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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6124153" data-attributes="member: 7006">This is exactly correct.Let's just put it into a modern perspective here to help us visualize it (not that I'm advocating what I'm about to describe.)You are ransacking a house, and you're grabbing a bunch of stuff.  One of the items in the house is an upended water bubbler container FILLED with pennies.  Do you pick that up and take it with you?  We're talking a container that probably 20+ pounds, and were you to get it home and count it up... maybe worth like 20 bucks?  Would you really waste your time, energy, and slow yourself down just to lug around this huge jug that is barely worth anything?That's exactly what finding copper pieces in a gold-standard economy is.The only time finding CP is worth it is when the DM just handwaves encumberance altogether and the party immediately changes the CP to its GP value and adds it to their treasure totals.  But that really isn't meant to be the standard way of relating to treasure in the game, I don't think.When you use a silver standard... copper pieces have a little bit of worth.  10 copper equal 1 silver.  You'd probably grab that chest filled with copper pieces, because it would be a meaningful grab once you counted it out.  Silver pieces?  They're the standard.  They have worth.  It's what everyone wants and uses.  Gold?  Now, all of a sudden (as Dausuul says)... gold is special!  A single gold piece is worth 10 silver!  Finding a chest of even just 100 GP becomes a terrific haul!  One that is actually easy to shlep around.  And then the best part of all (from an in-game, holy crap! perspective)... is when you find that one lone platinum piece.  That one piece that is worth 100 silver.  THAT becomes HUGE.Don't believe me?  You probably have never held a $100 bill then.  Because I tell you... there is something psychological about holding that hundred that just feels different than normal cash.  It feels special-- like I shouldn't even be holding it because it wasn't meant for me, it was meant for the idle rich.  THAT is what you get when you go to a silver standard-- you make copper, silver, gold, and platinum all feel useful and wanted again.  Whereas the old way where gold is gold, ho-hum, platinum is just a 10 dollar bill, silver is just the fractions of gold, and copper is a completely useless waste of time to even bother looking at or counting.</blockquote>

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