It'd be great if there was an option for currency to automatically make change when removing currency. E.G. I have 5 gold and remove 5 silver, it automatically converts it so that I have 4 gold and 5 silver.
Most games I've played have ignored change making currency in D&D, and it'd be a great QoL change.
Making change is fairly simple and intuitive when you have two tiers, say dollars and cents. D&D doesn't have two tiers, it has five. This means there are plenty of situations where the change made might not be what the user expects/wants as there are multiple possible combinations
Rather than doing any conversions automatically, I think it should detect when you try to remove coins you dont have then have a pop up window that makes you input how you get change.
That way people can stop complaining that it doesn't make change, but it also doesn't make it too gamelike.
It's not different at all, if you think of coins as just like bills in quantities of copper coins. A gold coin is a 100 copper bill.
You can easily represent currencies as quantities of copper, where 15 platinum, 24 gold, 13 silver, and 84 copper is 17614 cp. Cp is the ones place, silver is the tens place, etc. so you could simplify it to 17 Platinum, 6 Gold, 1 Silver, and 4 Copper. For the earlier described quantities, if you have to subtract 25 gold, it would just automatically pull from the next highest place, bringing you to 14 pp, 9 gp, 13 sp, and 84 cp. If you subtract 25 gold and 18 silver, you just start from the lowest denomination (18 silver) and work your way up.
I'm not sure where the inconsistency is. It's just as if you had to make change in USD, but you only had pennies, dimes, dollars, and ten dollar bills to work with. Sure, you might have more than ten pennies so that could technically be a dime and some pennies, but its still intuitive how to pay $13.47 and make change if you had two ten dollar bills, five one dollar bills, six dimes, and a penny.
In regards to making it to game-like, there's lots of aspects that are commonly passed over in D&D to avoid being too tedious. For example, hunger: most DMs at most will ask players to subtract one ration each in-game day, many will handwave it entirely unless the players become stranded, but rarely do DMs ask the players to set aside time to eat for each meal three times a day.
If my players are in a city or any sort of developing settlement, I'm going to assume the shopkeep can make change for them. Even a traveling merchant would probably keep enough money to make change. Unless you're paying for service from peasants, this is rarely a problem.
I'm not going to ask my players to go to a bank every time they're in town to change their currency.
It's not different at all, if you think of coins as just like bills in quantities of copper coins. A gold coin is a 100 copper bill.
You can easily represent currencies as quantities of copper, where 15 platinum, 24 gold, 13 silver, and 84 copper is 17614 cp. Cp is the ones place, silver is the tens place, etc. so you could simplify it to 17 Platinum, 6 Gold, 1 Silver, and 4 Copper. For the earlier described quantities, if you have to subtract 25 gold, it would just automatically pull from the next highest place, bringing you to 14 pp, 9 gp, 13 sp, and 84 cp. If you subtract 25 gold and 18 silver, you just start from the lowest denomination (18 silver) and work your way up.
I'm not sure where the inconsistency is. It's just as if you had to make change in USD, but you only had pennies, dimes, dollars, and ten dollar bills to work with. Sure, you might have more than ten pennies so that could technically be a dime and some pennies, but its still intuitive how to pay $13.47 and make change if you had two ten dollar bills, five one dollar bills, six dimes, and a penny.
How about electrum? Poor electrum, always forgotten about.
Then it's just like adding a 50 cent/half dollar coin to the mix. If I could only pay and make change with ten dollar bills, one dollar bills, half dollars, dimes, and pennies, it's still just as intuitive to make change, just as people function and make change today with quarters.
Then it's just like adding a 50 cent/half dollar coin to the mix. If I could only pay and make change with ten dollar bills, one dollar bills, half dollars, dimes, and pennies, it's still just as intuitive to make change, just as people function and make change today with quarters.
It'd be great if there was an option for currency to automatically make change when removing currency. E.G. I have 5 gold and remove 5 silver, it automatically converts it so that I have 4 gold and 5 silver.
Most games I've played have ignored change making currency in D&D, and it'd be a great QoL change.
Making change is fairly simple and intuitive when you have two tiers, say dollars and cents. D&D doesn't have two tiers, it has five. This means there are plenty of situations where the change made might not be what the user expects/wants as there are multiple possible combinations
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Rather than doing any conversions automatically, I think it should detect when you try to remove coins you dont have then have a pop up window that makes you input how you get change.
That way people can stop complaining that it doesn't make change, but it also doesn't make it too gamelike.
It's not different at all, if you think of coins as just like bills in quantities of copper coins. A gold coin is a 100 copper bill.
You can easily represent currencies as quantities of copper, where 15 platinum, 24 gold, 13 silver, and 84 copper is 17614 cp. Cp is the ones place, silver is the tens place, etc. so you could simplify it to 17 Platinum, 6 Gold, 1 Silver, and 4 Copper. For the earlier described quantities, if you have to subtract 25 gold, it would just automatically pull from the next highest place, bringing you to 14 pp, 9 gp, 13 sp, and 84 cp. If you subtract 25 gold and 18 silver, you just start from the lowest denomination (18 silver) and work your way up.
I'm not sure where the inconsistency is. It's just as if you had to make change in USD, but you only had pennies, dimes, dollars, and ten dollar bills to work with. Sure, you might have more than ten pennies so that could technically be a dime and some pennies, but its still intuitive how to pay $13.47 and make change if you had two ten dollar bills, five one dollar bills, six dimes, and a penny.
In regards to making it to game-like, there's lots of aspects that are commonly passed over in D&D to avoid being too tedious. For example, hunger: most DMs at most will ask players to subtract one ration each in-game day, many will handwave it entirely unless the players become stranded, but rarely do DMs ask the players to set aside time to eat for each meal three times a day.
If my players are in a city or any sort of developing settlement, I'm going to assume the shopkeep can make change for them. Even a traveling merchant would probably keep enough money to make change. Unless you're paying for service from peasants, this is rarely a problem.
I'm not going to ask my players to go to a bank every time they're in town to change their currency.
How about electrum? Poor electrum, always forgotten about.
Then it's just like adding a 50 cent/half dollar coin to the mix. If I could only pay and make change with ten dollar bills, one dollar bills, half dollars, dimes, and pennies, it's still just as intuitive to make change, just as people function and make change today with quarters.
Don't forget $2 bills! :)