Prices

JspecWip · Post by **JspecWip** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:09 am

I 'believe' that all prices should be set according to the players handbook for normal non enchanted items. This includes healing potions, and masterwork items, be they weapons or armour, and this includes all forms of armour, HP and FP.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:44 am

And every item published in a D&D sourcebook should be designed centrally and distributed, so that we don't end up with 3 different versions of ordinary hemp rope, 5 different backpack scripts, and a dozen different herbs of the same name and effect that don't work on the server they were not bought on.

Stormseeker · Post by **Stormseeker** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:17 pm

Okay since nwn2 will be gold only,and we will have some type of trade bar/gem merchant for higher coinnage, my idea is this.
How hard would it be to change prices as to reflect that gold=copper?
Instead of paying 5gp for a meal..it would mean 5cp. Of course we would have to have a good money merchant system. Hmm we could implement a alfa gems that looks like a coin and is stackable. These could reflect silver,gold, and platnium.
Just a idea.

JspecWip · Post by **JspecWip** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:19 pm

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:26 am

So something that would normally cost 10 gold would cost 1000?

NickD · Post by **NickD** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 12:44 am

I've thought about that as well, but ultimately I think it would be too much effort (implementation and constant mental calculations) for relatively little gain. A quick and nasty solution would be to have gold as a floating point variable to 2dp, but I suspect it'll be an integer and not something we can change.

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:04 am

I can just imagin that...

"So, how much for that lovely looking Long Sword +1?" said the Adventurer.

"Oh, it's a bargin if I've ever seen one! Only 1000 gold coins. That's just 1,000,000 copper peices" replied the merchant.

"Ah! That is certainly a bargin! I'll take two!" the adventurer stated, before counting out 2,000,000 copper peices and handing them over to the merchant.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:28 am

I really don't like the idea of a gold piece representing a copper piece (copper standard). You'd always have to do a conversion in your mind (though trivial) and the transaction figures would become astronomical. Even with a silver standard, it's still an ugly way to go about it, I think. It'll surely confuse the living day lights out of new players, though on the plus side, the system would handle itself if we were to do this.

Now, it's entirely possible to work around the gold standard in the game but it'll take work on a number of fronts. It'll require items for copper/silver/gold/platinum, it'll require revised loot scripts (though I think we already intend to introduce our own) so rewards do not include standard gold items, and it'll require a custom currency management system, much like we have now with coin pouches but that also tracks and manages the currency in them as well as handles conversion to/from gold-based Bioware stores to produce proper change. Furthermore, anything LESS than a gold piece will not be something you can have in a Bioware store. It will have to be sold/bought through conversation.

I like the idea of denominations for many reasons, which I won't bother going into here. In fact, I liked the idea so much I even wrote scripts that handled the tracking and management of multiple denominations back when I was fiddling with NWN all by my lonesome. It can be done if we really want it in the game. There was a very good discussion on the Bioware forums some time ago relating to the issues surrounding the gold standard (pity I don't have the link), which would make a very good read for anyone interested in currency.

Dorn · Post by **Dorn** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:14 am

Rotku wrote:I can just imagin that...

"So, how much for that lovely looking Long Sword +1?" said the Adventurer.

"Oh, it's a bargin if I've ever seen one! Only 1000 gold coins. That's just 1,000,000 copper peices" replied the merchant.

"Ah! That is certainly a bargin! I'll take two!" the adventurer stated, before counting out 2,000,000 copper peices and handing them over to the merchant.

hehehe like pulling 1000 gold coins weighting about a ton out is realisitc!! realism is not what we are going for here i'm thinking either way.

For that matter....a magic sword!?

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:03 am

Dorn wrote:For that matter....a magic sword!?

But the tag says "+1," see, right here!

I've seen a coin system implemented where all coins are inventory objects, stackable obviously, with some pretty cool looking faces too. The problem is the ridiculous economy of D&D.

Back in the olden days, we got around this by making gems effectively large currency that could be used for purchases, so you'd have 100 gp gems and 500 gp gems, etc. That was actually canon in 1e. It sure made things easier.

In a coin based system, once you make coins into inventory objects, well you can make them worth whatever you want. So you can have exotic metal coins like mithril and aurumite that are worth 20gp, 100gp, 500 gp each, and thus eliminate the tradebar system entirely, and beneficially since the coins would be usuable at the merchant and one coin would weigh a lot less than a trade bar, plus they are stackable so they'd take up less inventory. Gems are still valuable because of their lack of weight.

Nah, that's *way* too good a system to use in ALFA.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:07 pm

Not only that, but you could introduce regional currency as well, which could really be fun. The important point I think is that it can be done without scaling item prices. What we may not be able to do however is agree on HOW it should be done.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:30 pm

NickD wrote:I've thought about that as well, but ultimately I think it would be too much effort (implementation and constant mental calculations) for relatively little gain. A quick and nasty solution would be to have gold as a floating point variable to 2dp, but I suspect it'll be an integer and not something we can change.

Well, we could simply increase the price of everything by a factor of 100. It would take some imagination from the players RP using a mix of all four coin types, though.

Alternatively, we could have <1gp items cost 1 or 0 gp, and leave it up to the PC to imagine. I'm not quite sure why ALFA has 6gp meals now, thats extremely silly IMO.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:34 pm

Ronan wrote:I'm not quite sure why ALFA has 6gp meals now, thats extremely silly IMO.

Well, if a magic sword costs 2400 gp... it's a function of the economy. Every item you may want to purchase is a money sink.

And because ALFA is designed as a money sink, I really don't see any of this changing, so don't get too worked up about it.

TennysonBull · Post by **TennysonBull** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:15 am

i am not sure that we want to focus our creative efforts on the topic of coinage to converting from a gold standard to a silver or copper standard.

imo, the benefit of going beyond the generic bioware gold piece would be to add regional currencies to help sell the vastness of the realms and the various political divisions between regions and nations.

the various sourcebooks provide the names used for gold coins minted throughout the realms. just using the 3 from the major trading nations:

waterdeep (1gp = 1 dragon)
sembia (1gp = 1 noble)
amn (1gp = 1 danter)

of course if we can add more gold coins and the higher value coins like the toal and harbor moon of waterdeep or the various platinum coins, but even the 3 varieties of gold pieces above would add a considerable amount of complexity to scripting for merchants if we wanted to make merchants value "native" coins more so than "foreign" coins.

JspecWip · Post by **JspecWip** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:04 am

I think the benefit for immersion would be the regional coins but making some more valuable than others wouldn't be worth it.

The major benefit as stated would be the exotic coins, like platinum and what not. Makes carring around alot of coin easier, and having the lesser coins allows the prices to be set as they are in the phb.

The current system punishes people for being IC and holding to Immersion. Boots, cloaks, food, packs, all the rp kinda stuff kills your budget.