Silver Standard, Equipment and Masterwork

[Sadras]

I'm not sure if this has been addressed elsewhere, apologies if it has. (I did scan the thread names and found nothing)

My hope is that the equipment listing in the playtest was left utilising the gold standard for ease and not as a final product. I am under the impression that they will be utlilising the silver standard for D&DN, I believe I read something about that on Enworld (unless I bungled again on my comprehension skills).

I'm also not a fan of the masterwork "300gp minimum" rule. It smacks of arbitrary or lazy but more so, 300+gp for a masterwork dagger seems extremely high, even if we are to be using flatter math and they do away with +2,3,4,5 weapons. The only reason to make it as expensive as that, as far as I can foresee, is that the gold standard is going to stay.
Yes, I know its easy to change it with a houserule, thats not an issue, just before I write to WotC for the
playtest feedback, I'd thought to ask others on the matter to see if it is a valid point.

So how does everyone else feel?

 

[Mattachine]

I feel the same. I like the silver standard for D&D games, where gold pieces are not a regular sort of treasure until the characters hit level 3 or 4.

 

[Stormonu]

If I remember correctly, Masterwork in 2E (where I remember it being introduced) was simply 10x the item cost. I'd like to see it go back to that, rather than be a flat rate.

From old readings of the PHB (1E), the "outrageous" price of equipment assumed a gold rush-like premium for costs. I guess if you assume that most sane rulers wouldn't normally allow those without fealty oaths to blindly run around with arms & armor (and possibly gathering armies of henchmen...) without some sort of tax/fee/scutage/etc., it might account for the high gear prices.

I just hope for 5E we don't get into Astral Diamond territory of adventure cash awards.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The point about Astral Diamonds is it allows dragons to sleep on piles of gold without completely wrecking everything when the adventurers kill the dragon. The only alternative I see that allows the dragon to sleep on a bed of gold is a Tome-of-Awesome style "Wish Economy" where anything less than 15,000 GP can be bought in gold (or by the wish spell/beating up efreets/whatever) and anything more requires special currency that you literally can't convert to gold.

 

[werecorpse]

Yep - silver standard is my preference

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It look like a lot of the equipment material in the playtest was cut and pasted from 3E -- like the masterwork cost. We can hope the economics will get a little more refinement down the road.

I'd certainly like to see an effectively executed silver standard, if only to make adventuring treasure that much more special. I did like the note about electrum and platinum pieces being look at askance as coins of ancient empires in the document -- nice bit of offhand flavor, that.

 

[ferratus]

I was very disappointed when I saw the gold piece values for the equipment chapter, and just assumed that some "friends and family" playtesters had nixed the silver standard out of a reflexive "it doesn't feel like D&D". Even though it allows for more impressive treasures at low levels, (chests of silver instead of bags of gold) and gives a greater sense of using money that everyone else uses instead of having equipment that no peasant hero could afford if they worked and saved their entire lifetime. If anything in the D&D game needed a touch of verisimilitude", it is the equipment list being in reasonable prices in silver. I would like coats of mail to stop being priced artificially low so beginning PC's can afford them, though I like the idea of PC's inheriting armour from their background and theme, as long as those of other backgrounds get compensatory bonuses somewhere else.

As for masterwork weapons, I'd like to see a division between masterwork (slightly better) and ornamental (pretty and bejeweled) and ornamental masterwork (a sword forged fit for a king), with prices accordingly. A player can't really justify spending 10x the amount for anything less than 10x the benefit, but I can see a sword being worth 10x the amount if it is a work of art. For example, the breastplate of a principate era Roman Emperor.

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=55966]ferratus[/MENTION] - We are definitely on the same page. We used the inherited armour background during our 2E days with a character's Noble Warrior Kit and I definitely throw in ornamental equipment/treasure in our present 4E campaign.
Now to write that letter to Mike and co.

 

[Sunseeker]

I give my players(this is 4e) a pittance in gold, anything they need will be worked into the game and they'll have to work for it.

To me, it doesn't make a difference if DDN uses the gold standard, the silver standard, or the wooden nickel standard. In the end, I'll end up paying my players what they need for the game. If that's 10 billion gold so that they can get a flying airship and summon greater elementals to power it, fine, that's the kind of game I'm running. If my adventurers are to be poor mooks wearing hand-me-down armor, then they will get all the wooden nickels they can carry.

In the end, what I want from DDN is simply some reasonable standardization and a simple metric-system-style conversion chart. IE: everything is 1/10th, 1/100th, 1/1000th, no 2/3rd, 5/8ths, 17/32nds to convert from one to another. I want to see prices to be reasonable, if things are so expensive that I have to hand-waive giving my players their starting gear, that's a problem. A player of X class should be able to afford the basic gear for it, that means heavy armor, a shield, and a sword, as well as some pocket change.

The idea that my players may have more gold than realistically exists in a world doesn't bother me. If it bothers my players too much, they'll suddenly find themselves carrying fiat money issued by the local government. I'll then force them to use trading posts to convert their money(at rates randomly pulled from IRL coversion charts) to the local currency, which will immediately be worthless as soon as they topple the local regime.

Suffice to say, to me what matters is how much things cost compared to how much income the players are making, not what they're getting paid in.

 

[Sadras]

Suffice to say, to me what matters is how much things cost compared to how much income the players are making, not what they're getting paid in.

No. How much things cost AFFECTS directly how much the players are making. It's called trade. So it really doesnt matter that you give your players pittance in gold coin...its the equipment they took from those 30 dead orcs at the end of the day that will rake in the PC monies.