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

[RangerWickett]

Yes.

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

Cheers!

They certainly scale in cost akin to D&D items, but not in utility. D&D magic item utility barely increases. A +6 sword is pretty much just a sword, maybe with a dinky trick, but I think a stealth bomber can accomplish quite a bit more than a pistol can.

Again, my problem is that 4e magic items are unimpressive. Why not have a figurine of wondrous power that turns into a harrier jumpjet inscribed with runes and possessed of a malevolent sentience.

 

[keterys]

Sadly, cause that extra +1 hit and damage is more effective and useful than the harrier figurine.

Scary, right?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They certainly scale in cost akin to D&D items, but not in utility. D&D magic item utility barely increases. A +6 sword is pretty much just a sword, maybe with a dinky trick, but I think a stealth bomber can accomplish quite a bit more than a pistol can.

Again, my problem is that 4e magic items are unimpressive. Why not have a figurine of wondrous power that turns into a harrier jumpjet inscribed with runes and possessed of a malevolent sentience.

OK, let us consider swords then:

I'm sure you can buy today a serviceable but by earlier times standards rather crappy sword today for say $500.

You could buy a better sword, maybe actually made to something like standards of weapon quality considered ordinary 500 years ago for probably several thousand dollars. Lets say $4000

You could buy a genuine medieval or Renaissance weapon for probably what, $20,000 maybe, I don't know, but it wouldn't be cheap.

You could buy a genuine ancient 13th Century Katana of high quality, but it would surely cost you 100's of thousands of dollars. Say $100,000.

You could buy the finest sword in existence today, but it would SURELY cost you millions of dollars, say $1,000,000.

The sword Kusanagi simply cannot be purchased for any money. Bill Gates entire fortune would not even tempt it's keepers to sell it or even show it to you.

Sounds like there's quite a range there. Remember, these swords are all pretty roughly of the same utility. Maybe the cheapest ones would not serve so well, but they sure aren't as much different as magic blades are in 4e.

 

[Joshua Randall]

At risk of reductio ad absurdum....

4e D&D doesn't have an economy.

It has PCs who accumulate gold and primarily spend that gold on magic items, and to a lesser extent rituals. There are no other economic transactions to be made (unless the DM makes something up), and there are no economic actors other than the PCs.

What 4e D&D does have is, currently (pre-Essentials), a relatively balanced system that links level and gold. But this is purely an abstract game mechanical system. That's all it is.

 

[mneme]

Wow. Holy Katanafail, AbdulAlhazred. Katana are not better than western weapons. I'll except Grasscutter, simply due to its legend (which puts it in the same category as, say, Excalibur).

 

[keterys]

I don't believe he said that katana were better. He just used them for two of his examples for very expensive swords.

 

[Bandikoot]

I was in a mini-campaign not long ago that went from 11th to 18th level. Very early on we recovered all of our wishlist gear (apparently we were quite the party before the BBEG mind-wiped ups and threw us into slavery) and did not need to upgrade our equipment over the course of the game. We were still getting gold through treasures though and wanted to spend it. We had a galleon we captured from the slavers and a castle we captured from someone else. Our money sink became all those lair items that we'd never had a reason to look at before, with a few other wondrous items thrown in here and there. And you know what, even though we never really got much use out of any of it, it was fun.

I think that's the biggest problem the people I play with have with the 4E economy - it's made treasure boring. It's a cycle where you're just working on getting enough gold to buy that next plus for your favorite magic item that didn't appear from your wishlist. Going from +3 to +4 might be mechanically important, but it's not particularly exciting.

 

[Jhaelen]

4e D&D doesn't have an economy.

Eactly. And neither does any other edition of D&D.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

The "economy", such as it is, is one of the biggest problems with the entire Points of Light paradigm. A tiny population spread thin simply cannot provide a rational foundation for the kind of economy implied by D&D archetypes.

 

[nightwyrm]

Eactly. And neither does any other edition of D&D.

To add to this, what D&D always had is a bunch of price list for stuff that if you put them all together and/or scale them up, would add up to a non-sensical economy.

And this is perfectly fine, since D&D is about modelling adventures in fantasyland and not about modelling the economy of a magical pseudo-medieval continent. I hate it when people try to apply a model to things the model wasn't designed for and then draw faulty conclusions from it.