10 sp = 1 gp
10 gp = 1 pp
1,000 pp = 1 ad
10 cp = 1 sp
10 sp = 1 gp
100 gp = 1 pp
100 pp = 1 ad
fixed
Got it. That seems like an astronomical amount of cash... does anyone even use the astral diamonds?
At the higher paragon and throughout the epic levels.
Got it. That seems like an astronomical amount of cash... does anyone even use the astral diamonds?
that's the treasure you get in like, late paragon or epic levels. DAMMIT! NINJA'D!
I'm trying to calculate finances for the 4e D&D world, although it is now crystal clear that upper paragon and epic adventurers are in another world altogether from the rest of society... whereas 3.5 edition even counted the price of goats... heh.
I'm trying to calculate finances for the 4e D&D world, although it is now crystal clear that upper paragon and epic adventurers are in another world altogether from the rest of society... whereas 3.5 edition even counted the price of goats... heh.
4e sort of assumes that by epic level you will be dealing a lot of time in other planes. Astral diamonds are the standard currency in the astral sea. An epic level party will likely be spending a bit of time in the astral sea or elemental chaos or some such.
The rules of 4e (finally) only cover what is dramatic. There is nothing dramatic and cool about being a farmer. It makes absolutely no difference how much money he has on hand. It makes no difference how much his goats are worth. Nobody cares. If you desperately need an amount, make it up. It doesn't matter.
The players come into ownership of some land. When they sell it, how much is it worth? Well, how much is a treasure parcel for the level they got the land at?
Abstract, or lose.
who also remembers that 50gp/1Lbs i've had characters who carried 3k+ GPs on them... that's over 60lbs of money alone... heavier then their actual armor+weapons, and almost a third of their body weight!
so what did the smart adventurer do? transferred that $ into gems. a diamond worth 5000 GP weighs a lot less then 100Lbs. you could easily have 3 small bags: 1000gp gems, 500gp gems, 100gp gems and be done with it. astral diamonds are exactly that conversion
Then again, the economy never really mattered, so it didn't bug me that much.
Not that it matters much.
Does anyone know if the money system of the game has been changed a lot since 3.5e? I had heard of an overhaul, plus something about astral diamonds...
On top of what others have stated, treasure is given in parcels now, rather than individual treasures from monsters.
Meaning, at each level of play, you look in the DMG for the amount and types of treasure you should be giving out in your adventures, rather than the monster block in the MM. It doesn't matter what monsters you throw in, the adventurers should end up with the same amount of gold and treasure. This balances it out much more, and the players won't notice unless they already know (at least, my players didn't notice the difference).
you're grasping for things to complain about i'm afraid.
Incidentally, the astral diamond isn't that bad an idea, given both the absurd amounts of money a high-level party is likely to have and the general worthlessness of D&D money (which is three times heavier than real money and seems to buy under a third as much per coin).
IRL the main business of premodern moneychangers wasn't to change between foreign and domestic currency but to change between denominations of domestic currency. A decent-sized town should have at least one, although don't expect a town moneychanger to change astral diamonds. Charging a fee is realistic but might hurt fun.
Maybe... but determining the value of land dependent on PC level just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
if you're asking for a complete Sim City or Civilization style town building system that allows you to micromanage like heck, you are looking at the absolutely wrong game.
land given to a PC is usually for "coolness" or to show some sort of in-game RP reward in the same way a contact or liason NPC is a non-monetary reward.
most of the time when it was given to me or another PC, it was someplace the PCs could kick back and relax and act as a base of operations for the party. it was generally understood that the given lot of land was self-sufficient unless something big went down and required PC assistance.
5 ranks +5
Wis 10 +0
SF: Prof +3
taking 10
=18 = 9 GP per week
A guy that isn't so serious might only have 2 ranks and no feat. Thats 12 and thus 6 GP per week.
If you judge the cost of living by the PH then you're sorely off your mark. The price of a common meal is for going out to eat. The prices on that list reflect life as a tourist.
If a farmer and his son each have 1 or 2 ranks in Survival, they could go out to the woods once a week and each try to get lucky in catching or gathering some food. Maybe the inherited a masterwork game trap.
The cost of living for a peasant is much lower than that of an adventurer.
I can see land as a treasure parcel. I think, for simplicities sake, it should be assumed that the earnings from the land (if there is any) is about equal to the expenditures to maintain it. Land grants should be given with titles and should be used more or less for RP purposes and not for making treasure which can make things unbalanced.
The only real reason I was interested in the cost of common goods was to be able to work out the logistics of running a communal temple in the game world, and to see if it could be sustained, in part, by selling high-level magic items to the PCs.
My take with high level items is that they take a very long time and resources to make. Also, there are few that are high enough in level to make them and fewer that actually have or know the ritual to make them. Just as rare is someone with the money to actually buy such items and rarer still is those that will actually want to buy them. The selling of one epic level magic item would likely sustain a large temple for over a year (likely many years) but a lot of resources would go into the item's making and the temple would need for someone to buy it. There are not many people of level 20+ walking around (or at least outside of places like the astral plain and elemental chaos) so a temple would likely have only one person high enough in level to make items and maybe a group that high in level coming through town, or the city, once every few years.
Players don't care about your world. It's all 'bout the shinies.
(By the way join the edition war, 4e needs help.)
A level 30 magic item's market price is 3,125,000gp. This is 625,000 bottles of wine or 15,625,000 common meals. This means that 10,000 people would each be able to have 1,562 common meals.
Even if a single level 30 item were sold every three years, it would be enough to sustain the institution... if one adds the other sources of income... the temple would be rolling in cash.
Yes, something along these lines came up in the huge, closed, 40 page "Dracon" thread on Astrid's Parlor.
Even if a single level 30 item were sold every three years, it would be enough to sustain the institution... if one adds the other sources of income... the temple would be rolling in cash.
Now the important thing is if these large temples all have a level 30 ritual caster? Also, if the level 30 ritual caster dies then who will replace them? You must remember that level 30 characters and creatures are extremely rare such as they are something you will not run into unless you're kicking it with a god.
Temple
A level 30 caster will likely not be on the material plane. They will likely be serving their god as an exarch and will not likely leave their god's plane/dominion.
EDIT: Or, he could be chosen to act as a vessel for the god's will.
There is your real economy. Who cares if a fifty acre vineyard and winery is good for 63 tuns (208 gallons/tun) of cheap wine per year. Who cares if thats worth about 65,000gp a year, or if a 900 square mile estate is good for 20 million gp a year after taxes, tithes, and cutting with the farmers...oops having flashbacks to realistic economic rules. Must not think about it...
Crud: email me at [email]reddeerrun@hotmail.com[/email] and ask for domesday ebook.
I always wondered why they even bothered...considering the old flying ship took a hundred years and cost upward of twenty million gp to enchant (a guarantee that it will be unique), its unlikely that any one but elves are going to live long enough to enchant one and reap the rewards of its enjoyment.
There is your real economy. Who cares if a fifty acre vineyard and winery is good for 63 tuns (208 gallons/tun) of cheap wine per year. Who cares if thats worth about 65,000gp a year, or if a 900 square mile estate is good for 20 million gp a year after taxes, tithes, and cutting with the farmers...oops having flashbacks to realistic economic rules. Must not think about it...
And this would be the 'lolwut?' take on the 4Economy. I'd edit the last little bit of your post there. It could be seen as an advertisement, since I'm guessing 'domesday ebooks' have nothing to do with the 4Economy.
(As an aside, 4Economy is an awesome word.)
My setup was for there to be a communal temple in which 1,000 females of my egg-laying race would lay an average of 2 eggs a year, measured over the course of the 14 years it takes for a member of my race to considered an adult. By itself, that would be a bit more than 28,000 eggs, but 1/5 of them were duds, so that is 22,400 eggs which will hatch. Only about 1/2, or 11,200 make it to age 14; disease kills off many.
The children would need about 1 sp worth of food/other commodities to live well at ages 0-3, 2 sp/week from 3-7, and 3 sp/week from 7-14. The other commodities included things like clothing, medicine, etc. The child mortality rate would be 1/2, but 85% of that would be from 0-3, 10% from 3-7, and 5% from 7-14. For 52 x 3 weeks, the child would need 156 sp worth of food and other things, for 52 x 5 weeks, the child would need 520 sp worth of goods, and for the 52 x 6 weeks, the child would need 936 sp worth of goods. Keep in mind that the temple only buys raw food materials; grain is ground into flour and made into bread on the premises, and the clothing is also made there from raw materials. All education would be provided on the site.
Cutting one specific cost down would be simple: children of this fictional race only wear little clothing; nothing from 0-3, simple loincloths from 3-7, boys get pants at age 7 and a shirt to go with it at age 14, and girls get a top when their breasts start to develop; neither children or adults use footwear. All meals and dorms would be held in common in the temple.
A child raised in the temple who lived to age 14 would take 1,612 sp to raise, which equals roughly 161 gp and 2 sp. If 1/2 of them survive, that cost is equal to 11,200 x 161.2 gp for a group born in one year to make it to 14, not including the costs of raising the half which die early.
For 14 years, the surviving children would cost 1,805,440 gp, or 128,960 gp/year. While I haven't run numbers on the dead children, if it even cost another half of what the surviving ones did (a gross overestimation, to be sure), it would only come out to 902,720 gp for 14 years, or about 953.4 gp/yr.
In either case, the highest total cost is still probably under 2,708,160 gp for 14 years, or 193,440 gp for one year. No matter what, the sale of a major item (level 30) is equal to an income of 3,125,000gp. If even one of these were sold per every 5 years, it would be more than enough. If a couple of 125,000gp items were sold per year, it would also likely be enough, even if we assume that the cost of labor, materials, and possible research on how to make such items were to consume 1/3 of the profit (an unlikely high amount, to be sure.)
Then, when factoring in other costs (board for other temple inhabitants, 10% income tax, repairs, expansions, etc), and revenues (healing, donations, magic, etc), there should still be room for a very large profit. After age 14, the majority of the males would go into the military, but some would stay behind to act as priests, scribes, craftsmen, and mages for the temple (among other posts), or else enter into civilian life, usually with some sort of craft skill. The females would mostly enter general civilian life, or they would stay on the temple as priestesses, servants, weavers, cooks, or some other task.
Yes, I've thought a little too hard on this. Please forgive such an unwieldy post. I only came up with it to counter the accusations that no institution could afford to maintain all those children.
EDIT: lol. Thanks. 4Economics is a cool word.
To address the temple situation, first of all, people don't sell level 30 items on the material plane. Additionally, page 223 in the PHB clearly says that making a magic item is the same as buying it. The raw materials of a level 30 item are worth MORE than selling the item (since you only get 1/5 the value when you sell), though even if you use special "NPCs can sell for the full value" rules, its still even money. You cannot make a living enchanting, and that's how its supposed to be.
Furthermore, a level 30 character got there because of an epic destiny. They are shortly going to be fulfilling that destiny. I am telling you right now that there is no "Sit in a temple and make magic items" epic destiny.
This further reinforces the fact that in 4e, NPCs and PCs are different. 4e is gamist, not so much simulationist anymore. It doesn't have to perfectly simulate commoners. It can't. Its not dramatically interesting to do so. In D&D, you break stuff, kill monsters, steal their things, and hear the lamentations of the women. If you want to micromanage a kingdom, play something else. Actually, Reign is pretty awesome, and can be integrated into most games.
Oh, and I think you're way underestimating the price of raising children. You're not counting all the money required to take care of the people who care for the children. They need to eat and wear clothes, too, even if they're not getting paid. Even priests and nuns get paid, though, so it seems strange to me that these chaotic things would be so willing to live communally. Oh, and don't forget taxes, and building upkeep, and the vast amount of water such a place would require, funeral costs for the ones that don't make it, etc.
That's what I am talking about, not some silly SIM game.
Stop putting words in my mouth please. (not directed towards Aristocles)
then why not state that instead of beating around the bush hoping someone will read your mind?
commodities are a micromanagement mini-game. flour, lumps of iron, chickens, cows, the cost of rent per square yard per month... all these aren't really necessary in a game about Big Damn Heroes fighting Big Bad Evil Guys.
i can see why some people would want that, but even mid-heroic, the cost of these items can be offset easily. hawking a magic item for 20%, even a 1st level one will give approx 60gp
in 3rd ed this 60gp would net you 6 cows, 30 sheep, 60 pigs or about 3000 chickens.
while some people might want that kind of micromanaging, i'm happy they decided to let that drop in 4th ed.
And yes, more importantly, it is unlikely that a level 30 item is made in the regular material plane... I was just using an example... it could be that the item is recovered from another plane and then sold by the temple... or it could be that they only make level 20-25 (or lower level) items and then sell them regularly.
Either way, the whole thing was just an example. Most temple revenue come from sale of other goods and services anyway, plus donations... funerals would be held on site (it is a temple, after all), and the costs of water, maintainance, etc would be covered by the sale of other things (healing, magic, scrolls, wands, religious items, etc.)
Yes, they are a chaotic race in most ways, although even a chaotic race can have temples... even if this is a sort of a "free love" temple.
And as you said, I took it way too far; that sort of micromanaging is unnecessary and could rarely relate to gameplay itself.
EDIT: 3000 chickens are probably worth more than six cows in real life, but then again, that's D&Dconomics for you...
I also imagined that there would be some sort of an "NPC markup" for the items to be sold, but if that won't work, that is okay too.