Orius
Unrepentant DM Supremacist
I voted for gold standard 10-1, though silver wouldn't bother me a great deal.
The main reason for gold standard is that's what the PCs seem to use the most often. Weapons and armor tend to be priced by the gp, and that's the prices most important to a PC, unless they're in the kind of campaign where they're buying weird stuff off the tables to stymie whatever tricks and traps they think the DM has in store for them.
The silver standard itself doesn't bother me, if we're assuming that's typical wages for the commoner, but for the most part, it's more important to take into account what the PCs are actually using.
Silver or gold, I prefer the game to stick with a 10:1 conversion rate across the board. It's just easier to run things when 10 cp = 1 sp and 10 sp = 1 gp, and I'm used to it. I don't care what happens to platinum since I don't hand out pp, and I don't miss electrum. Platinum is moderately useful for converting large amounts of gold, but electrum has been somewhat pointless since at least 2e. Maybe it was ok in 1e when the exchange rates were different, but it was pointless in 2e when 2 ep = 1 gp and nothing was priced in ep. I just converted random ep treausre amounts to gold and that was that.
I suspect some of the love for the silver standard comes from peoples' experiences with OD&D/1e/Basic where treasure was worth xp. This became optional in 2e and 3e, and it leads to somewhat different playstyles. Where money=experience, you've got PCs piling up wealth to level, so the game starts throwing in money sinks like training costs to deal with it. It seems some DMs like to start lowballing treasure hauls as well so the PCs don't level up so fast, so thus the love of a silver standard.
The main reason for gold standard is that's what the PCs seem to use the most often. Weapons and armor tend to be priced by the gp, and that's the prices most important to a PC, unless they're in the kind of campaign where they're buying weird stuff off the tables to stymie whatever tricks and traps they think the DM has in store for them.
The silver standard itself doesn't bother me, if we're assuming that's typical wages for the commoner, but for the most part, it's more important to take into account what the PCs are actually using.
Silver or gold, I prefer the game to stick with a 10:1 conversion rate across the board. It's just easier to run things when 10 cp = 1 sp and 10 sp = 1 gp, and I'm used to it. I don't care what happens to platinum since I don't hand out pp, and I don't miss electrum. Platinum is moderately useful for converting large amounts of gold, but electrum has been somewhat pointless since at least 2e. Maybe it was ok in 1e when the exchange rates were different, but it was pointless in 2e when 2 ep = 1 gp and nothing was priced in ep. I just converted random ep treausre amounts to gold and that was that.
I suspect some of the love for the silver standard comes from peoples' experiences with OD&D/1e/Basic where treasure was worth xp. This became optional in 2e and 3e, and it leads to somewhat different playstyles. Where money=experience, you've got PCs piling up wealth to level, so the game starts throwing in money sinks like training costs to deal with it. It seems some DMs like to start lowballing treasure hauls as well so the PCs don't level up so fast, so thus the love of a silver standard.
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