D&D 3.5e Economy Overhaul

[Grez]

I will start by saying that not all of the content here is of my own original thought, nor do I claim that it is, several of the ideas I present here I seen at various places and combined it with a lot of my own. I apologize if the creators of the ideas I have used become upset at this. As with most homebrew, any suggestions are welcome.

The reason for this homebrew is to fix one of my biggest problems with D&D, as well as a lot of other systems,which is the broken and very unrealistic economy, even in a universe where magic exists. While there have been various attempts to fix this, I will be going far further.

The main target for this is E6/T5, gritty fantasy where the players want realism while still being fun. The aim of this is to add to setting through a more realistic economy, ever changing and providing opportunities to savvy characters, PCs and NPCs alike.

Although this is 3.5e specific, there is no reason why it can’t be applied to other systems with minor modifications.

[Grez]

For me, the problems with the usual economy and monetary system of 3.5e are:

Adventurers earn far more then what they should compared to a non-adventurer, enough that they could leave their village/town/city and return a year later with enough wealth to retire. Although adventurers live a dangerous life, if they can potentially earn that much in a single year then why don’t far more people do it? Why would a soldier, with comparative skills to an adventurer stay in the army when he could be striking it rich in a far away land?

Most items are either vastly overpriced or vastly under priced, in D&D even a short sword is a huge investment for a commoner, while in the Middle Ages a similar sword could be had for roughly half a week’s wages.
In medieval England the lowest paid were unskilled laborers (same as today), who earned around 40 Shillings a year, a common sword (not good quality, but a sword none the less) cost around 6 Pence (half a shilling). In 3.5e, a short sword costs 10gp, the income of a commoner (from the PHB and DMG) is 3gp a month (I will ignore the income he would gain by skilling Profession [X] for the time being). Of course, one could argue that the commoners wage is far below what it should be, but looking at the cost of food and comparing it with the real world medieval prices he is actually earning roughly what he should be.

The money used are coins or platinum, gold, silver, and copper. These are universal coins and can be spent anywhere in the campaign world. The only way for this to work is for the value of the coins value to be standardised is if they have a given weight (ie, the value of the coin is determined by the value of the metal it’s made from).

[Grez]

How I propose to fix these things:

Change the scaling of the WBL system, being an adventurer is risky, but not so risky that if you survive one year you can retire. The commoner will retain his 3gp a month income.
The value of the object, which currently is based on the usefulness of the item, will be rescaled to represent the time and effort taken to obtain or make. To compensate for the massive increase in the cost of some items, such as chain mail and full plate (which in reality took months, sometimes years to make), the properties of those items will be slightly adjusted. For things such as magical items, it will simply mean that money can’t buy them due to the price the crafter pays in making the item.

Coins will no longer be determined by the value of the metal they are made from; instead most will be copper with their value will be stamped on them. A consequence of this is that forgery will be a very useful skill which a character could be based around, as he/she could melt down low value coins and re-cast them into more valuable ones. Characters could be based around working for a wealthy trader, looking for forgeries through magical or conventional means.

Separate states could have their own currency, or several states could partner and share a currency. The relative value of each currency would fluctuate with supply/demand, changing the cost of goods going in and out of the associated state. This could be determined randomly or driven by the story. On top of this the cost of raw materials such as grain or iron could also fluctuate through the same method.

The introduction of banking and business rules. In all settings shops and businesses exist but there are no rules for determining the productivity or operation of those establishments. The introduction of even simple banks would be logical as well if we are going to include rules such as these. Remember, not all adventurers are murder-hobos, some are employees of large businesses out on jobs or people seeking riches who come across a suitable site for a gold mine.

[Grez]

Currency is at the heart of most adventurers’ interests; it’s his means and ends. However, the currency presented in the PHB/DMG is greatly simplified as the publishers assumed that most people want to do the following:
1 – Kill things.
2 – Take their stuff and money.
3 – Sell stuff for more money and use that money to get better stuff.
4 – Repeat until the character has enough money to retire.
Why would a player want to deal with different currencies when travelling from one country to the next? For most players, all they want to do is deduct a number of gold pieces from their total and receive an item.

But what if someone didn’t want to use that system? What if they wanted to have to deal with different currencies and their respective values? What if they didn’t want to go adventuring and instead make a living forging or trading currency?
Well this is for those players.

Today, a coin in use as an official currency has its value is determined by the value and face stamped on it, in D&D it’s determined by the value of the metal it’s made from. This leads to several problems, which I stated above. These problems can be ignored by players not interested in this stuff, but for those who like realism it’s a letdown.

One solution for this is to introduce currency specific to a region or state, no longer determined by the value of the metal but instead the value and face stamped on it. Each region or state could either have their own currency, or, for those who regularly trade, share a currency (similar to the EU the Euro). The relative worth of each currency could either be determined by rolling a dice to determine if its value should rise or fall and/or be story driven.

A method for doing this is to have at the start of the campaign roll 2d100 to determine the starting score for each currency, then, at an in game interval decided by the DM, roll 1d6 to see if and how it changes in score.
1d6 result:
1 - Reduce score by 2
2 - Reduce score by 1
3 - Unchanged
4 - Unchanged
5 - Increase score by 1
6 - Increase score by 2

A score of 100 means that when buying goods or services with that currency (if the recipient accepts it) then it is purchased at a 1:1 rate with the price in standard coins. For each point above 100 the price in that currency decreases by 1%, for each point below 100 the price increases. No score can be 0 or 200.

Example: The warrior Fleycher wants to buy a new sword, he has both Dynostian (with a score of 150) and Anoghalian (with a score of 50) currency, the smith accepts both currencies. He decides to pay with the Dynostian coins as they are worth more and recently the value for them has been decreasing, while the Anoghalian coins have been slowly increasing in value after their war with Knothal has ended.  He pays 5 Dynostian kerbs (equivalent of 10 standard coins) and receives his new sword.

For the sake of simplicity, the system of each subsequent coin being worth 10 of the coins below it will be kept, although DMs could feel free to do otherwise. Currency exchange will likley be a big part of the world economy, and traders will most likely only accept their own or neighboring states currency.

The material from which most coins would be made would is copper, with high value coins being made from silver. Gold, if its found by the adventurers will most likley be found as ingots for jewelers, occasional it will be in the form of coins, but almost no traders would accept them as they have probably never even seen one. As most coins will be made of the same material, forgery could be used to melt down low value coins and re-cast them as higher value ones, turning a profit. This would also make forgery a worthwhile skill for most characters so they can spot fake currency when receiving it.

For the rest of this homebrew the currency used will be SC, or standard coins, which the values of items will be in, and campaign specific currencies will be compared to.

[Grez]

When the publishers came up with the profession rules and the figure of 3gp a month for a commoner’s income, I believe that they didn’t intend farming to be a profession, and indeed it doesn’t make sense for it to be. A profession is something you train for years for, it’s things like a blacksmith or alchemist, a farmer (at least in the time most D&D settings are set in) wasn’t something you studied to be, most of the time you started work on a farm as soon as you were old enough, and most of the time, it was unskilled, low paid work. Therefore, from now on a commoner will refer to a laborer working on a farm.

Therefore, since most of the settings population would have been laborers working on farms, it makes sense to develop a wealth system that is central to this. The monthly income of a commoner, for the sake of simplicity, will be 100SC.

Due to the training involved in professions, they would have been paid more for their services, years of training to be an armourer or soldier would give roughly the following. Income is also a product of experience.
Armorer - 200SC per month
Master Armorer – 300SC per month
Soldier (low ranking) - 150SC per month
Soldier (high ranking) – 250SC per month

Assuming that a master armorer is a level 4 commoner, and a high ranking soldier is a level 3 warrior, this implies that:
Level 1 Adventurer – 200SC per month
Level 3 Adventurer – 300SC per month
Level 6 Adventurer – 550SC per month
These are average monthly income figures for an ‘I spend all my time killing bandits and monsters in caves’ type adventurer, and don’t take into account the extra loot they would collect while doing these jobs, which would in some cases significantly increase their income.

As the armorer and soldier are using the profession skill for their income, it will need to be slightly reworked:
 - Instead of receiving half the result of the check in gold pieces, receive 4x the check in SC.
 - If the character has no ranks in the applicable Profession skill, only receive double the check result.
This results in a level 1 commoner with 4 ranks in Profession[ArmorSmith] receiving around 52SC per week, and a level 4 commoner with 17 ranks getting 76SC (assuming he spent his stat increase and feats wisely).

[Grez]

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[Grez]

Time permitting I will try and get this finished as soon as possible as well as implement any suggestions.

[phaedrusxy]

I understand some of your gripes, and yes the economic system of D&D is quite terrible. I think there are a couple of flaws in your reasoning, though:

The value of the object, which currently is based on the usefulness of the item, will be rescaled to represent the time and effort taken to obtain or make.

But... but... that's exactly how prices are determined for things in the real world!! Supply and demand determine the price of things, not how much time and materials went into them. Of course, time and materials have some impact on this, but if there is a glut of things on the market, they often can and will be sold for less than what it cost to make them! Look at the current housing market in the US, for example. You literally cannot build an equivalent new house for the same money that you can buy many existing houses of equal quality and size.

The plate mail thing also alludes to another problem: the armors in D&D are terribly balanced against each other in terms of usefulness. There are basically two ways to address this: fix them all (which is insanely tedious, and mostly useless) or give every single armor in each category (light, medium, heavy) exactly the same stats. The differences in name and description would be reduced to "fluff" only. While some may object to this, I doubt most people would care at all. In reality, you rarely ever see anyone wear anything other than maybe 3 or 4 armors in the game at all, because all of the other ones are obviously inferior.

And finally, what about all of the ways there are to totally break the economy in D&D (many of them provided by spells)? Like for example Wall of Iron + Fabricate to make suits of plate mail (not to mention Wish, Flesh to Salt, etc). How are you going to deal with those? They are a far bigger problem overall for the game than the fact that all countries use the same currency, etc.

If you haven't, I'd also highly suggest reading through the Dungeonomicon, especially the parts on economics.

[Tarkisflux]

You can be more explicit about the economic disconnect and item pricing if you want. You can retain a smith for 4 sp a day, and have him craft whatever you want for that price plus the cost of raw materials. Unless you want him to craft something specific, and then it jumps to the full price of the item. It takes about 1 1/2 weeks to craft a greatsword per SRD craft (which isn't actually a bad time frame if you're going for realism, though you would normally be able to do other things at the same time), and that costs you about 4.2 gp. Toss in the cost of raw materials, which are likely lower than the recommended 1/3 of the weapon's final price, and you're still substantially lower than the 50gp selling price for the item. But you're still supposed to pay the smith the extra, for some reason.

Medieval town smiths had to equip the guards, the nobles, and do all sorts of other things that get ignored. Some of these they might get paid for, but it's just as likely that they just had to do it for free. But fantasy smiths also have to pay taxes, repair their stuff after the town gets smashed by monsters or careless adventurers, and they may need to pitch in to hire adventurers to help the town (if that doesn't just come out of their taxes in the first place). And those things cost money, potentially lots of it. But that also means that adventurers generally have lots of money. So here's an alternate way to look at the cost of that item. It's an "adventurer tax". It's a bullshit cost, but everyone knows that it is and they pay it because that's how the world works. But regular people in a town don't pay those prices, and an adventurer who became well known and respected in the city probably wouldn't pay them either. An adventurer who was lord of the city probably wouldn't pay at all. But these adventurers are also expected to have huge piles of cash on hand to pay adventurers for any assistance that the town needs that they can't cover themselves.

I don't know if that resolves the economy concerns for you or not, but it's probably worth considering where else their money goes, what other obligations living in a medieval fantasy town would place on a person, and whether the people in the town are actually paying the prices indicated.

[Grez]

Wow, re-reading this the following morning makes me feel like a bit of an idiot (serves me right for rushing that out in one night). I realize that the DMG2 has rules for businesses but they are far from in depth and the cost of setting up a business is so high that no one under level 10 could do it (which raises the question of how low level NPCs do it).

Yes, supply/demand effects everything, if an item is useful people will demand it, but if that same item is cheap and easy to make then a lot of people will try and make it. While a weapon is useful to an adventurer, if the number of smiths (say 1 to every 50 people) couldn't meet the demand and had to jack up their prices to the SRD type prices then lots more people would want to become smiths. What I will likely do is some kind of weighting factor, where each group of item (swords, potions, etc) would be subject to pseudo supply and demand using a similar system to the currency, with story events like war modifying the score of certain types of items.

And while the existence of spells like wish and fabricate would break the game economy, this is mostly intended for E6/T5, where spells as powerful as wish don't even remotely exist (except by gods) and fabricate would take a group of the most experienced wizards an entire day to cast.

I am ignoring the fact that a lot of small towns would have been under the feudal system, lets just assume for now that everyone is under a slightly more modern system (yes, I know).

I was considering something similar to what Tarkisflux suggested, smiths would have made mostly generic items like short swords and spears, and the because of this the price of those items would have been far less then what the SRD says, but weapons like great swords would have been far less common and more expensive. Also, the quality of the common swords and spears would have been far from ideal. What I will do is make the price and quality of a few common weapons very low, armies wouldn't have been too concerned with the quality of the weapon, only that they could buy X of them in Y time, and the characteristics would represent that (might give it something like a -1 to hit). If adventurers want a better sword then they can pay extra for various degrees of quality (ie, normal, masterwork, etc).

Also, with E6/T5 obviously armor is far more important, and the AC of armor like chain mail and plate would be worth the relatively huge price as access to magical weapons and armor, as well as the max BAB of +6 means that your plate is far more effective then what it is in standard 3.5e.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

Look at movie theater popcorn and designer jeans, both are marked up about 1000%. 

What would you recommend for a merchant that sets up shop in or near an infamously difficult dungeon and charges exorbitant fees for adventuring supplies?  Maybe he charges a fee to exchange currency as well.

[Grez]

Look at movie theater popcorn and designer jeans, both are marked up about 1000%. 

That's two extremes, one a result of a monopoly (only popcorn you got in OUR shop is allowed in our theater), the other a result of modern society in general placing value on a trademark rather then the quality of the product. The latter example obviously wouldn't happen in a typical fantasy world.

What would you recommend for a merchant that sets up shop in or near an infamously difficult dungeon and charges exorbitant fees for adventuring supplies?  Maybe he charges a fee to exchange currency as well.

[sarcasm]
That he also puts guards at the entrance to the dungeon who confiscate all weapons not brought at his shop, and charge exorbitantly high prices for mundane items and popcorn. Then, once the adventurers are dead, send in a more experienced group to loot their bodies and resell the items in the shop. Hell, he could even from an agreement with whatever is in the dungeon to supply them with a constant stream of ill-equipped adventurers if he could have the items back and they keep the money the adventurers had.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously though, if the characters are experienced enough to venture into the dungeon then they would either come prepared or just murder the shopkeeper and take the items. And why did the shopkeeper set up the shop there anyway? he is limiting his clientele to a very small group, as well as putting himself in extreme danger.

I get your point though, how about if I add a system where, say, a general store in a frontier town would charge more for an item then a store in the city its made? Mundane goods like food would receive only a small increase and specialized goods like tools would have a larger markup

Fees to convert currency is a given, it would take people all of 5 seconds to realize they could make money as a currency trader.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I await the day that simplified versions of
Farmville, MafiaWars, or similar to filter down.

But they work best with what Frank/K (PhaeXY's link above)
call the Turnip Economy.  Technically, you could re-do it at
each "tier", with floaty crossovers all the way up.  Honestly, I
have no idea what a Super-Hero economy is supposed to be like.

[dman11235]

There are two things that you really need to look at with regards to wealth issues.  First off, magic exists, and magic items are priced horribly (pay gold for a mechanical benefit?  Yes please).  Second off, magic exists, and breaks the energy equations (use magic=get gold.  Period.  No energy expenditure.  Planets become black holes eventually, from sheer amount of iron created with Wall of Iron).

The first problem is very easily fixed: magic items are level based, not wealth based.  It's not hard creating a new system to do that (and one exists, which I use, created by bauglir).  Gold now becomes relatively meaningless to player power, and only serves to show wealth.  Use it to....build a castle!  Retire!  Buy an air boat!  Pay an army!  Be creative!  However, it is independent of level, and these things will not be scaled through adventuring.  Some adventures will pay, but no more than the risk allows (well, more, but not significantly).  Gold from adventures will depend on the adventure, and it will actually be fine to just leave items with those you kill, if they aren't worth keeping.  This has an added side effect of making VoPov actually not a bad idea, since the level-dependent benefits can work with it too.

the second problem is harder to fix, since it relies on fixing the way magic works.  It's no secret that magic sucks right now (it's broken.  It's just broken.), so you're looking at an entire remake of half the core mechanics of the game.  You can fix it merely by saying "nothing created through magic stays indefinitely", but this requires new rules.  Probably for each individual spell.  So keep that in mind.

PREEDIT: I was writing this post 5 hours ago, and had to stop until now.  I have no idea where I was going with this, and I think I may have said everything I need to.  No guarantee though.  Also: not addressing anything that was posted after that time.

[phaedrusxy]

The first problem is very easily fixed: magic items are level based, not wealth based.  It's not hard creating a new system to do that (and one exists, which I use, created by bauglir).

I created a system like this for the games I run as well, but I still have item prices as kind of a backwards compatibility issue and way of ranking how powerful things are (and what level characters they are appropriate for).

[dman11235]

bauglir based his off of a percentage of the item's price, so they stayed level appropriate.  Also adjusted some because, well, they needed to be anyways.

Random things before the meat of my post:

The latter example obviously wouldn't happen in a typical fantasy world.

Ha!  Nice one.  Oh, wait, you're serious?  Okay, if you're bringing real-world economics into the campaign world this will absolutely happen.

call the Turnip Economy.

You mean like entry number 5?

The meat:

When creating an economy, you have to take into account a ridiculous number of factors, to the point of impossibility (there was a famous incident where someone made a computer program to trade stocks.  It did well, until we realized that it caused a massive crash because people are stupid).  Adding magic to the equation makes things even more complex.  So let's tackle the magic first.

Magic comes in a number of varieties, but we are only concerned with two: service, and creation.  Service magic involves anything that does not violate (directly anyways) the laws of thermodynamics.  These are things like divination, evocation, calling/summoning, that sort of thing.  These manipulate existing energy.  The creation type is almost exclusively Conjuration, and involves spells with a duration of Instantaneous.

They break laws, by creating matter.  These MUST go.  I suggest making them temporary durations.  No being should be able to create matter, until you have Divine Rank 16+.  Maybe 20+.  It's too powerful of an ability, and breaks the universe.  Alternatively, lower level deities might be able to, but on pain of death by a higher deity.  Pun-Pun exists, and exists as an arbiter of the universe (he can do it, and he don't care).  Another issue along the same lines is the make-up of the universe.

This is more important than you think, because it determines how much energy is available in the universe.  If the universe is infinitely big, then there is infinite energy.  If not, then the universe is likely much like ours.  There's a number of things to consider, so keep that in mind.  My personal favorite is that the universe is not unlike ours(and not infinite), made up of planets circling stars with similar physics to our own.  However, at various points throughout the universe there are openings to other planes, and these let elements spill out, and allow travel without magic into the other realms.  Each realm overlaps spacially, but not physically.  So traveling in each realm is 1:1 regardless of the realm.  The outer planes do not exist.  The minor planes (deity specific) do, but have no opening usually.  Astral no longer exists, and Ethereal is not changed (it's a 7th elemental plane, effectively, and serves as a glue for everything, and is responsible for the portals being open.  No portals are open to it).  The only places that portals exists are on planets/stars/etc, and this is because they formed as a result of portals.  That is my basic view of how the D&D universe should be handled.  This means that there is not an infinite amount of energy (and thus wealth), so things can actually have value.  It also means that the energy planes are very important to the daily life of people, and meld together nicely.  If you choose a model that has infinite energy, you have infinite wealth with a couple easy tricks.  Broken economy, yadda yadda.

After fixing those spells and taking into account the make-up of the universe, you now have the basis for an economy taking magic into account.  Now for the specifics.  I'm going to assume magic items are using bauglir's version, because it's just better.  You no longer have the massive amount of gold necessary for high-level adventuring, and Sunder becomes useful (Yes, it actually does).  You can now price items based on quality, usefulness in the NPC's life (because they are setting the price), and rarity.  Magic enters the equation, but here's the beautiful thing: nothing changes.  Service magic is just that: a service.  You pay based on the time taken to do the thing, and the resources necessary to do it.  It changes the make up of rarity, but food is no longer a guarantee for free (conjuration no longer persists), and iron is as rare as it used to be.  There's the risk of illusions tricking people, but that's a crime now, and not a guarantee.  Now for a list of things that will change, and ways society may change to accommodate them.

Labor is easier: you can use magic to make certain tasks easier.  People will go to healers to heal them, and it will cost more money than most people make in a year, due to labor/demand/cost.  Remember than healing spells usually just heal damage, not disease, so they won't help with sickness most of the time.  This should keep the peasants down, and the medieval flavor of the setting.

Unskilled labor is less useful in some areas, still useful in others: Assuming a logarithmic function of number/level, then you'll have very few people capable of casting even 4th level spells, so builders are still valuable.  Casters aiding them, are also useful.  Castles will not be as hard to build, but harder to break.

Grr, I forgot the rest of them again...