Coin size

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Bonhumm
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Coin size

Post by Bonhumm » Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:11 pm

Realized something today about the coin sizes in Earthdawn and was wondering if the topic was ever breached before.

Came by a large amount of money and was wondering if (as a Windling) as was able to carry it so I found out that according to the player's handbook, a gold piece weight 1/5th of an ounce (0.20 ounces)

For comparison, a US dime weight 0.08 ounce.

So yes, it's more than twice the weight of a dime BUT, the dime's dimension is due to the fact that it's made of a metal far lighter than gold.

The Roman Solidus, which was about half the diameter of a dime was weighting 0.16 ounce, literally twice that of an ED gold coin.

0.20 ounce of gold would have a volume of about 0.02 square inches, even flattened down, it would probably be smaller than a microSD card, which is way too small to handle as a currency; I mean you sneeze near the change counter and you just go bankrupt.


Did I miss something here?

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Mataxes
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Re: Coin size

Post by Mataxes » Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:33 pm

No. The coin sizes/weights have been the same since they were first introduced in ED1.

Since it didn't directly impact any game mechanics (aside from encumbrance), it's not something we looked at, assuming when they had first been written they were fine.

That they might not actually be if you look at it too hard isn't terribly surprising.

(Fun fact -- I once ran an adventure where a GMC was killed by being hung from a rafter by his arms with a bag of gold tied to his ankles, with the idea he was being stretched like on a rack, and it had a bit of ironic tone as well because he was killed as a result of his greed. When I looked at how much gold the sack would have held based on the weight of individual coins... I had to backtrack that so my Circle 2 group wouldn't be swimming in too much wealth. But the dimensions of the coins never pinged my radar as unusual, because it never really mattered.)
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etherial
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Re: Coin size

Post by etherial » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:01 am

Bonhumm wrote:
Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:11 pm
according to the player's handbook, a gold piece weight 1/5th of an ounce (0.20 ounces)...The Roman Solidus, which was about half the diameter of a dime was weighting 0.16 ounce, literally twice that of an ED gold coin.
Wait, what? A gold piece weighs 0.2 oz. The Roman Solidus weighed 0.16 oz. So shouldn't the ED coin be larger than the Solidus?

Bonhumm
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Re: Coin size

Post by Bonhumm » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:14 am

[/quote]

Wait, what? A gold piece weighs 0.2 oz. The Roman Solidus weighed 0.16 oz. So shouldn't the ED coin be larger than the Solidus?
[/quote]


Indeed, I failed. I checked the weight of a dime (0.08) instead of the weight of a gold coin (0.20) which would make the ED gold coin twice the size of a Solidus thus about the size of a dime.... but still, I can't figure out how they can make such a big coin out of 0.02 square inch of matter.

But anyway, never mind.

Lys
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Re: Coin size

Post by Lys » Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:37 am

US dimes are made from a copper-nickel alloy that has 45% the density of gold. This means that a dime made of gold would be 2.2 times heavier, or 0.176 oz. Since Barsavian gold coins are 0.20 ounces, we can conclude they are just under 14% larger in volume than US dimes.

Also speaking of too much wealth, after my 6th Circle group defeated the mighty Barrow King, his undead subjects thanked us for making their mad monarch sleep by handing us chests with 30 000 gold coins. We already had an over 4000 gold reserve, so that's more than 425 pounds of group gold, plus our individual purses. Let's just say it's a good thing the Troll Warrior/Beastmaster owns an elephant.

Graymayne
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Re: Coin size

Post by Graymayne » Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:39 pm

lol, my group took a wagon everywhere, usually with a few barrels full of some flavor of Ale.

but never an elephant. :-D

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etherial
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Re: Coin size

Post by etherial » Thu Oct 12, 2017 7:46 pm

In previous editions, we used elemental coin for carrying large sums but since the books say that elemental coin are more symbolic than literal currency, for my last campaign, I bought a sack of costume gems at Michael's and handed them out as treasure. They varied in value from 200 to 1600 Silver based on carat, cut, color, and clarity.

Lys
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Re: Coin size

Post by Lys » Fri Oct 13, 2017 2:56 am

We are probably going to want to put the hoard in a bank and maybe also buy some orichalcum coins at some point. But currently we're in Portage, which isn't exactly known for its strong banking institutions.

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