>Is it impossible to have a game of D&D where the economics actually attempt to make some sort of sense?

Unless you want to rebuild them from the ground up, yes. Yes it is.

if they say "that's two much because peasants make x" just tell them and you're not a peasant
meaning of course the innkeep will charge them out the ass, they'll prolly smash up his bar at some point and anyway, they're just passing through

>Or if you want to be more on the realistic side, you can make 1sp = $1, and not actually price anything out in gold because of rarity.

You already said my suggestion. I do this except I go with $1 = $1gold, ask me if I care about a detail like rarity when it makes that part of the game go incredibly smoothly. Any time the PCs go to a town and they want something, it's like I'm a contestant on the Price Is Right.

>>30061998
>So every time I run a game, my players always ask "How much for a room at the inn", or "How much for a meal", etc. Trivial things, for which I tend to make up a cost on the spot. However, since apparently I'm terrible at it

If you run D&D, you should know that the DMG has price charts in it. Problem solved.

>Why is the party awarded in amounts of gold that would be considered a small fortune every time they leave town, when normal activities cost pennies?

Presumably adventurers are not awarded small fortunes for engaging in normal activities.

The cost on adventuring items is inflated in D&D to keep characters adventuring. If you start making prices realistic and take out the "adventurer inflation", be sure that you have some other compelling reason for your players to keep raiding tombs and busting orc heads.

>We get it, you hate D&D.
I think this attitude is short-sighted. Even if you don't plan on playing them, its worth examining how other games approach this issue to see if their ideas are worth incorporating into your game. Deliberately ignoring and then mocking them may cause you to completely miss out on a potential solution to your issue.

>>30062045
That's not really what I mean.

If they're conducting transactions in values of gold, why would a normal worker only make a few silver for their labor?

If silver is the currency the masses use, then it's what the players should use for their transactions too. Meaning that mundane weapons and armor should at least be within reach of a peasant saving up for one, which would maybe mean hundreds of SP, but certainly not hundreds of GP, because that would take decades.

I don't see a point in costing out mundane things as they are, because a few SP for a meal and a room isn't even worth marking down on a character sheet.

> be sure that you have some other compelling reason for your players to keep raiding tombs and busting orc heads.
You mean, like, the plot?

I have literally never met a player who has said "You know, we don't get enough treasure. Fuck this game"

If you're playing to see your character be rewarded for killing orcs, you're playing the wrong game.

>>30061998
The whole game magic item and monetary system makes no sense.
Thus i completely changed the idea.

Trying to keep mundane items useful, i no longer give gold as much as i should, instead giving a very small amount of gold and the rest of should-have treasure is magic crystal shards. With these and if the pcs go to discreet and dangerous locations they can craft magic items. Due to the insane cost of these magic items nobody trades them for gold. Thus the players can gain magic items in exchange for favors.

And some kindness from players is needed to try not to abuse this system, since it is a bit illogical too.

In this way a gold piece will still make sense, as players will hardly have any from "random drops".

>>30062120
>why would a normal worker only make a few silver for their labor

This is how most of the real world works

>>30062178
Except that countries where people only make 20cents an hour don't also charge $10 for a hamburger.

The blacksmith can spend a week crafting the finest armor he's ever made, and somehow it's worth more than every house in town put together, so no one in town could ever afford it.

>>30062172
I like this idea. How difficult was it to implement?

>>30062120
The sort of things adventurers buy is on a completely different level than the sort of things peasants buy (or make themselves). While it's true the D&D economy doesn't 'work', I honestly don't see why anyone would care about it because it's only really there to limit low level characters and balance magic items.

If you don't like charging for every insignificant transaction, then just don't bother doing it. Personally I usually say the PCs can spend 10-50 gp to cover one month worth of stays at the inn, meals, stabling, etc instead of making them pay the specific amount each time it happens.

>>30062219
>he's never heard of china

Let us say you are a level 15 character. What is the value to you of a day's labor from a level 0 commoner? Close to fucking zero.

They can't repair any of your equipment, because they have fuck-all for skill points. They can't train your animal, competently manage your estate, or deliver a message without leaving a bad impression. The only thing you might want to use them for is as beasts of burden that can understand spoken instructions. So, the cost of renting unskilled labor should be compared against the cost of buying a mule.

>>30062202
But that's how any game system would be. You kill an enemy, you take their stuff.

How could a system not reward people for accomplishing things? That's not the problem, the problem is that somewhere along the lines, someone decided it costs 8000gp to make a +1 Longsword, which you totally can buy in a small starting town, without accounting for the fact that handing 8000gp to the armor shop owner now means he is the richest person in the region.

>>30062219
The average person isn't rooming at an inn or buying rations.

In my games, I used the Silver Standard, which just moves the coinage up a bit. So, instead of CP, SP, GP, PP, we have copper bits, CP, SP, GP. Everything else is the same, one GP is worth what a PP used to be worth, an SP is equal to an old GP, and so on.

This way, a nice leather backpack costs 2 silvers, not 2 gold. A longsword costs 15 silvers, etc. This way, a chest full of gold is actually a big deal, and you don't spend gold just getting regular stuff.

>>30062120
Usually there's a bounty on Orc heads. More for their chieftains' heads.

Think of it this way: If someone's offering X amount of gold for Orc heads/scalps, it stands to reason that the people posting the bounty expect entire mercenary bands to take up the job, diving their reward between the several dozen of them. Not 3 to 6 nobodies with skills that compliment each other. The long and short of it is that the average person really can't be assed to kick down the door to a lich's house and nab his ancient treasures and magic. Magic spells take a VERY long time to make, and A LOT of power to even manifest. Scrolls are expensive because A) there are typically very few spellcasters in any fantasy setting, plus fewer still even know what the hell they're doing with it and B) Even those who know how to use it can't be assed to sell scrolls in the first place. Magic scrolls are not something you pick up at a dimestore. They're rare as all unholy fuck.

>>30062269
Yes they are? Why do you think inns exist? Just to serve the one adventuring party that comes through?

You could charge everything in silver. That's what my DM does. I don't know WHY but, that's what he does.

>>30062219
Actually, a regular home in D&D costs 1000gp.

>>30062267
2315 gp. And maybe most of it goes to the local armorer's guild, who uses it to fund production of more +1 Longswords. Why does it matter?

>>30062291
Also merchants and whoever else can afford to travel. It's a hotel, not an apartment building.

>>30062120
>Meaning that mundane weapons and armor should at least be within reach of a peasant saving up for one, which would maybe mean hundreds of SP, but certainly not hundreds of GP, because that would take decades.

Do you think peasants had the money to save up for swords IRL?

>>30062219
A pound of wheat costs one copper. A loaf of bread costs one copper. Vegetables cost around that amount as well.

Did you know that for a single penny in the mid-1700s you could buy two loaves a bread so big you'd need to carry them under each arm? It was not expensive to eat in the early days, or even eat healthy as long as you had any concept of a balanced diet. The Roman peasantry could eat salted pork for dinner every night. Farmers. So yeah, you're overstating things.

>>30062219
>The blacksmith can spend a week crafting the finest armor he's ever made, and somehow it's worth more than every house in town put together, so no one in town could ever afford it.

Let's get some perspective here. One google search later:

>Although examples of the price of armor, weapons, and equipment are known from several periods in history, it is difficult to translate historical monetary value into modern terms. It is clear, however, that the value of armor ranged from low-quality or outdated second-hand items quite affordable to citizens and mercenaries, to the cost of an entire armory of an English knight, the contents of which were valued in 1374 at over £16. This was equivalent to about five to eight years of rent for a London merchant's house, or over three years' worth of wages for a skilled laborer, a single helmet (a bascinet, probably with aventail) being worth the purchase price of a cow.

Source:http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm#expense_b

>>30062345

Benjamen Franklin please go.

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>>30062291
Yes, that's why they have to charge so much. One adventuring party spending the night keeps the Color Animal Inn out in Dirt Hovel Village open for another year.

>>30062306
Bullshit. If that were true then nobody would buy a house and they'd make their own, driving down the prices sharply. I think you're referring to a house made entirely of marble and filigree.

>>30062291
>Just to serve the one adventuring party that comes through?
Why the fuck not? Strange, scarred assholes that will pay for room and board and booze boosted to roughly 10-100x the actual price? That's a fucking gold mine of profit. Plus they tend to treat you like part of the furniture and pay up front. All you need to worry about is random attacks on your inn and/or them busting up the place, which can be solved by a discreet back exit and a certain wisdom of when to run for it.

>>30062385
Crack open the DMG, retard.

>>30062407
The DMG is bullshit. It makes zero sense for a "regular" home to cost that much.
A wealthy merchant's or noble's house? Sure. Nothing "regular" about it though.

The problem with D&D, at least in recent editions, is that they try to pretend it's a medieval world and then slap on a modern "economy" where everyone uses currency, including peasants, and then don't take into account how magic and monsters would affect the economy and society etc etc.
Protip: 90% of a medieval population farmed and did not ever see a coin, much less touch it.

>>30062385
Simple house: 1000gp
"This one- to three room house is made of wood and has a thatched roof."

>>30062445
You could literally build a house like that yourself for 950g cheaper.

I (begrudgingly) DM pathfinder, and in comparison to dirty peasants, yeah my 5th level PCs are rich as shit. I justify this as adventuring being huge risk, huge reward. There's a buttload of money to be found and taken adventuring, but non-PCs die regularly doing that shit.

>>30062366
In the 14th century you could buy a crappy sword for 10p, or a weeks wages

>>30061998

I usually just charge a one pr two gp for the whole party. That usually includes a meal and a small cask of ale or a bottle of wine. If your PCs are that Jew then stop giving them as much gold and let them be poor fucks.

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>>30061998
Roleplaying games are unrealistic? Tell me more

>>30062385
If you look at the Pathfinder version, it's the total cost of materials and labor for a relatively small house (five rooms) built from scratch. Most people aren't going to own that, they'll live in a hovel or a tenement, or inherit a family home. Once they have a house very few people are going to be selling it, it's going to stay in the family for generations.

>>30062459
That's how it ought to be done. The point is that PCs are unnaturally courageous and capable. They're a step above the norm. Aragorn or Legolas have been determined to only be level 6 adventurers.

>>30062490
Middle Earth is probably E6 though.

>>30062407
>>30062436
>>30062445
The prices in that are there to keep players from wanting to just buy a house and settle down, they're inflated and not based on any standard of living besides when they should be bought by the players.

>>30062472
>all RPGs must be sword and sorcery and space battles

>>30062436
How common is it for someone to buy a house in your settings? Are most peasants paying off mortgages?

>>30062456
Does that include the land under it?

>>30062385
>>30062445
Anon, most people DID build their houses themselves, or inherit them from their families.

>>30062223
Not at all. The only hard thing is that you have to ask the players kindly that they do not abuse the thing.

Otherwise it is perfect, since you buy different things with different currency essentially.

Also, change crafting feats fluffwise to something like "you know how to craft it really well, thus paying only half the crystals cost, but need more time to do so.

>>30062516
>The prices in that are there to keep players from wanting to just buy a house and settle down
I would think wanting to play the fucking game would keep players from setting down and doing jack shit. I guess if you're adventures are so dull and boring that a domestic life is preferable, it would make sense for them.

>>30062531
I believe you missed the point.

>>30062566
The point of that post was that the prices in that book (or most D&D books) aren't based in any way on actual prices. Hell, most of them don't even match up within the same book. They're all based on when the players should be able to buy them, and how much they should be able to buy. Thus a simple house is inflated out the wazoo to keep them from being able to buy one early and set up a "home base" like they might do in the later game.

>>30062566

>getting this defensive

Holy shit, dude, the guy is just explaining something to you because you're too fucking dense to use inference. You don't have to like it or abide by it but that's the correct explanation.

>>30062603
>not setting up a home base as soon as you all agree to adventure with each other
>not letting your players plot and plan in a discreet location because "muh gameplay mechanics"
Still bullshit. I would be happy as hell that the players would invest in something like that from the get-go, because that is the smart thing to do.

>>30062639
You would be, but the makers of D&D would not. In their mind, everyone is a band of murderhobos and we should price everything based on what they should be to keep them being murderhobos.

Also, I never said I didn't want my players doing that, I think if they really want to buy a house like that then they should damn well be able to, hence why I don't use the pricing system found in the books.

>>30061998
>So my problem, it seems, is how gold functions in D&D settings.
It doesn't.

D&D economics make no sense whatsoever.

I don't know if my table is unusual, but we spend about 2/3s of our time adventuring and 1/3 of our time cherrying out our home base. We actually had our DM price out various additions to the place. Eventually he had us break into a dungeon while expanding our basement so that we could adventure without leaving home.

>>30062639
In a campaign I'm running, one of my players picked up the rent on a house owned by a now-deceased woman who sort of hangs around them as a ghost.

Everyone in the party uses it as a home base (the city thinks it's abandoned), except the fucking Oracle who insists on sleeping at his church half a city away. Meaning every excursion has to start with "We spend an hour walking to the cemetary district and asking if anyone knows where the Oracle is."

>>30062793
If he's an oracle, shouldn't he already know when you're going to need him for your next adventure?

>>30062793
They don't just wait outside the Oracle's church? Why don't they just have a meeting spot organized?

>>30062436
It makes no sense to you, because you're ignorant.

>>30062456
Good job, building a house YOURSELF costs less than buying one! You've discovered a basic rule of economics, people do not sell things for less or the same amount of what it takes to create it.
Shut the fuck up retard. STOP POSTING

>>30062812
That's not what "oracle" means.

>>30062816
Because he insists on doing church things. Which currently means carting plague victim's corpses from the city into mass graves, excavating old burial tunnels to make room for those graves, etc. He's never around, and has no way of knowing when they need him since he's not there when they make their plans.

>>30062456
No, you couldn't. Do you think that building a house costs only the value of materials?

>>30062839
When normally following the rules behind crafting, the raw material cost of a house worth 1000g is 500g.

500 gold pieces for a few dozen planks of wood and bundles of straw.

I think you need to reexamine your life. Or your brain.

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>>30061998
>We get it, you hate D&D.
And, judging by this thread, it's justified.

Well, theoretically it IS possible to unfuck D&D's economy. Only there's a lot to unfuck.

>>30062876
And that's specifically once a character has the necessary skills and feats to create it, and usually intended for magical items. Yes I know it applies to alchemical items and mundane traps and blacksmithing and all that other shit.

I'm kind of amazed, though, at two things.

One is your staunch lack of abstraction involving things that might be involved in building a home, such as other tools needed, nails, supports or professional assistance because your PC probably didn't put ranks in Carpentry or Architecture, or additional time needed, or as another anon cited, the cost of the land itself paid to whatever monarch oversees that parcel.

The second thing is that you insist on being such a sperglord over an entire house costing the equivalent of a +1 Longsword. Is that really so difficult to not throw a shitfit over? And you're telling other people to reexamine their life?

>>30062991
If you don't care about this topic, then shut up and leave. We're debating the retarded economics in tabletop settings in this thread.

>>30062341
Actually, yes. Swords weren't the insanely expensive weapons of the nobility that they're often made out to be. A sword could be as cheap as perhaps a week's wages for a peasant. Admittedly, this would be a very basic home defense weapon, probably not suitable for the intensive use required for adventuring, but even a good quality sword would be within reach of a peasant to save up for within a couple years at most if they really wanted it that bad.

>>30062991
>cost of the land itself
In ancient times only lords owned lands. Peasants living on land had to pay taxes to the land owner.

>>30063023
I'm a different anon than the one to whom my comment was replying, if that wasn't clear. And I understand what the thread is about, thanks.

It might be an overstatement to say I "care" about the retarded economics of D&D, but I'm happily attempting to discuss it like a rational human being. Part of that involves abstraction of costs intrinsic to something as complicated as building a house, since clearly 1000gp or even 500gp is more than the costs of the materials alone that go into a "three room wooden house with a thatched roof." As noted by the sperglord >>30062876
above.

>>30062219
Funnily enough, that's one thing Pathfinder's crafting system got(sort of) right. Making good metal armor takes a lot longer than a week.

>>30063187
True, amending my statement.

Assuming your character isn't paying whatever conceptual fee required for the title of "Lord" and therefore the right to own land, similar costs might be paid towards such taxes ahead of time. An adventurer might pay a "get off my ass" premium so they'd never have to hear from the tax collector of the local Lord. Perhaps.

It's still fantasy, no matter which way you slice it, so 500 or 1000gp past raw materials might even be a "Wizard did it" tax. Which is something I can't stand but still serves the context. There are also times when we can totally throw out the "medieval not-europe" elements of the genre as well, so the land or taxes associated might mean fuck-all depending on the campaign/context.

>>30062507
>dem nazghul
>dat dragon
>dose giant spiders
Yeah, nah.

>>30062783
Semi-unusual in that your DM sounds like he has a competent bone in his body for DMing.

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>>30061998
>Or if you want to be more on the realistic side, you can make 1sp = $1

Older D&D editions suggested that gold was the standard because a setting with "adventurers" would be like an American Gold Rush economy of San Francisco, 1849. The supply and demand would be all over the place, and it makes sense that if your D&D setting has a bunch of Guilds in town, a Bazaar, a Wizard Tower, and an "Adventurer Inn" (or a tavern where people go to find adventuring groups/ quests), a gold-saturated market might exist as well.

>>30063499
Why does that tree have a penis?

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>>30063539
You gotta problem with dicktrees, son?

>>30062254
I remember the 3.X DMG (and probably others) had a sidebar or something about that kinda thing, charging the PCs a monthly upkeep rather than noting down ever tankard of ale they buy.

>>30063269
Yes and no.

Yes, it did adequately model how in reality, full metal armor takes a shitton of time to make.

It, however, did not represent that mechanically, because the prohibitive crafting time of mundane items doesn't translate to magic items. Meaning that by the time you can afford to craft some armor, and spend the time it takes, you could just have adventured into one goblin cave and gotten the same armor for free, or the money to buy it.

Not only that, but since crafting time = cost, a solid sphere of gold would take longer to craft than a solid sphere of silver, even if they had the same dimensions.

The end result is, there's literally never a reason to USE those crafting rules.

>>30063497
That's unfair to say. I, as a DM, encouraged my players to buy houses within the city they play in, maybe even take up side activities like starting a business or something that they can sink time and money into.

The unanimous decision was "We do nothing" during every opportunity of downtime. Not even joking, they literally said they do nothing but sit around and wait for something to happen.

>>30062881
this is the exact kinda of post that diclaimer was aimed at, yes D&D's economics are a cluster fuck, but so is the economy of dang near every other game that has one in the books so these canned "lul have you tried not playing D&D" responses are irrelevant at best hypocritical most of the time and base trolling at worse.

I played in a group once where money and prices were treated as a more abstract gaming concept. Small scale stuff like food, lodging, tipping a beggar was treated as copper pennies. Our characters were professional adventurers/mercenaries/chosen ones with a few successful ventures under our belt, and so it was assumed that effectively we had enough that we didn't need to keep track.

For mid-level purchases like replacement armour weapons, horses etc, the value of what we were able to procures was context dependent by GM fiat. Most of the time we were not exactly rolling in cash, so choices would have to be made, get a good sword and inferior armour, or make both average. The actual amount didn't really matter, it was assumed to be slowly refilled by time, payments, looting etc.

And then there was gold. We still didn't really count it out because it seemed silly, and some of our treasure wasn't exactly gold pieces anyway. Instead gold became more like a plot point. You couldn't really buy much with gold, it was so far above the local economy as to be like paying for a Mars bar with a bit of bullion.

But drop a gold piece in a peasants hand and suddenly he'd look at you with awe.

It sounds complicated but actually it worked really well. It really promoted a sort of storytelling atmosphere, where getting money to do something, through begging, borrowing, stealing became plot points in themselves, rather than having arbitary, its x amount, oh I have that in savings.

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>>30062881
D&D is nothing but theory anyway. It's easy to unfuck as you want it to be.

Addressing your first comment: If economic issues are your breaking point with rpgs I have bad news for you, anon. I'm not going to be a smart ass and point out the obvious and instead go a little more apologist and say at the time of D&D's beginnings no one else was really trying to tie a fantasy hero shenanigans "solo" or "party" type game with historical simulation games. (For gold et al.) They went with a system, not the best, not the worst. Hardly ever in the storied history of D&D did we get a the best of all words scenario with anything they ever put out. Are you sure you just don't want to have fun? D&D is definitely not a check your brain at the door kind of game for 99% of the world's population but there is such a thing as suspension of disbelief and you will just have to overlook things like that. Unless you want to endlessly spiral out trying to fix things down that road is madness.

Madness I say. Nothing is or ever will be perfect. The closest you will personally achieve to it is willpower. Good luck, anon, if you choose that path. I admire it but it's only for the most hardcore of hardcore gamers and becomes really dreadfully boring.

>>30061998

Food for thought, OP. It won't let me post a link, but google Alvena Publishing's post on D&D economics. Their take is that peasants are wealthier than the wage listed in the PH indicates, because average rolls from Profession produce much more than that.

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>>30063726
Then that's not you, that's just shitty players. You'd qualify for the competent bone category. Really that just sounds awesome. Dm Competent Bone Category +1

>>30063049
Not to mention that most families had a sword or two passed down

>guys I have a problem
>but I don't want to hear a solution
>stop telling me what the solution is
>did I mention that I have a problem

>>30064711
Are we reading the same thread? Because it sounds like you're implying OP's statements when I'm seeing no such stance from OP.

Also, in the thread-related discussion, how many of you guys have been players/DM where the PCs attempted to manipulate economics for their own personal gain? I was once in a group where we narrowly avoided a TPK at low levels from a DM who decided we could handle an elder Gold dragon sitting on a giant horde. We all carved up the money equally (after the surviving Ninja paid for True Res for everyone that wasn't him) and then started a whole plot to essentially purchase an agrarian village and turn it into a brewing factory for sustainable income.

I've also imagined a wizard or artificer using a sum of money to create essentially an "XP-farm" to fuel item creation and amass wealth from sales with minimal numeric impact on his character.

You guys got any stories of that sort? What's it look like when a player tries to break the actual economy the way casters break the action economy?

>>30064883
I've read quite a few stories like that here on /tg/, but I've never experienced any first-hand.

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Is it so unrealistic?

I mean when you compare it to things in real life. Look at this chart here. The top 1% wealthiest people are so much higher than everyone else that it's hard to even comprehend.

So, you can live off Ramen noodles at 22 cents a meal. Or you can go to a high-end, five-star, Guinness World Record-scoring luxury restaurant where the *appetizers* cost upwards of $30. You can arm yourself with a cheap, single-shot bolt-action hunting rifle for around $75. Or you can get a "wizard" (air force pilot) to cast a "fireball spell" (napalm missile strike) for you, which would be...I have no idea, but I doubt anyone in this thread could afford to cover the cost by themselves, even if they had the authority to requisition such an attack.

The problem with that latter comparison, of course, is that jet fuel and military air-to-surface bombs are a hell of a lot more expensive than the bat guano and sulfur that get expended in the casting of a fireball. So most of what you're paying for is the wizard's labor and education, suggesting that wizards (even low-level ones) are extraordinarily rare things. If anyone could just go down to their local marketplace and find two or three wizards, supply and competition would drive the price down, and it obviously wasn't that hard to become one in the first place.

Then again, gold in D&D isn't a fiat currency, is it? It has intrinsic--and magical--value all to itself. That's why magic is limited in how much gold it can create and why material offerings to outsiders always have a set GP value. A Wish spell can create 25,000 gold pieces, but it can create ten times that amount in silver, or a hundred times that amount in copper. Clearly, the coinage metals don't just have the value that humans subjectively attribute to them. They are fundamentally connected to the magical aether in ways we cannot comprehend. *If* you want to attempt to make sense out of all this.

...I don't even know what my point is.

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>>30064883
Does this copypasta count?

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>>30061998
If it's really something you want to read up on, this works fairly well.

>>30061998
Well, here's the thing OP; the D&D economy does not, and was never intended to, make sense. In older versions, back when the action was more focused on dungeons crawls, the price of gear was vastly inflated to allow PCs to find the kind of treasure hoards mentioned in fairy tales and fantasy fiction, without coming into enough money to simply buy the world. More recent editions aren't as bad--we don't see the 5 gold backpacks and 10 gold crowbars in the equipment list of the Moldway edition--but the prices are still inflated beyond all reason.

Trying to tack a functioning economy on the existing rules is an exercise in futility. Can't be done without a pretty big overhaul. Personally, I'd just charge my players whatever seemed appropriate to me, and ridicule them if they complained about it.

>>30065108
I would say it partially counts, at least towards expert manipulation of wealth in the game-world. That story is still fuckin' glorious, though.

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I hereby seal this thread with my approval.

It shall be saved for posterity and the enjoyment of future /tg/ generations.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=the+archivist

>>30065066
I like you.

>>30065729
Awesome

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It's because D&D is more than heroic fantasy: it's YOUR heroic fantasy be whatever you want kill without repercussions power trip. That's why almost every character is a murderhobo(that and mentioning parents in your backstory means either you started an orphan or are one by the end of the first session).

On fixing the economy, use a new one instead. Or, hey, rebalance your quest rewards!

Provided is an economy .pdf, which will help you design an economy for your setting which appears to make sense, or just give you a list of prices(last 5 ish pages) to use instead. It pretty much works, but asks a lot of questions most GMs and players wouldn't ever care to ask. Also, may offend you if you're a longshoreman.

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>>30062881
Silver is a buck, Copper is pennies, Gold is Benjamins.

Fixed.
It's not fucking hard.
The only thing bad about it, is that it's an abstract concept to think in terms of a currency that hasn't been used in 200-500 years.

It's people like who mistakenly believe it's complicated, and are forced to move onto a different game.

Being bad at math, logic, troubleshooting, and problem solving is nothing to be proud or smug about.

Even though everybody's opinions have probably been said already im throwing my two sense in. Personally whenever me and my group play we usually do money like platinum=$5, gold=$1, silver=.10 cents copper=penny. In 3.5 handbook i do know there is like a "how much inn/meals" are and it tells of quality of food and stay.

>>30065936
This book is epic. I just used one hour of my life reading and, and i would do it again any time.

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>>30066940
>platinum=$5, gold=$1, silver=.10 cents copper=penny

>>30066940

>my two sense
>Troll uncloaking off the port bow Captain!
>Red alert, shields up, all hands battlestations!
>WHRRRRP WHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP

Rolled 11 + 1

>>30061998

Why not have adventurers able to take loans?

Starting adventurers start with Xgp but have to pay 2.5x. This covers failured adventurers, is a plot hook "do a job for our loanshark" and gives a way for a commoner to pay adventuring equipment.

>>30067477
Arrangements like this would actually be pretty interesting - insurance schemes like this were historically used for high-risk ventures such as trade caravans over land and water.

>>30067477
>150% interest

Jesus Christ. Maybe more like 40-50% would be realistic, as there's not a whole lot of security in lending to adventurers. Might require collateral. But people would literally just never pay you if you tried to charge 150% on top of paying back the principal. And, even if someone would loan to an adventurer(i.e. a probably dangerous, borderline legal wanderer who makes his money off of looting haunted tombs you'd be afraid to go near), you'd probably have to have a hell of a rep to even get the loan, or some high up levels of credit. If it's someone who isn't this hyper-dangerous person you probably can't forcibly collect from, then it's a nobody trying out babby's first adventure, and you may as well give them the loan for their funeral.

I can't see most adventurers ever getting a loan for anything.

>>30061998
Player's Handbook, Page 129, Goods and services.

Inn stay (per day)
Good 2 gp —
Common 5 sp —
Poor 2 sp —

How much does a shitty motel cost per night? $40-$50? 2 sp sounds about right.

Meals (per day)
Good 5 sp —
Common 3 sp —
Poor 1 sp

How much does a day's worth of Mcdonalds run you? $20 or so? Again, 1sp sounds about right.

>>30064319
Wouldn't profession rolls cover the costs of professionals, basically skilled labor, whereas meager peasants would be unskilled labor?

>>30067617
You could expand on this to be before the PCs get their gear too. Have them all have daggers, staves or clubs, peasant weaponry, more or less, and cloth clothing, no armor, and have them do some services for the loan sharks beforehand in order to build the necessary rep/bonds to get said loan. Like go murder X because he's a bad person.

>>30067716
Profession can cover unskilled labor, as long as you are skilled at unskilled labor.

>>30067818
That's true. Also, scaling down the quest rewards you get - an average quest gives enough to buy a small village outright for some DMs. Should be more like enough for a horse, or maybe a house(because most people in D&D price horses like cars and don't see 5+ years of labor as having an intrinsic value).

>>30067631
$20? Man, if you need more than $10 of McDonalds to feed yourself for a day, you're really doing it wrong.

>>30068154
I am not proud of this time in my life, but there was a time where I was living off fast food for $10 a day. 3 burgers at lunch, 3 at dinner, 3 breakfast items, drink water all day. If you wanted to have something with more nutritional value, like fruits, you could do $15. If you wanted to get off of the dollar menu you could do $20.

>>30068154
I'm assuming it's 2-3 meals a day. Speaking as someone who's worked fast food, the average person shells out 7-10 bucks per meal (Big Mac/Teriyaki sub +drink+fries/chips).

By weight, compared to gold today, 1gp = $350, and 1sp = $6.4 (Obviously the sliver:gold ratio must be significantly higher in D&D).
And yes, there are references saying or implying that by default, coins in D&D are pure metal, and are metal value only. I actually read an interesting module once that said that most nations do mint their own proper coinage, but that merchants were always willing to do trade by solid metal weight.

By the more useful metric of bread buying power, a gold piece is worth roughly fifty US 2014 dollars.

Adventurers make fat bank because D&D worlds have an obscene Gini coefficient, and this job combines extreme risk with, at high levels, extreme specialization (level 10 adventurer's may literally be one of a few thousand people in the entire world who could safely retrieve said fat bank.)
Because of the risk/reward and so on, I imagine a majority of successful to semi-successful adventurers work on a schedule kind of like boat workers. They have a season of brutal, hard, dangerous work, and go home with enough money to live like a fucking king for 9-21 months.

For goods you can hand wave a different reality. The difficulty and price to craft items is set, by the rules, to be based on the price of the item. Defined backwards, but still somewhat connected. (Though the way prices vary by region and availability is not very much in line with how it does in reality.)
And the prices for services are often extremely bizarre.

And yeah, some spells, even odd, marginally useful spells, cost more than a year's worth of skilled labor.

>>30065066
Yeah. 85 people have as much as the combined wealth of the poorer half of the entire world's population. Funny story: there are rich people in my extended family and I was visiting some. We went out to a country club for lunch to have sandwiches, which were more than $100 apiece. Nothing special about them. Regular club sandwiches: sliced meat, with lettuce and tomatoes and such. They weren't huge or made with truffles or anything. And while they were probably better than your average sandwiches, they really weren't anything exceptional. And this was a normal lunch for them. I don't think it ever occurred to them that anything was weird about shelling out that much money for some cold cuts and sliced vegetables served between two pieces of bread.

>>30067631
Food is cheap and plentiful these days. I'm not so sure you'd see the same balance between the costs of food and shelter in a Medieval-esque society (though I guess once you start throwing in magic and monsters, there really is no telling). Also, you can live off a good deal less than $20 a day--ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches supplemented occasionally with more-satisfying and more-healthy meals.

>>30065214
This is an amazing little book.

You are an amazing anon for linking it.

>>30067617

Well, depends on setting. In a setting where the average NPC level is fairly high (say, Faerun), the collection problem might not be so bad.

Alternately, could loans in a fantasy setting be enforced by some kind of mystic oath or geas? That might be one way to do it.

For the record, I seem to have taken it upon myself to overhaul not just economy mechanics, but also HP representation to, because one of my players asked about it.

I think at this point I'll just be attempting to re-write D&D.

>>30063499
What a retarded Dwarf

So, I know this is about Pathfinder economics, but I feel as though I should propose my question to /tg/ somewhere semi-related:

I'm planning on creating and running a mecha game, where non-mechs (excepting space ships) are largely mook-mobiles. The players will be nobles from a semi-constitutional monarchy (and thus mech pilots), and they'll be fighting a democratic society founded upon slavery.
I want to ask /tg/ how they think both society's economies and economic costs should work.
For aid: The PC-faction uses a sort of free-market economy, but with notable government oversight. Most large businesses are run by nobles of some form, though peasant-run businesses are not uncommon sights. Most people of exceptional status (ace pilot, shrewd businessman, typically best or near best in their field for the local area) are typically granted a knight hood, if not already nobility.

The Antagonist faction I'm having trouble figuring out. I know that most of the labor will be done by slaves (using very simple factory lines, so as not to confuse the uneducated masses), but there will be master-crafters who will build mechs and equipment by hand. I figure that replacement parts will be difficult for this faction to come by (as most things will be semi-unique), but replacement bog-standard equipment will not.

>>30073794
Fairly simple method: Characters have "wound points" equal to their con score. This represents actual wounds and such. Their hit points represent near misses, minor cuts and the like. As such, you could base HP off whatever stat you wanted and easily justify it. Crits don't do extra damage, they just apply directly to wound points.

Gritty mode: Look in the Unearthed Arcana for an optional rule involving Fort saves. I can't recall it, but it eliminated HP and made combat a lot more hairy.

>>30074635
I had discussed a similar system, or rather, had one told to me (the wound points/hit points thing), but I suggested somehow having a way for hits to bypass and go straight to the wound thing.

He also suggested having HP replenish a little bit after an encounter, but I didn't think that was a good idea. We discussed how magical healing somewhat devalues the concept of danger via injury, so it should either only heal Temp HPs or not physical injury.

I also suggested a combat stat that governs the likelyhood of being hit against more/less skilled enemies, but I think that's getting a bit too complex.

My personal method of dealing with this is to make the money that the average citizen makes into the "Excess spending money" they make. They don't make 2 or 3 gold per year, they make enough money to feed themselves and their family, pay for their home/land, and keep their tools in good working order. If you consider a peasant that barely scrapes by, he doesn't have money to buy anything frivolous. He takes his excess cash of about 1 copper per day and saves each penny for 365 days. At the end of the year he has about 3 gold because of a few coins spent here and there, but he still has absolutely no means to purchase a magic item, the services of a spellcaster, or (for plot hook convenience)the medicine he needs for that sickness that infected his son.

>>30065214
I came into the thread to mention this PDF.

Good work, anon.

>>30074635

Blue Rose used that as well, saves and health levels rather than points. I loved it.

>>30074811
I'm not familiar with that. Got a link/pdf/what-have-you?

I know that Savage Worlds uses a damage track, as does Heavy Gears.

>>30061998
Economics are a pain in the ass. the only way to make it work is to rebuild it from the ground up.

You could make up a system that would calculate the rough value of an item based off of the time, physical effort, skill, and rarity of the item or service; then build that into the framework.

>((t*(e*s))^r)*f)+m
>t=time in 6 hour days to produce the item from start to finish.
>e=% amount of effort/focus required (100% focus means nothing else can be done in that 6 hours)
>s=skill DC to craft the item, or some similar relative metric fo the skill needed to craft the item.
>r=rarity, on a scale of 1-10
>f=a functional multiplier that converts the above variable combination to a value in currency, based off of research.
>m=cost of materials by weight consumed (normally 150%-250% of actual weight used) (including fuel, excluding housing and tools)in currency

That would be the Lowest Market Price of an item.

From this you can figure out what the relative cost of an item is by changing the rarity in places it's less common, and jump it something like 150%-200% for MSRP.

You'd be doing most of this on the back-end; not at the table, obviously.

>>30074635
Wounds are awesome; but I find it better to get rid of scores, and use Mods alone for the game, then make Health 5+con; so negative con scores don't die from breathing.