Sounds like he accidentally forgot to make a character and made a hireling instead.
Well, yea - no, he's allowed to decide the motivation of his character. Also, he's a RL friend for over 30 years. But you're right, I sometimes do wonder why this character with great stats and potential, choses to risk his life adventuring, rather than building a merchant cartel or some such =D
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Have the quest giver make it clear they won't go lower.
I had to do this once, practically played chicken with my players.
It was a run through of the Dragon Lance Campaign, and they were in the first few chapters. 2nd or 3rd level. They kept trying to persuade this elderly gnome into lowering the price of a higher tier magic item. Eventually they failed enough persuasion checks that he simply told them to pay up or get lost, while placing a wand of fireballs on the table, staring them down. I normally wouldn't recommend this, but I knew my players, and instead of seeing this in a poor sense, they saw this as a "This guy is really OP and could come in handy if we worked with him in the future" way. They payed up and are still using many of the items to this day.
The intimidation also may have gone further when they realized that almost every shopkeeper, tavern owner, and merchant was a gnome, and the whole city seemed to be run by a monopoly of gnomes. Almost like a mafia. They loved the idea.
I still wouldn't recommend a show of force, but sometimes that's what people need, especially if your players are super attached to their characters.
There's nothing wrong with a character seeking riches as a motivation for adventuring. That motivation may even have another motivation behind it. If your motivation for wanting money is because you need it to purchase an expensive cure to an ailment a person close to you is suffering from, then the quest giver offering that cure as a reward instead of money suddenly becomes a much better incentive. A character who is motivated by fame may be only acting as such because he needs an audience with someone important who will only accept to meet someone who is famous. That important person may have something the character wants, for example the political power to release someone from unfair imprisonment. Fame and fortune can simply be a means to an end. For a more in depth example, I'll copy paste one of the backstories I posted in the popular "Share your character backstory" thread.
Human Courtier / Celestial Warlock / Lawful Neutral
Before becoming an adventurer, he worked for a conglomeration of guilds as a people pleaser. His job was to make sure that clients were treated well and that relations between the guilds were maintained. He worked with many people of different cultures and status, and made tons of connections that way. One of his clients was a beautiful young aasimar. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who wished to secure an important contract with a noble. The father had sent her in his stead. She was nervous about her task and wanted to make her father proud. The courtier acted as a middleman, helping with negotiations and offering lodgings. It didn't take long until she invited the courtier to stay in her room. The two had an affair.
After the contract was signed with the noble, she decided to remain with her lover. She was very curious and asked tons of questions. She found the life of a courtier to be fascinating: meeting all sorts of people and learning new things. One night while they were in bed, she had tears in her eyes. He asked her what was wrong. Instead of giving him an answer, she unexpectedly attempted to stab him. Because she hesitated, he managed to fight back and grab the dagger out of her hand. He was injured, but his wounds weren't deep enough to kill him. As they were fighting, he stabbed her in the chest. She died almost immediately and her corpse slowly disintegrated. The dagger glowed when it stabbed her, so he suspects it was magical. The dagger had now lost its magic, so it was probably a one time thing.
An investigation came out with surprising results. She was a spy and her story was a complete fabrication. She used him for his connections. It probably wasn't the first time she did that. Perhaps naively, he refused to hate her. Even if everything else was a lie, he refuses to believe that her feelings were fake. Hoping to see her again and find answers, he prayed. A celestial creature heard his prayers and offered its help. He resigned from his job and became an adventurer. His connections can allow him to find someone powerful enough to resurrect his lover, but he still needs 25,000 gp to pay for the spell components.
Using the silver vs gold example, while gold is rarer than silver (though not nearly as rare as people think), compared to silver, outside jewelery gold has very limited uses compared to silver.
When it comes to utility alone, gold is generally more useful than silver. Please do your research before making such a a claim.
I didn't. While I agree with some of the points you made, it doesn't the fact that your claim that silver has more uses than gold is wrong. While silver does have a few uses gold doesn't have (e.g. silver beats gold in terms of thermal conductivity), gold still has more uses than silver overall, and many of them are much more important (e.g. the reliability of gold makes it a material of choice when building spaceships to explore the universe). Even if both metals were equal in terms of supply and were thus of equal value, gold would actually still be more useful. In fact, silver would barely have any uses. By taking out silver's main advantage over gold, i.e. being less expensive, it would be foolish to use silver over gold when the latter can accomplish the same task with better results. Silver would only be favored for its niche uses. While this would ironically increase the value of gold for being in higher demand, let's not apply this and pretend that both metals have the exact same value on the market for the sake of my argument. If you don't like pretending, then let's just make both metals as abundant as water. That way, the demand will never surpass the supply.
Take for example an island where Gold is naturally found, but Silver, Iron and the likes are not found. Such a place is entirely possible within the worlds created by GMs for this game. It is after all fictional.
There are two problems with this. The first is that iron can't possibly be not found even in fiction. Iron is everywhere, it's in food, water, blood, etc. Just like the absence of water makes it impossible to sustain life, life cannot exist without an abundance of iron. The second problem is that according to RAW, the economy is universal. In terms of monetary value, platinum beats gold, gold beats electrum (naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals), electrum beats silver, and silver beats copper. With these two exceptions and the points I made in my previous paragraph aside, I agree with the rest of your argument.
As a DM, I actually do include more complex economics in my campaigns. Traveling merchants take advantage of the free market to make a living. They move from cities to cities to sell stuff from previous cities. One city might have an abundance of salt but a low supply of cheese, one might have too many weapons but not enough salt, and another might be famous for the production of cheese while being in dire need of weapons. So a traveling merchant might buy salt for cheap in the first city, sell it for a profit in the second city and buy weapons for cheap, sell the weapons for a profit in the third city and buy plenty of cheese, then return to the first city to sell that cheese. He might repeat that process by buying more salt and going back to the second city.
When my players travel to a new place, some items are sold for a discount while others have their prices marked up. Smart players can take advantage of this by becoming traveling merchants as a side hustle. One of my campaigns took place during wartime, so the economy is all over the place due to shifting priorities and closed borders. Earlier during the war, weapons and armor were in high demand and banned from from being sold to civilians. Adventurers could only buy them in the black market and they were ridiculously expensive. As time passed, the production of weapons and armor increased and the prices slowly stabilized. Once the war was over, there was a high surplus of weapons and armor compared to a much lower demand, so they were being sold for really cheap. It's similar to what happens every year with candies around Halloween. The best time to buy candies is on November 1st.
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Age: 33 | Sex: Male | Languages: French and English | Roles: DM and Player
There are two problems with this. The first is that iron can't possibly be not found even in fiction. Iron is everywhere, it's in food, water, blood, etc. Just like the absence of water makes it impossible to sustain life, life cannot exist without an abundance of iron. The second problem is that according to RAW, the economy is universal. In terms of monetary value, platinum beats gold, gold beats electrum (naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals), electrum beats silver, and silver beats copper. With these two exceptions and the points I made in my previous paragraph aside, I agree with the rest of your argument.
Fictional life can absolutely exist in the absence of iron. For an example from Dungeons and Dragons, look only to the elemental planes. For a traditional example, no iron exists in or can pass into the Green World. If you can't imagine a world without iron, that is not because it can't be imagined.
There is no rule that coins are universal. If there were, I'd mock it, but there isn't. The PHB says that the listed coins are the most common, but that just means "most campaigns use these as currency." To wit: Dragonlance, an official campaign setting, uses different coins. (It would, however, not surprise me if I were to learn that AL games required a universal currency. I don't know one way or the other, but it would make sense and I wonder if that's where the idea came from.)
There are two problems with this. The first is that iron can't possibly be not found even in fiction. Iron is everywhere, it's in food, water, blood, etc. Just like the absence of water makes it impossible to sustain life, life cannot exist without an abundance of iron. The second problem is that according to RAW, the economy is universal. In terms of monetary value, platinum beats gold, gold beats electrum (naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals), electrum beats silver, and silver beats copper. With these two exceptions and the points I made in my previous paragraph aside, I agree with the rest of your argument.
I guess you've never played Runequest in Glorantha. Everything is bronze, rather than iron.
Life in the real world can't exist without iron, but in fantasy worlds people aren't always built from DNA.
Or, you could sideline roleplay for shopping, have the player roll a Persuasion Check against a DC for the Store... with the store having bonuses depending on how little they're likely to negotiate... and depending on the player's roll, you just tell them what the best price they can get after haggling is, and the players decide to either pay it, on not engage in business.
Also, once the die is rolled and the success determined, the negotiation is over.
If the players continue to push the issue then bluntly tell them, "This interaction is over, your characters have already negotiated, move on please."
Thats what I would say.
The players get to roll the persuasion die and the NPC gets to counter with his roll. within 5 of each other and the price stands. Anything more and the price goes up or down in favor of the winner. They only get one roll for the group.
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Well, yea - no, he's allowed to decide the motivation of his character. Also, he's a RL friend for over 30 years. But you're right, I sometimes do wonder why this character with great stats and potential, choses to risk his life adventuring, rather than building a merchant cartel or some such =D
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Every time they ask for 70gp, have a rival party show up and do it for 40gp. Each time, the rival party has leveled up, and they haven't.
Have the quest giver make it clear they won't go lower.
I had to do this once, practically played chicken with my players.
It was a run through of the Dragon Lance Campaign, and they were in the first few chapters. 2nd or 3rd level. They kept trying to persuade this elderly gnome into lowering the price of a higher tier magic item. Eventually they failed enough persuasion checks that he simply told them to pay up or get lost, while placing a wand of fireballs on the table, staring them down. I normally wouldn't recommend this, but I knew my players, and instead of seeing this in a poor sense, they saw this as a "This guy is really OP and could come in handy if we worked with him in the future" way. They payed up and are still using many of the items to this day.
The intimidation also may have gone further when they realized that almost every shopkeeper, tavern owner, and merchant was a gnome, and the whole city seemed to be run by a monopoly of gnomes. Almost like a mafia. They loved the idea.
I still wouldn't recommend a show of force, but sometimes that's what people need, especially if your players are super attached to their characters.
There's nothing wrong with a character seeking riches as a motivation for adventuring. That motivation may even have another motivation behind it. If your motivation for wanting money is because you need it to purchase an expensive cure to an ailment a person close to you is suffering from, then the quest giver offering that cure as a reward instead of money suddenly becomes a much better incentive. A character who is motivated by fame may be only acting as such because he needs an audience with someone important who will only accept to meet someone who is famous. That important person may have something the character wants, for example the political power to release someone from unfair imprisonment. Fame and fortune can simply be a means to an end. For a more in depth example, I'll copy paste one of the backstories I posted in the popular "Share your character backstory" thread.
Human Courtier / Celestial Warlock / Lawful Neutral
Before becoming an adventurer, he worked for a conglomeration of guilds as a people pleaser. His job was to make sure that clients were treated well and that relations between the guilds were maintained. He worked with many people of different cultures and status, and made tons of connections that way. One of his clients was a beautiful young aasimar. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who wished to secure an important contract with a noble. The father had sent her in his stead. She was nervous about her task and wanted to make her father proud. The courtier acted as a middleman, helping with negotiations and offering lodgings. It didn't take long until she invited the courtier to stay in her room. The two had an affair.
After the contract was signed with the noble, she decided to remain with her lover. She was very curious and asked tons of questions. She found the life of a courtier to be fascinating: meeting all sorts of people and learning new things. One night while they were in bed, she had tears in her eyes. He asked her what was wrong. Instead of giving him an answer, she unexpectedly attempted to stab him. Because she hesitated, he managed to fight back and grab the dagger out of her hand. He was injured, but his wounds weren't deep enough to kill him. As they were fighting, he stabbed her in the chest. She died almost immediately and her corpse slowly disintegrated. The dagger glowed when it stabbed her, so he suspects it was magical. The dagger had now lost its magic, so it was probably a one time thing.
An investigation came out with surprising results. She was a spy and her story was a complete fabrication. She used him for his connections. It probably wasn't the first time she did that. Perhaps naively, he refused to hate her. Even if everything else was a lie, he refuses to believe that her feelings were fake. Hoping to see her again and find answers, he prayed. A celestial creature heard his prayers and offered its help. He resigned from his job and became an adventurer. His connections can allow him to find someone powerful enough to resurrect his lover, but he still needs 25,000 gp to pay for the spell components.
I didn't. While I agree with some of the points you made, it doesn't the fact that your claim that silver has more uses than gold is wrong. While silver does have a few uses gold doesn't have (e.g. silver beats gold in terms of thermal conductivity), gold still has more uses than silver overall, and many of them are much more important (e.g. the reliability of gold makes it a material of choice when building spaceships to explore the universe). Even if both metals were equal in terms of supply and were thus of equal value, gold would actually still be more useful. In fact, silver would barely have any uses. By taking out silver's main advantage over gold, i.e. being less expensive, it would be foolish to use silver over gold when the latter can accomplish the same task with better results. Silver would only be favored for its niche uses. While this would ironically increase the value of gold for being in higher demand, let's not apply this and pretend that both metals have the exact same value on the market for the sake of my argument. If you don't like pretending, then let's just make both metals as abundant as water. That way, the demand will never surpass the supply.
There are two problems with this. The first is that iron can't possibly be not found even in fiction. Iron is everywhere, it's in food, water, blood, etc. Just like the absence of water makes it impossible to sustain life, life cannot exist without an abundance of iron. The second problem is that according to RAW, the economy is universal. In terms of monetary value, platinum beats gold, gold beats electrum (naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals), electrum beats silver, and silver beats copper. With these two exceptions and the points I made in my previous paragraph aside, I agree with the rest of your argument.
As a DM, I actually do include more complex economics in my campaigns. Traveling merchants take advantage of the free market to make a living. They move from cities to cities to sell stuff from previous cities. One city might have an abundance of salt but a low supply of cheese, one might have too many weapons but not enough salt, and another might be famous for the production of cheese while being in dire need of weapons. So a traveling merchant might buy salt for cheap in the first city, sell it for a profit in the second city and buy weapons for cheap, sell the weapons for a profit in the third city and buy plenty of cheese, then return to the first city to sell that cheese. He might repeat that process by buying more salt and going back to the second city.
When my players travel to a new place, some items are sold for a discount while others have their prices marked up. Smart players can take advantage of this by becoming traveling merchants as a side hustle. One of my campaigns took place during wartime, so the economy is all over the place due to shifting priorities and closed borders. Earlier during the war, weapons and armor were in high demand and banned from from being sold to civilians. Adventurers could only buy them in the black market and they were ridiculously expensive. As time passed, the production of weapons and armor increased and the prices slowly stabilized. Once the war was over, there was a high surplus of weapons and armor compared to a much lower demand, so they were being sold for really cheap. It's similar to what happens every year with candies around Halloween. The best time to buy candies is on November 1st.
Age: 33 | Sex: Male | Languages: French and English | Roles: DM and Player
Fictional life can absolutely exist in the absence of iron. For an example from Dungeons and Dragons, look only to the elemental planes. For a traditional example, no iron exists in or can pass into the Green World. If you can't imagine a world without iron, that is not because it can't be imagined.
There is no rule that coins are universal. If there were, I'd mock it, but there isn't. The PHB says that the listed coins are the most common, but that just means "most campaigns use these as currency." To wit: Dragonlance, an official campaign setting, uses different coins. (It would, however, not surprise me if I were to learn that AL games required a universal currency. I don't know one way or the other, but it would make sense and I wonder if that's where the idea came from.)
I guess you've never played Runequest in Glorantha. Everything is bronze, rather than iron.
Life in the real world can't exist without iron, but in fantasy worlds people aren't always built from DNA.
Thats what I would say.
The players get to roll the persuasion die and the NPC gets to counter with his roll. within 5 of each other and the price stands. Anything more and the price goes up or down in favor of the winner.
They only get one roll for the group.