D&D 5E D&D Lied To Me. Gp vs Sp
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
MGibster
Legend
I don't know if it's an easy task trying to pin down the value of gold in the past let alone in a fantasy world. A standard gold coin in D&D weighs approximately .02 pounds or close to 9 grams. A gold coin isn't going to be 100% gold, so I'm not sure how much of that 9 grams is actually a gold. A double eagle $20 gold coin minted in the United States in 1849 weighed about 33 grams of which 90% of was gold. A British gold guinea was 8.35 grams though I don't know how much of that was actually gold.
In 1194, King Richard's ransom was 150,000 marks which was 25,500 kg of silver. In D&D terms, that would make 1,275,000 gold pieces a literal king's ransom. If I'm doing my math right, and it's early so there's a good chance I'm not, that's roughly 141 kilograms of gold or 310 moon landing units. At the time the ransom was paid, this was two or three times the amount the Crown made annually. (According to Wikipedia, it was 100,000 pounds of silver but I'm not sure if that's pure silver or how much 150,000 marks would weight. Most sources I see online say 25,500 kg of silver.)
There have been plenty of D&D articles over the years about coins and how to customize them for your campaign. I find it's simply much easier to say gold piece to a player rather than giving it a cute name they likely won't remember. It's also a pain in the rear to try to keep track of different values of gold coins produced by different nations. Ultimately D&D is a game of high adventure and keeping track of some of this stuff just isn't high adventure.
In 1194, King Richard's ransom was 150,000 marks which was 25,500 kg of silver. In D&D terms, that would make 1,275,000 gold pieces a literal king's ransom. If I'm doing my math right, and it's early so there's a good chance I'm not, that's roughly 141 kilograms of gold or 310 moon landing units. At the time the ransom was paid, this was two or three times the amount the Crown made annually. (According to Wikipedia, it was 100,000 pounds of silver but I'm not sure if that's pure silver or how much 150,000 marks would weight. Most sources I see online say 25,500 kg of silver.)
There have been plenty of D&D articles over the years about coins and how to customize them for your campaign. I find it's simply much easier to say gold piece to a player rather than giving it a cute name they likely won't remember. It's also a pain in the rear to try to keep track of different values of gold coins produced by different nations. Ultimately D&D is a game of high adventure and keeping track of some of this stuff just isn't high adventure.
ezo
Hero
As far as actual buying power, I've been running games with 1 gp = 100 USD so my players here get a decent grip on it.
A modest lifestyle at 1 gp per day would be 100 USD per day or about 35000 per year, which while well below the national average, is close to fit the bill (no pun intended).
A comfortable lifestyle at 2 gp per day would be twice that, or about 70000 per year, well above the national average and certainly "comfortable".
At 100 USD per gold piece, silver is worth 10 USD and copper 1 USD. You want to buy a meal of modest quality? 5 cp or so. You want a "high-end, top of the line" suit of armor (plate), at 1500 gp would equal about 150000 USD by comparison, enough for a very nice sports car, truck, or SUV. I'm not talking an exotic sports car, which would easily be double that or more, of course.
Room at an inn? 5 sp for modest would be 50 USD, seems about right for most road-side inns, etc.
More or less, it works well enough IME.
I always saw 1gp as ~$10 US.
1sp as a buck
1cp as a dime.
1gp is a venti Starbucks and a donut.
A Modest lifestyle in 5e is 1gp a day or $10 a day. Which is basically not in the slums but not the good part of the city. DMG says this is students and hedge wizards. A bad apartment in the old part of the city eating sandwiches and cheap juice/tea.
see
Pedantic Grognard
The Roman silver-to-gold ratio by weight stayed pretty close to 12 silver = 1 gold, both as recorded in written records of official pronouncements and as measured by comparing the weight of Roman coins. Ten to one would, of course, be the decimalized approximation of this ratio.
The 1878–1904 Morgan silver dollar contained approximately 24 grams of silver, to the 1849-1907 Liberty Head double eagle's approximately 30 grams of gold, reflecting a 16 silver = 1 gold ratio by weight. The coins' face values were such that 20 of the silver coins equaled one of the gold, which one might recall was the AD&D 1st edition sp to gp rate.
(Oddly enough, AD&D 1st edition coinage was entirely decimal except for the gold piece. 1,000 cp = 100 sp = 10 ep = 1 pp, all of which equaled 5 gp.)
The 1878–1904 Morgan silver dollar contained approximately 24 grams of silver, to the 1849-1907 Liberty Head double eagle's approximately 30 grams of gold, reflecting a 16 silver = 1 gold ratio by weight. The coins' face values were such that 20 of the silver coins equaled one of the gold, which one might recall was the AD&D 1st edition sp to gp rate.
(Oddly enough, AD&D 1st edition coinage was entirely decimal except for the gold piece. 1,000 cp = 100 sp = 10 ep = 1 pp, all of which equaled 5 gp.)
While true, 1:100 or 5:1pound instead of 20:1 & 50:1 is also easy and would mitigate a lot of problems with the overly generous carry capacity among other bribery type things
That is assuming modern extraction and refinement techniques, which don't exist in your game world. There's also purity of the metal in the coins to be considered.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
By that logic, shouldn't diamonds be worth a lot more in D&D given all the need for diamond dust?
Similar Threads
