for every two BAB higher than the Armor Check Penalty.
We then get an expanded set of tables for new and existing armor types in the Tomes. In addition to straightforward protection, armor and shields also grant bonus benefits based on Base Attack Bonus and ranks in particular skills in line with the principles of Scaling Feats. This wasn’t just a Frank and K endeavor, for they were assisted by Mister Sinister in rounding out the scaling armors. For example, Dragonscale Suits grant stuff like Energy Resistance and eventually Immunity based on the type of dragon its armor is made from, Hide Armor can make the wearer undetectable by scent and harder to track, and Spiderweb Clothing lets one be more spider-like such as unrestrained movement through webs as as well as gaining poison immunity.
Thoughts: There’s an awful lot of armor types, and the scaling benefits help make them stand out. However, these rules suffer from the option paralysis effect that the Scaling Feats do, and there are still certain armors that have more broadly applicable benefits than others. For example, Padded Armor still sucks, with the 8 rank benefit (gain benefit of 8 hours of sleep with 7 hours) actually being weaker than the 4 rank benefit (can reroll a failed Tumble check under certain circumstances), while the Adamantine Breastplate’s +1 BAB has a better benefit (Damage Reduction equal to BAB vs non-adamantine weapons) than most of the Ringmail armor’s (its +1 BAB merely negates 5 points of non-lethal damage from any attack).
The Economicon is the final section of this chapter, moving on from raw crunch to the discussion of more ephemeral concepts that are split into 8 different subject matters. This is also the first time that the Tomes talk about the Wish Economy in more depth. Although the PDF goes into proper detail in the Book of Gears in back, I believe that giving the readers a brief run-down here can help provide a better understanding.
The Tomes operate with the expectation that D&D societies are separated into three broad economic systems:
- The Turnip Economy, representing subsistence agriculture and hunter-gatherers, societies that rely on barter systems, and others that have not developed or are sufficiently removed from more intricate systems such as banking and minted coinage.
- The Gold Economy, representing the pseudo-medieval adventuring standard, with Material Plane cities and major population centers being the nexus points of trade.
- The Wish Economy, representing archmages, extraplanar bastions, the courts of archfiends and divinities, and other people and places operating by immortal principles.
The Wish Economy is further outlined by several core rules: the first is that coins in D&D are 1/50th of a pound; that an Efreet can produce a Wish for any magical item of 15,000 gold or less; that a Balor can cast Greater Teleport at will, but only carry 30 pounds of currency while doing so, and that even with platinum pieces that’s only 15,000 gold worth of currency.* Thus, any magic item worth more than 15k is only bought for more valuable things, such as immortal souls and other planar currency. And as the Tomes are built around the expectation that captured Efreeti are easily accessible, that PCs of powerful enough status can be assumed to more or less acquire magic items worth 15k or less without any effort.
*This is actually wrong: a Balor can Greater Teleport with 50 pounds of objects at most, not 30.
The Economicon bounces between different subject matter, such as an attempted in-universe justification for the universal price tag increase for masterwork weapons and armor by saying that D&D functions on a war-time economy. As to why, this doesn’t make sense to the authors that a masterwork dagger is worth more than their weight in gold. Or that silver/gold/etc pieces are unreasonably heavy in comparison to real-world coins. But there are some choice essays I want to focus.
8.3.4 Bad Money Drives Out Good: The Penalties of Paper
This essay attempts to explain why fiat currency and paper money don’t really exist in D&D. It basically boils down to the claim that such currency only came about with the rise of Nationalism in the real world, and that D&D societies are still operating in the Iron Age. The authors point out that D&D settings can have expansive empires and kingdoms, but “that’s it as far as civilization goes.” Since they aren’t countries in the modern sense of the word, people can’t place trust in a higher governmental authority beyond what can be enforced through labor and force of arms.
This is wrong from an historian’s perspective: first off, the real-world Iron Age predated the feudal era by several centuries to a millennia, depending on where you are in the world.
Additionally, many pre-Industrial societies have made use of paper currency. The Mongol Empire, the Tang and Song Dynasties of China, even the Knights Templar all had paper currency. And if we really want to be in the Iron Age, Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi and the city-state of Carthage also made use of paper for the tracking of debts.
8.3.5 Powerful Creatures Have a Powerful Economy
This focuses on what forms of currency that archmages, demon lords, and the like use in place of vulgar metal. The Tomes provide five major types: gems, souls, concentration, hope, and raw chaos. Gems are useful because they are used as material components for all manner of spells, souls are useful for necromantic stuff and for the lower planes’ slave trade, concentration represents ideas so powerful that they take the form of an amber-like substance and are valued by Lawful outsiders, hope is a shining weightless material valued by celestials, and raw chaos is the essence of possibility that can take innumerable forms. All of these materials can be used in the crafting of magic items.
Our final essay in this chapter brings things to a close. As we covered in prior posts, D&D 3.5 and the Tomes grant characters (not just PCs) powers and abilities that can fundamentally change things on both a personal and societal scale. And that’s before getting into high-level Wish-granting shenanigans! The Tome authors are more than aware that many gaming groups have asked the question of why the PCs and powers-that-be haven’t used their influence to reshape D&D settings into something much more advanced. This is pretty much a fantasy equivalent of the
“Why Doesn’t Reed Richards Cure Cancer?” type of questions you see bandied about in superhero fandoms. This next subject is what the Tomes attempts to answer.
8.3.8 Bringing the World out of the Dark Ages
It is historical fact that you can take a ridiculous and crumbling imperium with serfs and horse-drawn carts managed by a tyrannical and squabbling aristocracy and boot strap it into being a technologically sophisticated global power that can win the space race and such in a single generation even while being invaded by an evil and genocidal empire. The people at the top don't even need to be nice or sane, they just have to understand that economics is an entirely voodoo science, and the limits of production can be broken by thousands of percentage points by getting everyone to buy on credit, work on projects that people looking at the big picture tell them to work on, continuously invest in productive capital, and believe in the future.
Right. That's called Communism, and it ends the dark ages immediately even if it isn't run well. Presumably if it was being run by Paladins who actually radiate goodness and Wizards who are inhumanly intelligent and can cast powerful divinations to determine projected needs and goods could be distributed to the masses with teleportals - it would work substantially better. That sort of thing is not outside the capabilities of your characters in D&D. It's not outside the capabilities of the people in the village your characters are saving from gnollish invasion. It's not even technically complicated. But it isn't done.
Partly it isn't done because we're playing Dungeons & Dragons, not Logistics & Dragons. While it is true that you can fix the world's ills in a much more tangible fashion by industrializing the production of grain and arranging a non-gold based distribution system such that staple food stuffs are available to all, thereby freeing up potential productive labor for use in blah blah blah… the fact is that to a very real degree we play this game because telling stories about slaying evil necromancers and swinging on chandeliers is awesome. But the other reason is that the society in D&D really isn't ready for a modern or futuristic social setup. No one is going to understand how they are supposed to interact with Socialism, Capitalism, or Fascism, things are Feudal and people understand that. Wealth is exchanged for goods and services on the grounds that people on both sides of the exchange aren't sure that they would win the resulting combat if they tried to take the goods or wealth by force of arms.
Rome had steam engines. Actual difference engines that propelled a metal device with the power of a combustion reaction through the medium of the expansion of heated water. Really. They never built rail roads because slaves were cheaper than donkeys and the concept of investing in labor saving devices was preposterous. In D&D, the idea of having an economy based around trust in the government and labor/wealth equivalencies is similarly preposterous.
It's not that the idea wouldn't work, it's that every man, woman, and child in society would simply laugh you out of the room if you tried to explain it to them.
Thoughts: A long-ass time ago, when I first got interested in the Tomes, the “economics is voodoo science” was the major thing I tripped over. It’s pretty uncontroversial in academia that economics is a legitimate social science. Heck, it’s one of the few things that libertarians and communists agree on! I first thought (and saw the defense of) the bolded line that it’s being discussed in the context of Soviet-style centralized planning. But it’s not, for the term "entirely" applies to an objective stance of authority. It’s also not talking about “Voodoo Economics,” which was a criticism of Ronald Reagan’s policies, as it’s quite clearly about the Soviet Union which was hardly a laissez-faire capitalist society.
This is perhaps the prime example of obfuscated authorial intent: the writers not only drop a contentious declaration that is hardly a popular opinion, they don’t really explain why they came to that conclusion and presume that the reader will accept it at face value. What makes this line worse than other examples is that the Tome authors go into a lot of detail about fantasy economics. For a STEM example, this would be the equivalent of reading a D&D sourcebook talking about fantastical poisons and diseases, and then out of nowhere the author says that vaccines cause autism in real life. This served as my first shelf-breaking moment in not just the Tomes, but the future works of Frank and K. Even if what they were talking about appeared to make sense, I always had that lingering seed of doubt that what I was reading could in fact be incredibly wrong.
But more broadly, this essay is a good example of the Selective Realism I talked about in the original post. This isn’t the first time that the Tomes take an implied “feudal people are too dumb and unenlightened to take advantage of magic and other society-shaping tools,” but it does showcase the authors’ attempts at explaining why there’s a dissonance between the rules presented and the world as it is presented. I am reminded of how Ars Magica had sourcebooks talking about how the magical powers and creatures presented in its rules could change medieval Europe, which is quite solidly feudal. Instead of retreating from the world-breaking expectations that could arise out of handing great power to the PCs and NPCs of the setting, it reinforces the feeling of a living world full of people making decisions that feel plausible to the reader. The Tomes’ take is antithetical to this.
Thoughts So Far: There are some things I like in this chapter, some things I dislike. The latter outweighs the former, for where the Tomes falter, they falter hard.
Join us next time as we get our war face on in Chapters 9 through 11: Combat Basics, Advanced Combat, and Conditions & Special Abilities!
