The Power of 5

[Amphimir Míriel]

Now, the other group of incredibly rich folks are the ones who kill and steal for it... which is basically the same as a D&D party.

PC's are rich because they go out and murder and steal

Quoting Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled:

"Soy un narcotraficante colombiano??!! Mierda!!"

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There really is seperate economies by tier.

In heroic, the players are up-and-coming rockstars. They make huge ammounts of money but don't retire 'cause there's still more to be had. But for the most pert, they still exist in a similar playing field to the merchant class or aristocracy of the land. Still (mostly) within the wealth of individuals.

By paragon they are Bill Gates. They have more money than they could ever spend, and they can use it to build castles with servants and serfs They start to have the money of countries and corporations.

In Epic, they no longer follow any of the rules of the normal world. As stated above, they use Astral Diamonds (the stars in the astral sea) as currency. They buy stuff at the City of Brass. Even taking the OP's arguement totally seriously, there is no reason to worry about what the wealth of epic characters means to the "real world" of the game. It doesn't factor into the mundane world. Most Kings will never in their lives even HEAR of such things,

So I would reccomend that if this discussion concerns you at all, keep it in this perspective:

Heroic: Wealth of the individual
Paragon: Wea'th of the nation
Epic: Wealth of the imagination

Fitz

 

[dystmesis]

You can also get rid of outrageous gold prices for magic items by not having a magic item market at all. Players get very little gold in their adventures, and instead find a ton of residuum which they can use to enchant magic items with. It's cheesy but it could work.

 

[N0Man]

I'm playing Night Below right now. We're well into it, and we've recovered so much loot that the entire party could simply retire right now, with no worries for the rest of their lives, and get out of the underdark to boot. But that would be pointless, since the point of D&D is to have fun playing D&D, not to provide a comfortable retirement for your character.

Indeed. D&D is not a simulation, it's a storytelling game, and stories about settling down just aren't very fun stories. It's Dungeons and Dragons, not Trustfunds and Townhouses.

However, there's nothing stopping anyone from having a low gold campaign, or a low magic campaign. You can make the gold more rare, the treasures more difficult to sell at a profit, and magic items more rare.

If you want to keep magic items more common, then don't allow any magic items to be purchased at all from the world. They are too valuable to expect to be sold easily, but can be broken down to help keep your party in supply of more powerful magic items that they need.

Or, do as was suggested before and just give PC's certain innate bonuses at certain levels, and ditch the magic items.

 

[Parlan]

Actually, we play DND with "coins"...In our case, just like in the case of adventurers actually lugging around chests full of gold, it makes more sense for the economic scale to be something reasonable to use with the rest of the game system. Even without using coins at a table, it's excessive bookkeeping to keep track of money in 3 different scales (GP, PP, and AD) up to 4 or more digits each (let alone keeping track of gems of many various denominations). 4E is supposed to get rid of bookkeeping, not add more.

Adventurers become greengrocers and merchants, and are more incentivized in 4E to become economic tradesman instead of adventurers when the curve is so steep. Unless a PC is motivated to save the world, why endanger himself when in a few weeks, he can save up enough to buy himself a town and live in luxury?

I'm seeing two issues here:
1. Suitability to physical props
2. PC motivation

As to the first, while I think it would be fun to use chips to represent plyaer cash, the system has obvious problems when players have billions of gp in wealth. The only solutions I see are either house ruling it to reduce the number of chips you need, or stop using chips.

For GMs who don't use physical props, like myself, I don't anticipate the problem of "excessive book keeping" you predict. While I'd describe a dragon's hoard at 25th level as including a mountain of copper, silver, gold and platinum pieces all mixed together, I'd handwave the book-keeping down to a single value.

"After spending a week counting and sorting the coins, the dragon's hoard is worth a total of X-thousand PP. BTW, where are you going to keep a mountain of coins? Basement of your extraplanar mansion? Great!"


And IME, PC/player motivation isn't a problem. I'm not running a game where players spend game time exploiting the DnD economy by buying individual sheep then labelling them "flocks of sheep" and selling them for a few gp more.

I won't do this for flocks of Astral Sheep and Astral Diamonds either. YMMV, but that just isn't my bag. If a player wants to be in a game like that, more power to her, but I'm just not the right DM.

As for PC-motivation, I think it perfectly natural that a PC might want to retire, enjoy her hard-earned wealth and stop risking her neck. If that's the case, the player would just need to bring in a new PC.

Problem solved.

Generally though, I've found the player wants their PC to keep adventuring so the *player* gets the thrill of discovering a Holy Avenger, and more cash than the pope.

 

[malraux]

There's nothing wrong with stories where adventurers make huge amounts of money by killing things and taking their stuff, but it's not the only kind of fantasy story.

Fantasy story, yes. DnD story? Im not so sure. Certainly 3e involved a rather fast leveling curve. A base worker got 1sp a day, so he would make 36 gold a year minus expenses. But from level 1 to level 2, a character would get around 900 gold. Slog through to 3rd and get almost 3000. The disparity is huge, and has to be if you have magic item price run as the exponential.

Besides, I don't know how to evaluate economic systems wherein magic exists.

 

[Tenebras]

Pretty much what I'm planning, though I'm thinking about splitting the bonus between inherent bonuses (at 5th, 15th, and 25th levels) and mundane item bonuses. However, only the equivalent of +1 items will be available for purchase. Higher level items have to be found or given to you. You won't be able to just go down to your friendly neighborhood weaponsmith and plunk down a chest of gold for a +3 sword. That +3 sword is a family heirloom, or the lost sword of King Bertram the Magnificent you retrieved from the dungeon.

But what about when the PCs kick in the door, kill everybody and loot the +3 sword? Are you saying there aren't some other adventurers out there who would like to have a +3 sword of orc pwning? If there are, why isn't there someone to sell it to them?

 

[Dausuul]

But what about when the PCs kick in the door, kill everybody and loot the +3 sword? Are you saying there aren't some other adventurers out there who would like to have a +3 sword of orc pwning? If there are, why isn't there someone to sell it to them?

In my campaign, at least, the answer is "because neither the supply of +3 swords of orc pwning available for sale, nor the number of craftsmen capable of making them, nor the number of adventurers willing and able to shell out big money for them, is sufficient for a sustainable business model."

Sure, you can sell that +3 sword--set the price low enough and you're bound to find a buyer--but you're not apt to find many people willing to pay anything near list price; and the odds of you finding one on the market are slim to none.

 

[Blackeagle]

But what about when the PCs kick in the door, kill everybody and loot the +3 sword? Are you saying there aren't some other adventurers out there who would like to have a +3 sword of orc pwning? If there are, why isn't there someone to sell it to them?

Besides what Dausuul said, you would essentially be giving up the +3 sword of orc pwning forever. Essentially I'm thinking of either giving players one +X weapon per tier or giving them a +3 weapon to start and allowing them to unlock it's abilities at each tier (+1 at heroic, +2 at paragon, +3 at epic). Either way, sell off your current sword and you're not getting another. Legendary blades don't grow on trees, 'ya know.

 

[SDOgre]

I have always disliked the D&D economy. One of the aspects of improving your character to me was being able to afford better armor, weapons, etc. In D&D after your first day of adventuring there is no weapon you can not afford and after a couple of levels no armor. Bam, all the mundane stuff you want is yours by level 2 or 3.

After that it's just magic and all the problems magic vendors bring.

The feel I always liked in RPGing was low level characters scraping by, being angry if they lost a sword because they'd have to buy a new one until BaM! that hidden lost treasure trove. Now they can upgrade, buy a new horse, settle for a few months... then it's back to the grind.

Only at moderate (10-20 for 4E) levels should players be able to afford any mundane thing they want. That's the economic feel I like.

By handing the characters so much cash so quickly you take away desire to save up to purchase things. Unless you make magic items common and every village sells tons of them, then they can save up for magic items cause they know what they are (every vendor has them) they know what they do (everyone talks about them) and they know the price (they're so common the price is fixed).

But if they're so common, what makes them... well... magic?

If they're rare and special and characters can't buy them, you end up with characters will too much cash by level 3. They have nothing to spend it on and get bored. "Great another 1,000gp..."

So the D&D economy is more than just "The Local economy couldn't possibly support this kind of cash." It plays into the availability and rarity of magic items as well.