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I just hope this allows characters to break out of that christmas tree advancement mold we have all gotten used to. It really bothered me that in a lot of game high level characters really had nothing to show for themselves except gear. 

It used ot have that with the battle system rules IIRC. At lesst the old D&D rules cyclopedia referenced it.

I'm a fan of revising the economy somewhat. A silver piece standard makes more sense. I did a bit of an analysis on the economy, and came up with this:

1. The "days wage" silver piece is likely based on the Roman denarius.
2. According to my research, a denarius would be roughly equivalent to $20 USD in value. (I'm comparing this to US society.)
3. Peasants would have to have more than one worker in a family, and would still be poor.
4. Gold would be serious money. As in $200 per gp.
5. You would still have poor, middle class, and upper class.
6. Many of the prices in the books make perfect sense.
7. Weapons and armor are highly expensive, but that makes sense.
But...
8. Some prices make absolutely no sense. The way they make some items cost 6 sp, and then something else similar cost 7gp ends up totally throwing the comparison out of whack.
9. Magical services are downright ridiculous. It takes all of a couple minutes for a spellcaster to prepare a spell in the morning that they can then charge thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to cast.
10. Real Estate and realm level expenses also seem to use an entirely different scale than everything else.

So they basically made an economy that almost makes sense for casual observation, but then when you get to adventurer purchases it all goes wacky and becomes seriously inflated. Adventurer economy would make sense if they switched more things from gp to sp.

However, that simply makes it make sense--it doesn't solve (and actually increases) the issue of ridiculously wealthy adventurers with nothing to do with their cash.

Of course, you can't easily solve the issue for adventurers who do things like raid extravagant tombs. If you are walking out of dungeons laden down with bags of gems and jewerly, you are going to be filfthy rich! There is no way around that except not to provide those sorts of adventuring opportunities. The problem is that the game worlds create the assumption that there is a small amount of money in actual circulation, and 500 times as much money stashed out there in dungeons (or in $100,000 jewerly that happens to be worn around the neck of a random goblin).

In other words, as soon as Alice enters Adventurerland, she finds money growing on trees.

If the cost of real estate and domains is kept to believable values, then the only way to really use up that cash is to leave the Material Plane and go buy crazy stuff in some planar metropolis.

All that being said...it's ridiculously hard to actually create a heap of coins for a dragon to rest on. (See 3.5 Draconomicon p.278) Maybe that's a goal worthy of the cash of high level adventurers.

Dec 4, 2012 -- 4:46PM, Sword_of_Spirit wrote:

I'm a fan of revising the economy somewhat. A silver piece standard makes more sense. I did a bit of an analysis on the economy, and came up with this:

1. The "days wage" silver piece is likely based on the Roman denarius.
2. According to my research, a denarius would be roughly equivalent to $20 USD in value. (I'm comparing this to US society.)
3. Peasants would have to have more than one worker in a family, and would still be poor.
4. Gold would be serious money. As in $200 per gp.
5. You would still have poor, middle class, and upper class.
6. Many of the prices in the books make perfect sense.
7. Weapons and armor are highly expensive, but that makes sense.
But...
8. Some prices make absolutely no sense. The way they make some items cost 6 sp, and then something else similar cost 7gp ends up totally throwing the comparison out of whack.
9. Magical services are downright ridiculous. It takes all of a couple minutes for a spellcaster to prepare a spell in the morning that they can then charge thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to cast.
10. Real Estate and realm level expenses also seem to use an entirely different scale than everything else.

So they basically made an economy that almost makes sense for casual observation, but then when you get to adventurer purchases it all goes wacky and becomes seriously inflated. Adventurer economy would make sense if they switched more things from gp to sp.

However, that simply makes it make sense--it doesn't solve (and actually increases) the issue of ridiculously wealthy adventurers with nothing to do with their cash.

Of course, you can't easily solve the issue for adventurers who do things like raid extravagant tombs. If you are walking out of dungeons laden down with bags of gems and jewerly, you are going to be filfthy rich! There is no way around that except not to provide those sorts of adventuring opportunities. The problem is that the game worlds create the assumption that there is a small amount of money in actual circulation, and 500 times as much money stashed out there in dungeons (or in $100,000 jewerly that happens to be worn around the neck of a random goblin).

In other words, as soon as Alice enters Adventurerland, she finds money growing on trees.

If the cost of real estate and domains is kept to believable values, then the only way to really use up that cash is to leave the Material Plane and go buy crazy stuff in some planar metropolis.

All that being said...it's ridiculously hard to actually create a heap of coins for a dragon to rest on. (See 3.5 Draconomicon p.278) Maybe that's a goal worthy of the cash of high level adventurers.

Well what they need to do is figure out what the numbers would be for all those items, then figure out what it takes an adventurer to live on for the length of the average adventure. Things like trail rations, meals, inn stays, tavern costs, repairs and upgrades to items, passage to and from areas, things like that and then build the treasures around that kind of cost. So instead of finding 1000gp in a dungeon maybe they find 1000cp which turns out to be about 10gp and 4 of that covers their costs for the next month. Then the party can save up their money to buy that fabled 5000gp suit of plate by level 10 or so. The Fighter would start with the higher end of light armor and have to work their way up because their starting money would be 20gp instead of 200gp or whatever it is now.

Dragons would sleep on beds of copper pieces rather than silver, and the few gems they find would be valued in copper not gold. They might rarely find an art piece worth 5-10gp.

Throw in the costs of healing potions and the group would have to choose between upgrading the Fighter from Ring Mail to Chain Mail or getting everyone an extra potion or two...

Dec 4, 2012 -- 10:15PM, Rory wrote:

Dec 4, 2012 -- 5:56PM, lokiare wrote:

Well what they need to do is figure out what the numbers would be for all those items, then figure out what it takes an adventurer to live on for the length of the average adventure. Things like trail rations, meals, inn stays, tavern costs, repairs and upgrades to items, passage to and from areas, things like that and then build the treasures around that kind of cost. So instead of finding 1000gp in a dungeon maybe they find 1000cp which turns out to be about 10gp and 4 of that covers their costs for the next month. Then the party can save up their money to buy that fabled 5000gp suit of plate by level 10 or so. The Fighter would start with the higher end of light armor and have to work their way up because their starting money would be 20gp instead of 200gp or whatever it is now.

Dragons would sleep on beds of copper pieces rather than silver, and the few gems they find would be valued in copper not gold. They might rarely find an art piece worth 5-10gp.

Throw in the costs of healing potions and the group would have to choose between upgrading the Fighter from Ring Mail to Chain Mail or getting everyone an extra potion or two...

Why should someone wait until they are 10th level to wear Plate? I hate tanks so Im stepping out of the box here. 4e had it right with 50gp Plate Mail.  A wearer of full Plate is a character type not a status symbol. Or I should say that is what I want. Right now a wearer of Full Plate is a status symbol. Its someone who made a bunch of money and spent 4,500 gold on one AC point.

Im all for beds of gold in the teen levels. Dragons are just too weak in the current packet.

Well really plate mail needs to be broken into two types, plate and plate mail. The plate would be a kind of incomplete suit that covers the chest and the major parts of the arms, legs, and shoulders. It would have an AC bonus of 1 less than plate mail and cost significantly less. Then have plate mail that requires a fitting and custom work to make it fit and have it cost quite a bit of money...