The Power of 5

[Intense_Interest]

You want to know where Dragons and all those monsters get all their treasure from? By eating and hunting down the stupid PCs that stay in one spot for long enough.

There is no credit or insurance for easily-killable meat sacks like Adventurers.

Tiered economies have always been terrible things to watch. Short the fact that the last gallon of water you have is worth 200 million dollars more than the trillion gallon of water available, so flat-rate economies aren't realistic yet are nigh-impossible to system: Back-pack "Adventures" in 3rd world countries could and have destabilized economies by purchasing a "thousand dollar" trinket and turning that vendor into a king.

The major problem I see with the DnD economy is that it is assumed to exist within a given framework and then introduces a drastic market inequality in that you don't throw lvl 30 Dragons at "rich" lvl 5 PCs

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.''

Nobody seems to have picked up on this, but as I was reading the first couple of posts it seems like it would be a practical way of separating the monetary economy (which everyone else uses) and the magic item economy (which is used by adventurers).

In fact, I'd envisage a three tier economy:

Peasants: barter goods for other goods and services.

Townspeople, merchants: use money, buy and sell stuff

Adventurers: barter magic items with one another.

I like adventuring worlds where there just isn't that amount of money around. It works for me if people aren't just swimming in money. Using this principle, the standard D&D world goes on around the adventurers, and is reasonably recognisable (economy-wise), while adventurers use and barter magic items.

I'd also make a certain value of residuum necessary for rituals, perhaps, to take them out of the monetary economy.

I'll know more how I'll handle it once I've got the books, but at the moment this looks like a fairly reasonable approach.

Cheers

 

[hong]

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.

I thought grind was a videogame thing.

 

[Andor]

Some one made a comment about Fantasy stories and wealth earlier and I'm trying to think of a Fantasy Story where the PCs became fantastically wealthy.

The Hobbit, when they lay claim to Smaug's treasure, which is really the entire wealth of a powerful Dwarven kingdom. Oh, and the Troll loot too.

Aaaaaand.... That's it. I can't think of another. Anyone?

No wait, no. "The rise of a merchant prince" by Ray Feist. However that was done not by adventureing but by all that boring trade and haggleing crap that get's flamed whenever anyone suggests it might take table time away from the important work of killing imaginary monsters. Funny how it worked as a book...

Heck right now I'm reading Keith Baker's Dreaming Dark series and in book 3 the characters who are at least mid level are still happy whenever they can afford to eat a meal they didn't conjure.

 

[Benimoto]

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.

First, thanks for the well thought out and enlightening post, KarinsDad.

I think that just as a naval wargame would bog down with realistic movement scales, you have to accept accelerated advancement in a game like D&D to keep things moving along. In other words I agree that yes, the rate of money (and XP) advancement in a standard D&D campaign is probably 10 times any sort of "realistic" rate.

So, imagine that instead of having $12,000 laying around in their lair, the kobolds have $1,200. That's more realistic, perhaps. But then it would also be more realistic that an adventurer might adventure for 2-3 years before hitting the level of a professional soldier (level 3-4?). The advancement is accelerated to keep the game moving at a satisfying reate.

In regards to the adventurers picking up 17 million laying around at epic levels, that actually sounds about right to me. Think if it in the same terms as you thought out your base level 1 costs. At paragon levels, you're dealing with monsters that are untouchable by almost any amount of rabble or conscripts. Monsters like the elite ogres or adult dragons can fight dozens or hundreds of professional soldiers and expect to win. To deal with them on their level, you have to break out the big stuff. In modern terms, by level 15 or so, the fighter's sword might cost as much as an M1 Abrams tank, or perhaps $2 to 4 million. Since a level 15 magic item costs 25,000 gold, we're on the right scale here.

At epic levels, you're dealing with stuff that has no modern parallel aside from at the movies. A monster you might fight at level 29 is the Tarrasque, a threat to whole nations who could only compare to stuff like Godzilla or the Cloverfield monster. In Cloverfield, the monster only flinches, when directly hit by air support. Since the $137 million F-22 Raptor would be about a level 26-27 magic item by your scale, I think we're in the right ballpark. Adventurers who can deal with not one but several of those kinds of threats in a day finding $17 million laying around sounds about right. The economic damage is not even a factor. It's clear that by the time those kinds of threats are out in the open that the entire world is imperiled.

But, as I mentioned earlier I do consider the wealth and perhaps XP advancement rates accelerated by perhaps an order of magnitude. This is done to keep things advancing at an interesting rate, and perhaps to make it so that the adventurers can hit level 30 before they're too far into middle age.

As a side note, the factor of five you refer to in your title, as you've already discovered, refers to the utility of each "+" in the magic item world. What I'm not sure I saw mentioned in the thread is that in 4e as it's designed, this is directly related to the 20% sell rate. The low sell rate in 4e seems designed to make it clear that you are expected to use the magic stuff you find. It's a deliberate decision that by selling stuff considered non-useful you get the equivalent wealth of an item five levels lower. Changing the cost advancement rate will also tip this out of balance. I can't pretend I've had enough experience with 4e to predict what effect this will have, but I just wanted to point it out.

 

[KarinsDad]

First, thanks for the well thought out and enlightening post, KarinsDad.

I think that just as a naval wargame would bog down with realistic movement scales, you have to accept accelerated advancement in a game like D&D to keep things moving along. In other words I agree that yes, the rate of money (and XP) advancement in a standard D&D campaign is probably 10 times any sort of "realistic" rate.

I'm actually ok with the XP (and magic item) rate of advancement. I just have an issue with the monetary rate and the fact that a PC can adventure for 2 levels and then suddenly buy a ranch full of horses and start a business, even though he has only been at it for a month. I've had that issue since 1E. Pet peeve.

As a side note, the factor of five you refer to in your title, as you've already discovered, refers to the utility of each "+" in the magic item world. What I'm not sure I saw mentioned in the thread is that in 4e as it's designed, this is directly related to the 20% sell rate. The low sell rate in 4e seems designed to make it clear that you are expected to use the magic stuff you find. It's a deliberate decision that by selling stuff considered non-useful you get the equivalent wealth of an item five levels lower. Changing the cost advancement rate will also tip this out of balance.

Actually, I've already handled that for my game.

I am using the suggested monetary rate of advancement that I mentioned on the first page of this thread (which is ~3.2 times cost per + of item combined with ~25% monetary acquisition rate at first level, i.e. 200 GP).

So, I associated the purchase price of magic items with my monetary acquisition rate (just like WotC did) and then changed the 20% return to 30% return. Ditto for rituals.

In other words, the math works the same for everything except mundane items and the re-sell of magical items (the return rate is, as you suggest, adjusted so that a PC can sell the +2 item and replace it with a different +1 item straight up, just like in 4E). The PCs gain the same amount of magical items of the same level as suggested by the DMG.

What this does is lower the amount of money acquired over 30 levels by 97%. That sounds high, but it really isn't. The 30th level PCs are still millionaires (with hundreds of thousands of GP in wealth), they are just not billionaires (with tens of millions of GP). And, they are still the richest people around shy of possibly an Emperor (the first of whom was probably an adventurer himself). The PCs also stlll have the exact same magical items. They can use the exact same rituals for the same percentage of their money.

The only thing it does is prevent them from totally destabilizing the economy as easily (especially during the first 10 levels) because they do not flood the market with gold to the same extent. It allows me to have the rare city with an actual market for magical items, especially low level magic items in the hundreds of GP as opposed to the thousands and tens of thousands of GP of 4E. It allows me to create an economy where even low paid laborers can make 5+ SP a day and innkeepers can make 10+ GP a day and can afford low GP cost items.

The DMG (IIRC) has the PCs acquiring 720 GP at level one and a first level item costs 360 GP and sells for 72 GP. I hand out 200 GP and a first level item costs 100 GP and sells for 30 GP. The PCs can still buy two level one magic items with the money. It's just a different economy of scale.

And except for Rituals, it was pretty quick and easy to convert.

 

[malraux]

Meh, what's the point in just dividing all numbers by x? That's like saying the xp system is inflated because those numbers get so large, and then dividing it all by 10. Certainly the PCs can't screw up the economy because there isn't an economy.

 

[KarinsDad]

Meh, what's the point in just dividing all numbers by x? That's like saying the xp system is inflated because those numbers get so large, and then dividing it all by 10. Certainly the PCs can't screw up the economy because there isn't an economy.

Except that is not what I did.

1	720        	200
6	3,600     	630
11	18,000    	2,000
16	90,000    	6,300
21	450,000  	20,000
26	2,250,000	63,000
30	6,250,000	160,000

At first level, the GP handed out is less than 30% of 4E.
At 30th level, the GP handed out is less than 3% of 4E.

It's a shallower curve and one that starts lower to begin with. Totally different math than just dividing by x. Since the curve is lower and shallower, the damage to the economy that the PCs can do at level 11 in 4E is close to the damage they can do at level 20 with this system.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Meh, what's the point in just dividing all numbers by x? That's like saying the xp system is inflated because those numbers get so large, and then dividing it all by 10. Certainly the PCs can't screw up the economy because there isn't an economy.

Maybe in your campaigns there isn't a notional economy, but it is an issue for others (including myself and Karinsdad, for example).

In other words, this is apparently not the thread for you, since it is discussing an issue which is irrelevant to you.

Constructive discussion is great, but we don't want any "what's the point" posts, thanks.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The interesting question might be: Why did the designers use the economy system as it is now? What was their reasoning for the scale? Is there something we're missing? Or did the designers just settle for the first system that proved to work in game?