Suggestion Discussion - Craftable Coinage

[Irongron]

Many coins are made from mixing things like copper with zinc, and given the limited use of many resources, and that silver and gold are rarely really worth selling to settlements I am considering adding proper coinage as a worthwhile crafting recipe for forging (I recall something like this being in place but not being wholly useful)

The idea would be that one can do this bronze + zinc, as is the case in RL 'old=world' coinage, replacing the bronze with silver and gold for higher level coins (zinc remaing the constantly required ingredient)

Right now making bronze particularly is rarely worthwhile and even silver and gold are often not the treasures they first seem to be.

It would really be a question of finding the right yields, DC and crafting point cost to put them 'just' within the worthwile range. I say 'just' because I wouldn't want to cause all settlements to be entirely unable to compete, and also because we are looking at having more uses for metals overall. I'm really just interested in introducing a 'if nothing else' use.

So suggestions on values? Or does anyone think this is a terrible idea?

[Dreams]

I like the idea. Would recommend having some exchange function at the banks that works the same way as gem scales, or just make the gem scales work for these coins also.

[Irongron]

The end product would simply be the gold piece value, so no further exchanging would be required.

[yellowcateyes]

A quick reference for values is the GP you expect to make per each spent Crafting Point. Gems are a good standard for this, as there's a direct translation from the CP spent cutting them to the gold returned via the scales.

I'd ask the players of prominent crafting characters what they tend to charge for a day's labor (or a full refresh of CP).

A suggestion, though - definitely make mass crafting options like what was done with Glass.

[Miaou]

Would this be directly making coins, or would this be making a "coin" like item? If it's the first, so long as it doesn't become to the point where you can "craft money" directly and one can print out insane amounts with little effort, I think it's interesting. If it's the second, it could be a unique way to have exchanges of coin. Maybe counterfeit coins? One thinks it's made of gold, but alas! It was just gold plated copper! Which, of course, can be brought to a banker and exchanged for a more standardized coin.

I know Forgotten Realms has a wide variety of coins, so seeing the UD make and use their own coins, Brog uses theirs, etc, can cause a lot of unique and story rich interactions. I would need to see how much settlements and ore are generally sold for before I could suggest values though.

Edit: Ignore the first paragraph! It was answered. Still enjoy the idea as a whole, though.

[Dreams]

Would this hard set a value for ingots? For example, gold ingot becomes equivalent value of 5,000 gold coins, and these things become interchangeable as currency?

Also, if coin items come into existence, please also introduce ways for the criminal world to take advantage.

[yellowcateyes]

Would this hard set a value for ingots? For example, gold ingot becomes equivalent value of 5,000 gold coins, and these things become interchangeable as currency?

It will set a hard minimum value, likely. (After accounting for crafting point expenditure.) But you'll see metals traded for a higher price than their value in coin crafting if demand rises high enough due to other recipes / rarity.

[Miaou]

Coin is finished, and can not be used for crafting at that point. A bar or copper or gold can still be used for crafting items, so a branching path in their usefulness. It might set a ball park of how much metal is sold for, but I do not see it making a "hard value" exactly.

[WanderingPoet]

Making coin items would definitely be interesting, especially if they can be traded in for real money - gives a way to 'trade' gold for services without needing to actually carry around massive amounts of gold. This could be especially interesting RPwise if settlements want to trade 'gold', rather than carrying a massive chest around. A leader could give everyone that helped with a mission a single 'Cordor Coin', rather than just going to the bank for 2000 gold or what not. Could be used as a token of approval (everyone with a Cordor coin from this leader is allowed to cast magic, etc), or used by criminal underground as a way to prove their identity.

Turing them directly into gold coins though seems less 'fun'. It sounds like it would be easier and more consistent with gems to just let ingots be turned in for gold like polished gems can be.

[WinkinBlinkin]

Gems give roughly 60gp per crafting point. 50gp is a good floor for worthwhile crafting. Annything below this level of pay back is something that is usually only done for rp reasons rather than financial gain.

[Kuma]

[casimir intensifies]

[Durandal]

Ive wondered since I started playing why the heck you cant sell gold ore for gold. I think this would be really cool, as long as making them is actually worthwhile and not something no one will ever bother with.

[Aodh Lazuli]

If this is something you're considering, and you want bronze to be the lowest level of this, you'd probably do well to make copper spawn more frequently.

[Baseili]

To answer yellowcatseye's question first, I usually charge around 25gp per crafting point on Bjorn.

Minting coins sounds like a fine way to make the more common or infrequently used ores worth collecting, though I would suggest keeping the legit coins to Silver and Gold only. Instead Counterfit Coins could have Lead or Tin as their base instead of Zinc. For example, legit Gold Coins would be 1 Gold Ingot + 1 Zinc = 200 coins. Counterfit Gold Coins would have 1 Gold + 2 Lead or Counter Silver Coins 1 Silver + 2 Tin but produce slightly more than what forging legit coins would (e.g 400 coins).

Edit: A general increase in Copper yield per node would be welcome too, regardless of the coinage. Ratios of gathering Tin to Copper are usually 2:1 or even 3:1 if the dice are in your favour.

[Yma23]

This sounds.... complex. And whilst I am not against the idea, I would suggest it really does need a lot of thought.

I have to say though - a little baffled by this idea of gold/silver ingots being worthless. I make hundreds of thousands of gold in protective essences, for example. And Gold is invaluble in a number of producs, most of which sell for a good price. (Statues, Amulets, Essences, lots more!)

The funny thing is, I always figured -Not- being able to make your own coinage was very In Character. I figured somewhere arelith had it's own Mint, which prevented massive inflation from adventurers going out, mining all the ores, making their own coin, and then massivly devaluating the currency.

The problem is really going to be balencing this, because it'll be so easy to either make an item that will be so 'worth it' that no one will use gold/silver for much else.

Or else make it so useless than no one will bother with it at all.

But that balence will be a pain, if because the price on ingots fluxuates so much.
A few days back I came across silver ore selling for 50 gp per lump (so that's say, 200 gold per ingot? presuming you have to pay 50 gp for coal) And yet I saw a silver ingot in a shop for 2000 gp.

[Lorkas]

I would simply add an NPC somewhere who buys bronze, silver, and gold ingots at a higher price than the settlements pay. The silk merchant in Cordor buys silk bolts for more than 10 times the item's book price, and the same sort of thing could be done for silver and gold ingots.

[Scurvy Cur]

I have to say though - a little baffled by this idea of gold/silver ingots being worthless. I make hundreds of thousands of gold in protective essences, for example. And Gold is invaluble in a number of producs, most of which sell for a good price. (Statues, Amulets, Essences, lots more!)

It's not so much that the ingots themselves are worthless as that the supply of them has exceeded the demand for them by such a margin that they're not "scarce goods" that respect market forces. For an illustrative point, I no longer mine gold or silver on my character, because over the past several weeks, I have accumulated hundreds of ore chunks of each. My mining list now is adamantine, mithril, arjale, and iron. Anything else is just going to needlessly clog my storage chest. I get most of my ore converted by a smith friend who swings by every now and again to do bulk work on it, and the last time he visited, I asked him to skip the gold and silver once he was done with the mithril, and move straight on to the iron, because I have more gold and silver ingots than I, my smith friends, and my alchemist friend could possibly use.

The funny thing is, I always figured -Not- being able to make your own coinage was very In Character. I figured somewhere arelith had it's own Mint, which prevented massive inflation from adventurers going out, mining all the ores, making their own coin, and then massivly devaluating the currency.

I mean, players already mint their own currency out of the blood of their slain enemies.

[Yma23]

Ahhh interesting. I didn't know that the ore changes had had such a huge effect on gold/silver. Well that being said, it's fair enough then. Extra uses are all good.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Is the objective to add variety to Arelith's economy, and more horizontal mechanics that use different resources, to create more interesting roleplay? Sure.

But if the objective is to wade into some new currency system, I think that's a little too much. It seems artificial and incongruous with the fact the mint of Arelith has always been dealing facto goblins, orcs, demons, and giants.

[Montaugh]

It would be nice if the scrapper merchants bought raw ore. Sometimes you are left with an odd piece after crafting. Add a few more options to the scrapper to buy the various ores so that people don't sell what they want to hold onto by accident. Yesterday I was playing (yes, yes I still play from time to time shocking I know) and the party (yes, I was in a party even!) I was in came upon some Tin ore in a cave. Normally its just not worth the crafting points or time (by the time you run and fetch coal) to turn it into ingots and dump off in a trade merchant.. but if I could have just dumped off the tin ore at the scrapper merchant I would have grabbed it because it would have been worthwhile at that point. It would actually be fun to go looking for deposits because I would be doing so knowing that whatever I came upon I wouldn't have to spent additional time turning it into something that I could sell if it wasn't a worthwhile material that I had come upon.

As for the coinage itself I'd put it in duel crafting skills of Art and Forging. They already share some items already. Perhaps forging is better at quantity but quality suffers. Art is better at quality but quantity suffers. Visually it would be like the smith melts down the metal pours it into the bottom mold then adds the top mold and stamps the coins, dumps them into cold water and moves onto the next. Meanwhile the artist is making smaller batches of coins, taking the coin blank and adding in details to the surface that the forge just can't match as each coin goes from simple to works of actual art.

[Irongron]

Yes, good points. IF I do this I'm not going to make them new coins though, just a method of using crafting points to turn ingots into coin, and give another use for zinc (which still doesn't have the same amount of uses).

I've had the same experience as Scurvy, finding silver in particular (but also gold) not the treasure it appears to be.

[Hunter548]

If this is just a way to turn gold/silver into money, then sure, why not? I don't see any real downsides there as long as the profit isn't a ridiculous number.

[BegoneThoth]

We make IC jokes about finding 'useless gold' so this sounds good to me.

Though I'd put coin minting in art crafting rather then smithing, smithing is pretty much already the most used and most desired profession.

[Xerah]

An additional option could be to utilize alchemy to change one ingot into another.

[BegoneThoth]

Lead into gold at a very high alchemy DC would be pretty neat.

Make it require various vials of magic/dragon blood too.