Relative Rarity of Precious Metals

[Umbran]

they have a potentially-endless source of coinage thanks to the elemental plane of Earth.

This is campaign-specific . Unless you have regular, bulk transport of materials across planar boundaries, it doesn't really hold.

 

[Imperialus]

The correct answer is that platinum, gold, silver, and copper are vastly overvalued in the typical DnD-esque world.

The reason is that the real-world rarity values simply do not apply; they have a potentially-endless source of coinage thanks to the elemental plane of Earth. Which means that the typical DnD coin value ratio is likely maintained by outsiders.

Now there's an adventure seed for your group to investigate

Just to back up your point, though I'd actually say precious metals in D&D are vastly undervalued compared to the real world since the purchasing power of a given weight of gold in D&D is minuscule compared to what gold has been worth historically... If there are 10GP to a pound and we assume that said GP are pure gold then each coin is over an ounce in weight then things get all kinds of screwy if we compare anything in the real world to D&D values.

There are 340 grams to an pound, so that means each D&D coin weighs 34 grams. Now, using the ducat and the florin as examples, ducats weighed 3.5 grams, and florins weighed 6.5 grams. That means that 5.2 florins are 'worth' about as much in gold as a single D&D gold piece and there are 9.7 ducats to a GP. In other words, one of the finest gold coins produced during the middle ages would be 'worth' about as much as a silver piece in D&D, and I can guarantee you no-one it Italy was paying for a room at an Inn using ducats.

For another example, the Medici's were the richest family in Europe during the Renaissance. There are all sorts of numbers thrown around to guess as to how much the Medici's were actually worth, but most estimates put it somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 florins at the height of their power. Translate that to weight we get 1300 kilograms of gold or 2860 lbs of gold. At 10 GP to a pound this means that the vast fortune of the Medici familiy would have been 286 gold pieces... A mid level D&D adventurer wouldn't even roll out of bed for a haul like that.

To put things further into perspective Lorenzo de Medici estimated that between 1434 and 1471 his family spent 663,000 florins on "charity, buildings, art and taxes". In other words he was basically saying "this is how we paid for the Renaissance". Using the same math... we get 4300 KG, 9480 pounds or 948 gold pieces... In other words the entirety of the Medici investment into the freaking Renaissance wouldn't even get a 1st level fighter up to 2nd level if he killed them and took all their stuff.

Of course the real reason coins are weighted the way they are in D&D is because Gygax didn't like the idea of adventurers being able to carry thousands and thousands of gold coins out of dungeons in one go.

 

[Celebrim]

The correct answer is that platinum, gold, silver, and copper are vastly overvalued in the typical DnD-esque world.

The reason is that the real-world rarity values simply do not apply; they have a potentially-endless source of coinage thanks to the elemental plane of Earth. Which means that the typical DnD coin value ratio is likely maintained by outsiders.

Now there's an adventure seed for your group to investigate

This assumes that there is no consequences to transporting tons of stuff across the planar boundary. That seems to be a highly unlikely proposition - particularly for 'energetic' earth ores like gemstones and precious metals (which presumably have higher shares of mineral and positive energy). The consequences of transporting such material are likely to be as consequential as in the D&D world as they were postulated to be in the equivalent situation in Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves'.

It's therefore likely that both the rules of the Elemental Plane and 'The Gods Themselves' would act to stop any wholesale mining operations.

And that's not even to get into the absurdity of 'infinite' Elementals planes given the presumed finitude of most prime material worlds or the fact that, in all likelihood, mining on such planes would be costlier and more difficult than mining on the planet itself. For example, there is no guarantee that the average density of say a vein of copper is higher on the elemental plane of earth, which lacks air and is only reachable by magic, than it is on a typical prime material world. In fact, if copper is in fact some sort of molecule of earth, fire, mineral and positive elemental 'atoms', it's entirely possible that though the total amount of copper on the elemental plane of earth is infinite, that it is far less prevalent and harder to find there that it would be on a prime material world where such atoms regularly mingle. Further, the only way an infinite elemental plane makes the slightest bit of sense is if there is also an infinite number of prime material worlds, which means that there would be about as much competition for such ores on the elemental plane of earth as their would be on the prime material worlds themselves.

Or in short, your analysis is not as solid as you think. We can't assume that the presence of an infinite amount of copper on the elemental plane of earth in any way impacts the price of copper on your average prime material world. Depending on your assumptions, it might, but there is no way to validate your assumptions and many ways to invalidate them. In fact, arguably, the very fact that ores don't have trivial value suggests the assumptions that make mining on the elemental plane of earth economically valid are in fact invalid.

The fallacy you raise is a particular case of a cautionary word I always give my new players - never assume that you are the first person who has ever had your 'great idea'. The world has a 5000 year unbroken written history and a fragmentary written history for thousands of years before that. If you don't see people doing something you think is an obvious way to revolutionize the world - building cannons, or mining the elemental plane of earth - chances are very good it is because people have tried it many times before and it didn't work. Likewise, if you think that you've found a cute and easy way to cheat or trick society with your low level spell use, think twice. You are not the first person who has ever been able to use that spell. People have had that spell for thousands of years. Chances are societies have highly evolved means of dealing with it.

 

[Imperialus]

Though it might be an interesting adventure if someone with access to the elemental plane of earth and ability to transport huge amounts of gold suddenly began to do so. It would create a destabalizing effect on a society not entirely unlike what happened in Spain after they started importing gold and silver en mass from the New World. Rather than saving the kingdom from dragons or whatever you'd be saving it from economic collapse and hyperinflation.

 

[Celebrim]

Though it might be an interesting adventure if someone with access to the elemental plane of earth and ability to transport huge amounts of gold suddenly began to do so.

Yes, it would.

It would create a destabalizing effect on a society not entirely unlike what happened in Spain after they started importing gold and silver en mass from the New World. Rather than saving the kingdom from dragons or whatever you'd be saving it from economic collapse and hyperinflation.

That would only be the obvious problem, the sort of challenge that the 1st level PC's would be put on investigating and dealing with.

Accidental or not, and regardless of what the entrepreneurial miner actually knew, some enabler of this plot (probably Ogremach), would know this is a 'threaten the world with destruction' plot in my homebrew world. The first stage of this would be that you'd start to create local elemental alignment, where earth magic in the vicinity of your newly imported alien gold got easier, and conversely air magic got harder. The second stage would be you'd weaken the veil between the earth elemental plane and the prime, resulting in spontaneous portals appearing through which would pour a variety of angry and/or malicious earth spirits (Ogremach's minions would love this). By this point, any slyphs in the region would be dead, and you'd have a very angry group of small gods, greater gods and spirits of the air. The third stage is that all life on the prime material plane would begin to petrify or crystalize, starting at the point of infection. Midas touch indeed.

 

[Celebrim]

Of course the real reason coins are weighted the way they are in D&D is because Gygax didn't like the idea of adventurers being able to carry thousands and thousands of gold coins out of dungeons in one go.

Gygax's economic system is gamist in purpose. He retroactively stated the simulation assumptions that justified his gamist workings. Unfortunately, far too many authors since them have taken his economics as entirely reasonable and generic for any fantasy setting. The result is often nonsense. I'd pay $49.95 for an actually useful and coherent 300 page hardback on crafting goods, labor, prices and economics. I've seen some attempts, and there are some scattered good ideas in a lot of disparate places, but no one has ever put it all together to my satisfaction and I've been daunted by the amount of work if I had to do it alone.

One quibble though:

"9480 pounds or 948 gold pieces"

9480 pounds of gold is 94800 g.p., so the Renaissance didn't come quite as cheaply as you calculated.

 

[Imperialus]

One quibble though:

"9480 pounds or 948 gold pieces"

9480 pounds of gold is 94800 g.p., so the Renaissance didn't come quite as cheaply as you calculated.

*headsmack* right you are, sorry. Still though, in D&D terms, especially once the PC's hit higher levels that's peanuts.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

This is campaign-specific . Unless you have regular, bulk transport of materials across planar boundaries, it doesn't really hold.

If you have the possibility of large numbers of demons or angels crossing planar boundaries in some way, you already have the capacity for bulk transport of materials.

It might be an issue on a setting like Eberron. I can't really think of many others where it would be.

It's therefore likely that both the rules of the Elemental Plane and 'The Gods Themselves' would act to stop any wholesale mining operations.

The rules of the Elemental Plane can be easily countered; in fact, more than a few DnD settings note that Earth has ongoing long-term mining operations. It's specifically mentioned in the 3E Manual of the Planes. So the mining issue is itself a moot point, as it's already been shown to be conceivable and feasible.

Assuming the gods themselves would act to stop wholesale mining is not remotely likely, based upon the evidence at hand.

And transporting the materials to the plane wouldn't be any more difficult than transporting elementals, which are typically living parts of the plane and should be just as difficult to get across planar boundaries.

Now, that's ignoring a separate issue: That the gods themselves may stop an intentional disruption of the coinage value ratios. I would agree that this is very likely.

 

[Celebrim]

So the mining issue is itself a moot point, as it's already been shown to be conceivable and feasible.

There isn't much sense arguing the details. This can be put down simply to the fact that D&D generally, and published settings specifically, have generally spent almost no time and effort into reconciling all their disparate parts and claims. D&D generally is less coherent as a whole than DC and Marvel comic book universes. Most everything is handwaved. Coherent world building is seldom a focus or interest. Batman and the Flash are on the same team. Don't inspect or question the setting too closely would appear to be the main guideline.

You certainly could have a setting where mining of the elemental Earth is part of long term ongoing operations, but despite claims to the contrary no published D&D setting (I know of) is such a setting. If it were actually feasible and actually happening, you'd expect a fairly high percentage of mines in the setting to be converted over to mining the elemental plane of earth over the course of the last few thousand years of the average world's history. But no published setting not even the high magic ones has this as an artifact. Eberron, which has directionality and coherence most settings lack, conceivably could have such mining as a recent invention, but the rest show its infeasibility by ignoring the possibility outside of guides to the planes. Given that the default planar cosmology requires that the elemental planes be shared by all possible prime material worlds, it's quite possible that the ongoing mining mentioned in the 3E manual of the planes represents either beings not from the prime material plane or beings from no known published setting aside from Planescape itself.

And transporting the materials to the plane wouldn't be any more difficult than transporting elementals, which are typically living parts of the plane and should be just as difficult to get across planar boundaries

This assumes that when an elemental is conjured, the actual substance transported from the elemental plane to the world is physical as opposed to spiritual. It's equally possible that the elemental is spiritual and embodies itself in the substance it finds available when it arrives.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

The mining in the Manual of the Planes is overseen by the Dao, mostly. Who use slaves to keep the cavern they're in from collapsing and tunnels maintained. It's mentioned as part of inter-planar trade going on.

The issue with mining not being converted to mining the Elemental Plane is easy enough to explain: Most casters simply wouldn't be high enough level, and even for those who are there is likely some kind of interference which exists to prevent someone from intentionally destroying economies using income derived from other planes. I can very much see a number of gods stepping in to prevent it in any number of settings. So, very likely, even with all of the mining, the majority wealth is kept off of the Material Plane.

The issue of elementals using local material gets iffy when you start talking about interplanar gates that allow directly crossing over; I don't think the idea of material works out, as it doesn't explain why the adventurers do not suffer the same if they cross into another plane.