Prices in Sharn - 4E conversion - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Prices in Sharn - 4E conversion

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
bobiago
Apr 29, 2010 22:05:07
When using 3.5 sourcebooks in 4E, what do you all use for prices? Do the costs for goods and services in Sharn, as given in the Sharn, City of Towers sourcebook work for a 4E campaign, or are they too high/low?
#2
ChrisTheS
Apr 29, 2010 22:21:24
Too low, if you want them to be significant costs past level 1 (the Sharn book in particular operates on the assumption that the silver piece is the standard, rather than multiple thousands of golds).

If just using them for flavor/trivia, though, they're fine as-is.
#3
bobiago
Apr 30, 2010 11:39:24 Mostly flavorful. I had a PC want to buy or rent a house, and everyone wanted feather fall talismans. I used the 1d4 x 100gp for a house in a poor neighborhood - my description of Sharn and Khorvaire in general is that there is a housing glut due to the high mortality of the Mourning and the last years of the war in general, so even though that is low, it is because there is so much available real estate.

For the feather fall talismans, I thought 50gp was pretty high for a one use, "only works in Sharn" item, so I let them have it for 5gp. I think I priced it too low, but if they are abused, I'll make it known that they are of dubious quality (maybe fail on a 1 out of 6).
#4
Ogiwan
May 01, 2010 11:21:34 Hahahaha. Nice. Of course, if they complain about that, you could tell them that the ones that fail on a 1 aren't made by House Cannith certified artificers.
#5
Hellcow
May 01, 2010 12:30:30
For the feather fall talismans, I thought 50gp was pretty high for a one use, "only works in Sharn" item, so I let them have it for 5gp. I think I priced it too low, but if they are abused, I'll make it known that they are of dubious quality (maybe fail on a 1 out of 6).

The thing about cheap feather fall talismans is it makes it very easy to escape an unpleasant situation by jumping off a bridge... which is a good way to save that villain you want to be a recurring character when the tide of battle has turned. of course, if everyone in the party has a talisman, they could just jump right after him...
#6
Ogiwan
May 01, 2010 19:49:19 What, no mention of escaping an angry Dwarf Guardsman and his friends that way?
#7
Madfox11
May 03, 2010 4:48:29
Too low, if you want them to be significant costs past level 1 (the Sharn book in particular operates on the assumption that the silver piece is the standard, rather than multiple thousands of golds).

If just using them for flavor/trivia, though, they're fine as-is.

Why would you want services and minor goods to have a significant cost effect? Adventures do not follow the standard economic models, and if you would fit the costs of standard stuff to that of adventurers most of those would be completely out of reach of the commoners. In our home campaign we do not count basic expenses, with "basic" being defined by the tier we game in - heroic = middle class, paragon = upper class and epic = rediculously wealthy.
#8
pluisjen
May 03, 2010 4:57:37 Might be for flavor reasons; in which case the old edition prices would be just fine. I wouldn't bother tracking them either, but it's nice for RP when you don't have to break character to mention that a pitcher of ale costs "some random amount, I don't know" but can just keep in the character of the bartender and mention it costs 2 silver pieces (which the characters then not track)
#9
JohnLynch
May 03, 2010 5:01:30 I typically see what a loaf of bread costs in both editions and use the difference to convert prices for mundane things. For expensive stuff I see what level magical item its close to and then make it close to the price for that level magical item in 4th ed.
#10
bobiago
May 03, 2010 16:36:52 So, for mundane, non-game busting things, what do you do?

1) You have the book memorized and rattle off the price
2) You flip through the book and look up the price
3) You make up the price out of whole cloth
4) You say you don't know, but it's not significant

I think it would be good to have a dollar to gp conversion value, say $1=1sp? That way, with a vague understanding of the costs of everyday things, you can whip out prices pretty consistently and quickly.

I was thinking 1 dollar=1sp. Let's see:

A mug of cheap ale=2 bucks, so 2 sp. Nice ale, go up to 6sp. (do they do "dimeys" in Sharn?)
Cheap meal from a street vendor = 3sp, a nice meal in a restaurant = 3-10 gold
Rent a scumhole for a month = 10gp/mo; Buy the scumhole - 1000 gold
Rent a nice townhouse 250gp/mo; Buy the nice townhouse - 25,000 gold

What do you think? Too high, too low?
#11
Madfox11
May 04, 2010 6:37:14 Too high. A typically unskilled laborer earns about 1 sp per day. In regards to bribes and common commodities we tend to use that as a base line. Cheap ale would at the most cost a couple of copper pieces.
#12
bobiago
May 04, 2010 16:41:00
I remember that measure, but does it still apply in 4e? It seems like the discussion of available currency in the EPG increased the minimum wage by quite a bit, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.
#13
bobiago
May 05, 2010 15:22:34
Ah, so the PHB lists the price of a pitcher of ale as 2sp. Around here, a pitcher is about $10. So, that puts the conversion rate at 1sp=$5. Still a mighty low minimum wage, but before labor laws, I guess this is reasonable. Also brings up an interesting point about currency - the smallest coin (1cp) is effectively the 50 cent piece. 1gp is 50 bucks, the price of a skycoach ride anywhere in Sharn... I guess a magical cab ride would cost more than a mundane cab ride.

Also, what do you think about the price of flavorful magical gadgets? The lawyer (advocate) the party just met with had a magical copy machine (two disembodied hands connected by an arcane linkage - one tracing, the other writing). How would you price such a thing? I was thinking of taking a cost for a mid-grade model and converting it (say $5000, which is 100gp). It seems cheap, but I don't see a way that Eberron can be filled with these pervasive magical labor-saving devices if they are not reasonably priced to a middle class Eberonnian (and thus ludicrously inexpensive for an adventurer).
#14
Madfox11
May 06, 2010 4:33:16 Designers have noted that the 1 sp minimum wage is what the laborer has left after paying for absolute minimum living expenses.

As for the price of non-adventurer impact items, 4E specifically stepped away from the 3E model. In 3E the price of an item was based on the magic used to create it, regardless of how usefull the item actually was. The result was that some silly items which no PC would want, but which would be great for the common citizen, became rediculously expensive. 4E simply says that usefullness to the adventurer determines the price, and the DM/story determine the price for the rest. If you as a DM want minor magic items to have a bigger impact on Eberron, then you should indeed make those items cost 100 gp. It is not as if the PCs would want a copy machine* ;)

* Mind you, there is a level 1 ritual which copies text. If the item in question is bulky, and the inks expensive there is no issue, but if you make it too cheap, realize you also downgrade the usefulness of said ritual.
#15
JohnLynch
May 06, 2010 5:19:26
So, for mundane, non-game busting things, what do you do?

1) You have the book memorized and rattle off the price
2) You flip through the book and look up the price
3) You make up the price out of whole cloth
4) You say you don't know, but it's not significant

I think I've only been asked once in a game how much food costs and that's in the PHB. I typically work prices out ahead of time and encourage my players to do shopping between games (that way there's no need to update character sheets mid-game as well).
#16
bobiago
May 25, 2010 9:44:07 So, I just wanted to post and say that after quite a few sessions with my group in Sharn, the 1sp=$5 is working pretty well for a quick-reference rule of thumb. Some have posted that their groups don't really care, but this is the second group I've had that is buying real estate, hiring retainers, dining out frequently, buying appropriate clothing, investing in art, and setting up side "black market" businesses. (although the latter two is the same player, and she was in both groups playing pretty much the same character). I've gone through the EPG and ECG, the 3.5 ECS, Sharn, City of Towers, and even the 3.0 Arms and Equipment Guide and with some exceptions (a bottle of wine = 5gp???), it all seems to work out, more or less. I recommend it.

For magical conveniences, I have pretty much come down to a 1 year cost-recovery model. Meaning, a magical labor-saving device will generally need to cost the same as 1 year (324 days) of a paid laborer. If it is highly fashionable or prestige building (all of the most reputable advocates have magical copiers - manual scribes are passe), then 2 or 3 years might be appropriate.

I have been playing with the assumption that the population (at least that of young men) is down as a result of the war, so labor is expensive - 2 or 3x the "normal" wage (that being 1sp/day for unskilled labor, 2-5sp/day for skilled labor, 1-2gp/day for professionals). Tensions are still high, so there hasn't been a significant reduction in arms spending, and the wartime economy is holding steady.

Anyway, that's what I've been doing. I'm curious as to what guidelines the authors used when they came up with the pricing in the books. Obviously magic items have to serve the adventuring economy, so there are rules for that and a lot of the mundane items in the Arms and Equipment Guide provided circumstance bonuses to skills - presumably a formula for that. But for the rest of it (cost of a backpack, bedroll, 30' chain, fishing net?) - what was the thinking behind that, do you suppose?
#17
AvonRekaes
May 25, 2010 16:20:55
I think there's also a tendency to forget that Eberron is more industrially advanced than most settings, Khorvaire being portrayed as if in an Industrial Revolution fueled by magic rather tha tech.

Specifically, I'm referring to the rise of "the middle class". Most residents of Sharn are not unskilled laborers. They're crafstmen and shopkeepers, bakers and tanners. I can't really call off the top of my head where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure in 3.5 it was said that the "average person" on Khorvaire had about 300 gp available to them at any given time (What they could pull out of their bank accounts and out from underneath their mattresses in total).

I used to set the price of magical-mundane conveniences (Everfrost Ice Boxes, Automagical Brooms, Cleaning Cabinents for laundry etc) at the cost of a magic item that could 1/day cast Prestidigitation (because as a cantrip it could do so many things), which was 300 GP. This would mean that a family would have to save up for a new refrigerator. Sounds good to me. (I didn't limit the items to working 1/day, however, because honestly how much does it realy matter if you vaccuum and do laundry twice per day?)

A level 1 magic item in 4e costs 520 gp. I think keeping the 300 gp watermark for a major household appliance would still hold. Again, this is still assuming the baseline "middle-class" is not an unskilled laborer.

As for all those unskilled laborers, well, they'll just have to wash their clothes and do their dishes the old fashioned way.

(As a side note, $250 for a bottle of wine isn't unheard of.)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 bobiago Apr 29, 2010 22:05:07	When using 3.5 sourcebooks in 4E, what do you all use for prices? Do the costs for goods and services in Sharn, as given in the Sharn, City of Towers sourcebook work for a 4E campaign, or are they too high/low?
#2 ChrisTheS Apr 29, 2010 22:21:24	Too low, if you want them to be significant costs past level 1 (the Sharn book in particular operates on the assumption that the silver piece is the standard, rather than multiple thousands of golds). If just using them for flavor/trivia, though, they're fine as-is.
#3 bobiago Apr 30, 2010 11:39:24	Mostly flavorful. I had a PC want to buy or rent a house, and everyone wanted feather fall talismans. I used the 1d4 x 100gp for a house in a poor neighborhood - my description of Sharn and Khorvaire in general is that there is a housing glut due to the high mortality of the Mourning and the last years of the war in general, so even though that is low, it is because there is so much available real estate. For the feather fall talismans, I thought 50gp was pretty high for a one use, "only works in Sharn" item, so I let them have it for 5gp. I think I priced it too low, but if they are abused, I'll make it known that they are of dubious quality (maybe fail on a 1 out of 6).
#4 Ogiwan May 01, 2010 11:21:34	Hahahaha. Nice. Of course, if they complain about that, you could tell them that the ones that fail on a 1 aren't made by House Cannith certified artificers.
#5 Hellcow May 01, 2010 12:30:30	For the feather fall talismans, I thought 50gp was pretty high for a one use, "only works in Sharn" item, so I let them have it for 5gp. I think I priced it too low, but if they are abused, I'll make it known that they are of dubious quality (maybe fail on a 1 out of 6). The thing about cheap feather fall talismans is it makes it very easy to escape an unpleasant situation by jumping off a bridge... which is a good way to save that villain you want to be a recurring character when the tide of battle has turned. of course, if everyone in the party has a talisman, they could just jump right after him...
#6 Ogiwan May 01, 2010 19:49:19	What, no mention of escaping an angry Dwarf Guardsman and his friends that way?
#7 Madfox11 May 03, 2010 4:48:29	Too low, if you want them to be significant costs past level 1 (the Sharn book in particular operates on the assumption that the silver piece is the standard, rather than multiple thousands of golds). If just using them for flavor/trivia, though, they're fine as-is. Why would you want services and minor goods to have a significant cost effect? Adventures do not follow the standard economic models, and if you would fit the costs of standard stuff to that of adventurers most of those would be completely out of reach of the commoners. In our home campaign we do not count basic expenses, with "basic" being defined by the tier we game in - heroic = middle class, paragon = upper class and epic = rediculously wealthy.
#8 pluisjen May 03, 2010 4:57:37	Might be for flavor reasons; in which case the old edition prices would be just fine. I wouldn't bother tracking them either, but it's nice for RP when you don't have to break character to mention that a pitcher of ale costs "some random amount, I don't know" but can just keep in the character of the bartender and mention it costs 2 silver pieces (which the characters then not track)
#9 JohnLynch May 03, 2010 5:01:30	I typically see what a loaf of bread costs in both editions and use the difference to convert prices for mundane things. For expensive stuff I see what level magical item its close to and then make it close to the price for that level magical item in 4th ed.
#10 bobiago May 03, 2010 16:36:52	So, for mundane, non-game busting things, what do you do? 1) You have the book memorized and rattle off the price 2) You flip through the book and look up the price 3) You make up the price out of whole cloth 4) You say you don't know, but it's not significant I think it would be good to have a dollar to gp conversion value, say $1=1sp? That way, with a vague understanding of the costs of everyday things, you can whip out prices pretty consistently and quickly. I was thinking 1 dollar=1sp. Let's see: A mug of cheap ale=2 bucks, so 2 sp. Nice ale, go up to 6sp. (do they do "dimeys" in Sharn?) Cheap meal from a street vendor = 3sp, a nice meal in a restaurant = 3-10 gold Rent a scumhole for a month = 10gp/mo; Buy the scumhole - 1000 gold Rent a nice townhouse 250gp/mo; Buy the nice townhouse - 25,000 gold What do you think? Too high, too low?
#11 Madfox11 May 04, 2010 6:37:14	Too high. A typically unskilled laborer earns about 1 sp per day. In regards to bribes and common commodities we tend to use that as a base line. Cheap ale would at the most cost a couple of copper pieces.
#12 bobiago May 04, 2010 16:41:00	I remember that measure, but does it still apply in 4e? It seems like the discussion of available currency in the EPG increased the minimum wage by quite a bit, but I don't have it in front of me at the moment.
#13 bobiago May 05, 2010 15:22:34	Ah, so the PHB lists the price of a pitcher of ale as 2sp. Around here, a pitcher is about $10. So, that puts the conversion rate at 1sp=$5. Still a mighty low minimum wage, but before labor laws, I guess this is reasonable. Also brings up an interesting point about currency - the smallest coin (1cp) is effectively the 50 cent piece. 1gp is 50 bucks, the price of a skycoach ride anywhere in Sharn... I guess a magical cab ride would cost more than a mundane cab ride. Also, what do you think about the price of flavorful magical gadgets? The lawyer (advocate) the party just met with had a magical copy machine (two disembodied hands connected by an arcane linkage - one tracing, the other writing). How would you price such a thing? I was thinking of taking a cost for a mid-grade model and converting it (say $5000, which is 100gp). It seems cheap, but I don't see a way that Eberron can be filled with these pervasive magical labor-saving devices if they are not reasonably priced to a middle class Eberonnian (and thus ludicrously inexpensive for an adventurer).
#14 Madfox11 May 06, 2010 4:33:16	Designers have noted that the 1 sp minimum wage is what the laborer has left after paying for absolute minimum living expenses. As for the price of non-adventurer impact items, 4E specifically stepped away from the 3E model. In 3E the price of an item was based on the magic used to create it, regardless of how usefull the item actually was. The result was that some silly items which no PC would want, but which would be great for the common citizen, became rediculously expensive. 4E simply says that usefullness to the adventurer determines the price, and the DM/story determine the price for the rest. If you as a DM want minor magic items to have a bigger impact on Eberron, then you should indeed make those items cost 100 gp. It is not as if the PCs would want a copy machine* ;) * Mind you, there is a level 1 ritual which copies text. If the item in question is bulky, and the inks expensive there is no issue, but if you make it too cheap, realize you also downgrade the usefulness of said ritual.
#15 JohnLynch May 06, 2010 5:19:26	So, for mundane, non-game busting things, what do you do? 1) You have the book memorized and rattle off the price 2) You flip through the book and look up the price 3) You make up the price out of whole cloth 4) You say you don't know, but it's not significant I think I've only been asked once in a game how much food costs and that's in the PHB. I typically work prices out ahead of time and encourage my players to do shopping between games (that way there's no need to update character sheets mid-game as well).
#16 bobiago May 25, 2010 9:44:07	So, I just wanted to post and say that after quite a few sessions with my group in Sharn, the 1sp=$5 is working pretty well for a quick-reference rule of thumb. Some have posted that their groups don't really care, but this is the second group I've had that is buying real estate, hiring retainers, dining out frequently, buying appropriate clothing, investing in art, and setting up side "black market" businesses. (although the latter two is the same player, and she was in both groups playing pretty much the same character). I've gone through the EPG and ECG, the 3.5 ECS, Sharn, City of Towers, and even the 3.0 Arms and Equipment Guide and with some exceptions (a bottle of wine = 5gp???), it all seems to work out, more or less. I recommend it. For magical conveniences, I have pretty much come down to a 1 year cost-recovery model. Meaning, a magical labor-saving device will generally need to cost the same as 1 year (324 days) of a paid laborer. If it is highly fashionable or prestige building (all of the most reputable advocates have magical copiers - manual scribes are passe), then 2 or 3 years might be appropriate. I have been playing with the assumption that the population (at least that of young men) is down as a result of the war, so labor is expensive - 2 or 3x the "normal" wage (that being 1sp/day for unskilled labor, 2-5sp/day for skilled labor, 1-2gp/day for professionals). Tensions are still high, so there hasn't been a significant reduction in arms spending, and the wartime economy is holding steady. Anyway, that's what I've been doing. I'm curious as to what guidelines the authors used when they came up with the pricing in the books. Obviously magic items have to serve the adventuring economy, so there are rules for that and a lot of the mundane items in the Arms and Equipment Guide provided circumstance bonuses to skills - presumably a formula for that. But for the rest of it (cost of a backpack, bedroll, 30' chain, fishing net?) - what was the thinking behind that, do you suppose?
#17 AvonRekaes May 25, 2010 16:20:55	I think there's also a tendency to forget that Eberron is more industrially advanced than most settings, Khorvaire being portrayed as if in an Industrial Revolution fueled by magic rather tha tech. Specifically, I'm referring to the rise of "the middle class". Most residents of Sharn are not unskilled laborers. They're crafstmen and shopkeepers, bakers and tanners. I can't really call off the top of my head where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure in 3.5 it was said that the "average person" on Khorvaire had about 300 gp available to them at any given time (What they could pull out of their bank accounts and out from underneath their mattresses in total). I used to set the price of magical-mundane conveniences (Everfrost Ice Boxes, Automagical Brooms, Cleaning Cabinents for laundry etc) at the cost of a magic item that could 1/day cast Prestidigitation (because as a cantrip it could do so many things), which was 300 GP. This would mean that a family would have to save up for a new refrigerator. Sounds good to me. (I didn't limit the items to working 1/day, however, because honestly how much does it realy matter if you vaccuum and do laundry twice per day?) A level 1 magic item in 4e costs 520 gp. I think keeping the 300 gp watermark for a major household appliance would still hold. Again, this is still assuming the baseline "middle-class" is not an unskilled laborer. As for all those unskilled laborers, well, they'll just have to wash their clothes and do their dishes the old fashioned way. (As a side note, $250 for a bottle of wine isn't unheard of.)