Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback D&D Money Larianized

Roethen, if you're looking for a video game that makes a reasonably strong translation of 5e to video game format, and shows how effectively it can be done while still remaining more or less true to the spirit of the system where it does make changes, you might consider taking a look at Solasta - It's not as high budget, or as 'pretty' as BG3 by any stretch and they only have access to the SRD, so they had to fill in the blanks that it leaves, but as a game, mechanically, it's far more solid and does a vastly superior job of bringing the 5e game system into video game format in a satisfying and respectful way.

I think they could use silver in BG3 much the same way BG1 used gold, and it would feel a bit more sensible. Coppers I think would be fun for a lvl0-1 pre-prologue, or to make an appearance as an essentially worthless coin that can always be given away or thrown at random bards without incurring any real cost lol. Treated more like a spoon or a plate in that way, as a novelty item that's more for flavor than currency. Coppers corrode pretty quickly, I mean your pennies are definitely turning green well before any of the 'silver' coins in your pocket hehe, like not even worth picking up or carrying around. A lucky copper as a magical item would be cool though, we should find that first maybe and then have a tough decision about whether to let it go. Sticking with the noble metals and silver as the real base seems fine to me. The renaissance flare the setting has going for it also makes Platinum a fun option at the high end, again more flavor there. Perhaps not as rare as snatching up a soul 'coin' hehe, but you know pretty rare there. Not that the game has to indulge every numismatic fantasy I might have, but I think they could do somewhat better. Part of the reason I like the concept is because then you can do a breakpoint, say around level 5 with the power spike, and that's when the party starts acquiring and dealing in GP more than SP. Thematically in BG3, probably also as we get closer to the big city and the high rollers by that point. I also like the idea of cursed gold somehow making an appearance, cause that's so classic, but I think that would work better as an ingot/item rather than just like a general curse on GP hehe.

Finally I'd like to see a dynamic where rather than collecting gems and jewels only to sell them for gold, that this would be inverted. The real value being the portability, ease of concealment, and broad appeal. Perhaps there's a merchant somewhere, probably a Dwarf or a Gnome, who deals only in gemstones or jewels, and will trade higher value items and equipment for them, but won't accept Silver/Gold. That would be cool! I'd like to see a gembag and some visuals for the gems that make them look really impressive. BG1 at least had a lot of different sprites for them, but it would be cool if they had an "item description" view that made them look like something worth coveting. I see all this as being not too hard to achieve in a way that's automated, so as not to overburden the player, but while still giving it some flare. Then they can peg the early standard equipment buys to SP and having it be somewhat inflated there wouldn't seem quite so wild, cause the conversion to GP later could stay a bit closer to the sourcebook norms for those.

+1

Otherwise, gold as only currency is ok for me. As main thief, it's hard for me to imagine what stealing money would look like with multiple currencies. I mean, that's the main reason why there's no automatic money accounting as a resource and you have to carry the gold around in your inventory. Would be annoying if we have two more stacks of currency in the inventory. Up to now there are enough items that are not even properly stackable... In addition, there would be the meticulous counting of pennies when bartering... Like old grannies at the supermarket checkout...

I don´t mind that there is only one currency and it is normal that you have tons of money at the end of games.

The problem with BG3 is that you have tons of money at the beginning of the game. Especially if you give a merchant some stuff for free to max your reputation, give all items to the char with the highest CHA and cast guidance before shopping. Most players have no problem to buy all unique magic items in the game and still have tons of money left. Maybe the game is "Larianized" in a way that economy is balanced like in DOS where you have to get new equipment every level but DnD is not made that way. In DnD magic items are supposed to be rare and once you find them you will probably use them for a long time.

Agreed. So I hope in the game that Tactician and higher difficulty also includes maybe 175% or 200% vendor prices.

Take a chill pill. If you have issue with something I say, at least address the content of my post instead of singing bile. Aside from boldly calling me a liar (without any context or proof towards what exactly was a 'lie') This is a zzero-content post. If all you have to contribute is hate and insults towards fellow posters, why post? By all means, contribute to the conversation if you have a different opinion than us. But this is doing neither the topic nor the board any service.

A lot of MMOs and singleplayer rpgs actually automate the consolidation . Dragon age, for instance. WoW IIRC also did this. It needn't be nearly as invasive as some people may think. Usually it's some variation of a little symbol of a gold coin, followed by a number, followed by a little symbol of a silver coin, followed by a number, etc.

So in D&D terms, if you had nine silver coins and picked up two more, it'd display as 1gp 1sp. No need to go into elaborate inventory tetris any more than we already have in game with stacks of different currency taking up space.

Right now it's kinda like having a hundred dollar bill as the smallest unit of currency. Considering how many items in the game fall under that price tag naturally but get rounded up to '100 dollars', we get all of this useless item clutter, differentiated only by weight. Would be neat to decompress the prices for low-end vendor trash-maybe larian could bring down the ceiling on the prices of the top-end stuff to compensate, but considering how much money you can already make in EA, I think this would be a good thing. Prices will have to get absolutely ridiculously inflated by the time we reach BG at the rate we accumulate gold

You're right, as long as this automatic consolidation is also implemented reasonably for the money, because I don't know any game where you can explicitly steal money in GP, SP, CP.

Perhaps money stealing should also be completely reversed and limited to items only. I always found it annoying to rob the merchants and then rest again because they had no more money to buy my loot so my inventory is empty again....

But since you brought up MMORPGs, I remembered @ Black Elk's suggestion to introduce a merchant with special currency.


I find a special currency via gems difficult to implement. You don't find that many gems, because IMO they should be rarer than gold. Maybe you should work on a reputation system instead, similar to Brem from the Zhents. If it should be absolutely a currency, then perhaps letters of recommendation of the respective faction for side quests, which grant a certain amount of reputation points. These must be reached then, in addition to the gold amount of the item. But as I said, this would be MMORPG style and I don't know if that would be so appropriate or popular....

Yeah so I'll admit the reason why it even came to mind is because of the barter toggle in the merchant UI. The very first time I ever visited a merchant I got excited because I thought "finally a game that actually tries to pull this off!" but then found that it was little more than a redundant sale button. A way to pointlessly gift items by accident, or to raise our reputation with a given merchant, which I guess was the intent. This struck me as lame on two counts though, first because what self respecting merchant wouldn't admire the customer for a good haggle, or judge them for just giving it away like that? (I mean it's almost like they'd respect you less as an easy mark in that instance hehe) And second because it's just kinda confusing for the newb, since it was never tutorialized, and then just defaults to the more awkward and less intuitive of the two 'sale' options.

For gemstones and jewelry I have a couple thoughts there too. For jewels I think these should look cool enough that the PC wants to actually wear them on their avatar (rather than simply seeing them as X amount of gold), and that gemstones should have their own display within a "gembag" menu which shows them off in more glorious detail. Basically where the camera shows a close up on the PC shaking the gems from the bag into their hands, and then we can select a given gem to get the details on it from there. It should also be possible to craft the gemstones into jewelry too, if not as a PC skill then as a feature of at least one merchant in the game. I think it would be cool if we could add gemstones to the hilts and pommels of our weapons or to adorn elements of our armor. Perhaps a group of PCs who are all wearing it on their sleeve would draw the attention of more thieves and cutpurses in the big city? People complain of random encounters, but I mean more like having NPCs/Monsters comment on it, or perhaps greedy enemies demand we hand over the jewels to avoid/provoke a fight. Or someone could try to steal from us and then have to punished accordingly hehe. That kind of stuff.

They could do a lot with it I think since it's such a genre classic but also rarely given a full treatment. I'd imagine something a little bit the way soul gems worked in Skyrim, but extended to all the precious stones so it doesn't feel so generic. Like give me some D&D version of those silly birthstone charts, but handled with more Dwarven or Gnomish or Elvish flare. You know where there's a difference between say Rubies or Sapphires that actually extends into a 'realer' magical or mythological realm in FR. I can picture where a gem like say a Bloodstone might be highly prized among the Goblins, whereas Elves might delight more in Emeralds and Diamonds, just for FR cultural reasons lol. I think the big payoff would be to make jeweled items like lesser Ioun stones or enchanted circlets, but where the PC can actually adorn themselves with the chosen gems they're finding. I like the idea of the PC starting to think about stuff like gemstones and jewelry a bit more like enchanted gear - something that has value unto itself, beyond just transacting it into the gold at the earliest opportunity (with minor tedium). BG1 took the approach of making gems and jewels into a Tetris/inventory management thing like Leucrotta mentioned, and while that worked well enough at the time (especially since the avatar visualization was so limited), it wasn't particularly exciting I don't think. BG3 could do a lot better, and already does do better in many respects, but it still feels like this stuff is an afterthought at best. I'd like them to really delve deep with it. Gems and Jewels should be inherently better than their equivalent value in GP. Not just like GP giftcards that the player has to then jump through some further hoops to exchange for GP, to get what they really want (usually enchanted equipment that looks cool lol). Instead make the Jewels more a thing of more value unto themselves, with a gameplay/aesthetic progress aspect to them in that way.

For the Silver to Gold conversion I imagined it pretty much exactly as others have suggested, where the PC doesn't have to sweat the abacus on that one, and all of this is automated at the point of purchase/sale in the merchant screen. To me having the floor at 1 SP rather than 1 GP just makes everything feel more believable, and I think they could peg the actual conversion into GP there at whatever ratio made the most sense for the gameplay balance. Meaning it could easily be 100-1 instead of 10-1 or 20-1 if needed, to make the scaling work there. Of course that is all a somewhat different subject than how much "money" we're making, or whether we're making too much at the outset, but I think it'd be cool if they gave the whole concept a bit more love. Carrying a dragon's horde worth of gold everywhere we go at lvl 4 is pretty nonsensical, even with an instant perma camp and a giant magical treasure chest. They should at least give us a pack animal like a mule or a donkey. He should be named "Lucius" and we should find him early on, the same way we meet Scratch. Maybe there's a pony named "William" too, for the shorties? hehe and they can both hang out at camp to help us rationalize how we're able to move this much loot around with such ease.

I agree. Finding silvers and coppers, if implemented, would be more common than finding gold.


I couldn't really see it working like this unless characters go to a bank, miner's exchange, or merchant who is willing to trade silver for gold at 10:1. I can, however, say that it might still be realistic to use silver to pay for things that cost gold, provided the player has enough. For example, buying a goat for 1gp would cost 10sp if the play had no gp available. It's really just a matter of personal taste. Perhaps automatic transference should be an option in the difficulty settings, if implemented.

Imo needing to go to the bank would add vastly more annoyance than benefits (immersion, realistic economy, proper value of items). It'd be a mechanic that purely wastes time and thus should be included automatically as QoL. Exchanging money at merchants...I guess it wastes less time, but it still wastes time.

If there wouldn't be automatic conversion then I'd much prefer BG3 just stick with a single currency.

I would assume there would be automatic conversion. That's far more common than making the player keep track of all their copper/silver/gold/platinum/electrum/steel pence/harbor moons/whatever. Larian isn't going for a Simulationist sort of game where you have to keep track of travel hours and set watches or pack animals etc (a fun as I might find a game like that) I don't think that sort of extra work for the player would be appropriate in a game like BGIII. But decompressing the values of lower-end items would make looking for treasure through the piles of junk a bit more enjoyable.

Aside from the odd piece of silverware or gems there really isn't much to be found amongst all the rubbish to make me say 'oh yay'

I'd also echo the suggestion of specialist merchants. I often instinctually horde stuff like books or seemingly-rare commodities and luxuries because it makes sense to me that (for example) 'somewhere I'm sure to find a buyer in BG for this collection of rare books/fancy wines etc'.

I really don't like the attitude + bartering system. I'd like it if every merchant just had different price settings for goods. Like 'doesn't buy X', 'Buys X for reduced price', 'Buys X at normal price', and 'buys x at increased price'. So maybe a jeweler could buy your rubies for more than the general store, but won't buy your pot lids and goblin scimitars at all etc.

Some other suggestions for treasure that Larian could use to spice up looting-luxury trade goods like expensive textiles or spices, & trade bars.

Regardless of how they handle the implementation of silver and copper, the prices need to reflect what they actually represent. A set of Studded Leather armor costs 45gp in the tabletop game. I fail to see the reason why it costs ~1300gp in BG3. Furthermore, I reiterate, if a player doesn't feel like making a manual conversion to gold, they could easily pay in silver or copper.

Out of curiosity, because I've not examined it myself.... but how would the prices in BG3 compare to handbook prices if you turned the 'g' in your (and all of their) coin pile(s) into a 'c'? Studded leather would be costing about a third of its handbook price... how would other things measure up?

Nobody has bothered with different currencies for years.
The last major game that had this system was dragon age 1 and even there it ceased to be relevant shortly after Lordran. There is no need to mention MMO games like WoW, because anything other than gold has ceased to matter even before the TBC came out.
It doesn't matter at all.




Pathfinder is probably the worst example you could give because not even in the middle of the game you could have hundreds of thousands of gold because game rewards you at every step with magic items.

The game must somehow reward the player with equipment. It would be a bit boring if we got 1-2 interesting items during ten hours of the game.
Equipment is definitely one of those things that translates very badly into games.
You can argue that in older games, indeed magic items were rarer, but now the design of the games looks a bit different.
Even such a pathfinder which probably most resembles games from the infinite engine era literally floods you with magical items worth thousands of gp.
After all, a lot of magic items = a lot of gp.
Another thing is that virtually every game has a problem with too much currency inflation. Gold is very rarely any problem other than the very beginning of the game, then you might as well buy half the kingdom.

Strongly agree. Prices obviously don't need to exactly match the PHB prices, but the relative price of items should make sense and be consistent within the world, and theoretically not involve a lot of bloat. The PHB is a good starting point for prices, upon which modifications can be made.

That would be an interesting study. The fextralife wiki states that merchants buy items for ~250% their value and Studded Leather is listed at having a value of 500, which matches with merchant prices of 1300.
So, if you go by item value, it seems like you'd actually want to turn the 'g' into an 's': Studded leather 500 gp -> 500sp = 50gp
However, this changes a potion of healing (wiki value 60) into having a "true" value of only 6gp...

I think the amount of gold you accumulate should be how many experience points you have. And when you reach milestones you're allowed to level up.

But any money you spend keeps you further away from your next level milestone. So you can save your gold to get to your next level or spend portions of it on things like magic weapons that will be useful in combat.

That's how it used to work a long time ago, back in the days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Good times.

Please not.
If we get as much exp as we get money, we could get to lv 10 in the EA.
You can gather tens of thousends gold in the EA, even you you buy all unique items.
It would also make playing more annoying because it encourages you to grab every item in the game just to sell it and the game is full of items.

I say gold and exp must be totally independent things.
Getting gold should not give exp and getting exp should not give you gold. You explore and do quests and as reward you usually get both, where money usually comes as loot that can be sold.
But for example opening a chest with gold should not give exp and killing an enemy who does not have loot should not give you gold. Most non humanoid monsters should not have items or equipment.

I don't really care whether or not they add silver and copper, it's fine either way for me...but please not that 😶
I don't thing that would be fun at all.

Also...I prefer thinking that leveling up comes with achievements/merits (ie: discovering new things, winning a fight or successfully avoiding one using wits), not wealth growth.

Although I'm not necessarily opposed to that idea on principle (I like gold as xp better than milestone, at least)...BG III really isn't set up in a way conducive to that sort of progression system. Like right now there really isn't any way to 'grind' levels-no random encounters basically. kill enemies. complete quests. But assigning xp to every tankard and wooden spoon wood make the process of leveling up very tedious IMO, and the 'scrounging for junk' thing even worse since it would become mandatory in a very unpleasant way.