The Power of 5

[KarinsDad]

Starting at first level, each PC (in a 5 party group) averages nearly 1/2 of a suit of Plate Armor or 1/3 horse as treasure each encounter (taking monetary treasure only into account, they actually average 5x that with magic items).

Level 2 increases over level 1 by 44%.
Level 3 increases over level 1 by 88%.
Level 4 increases over level 1 by 133%.
Level 5 increases over level 1 by 178%.
Level 6 increases over level 1 by 400%.

It's kind of strange. There are these relatively gradual (but still somewhat high at +44% per level) increases in treasure and then suddenly, bam: 5x as much treasure.

This same scale continues now starting at level 6. So, level 7 is 44% greater than level 6 and level 11 is 5x greater than level 6.

Level 26 is 5x5x5x5x5 times greater than level 1.


To put this into perspective, let's assume that 1 CP = $1. If one looks at non-magical equipment and services in the PHB, this is not too far off real world prices, e.g. $200 for a backpack, $20 a meal, $50 a night in an inn, $1500 for a sword (i.e. primary tool of the trade or laptop), $7500 for a horse (i.e. transportation/car/motorcycle). Sure, some items at this rate seem real high (especially cloth made items due to lack of mass manufacture), but others seem a bit low.

Level 1 has each PC acquiring $2,400 in each encounter or $72,000 for the group acquired from level one to two without counting magical items.

Quite frankly, why are average low level kobold type encounters resulting in $12,000 in cash just lying around? An average of $12,000 in cash or $85,000 in magic items for each encounter (i.e. some have less, some have more, but on average) or $376,000 found total from level 1 to level 2 for the 5 person team. Less than a week's worth of work could result in them being able to retire for a year or so.

Level 29 has each PC acquiring $17,500,000 in each encounter or $525,000,000 for the group acquired from level 29 to 30 without counting magical items.

And this is only what each PC acquires in an average encounter. Their net worth each by level 30 (without even counting magic items) is $531,215,900 (minus expenses). With magic items, it's almost double that. Every 30th level player is nearly a billionaire.


I understand that players want to acquire treasure, but the economic problems (at least for some DMs) of 1E to 3E were just plain blown off and ignored in 4E.

The amount of economic damage a single PC who picks up 17 million dollars in pocket change from a single average fight is staggering.

This does not sound like a Points of Light setting to me. Points of Light should have limited economic wealth except in hidden treasure troves. 1st level Kobolds should not be carrying around expensive gems.


Even if one were to assume some extremely generous ratio (e.g. $1 = 1 SP), this still gets pretty far out of hand real quick. Where is the economic basis for higher level lords and such having such massive wealth for the PCs to steal?

In the real world, wealthy companies and individuals have billions of dollars because they are leveraging off of hundreds of millions to billions of people that each company has as customers (unless they sell real expensive goods or services with a decent markup).

But lords in a DND world should only be able to leverage off a few hundred thousand people max and then, only in big city states (where the wealth should be shared by several powerful individuals like merchants, lords, clergy). Points of Light. So the wealthiest lord should only be worth maybe a few million dollars or 20,000 GP and that is with everything they own (cattle, castles, horses, gold, etc.). They shouldn't have $100 million or 1 million GP (even in Astral Diamonds) just lying around for PCs to pick up. IMO.

Sure, some wealth like a Dragon hoard might be larger due to the Dragon acquiring the wealth from many merchants and others over the years.

But like 1E to 3E, the economic scale just seems way out of wack and I am disappointed that 4E did not even try to fix it.

Someone just used a formula (in this case, 5x every 5 levels). The problem now for me (and possibly other DMs who do not want massive treasure and influx of PC wealth) is changing the treasure tables and magic item creation / ritual cost tables so that it is not so overwhelming.

Fortunately, the magic item tables follow these same equations. So changing the equation for one allows easy changing of the other. Ritual costs, on the other hand, appear to be all over the place which will make converting those more difficult.

I'm a bit disappointed that 4E designers did not take into consideration DMs who do not want to be handing out 10+ millions of GPs of monetary and magic item treasure per PC over 30 levels. I can understand that this is totally fine for some DMs, but some of us do not want such (IMO) Monty Haul type wealth campaigns. They seemed to have fixed the magic item distribution, but left wealth still extremely high (especially for a PoL setting).

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Starting at first level, each PC (in a 5 party group) averages nearly 1/2 of a suit of Plate Armor or 1/3 horse as treasure each encounter (taking monetary treasure only into account, they actually average 5x that with magic items).

Level 2 increases over level 1 by 44%.
Level 3 increases over level 1 by 88%.
Level 4 increases over level 1 by 133%.
Level 5 increases over level 1 by 178%.
Level 6 increases over level 1 by 400%.

It's kind of strange. There are these relatively gradual (but still somewhat high at +44% per level) increases in treasure and then suddenly, bam: 5x as much treasure.

This same scale continues now starting at level 6. So, level 7 is 44% greater than level 6 and level 11 is 5x greater than level 6.

Level 26 is 5x5x5x5x5 times greater than level 1.
[...]

I think that you need to take into account magic items. At level 6, 11, 26, etc. magic items get a bonus over its previous levels. That bonus has to spill into the monetary side of the game, and this is how they do it.

Also you should never question the economy in D&D. It just leads to pain.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think that you need to take into account magic items. At level 6, 11, 26, etc. magic items get a bonus over its previous levels. That bonus has to spill into the monetary side of the game, and this is how they do it.

That's because they used the same equation for magic items as wealth handed out.

It has nothing to do with anything reasonable other than that is the equation they picked. +2 items are 5x as expensive as +1 items. If you fix one equation, you fix the other.

Also you should never question the economy in D&D. It just leads to pain.

Actually, if i can figure out the Ritual economy, I'm all set to make the entire economy something reasonable. Still a curve, but not a super steep one with step functions in it like the 4E magic items or the wealth.

One cannot do that without questioning.

For example, a better system (IMO) is:

1 x
2 1.25x
3 1.6x
4 2x
5 2.5x
6 3.2x
7 4x
8 5x
9 6.3x
10 8x
11 10x
12 12.5x
13 16x
14 20x
15 25x
16 32x
17 40x
18 50x
19 63x
20 80x
21 100x
22 125x
23 160x
24 200x
25 250x
26 320x
27 400x
28 500x
29 630x
30 800x

And then pick a value of x that feels reasonable to the DM. For example, 200 GP (or whatever else feels good). In real world equivalence, the PCs found $20,000 in that first week or so (i.e. first level) of adventuring.

Still serious money, but not $370,000 in a week, enough to retire for the next year like 4E. The next level, they find $25,000 (total so far $45,000). The level after that, $32,000 (total $77,000). An entire adventuring season goes by (5 levels gained) and they found a total of $231,000. Serious money, but not overwhelming like the million dollars in cash and 4 million dollars in magic items of 4E for gaining 5 levels.

PC1: "Yup, a million dollars each this summer. Solid."
PC2: "Yeah, but next year I plan to kill even more powerful lords and steal their vast wealth. I figure we can pull in 7 million dollars each next summer, 50 million dollars each the summer after that, and 350 million each the summer after that."

Gaining 800x at level 30 as at level 1 still makes the players feel like they are making significant gains as long as the magical item outlay is the same and they can still pay for other things like rituals the same.

Note: The equation above states that +2 items are 3.2x as expensive as +1 and +3 items are 10x as expensive as +1. Not 5x and 25x like 4E. Still a significant increase in cost for an additional +1, but not way out in left field.


And any curve can be used, either shallower or steeper. It all depends on what the DM personally feels is reasonable. The step function that 4E uses though is a really strange at:

1 x
2 1.44x
3 1.89x
4 2.33x
5 2.78x
6 5x

From 5 to 6 is nearly double whereas the other 4 increases are basically linear. That is just so strange. I can understand making +2 items 5x as expensive as +1 like the designers did (although I consider it super steep). I just do not get why the equations for levels 2 through 5 do not build up to level 6 better.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Think of it like raises. You work and toil at your job and every year you get a raise that, if you are lucky, is a little more than the cost of living increase. Then one year (level 5) you get a promotion and your salary jumps significantly.

Level 1: drone
Level 5: Supervisor
Level 10: Manager
Level 15: Director
Level 20: Vice President
Level 25: Senior Executive VP
Level 30: President

 

[WalnutNinja]

D&D Economy

Ok, I know I have a lousy post count, but I've been playing D&D for about 15 years, so I'll venture an opinion regardless of my newbish-ness.

What you guys are forgetting when you examine the D&D economy is that adventurers are the top 1% or even .5% of the economic bracket. And they deserve to be there. They get these millions of gold pieces by going out and killing people and monsters, and they die... a lot. Adventurers are like underwater welders or secret agents; they make the money because they take the risks.

When you think about people who have billions of dollars in the real world, most of them got lucky and invented something, or leveraged thousands of monetary transactions over the course of their careers, not necessarily all of them honest. 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, but it's socially acceptable because the "victims" are hideous monsters who would've just done the same thing. Think of PC's as apex criminals. They go around stealing back all the money and items that monsters and thieves have stolen over the course of their entire careers.

Your average adventurer, just like your average criminal, doesn't have a great life expectency for his career. The adventurer will be killed and the criminal will be caught, and some bigger fish will take their loot and add it to their own. It's only the truly exceptional adventurers that manage to survive and collect on years of pillaging and looting get to keep these phenomenal sums of money.

More importantly, most adventurers do exactly what OP suggested, they get to level 3 or so and say to themselves, "I have enough to retire now... why continue risking my life." Then they become the rich ruler of a small town like Winterhaven and live out their days on the fantastic sum of money they made by skirting death and pillaging everything in sight.

Thus, to call the economy broken is to unfairly compare it to the life of an average gamer, who is in fact, a peasant or merchant, working a safe job day in and day out to make a pittance but doesn't risk death on a daily basis.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

The D&D economy is not even a semi-accurate silmulation?

I, for one, am shocked!

 

[KarinsDad]

What you guys are forgetting when you examine the D&D economy is that adventurers are the top 1% or even .5% of the economic bracket. And they deserve to be there. They get these millions of gold pieces by going out and killing people and monsters, and they die... a lot. Adventurers are like underwater welders or secret agents; they make the money because they take the risks.

...

Thus, to call the economy broken is to unfairly compare it to the life of an average gamer, who is in fact, a peasant or merchant, working a safe job day in and day out to make a pittance but doesn't risk death on a daily basis.

I didn't forget it.

If you read my first post, I explain the economic reasons why billionaires in the real world do indeed become billionaires. Leverage over vast numbers of consumers. But, if there were only 10 million people (or other intelligent creatures) on our planet (like potentially in a fantasy world), instead of 6 billion like in the real world, the richest people would be millionaires instead of billionaires because they would not have the labor force to build up that amount of wealth. And, they would not have leverage over the entire world, just their local community.

If you only have 2 people in the entire world and one of them makes a wage of $50, the other (i.e. the lord) should not be able to tax that person $100. The economy just does not support that. If the lord found a ton of gold, gold would be worth next to nothing for just 2 people on the planet. It would be a common item because each of the 2 people would average 1000 pounds of the stuff.

I do not disagree with your top 1% statement. But, top 1% in a Points of Light setting should be relative to the number of intelligent creatures found in all of these scattered communities (even if the communities are those of monsters).

A non-PoL metropolitan setting where there are billions of intelligent creatures on the planet? Sure. I could see the 4E economy as written as being viable. Even in a setting of "the empires of the past collapsed and the population dwindled", I have a hard time justifying such a steep wealth gain curve.

 

[Blackeagle]

And any curve can be used, either shallower or steeper. It all depends on what the DM personally feels is reasonable. The step function that 4E uses though is a really strange at:

1 x
2 1.44x
3 1.89x
4 2.33x
5 2.78x
6 5x

From 5 to 6 is nearly double whereas the other 4 increases are basically linear. That is just so strange. I can understand making +2 items 5x as expensive as +1 like the designers did (although I consider it super steep). I just do not get why the equations for levels 2 through 5 do not build up to level 6 better.

Actually, it's pretty simple: As you've noted, weapons get a new +1 at every level - 1 that's divisible by 5 (so 1st, 6th, 11th, etc.). However, the magic items at these levels are pretty generic, without special abilities. At the next four levels after that, weapons get special abilities (flaming, phasing, etc.). However, the power provided by these abilities isn't anywhere near as good as another +1. The magic item prices are simply a reflection of this, getting another +1 is far better than getting a special ability.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Level 29 has each PC acquiring $17,500,000 in each encounter or $525,000,000 for the group acquired from level 29 to 30 without counting magical items.

And this is only what each PC acquires in an average encounter. Their net worth each by level 30 (without even counting magic items) is $531,215,900 (minus expenses). With magic items, it's almost double that. Every 30th level player is nearly a billionaire.

Hey. . . PC's NEED a lot of cash to support their drug habits, hollywood lifestyles, expensive hookers, and lavish vegas parties!

Seriously though. . . the PCs are supposed to be the rock stars of the D&D world. That means rolling in dough. Like most good rock stars they will fritter away their wealth on frivolities like pimped out swords or armor and be perpetually broke.

. . . and for every adventurer that makes it to being a "billionaire" at 30th level. . . how many died a painful and horrible death trying to get there?

 

[Serensius]

I'm a bit disappointed that 4E designers did not take into consideration DMs who do not want to be handing out 10+ millions of GPs of monetary and magic item treasure per PC over 30 levels. I can understand that this is totally fine for some DMs, but some of us do not want such (IMO) Monty Haul type wealth campaigns. They seemed to have fixed the magic item distribution, but left wealth still extremely high (especially for a PoL setting).

Couldn't agree more. The scale is way off, player economy is basically just inflated. I'd much rather have a game where my players think finding a chest with a hundred gp (just imagine that many gold pieces for a second) is exciting, as opposed to now where it's basically just pocket change. Hope to see you make some leeway here, KarinsDad, I'd love to use your house rule in my game.