cause the plane of earth contains infinite gold, only thing keeping the price stable is it's hard to get.

The economy in D&D isn't well thought out. Just like a lot of other things. Mostly I think it's an artifact of increasing power level.

the only thing that's expensive is dragon hide stuff, unlike gold where you turn around and find it, you have to "ask politely" to get a dragon to give up it's hide.

The designers didn't put enough thought in it. I think it went along the lines of "hm, what could be accepted as a universal currency in a medieval setting? something sought by all nations alike... oh, right, gold! that's good enough".

>>317025
But D&D isn't medieval. It's classical.

>>317025
but their are more valuable metals to make stuff from that are also more common. platinum, mithril, adamantine.

>>317032
Is it, now?

>>317041
>When people are asked to name a historical point that D&D most closely represents, they’ll usually say something like “The Middle Ages”, or perhaps a date between 1000 AD and 1500 in Europe. Truth be told, to find a historical period which has a social setup anything like D&D, you’re going to have to go back. Way back. D&D represents a period in history that is most closely identifiable with the Iron Age: the landscape is dotted with tribes and aspiring empires, the wilderness is largely unexplored, and powerful individuals and small groups can take over an area without having a big geopolitical hubbub about it.
>The source material for the social setting of D&D is not Hans Christian Andersen, it’s Homer’s The Iliad and Caesar’s The GallicWars. In the backdrop of early historical empire building, crimes that modern humans shake their heads at the barbarity of are common place – even among the heroes. D&D at its core is about breaking into other peoples’ homes, possibly killing the residents, and taking their stuff home with you in a sack. And in the context of the period, that is acceptable behavior for a hero.
-http://turing.bard.edu/~mk561/frank_k_0.5.1.pdf

Gold has a pretty darn high value, as you can see if you look at the costs of some normal stuff a peasant would want to buy. It's just that the PCs are usually raiding the shit from dead cities and dungeons, where there's a lot of it.

The gold does have high value, if you measure it via the prices of "peasant goods". It's just that player characters, even at level 1, _start out rich and get richer_.

This of course conflicts terribly with the "poor farmer's son out to find his fortune archetype, which, by strict reading of the rules, isn't really possible in D&D. People still use it because they don't stop and think about what 100 gp means in the context of things a non-PC might buy.

(That, and D&D economy - any version of it - isn't really very well thought out. Already in OD&D edition I was frustrated by how the XP system revolved around getting a shitload of money in every adventure, yet there was never anything good to spend it on, so we ended up literally throwing money and gems away as soon as we got out of the dungeon.)

>>317048
Not in my games. In my setting, human heroes are pretty much aristocrats while peasants are filthy, stupid and deformed creatures (insufficient diet) stuck in cicle of poverty who exist only to be used and abused by heroic class which sees them as something lower than animals. Thanks to their bad diet no peasant can possibly rise abowe his station in life as even the weakest hero will fuck his shit.

Allotter 2011/05/24(Tue)13:35 No. 7055 ID: 677003
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I remember when my halfling bard hired on a few other party members who had no clue what they were doing for 30 silver a week to be my bodyguards. They of course agreed, not realizing that I just suckered them into a 3 gp per week contract. When an adventurer could easily pull in 200 gold for a job. I of course deigned to gift them with a few of our more 'mystifying' (read: unidentified) items as compensation when they put their heads together and did the math.

Of course, part of the problem is simply transporting all of these precious metals. We had one haul at a necromancer's lair in a graveyard where we had almost 600cp, 440sp, and 50 gp. Simply transporting more than a man's weight in metals through a dungeon is rather mind boggling when the place was designed to be difficult to reach in the first place.

I decided to store most of my wealth as precious gems, trade goods, or magical items. Consider that most magical items should 'not' really have a price in gold.

What monetary value can be placed on a crown crafted from the teeth of a dragon which lets you speak with the authority of a king and shoot rainbows from your eyes? (+3 CHA, Colorspray 3/day.) What's the demand for magic carpets or a ring of 3 wishes?

You could perhaps trade it for the lordship of a city, or the hand of a lady (attached or not, your choice.) But there simply won't be 'enough' liquid currency to pay for such treasures even were they for sale to wandering troublemakers and vagabonds. Even a shopkeep wouldn't sell such things as he could make more money simply using them and a little buisness sense than selling them to someone who's probably going to die to deamons in a labyrinth.

>>317046
yea... assuming an uneducated laborer makes 2$ a day and a blacksmith makes 100$ a day then a gold is somewhere around 60-80$. PCs are walking in a zone whose economy is equivalent to the poorer third world countries and carry millions of dollars worth of equipment. BTW, one of the major fuckups of the D&D economy is that an uneducated laborer literally doesn't make enough money to buy enough gruel to feed himself even if he spent all his money on food. They live in a hovel they construct themselves (since they cannot afford to buy a place) and MUST hunt, beg, or work for someone who provides meals. Interestingly this is partially on purpose because the sourcebooks actually SAY that those people "must hunt to supplement their meals".

Anyways, its like a third world country IRL where the highest social ranks in those countries IRL really do have money coming out of every orfice while the common people are poor as shit.

>>317344
The PCs are American Soldiers walking around in rural Pakistan.

>>317344
>money coming out of every orfice
I don't think you can actually do that in DnD. That sounds more like an Exalted thing.

>>317055
get a bag of holding next time.

>>317045

already got this started, but here. Enjoy (one of) the best (series of) thread(s) from the official wizards D&D boards in the glory days of third edition:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Dungeonomicon_%28DnD_Other%29/Economicon

>>317352
pakistan works for a setting, but american soldier only works for the wealth level of 1st level characters. by 10th level they are walking around with a 2 million dollar gun. The US army wouldn't even pay 5k per soldier for top tier body armor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Skin
>Dragon Skin has been worn by some civilian contractors in Iraq, some special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,[4] some SWAT teams,[5] nine generals in Afghanistan,[6][7] bodyguards tasked with protecting generals,[8] and U.S. Secret Service personnel.[9] The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has also purchased Dragon Skin.[10]
Those are the people wearing 5k$ armor in the USA employ. Regular soldiers get body armor that cost at most 500$, sometimes less.
Which in countries where labors make 2$/day is 250 days worth of wages.

Anonymous 2011/08/09(Tue)04:10 No. 7528 ID: 1444d5
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>>317527
>dragon skin
OH BOY HERE WE GO

>>317352
You know what this makes me think?
There's a magic wonderland in the setting where everyone shits money and SHENANIGANS happen.
This country is asshole magic shadowrun and a few thousand miles away you have magic pakistralia.
Guess where the PCs get to start.

Alternate explanation for gold's commonness:
Those goddam alchemists succeeded and now gold has suffered massive inflation.

notBrandX 2011/09/20(Tue)20:44 No. 7631 ID: 30df25
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If your PCs are carrying around 1,000 gp in their backpack, then you're DOING IT WRONG. back in AD&D, 10gp would weigh 1 lbs. In the default campaign setting for D&D 3.5 it's 50gp to the pound. That's still fukkin heavy. It was intended that PCs would carry gemstones, or jewellery with high resale value, instead of coins.

If you want to know what gold pieces are really worth, check their buying power.
- ale, 1 gallon: 2 silver -- ancient-era beer was probably no better than malt liquor, and a 40oz of Colt 45 goes for $2, or $6.40 a gallon
- meals (per day), good: 5 silver -- anything we eat now would seem extravagant by typical D&D standards. Let's assume the adventurers are eating out, not cooking at home, and they probably have two meals a day. $10 a meal for typical USA? $20 then.

2 silver -> $6.40 -> $3.20/silver
5 silver -> $20 -> $4.00/silver
10 silver -> 1 gp -> $32~40/gold I'll say $40 for ease of use.

So 100gp would be like carrying $4000 in your wallet. 100gp buys a carriage, which is the local equivalent to a car without the engine. The "engine" would be another 75gp~200gp, so the local "car" would be $7000~12000.

A basic +1 sword is at least 2,000gp, or $80,000. The "Treasure Values per Encounter" table recommends 300gp per ECL 1 encounter, or $12000 to be split among the standard 4 adventurers.

Anonymous 2011/09/21(Wed)06:23 No. 7632 ID: 30df25
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Sept 2011 gold price: $1800 USD / ounce

Remember that gold is measured in "troy ounces," not avoirdupois ounces used for dry goods. When D&D says '1 pound' they mean '1 avoirdupois pound'.

So 1 avoirdupois pound = 14.583 troy ounces.
1 pound of gold = $26,249 US
1 AD&D gold piece = $2,624 US
1 D&D 3e gold piece = $525 US

So the previous post where 1gp = $40 ? Yeah, D&D has way too much gold in their economy.