D&D 4E The 4e Economy

[Cbas_10]

How does one define "well-known" and "rare" in terms of D&D?

Only the DM of a particular game can answer that, based on the setting he is using.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I must sound like a shill by now but the Expeditious Retreat Western Europe book had a good system for determining the difficulty of finding various items and altering their price as a result of difficulty. Their Silk Road book probably one-ups it but I dont have that one.

 

[3catcircus]

I must sound like a shill by now but the Expeditious Retreat Western Europe book had a good system for determining the difficulty of finding various items and altering their price as a result of difficulty. Their Silk Road book probably one-ups it but I dont have that one.

Yup - both are outstanding. The best part is that it adds some risk to your chances of buying or selling any given item. Want that +4 deathsword and roll into a Metropolis? Yep - there is a chance no one is willing to sell it. Likewise, you've killed the Mungrag Goblin Tribe and have two dozen short swords? Yep, the possibility exists that you can't sell them in the Village of Snot. Of course, Silk Road will then allow you to figure out how much money it'll cost to transport them to a city that has people who can and will buy those short swords.

Highly recommended.

 

[3catcircus]

I would like to see a basic monetary system that could be upgraded, I would pay for an options book which detailed the economics and prices...I too love that sort of crunch. Especially if it is relatively hiostorically accurate

The biggest upgrade already exists - it is called the RAW. You'll note that the PHB clearly states that "Members of the peasantry trade mostly in goods, bartering for what they need and paying taxes in grain and cheese. Members of the nobility... trade in gold bars...," and "The gold piece is the standard unit of measure for wealth," and finally, "The most prevalent coin among commoners is the silver piece (sp)."

Note that part I highlighted in bold - unit of measure - not coin. Unless the PCs are nobles, their wealth should be in silver pieces. That is - instead of $1, they'll have 10 dimes. Same value, but more of them.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Haven't we had enough of trickle-down dragonomics?

How does that work?
Dragon horde gets stolen by PCs
PCs go into towns and buy stuff from peseants
Orcs kill and loot peseants
Orcs work for dragon who takes their loot

 

[Christian]

Haven't we had enough of trickle-down dragonomics?

:\ Roll initiative, buddy.

 

[Gundark]

Anyone else with me on this one?

/agree

I want a decent economics system.

 

[wedgeski]

How does that work?
Dragon horde gets stolen by PCs
PCs go into towns and buy stuff from peseants
Orcs kill and loot peseants
Orcs work for dragon who takes their loot

Ah, the Circle of Life in action.

 

[Imp]

A points-of-light default setting is going to have a real crap economy, since trade in such a scenario is hardly going to exist. Some goods are going to be barely available if the settlement doesn't have access to iron, for example. You'll wind up having economies that are generated by adventurers bringing home loot – party brings home the goblin's horde, buys things for as much as the townsfolk can get away with, town eventually attempts to forge trade lines with the next settlement the PCs clear a path to, civilization starts rebuilding.

It seems like a really hard thing to try to simulate with a few pages in a DMG, though.

 

[Li Shenron]

On my top 10 wish list for 4e (one I haven't heard much clamor for) would be for the next DMG to have a good economic system. When the party rolls into town, I want a good, fair, fast, and easy way of determining what is available to buy, how much of it the town has, etc.

In my experience, 3e was pretty clumsy in this regard. The tables presented therein were far too generous and too kludgey for my taste. I find that it's more fun when the PCs find random magic gear and start coming up with clever uses for them... as opposed to hocking everything that isn't nailed down to save up for their ideal min/max arsenal.

I would also like to see haggling and bartering be STANDARD in price setting. A charismatic PC should save the party some cash.

This has been an ongoing and (mostly) unresolved problem at my table.

Anyone else with me on this one?

I agree completely. I don't think it's necessary to have a "complete economy system", something very simple would suffice.

For example a table that has on one axis an item's "rarity level" and on the other axis the locale's "market level".

The rarity level of an item will be a number that depends on its value (e.g. market price / 1000, round down) and some modifiers like the following examples:

- exotic weapon +1
- racial-specific item +4 (when in an area with few or no of that race) or +2 (when in an area where the race is only minority)
- magic item + minimum CL
- item of exceptional size +2
- class-specific item +1
- very popular items -1 (e.g. dagger, longsword)

The market level of a town will depend on the population, and then modified by other factors like

- town is centre of commerce +4
- town is capital or other centre of power +2
- town has a sea or river port +2
- town has one major road connection +1
- stalling economy -2
- isolated town -3
- town is under siege -10

So we'd get a table maybe as big as 20x20 that would fit a page, and then some modifiers that would move us up/down the rows or left/right the columns (think of the Leadership table as an example). The lists of modifiers could have maybe a dozen of them each. The content of each cell of the table is a % value that the DM rolls to let the players know if they found the item for sale (retry allowed only after 1 week).