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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Bohandas]

Coins can be broken down into fractionals, or even just melted down for the gold. Everyone uses gold. Kings, peasants, wizards. Gold is a currency that anyone can use.

You've got it backwards. Gold is a currency that no one can use. Not in that sense at any rate. Only spellcasters can make direct practical use of scrolls, true, but nobody can directly make practical use of gold; they can only trade it for things that are useful.

...no, I haven't?

I'm not talking about using the gold as a material. I'm talking about using it as a currency, because that's what we were talking about.
And gold is used in at least one process to do with magic, so I'd argue that gives it a practical use, but that's beside the point.

No, you're talking about both in an attempt to strawman me. You said that scrolls are only useful* to spellcasters because only spellcasters can make direct practical use of them but that gold is useful to everyone** because anyone can use it as a currency. At no point is the practicability of using scrolls as currency (which was the ostensible topic of the conversation) touched upon.

*here talking about practical use
**here talking about use as a currency, but pretending to still be talking about the same thing

[Jimmy]

It's a property of intrinsic vs. extrinsic value. A scroll has intrinsic value in that it can create an effect for an appropriate spellcaster. It has an inherent value defined by the cost of creation too, which is a static amount.

Gold is, by and large, valuable only for what it can be traded for. Thus, its value is extrinsic, excepting a few specific spells using it as a material component.

In a real world situation, you'd run into issues of inflation, economy of scale, etc. However in the game setting that's not a feature of the core rules. After all, even if your character's background has them as the scion of a noble house, a princess or the damned king of the country, if you're level 1 you still have a set Wealth by Level.

Thus, it doesn't matter whether or not it would be more logical for your fictional fantasy setting to use scrolls as de facto promissory notes. The rules say the standard currency is a piece of gold, so that's how you play it unless you're using house rules to make it slips of paper, colored rocks or toenail clippings.

[Bohandas]

It's a property of intrinsic vs. extrinsic value. A scroll has intrinsic value in that it can create an effect for an appropriate spellcaster. It has an inherent value defined by the cost of creation too, which is a static amount.

Gold is, by and large, valuable only for what it can be traded for. Thus, its value is extrinsic, excepting a few specific spells using it as a material component.

In a real world situation, you'd run into issues of inflation, economy of scale, etc. However in the game setting that's not a feature of the core rules. After all, even if your character's background has them as the scion of a noble house, a princess or the damned king of the country, if you're level 1 you still have a set Wealth by Level.

Thus, it doesn't matter whether or not it would be more logical for your fictional fantasy setting to use scrolls as de facto promissory notes. The rules say the standard currency is a piece of gold, so that's how you play it unless you're using house rules to make it slips of paper, colored rocks or toenail clippings.

IOUs for spellcasting are a canon currency though (in the Epic Level Handbok). Which is why it seems to me that it would be sensible to simply use magic scrolls directly.

[My Name is Immaterial]

The thing about Favors, the specific entry you're referencing, is that they can be used to pay for any spellcasting, whereas a scroll can only be used for a specific spell. To be fair; you could pay for things with a scroll, but the cost of making a scroll (50% of the cost! That quickly adds up to thousands of GP at higher levels.) far outways the benefit of having a scroll as currency. Imagine if a dollar cost 50 cents to make! The government would probably print dollars in larger denominations instead, so they get more bang for their buck, as it were.

[Jimmy]

An epic level character typically deals with values above and beyond normal limits. When you spend your day walking around in gear with a net value roughly equivalent to the entire combined wealth of a large city, you mostly trade in favors and rare items rather than gold. It's mainly a way of reducing the bookkeeping for playing an epic character when trying to haul that much wealth in physical form would be a logistical nightmare. I doubt it's meant to be extrapolated down to everyday common trade. After all, the rules also have prices for using goats as an alternative currency too, but I doubt anyone would seriously consider using this as the standard coin of the realm. It's more an exception that may come up in specific circumstances.

[BlackFlyme]

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but pennies still exist.

Not in Canada, though.

Also, remember that adventurers are unusually rich compared to in-game economies. Even in the largest cities, you still technically have to roll to see if they got what you want.

Trading scrolls wouldn't translate well to poorer areas where a low-level scroll could be worth the town's monthly production value.

[flabort]

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but pennies still exist.

Not in Canada, though.

The reason Canada canceled the penny is because of that very reason: they cost too much to make.
Also, Australia canceled the penny far before we did.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but pennies still exist.

Pennies have a specific role in the currency system, though. They provide a physcial representation of the smallest denomination of monetary value. Scrolls don't have a similar role when things like the Favor exists. Using a scroll would be like like trying to buy a house with a car.

Trading scrolls wouldn't translate well to poorer areas where a low-level scroll could be worth the town's monthly production value.

I think the premise of the discussion is that the party is purchasing expensive things.

[Bohandas]

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but pennies still exist.

Pennies have a specific role in the currency system, though. They provide a physcial representation of the smallest denomination of monetary value. Scrolls don't have a similar role when things like the Favor exists. Using a scroll would be like like trying to buy a house with a car.

Trading scrolls wouldn't translate well to poorer areas where a low-level scroll could be worth the town's monthly production value.

I think the premise of the discussion is that the party is purchasing expensive things.

Indeed. even a lot of non-epic magic items cost upwards of, like, 10000 gp. That's upwards of 125 pounds (the weight of 10000 US quarters; the weight in question here would probably be higher as gold is denser and the gold coins are generally depicted as larger than a quarter) to lug around plus the weight of whatever you're carying it in.

So you can either carry around he weight of 400 sheets of parchment, or more than the weight of 500 $5 rolls of quarters.

Speaking of parchment, why does it cost less than paper in the phb? The whole reason why paper replaced parchment is that it's cheap.

Pennies cost more than a penny to make, but pennies still exist.

Pennies have a specific role in the currency system, though. They provide a physcial representation of the smallest denomination of monetary value.

Yeah. Without that they'd take the excust to round all the prices up.

I still don't like pennies though. I wish the government would bring back Fractional Currency

[highmax28]

Attempting to make an Elementalist Homebrew for 5e.

Although with some tweaks taken from the 4e elementalist (such as element specific proficiencies, skills, saves, etc.) it pretty much is the Kineticist from pathfinder with their abilities functioning like the warlock invocations. Its not yet finished, and I will be running some tests, but I already changed quite a bit to fit 5e. For example, enervating infusion (now called weakening blast) causes disadvantages to all rolls until the next turn.

I also reduced it to only 5 elements which reflect the Book of Five Rings: Air, Earth, Fire, Water and Void. Void will end up functioning like a hybrid of pathfiner's aether and void kineticists though.

I'll throw it up here when I'm done so you guys can tell me how much of a bag of dicks I am for doing this. This is really fun but god damnit, it is time consuming. Its taken me three days of work to just get the effects of things down, and this isn't even doing any balancing between elements or anything yet. So far, it seems that void is the only one who's gotten anything good since all their attacks deal force or bludgeoning damage and because of the nihilist ideals they have, they aren't proficient with many weapons and instead gained the monk's martial arts effect to use their fists (no flurry of blows for them though). I also need to change how much damage these guys can dish out. The elemental blast right now is pretty disgusting on the kineticist, and I need to find some way to balance it (probably increase it every few levels and cap it off. I'll figure it out)

[Rolan7]

Dunno if this is any help, I know little about 4th edition and nothing about kineticists, but 3.5e's Complete Divine has the "Shugenja" which uses the 5 elements like that.  With some mostly-minor abilities, mostly just sensing sources of their elements.

[Bohandas]

Dunno if this is any help, I know little about 4th edition and nothing about kineticists, but 3.5e's Complete Divine has the "Shugenja" which uses the 5 elements like that.  With some mostly-minor abilities, mostly just sensing sources of their elements.

There's also the Wu-Jen and Elemental Savant from Complete Arcane

[Bohandas]

Do curses seem potentially bizarrely over-powerful to anyone else?

I mean, naively interpreted they arguably may have the power to influence the minds against creatures immune to mind-altering effects (at least as expanded in the BoVD, as in the case of a curse that lowers initial reactions to the cursee; the bestow curse does not have the mind-affecting tag thus making "immune to mind-affectig ppwers" arguably inapplicable, nor does it mention any saving throw for creatures other than the target) and to ignore Mordenkainen's Disjunction (which is not on the list of spells that can remove it)z

[Jimmy]

Which is why a Potion of Remove Curse is a wise investment.

[Bohandas]

We'll come up with 101 ideas for cheap magic items!

25.) Correcting Quill: Anything written with this pen is always spelled coreectly (provided that the writer is actually familiar with the word they're trying to write, and also that they're not trying to spell incorrectly deliberately), and never smudges.  (CL 3; Craft Wondrous Item, amaunesis, prestidigitation; Price ~12-150 gp)