Level Up (A5E) Thoughts on readjusting prices for games with less treasure?

[Faolyn]

So the campaign I'm working on is set in a pseudo-Victorian setting and will be mostly city-based. There's not going to be a lot of monsters the PCs can kill and take their stuff--although I won't be surprised if they decide to start stealing from the nobility, since it looks like four out of the five characters are going to be anti-nobility to one degree or another. (And, of course, the 5th PC is nobility, so this'll be fun... for me, at least.) Magic and what I'm calling arcanics (for artificers) is fairly common, particularly in the form of what would be treated as common and uncommon magic items.

Yes, I know, there's no way to create a realistic D&D-ish economy, but it's very weird doing research into actual Victorian times and seeing how cheap things like laudanum was (one site I read used the phrase "as cheap as beer") and then looking at the equipment list and seeing it costs 35 gp per dose. I know full well it's like that to prevent player abuse, but it kind of spills out into other things as well.

So, does anyone here have any thoughts on this sort of price readjustment? Or do I need to make inflation rampant amongst my commoners?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would say feel free to adjust pricing to more realistic levels, take care to be reasonable regarding availability, and keep an eye on your players. Are they invested in taking the setting seriously?

 

[Faolyn]

I would say feel free to adjust pricing to more realistic levels, take care to be reasonable regarding availability, and keep an eye on your players. Are they invested in taking the setting seriously?

Well, they won't let me use non-decimalized money, but other than that they're pretty serious.

 

[Atomoctba]

Well, they won't let me use non-decimalized money, but other than that they're pretty serious.

Paraphrasing Neil Gaiman, "Damned decimal system. It is difficult to remember that 10 milimetres are 1 centimetre, 10 centimetres are 1 decimetre, 10 decimetres are 1 metre, and 1000 metres are 1 kilometre. It is easier to remember thar 12 inches are 1 foot, 3 feet are 1 yard, and 1760 yards are 1 mile".

(I think the original Gaiman's quote was about money, but that was the general meaning)

 

[Atomoctba]

More about the OP wants... Once I had compared the expected wealth by level with the prices on PHB and DMG just to downgrade lots of them, once one of my campaigns also suppose the players would not take lots of money. Several items, buildings, etc... are priced so high because they account the players will gains lots of money and need something to expend it. If I can find my annotations about that, I will share.

 

[Deadmanshand]

I would say just do a full conversion. I did pretty much the same thing and actually changed the monetary system to be loosely based on the old European systems that were carried over from the Roman system. Gold is pretty rare as coin in my world. Various countries use a silver coin based on the Solidus which is essentially 1gp in game terms. Other countries may have the Crown or Mark, but they are similar in weight. Because I threw out decimalisation, I repriced everything in the game. My players hate it, but I believe it feels right for the campaign world.

 

[Deadmanshand]

In the Victorian era there was a huge disparity in wealth between the classes. I think you have to add a more realistic monetary system than the basic D&D default. Possibly try something like I have attached. I have included slang terms for various coins influenced by real world uses, as well as, what was used in Greyhawk. You could decimalise it for simplicity, but definitely use more than gp, sp and cp. Then as I stated in previous post, reprice everything. For background, read some Dickens to get a feel for the abject poverty of the working classes versus the wealth of the upper class.

 

[Faolyn]

I would say just do a full conversion. I did pretty much the same thing and actually changed the monetary system to be loosely based on the old European systems that were carried over from the Roman system. Gold is pretty rare as coin in my world. Various countries use a silver coin based on the Solidus which is essentially 1gp in game terms. Other countries may have the Crown or Mark, but they are similar in weight. Because I threw out decimalisation, I repriced everything in the game. My players hate it, but I believe it feels right for the campaign world.

At least one of my players threatened to riot if I did non-decimalized money. We compromised and have most people use paper money (except for copper pennies and half-silver coins--they also don't like electrum ), but the nobility still uses precious metal coins because they're speshul that way.

The setting isn't a totally Victorian, btw--there's no monarch and instead there's basically a senate consisting of non-elected representatives from the noble houses, with one of the social issues being that guilds and unions are fighting for actual representation instead of just lobbying/bribing the nobility. There's definitely a hint of pre-French Revolution feelings going on here. It's just Victorian in tech level and most of the social issues.