D&D 5E Money System in D&DN?

[Jeff Carlsen]

No, I believe I didn't miss the point. A silver standard is pointless. Gold pieces are already a fine standard and there is zero reason to have two sets of currencies in the game.

The silver standard may not be to your taste, but it isn't pointless, for the same reason that there are more than zero reasons to have multiple currencies.

Gold is rare and extremely valuable. Today, a single troy ounce gold coin is worth $1700. Now, you may not care if your fantasy world holds true to this, but many of us do. We want gold to be rare and highly valuable. It's treasure, afterall. We want an every-day currency that covers most adventuring needs. Appeasing these desires is a considerable reason.

The other reason is weight. Unless you don't even consider the weight of coins, which is significant playstyle decision.

 

[delericho]

Are they going to go to the effort of putting together a consistent and meaningful in-game economy, where things actually cost what they rightfully should in-setting?

If so, going to a silver standard is probably right. If not, it's largely irrelevant what they do - it's purely a number on a character sheet with no real meaning.

And that's doubly true if 5e is going to remove the magic item economy (or, possibly, XP-for-gold), meaning that PCs don't actually have any real use for all that treasure they accumulate.

 

[Dausuul]

And that's doubly true if 5e is going to remove the magic item economy (or, possibly, XP-for-gold), meaning that PCs don't actually have any real use for all that treasure they accumulate.

If they just take out the magic item economy and don't replace it, then yes, PCs will tend to pile up gold with no way to spend it except what individual DMs provide. However, some optional modules devoted to castles and armies and large-scale warfare would solve that problem nicely.

Edit: Heh, just noticed that I used "gold" as a synonym for "money" there. The D&D gold standard is more ingrained in me than I realized.

 

[delericho]

If they just take out the magic item economy and don't replace it, then yes, PCs will tend to pile up gold with no way to spend it except what individual DMs provide. However, some optional modules devoted to castles and armies and large-scale warfare would solve that problem nicely.

True. That was essentially what I was alluding to - the game needs something for PCs to do with the immense wealth they've accumulated. Whether that's buying magic items, squandering it for XP, buying castles, raising armies, or whatever is largely irrelevant.

But, in any case, unless the in-setting economy has been set up to make sense, it doesn't matter if the standard is called 'gold' or 'silver' - it's just a number with no meaning behind it. And D&D has never had an economy that makes sense.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Are they going to go to the effort of putting together a consistent and meaningful in-game economy, where things actually cost what they rightfully should in-setting?

Not possible in your standard D&D, where PCs effectively mint money every time they haul hitherto-out-of-circulation currency out of the dungeon.

 

[delericho]

Not possible in your standard D&D, where PCs effectively mint money every time they haul hitherto-out-of-circulation currency out of the dungeon.

Not strictly true - history tells us what happens to an economy when there's a gold rush on.

Of course, actually modelling that would require significant research by the designers, and inevitably lead to much greater complexity in the game. So it's almost certainly more trouble than it's worth, even as an optional module.

In which case...

If not, it's largely irrelevant what they do - it's purely a number on a character sheet with no real meaning.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I don't think there is any point to a system with two currencies with a 1:10 conversion rate. You could just as well have gone with one currency.

I think D&D 5e should go with either the modern 1:100 conversion rate, or use the old british system: 1:20:12 gold:silver:copper. I would like them to use the pound:shillingence names for them as well. It fits the medival setting better, even if it's awkward.

 

[cmbarona]

I initially voted Gold 1-100, then Silver 1-100, but after reading these posts, I have to agree that I don't really care all that much. So I'll vote "Other." I think there are a few good reasons why I don't care:

1. When I track money in my character sheet, I have never bothered to track my exact coinage. It's cumbersome. I don't track how many quarters, dimes, nickels, and especially not pennies, that I have in my wallet at any given time. I put it away and just check if I have enough change for any given purchase in front of me. Moreover, in my bank account, I just worry about a single currency: dollars and fractions thereof. I barely think in terms of "63 cents." I think about "point 63 dollars." What matters is that a standard exists, and that it's easy to calculate when you get more and when you need to purchase something.
2. I abhor arguments concerning the rarity of metals as an assumption of their inherent value, like "Gold is worth a lot more than 10 times an equal weight of silver!." Unless, of course, you're trying to replicate an actual Earth historical period. In that case, more power to you, I'd like to play a different game or let you handle the math, thank you very much. But if the campaign world I imagine, make up, and fictionally create has an exchange rate of 10 silver to 1 gold, then by the power vested in me as DM of the table, that world shall contain metals in the exact rarity needed to enforce that rate of exchange.
3. Given the above two, I would much prefer WotC publish a single unit of currency and suggest you make up whatever forms of currency you want to make that work. Item X cost 100 "money." "Money" can be 100 gold pieces, 100 silver pieces, 10 gold bits, 1 Platinum piece, 100 credits, .58439715 bitcoins, or whatever you want. I think this system should come with a default currency suggestion, of course, just so there's a default assumption to make Encounters and the like easier to jump into.

 

[Dausuul]

Not possible in your standard D&D, where PCs effectively mint money every time they haul hitherto-out-of-circulation currency out of the dungeon.

I see this sort of criticism a lot, and it strikes me as a bit too flip. Obviously there is the potential for PCs to cause local inflation if they pull a lot of money out of a dungeon and then dump it all in a small town. But a few thousand gold pieces, even a few tens of thousands, won't upend the economy of a medieval kingdom. It's quite possible for D&D to provide consistent and sensible prices for items assuming adventurers are rare and their treasure hauls limited. Then you can toss in some guidelines for DMs to deal with how things might change if they depart from that model.

 

[El Mahdi]

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