D&D 5E Why are potions of healing so expensive?

[UngeheuerLich]

About the most unrealistic thing you can do is think in terms of the modern value of gold. Across history gold:silver value ratio was only about 20:1, falling to 10:1 in some gold producing areas. I rem from Classical History class that during the Peloponnesian War the ratio in Greece fell from 20:1 to 10:1 due to the influx of Persian gold - Persia backing the Spartans against Athens. And a silver piece was a pretty typical day's wage in many eras.

PHB arms and armour prices, along with some adventuring gear prices, definitely are inflated though - dividing by 10 (ie 'silver standard') would give prices much closer to historically accurate. The arms and armour are on 'adventuring economy' prices - and so are potions of healing, of course. This is deeply embedded in D&D norms and I don't see an easy way to change it; but you can make some cheaper gear (& potions) available in your game.

Edit: On the non-adventuring-economy scale a GP seems to be about $100. On the adventuring economy scale it's about $10. These aren't really reconcilable, the best we can do is fudge it a bit.

I don't think the adventurer scale is much different from 1gp = 100 Dollar, if you compare a warhorse to a modern equivalent of a car. Some things are a bit overpriced then, but most makes sense on that scale. It is just, that adventurers are quite rich by fantasy commoner standards... just like youtube stars

 

[Undrave]

They should have kept healing surges instead of going back to hit dice >.>

 

[S'mon]

I don't think the adventurer scale is much different from 1gp = 100 Dollar, if you compare a warhorse to a modern equivalent of a car. Some things are a bit overpriced then, but most makes sense on that scale. It is just, that adventurers are quite rich by fantasy commoner standards... just like youtube stars

We-ell, sort of... some people did pay the equivalent of 15 gp for a longsword, but from the medieval records I've seen, the equivalent of 15 sp would be a lot more common, less for a ratty old one. If mercenaries get 2 gp/day then the arms & armour numbers look ok, but on 2 sp/day they look extremely high.

I've done a fair bit of research on this over the decades (almost at ACKS levels!) - the actual middle ages in Europe wasn't really a cash economy, but the Roman empire was to a large extent. AIR people were typically living on the equivalent of about $20/day; around 2 sp/day in 5e D&D terms (maybe a bit less). But maybe D&D works better assuming a more modern economy with people earning more like $200/day, or 2gp. That certainly suits Eberron better; not so much Greyhawk.

 

[Emerikol]

They should have kept healing surges instead of going back to hit dice >.>

I don't like any of the metagame mechanisms. It's one major reason why I passed on 5e.

 

[Undrave]

I don't like any of the metagame mechanisms. It's one major reason why I passed on 5e.

Metagame mechanisms?

Anyway my point is that Healing Surges were used for almost all healing and it was a daily limit. Almost all healing made the person being healed spend a resource. You can't just chug down as many potions as you want: your body just can't handle that much without resting. That means that you could buy all the potions you wanted, but you still wouldn't have more daily HP than if you didn't use any.

It was also always 1/4 your max HP, so a potion of healing that lets you spend a Healing Surge is good at whatever level you get them.

I thought it was an elegant system that really just needed some tweaks and you could have some dangerous combat (by having lower max HP) while not having to take long rests all the time (max HP + surges being your TRUE daily HP budget).

 

[billd91]

Metagame mechanisms?

Anyway my point is that Healing Surges were used for almost all healing and it was a daily limit. Almost all healing made the person being healed spend a resource. You can't just chug down as many potions as you want: your body just can't handle that much without resting. That means that you could buy all the potions you wanted, but you still wouldn't have more daily HP than if you didn't use any.

It was also always 1/4 your max HP, so a potion of healing that lets you spend a Healing Surge is good at whatever level you get them.

I thought it was an elegant system that really just needed some tweaks and you could have some dangerous combat (by having lower max HP) while not having to take long rests all the time (max HP + surges being your TRUE daily HP budget).

Problem was, a lot of other players and DMs didn't like that system of external resources actually running off of internal resources. Kind of made people like me wonder what was the point? It was a purely metagame structure that conflicted with the fiction that external magic should be its own power source.
Just about the only aspect of healing surges I actually liked was the paladin's laying on of hands. I thought it was a nice idea that a paladin had to sacrifice his own healing surges to heal other people - very paladinesque. Too bad they were spotted a larger number of healing surges to undermine that idea. If they have additional resources with which to do it, it's really not as much of a sacrifice.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I don't like any of the metagame mechanisms. It's one major reason why I passed on 5e.

Oh those nasty mechanisms such as hit points which allow one to run at a platoon of goblin archers because they have enough hit points. I know what you mean.

 

[Undrave]

Problem was, a lot of other players and DMs didn't like that system of external resources actually running off of internal resources. Kind of made people like me wonder what was the point? It was a purely metagame structure that conflicted with the fiction that external magic should be its own power source.
Just about the only aspect of healing surges I actually liked was the paladin's laying on of hands. I thought it was a nice idea that a paladin had to sacrifice his own healing surges to heal other people - very paladinesque. Too bad they were spotted a larger number of healing surges to undermine that idea. If they have additional resources with which to do it, it's really not as much of a sacrifice.

Like I said, it needed some tweaks, but I don't think it was smart to just throw it all out.

In general, anything that was an Encounter power would use Healing Surges, but any non-Martial Daily with the ability to heal would not use surges.

If we were to adapt it to 5e, you could essentially give the Cleric a short-rest ability to allow allies to spend healing surges, but any of their spells that uses a Spell Slot would be external healing and not use surges.

It's a give and take. Basically, any healing spends a daily resource, wether it's a surge or a spell slot, even if the ability to heal is practically at-will like a potion.

 

[BlivetWidget]

the actual middle ages in Europe wasn't really a cash economy

This points out what is, in my opinion, one of the biggest stumbling blocks in D&D design: they put too much focus on money. The entire game revolves around gold or gold equivalencies. Gold value is so central to the game that you can't even cast many spells without taking money into account.

Where this becomes a problem is that they want a medieval world with a functioning cash economy for everybody except the adventurers. For adventurers, they want a fantasy world where the only way to live is to go on adventures and find treasure. What they attempted to ham-handely achieve with their crazy prices and bonkers crafting / downtime rules (especially pre-Xanathar's) is to make anything except adventuring for treasure a complete waste of time if you're a PC, and a completely viable 100% legit way of life for an NPC.

I would have preferred to leave money out of it. If you make money your goal, business is always going to be the answer. As it is, they're trying to prevent PCs from getting rich by crafting items. Without money, we could lift a lot of the weird restrictions on crafting because we could focus on the utility of crafted items rather than their value.

 

[S'mon]

Metagame mechanisms?

Anyway my point is that Healing Surges were used for almost all healing and it was a daily limit. Almost all healing made the person being healed spend a resource. You can't just chug down as many potions as you want: your body just can't handle that much without resting. That means that you could buy all the potions you wanted, but you still wouldn't have more daily HP than if you didn't use any.

It was also always 1/4 your max HP, so a potion of healing that lets you spend a Healing Surge is good at whatever level you get them.

I thought it was an elegant system that really just needed some tweaks and you could have some dangerous combat (by having lower max HP) while not having to take long rests all the time (max HP + surges being your TRUE daily HP budget).

Well the system you describe is elegant (and common in CRPGs). However the actual 4e approach was to have a basic healing potion cost a surge and heal a fixed 10 hp, which did not scale with level. If you wanted more hp you spent enormous amounts of gold on better potions, and IME 4e players basically never used healing potions. 5e I think does it a lot better.