Magical Change Machine

[elyktsorb]

A magical box that when you insert proper denominations of coin into it, it transmutes it into higher or lower denominations when you speak the command words.

Put it ten copper, say silver, and it spits out one silver piece. Put it ten copper and say gold and it just spits out your ten copper. Etc, etc.

[Ventruenox]

Or just handwave currency exchange to proceed with the actual narrative, unless encumberance is important to your game.

[Arkhios]

Better yet

Common Magic Item: Wand of Exchange

Everyone can use it, and most people have one. If they don't, they're people who live hand to mouth.

The Wand of Exchange holds all your money in easily transferable format.


:smallcool:

[LibraryOgre]

Or just handwave currency exchange to proceed with the actual narrative, unless encumberance is important to your game.

This is where I find having banking systems is very useful.

Roll into town with 90 pounds of copper pieces? Go to the bank and deposit it, and you can probably write drafts on your bank around town.

In the Realms, I prefer to do this with the Temple of Waukeen. Others may be involved in banking, but Waukeen does it as a matter of faith, and they're international.

[Monster Manuel]

Or just handwave currency exchange to proceed with the actual narrative, unless encumberance is important to your game.

Whether or not this is appealing as an item does sort of depend on the type of game you're running. In a highly simulationist, deep world-building sandbox kind of game? Yeah, it's cool. It's absolutely something a rich merchant or banker would have to make their lives easier.

If you're in a dungeon crawl where encumberance is important, it's OK, but I'd probably rather have a bag of holding to store my 200 lbs of copper pieces.

I would probably make it work like that bag of holding, honestly, and price it at about the same level of rarity. Let people store an effectively unlimited amount of money in it, and be able to withdraw it in whatever amount or denomination they want. Both this and the Bag are a way to bank extra encumberance. The bag is stronger because it can negate the weight of almost any item, not just coins, but this thing is useful because it can spit out specific denominations of other coinage without having to fumble around in a bag for it.

I imagine it could convert all the way up to Platinum. Could it do gems? Could you stuff like 100,000 copper pieces in there, and have it spit out a diamond? If so, could you use the resulting diamond as a material component for a spell? I'd say no to that use, I think.

[Man_Over_Game]

Whether or not this is appealing as an item does sort of depend on the type of game you're running. In a highly simulationist, deep world-building sandbox kind of game? Yeah, it's cool. It's absolutely something a rich merchant or banker would have to make their lives easier.

If you're in a dungeon crawl where encumberance is important, it's OK, but I'd probably rather have a bag of holding to store my 200 lbs of copper pieces.

I would probably make it work like that bag of holding, honestly, and price it at about the same level of rarity. Let people store an effectively unlimited amount of money in it, and be able to withdraw it in whatever amount or denomination they want. Both this and the Bag are a way to bank extra encumberance. The bag is stronger because it can negate the weight of almost any item, not just coins, but this thing is useful because it can spit out specific denominations of other coinage without having to fumble around in a bag for it.

I imagine it could convert all the way up to Platinum. Could it do gems? Could you stuff like 100,000 copper pieces in there, and have it spit out a diamond? If so, could you use the resulting diamond as a material component for a spell? I'd say no to that use, I think.

I say...why not?

I'd probably have the box be a part of some kind of merchant or trading deity. Having trade being easily accessible for everyone is a really good way of encouraging worship of your god, especially if you're performing services under his name. The Forge Cleric has a similar effect, being able to convert metal of a certain value into another object.

[Vogie]

It would vary from campaign to campaign. I don't mind it in concept, but I know that an aspect of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is the Scrooge-McDuck amount of gold (500k gold pieces) that is hard to move. The ability to quickly BAMF the treasure into 500 diamonds, then split 5 ways and moonwalk away... not so great.

At the same time, I could see high magi-tech worlds like Kaladesh, Eberron, or the Tippyverse that have alters or tablets that can quickly exchange funds like the OP said, or even seem to transform funds into mundane or common magic items.

[Yunru]

Forget that!
Now I can steal someone's coin purse and then can legitimately claim to not have their coins, booyah!