equivalent rates on souls<->gold in a devil economy?

[flamewolf393]

Im dm'ing a game set around playing evil characters. I am going to give the characters access to a major city in hell where they can access a market that trades in anything they could want.

Given that the main currency among devils is in the trade of souls, I wanted to give my players a way to capture souls and then have an equivalent value on them so we can still just use the flat prices on magic item charts. I am thinking of a fixed formula that equates the ECL of the soul to a fixed amount of gold, but how much should a soul actually be worth? Should it also be less for npc classes vs pc classes?

Another idea is putting a value on contractual favors. Favors would be classified by how much effort/danger the promised favor would intail. So something like a small errand to a nearby town would be a class 1 favor, while a year long quest that puts them in great danger would be a class 10 favor. But again, what should be an equivalent gold values?

[Red Fel]

Well, according to the BoVD, a soul is worth 10 xp as a component. I know there's a conversion rate of xp into gp (I think it's 5 gp/ 1 xp, but I forget). So, at least in theory, you can calculate the gold value of a soul.

Doesn't sound like all that much, end of the day, does it?

[Immabozo]

Well, according to the BoVD, a soul is worth 10 xp as a component. I know there's a conversion rate of xp into gp (I think it's 5 gp/ 1 xp, but I forget). So, at least in theory, you can calculate the gold value of a soul.

Doesn't sound like all that much, end of the day, does it?

But in this setting, I dont think that is a viable measuring stick.

Although, if you wanted to do a similar conversion for how much exp they have, that might work. Although, then, they would be broken price wise the opposite direction 10,000 exp soul being worth 50,000 gold? It seem like your PC's would make far too much, far too fast. You could make everything 3x or 4x the cost, then a single soul being so valuable wont shatter your games.

Another solution is making the devils want only certain souls, or certain types. Then a character with track would be able to use that ability for once!

[Shieldbunny]

Both Soul Bind and Trap the soul say you need a gem worth 1000 GP/HD of the victim. It's a starting point at least.

[Immabozo]

Both Soul Bind and Trap the soul say you need a gem worth 1000 GP/HD of the victim. It's a starting point at least.

No, not really. That is the value of a gem component for a spell. I don't think it is a good yardstick for the value of a soul.

[Shieldbunny]

No, not really. That is the value of a gem component for a spell. I don't think it is a good yardstick for the value of a soul.

If that's how much it costs to capture the soul, then yes it does. One has to cover overhead after all.

[White Blade]

Well, Fiendish Codex II sort of does this.

The price of a soul is worth a seven point reward on a Pact Certain. That's 60% of the individual's present wealth.

When hiring a devil, a gold reward of 501-100 GP per HD of the devil gives an equivalent bonus to the caster offering their own soul (which is a non-variable.)

That's all it has. And the Fiendish Codex is sort of dumb about it, but there you go.

[flamewolf393]

If that's how much it costs to capture the soul, then yes it does. One has to cover overhead after all.

I plan on the soulgems themselves being highly accessible and cheap. The equivalent of having a purse to hold your coins.

[Shieldbunny]

I plan on the soulgems themselves being highly accessible and cheap. The equivalent of having a purse to hold your coins.

Then I'd still go with an X/HD system. Or go off of ECL, Perhaps 10-20% of the average treasure value for an encounter given in the DMG?

[Phelix-Mu]

Given the propensity for WBL to suddenly and somewhat unpredictably break as part of game design, I'd avoid this. Also, given the huge numbers of fiends and celestials with wish/sundry powers 1/day or whatever, the amount of gold floating around the Outer Planes is likely infinite. Thus, if you are aiming for anything other than an arbitrary number, economics on the Outer Planes can't rely on an infinite resource that people have virutual at will access to (solar cashpoint).

Otherwise, I'd suggest making it based off of the expected 13 on-CR encounters per character level of the people in the party. Thus, you'd want to predict that they won't come up with more than 13x (average monsters per encounter) souls per level. Divide WBL for that level by the resulting number or something. Thus, this will give you a number consistent with the party earning approximately WBL off of just souls. If you are handing out actual treasure as well, then you are in trouble, as it gets substantially more complicated (since many monsters automatically come with a soul, this is like automatic treasure coming off the monster's wealth...but the monster can't use it's soul, so that doesn't make much sense).

Nevertheless, I'd avoid a fixed value per strength of soul. That sounds like you will get a curve ball at some point resulting in WBL implosion.

[TheGeckoKing]

Page 45 of the BoVD prices a Soul in a Receptacle at 200gp, and a Soul in Larval Form at 250gp.
Which, when you look at it, makes Soul Bind cast as a spell a massive money sink, but there you go.

[flamewolf393]

Hmm. Maybe I should give some more details on the game setting.

The game is starting at low levels in a mildly low resource prime world with an open sandbox playstyle. The players are playing evil characters serving under a low ranked devil prince that wants them to build him a fortress on the prime plane (kinda like dungeon keeper style :smallbiggrin:). How they go about doing this is up to them, though it will take them a long time as the final design requirements are fairly outrageous.

To help them get whatever they may need to complete this service he is giving them semi-safe passage within a devil city where gold is completely useless because of the soul based economy. He will be giving the party the means to capture souls to use in the devil economy, meaning that the characters have access to the entire prime plane for gathering souls as they need (though obviously they will begin to attract the attention of heroes and other goodies, hence the challenge).

To gather a soul, they have to successfully coup-de-grace (not just kill) the victim with a ceremonial dagger that has an attached soul gem.

[Baroknik]

I would consider factoring in soul alignment for value as well...
To a fiend,
An evil soul is a microwave dinner
A neutral soul is an average restaurant
A good soul is a coat and jacket affair
An exalted soul is a foodie cruise

[Immabozo]

If that's how much it costs to capture the soul, then yes it does. One has to cover overhead after all.

No, not at all.first, your arguement implies it is a profitable "business" and not horrendously over priced.


The equivalent of having a purse to hold your coins.

or you could picture it like this. My wallet cost so probably $10-$15, but right now, there is over $200 in it. But it only cost me $15 to hold it all, so that must be what it's worth, right?

I am not trying to insult you, please do not take it as such. It is a logical argument where I reduce your argument to absurdity to point out the fault in the logic.


- snip -

Phelix has a good idea, although it sounds incredibly complex, however, that way, your PCs wont break WBL wide open.


Hmm. Maybe I should give some more details on the game setting.

The game is starting at low levels in a mildly low resource prime world with an open sandbox playstyle. The players are playing evil characters serving under a low ranked devil prince that wants them to build him a fortress on the prime plane (kinda like dungeon keeper style :smallbiggrin:). How they go about doing this is up to them, though it will take them a long time as the final design requirements are fairly outrageous.

To help them get whatever they may need to complete this service he is giving them semi-safe passage within a devil city where gold is completely useless because of the soul based economy. He will be giving the party the means to capture souls to use in the devil economy, meaning that the characters have access to the entire prime plane for gathering souls as they need (though obviously they will begin to attract the attention of heroes and other goodies, hence the challenge).

To gather a soul, they have to successfully coup-de-grace (not just kill) the victim with a ceremonial dagger that has an attached soul gem.

So, in a regular on-DR encounter, they are likely to get only two souls. Another way to limit the souls, so you dont let them break WBL, is make the gem have a storage capacity. Once they reach it, they need to "discharge" it and only then, can they trade the souls.

The capacity should be like 2 or something. Either they will discharge it after every fight and never get more than 2 at a time, or they will try to discharge it mid combat, making combat much more challenging and fun.

Also, remember, they need building materials. They are not just going on a shopping spree. So there is a balancing factor they have right there. "Oh, you have 5 more souls than you need to complete the next section? Well guess what, you need 5 souls to pay for the parts for this trap that you need to build"

[Shieldbunny]

or you could picture it like this. My wallet cost so probably $10-$15, but right now, there is over $200 in it. But it only cost me $15 to hold it all, so that must be what it's worth, right?

I am not trying to insult you, please do not take it as such. It is a logical argument where I reduce your argument to absurdity to point out the fault in the logic.

First off I said it's a starting point. If your wallet is worth 15 dollars and you want to sell it, then yes 15 dollars is a starting point. You then add all the valuables in the wallet, plus say 10% to ensure profit, to said 15 dollars.

Second, you really can't picture it like that. You don't need your wallet to have money. You do however need a 1000 GP/HD gem to Contain a soul (at least with those two spells).

[Immabozo]

First off I said it's a starting point. If your wallet is worth 15 dollars and you want to sell it, then yes 15 dollars is a starting point. You then add all the valuables in the wallet, plus say 10% to ensure profit, to said 15 dollars.

Second, you really can't picture it like that. You don't need your wallet to have money. You do however need a 1000 GP/HD gem to Contain a soul (at least with those two spells).

True, you have a very good point. It might add to the value of the soul, but it certainly makes a bad yardstick to judge the value.

On the other hand, AFAIK, we are in solid houserule for a homebrew setting territory right now, so it could make as much sense as anything else.

[Slipperychicken]

To balance out the price of souls:

It could take a lot of effort to reach someone willing to buy a soul.
They might need to use RAW-legal methods like Trap The Soul or Thinaun weapons (special material from Complete Warrior), which are expensive (10k for a light weapon) and only hold one soul at a time.
Receptacles to store multiple souls at once do not exist.
Tampering with another person's soul, not to mention selling it to fiends, is truly messed up and will basically insta-damn you.


These restrictions will not only curb the extent to which PCs might break the economy through soul-trading, but also help justify the value of souls. Every person might have a soul, but collecting them is far from easy. Of course, it still leaves the possibility of specialized, high-level "soul-hunters" or even "soul-farmers" (both of which are invariably some of the most vile and despicable people imaginable) who are able to make a very good living by acquiring souls, once they pay off the initial investments. Naturally, soul-hunters might become highly territorial if they find someone reaping on their turf. A hunter or farmer's "Turf" might be anything from a corrupt hospital ward or poorhouse to an entire city district or village.

EDIT:


To help them get whatever they may need to complete this service he is giving them semi-safe passage within a devil city where gold is completely useless because of the soul based economy.

Devils are smart fellows and very well-organized, so I would imagine that someone would have a currency exchange set up. Obviously, the exchange might take a 4% to 10% cut as is customary among currency-converters.

[ace rooster]

A few factors to consider:

1) Anything that raise dead works on presumably has a soul, so souls are not rare.

2) The souls of evil characters end up in the lower planes anyway, so gathering them may not be hard or expensive for natives of those planes.

3) Holding souls on the material plane is difficult (1000gp per HD gem, or thinian. 1000gp diamonds at least to bring a soul back to the material plane), but controlling an soul in the plane that matches it's alignment may not be.

4) They would not make a very good currency if they were difficult to handle, so we have to assume that they are easy for fiends to handle for some reason. It could relate to natural abilities of fiends, or the natural behavior of souls in the outer planes.

5) The price of a commoner soul does not need to match the price of an character with PC class levels, even at the same level.

6) Controlling a soul may not be entierly trivial, particularly for powerful souls, but most should be fairly easy.

7) Souls, particularly souls that often get drawn into summons may get more powerful as time goes on. Such souls would be more valuable than their power level would suggest, due to their natural 'interest'.

8) Fiends are immortal, so may be prepared to accept very long term investments. On the other hand the risk of a planar binding or ally are huge, so the prices they would ask would be equally astronomical in terms of souls.

9) I don't know how your cosmology works, but as I generally understand it souls gradually merge into the plane that matches their alignment. Control of this process could be what gives fiends (and celestials) their power, which is what gives them their value to fiends. This process could be available to non-fiends. :smallamused:

10) Gold may be worthless to fiends, but magic items are not. This will establish an exchange rate, as if a fiend can buy cheaper by trading into gold first, they will. If you want to avoid fiends using items then having them naturally decay on the outer planes could be an option.

None of this establishes an exchange rate, but I think it would be far lower than you would expect. Hope this gives you some ideas.

[Phelix-Mu]

The reason why capturing souls using spells doesn't affect things is that most souls acquired by outsiders are done via SLA or via some kind of arrangement with a mortal, or through the normal flow of souls from the Prime to the Outer Planes. While more souls = desirable, fiends and others aren't idiots. They get more souls if they just wait, and they will live forever, so no hurry. If it's just gold, well that is more or less disposable to outsiders, so that's a good deal for them. In short, a soul should either be not very valuable (and thus common currency, which is established), or really valuable and worth much more than gold.

Part of the problem here is one of perspective. My soul = priceless. Your soul to me = whatever I can get it for. Soul of that dead guy = well, he's not using it anymore, so suddenly much less valuable (as it's either bound for the Lower Planes, and thus will be available for free to my buyer, or bound for the Upper Planes, and possibly out of reach/criminal to possess/very valuable indeed).

[JusticeZero]

Some prices are listed on the PF SRD under "Abbadon".

[Alex12]

Hm. Who says that souls that go to the appropriate plane are valued the same as those that got trapped beforehand?
There's obviously something lost upon death that's restored upon resurrection, otherwise any caster that dies with the appropriate spell available can just drag himself back out, and why the lower planes aren't ruled by the souls of high-level dead spellcasters, and it's not going through that loss that's what makes the soul currency so valuable, since the captured souls have that little something extra.
Or maybe dead souls only show up normally in one or a few locations, and those locations are controlled by the ruling group/groups of Hell. They're the ones with the most souls, for obvious reasons. If you want to get souls in other ways, you have to obtain them yourself.

Now, having 1 soul be worth 50 gp in terms of magic items sounds about right to me, the way you're doing it. I note that, while Thinuan gear is expensive, CW doesn't actually give a minimum size for what can hold a soul. No reason you couldn't have thinuan chips, each of which contains a soul.

On a side note, it's actually pretty easy to get a surprising amount of crafting XP from even a random goblin. Hook him up to a pain extractor and torture him (or throw him into that one magic iron maiden in BoVD) for his Con score*3 crafting XP, then once he's spent, grab a thinuan dagger and sacrifice him to the dark gods for dark craft XP. Then use the soul that the dagger trapped to further fuel the thing.

[Shieldbunny]

Hm. Who says that souls that go to the appropriate plane are valued the same as those that got trapped beforehand?
There's obviously something lost upon death that's restored upon resurrection, otherwise any caster that dies with the appropriate spell available can just drag himself back out, and why the lower planes aren't ruled by the souls of high-level dead spellcasters, and it's not going through that loss that's what makes the soul currency so valuable, since the captured souls have that little something extra.
Or maybe dead souls only show up normally in one or a few locations, and those locations are controlled by the ruling group/groups of Hell. They're the ones with the most souls, for obvious reasons. If you want to get souls in other ways, you have to obtain them yourself.


I seem to remember something about when your soul is judged, and sent to it's final resting place, it then becomes a petitioner of that plane and looses all abilities. Not entirely sure where I saw/heard that though.

[...]

Well, in soul-catching-difficulty times like these, you just have to go back to MoTP. When you die, you turn into a petitioner. You lose all of your trained abilities (and all other connections with your previous life), but you keep your species's abilities. You also have only one energy type that effects you normally, and two that you are full-on immune to. You also get assorted special abilities based on your afterlife. Considering this, you should probably do a CR/GP measurement that does not take into account character levels, unless you have a trait that lets you retain some of them.

[XmonkTad]

The other balancing factor that you want to consider is you want the PCs to be able to get more by trading in their soul to a fiend rather than using it themselves.

As stated above, pain extractors, liquid agony, "nipple clamp of exquisite pain" shenanigans, even slavery make creatures used for the evil PCs own ends valuable without giving them a set gold price.

To avoid this, perhaps have the fiends give out unique abilities or effects that go beyond GP/XP. Want an apartment in Dis? Rent is in souls. Safe passage on the river Styx? Souls please. There are lots of things that are valuable to a low level PC that fiends can provide. Perhaps you can houserule that no fiend would break a contract where souls are on the line.

[Sith_Happens]

2) The souls of evil characters end up in the lower planes anyway, so gathering them may not be hard or expensive for natives of those planes.

This. Fiends don't need to run around casting Trap the Soul and Soul Bind on things, Hell explicitly has an infrastructure for processing souls that end up there post-mortem and the Abyss presumably has some rough equivalent.

If you want a specific soul that belongs to someone still alive then yeah, you're going to have to pay some hefty overhead, but in that case you probably have a special use in mind for that soul in the first place besides just burning it for crafting XP or a chance at +CL on a spell.

[...]

The other balancing factor that you want to consider is you want the PCs to be able to get more by trading in their soul to a fiend rather than using it themselves.

As stated above, pain extractors, liquid agony, "nipple clamp of exquisite pain" shenanigans, even slavery make creatures used for the evil PCs own ends valuable without giving them a set gold price.

To avoid this, perhaps have the fiends give out unique abilities or effects that go beyond GP/XP. Want an apartment in Dis? Rent is in souls. Safe passage on the river Styx? Souls please. There are lots of things that are valuable to a low level PC that fiends can provide. Perhaps you can houserule that no fiend would break a contract where souls are on the line.

That is a really good point I didn't think of. Although, bringing up what you said, there should be some special soul-involving-stuff that the fiends should sell the PCs, so they can use the souls on their own. For example, a machine that turns souls into HP, using the positive energy in them, would be a cool, if underpowered, concept.

[Slipperychicken]

2) The souls of evil characters end up in the lower planes anyway, so gathering them may not be hard or expensive for natives of those planes.

And what about the souls which wouldn't normally go that specific plane? Demons and devils would probably want to poach souls who were going to, say, Carceri or Hades, to say nothing of Neutral and Good-aligned souls. Additionally, if the Blood War is in your setting's canon, then if a demon manages to nab a LE soul, that's one less Devil to fight later on. Yet another reason to grab souls prematurely is if the soul looks likely to be redeemed at some point prior to death.

As a result of the points I've mentioned, I would imagine that fiends would be willing to pay for pretty much any soul already captured, if only to keep them out of the hands of rival planes. At that point, it doesn't matter what the soul's alignment is: it's going to the highest bidder whether the fiends like it or not.. unless the fiends decide to take the seller's goods by force, of course.

[Jack_Simth]

Funny thing about currency: The cost to make it does not inherently need any correlation with it's face value. Seriously. Money needs to be hard to fake - in ye olden days, that was done by way of tying the value to the mineral from which it was made - which, among other things, meant that paying the craftsman to put your stamp on it meant you were ALWAYS behind (unless you debased it, of course). Printing money to be profitable is just a form of taxation (via inflation). Fundamentally, that's not the point of a currency.

The value of money is not it's face value. It's that it makes it a medium of exchange. If you have to take your sheep to the farmer to trade it for some bushels of wheat to take the wheat to the weaver to trade it for some yards of linen to take it to the smith to trade for some pots & pans to take them to the carpenter to trade for ... to take it to the widget-maker to trade for that little purple animated alien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_%28TV_series%29) you wanted, you've spent a rather lot of time trading your sheep for that new little purple animated alien you wanted, and moved a hefty amount of goods all over town. If, instead, everyone agrees that X is valuable (doesn't matter what X is), then you take your sheep to the farmer, sell it for some amount of X, then take the X you got to the widget-maker, and buy the little purple animated alien you wanted for some other amount of X. Additionally, the introduction of a medium of exchange makes taxation a lot simpler, too.

How does this apply to the soul economy? It means that it doesn't necessarily matter if it costs 1,000 gp to trap a soul valued at 100 gp, if that soul will be used as a unit of exchange in enough transactions - because every transaction in which it is used is saving work which could be better expended on other things - and it also means that the powers-that-be can tax the transactions more effectively. So use whatever exchange rate you want.

[JusticeZero]

Well, apparently in PF, the rate is one uninteresting humanoid soul equals 100 GP, animals 25 and bugs 10 if you need to make change, with particularly interesting mortal souls going upward in value in the collector economy, as described here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/daemons).

[Telonius]

A devil that doesn't get all of his target's worldly possessions (upon the soul's transfer to the lower planes) is doing something wrong. :sabine: