Silver Standard?

[3catcircus]

Has anyone thought of going with a silver standard instead of the gold standard for coins and money?

I'm thinking of going with a silver standard using the British system (the 24-grain silver penny) and having the standard 12 d = 1 s and 20 s = 1 £.

I'd probably stick with the farthing, ha'penny and penny as coins with the shilling and pound as units of account.

The interesting thing is that, now, there are ~ 290 coins per pound (avoirdupois) vice the 3.x standard of 50 coins per pound.

I'd probably expand it to include roman, greek, and arabic style coinages (with those countries that are gold-rich using gold coins vice silver).

Given the British style system, with a 24-grain silver penny as the basis, and a 12:1 silver-to-gold ratio, and adjusting core rule book prices to reflect that 1 gp item is now worth 1 shilling (and keeping in mind that 292 pennies per pound), does anyone see any problems with PCs becoming too rich?

 

[evilbob]

I think the "gold standard" was created to make a mundane process - buying and selling - easy. 10 silver = 1 gold for a reason: it's amazingly simple to calculate. By contrast, the old British system that you seem to be emulating was so convoluted and hated that even they threw it out. Be sure your players love math before you start, or they will most likely be frustrated and/or confused at least at the beginning.

If it's a flavor thing you're going for, then by all means go for it - but I'd advise setting a simple exchange standard and just going from that. For example, 1 pound = the D&D equivalent of 1 gold; all other coinage worth adjusted accordingly. Or, using your 20 silver = 1 pound, just make all prices half their listed "cost" as pounds. (So a 20 gp item is 200 silver normally, but with your system 200 silver equals 10 pounds - so, 20 gp = 10 pounds, or 2:1.)

Also, be aware that after about 2 gaming sessions, everyone will have tons of money anyway and anything less than a standardized price will mean basically nothing. (I don't even use copper or silver pieces in my game. )

 

[Kmart Kommando]

I kinda like shifting coins down one step. Longsword = 15sp, Meals = 1cp etc.
Dunno how realistic it is, but it's different, though not enough so to have to change everything in the book.

 

[hong]

1E used something like the British system, IIRC. It wasn't that wonderful. After a while, the novelty wears off and you're just wanting to get back to the simplicity of decimals.

 

[Wik]

Yeah. Use the standard system. Change the name of the coins (done that). For a bit of exotic flavour, introduce some strange coinage - like the old 2e electrum piece (woth five gp). Introduce a coin that's worth two and a half gold pieces, or something else like that, too. You could even play with exchange rates (a lot of fun!)

 

[el-remmen]

I used a silver standard in my Aquerra setting, which was just a hold over of something I implemented in 2E days.

In terms of buying basic gear, I tell players that everything listed in the book as gold costs that amount in silver. Anything listed as silver is double that amount in copper, and copper remains the same.

 

[Tetsubo]

I've been using a silver standard since 2E.

1 pp = 10 gp = 100 sp = 1000 bp = 10,000 cp

pp = Platinum Piece
gp = Gold Piece
sp = Silver Piece
bp = Bronze Piece
cp = Copper Piece

Your average Commoner would use sp and bp on a daily basis. They might see a few gp in their entire lives. The pp is for Royal (national) type of transactions.

I also use Electrum Rings (1 ep = 5 sp) as the base Elven currency. Commoners have taken to using them as wedding rings.

The Dwarves use Mithril Pieces (1 mp = 10 sp) as their base currency.

 

[Pyrex]

Looking at the prices in the PHB, silver *is* the standard for anyone except PC's and Nobles.

Take a look at the Food, Drink and Lodging chart for example. Day to day costs for day to day purchases are in the CP and SP range.

 

[3catcircus]

I think the "gold standard" was created to make a mundane process - buying and selling - easy. 10 silver = 1 gold for a reason: it's amazingly simple to calculate. By contrast, the old British system that you seem to be emulating was so convoluted and hated that even they threw it out. Be sure your players love math before you start, or they will most likely be frustrated and/or confused at least at the beginning.

If it's a flavor thing you're going for, then by all means go for it - but I'd advise setting a simple exchange standard and just going from that. For example, 1 pound = the D&D equivalent of 1 gold; all other coinage worth adjusted accordingly. Or, using your 20 silver = 1 pound, just make all prices half their listed "cost" as pounds. (So a 20 gp item is 200 silver normally, but with your system 200 silver equals 10 pounds - so, 20 gp = 10 pounds, or 2:1.)

Also, be aware that after about 2 gaming sessions, everyone will have tons of money anyway and anything less than a standardized price will mean basically nothing. (I don't even use copper or silver pieces in my game. )

Hmm - considering that, for example, the starting human fighter has scale mail (50 gp), a greatsword (50 gp), a shortbow (30 gp), a backpack (2 gp), waterskin (1 gp), 1 day's rations (5 sp), a bedroll (1 sp

), a sack (1 sp), flint & steel (1 gp), a quiver with 20 arrows (1 gp), and 2d4 gp - the total value is 135.7 + 2d4 gp - average of 139.7 gp.

Under a silver standard, this'd be 139.7 shillings. Since it takes 12 pence to make one shilling, this is roughly 1658.4 pence. The Shilling and the Pound are units of account only - not coins. So, in order to buy this stuff, you'd have to have 1658.4 pence - 1658 pence and 1 ha'penny. At 24 grains per penny coin, this is almost 6 pounds avoirdupois worth of coins. Of course, you could also, if the DM allowed it, to use trade bars, but it'd still be 6 pounds-mass worth.

Under the gold standard used for 3.x (for PCs), 139.7 gp = roughly 2.8 pounds-mass worth of coins - less than half the weight.

So, I really don't see how this will be meaningless - the PCs have to physically carry *more* weight in coinage to buy items.

My goal is two-fold. One - make it harder for PCs to utilize black holes of holding to carry off whole thrones, which seems too prevalent right now. Two - make it more expensive to purchase items by devaluing the actual coinage available, thus limiting access to magic items.

 

[3catcircus]

1E used something like the British system, IIRC. It wasn't that wonderful. After a while, the novelty wears off and you're just wanting to get back to the simplicity of decimals.

Yes, decimal math is fairly easy, but I don't see why it is so hard to use a different system. It is basic math. It isn't like I'm asking them to calculate in binary, octal, or hexadecimal... especially since they only need be worried about the weight of a single coin (the penny). The halfpenny and farthing, I'd make exactly 1/2 and 1/4 the weight (especially since the farthing would be a penny cut into quarters).

4 farthings = 1 penny. 12 pence = 1 shilling. 20 shillings = 1 pound.
5 pennies = 1 nickel. 2 nickels = 1 dime. 2 dimes and 1 nickel = 1 quarter. 2 quarters = 1 half-dollar. 2 half-dollars = 1 dollar (and the 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000 dollar denominations).