Idea for alternate currency system

[Lukalaly]

I'm currently getting ready for a 3.5 game in a custom setting. This setting has no governments (what with the previous campaign ending with a god of chaos getting revived and all) and is incredibly high magic. Because of this, I felt that an economy based on gold, or any similar material for that matter, would be very silly, considering that the average city would probably have several mages able to magically create mountains of gold just for kicks.

I just so happened to remember a spell that I made an entire character around once, that being Distilled Joy. For those who don't know, Distilled Joy is a spell that, when cast on someone experiencing immense pleasure, is able to extract that pleasure and turn it into a substance called Ambrosia, which can be used as a substitute for experience points in the crafting of magic items or casting spells with an experience cost (as well as being able to heal you if you drink it, but I'll get into that later). Typically there is also the restriction that ambrosia can only be used in crafting "good" magic items, but I'm lifting that for this campaign. The people that originally made the spell don't exist in my setting, so neither does their moralizing.

In terms of mechanics, this means that, once my players get to dealing with wizards and people who deal with wizards, they will start trading in vials of ambrosia. Each vial contains 50 mL of ambrosia, with one "dose" of ambrosia being 10 mL, meaning 5 doses per vial. Each dose of ambrosia is worth 2 xp, and (according to most sources but not all) 1 xp is worth 5 gold. After some quick maths, you end up with 1 vial of ambrosia being worth 50 gp (though of course, such an exact exchange rate would almost never actually happen in game).

Here's an example of an ambrosia based economy on a very small scale. Take a restaurant in a big city. In order for them to have the best possible quality dishes, they hire a wizard to enchant their ingredients. The wizard happily agrees, knowing that they will be able to charge some ambrosia in order to fuel their next magical project. The restaurant gets the needed ambrosia by charging their patrons a small fee of ambrosia. They may even have a policy that, if you enjoy a dish enough to have distilled joy cast on you, you get to eat for free, as a full dose of ambrosia is worth significantly more than the cost of preparing a single meal (10 gp per dose of ambrosia, as opposed to the silver or even copper pieces that ingredients might cost).

Additionally, my party seems to have...neglected to make any characters that have easy access to healing. The closest they have to "healing" is a wilder. This is where the healing properties of ambrosia come in. A single dose of ambrosia, when consumed, heals for 1 point of health, which is enough to stabilize someone in a pinch. I really like the idea of a party being deep into a dungeon, out of healing potions, and needing to literally drink their money to get a potion of heal minor wounds.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Personally I think it's a really cool idea, and if anyone else has experience using alternate currencies, I'd love to hear them! Heck, if anyone has done this specific thing before, tell me if it worked well or not so I know what to change around before the actual game starts.

Note: Any time I say "wizard" in this post, just replace it with "class that can create magic items of your choosing." My go to just so happens to be wizards. :smallbiggrin:

[Maat Mons]

Trading in liquids would be quite tedious without any certifying authority.

Coins have standardized weights and purities so you don't have to do a lot measuring to know how much gold is actually being offered to you. And they have ridged edges to stop people from trimming them down a bit and keeping the gold powder.

What do you do when someone holds up a vial of liquid? Try to eyeball how much is in there. Every container could be a different shape, have walls of a different thickness, et cetera. You'd have to pour it into a measuring device for every transaction. Have fun worrying about the value of the dribbles left in an empty vessel! And if anything is spilled, prepare for blood to also be spilled on short order.

How do you know if someone's been watering down the ambrosia? Does every transaction have to include a verification of purity? Dealing in this economy sounds like a nightmare.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Maybe have ambrosia not mix with any other substance? It floats on oil. It sinks under water. It reacts poorly with alcohol. Etc. Furthermore, attempts to make other substances look/feel/smell/taste/react/etc like ambrosia fail because it's a unique substance that's impossible to counterfeit, so the purity is never in question. Another part of what makes it so valuable.

[Palanan]

Since ambrosia is a magical substance, presumably it has an aura that can be read. With a little training its exact quality will be easy to determine, at least by anyone with a little experience in magic.

[Lukalaly]

Trading in liquids would be quite tedious without any certifying authority.

Coins have standardized weights and purities so you don't have to do a lot measuring to know how much gold is actually being offered to you. And they have ridged edges to stop people from trimming them down a bit and keeping the gold powder.

What do you do when someone holds up a vial of liquid? Try to eyeball how much is in there. Every container could be a different shape, have walls of a different thickness, et cetera. You'd have to pour it into a measuring device for every transaction. Have fun worrying about the value of the dribbles left in an empty vessel! And if anything is spilled, prepare for blood to also be spilled on short order.

How do you know if someone's been watering down the ambrosia? Does every transaction have to include a verification of purity? Dealing in this economy sounds like a nightmare.

Oh, absolutely. This would not work at tables that would look into the specifics of each and every vial. My group is very rules light and I think they will just take the novel concept and run with it. The exact amount of a liquid isn't important, eyeballing it works in virtually all situations.
Uhhhh, ambrosia just doesn't mix with other liquids? Sorta like how oil floats on water, I guess. It is a magic liquid so I can make it have whatever properties I want lol
Realistically it would never work, you're right, but this isn't real life.

Your mentioning purity makes me wonder how deals with liquids like this work in real life. I think I'll look into that and try to find ways to get around them since purity just isn't something I want to deal with in this game. Vials shattering is something I might use as a plot hook, though very rarely. Thanks for the critique :)
Edit:

Since ambrosia is a magical substance, presumably it has an aura that can be read. With a little training its exact quality will be easy to determine, at least by anyone with a little experience in magic.
That sounds like a good idea! Examining quality, tradeworthy ambrosia for a few days would let you know the difference between a good vial of ambrosia and a bad vial just by looking at it. This is why I like telling other people my ideas before I actually use them.

[Maat Mons]

If you're curious about real-life parallels, the rampant fakery in the olive oil business is interesting.

[Fouredged Sword]

I think this is a really cool idea, but I think you will have to consider one step further and consider practicalities.

You are still going to have coins of some kind. Coins (and other forms of currency) exist in the modern world for a reason. They facilitate transactions.

What you are going to get instead is an arcane mark bank. It's a bank that has a wonderous item that cast arcane mark without daily limit. Because arcane marks are unique to the castor they are a solid way to prevent counterfeiting. Your coin can be made of anything, with a preference for something reasonably hard and enduring. Gold is a fine option if alloyed, or something like copper or iron. The coin itself doesn't matter.

What matters is that the coins are issued by a bank. The bank exists to hold items of value. For example, you go to the bank with a vial of ambrosia worth 10 exp worth of ambrosia. The bank then issues you 9 exp worth of coins. They can be in smaller denominations than 1 exp. To match them to the DnD gold currency the standard could be 5 gold coins exchanged for 1 exp worth of ambrosia.

But, you see, the bank took a cut. The bank took 10% of the exp as a cost to issue the coins. The bank uses fabricate to make the coins and arcane mark to authenticate them, so the actual cost to them is not much. No, that 1exp is directed upwards to some wizard doing powerful magic that takes exp who acts as a guardian to the bank.

Most people don't need exp to cast or craft magic items. Most people thus don't interact with the bank. The bank would solely exist for magic users to exchange coins for exp to craft without spending their own exp, or for ambrosia suppliers to turn their ambrosia into easily traded coins.

[Lukalaly]

I think this is a really cool idea, but I think you will have to consider one step further and consider practicalities.

You are still going to have coins of some kind. Coins (and other forms of currency) exist in the modern world for a reason. They facilitate transactions.

What you are going to get instead is an arcane mark bank. It's a bank that has a wonderous item that cast arcane mark without daily limit. Because arcane marks are unique to the castor they are a solid way to prevent counterfeiting. Your coin can be made of anything, with a preference for something reasonably hard and enduring. Gold is a fine option if alloyed, or something like copper or iron. The coin itself doesn't matter.

What matters is that the coins are issued by a bank. The bank exists to hold items of value. For example, you go to the bank with a vial of ambrosia worth 10 exp worth of ambrosia. The bank then issues you 9 exp worth of coins. They can be in smaller denominations than 1 exp. To match them to the DnD gold currency the standard could be 5 gold coins exchanged for 1 exp worth of ambrosia.

But, you see, the bank took a cut. The bank took 10% of the exp as a cost to issue the coins. The bank uses fabricate to make the coins and arcane mark to authenticate them, so the actual cost to them is not much. No, that 1exp is directed upwards to some wizard doing powerful magic that takes exp who acts as a guardian to the bank.

Most people don't need exp to cast or craft magic items. Most people thus don't interact with the bank. The bank would solely exist for magic users to exchange coins for exp to craft without spending their own exp, or for ambrosia suppliers to turn their ambrosia into easily traded coins.

That's a really cool idea! In terms of the tone I'm going for in the campaign though, I don't think an "arcane bank" would really work. That might be something that forms midway through the campaign though, coincidentally as the players start getting enough cash that holding it becomes too much to handwave.
For a bit of reference, my personal favorite game I've been a part of in this group was a homemade system a friend of mine cobbled together from world of darkness games that had, in fact, no currency at all, it only used bartering. I'm trying to find a similarly "moneyless" system while still taking into account that 3.5 is highly dependent on the value of gold (ideally I would have no proper money system, but I have no earthly idea how I would make a bartering system while still respecting the system that I love so much). Ambrosia was the first thing that came to mind, since the idea is that most people would at least know someone who would value it and want to trade for it. I realize that this kinda makes it a "bad" currency, but that's something that I'm willing (and wanting to) overlook.


If you're curious about real-life parallels, the rampant fakery in the olive oil business is interesting.

So it is! Reminds me of the fake Austrian sweet wine, they mixed diethylene glycol with their wine since it was really sweet. Supposedly they didn't know that it was also toxic and would cause kidney failure and death in large doses.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would also direct you to the trade good section of the SRD if you want to have ready made, if someone sparse, barter system.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins

I actually played an orcish druid at one point who spent his life wandering the wilds trading with rural settlements. He carried his wealth not as coins, but spices. It's fairly trivial to use. Tobacco holds the same weight per value as copper coins. Salt holds the same value as silver. It was a lot more flavorful when he strolled up into a settlement and pulled out his pack of trade goods and started to make deals. The DM let me use it to get a much warmer welcome at skittish towns.

Unless you are going pure tippyverse the spellcasters who wreck the gold economy likely won't have bothered to mess up the tobacco industry before you get a government of some sort forming again.

And the high GP value trades are going to be in things like diamonds and onyx, or other magically valuable gems.

The ambrosia idea could be useful to set up a dual track wealth system. Trade goods could be bartered for anything mundane, and you could let your players develop personal wealth through such means basically without limit. Magic items though, would be priced in ambrosia, accept no substitute.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You could always have coins made of ambrosia and coated in riverine with arcane mark cast on them...

[Lukalaly]

I would also direct you to the trade good section of the SRD if you want to have ready made, if someone sparse, barter system.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm#wealthOtherThanCoins

I actually played an orcish druid at one point who spent his life wandering the wilds trading with rural settlements. He carried his wealth not as coins, but spices. It's fairly trivial to use. Tobacco holds the same weight per value as copper coins. Salt holds the same value as silver. It was a lot more flavorful when he strolled up into a settlement and pulled out his pack of trade goods and started to make deals. The DM let me use it to get a much warmer welcome at skittish towns.

That's...really helpful actually, thank you!


Unless you are going pure tippyverse the spellcasters who wreck the gold economy likely won't have bothered to mess up the tobacco industry before you get a government of some sort forming again.

How could I have forgotten about the tippyverse. After rereading it, it seems that is actually fairly similar to what I'm going for, with only 2 Cities in the setting being founded at the start of the game (though they are constantly at each other's throats, and go to great lengths to make sure that more Cities aren't founded). The main difference being that the wilds isn't as harsh as it is in the tippyverse, so settlements outside of Cities are more viable.


And the high GP value trades are going to be in things like diamonds and onyx, or other magically valuable gems.

For making a setting where gems are even more magically valuable than they are normally I sure do forget about them a lot. Thanks for reminding me.


The ambrosia idea could be useful to set up a dual track wealth system. Trade goods could be bartered for anything mundane, and you could let your players develop personal wealth through such means basically without limit. Magic items though, would be priced in ambrosia, accept no substitute.

I love this idea. I was originally going to have gold be the main system until players started buying magic items, at which point I would introduce ambrosia, but this is probably what I'm going to end up doing. I have awhile before the campaign actually properly starts, so I should be able to set up proper systems for bartering. Thank you!


You could always have coins made of ambrosia and coated in riverine with arcane mark cast on them...

Second time you've posted while I was typing up my own post, impressive. That's definitely an option for when ambrosia vials become too much to reasonably carry. It would make more sense to always have them, but mechanically I want the option of drinking it to be there, since like I said the party has no proper healers at the moment and they aren't the type to remember to stock up on potions.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yeah, if you are going tippyverse eve a little you should lean hard into having a dual track economy. The cities should essentially become completely divorced from the rest of the world. Food, water, and raw materials should be magically created to the point that they have no value. On the other hand, you can't actually trade for any of it meaningfully because there are no raw materials that the city needs.

On the other hand, if you can cast magic then the cities are THE place to be, leaving all the places outside the city low magic save for those who have a reason to be out there.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Second time you've posted while I was typing up my own post, impressive. That's definitely an option for when ambrosia vials become too much to reasonably carry. It would make more sense to always have them, but mechanically I want the option of drinking it to be there, since like I said the party has no proper healers at the moment and they aren't the type to remember to stock up on potions.Coin-sized vials (compressed and coin-shaped) that contain a single serving of ambrosia (only 20 calories!)? They could have mechanical pop tops (much like these (https://www.amazon.com/Masthome-Sealing-Kitchen-Container-16-9oz/dp/B07CMRTHKY)) that can be refilled and reused. Obviously, the riverine coins themselves aren't worth nearly as much as ones filled with ambrosia, although they could potentially be filled with other potions, oils, and alchemical mixtures that are worth differing amounts, as well.

[Kazyan]

This is a really cool idea and you should go with it.

For the worldbuilding ramifications, consider what people would do to get more Distilled Joy. How widely-accessible is the spell itself? Are all sources of the Distilled Joy spell constantly in use as private money printers, or is the spell tightly regulated?

If ambrosia is a liquid, the society probably has some good infrastructure--magical or otherwise--for transporting liquids. What else could they do with liquid transport?

[TheStranger]

This is a really cool idea and you should go with it.

For the worldbuilding ramifications, consider what people would do to get more Distilled Joy. How widely-accessible is the spell itself? Are all sources of the Distilled Joy spell constantly in use as private money printers, or is the spell tightly regulated?

If ambrosia is a liquid, the society probably has some good infrastructure--magical or otherwise--for transporting liquids. What else could they do with liquid transport?

A further worldbuilding concern - how do you instill joy on an economic scale in order to distill it? It’s not enough to have the caster, you need people who are deliriously happy. On command, because good luck producing enough ambrosia to run an economy from people who are spontaneously joyful when a caster is handy.

My initial thought was some kind of lottery, where the joy-mint gives some peasant a life-changing amount of money. Have your caster present the giant check, and there you go. But does that work? If you use money to create joy, but joy is money, can you get joy that’s worth more money than you gave away? That’s like perpetual motion or something.

What else? Have your joycasters perform wedding ceremonies? Make some kid’s dog get lost for a couple days then “find” it when your caster is ready? You can get pretty dark once you commoditize happiness.

[Lukalaly]

Coin-sized vials (compressed and coin-shaped) that contain a single serving of ambrosia (only 20 calories!)? They could have mechanical pop tops (much like these (https://www.amazon.com/Masthome-Sealing-Kitchen-Container-16-9oz/dp/B07CMRTHKY)) that can be refilled and reused. Obviously, the riverine coins themselves aren't worth nearly as much as ones filled with ambrosia, although they could potentially be filled with other potions, oils, and alchemical mixtures that are worth differing amounts, as well.

Don't know how I didn't think of that myself. That works pretty well, and I like the idea of potentially smuggling potions and stuff like that under the guise of ambrosia coins. Fun stuff.


This is a really cool idea and you should go with it.

For the worldbuilding ramifications, consider what people would do to get more Distilled Joy. How widely-accessible is the spell itself? Are all sources of the Distilled Joy spell constantly in use as private money printers, or is the spell tightly regulated?

If ambrosia is a liquid, the society probably has some good infrastructure--magical or otherwise--for transporting liquids. What else could they do with liquid transport?

As for creating more ambrosia, the average person has no clue where the vast majority of it comes from. It's not hard to pick up an item that can cast distilled joy for you, but actually finding a scenario where it will work is a lot less common. The average person experiences the pleasure needed to create ambrosia only a handful of times in their entire lives, and it's not exactly often that people will be crowding around you ready to cast Distilled Joy to capitalize on it.
No, most ambrosia comes from somewhere much more sinister. If you've read the companion book to Book of Exalted Deeds, you've probably also read the Book of Vile Darkness. One of my favorite items from this, as a DM anyway, is the clamp of exquisite pain. This turns unimaginable pain into unimaginable pleasure, more than enough for Distilled Joy to extract a wealth of ambrosia. Knowing this, a few seedy folk set up a collection station, hooking people up to the clamps of pain and basically...torturing them to near death and getting as much ambrosia out as possible. Despite this, they know that hoarding the ambrosia would ultimately lead to less growth in terms of magical growth, so they typically circulate most of that ambrosia into the public through various means.
This is a very well kept secret, with said collection stations generally being far underground and lined with enough anti scrying that no one without already knowing the location of the stations could find them. Generally those that are "collected" from are outside of the City, in some small settlement.

As for transporting liquid, water has been thematically incredibly important to the prior campaign. Even with all the chaos that happened between then and now, the knowledge of how to transport and generally manipulate liquid wasn't lost.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Note that the distilled joy spell is permanent, and it creates ambrosia any time the target experiences sufficient amounts of joy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmVahy7e4KE). So perhaps have people whose job it is to go in to work and get hit with repeating traps of power word: o****m all day. And they get paid in some of the "ambrosia" they made. One casting of distilled joy is all you need forever, unless dispelled.

Note: This can get really weird really fast.

[Lukalaly]

Note that the distilled joy spell is permanent, and it creates ambrosia any time the target experiences sufficient amounts of joy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmVahy7e4KE). So perhaps have people whose job it is to go in to work and get hit with repeating traps of power word: o****m all day. And they get paid in some of the "ambrosia" they made. One casting of distilled joy is all you need forever, unless dispelled.

Note: This can get really weird really fast.

I guess I just don't know how to read, I always thought it was an instant duration that gets the ambrosia when you cast it if the target is experiencing joy. My world has truly been shattered.
On a more serious note, my original idea would still work, they just wouldn't need to cast distilled joy multiple times. I'd...rather not use stuff from that book if I can avoid it.
Though with that in mind, everyone in a City would probably have distilled joy cast on them either at birth or as soon as they entered. The more ambrosia there is being made, the better.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This can go in one of a few ways:

The nation this takes place in could be truly happy and joyous because the government is doing everything it can to make its residents truly happy, and you end up with, I dunno, typical depictions of Santa's Workshop at the North Pole. Everyone sings and dances in the streets and is truly happy and content because they work really hard to ensure everyone leads rich fulfilling lives.

Alternatively, it's a fascist state where you WILL be happy, or else. This typically involves mind-controlling spells and being forced into accepting spells that make you feel pleasure. People regularly get addicted to this kind of thing, and everyone has basically been forcibly Matrix'd to prevent dissent. This is...significantly darker.

Depends on what you want, really.

[redking]

Sounds like the setting is anarcho-capitalism. In that case, you can have the wizard's guild create a fiat currency. A piece of paper with something similar to an arcane mark on it, except that it cannot be counterfeited.

[Lukalaly]

Alright, I think I've gotten all the ideas I need. Thanks very much to everyone that helped! I'll keep everything you all have said in mind moving forward. If I encounter any problems I can't handle on my own, I'll probably come back here for more advice.

Thanks again!

[Calthropstu]

Spell tickets.

If magic really is as high as you say, a cabal of mages get together and use their services as currency. (t is tickets)
1ct = 1 0th level spell. 100 cp = 1st or 1 1st lvl spell. 100st = gt for 2nd lvl spell. 100gt = 1 pt. Getting 4th tier or higher gets into rarer tickets and harder to acquire. Rare items need rare spell tickets to purchase.

[aglondier]

The people of Pern (dragonriders, Anne McCaffrey) use a system of Marks, where a Mark is issued by a Mastercrafter and represents a guarantee of a certain period of effort on his part. Smaller purchases are completed with fractional Marks (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16...). This could easily translate into efforts by mages and other spellcasters.

[Bohandas]

Use scrolls as paper currency