The silver standard?

[rjfTrebor]

Does anyone else remember Monte saying something about this back at DDXP?

i was really excited to hear that silver would become the new base currency, yet the playtest item costs don't seem to reflect that.

 

[slobo777]

This is something very easy to homebrew

Come up with a coin system in your game world

Create a simple conversion table. E.g.

1 game world copper = 0.01 gp

1 game world silver = 1 gp

1 game world gold = 100 gp

Give out treasure in your currencies, and either you or the players convert to book "gp" to see what they can afford.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Admittedly it's easy to adjust, but I would like to see an economy shift to silver standard.

Why? I'm not sure, since it admittedly makes no really difference to the game run if we've effectively just renamed "gold" to "silver".

The more effective fix is to reprice everything to make adventuring equipment far more expensive compared to average items in the economy. More "realism" that way but in the end it probably doesn't really change the game substantially.

 

[slobo777]

My angle on liking a silver standard is that it would be nice to have the variety of different coins, but without having to track individual purchases of sacks, chickens and pieces of chalk!

Definitely in 4E, but also in 3.5E for anyone not tracking minutiae, coins smaller than a gp are pointless detail after 1st level. that's a shame, it's a little bit of colour lost for no good reason.

For money, a lot depends on what PCs can spend their treasure on in 5E, and how that scales with level. Not seen that yet.

In fact, I have no idea what PCs will be using their cash treasure for in 5E core rules. It's not even clear whether motive will be primarily mechanics-based or roleplay (PC "lifestyle") based.

 

[Dragoslav]

Mearls said in the recent Reddit "ask me anything" thread that they're looking into how to "flatten player wealth," so I would expect that to include not having item prices skyrocket with each additional level.

 

[Lexeme]

IIRC, the 1e AD&D PHB goes to some length to describe why gold is the standard - the adventurers find themselves in the fantasy world equivalent of a gold rush town, where adventurers saturate the economy, and certain goods see ridiculous inflation.

Since then, the explanation seems to have gone away, but the standard has remained and spread through many, many other games. I mean, is it really so broken that this common language should be lost?

Personally, I don't really care either way and would be willing to live with it if it meant new players better understood.

 

[Szatany]

This is something very easy to homebrew

Come up with a coin system in your game world

Create a simple conversion table. E.g.

1 game world copper = 0.01 gp

1 game world silver = 1 gp

1 game world gold = 100 gp

Give out treasure in your currencies, and either you or the players convert to book "gp" to see what they can afford.

Then set up a real money auction house and allow players to buy gold with dollars/euro

 

[slobo777]

Mearls said in the recent Reddit "ask me anything" thread that they're looking into how to "flatten player wealth,"

Hopefully they mean to flatten character wealth? Or was it a Freudian slip by WotC design team? ;p

 

[Ahnehnois]

Definitely I'd like to see prices go to a silver standard, but keep the same general baseline, which is that one silver is pay for a day of unskilled labor.

The sheer absurdity of a vial of acid costing a year and a half's wages is just wrong. As poor as poor people can be, and as rich as the rich can be, D&D made it silly.

 

[Remathilis]

My guess is that the items list was copypasta'd for purposes of playtest. Prices will be re-evaluated later...