4E: Investing and Trade Goods

[Alejandro]

I'm the player (and the character) who manages the money for our adventuring group. I divvy out the shares, put a percentage aside for a party expenses fund, and so forth.

My question is: Our campaign takes place in a large, urbane city with many large guilds and mercantilist activity. I'd really like to do something with our party's money rather than just hoard it in a chest, seeing as my PC has the high INT to manage it, and we're in a prosperous trading city. However, I flipped through the Player's Handbook and the DMG, and I did not find much in the way of the prices for trade goods, how much various services cost, how much different kinds of animals (sheep, cattle, etc) cost. The closest items are the prices of a horse and a sailing ship.

I recall in 2nd and 3rd Ed that such things were there. Are these just absent from 4th? If so, any recommendations or others who have come up with something?

Edit: Another example. Let's say I want to build a tower/manor/house for my wizard PC to live and work in. How do I get a baseline for what it should cost?

[obryn]

(edited severely for clarity. Man, I can ramble...)

Nope. 4e is a game tightly focused on adventurers doing adventurey stuff. Not necessarily dungeon-crawling, but facing danger and the like - be that city-based intrigue, wilderness exploration, or more typical tomb-robbing.

And frankly, the 4e economy is pretty severely broken. It's the one part of 4e I really don't like. It continues with a hidden "feature" introduced in 3.x and makes it explicit.

You see in 3e, whether the designers intended it or not, "gold" became a second XP track that you use to buy your equipment-based power-ups. There was even an "xp chart" in the wealth-by-level table that DMs ignored at their peril. I didn't like it then, and I still don't like it now. :smallsmile:

Likewise, the 4e economy works fine if you assume that buying and selling magic items is the entire point of the economy. And from a normal PC's perspective, it pretty much is. However, it utterly fails to do anything else well. 4e does many things wonderfully, but comprehensive world-simulation it ain't.


With that said, there are some campaigns (like Dark Sun) in which the broken 4e economy can be destroyed and rebuilt. It just requires detaching the economy from character power advancement by using (for example) inherent bonuses, putting sharp limits on item crafting, and cutting the costs of rituals.

Basically you have two options if you want to be an investor or merchant in 4e...

(1) Look up those price tables from 2e or 3e (but mostly 2e; that edition cared the most about setting-as-real-world). They still work fine; you still have gold and silver. They mean basically the same thing, too, at least at Heroic tier. Things get insane by Paragon.

(2) DM Fiat. Go to town.

As for the manor house, I am 95% sure there was a Stronghold article a ways back, but I don't know the issue number.

-O

[Alejandro]

Thank you. I think I understand now why 4E has no Craft or Perform skills; those were ways to earn additional money and 4E doesn't really want you to do that.

[obryn]

Thank you. I think I understand now why 4E has no Craft or Perform skills; those were ways to earn additional money and 4E doesn't really want you to do that.
Ummmm.... It's not that - seriously, the amount you could make is trivial with the 4e economy as it is. :smallsmile:

Craft/Profession isn't there for a few reasons. For starters, they were a bit broken under 3.x, and second they really only worked with skill points as an option. Without Skill Points and with fewer trained skills in general from a concise list, they don't work as well.

The 4e philosophy is that becoming a more interesting, well-rounded character shouldn't require your limited character-building resources like trained skills or feats. You want to be a blacksmith? Awesome; that's a good thing to be. Just declare it as part of your background. Your DM is a human being, who will recognize this. When blacksmithy things come up, just work it out as part of your background. You don't need a page of rules dictating how you could make a living at it. It's more or less a return to the 1e system of secondary skills. (Even under 3.x, a very common houserule was to give people points for "background skills"; I know I used it. This bypasses that formality.)

4e is not a world-simulator. Treating it like one ... that direction lies madness. :)

-O

[Alejandro]

Very true, but that requires you to have a GM that allows it. A GM can also say that your character cannot do anything that is not spelled out.

[obryn]

Very true, but that requires you to have a GM that allows it. A GM can also say that your character cannot do anything that is not spelled out.
As always, yep. But if your DM is putting up a big fight over your background profession and your character knowing some stuff about it, I'd say there's some major power issues in play. Really, check out the 4e DMG sometime - this falls clearly into the general "say yes" philosophy it espouses.

Back to the original topic, in my Dark Sun game, I make use of the 2e Dune Trader supplement for commodity prices in the various City-States. It's seldom used, but it makes for some good flavor text when I'm talking about the sorts of goods on caravans. That'd be a sensible amount of money in the game I'm running where (non-consumable) magic items are generally neither bought nor sold.

-O

[Ashdate]

Thank you. I think I understand now why 4E has no Craft or Perform skills; those were ways to earn additional money and 4E doesn't really want you to do that.

Obryn is correct that the economy gets snapped in half once you reach Paragon Tier. Adventurers in 4e are generally "the 1%" of the D&D world.

Consider if you spent 365 days of the year staying at luxury inns (2g/day) and eating three "feast" meals a day (15g/day). That's 6205g to live in luxury for a year.

Assuming players start at level 1 are given standard DMG treasure packages, players will have that in pocket change by level 10 (plus a full ten levels worth of magical items). And then they start getting rich.

Magic items exponentially scale upwards in value along with the gold being handed out. Whereas a level 9 item is 4200g, and a level 10 item is 5000g, a level 11 item (found as early as level 7) is worth 9000g. The items value increases by 4000g increments to level 15, where it then starts rising by 20,000g increments.

Investments? The only thing an intelligent adventurer would invest in is more adventuring! The ROI becomes staggeringly high.

[Alejandro]

The GM said basically the same thing. I was just disappointed that it was so skewed, as the actual player (me) hates seeing gold just sitting in a pile and not earning anything. In our characters' mercantilist setting, it should be sponsoring ship voyages and purchasing farm and hunting lands.

However, the GM also said that I can say my PC is investing and being a business-tiefling with a 21 INT, and as the levels go by, I can simply act as if I am wealthy even if I did not go adventuring, have a wizard's tower, etc, without any actual GP ever changing hands.

[obryn]

However, the GM also said that I can say my PC is investing and being a business-tiefling with a 21 INT, and as the levels go by, I can simply act as if I am wealthy even if I did not go adventuring, have a wizard's tower, etc, without any actual GP ever changing hands.
Well, there you go. :) I think this is a pretty good solution which fits in perfectly with the game's philosophy. I'd love integrating those sorts of plot hooks into a campaign. Business investments? Home base? Awesome.

-O

[Firebug]

The DM can by all means allow you to invest your gold and get a good return on your capital... and then deduct it from the treasure parcels you would have recieved anyway.

You feel like you are being wise with your money (at least RP wise), and the game stays in balance. If you enjoy a trading game, it could fit right in. Its essentially 'just roleplay' as opposed to 'just combat' for gaining treasure.

[Alejandro]

Yes, we talked about that option, but I have no interest. That's not making actual profit, that's just calling it something else. However, I understand now that 4E breaks if one PC gets more gold than another PC, even if they worked for it.

[Firebug]

IMO, is it more realistic that the dirty, down-on-his-luck ruffian you just clobbered for ambushing you on the road has a suit of Gith Plate, Plate Bloodiron Armor +3 or you invested your money wisely and after you arrived at your destination you finally collected enough dividends to commision a blacksmith and enchanter to fashion one for you?

I'd love to be in a game where there was story and attachment to items as opposed to "oh, the assassin vine has 20k gold pieces and a battlemaster's longsword on it, btw".

edit: spelling is hard

[obryn]

Yes, we talked about that option, but I have no interest. That's not making actual profit, that's just calling it something else. However, I understand now that 4E breaks if one PC gets more gold than another PC, even if they worked for it.
:smallconfused:

No... it really, really doesn't. At least not in the amount of wealth you'd likely gain from investments and the like. If you are 5th level with items and treasure worth 200,000 gp, that's a different story.

-O

[Ashdate]

:smallconfused:

No... it really, really doesn't. At least not in the amount of wealth you'd likely gain from investments and the like. If you are 5th level with items and treasure worth 200,000 gp, that's a different story.

-O

This is true. I mean, think about how long an investment would likely take to come to fruition, and how quickly you could... simply go adventuring and make bundles more.

The game expects your party to level up after you have fought a number of creatures equal to roughly (character level x number of characters x 10) standard monsters. Elites count as two monsters, Solos count as four to five. You can potentially add potential experience from skill challenges and quest rewards as your DM desires, but let's assume for the sake of being boring that you fight nothing but standard monsters equal to your party's level. You would be expected to gain a level every ten fights. 4e assumes a party can do four fights a day, so you can expect to gain a level every three days. Assuming you pound those dungeons every single day, you can hit level 30 in three months.

That's right, in three months you can go from the level 1 wizard out to make a name for himself, to a level 30 wizard who has multiple items worth millions of gold each.

Of course that isn't realistic, as your DM would probably enforce more downtime than that, but even if you took a week between each level, you would still hit the point where you're high-fiving it with gods within a year.

What possible investment could you make that would "tip the scales" of wealth? Even if you made a generous return on your investment, it would still be chump change compared to the money you would simply get by raiding dragon lairs and keeping your list of "people whose names I've listed such to ass kick later" list updated. By level 15, you'll be gaining enough loose change in treasure to purchase a 10,000g sailing ship, and can purchase more at an almost exponential rate afterwards. Pretty good for a week's worth of work!

I mean, I love 4e, but its economy apparently runs on butterflys and unicorns.

[obryn]

I mean, I love 4e, but its economy apparently runs on butterflys and unicorns.
hah! And agreed.

or *like* whatever...

-O

[Alejandro]

I'm not really complaining, I love the game I am in. I just had not ever realized before that 4E has such stringent controls on how much gold the party should ever have. Now I do.

Also, it seems to me that if an evil villain wanted to destroy the world, all they really need to do is become an adventurer, earn adventurer grade income, and then use it to absolutely destroy the world's economy. :) Just flooding the market with currency would do it. It happened to Spain when too much conquistador gold and silver flooded their vaults.

Screw raising undead armies or dethroning a god, just reduce everything to squalor with the power of economics. :)

[DragonBaneDM]

I'm doing something similar in my campaign. The PCs have become really attached to this one business-savvy Warforged NPC. He's got a business rival, who just happens to be a very powerful warrior.

Therefor, I'm planning on that story arc being a bit like 4e meets Shadowrun. Meet with their business investor, raid the enemy shipments, take out assets, win trading partners over, etc.

However it's a lot easier to do when most of the "businessy" stuff takes place off screen and I don't have to roleplay it. That's gonna be the challenge for your DM, setting up those sort of more real world deals while keeping it interesting for the rest of the party.

May I suggest something a bit more on the dangerous side to keep things adventurey? Like arms dealing or courier running for the guilds in your city?

[Yakk]

By level 15, you'll be gaining enough loose change in treasure to purchase a 10,000g sailing ship, and can purchase more at an almost exponential rate afterwards.
"Almost exponential?" In this case, it is exponential.

The value of a level L magical item is 5^(L/5)*100 gp, piecewise linear interpolated between every 5 levels (starting at level 0).

A party of 5 of level X runs into twice a level X's magic item value in gold over a level. So the amount of treasure you earn increases literally exponentially.

Now, monster XP values also go up exponentially (with a bit of a correction to generate round numbers around the end of paragon) at a rate of 2^(L/4) * 84 (or 2^((L-1)/4) * 100) piecewise linear interpolated every 4 levels starting at level 1. And raw monster power goes up roughly quadratically with XP value (well, closer to x^1.7 or so, based off of a best-fit of triangular numbers in the range 1 to 10), which actually means that monster threat grows at roughly the same pace as their treasure.

In short, treasure rewards are roughly linear in enemy threat: it is your characters capabilities that grow exponentially that drive the gonzo economy of 4e. If treasure didn't grow exponentially, it would quickly become optimal to "farm mass numbers of low level monsters" for treasure (in theory), presuming that treasure distribution wasn't a function of your DMs desire to have an interesting game. Well, sortof. :)

The paragon/epic tier 4e heroes are really larger than life. When a level 30 4e character pins a greater god to the ground and simply doesn't let the god up until the god is dead, that is actually an appropriate power scale action. Level 30 characters are on the order of 10 thousand times stronger (and richer!) than level 1 characters.

Now, not all games will play this way. The ability to curb-stomp gods doesn't have to translate to the ability to smash entire cities to the ground. But that, in my mind, leads to a FF-like cut-scene disconnect, where you go from summoning meteors to slay your enemies to being afraid of a handful of guards with guns.

[TheKoalaNxtDoor]

You could invest in magic items.... That's what's the economy is built for, so you could just buy tons of low-level magic items and set up adventuring equiptment shops. Or something. I've never attempted such things, so i wouldn't know.

[Excession]

With adventuring itself producing exponential returns, the obvious thing to invest in is adventuring. Not your own adventuring of course, that would be dangerous. No, what you invert in is other adventurers.

That 100gp that everyone starts with has got to come from somewhere, and it only takes a few success stories for that "... or 5% of future earnings, whichever is higher" clause to make you a lot of money. The downside is that you've just gone from PC adventurer to NPC quest giver.

[TheKoalaNxtDoor]

With adventuring itself producing exponential returns, the obvious thing to invest in is adventuring. Not your own adventuring of course, that would be dangerous. No, what you invert in is other adventurers.

That 100gp that everyone starts with has got to come from somewhere, and it only takes a few success stories for that "... or 5% of future earnings, whichever is higher" clause to make you a lot of money. The downside is that you've just gone from PC adventurer to NPC quest giver.

Well, the world doesn't feel real if they're aren't lower-level monsters or smaller-level schemes going about. The BBEG is sure to have lower-level hobgoblin or equivlent hoards that you'd rather not deal with, and investing in heroic-teir adventurers might just be the thing to get rid of them while you close his daemonic portals. It'll feel very appropriate if you're adventuring in the forgotten realms. Now YOU are the epic-level wizard who hires adventurers to clean the trogledyts out of his wine cellar, just because he can't be bothered to just snap his fingers and desinigrate them and all other trogledytes on the continent!

[Badgerish]

I have my own nascent ideas on changing the 4ed economy system, partly to allow for more options for trade/business/casual looting without upsetting game balance.

The short form of it involved splitting the total recommended money + item-value into "currency" and "craft reserve".
Currency is cash, trade goods, art, certain types of ritual components* and magic items up to 5000gp** value.
Craft reserve is other types of ritual components* and magic items above 5000gp** value.

Importantly, Currency and Craft Reserve can't be traded for each other. No selling of magic items above the threshold, although trading items for other items is certainly possible.

Craft Reserve is partly made up of looted items, 'free' crafting over time and crafting resources found during play (e.g. kill a fire elemental and gain it's elemental core, which you can use to craft/improve a flaming weapon etc)

* ritual components are the hard part. I want them to be something you can aquire and use, but I don't want them taken for granted. Still not sure what levels/types to put in each category.
** inital threshold was 1000gp but that seems too low. It's also 20lbs of gold, which is a hefty size. 5000gp is 100lbs of gold! Seems a fitting threshold for the very edge of portability. The planned economy wouldn't use platinum coins and Astral Diamonds would be Craft Reserve; vehicles and banks would be assumed parts of the setting.

[Yakk]

Splitting the magic item and non-magic item economies of 4e could be fun.

First, I'd exploit the level system on magic items.

Then I'd give Markets levels. The amount of money you can get for a magic item is a function of the Market and the magic item level, not just the magic item level.

Markets generally only have magic items for sale for cash (gold) that are much lower level than the Market level, and those are at a significant markup. Markets can have magic items for trade for other magic items, but the kind of people doing so will only trade lower level items for higher level items in general. The size of that gap is a function of what kind of luck and skill rolls you get, as is the magic items you can get ahold of. And generally when trying to trade such items, violence is a distinct possibility.

Components for rituals are divorced from cash values. Instead, components have descriptors and levels. Some rituals require multiple components.

A level X exploration component can be used to power an exploration ritual of level X or under.

Crafting magic items requires multiple components (how many? Dunno) of the items level or higher. Some of these components may be specific to crafting: ie, a level 15 fire crafting component (young red dragon blood). Magic items might need 2 crafting components, and at least 1 that matches the items capabilities, of the item's level or higher.

Crafting components might be available for purchase in a market, much like magic items, but without trading at a significantly lower level than the market level.

The cash economy would then be changed to one of influencing the world, rather than proxy magic item points which is the default 4e approach. You'd take the MME work (where they start pricing out castles) and rejigger it, and work out how much it costs to build a castle, fund an army, or the like.

[TheBajaBojo]

sounds fun and all, but our DM simply said "stick it to The Man" or whatever.
Or at least for the last party (the one I wasn't part of), he just handed out magic items, that people of that level were supposed to have, for free. They had barely any gold, though, cuz I remember subbing for the DM as well, and the guys only used gold for bribes.

[Beleriphon]

Then I'd give Markets levels. The amount of money you can get for a magic item is a function of the Market and the magic item level, not just the magic item level.

Markets generally only have magic items for sale for cash (gold) that are much lower level than the Market level, and those are at a significant markup. Markets can have magic items for trade for other magic items, but the kind of people doing so will only trade lower level items for higher level items in general. The size of that gap is a function of what kind of luck and skill rolls you get, as is the magic items you can get a hold of. And generally when trying to trade such items, violence is a distinct possibility.


Pawn Stars the RPG? American Pickers the RPG? Actually the second one there is kind of what D&D already is, but with more fighting and less haggling.

[oxybe]

Fighting is nothing more then aggressive haggling, if one party has something the second party is interested in.

[fallenwarrior]

Importantly, Currency and Craft Reserve can't be traded for each other. No selling of magic items above the threshold, although trading items for other items is certainly possible.

A different take on the same idea would be to just get rid of all magical items except consumable items (potions/elixers/etc) and artifacts. Instead, give PCs the ability to empower mundane items so that they work like the ones listed in the various books, and allow them to change those items when they level up. They could "create" items to the gold value of Level+1/Level/2*Level-1, with the characters restricted to creating at most one item of level +1, and two items of their level or higher.

With the exception of consumable items, the PCs shouldn't be able to routinely buy, sell or create magical items that can be used by others. Which means that more gold can be used for trading and things like that, without seriously affecting game balance. The PCs shouldn't really need much in the way of gold anyway, and you can significantly reduce the amount they would normally get in treasure. Sure, a level 30 character should be considerably more wealthy than a level 1 character (and should be able to demand higher payments), but a lot of that would be in terms of land and mundane valuable items (artwork, jewellery etc) - which is more what you'd expect in a fantasy game anyway.

The other advantage is that with this method, you are making sure the characters have all the level appropriate items they should have as they level up, and aren't stuck with items they don't really want or can't use very effectively. And they can keep hold of their favorite items (usually weapons, but it can be anything) without it becoming obsolete as they gain levels. Or if they lose an item to some catastrophe (rust monster etc), they can just pick up a mundane item to replace it with and power it up (this might require an extended rest, at your option).

[Alienist]

D&D economy starts with the notion that players always buy high and sell low.

In 3.5 and earlier systems you could bend or break that, to the point where you could buy new items heavily discounted and even sell second hand goods more expensively than the retail price for brand new ones.

If you have a character such as a warforged that doesn't sleep, you can then break the game, even with mundane crafting, while everyone else gets their beauty sleep/trance. Once you start making your own magic items for 5-10% of list price it gets silly extremely quickly.

Consider the big adamantium door (for whatever reason the guys at WoTC love shoving adamantium doors in their modules). But wait, you think that's a door? Not at all! You're a wizard, and what it is is actually an enormous pile of raw materials! Camp there for a couple of days casting Fabricate, turning the door into shiny new piles of masterwork adamantium full plate, each of which you can make thousands of gold profit on, even if you have to sell at half price.

In all seriousness, I've seen several dungeons where the big ass doors are worth more than all the monsters treasure combined. It's ridiculous.

Also a cleric or wizard can make thousands of gold daily simply by selling their spell slots.

Frankly, I'm happier playing in 4e's dumbed down economy. It doesn't 'make sense', but it is a lot more 'heroic', and so is more fun that way.