Your Money's No Good Here

[Dean]

I've thought for a long time that we could fix some wealth by level problems by making different forms of money come online at different points. The Wish Economy does something like this by separating everything into things that can be acquired with money and things that can't. I think there could be more categories than the Wish Economy's binary system and I will try to spell out such a system here and you all tell me if you think it will snap in half.

My New Money System for Great Justice

There are three kinds of funds in the world that anyone cares about, each with their own economy. Gold, Iliaster, and Mana.

GOLD
What is Gold: Gold is pretty and shiny and people naturally like it. Peasants have agreed to trade things for it on the assumption that that agreement will still hold true tomorrow.
The Gold Economy: Everything peasants can make or do is a part of the gold economy. Adventurers should be a part of it for the D&D equivalent of levels 1-4. PC's here track how much gold they have and if they buy a sword they mark off the 15 gold that it costs. PC's in this economy take the gold they are paid and buy better swords, horses, and gear. But gold can't buy magic items in this system so if the PC's come into truly fantastic wealth it doesn't break the game because once they have the sword they want and the horse they want they can really only spend the rest on swag and that's actually good for the game. By the time your PC's are 8th level it will be assumed that they have infinity dollars and have all the Castles and mink coats that could be purchased from people who value gold. The nice thing about this is that around that level you can do the "Big Score" plotline where the PC's finally kill a Dragon, hit the big leagues, and have a billion gold to cart home. Everyone feels like a big success and the game considers that right on schedule.

ILIASTER
What is Iliaster: Iliaster is crystallized magic energy. It naturally looks a lot like uncut diamonds and has a weak magic aura. Iliaster is required to make magic items. The process of creating a Flaming Sword requires one Iliaster crystal to do it. Bigger items require more crystals. Shattering or draining magical items will net you half the Iliaster it took to make them rounded up. Iliaster is also used to form magical architecture but that crafting process takes much longer and once the Iliaster is used there it's gone.
The Iliaster Economy: Iliaster is the trade good of the mid levels because it makes you better. It can be made by high level spells or rituals but the people who can do those things won't care about flaming swords anymore so for most mid level adventurers Iliaster is very much worth fighting for. You take magic items off your enemies and get the sweet bling inside so you can eventually turn it into Helms of Telepathy. Iliaster wouldn't have a set gold value because there would be no stable market for it as basically anytime you trade Iliaster for gold you are trading a piece of real ultimate power for beer money. An Iliaster piece might be roughly valued at 1000 gold pieces but that's for when some Peasant finds some crystals over an eaten adventurers corpse. An actual Adventurer in this economy works only for Iliaster because every piece he gets gains him a little more vertical power. The Iliaster economy will end once PC's hit the D&D equivalent of the 13th to 16th level range. At this point they will just be able to make their own Iliaster and will be assumed to be decked out in whatever magic gear pleases them.

MANA
What is Mana: Mana is soul energy and it's as much something you have as something you are. Powerful creatures gain Mana as a force wrapped around their soul. Anyone with a Mana score of 1 or higher is immune to natural aging and natural disease. Mana is generally immaterial in nature and has no natural physical form.
The Mana Economy: Mana can be given or taken from someone with a Mana score. Giving it is as easy as willing it to be given and taking it requires killing the person who has it. Mana can be expended in the creation of artifacts (in a system that doesn't exist yet) or the creation of other dimensions as if by a permanent casting of create demiplane. 10 Mana (about enough to make one artifact) can also be turned into a physical object called a Mana Diamond used almost exclusively by Gods for the services of other Gods, perhaps to secure century long pacts between rival deities. Mana score would gradually increase very slowly in beings that had it over the centuries but that wouldn't really impact a given campaign.

So for each stretch of levels there would be a resource the party was gathering and a resource they greatly desired. The parties resources would look something like this.

• Levels 1-4: Gold
  Levels 5-8: Iliaster and Lots of Gold
  Levels 9-12: Lots of Iliaster and Infinite Gold
  Levels 13-16: Mana and Infinite Iliaster
  Levels 17-20: Lots of Mana and Infinite Everything Else

Which means the things that could be bought with and crafted with each resource would be
Gold: Mundane gear and weapons, construction, and peasant work. services from low level PC's/NPC'S/Adventurers.
Iliaster: Minor and Major Magic gear and weapons, Magic Architecture, services from Mid level PC's/NPC's/Adventurers.
Mana: Artifacts and Artifact Weapons, Planes, services from from high level adventurers, Gods, and Outsiders because that's probably the only people that have it.

[Koumei]

Mana, you say?


I approve.

[Sashi]

Shattering or draining magical items will net you half the Iliaster it took to make them rounded up

I've never quite understood why it's so important to make magic items only worth half their value if you're trying to turn them into other items. I can see some argument that finding magic items feels more "special" if you lose half their value by grinding them up to make the item you actually want, but I don't know that the actual item economy benefits.

Otherwise it makes no sense for Flame Swords to exist. 16th level characters don't care about Flaming Swords, they're going to use thier Iliaster-crafting abilities to make Vorpal Swords, and nobody's going to break down a value 10 Vorpal Sword so they can make five value 1 Flaming Swords, that's terrible business. So is the source of flaming swords just stupid people?

Also, how does Iliaster work with regards to consumables?

An Iliaster piece might be roughly valued at 1000 gold pieces but that's for when some Peasant finds some crystals over an eaten adventurers corpse.

How about if Iliaster is actually essence of magic stored in gemstones? Then the GP value of the Iliaster is just the GP value of the stone it's stored in. You can store more Iliaster in better quality crystals. So "one Iliaster" pretty much boils down to the amount of power that can be stored in a rough flawed diamond.

Is your idea of "artifact" different from mine? I feel like to you it means "quite powerful magic item" wheras to me it means "campaign defining magic item" like a spelljammer helm or a dragonorb. Regardless, Mana needs more uses. It especially needs a reason to build up giant piles of it without parting it out into artifacts at the first opportunity, because Gods and Demon Princes totally do that.

[Dean]

I've never quite understood why it's so important to make magic items only worth half their value if you're trying to turn them into other items.

The loss is there because an item you'll find will never be as optimal for your character as the most optimal item you could make or have made. So when you find a Guisarme with a Speed enhancement your option is to either use it or refund it for half its value in Iliaster that you can put towards the Dancing Greatsword you really want. Using things as you find them is more cost effective but will have less synergy with your character.

it makes no sense for Flame Swords to exist. 16th level characters don't care about Flaming Swords, they're going to use thier Iliaster-crafting abilities to make Vorpal Swords

Flaming Swords are your intro magic items. Their Iliaster cost is 1, 2 if someone is crafting it for you cause you have to pay the Crafter and they are in the Iliaster economy too. You are correct that 16th level characters will have badass magic weapons and not intro magic weapons but intro magic weapons will still exist because if you hand a 6th level character his first Iliaster he's gonna make something out of it. It would be a rare person that would hoard every shard they ever got until they had enough to make some 60 Iliaster Vorpal Speed weapon. There is no need for that because you reclaim half rounded up for exactly that reason. Turning one Iliaster into a Flaming sword has lost you nothing because when you reclaim it later it's still worth one.

Also, how does Iliaster work with regards to consumables?

Consumables are very complicated and I don't really have a satisfying answer for what they should do. A part of me believes that potions should be distinctly low level effects and just remain in the gold economy. That way a cure potion or an anti-poison potion is something the peasantry would find really valuable but that real adventurers just wouldn't care much about.

How about if Iliaster is actually essence of magic stored in gemstones? Then the GP value of the Iliaster is just the GP value of the stone it's stored in.

You've missed the point. The 1000 gold value is a wild benchmark. There is no stable gold value on Iliaster because a 9th level character would gladly give you 50 times that amount because gold has no value to mid level characters and more magic items do. So there really is no stable Iliaster for gold market because any market that temporarily existed is a result of freak circumstances and would immediately dry up. The 1000 gold guess is just for like....down on their luck adventurers with drug habits and peasants who find pieces on corpses. It's just an agreed upon random amount to reclaim any bits that accidentally fall out of the economy.

Is your idea of "artifact" different from mine? I feel like to you it means "quite powerful magic item" wheras to me it means "campaign defining magic item" like a spelljammer helm or a dragonorb. Regardless, Mana needs more uses. It especially needs a reason to build up giant piles of it without parting it out into artifacts at the first opportunity, because Gods and Demon Princes totally do that.

I don't find the Dragon Orbs or Shadowstaff so powerful that I'm worried about a 16th level character having them. They are good and cool but at that level the game doesn't make sense so if you can fight a Demon Lord and make a Saint's Mace out of his mojo that sounds like a decent high level adventure to me. That being said I agree that there should be more to having lots of Mana than just being able to make tons of sweet gear but that was encroaching on designing a Divine Rank system I wasn't ready for.

[TheFlatline]

Shattering or draining magical items will net you half the Iliaster it took to make them rounded up

I've never quite understood why it's so important to make magic items only worth half their value if you're trying to turn them into other items. I can see some argument that finding magic items feels more "special" if you lose half their value by grinding them up to make the item you actually want, but I don't know that the actual item economy benefits.

Because with few exceptions, there is no such thing as perfect conservation of mass in manufacturing. There's always loss. It's not just a concept, it's almost an axiom. If it costs 1000 Iliaster to make a vorpal sword and you break it down into it's components, the magic still inherent in the vorpal sword is not going to be equal to 100% of the magic that went into making it. Magic was used/lost in the manufacturing process.

Think of recycling. Yeah, you can recycle that aluminum can and get the same amount of aluminum back, but you've used all kinds of energy that has been lost irretrievably in the recycling process to get that lump of aluminum back.

In game mechanics terms, it means that items that exist are intrinsically more valuable than the raw materials you get back. Same idea for why you don't get 100% of the list price of any mundane loot back when you sell it.

I don't know if I'd set the ratio to 50%. That'd be a mechanics thing. I could see it being lower or higher depending on how stingy you want to be with magic items. If you only get 10% back, then you have to destroy a LOT of magic items to make that one bigger item, and it might be better just to settle for something less.

[Sashi]

Flaming Swords are your intro magic items. Their Iliaster cost is 1, 2 if someone is crafting it for you cause you have to pay the Crafter and they are in the Iliaster economy too. You are correct that 16th level characters will have badass magic weapons and not intro magic weapons but intro magic weapons will still exist because if you hand a 6th level character his first Iliaster he's gonna make something out of it. It would be a rare person that would hoard every shard they ever got until they had enough to make some 60 Iliaster Vorpal Speed weapon. There is no need for that because you reclaim half rounded up for exactly that reason. Turning one Iliaster into a Flaming sword has lost you nothing because when you reclaim it later it's still worth one.

You misunderstand. Where do these single crystals of Iliaster come from at all?

If high level characters are the only source of iliaster, but also have no incentive to flood the market with flame swords and Iliaster crystals, then they're exclusively going to make Vorpal swords and other items for level 14+ characters. You actually should have more Vorpal swords than Flaming Swords. Because Flaming Swords are only made by idiots breaking down vorpal swords in order to make half their value in weaker items.

If conversion is lossless, then it kind of makes sense. Because a Vorpal sword probably has enough Iliaster to kit out an entire 5th level party in starter gear, and that's totally a better use of resources. And it makes sense to establish the Knights of the Round by parting out excalibur into 12 magic swords if the swords can be recombined into Excalibur again.

It's also less of an issue if Iliaster bubbles out of the ground in especially magical areas, and be created by resource-intensive rituals, or refining down body parts of powerful creatures. Then starter gear is crafted by skilled blacksmiths who get one or two pieces of iliaster in their entire lives.

[Zaranthan]

You misunderstand. Where do these single crystals of Iliaster come from at all?

If high level characters are the only source of iliaster, but also have no incentive to flood the market with flame swords and Iliaster crystals

As it turns out, they do. A level 13 wizard might offer a pile of Iliaster as a reward for dealing with some level 10 threat that he doesn't personally have time to handle (because he's got a level 13 situation to deal with but that necromancer is looking to suck up some of his territory and can't be ignored). In turn, a level 10 might offer a handful of I to handle some nearby level 7 threats. Thus, your level 7 dudes go forth, save the day, get paid, and are ecstatic to go commission some shiny new flaming swords off some other level 7 dudes.

[spongeknight]

You misunderstand. Where do these single crystals of Iliaster come from at all?

If high level characters are the only source of iliaster, but also have no incentive to flood the market with flame swords and Iliaster crystals

As it turns out, they do. A level 13 wizard might offer a pile of Iliaster as a reward for dealing with some level 10 threat that he doesn't personally have time to handle (because he's got a level 13 situation to deal with but that necromancer is looking to suck up some of his territory and can't be ignored). In turn, a level 10 might offer a handful of I to handle some nearby level 7 threats. Thus, your level 7 dudes go forth, save the day, get paid, and are ecstatic to go commission some shiny new flaming swords off some other level 7 dudes.

Also, sometimes the lower level dudes just die when adventuring and then the Iliaster they had is left in dungeons that only other low level dudes bother to plunder. Plus monsters are probably carrying it too- dragons and giants and beholders and whatever are all on the Iliaster economy, so when level 6 dudes go take out a giant they get his Iliaster to make their low-level swords with. It seems perfectly logical to me.

[Korgan0]

But where does Iliaster come from in the first place? Do dragons shit it out? Do wizards make it? Does it spontaneously appear after making terrible jokes?

[RadiantPhoenix]

But where does Iliaster come from in the first place? Do dragons shit it out? Do wizards make it? Does it spontaneously appear after making terrible jokes?

It spontaneously generates in the presence of appropriate-leveled characters who don't have enough of it.

[codeGlaze]

Does it spontaneously appear after making terrible jokes?

This.

[spongeknight]

But where does Iliaster come from in the first place? Do dragons shit it out? Do wizards make it? Does it spontaneously appear after making terrible jokes?

That doesn't matter much. It can be handwaved with an explanation like "Really powerful spells leave magic residue that crystallizes into Iliaster over time" or even "Iliaster forms naturally from the ambient magic of the world." It just has to be a process that takes too long for PCs to wait for instead of adventuring for it.

[Sashi]

Once you get to the next tier, the prior tier is supposed to be irrelevant. So probably anyone with at least 10 Mana is capable of crystallizing Iliaster out of the air, or forging illiaster directly into items they craft.

[Dean]

I would say that yeah, people with some Mana reserve can just make Il with a little time and also that it crops up occasionally around magically powerful sites or locations. That way if you find and claim the Arcane Nexus you also net a few free Il embedded in the nearby cavern walls. For the most part though Iliaster would come from higher level people.

[Omegonthesane]

I would say that yeah, people with some Mana reserve can just make Il with a little time and also that it crops up occasionally around magically powerful sites or locations. That way if you find and claim the Arcane Nexus you also net a few free Il embedded in the nearby cavern walls. For the most part though Iliaster would come from higher level people.

Plus, in-universe characters don't have an arbitrary end point after which they stop caring about accruing shit, so you don't have to question whether it's worth PCs doing that.

[hogarth]

This still has the same problem as Frank's system: if by "Infinite Gold" you really mean infinite, then one person can fuck up the whole world's gold economy, but if by "Infinite Gold" you mean "lots of gold", then some people or organizations in the world will be willing to trade 1 Iliaster for (big number) Gold, so all you've done is effectively create a million-GP bill (which is not particularly revolutionary).

[Seerow]

How about if Iliaster is actually essence of magic stored in gemstones? Then the GP value of the Iliaster is just the GP value of the stone it's stored in. You can store more Iliaster in better quality crystals. So "one Iliaster" pretty much boils down to the amount of power that can be stored in a rough flawed diamond.

This actually got me thinking about the parallels between the OP and two different magic systems from Brandon Sanderson.

If going with your suggestion, then Iliaster would be effectively equivalent of Stormlight from the Stormlight Archives (where the common currency is spheres with gemstones in the middle. These gemstones get infused with stormlight during a Highstorm, and infused spheres are used to power various kinds of magic).

The Mana concept actually reminds me of Warbreaker. In Warbreaker it's called a BioChromatic Breath, and the main difference is that literally everyone is born with 1. Truly desperate people sell theirs for large sums of money, and rich people buy them from others. Rather than 1 Breath = Immortality, there's instead several plateaus that once you have collected that many Breaths you gain access to new powers.

Just something to think about.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Seerow, are those books any good? I love Sanderson's ideas, but goddamn if it didn't take me forever to slog through the first Mistborn book.

[Seerow]

Seerow, are those books any good? I love Sanderson's ideas, but goddamn if it didn't take me forever to slog through the first Mistborn book.

Way of Kings (book one of the Stormlight Archives) is my favorite book to date, and definitely worth picking up. It has a slow start, but once it hits its stride, it's really good.

Warbreaker I'm not quite as enthusiastic about. I liked it, but I preferred the Mistborn series to it and it's not really a book that has enticed me to rereading it. So if you had trouble with Mistborn I'm not sure how you'll feel about it. It really depends on what about Mistborn in particular made it seem like a slog.

Edit: If you are interested in checking it out but don't want to spend money/check the library, Warbreaker is apparently available online for free under the creative commons license. http://www.brandonsanderson.com/page/20 ... -Downloads

[Dean]

This still has the same problem as Frank's system: if by "Infinite Gold" you really mean infinite, then one person can fuck up the whole world's gold economy, but if by "Infinite Gold" you mean "lots of gold", then some people or organizations in the world will be willing to trade 1 Iliaster for (big number) Gold, so all you've done is effectively create a million-GP bill (which is not particularly revolutionary).

Yeah "Infinite" in this case meant lots and lots and that you can make more at will. The million-gp bill isn't a concern I think because there just isn't much you can buy with gold that a high level target would care about. While it is certainly possible that there will be someone out there with some Il sometime that will let you buy it for gold it wouldn't be enough to sustain any market on.

The flooding the market thing actually is a problem that I didn't have any elegant solution for. If 9th level PC's can make NI gold and 13th level PC's can make NI Iliaster then you could create a situation where a party of 16th level PC's said "We want to buy everything in the world, pay every commoner double what he's getting now to work for us, pay every adventurer double what he's getting now to work for us". The response to that would then either be rapid inflation of the world's economy or people showing up to smash the parties chain binding Efreet factory.

[JonSetanta]

You'd think Efreeti would declare interplanar jihad against the prime material plane after a while...

[Sashi]

The flooding the market thing actually is a problem that I didn't have any elegant solution for. If 9th level PC's can make NI gold and 13th level PC's can make NI Iliaster then you could create a situation where a party of 16th level PC's said "We want to buy everything in the world, pay every commoner double what he's getting now to work for us, pay every adventurer double what he's getting now to work for us". The response to that would then either be rapid inflation of the world's economy or people showing up to smash the parties chain binding Efreet factory.

There's always the problem of the Lawful-Stupid paladin who just gallivants around the countryside handing out fat stacks of cash to every Tim the Crap-Covered farmer he sees.

Since the goal of "infinite gold" is that PCs don't have to worry about running out of equipment that doesn't require Illiaster to make. I think this means an abstracted "wealth" system that focuses on backgrounds and contacts more than bags of endless gold or chain-binding Efreeti.

[Orion]

You'd think Efreeti would declare interplanar jihad against the prime material plane after a while...

I'm pretty sure Efreeti aren't Muslim.

[Dr_Noface]

only god is all-knowing

[Wiseman]

and with infinite wishes, it's not like anyone can really win against them either.