These thoughts arise from my experiences at a recent Seattle game.
From my perspective there are two distinctly separate economies that exist IG.
The first is the Low level economy that is based around the bare essential Items needed for survival. This economy is Coin driven and includes potions/elixirs, Normal weapons, Armor and Shields, Very cheap magic items, Arrows and bolts. Essentially The Low level economy consists of things that cost less than 5 gold.
The second economy consists of Expensive Magic Items, Ritual Scrolls, and components. This system is driven by high level characters that have excessively large amounts of gold. Essentially this economy consists of stuff that has a value of over 25 gold. I would consider it a largely trade based economy.
As a low level character you struggle to obtain the essential items from the high level characters that control the majority of all Items.
As a mid level character a majority of your assets still go towards purchasing the essential items from the high level characters. The rest of your assets go to collecting Ritual scrolls, Components and Magic items which are a necessity if you want to have any chance of keeping up with the High level players. You have no surplus of coin.
I guess my issue is that the economy's don't seem to be compatible or proportional. Once a player has a bit of a coin surplus they are stuck dealing with high level characters that already have astoundingly large amounts of wealth and therefore have the power to arbitrarily inflate the prices of Ritual scrolls, and magic items. Or they run into a wall in that they do not have anything of value to trade.
I am interested to see if this is or is not true anywhere else.
From my perspective there are two distinctly separate economies that exist IG.
The first is the Low level economy that is based around the bare essential Items needed for survival. This economy is Coin driven and includes potions/elixirs, Normal weapons, Armor and Shields, Very cheap magic items, Arrows and bolts. Essentially The Low level economy consists of things that cost less than 5 gold.
The second economy consists of Expensive Magic Items, Ritual Scrolls, and components. This system is driven by high level characters that have excessively large amounts of gold. Essentially this economy consists of stuff that has a value of over 25 gold. I would consider it a largely trade based economy.
As a low level character you struggle to obtain the essential items from the high level characters that control the majority of all Items.
As a mid level character a majority of your assets still go towards purchasing the essential items from the high level characters. The rest of your assets go to collecting Ritual scrolls, Components and Magic items which are a necessity if you want to have any chance of keeping up with the High level players. You have no surplus of coin.
I guess my issue is that the economy's don't seem to be compatible or proportional. Once a player has a bit of a coin surplus they are stuck dealing with high level characters that already have astoundingly large amounts of wealth and therefore have the power to arbitrarily inflate the prices of Ritual scrolls, and magic items. Or they run into a wall in that they do not have anything of value to trade.
I am interested to see if this is or is not true anywhere else.