The Power of 5

[Mal Malenkirk]

Standard D&D economy just balances loot and magic items. A Sword +x is worth that much more than a sword +y.

Verismilitude in the economy is hardly required in all campaign, but balance always is. For myself, it depends on the campaign.

If you are worried about the impact of the high level magic items on the economy, dissociate them from it.

So on one hand you have the gold based economy and on the other you have magic item bartering.

So you could find 150 gp and a +3 axe of terror after defeating a powerful troll bandit.

Only 150 gp? Well, yes. Travellers aren't that rich in the area. The axe? Got it from an overly ambitious fighter with insufficient backup.

So the Axe is 'worth' 21,000 gp, but only the actual the gold will keep you fed and allow you to replace your slain horse at the next town. What about the axe? Can you get over 4000gp for it from some merchants? Err, no. Nobody has that much liquidities available in town except maybe the duke and he needs it for more practical things. If he's worried about security, he'll double his guard for a fraction of 4,000 gp, let alone 21,000. The axe isn't worth that much to him. It's only worth that much to an adventurer.

A travelling merchant might give you 200 gp and his entire cart of peasant ware but that's it. He has nothing else.

But if you meet a powerful knight who fancies your axe, you could swap it for his helm of the eagle.

What? The trade isn't fair in term of gp value? Well he has nothing else to offer and if you're not happy, then keep logging around that axe you don't need and live without that helm that the ranger would have fancied. But if you drive a hard bargain, he'll thrown in his his back up resounding hammer +1.

''Everything is worth what people are willing to pay for it''.

If you are serious about the economy, then magic objects have to operate on a barter system between adventurer. At best, in huge city, you could have magic item store (with tough security) where you could conduct more extensive barter.

''I'll sell you this Shield of deflection against your Resounding hammer (+3) and I want 300 gp on top of that.''

 

[Harr]

I don't understand the motivation behind any of this.

Clearly the prices and money is balanced to keep players within the power curve as regards to gear and magic, while still giving them a goal to shoot for.

This... economy thing... seems to me not centered on what the players want or need at all, but simply a self-centered project to satisfy the DM's sense of imaginary aesthetics.

Seriously, if what's important to you in a fantasy game is to look at the economy, of all things, and nod your head in satisfaction at the inner workings of it all... play railroad tycoon or something. First, a one-player game; you don't need to mess up other player's game experiences to satisfy your own need for... for not having to imagine adventurers talking about 'millions of dollars', I guess? God forbid Second, a game that was designed to deal with economics in the first place... D&D is as far into the wrong place for that as you can get. IMO not only did the designers not try to fix these supposed 'problems', they actually and deliberately embraced them and spotlighted them as the anchorstone of D&D. Which is how it should be.

 

[FadedC]

The one thing I have to add is that by the time inflation reaches truely ridiculous levels, the players are epic characters. They are no longer buying things at the local town, they are buying things in the city of brass.

To use a real world example, imagine if there was an entire alien civilization out there only you and a few others could visit. Imagine if you killed some alien soldiers and brought back their weapons and artifacts, how much those would be worth. You could easily make millions of dollars per "encounter". That compares to epic characters going to other planes and bringing back things worth insane amounts of gold.

As for the economy on these outer planes your visiting, they use much larger units of currency (astral diamonds). It's kind of like comparing pesos to the US dollar (or these days the British pound) but on a much larger scale.

 

[Blackeagle]

This... economy thing... seems to me not centered on what the players want or need at all, but simply a self-centered project to satisfy the DM's sense of imaginary aesthetics.

It's not just the DM's aesthetics. The default D&D economy (players start out pretty well off and get rich, very rich, enormously rich, and obscenely rich as they level up) rules out certain kinds of stories. There's no way to do any sort of "hungry warrior" story like Seven Samurai or Samurai Champloo. Same goes for a lot of Conan stories where all he needs is a good blade and some study armor (in fact, in stories where he has a lot of good stuff he tends to loose it in fairly short order). Being a good warrior is not necessarily synonymous with having obscene amounts of gold.

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.

 

[AllisterH]

It's not just the DM's aesthetics. The default D&D economy (players start out pretty well off and get rich, very rich, enormously rich, and obscenely rich as they level up) rules out certain kinds of stories. There's no way to do any sort of "hungry warrior" story like Seven Samurai or Samurai Champloo. Same goes for a lot of Conan stories where all he needs is a good blade and some study armor (in fact, in stories where he has a lot of good stuff he tends to loose it in fairly short order). Being a good warrior is not necessarily synonymous with having obscene amounts of gold.

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.

True.

That said, I think the best tactic is what others have mentioned.

Roll the standard bonus into the character themselves and then you can safely throw out the treasure table and work from scratch, Trying to juryrig the EXISTING guidlines with the expected wealth/item per level just makes you own work harder.

So, I would a) incorporate the bonuses into the character (+1 for Attacks/Defenses every 5 levels) then
b) rule that magic items can't be bought.

THEN figure out what a proper economic system is (or better yet, simply grap a GURPS book and use those values).

Anyone agree with that?

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't understand the motivation behind any of this.

Obviously.

Clearly the prices and money is balanced to keep players within the power curve as regards to gear and magic, while still giving them a goal to shoot for.

Yup. Doesn't mean the 4E one a good curve, but that's the goal.

This... economy thing... seems to me not centered on what the players want or need at all, but simply a self-centered project to satisfy the DM's sense of imaginary aesthetics.

Actually, we play DND with "coins". I know that the players love them because when I tried to get rid of them as time consuming, my table rebelled. I guess it's like people who play with their chips in Vegas.

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?

In fact, the 4E system of economy is so overbloated that PP were multiplied by 10 in worth and Astral Diamonds were added to the system, just to shoe horn a clunky system together.

CP on the other side of the coin (pun intended), have almost disappeared.

In fact, go read Mal's post. The players are forced to barter and give away stuff, even in 3E, because no merchants can afford their goods.

So with regard to what my players need or want, it's pretty obvious that you have no idea what you are talking about. In areas where 4E does not make the system simpler and actually makes it more complex or cumbersome, I suspect we'll be house ruling simpler solutions.

Seriously, if what's important to you in a fantasy game is to look at the economy, of all things, and nod your head in satisfaction at the inner workings of it all... play railroad tycoon or something. First, a one-player game; you don't need to mess up other player's game experiences to satisfy your own need for... for not having to imagine adventurers talking about 'millions of dollars', I guess? God forbid Second, a game that was designed to deal with economics in the first place... D&D is as far into the wrong place for that as you can get. IMO not only did the designers not try to fix these supposed 'problems', they actually and deliberately embraced them and spotlighted them as the anchorstone of D&D. Which is how it should be.

What's it to you sport if someone else wants to make an element of the game work more smoothly for their game? You seem a bit antagonist telling others to find another game to play.

 

[Blackeagle]

That said, I think the best tactic is what others have mentioned.

Roll the standard bonus into the character themselves and then you can safely throw out the treasure table and work from scratch, Trying to juryrig the EXISTING guidlines with the expected wealth/item per level just makes you own work harder.

So, I would a) incorporate the bonuses into the character (+1 for Attacks/Defenses every 5 levels) then
b) rule that magic items can't be bought.

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.

Players can still adventure for the money, but it will be for more conventional purposes (ale and whores rather than magic items) and won't necessarily be sufficient to buy entire countries at high level.

 

[Aenghus]

There's a core of truth in the saying that D&D is a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. The 4e designers had to pick a particular baseline for treasure amounts, and they can't please everyone with their choice.

The penniless adventurer genre a la Conan is a very particular genre, and it is unsurprising it isn't directly supported by the core rules. That said, treasure amounts can just be massively reduced if desired, just like there are guidelines to remove magic items from the game.

 

[Fifth Element]

The problem comes when the players realise that they could just spend a couple of week's income on a brewery and a brothel, and they're sorted with the basic requirements for life...

I suppose that's a problem if they actually decide to do that, since it would effectively end the game. If they're spending their time managing a brewery and a brothel, they're not going to be adventuring.

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.

 

[direkobold]

Rather than using current purchasing power and current wealth to look at PC wealth you should look at how it worked during actual medieval times (and I know that 4E has moved substantially beyond it's medieval European roots).

Back then the difference between the average serf and a baron or king or nearly any member of the nobility was much more extreme, particularly when you examine purchasing power. And the nobility often had things which were so valuable that they would have completely distorted the local economy had the noble tried to sell them. So in effect these nobles were basically billionaires. Of course there was also not really a middle class...

I share your desire to tinker with the underlying assumptions and make the world more realistic and I think that current 4E wealth guidelines are a bit off, but perhaps less off if you compare them to medieval standards of wealth than to modern standards.