D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Jfdlsjfd]

There is in the setting, but how much it exactly is doesn't really matter. Like how would it?

Because at today's price, 50 gp is 1 kg of natural diamond dust, or 21.5 kg of industrial diamond dust. Depending on whether there is diamond dust magical manufacturing process in your campaign world, you can't really conceal it and it's not a negligible amount to carry. At some point, there might be a player who will ask "we have diamonds in that dragon hoard, let's make diamond dust" and you'll have to tell him he needs 10 500 gp diamonds to create 10 gp of diamond dust...

It doesn't matter until a player asks. And if the answer breaks verisimilitude, it breaks immersion. Fortunately, since the idea that 50 gp of gold is right now 20 kg of diamond dust is breaking verisimilitude for most players despite being real, one might not encounter that problem. So the odd of it mattering is highly player-dependent.

Also, there is a strong possibility, especially for divine magic or pact-based magic, that the value of the sacrifice is more important than the amount. The god don't care if you sacrice two goats or ten fowls or an ox, he wants you to sacrifice a substantial amount in echange for his intervention. If you game the system in order to produce infinite chicken with your Magical Bag of Chickens (or you planeshifted to Powdered Diamond Plain, Plane of Earth, with a wheelbarrow), the spell will be denied.

Which might become another reason for which you might want an mount. What do you tell the player who planeshifted to Diamond Powder Plain and came back with a full, overflowing wheelbarrow's worth of diamond powder, when he asks you how many he can cast his spell now? Or when he decides to crush his fist-sized ruby into a powder?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But to be clear: you want the game to give you rules for that? And you intend to follow those rules. How long is your prep each session?

You set the economic indicators for communities the PCs are likely to visit ahead of time. I have a D&D-style game that has an economic system that really does work, and if I had a group willing to play OSR I would use it. The designers did nearly all the needed work already.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think that anyone is talking about converting gems as treasure/currency alternative to standardized trade goods or something, most or all of the discussion seems to be around costly spell components.

While there are a few spells like chromatic orb & identify that use a diamond/pearl worth a set value in gold, those spells are generally the exception when it comes to spells with costly components other than diamond dust. Doing a proper switchover would need to entail swapping them to standardized items like five bulbs of elementally charged fluid & draconic grade runesmith tools (or whatever the most relevant of a standardized list is).

That would definitely be easier than making use of a fantasy economy, and can be made logically consistent in-setting too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But there are innumerable variables we don't have a similar issue. If we start questioning this, what else should we question? Why does a longsword cost 15 gp? For that matter what purity of dust is required? If it's diamond dust, what clarity of diamond? For that matter, how common are diamonds? They could be as common as quartz or practically nonexistent.

The point is that there is no answer to these questions other than "whatever you decide." You could come up with a system, it just wouldn't be any less arbitrary.

It depends on your starting point, I admit, and it would work best if you do some research to establish median pricing, but so long as you vary from the default for consistent, logical reasons you can still make the economic system itself work.

 

[tetrasodium]

That would definitely be easier than making use of a fantasy economy, and can be made logically consistent in-setting too.

I think that the biggest benefit to that sort of change for me as a GM would be the ability to have a short list of around five or so high subjective value spell components that are immediately recognized as worthy of being excited about finding. Even if the end result is a slightly longer list & more spells needing a component from that longer list in order to ensure that they don't wind up being one off things where they are each basically just the component for one specific spell.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Poring over the spell list that requires costly components consumed by the spell, I notice they don't seem very useful for day-to-day adventuring. Planar Ally? Symbol? Glyph of Warding? That's not the bread and butter of spellcasting. The resurrection line of spell might matter more, but I find that controlling wealth of the party to restrict access to resurrection isn't in today's mood of playing, where we mostly don't kill characters unless the players agrees or is downright doing something stupid. Maybe, outside of the interesting debate on economics, the ideal answer could be that we should entirely drop those components from the game.

 

[SkidAce]

It could, but it makes more sense to me for the amount to stay the same and the price to change. Why would the price be the deciding factor in the use of spell components?

If you have "scientific" magic, then it wouldnt.

However, if you are using "sympathetic" magic the value of the component contributes to the power of the magic, hence higher rarity and more powerful items requiring more rare and "valuable" componenets.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you have "scientific" magic, then it wouldnt.

However, if you are using "sympathetic" magic the value of the component contributes to the power of the magic, hence higher rarity and more powerful items requiring more rare and "valuable" componenets.

Magic in D&D seems pretty clearly to have a more scientific basis than a sympathetic one. And even if that weren't true, it seems odd for the supernatural value of a component to change based on the regional price fluctuations of pork bellies (so to speak).

 

[pemerton]

it seems odd for the supernatural value of a component to change based on the regional price fluctuations of pork bellies (so to speak).

Why? I mean, two answers to this have already been posted:

if you are using "sympathetic" magic the value of the component contributes to the power of the magic, hence higher rarity and more powerful items requiring more rare and "valuable" componenets.

there is a strong possibility, especially for divine magic or pact-based magic, that the value of the sacrifice is more important than the amount. The god don't care if you sacrice two goats or ten fowls or an ox, he wants you to sacrifice a substantial amount in echange for his intervention. If you game the system in order to produce infinite chicken with your Magical Bag of Chickens (or you planeshifted to Powdered Diamond Plain, Plane of Earth, with a wheelbarrow), the spell will be denied.

 

[kigmatzomat]

There are other ways gold could work in a settinf

Let's say for something needing ruby dust that if it's clear, sparkling ruby dust you could use an ounce or so because it has high "rubiosity." For cloudy ruby dust with low rubiosity you need a pound of thr stuff. Magically, that ratio of (rubiosity x mass) have equal value and that, ultiimately, is how the price is set. The prices listed are in the "standard" coinage of tvaries. (50 coins of purity X gold to the pound). Go to a foreign land where the coins are debased or heavier and the price caries.

Ruby dust is a commodity item that is totally fungible, much like copper, iron or salt. I mean, we don't argue about the purity of copper or iron bars because our characters rarely need them, but there is definitely a range of quality in metals.

Iirc, the oldest known complaint letter in the world is a several thousand year old tablet from Ur, complaining about the quality of copper.