Peter BOSCO'S
Adventurer
If you look at the prices of food and lodging 1 GP is more like $80, so 50 GP is more like $4,000. Also, D&D settings have third world economies and thus many people do not earn 50 GP ($4,000) per year.
D&D 5E Why are potions of healing so expensive?
I think somewhere it says that a skilled individual can expect to earn about 2gp/day, assuming average pay that should work out to about 3-4k easy yea
Benjamin Olson
Hero
Huh, I wonder why a design team based in the United States would find it natural for healthcare to be prohibitively expensive...
Keith Baker wrote a blog post about how normal people (even wealthy ones) tend to handle medical services here, also Rising has both artificial limbs & lungs as magic items. Healing potions aren't something normally used because it's rarely important to immediately cure something & there are often better ways of doing it
Mercurius
Legend
I've made herbal tinctures too. The thing is, you don't have to make a one ounce bottle at a time. You can make huge amounts at a time. And it isn't like you are working on it the whole 4+ weeks - you're basically just letting it sit.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Ok, what about peasants?
Let us posit a village of 100 people. 80 are income earners - the others are too young/old/sick to help. The average salary of a poor person (based on the income table) is 2 sp/day. I'm going to pausit that 60 people are poor (2 sp/day), and 20 are doing ok (the village is on a crossroad so there is a bit of trade) at 1 gp/day.
Accidents happen in medieval life - accidents where fast magical healing could save a life, or at least prevent an injury from being crippling or getting infected. I have no doubt that a potion of healing for emergencies would be greatly welcomed.
The 20 wealthier individual know this. and they form a pact to each save 1 sp/day. They are now saving 2 gp a day. In 25 days, this humble village can save enough money to purchase one healing potion.
So... it's not that crazy a price for magical healing anyone can use.
Let us posit a village of 100 people. 80 are income earners - the others are too young/old/sick to help. The average salary of a poor person (based on the income table) is 2 sp/day. I'm going to pausit that 60 people are poor (2 sp/day), and 20 are doing ok (the village is on a crossroad so there is a bit of trade) at 1 gp/day.
Accidents happen in medieval life - accidents where fast magical healing could save a life, or at least prevent an injury from being crippling or getting infected. I have no doubt that a potion of healing for emergencies would be greatly welcomed.
The 20 wealthier individual know this. and they form a pact to each save 1 sp/day. They are now saving 2 gp a day. In 25 days, this humble village can save enough money to purchase one healing potion.
So... it's not that crazy a price for magical healing anyone can use.
Mercurius
Legend
That all assumes a strictly medieval setting. D&D is not strictly medieval - it has wizards, clerics, and all kinds of magic creatures and things.
When I started this thread, I was just thinking about how 50 GP is a lot, especially for a 1st level character and given the relatively little healing involved. A goblin hits you with an axe and it takes a 50 GP item to heal it?
But then after a few posts and thinking about it some more, I realized--or remembered--that every setting is (potentially) different, and it really depends upon what the DM (as world-builder) is going for. As I said above, I imagine my own setting as being more akin to a magic-infused, animistic world akin to the way that ancient peoples saw the world, not the orthodox historical view of the medieval with some magic slapped on that that default D&D assumes. My issue with that is along the lines of what @BlivetWidget said above, that magic is assumed to be rare but presented as common.
There's no right or true way to do it, except I think it erroneous to assume that all worlds must follow the same template and the same assumptions or go along with the default view. We can play with this and follow through with some kind of thought out internal consistency (aka, the infamous verisimilitude).
So in my world, in the village that you describe, there is an herbalist who lives on the edge of town, who is deeply connected with the living (and magical) world and creates herbal concoctions that are available to villagers, in the same way that there's a smithy or a tavern or a shrine. Druids and rangers know the intrinsic properties of the living things of their region, and can find plants or springs that can heal or provide visions. Priests can bless water to offer for true believers. And so on.
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houser2112
Explorer
This is 5E, what else are you going to spend your money on?
Chaosmancer
Legend
I tend to have slightly less of a problem with common potions (though I do think they are a little expensive for the amount of healing) but once you get into the more expensive stuff?
A Superior Potion is potential 2,000 gold for 28 hp? By the time you can afford that, most characters would need to drink multiples of these potions to be fully healed. Supreme? Potentially upward of 20,000 gold for 70 hp.
Or, buy four thousand basic healing potions (yes, supply and demand, but talking value for healing) and get 8,000d4+8,000 potential healing. Sure, going to take multiple actions, but that's just showing the same money spent. 10 basic potions for 500 gold is equivalent healing for a fraction of a fraction of the cost. And for the level where you might have supremes.... it isn't always great healing either. 70 is the average, but you could just as easily end up healing 55. And since it is hard to justify the action either way, it makes them really hard to justify ever buying.
A Superior Potion is potential 2,000 gold for 28 hp? By the time you can afford that, most characters would need to drink multiples of these potions to be fully healed. Supreme? Potentially upward of 20,000 gold for 70 hp.
Or, buy four thousand basic healing potions (yes, supply and demand, but talking value for healing) and get 8,000d4+8,000 potential healing. Sure, going to take multiple actions, but that's just showing the same money spent. 10 basic potions for 500 gold is equivalent healing for a fraction of a fraction of the cost. And for the level where you might have supremes.... it isn't always great healing either. 70 is the average, but you could just as easily end up healing 55. And since it is hard to justify the action either way, it makes them really hard to justify ever buying.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
You don't used improved potion of healing to just heal HP. You used them to heal HP fast, ie in combat, where spending an action to heal someone is a significant cost - you might as well make that count and heal more than 2d4+2. Outside of that, baseline healing potions are much better as you outlined - and probably why they are a lot more available
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