Moving Mundane and Magic Item Prices Together

[Grytorm]

Hello, it really gets on my nerves how far apart the two sides of the economy are. A +1 sword is vastly expensive compared to a regular sword, and worth around 100 head of cattle. So, I was wondering if anything would really change if the two ends were brought closer together.

My idea is to do the following:
Cut starting gold and the price of regular equipment in half.
Keep the price of trade goods the same.
Reduce the price of most magic items to a tenth.
Reduce the price of scrolls and potions to a fifth.
Cut WBL to a tenth of normal.
Most treasure found is in Silver Pieces.

This would hopefully make luxury items more valuable in PC eyes. And make it so the value of magic items is at least on the same scale as high end mundane equipment.

Thoughts?

[Ottriman]

Sure this should work, though with consumables being 2x as expensive on a relative level your players will not have quite as casual an access to buffs and niche spells. Keep that in mind as you design encounters and you should be good.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If you're cutting both the cost of the magic items and the treasure your players find by ten-fold, I don't see the point and I doubt it will accomplish your stated goal.

I get the impression you're aiming to make "luxury goods" more affordable but this does just the opposite. That or more desirable which these changes don't address at all.

Consider: you've cut the cost of "luxury goods" in half but you've also cut the PC's income by ten-fold. This makes those "luxury goods" effectively five times more expensive in relative terms. Meanwhile, magic items have been cost-reduced to the same degree as PC income and have effectively had no change in relative value. If the luxury goods weren't worth forgoing for magical gear before, this makes them much more so. This seems counter to your intent.

The major problem you're running into is that "luxury goods" don't actually do anything unless your PC's are engaged in politics or courtly intrigue and need to be able to impress visitors. They're a cash-sink with no practical benefit to help them stack up next to magic items that make the PC's more capable in an encounter.

Screwing with the economics of the game is quite possibly the worst way to accomplish what you're after if you feel that PC wealth is already absurdly over the top. If you want them to actually pay attention to luxury goods you have to inventivize getting luxury goods in a way that actually furthers their character goals.

The following is an aside that can be safely ignored

I've never understood the distaste for PC's having such over the top wealth.

For one thing; if you're going to be throwing yourself headlong into potentially life-threatening situations several times each day during an adventure, the payoff -needs- to be worthwhile. If a couple weeks or even a month or two of a steady, relatively safe job could earn you the same kind of money and adventures are separated by a similar period of down-time, what the hell is the point for anyone who isn't motivated by either ideology or madness?

For another, it's not all that unrealistic. Compare the prices of cheap, consumer quality kitchen wares you get at a department store to the stuff you get in a resturaunt supply and you see a similar, if somewhat less pronounced, price gap. Getting the very best tools for your trade is -always- absurdly expensive compared to getting merely functional tools for the same but if you're working in a life-and-death field, nobody is going to settle foor "good enough" unless they can't afford the best. High demand and low supply makes for impressive price tags.

The only notable issue is that the ultimate values that characters reach when you start hitting 8th and 9th level spells is the kind of money mid-sized cities see in tax revenue for a year, which -seems- absurd. That is, until you realize that it's not at all uncommon, and never has been, for the most skilled artisans in a society to reach the same kind of net worth when you take all their holdings into account from around the time of the renaissance forward.

The only problem -I- see with the way PC wealth goes is that it's weird for so much wealth to be so extremely portable and liquid but, then, magic does strange things to any system. Otherwise, high-level PC's are just their worlds' equivalent to millionaires. It's not that big a deal.

[D.M.Hentchel]

Yeah the numbers in D&D aren't as crazy as it first seems, they can out-bid kings at the up most levels, but in general they make money comparable to wealthy individuals (just in a shorter time frame with less reinvestment*).

In the proposed system commoners can afford significant magic items which can have mind-blowing effects on economy. It makes Profession skill much more valuable, but that is kinda part of the problem really.

*Well, you kinda need to invest into your gear so you don't end up dead, so how much spending cash do you really have???

[Grytorm]

For the first post, the thing with scrolls and potions is a problem. Because I don't really want to change the absolute price, but if they were cheap cheap it would become pretty available at character creation.

Second, for the trade and luxury goods. I wanted to increase the prices. So that trade goods can become a more meaningful part of the loot.

And for the overall player wealth. I was partially thinking about earlier the early middle ages. When to my understanding gold was not commonly used as currency because they weren't moving enough goods for it to matter.

For the point about relative amounts of money. That definitely makes a pretty big difference. I don't know that much about historical currency. But I did find one thing suggesting Masterwork full plate is near the same cost as one English Princes armor. And looking at some other numbers, the ransom of the King John II of France was set at 3 million crowns. A crown was worth a pound of silver. So 15 million gold pieces, or there about. This was considered an absurd amount of money. But still perhaps possible for France when it wasn't in the middle of a major war with England while having a somewhat tenuous grasp on much of the country.

Mostly, it seemed to me that magic items and regular equipment don't fit together on the same scale very well.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Mostly, it seemed to me that magic items and regular equipment don't fit together on the same scale very well.

They don't and they aren't supposed to fit on the same scale. Adventurers are supposed to be pretty uncommon and magical equipment is supposed to be almost exclusively for them and high-ranking aristocracy which is why it's so disparately expensive compared to non-magical equipment. It's supercars and private jets and 1200 dollar smartphones and other goods intended to only be bandied about in a relatively small, closed market.

Your comparison of D&D gold to any real world currency is what's tripping you up. There's just no really good comparison to make in that regard. A grasp on economic forces and market trade serve far better to grasp what's going on. I'd also question comparing a masterwork full plate to a prince's armor. The latter almost certainly has -some- unnecessary flourish added to its design and cost.

Gold was never a -common- currency. It was used by nobles, caravaneers, and sometimes by some of the very best artisans. The common man used silver if he dealt in coin at all in the early middle ages. The same is true of D&D characters. PC's deal in gold because they are -not- common men. They're in a weird place beside the elites financially speaking. Their equipment is universally produced for individuals and only appears in quantity in second-hand (usually a result of the previous owner's demise). There's a reason all of a first level character's starting gear is mundane except the odd consumable. That first successful adventure sets them apart from the common folk and catapults them into the newly rich. Subsequent adventures take them from the newly rich to the truly wealthy or the recently deceased. It all comes down to the riskiest career available having some of the very best of the best pay.

Like I said, why would anyone hurl themselves into mortal danger with that kind of frequency if the pay sucked unless they were committed to a cause or completely batty?

On making trade goods a more meaningful part of the loot by increasing their prices, you're not just barking up the wrong tree, you're not even in the right forest. Things aren't (generally) desired because they're expensive, they're expensive because they're desired. At most, you're making them prioritize a good wagon or extradimensional storage device to allow them to transport a bunch of trade goods more easily or and/or forcing them to deal with liquidity issues when they try to unload the stuff. Seriously, making things expensive doesn't make them special, making them special makes them expensive. The players will just look at the trade goods as heavier gold that's harder to spend.

[Grytorm]

Why would you keep throwing yourself into danger if after a short time you are vastly wealthier than you ever expected to be. People throughout history have been warriors, raiding for goods. They thought it was worthwhile.

Sorry if that seems rude somehow. I have more thoughts which would be more relevant, just I don't feel like getting off my computer right now to research them.

[Coidzor]

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28547 check out the Economicon section of the Dungeonomicon, it is of interest to you, even if you ultimately disagree.