D&D 4E Prediction: 4e economy will have to change

[Storminator]

Yeah, the hyperinflation at higher levels in the D&D economy since 3e really annoys me.

For instance, in epic 3e the cost in money of developing epic spells, items, etc. can easily be more than the gold held by the treasury of entire countries.

I would love to see incentives for pcs to buy strongholds and the like, too. One thing I have complained about since, well, 1e, really, is the lack of a good system for managing domains. That's a great place for a pc to invest their money! Yet there's no rule support for it at all in 4e and very little in earlier editions.

I remember the day my PC (one of six) lost almost 2 million gold pieces in equipment to Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Those 6 seconds were mighty expensive!

PS

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Barring antiques (which cost more due to sentimentality and rarity), do weapons in the real world scale in cost and utility as magic items do in D&D?

No

In the real world, you can buy a pistol that costs $100. It's dinky, but it works. That's a normal sword.

If you want a quality pistol, you can easily buy one for $1000. That's a +2 sword.
snip
I dunno, maybe magic items in D&D cost too much. Or maybe Olympic shootists and elite mercenaries do spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single gun.

Not sure about the Olympic shootist but I very much doubt about the elite soldiers because there are other more effective things they can spend that kind of money on that is more effective.

Either way, my main problem is that a lot of 'epic' magic items are boring. Oh, so this sword is mathematically superior to that one? Wow, that's impressive. But I'm fighting gods. Where's my sword that can cut down a forest in a single swing?

D&D characters spend irrationally. If I have $300,000 dollars, I'm not going to own three $100,000 items and nothing else (one to hold, one to wear, and one for my neck). I'm going to have most of that invested or in a bank, and probably splurge for a single $50k item, and then have a variety of smaller things.

I agree, I think that money == magic items was a mistaken path and that things like that should evolve with the story.
Either the weapon they have improves or the improvement comes with the hero.
If money no longer represents magic items then estates, strongholds and ritual magic would all probably get more attention.

With the right rituals you can make a stronghold pretty secure and in a way that you know when it is in trouble. And then you can used linked portal to get back in time. Or to make a timely retreat from the dungeon.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, massive amounts of cash always caused problems, and always existed. Things like castles also sucked up massive amounts of gold. In a lot of ways making items and gold equate actually is nice because it means there's another reasonable way to tie all that money up. I saw FAR more AD&D campaigns with DMs trying to figure out how the HECK to get all that money out of the PCs hands than ones that managed to use it creatively.

The whole 4e treasure system is designed to run nearly on automatic. You toss the right size parcels at the characters and it works. You make a mistake and the escalating numbers erase it soon enough.

As for major property and such you can do it fine now. The major factor isn't cost. The major factor is availability. Unless a PC is going to either take over his own castle by force or be granted one by the local government there's little to no chance of buying it anyway. You can't buy equivalent types of stuff in the real world, and in say 12th Century France NO amount of gold would have bought you a castle either. It all falls more under RP. At super high epic levels yeah PCs have millions of GP potentially, but as the system is designed they'll very rarely spend it.

 

[MerricB]

Barring antiques (which cost more due to sentimentality and rarity), do weapons in the real world scale in cost and utility as magic items do in D&D?

Yes.

One handgun... $100
One rocket launcher... $40,000
One tank... $6,210,000
One stealth bomber... $737,000,000

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Oh, very well:

Aircraft carrier - $6,200,000,000

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

It should also be noted that rich people these days can be extremely rich.

For instance, the net worth of a lot of people on these boards would go from values of $1,000 (students) up to $500,000 (people who have their own home in a nice area, possibly inherited). Meanwhile, Bill Gates has $43,000,000,000.

These are astonishing amounts of money. And yet, we live on the same planet!

Cheers!

 

[Insight]

You can't really equate modern wealth (and modern items) to those crafted in a quasi-medieval world that probably doesn't even have the same history as ours. They are completely different economies with completely different sensibilities and mechanics.

The other problem with the monetary system in 3rd and 4th ed is that the sheer amount of coinage may not even exist in a lower technology world. Kingdoms (heck, even entire civilizations) might not have a million coins in total. Certainly, a single merchant isn't going to have that kind of scratch. In medieval times, wealth was not always measured in coins. Many times, wealth was measured in power and influence and what that could get you.

A lot of this depends on the world we're talking about. A high renaissance sort of world has guilds and banks and credit, whereas a dark ages sort of world does not.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yes.

One handgun... $100
One rocket launcher... $40,000
One tank... $6,210,000
One stealth bomber... $737,000,000

Cheers!

Neither the tank or the stealth bomber are what you might call personal weapons. The stealth bomber requires a huge maintenance effort.
The D&D equivalents would be a fortified earth mote with built in manouver magic.

 

[MerricB]

Neither the tank or the stealth bomber are what you might call personal weapons. The stealth bomber requires a huge maintenance effort.
The D&D equivalents would be a fortified earth mote with built in manouver magic.

The thing is, there's no direct equivalent in our world for a holy avenger. It just doesn't exist. Ahandgun is cheap because it can be mass-produced... not so with the more powerful magic items.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

The big missing piece to the 4e economy is the town building gp limits. With this, the PCs are encouraged to travel to where they can sell thier items {plot hook} and if a city doesn't exist with a high enough gp limit they have to seek out a buyer on thier own {plot hook} or find power components so that they can make thier own items {plot hook}


I have come to like the 4e costs to magic items because I don't expect anyone to drop cold cash on a counter, beyond a certain level. Selling and buying items then becomes part of the adventures.

Of course, in my game the GP treasure parcels have been eliminated. I give out statues, gems, magic items, and an item called a "Box O'Bling".. which is a chest of gold pieces that can be traded in for a plot point

My ramblings on the topic with the table for gp limits can be found in this thread here.