@@fowlfables that's fine. But the real life weight of gold isn't what is written in the books. Shad said that the same size coins made of gold would have weighed double what his coins weighed.
The only thing I would add is that coins have a “packing density”. Coins laid haphazardly will have roughly half the density of solid gold, so cut the final amount in half and you’re good. Easy way to do packing density, fill up your container with the coins, then fill it up with water. Take the coins out, look at what fraction of space the water still takes up, then subtract that fraction of the weight. You’ll get a perfectly accurate density of packed coins in your specific container!
Building on the idea of packing density and density. For 50 gold coins to weigh one pound each coin should be around 1 cm across and 0.135 cm thick. That a little over half the diameter of a dime, though the same thickness. Which means a bag full of dimes might be a better analogue for a bag full of gold coins then poker chips or something (plus a bunch of weight of course). Dimes are still far too big though so maybe very small buttons? edit: dimes are pretty close to the right size for silver or copper coins
You can try getting tungsten, it's the same density as gold, and it should cost less than 20$ for a pound. You don't need a lot, maybe like 10 pound, just so we can actually see the size, how we could carry, maybe put in some pouches.
@@BobWorldBuilder William Osman has a video of people messing with a 4in cube of tungsten (~42lb), which might shed ome light on what 2100gp/pp would feel like: watch?v=9O551__3ppM
One thing I like to point out about D&D (at least in 3.5, I don't know about 5e) is that gems can be exchanged for full value and they value more per weight and volume than gold, so the book even recommends using it as equivalent, in travel.
Yes people in the world of d&d seem to accept gems as coinage for some reason. Despite how hard it is for a common person to tell how valuable a gem really is.
Another stellar video! Can't wait to see the encumbrance video, I'm in between campaigns at the moment (just finished a 6 year long one), so all this meta math is a wonderful thought experiment before starting with level 1 PCs again!
I've been trying to get head around this too! A wicked small coin. Though I wound up googling it and that doesn't seem to far from what existed historically. They also seem remarkably thin. Still there's something to chuckle at when the barbarian has to spend a couple seconds fiddling with his tiny coin pouch to gingerly pluck out 40 dimes!
Based on the specific gravity of the metal and each coin being 9 grams (50 to the pound), these are good relatable (for the US at least) sizes of coins. If you just want a standard coin for all the coin metal types, the EP is a decent average of all of the coin metals for a standard coin if you don't want to deal in coins of multiple sizes. For containers in D&D 5e, the weight of the coins will fill up the container, before the coins ever reach the volume of the container. But the amount of stacked and loose coins gives you the ability to say how much space they take up if that is relevant. For example for the standard coin size (EP), it comes out to 6,840,120 loosely stacked coins to completely fill a portable hole. PP - penny sized, but barely thinner than a penny. 17 stacked in 3/4"x3/4"x1" stack and 12 loose in cubic inch GP - size of a nickel, but thin as a dime. 19 stacked in a 5/6"x5/6"x1" stack and 13 loose in cubic inch EP - barely larger than a quarter, but barely thinner than a dime. 20 stacked to a cubic inch and 14 loose in a cubic inch SP - barely larger than a quarter, but just barely thinner than a quarter. 15 stacked to a cubic inch and 10 loose in a cubic inch CP - barely larger than a quarter, but just barely thicker than a nickel. 13 stacked to a cubic inch and 9 loose in a cubic inch For people without access to US coins, you can use these measurements to relate them to coins you have access to. (diameter x thickness) PP - 19.05mm x 1.47mm GP - 21.21mm x 1.34mm EP - 25.4mm x 1.27mm SP - 25.4mm x 1.69mm CP - 25.4mm x 2 mm
As a Canadian. We love coins and have both a 1 dollar and two dollar piece that are quite large and heavy; the weight of a pocket full of coins is very familiar!
@@eopatcjo the rough made coins of old were considerably bigger than modern dimes. The average size of a gold coin in the tenth century would be about the size of a modern quarter up to the size of a modern silver dollar.
Coins are usually alloys so gold coins in dnd are probably something like 30% gold 70% other metals (like copper, iron and other cheap metals) so it would make the coin bigger
This may sound weird, but I can't describe what a delight it was to see sincere, enthusiastic people having fun. My first impression, in the very immediate seconds of watching my first video when I found this channel, was to smile. And I just kept smiling throughout each video I watched.
@@BobWorldBuilder they are! Not hating on soda, I just thought it was funny you chose to visualize with something that is apparently not in a 1 Liter packaging 😂 (forgot the emphasis on Half)
Unfortunately I can't find my calculation sheet anymore, but I did the calculation for coin weight, size and volume for my own game. And I found it extremely funny when my party defeated the massive dragon, charged into his lair and... found it empty. Except for a single vase, too heavy for them to lift, because it contained the WHOLE dragons hoard in platinum coins. They couldn't really believe it, but hey, they were rich. ^^
I'm not much of a math nerd myself but one thing you also have to consider for gold coins is that most of those coins are not solid gold, but an alloy. And according to Wikipedia, from 1526 onwards in England, for example, gold coins were usually 91.7% gold and 8.3% other metals to make it more durable. So you'll be having a mix of different metals to weigh out and calculate, which hurts my brain to think about already. But I suppose if you want to be true to form, that would be the way to do it.
Such a topical video when I was JUST making a magic item of a pouch of 200 magical silver pieces (it's supposed to be something this god Merces gifts you if you impress him). You can toss out the coins to barrage them with animate objects, gain a bonus to your ability checks, drown them in a wave of coins, and more. Fun stuff.
The only thing I would ding on accuracy for the volume is that, coins are not smelted together and have air between them, which increases their volume by several factors, that being said, maybe a second backpack so it will still be relatively close to your estimates. What I am not sure on (as I have never dug that deeply into the currencies of 5E) is whether or not gold coins are pure gold. In terms of real human history, coins were almost exclusively alloys as for one, precious metals are not very resilient and could bend or be defaced rather easily. Also, making coins out of alloys allows you to make a more consistent size for your currency. So if this is the case, the weight per volume of the coin will probably drop as you would be infusing iron and tin into the coins, once again increasing the volume. All in all, good chuckle of a video, would love to see this actually acted out like your encumbrance and movement videos!
When we started our sendbox campaign, we kept track of every type of stuff we where paid with (coins, gems, pearls, etc.) separate. But we eventually decided that we just have some amount of "gold" and can spend it just as modern money (just keep track of spellcasting component separate), cause money charge wasn't something worth roleplaying.
Hey Bob brilliant video and yes that number is correct from a maths standpoint your volume will be wrong. Due to the fact that you are storing coins separately and not as a singular mass there will be an inefficiency in packing those coins if for example it is a round coin 1cm in diameter and 1mm thick it would have a volume of 0.079cm3 but if it were square and of the same dimensions 1x1cmx1mm it would have a volume of 0.1cm3 which is 1.273 time larger while packing efficiency can change you would be looking at a required volume of 2.125L+ for those because they won’t be perfectly packed each time an adventurer goes out
hey Bob, a backup nerd with some math skills here, although I took a bit of a different route, - using just metric since I am European and don't know a thing about Imperial - I came to the same answer off 1.669 liters so your math is correct! edit: ps: last year I calculated the value of the money in dnd, using the cost of wheat in dnd and the time a farmer has to work for it in a medieval setting, compared to what wheat costs in real life and the time a farmer has to work for the same amount in 2020 (last year remember) and I came to a value of 263 euro's per GP, recalculating with inflation it is now 266,42 euros or 312.02 dollars. that means that this fighter can carry up to 1 million dollars worth of gold and that commoner 1.95 million. while if that fighter was living today it would be worth 1.85 million, gold is not worth a lot in dnd apperiantly.
That seems fairly reasonable for a medieval setting. Gold is much more valuable now than it was in the past because there are many more people wanting it, and new practical uses for it, but only a little more supply. The opposite is true for silver because such huge quantities of it were extracted from the Americas
@@BobWorldBuilder you're welcome, most of it I did a year ago, but spreading knowledge is alweys good. In this case more people can help to flavour there game with immersion for how much money there party actually has
So I took the liberty of checking other sources regarding coin weight and discovered that 5e rules for weight are slightly simplified (like many elements) compared to previous editions... it seems that back from 2nd through 4th edition, the standard gold coin size was equivalent to 9 grams, meaning that 1 pound of coinage would equal 50.3991111111 coins. This seems inconsequential, but when you factor in large quantities as we are now, this becomes at least a little significant. If we assume the carrying capacity is 71 pounds now, our adventurer will be finding themselves capable of hauling 3578 1/3 coins with them by these standards rather than merely 3550, or over half a pound of coinage... enough difference in gold to equal that crossbow at their waist and the ammunition for it. Fun Fact: Assuming the coins are solid gold, the fortune in our adventure's pack would be worth $1,838,941.11 USD.
Correction: D&D 2e-4e and PF 1e both do the same 50 coins per pound as 5e, while PF 2e has 1000 coins as 1 Bulk, with no fractions. (PF 2e abstracts weight into Bulk, instead of acting like all things of equal weight are equally cumbersome) Also, while Melissa's right that PF **2e** uses a silver standard, PF **1e** is basically just a glorified set of houserules for 3.5 (there, I said it), and kept the gold standard
Not to be a sourpuss but, honestly... bag of holding, coin conversion (platinum), land vehicules (carts)/mounts, dragging rules and spreading it around the party... you are looking at a huge carry weight, barrelfuls of currency. And that's before using especific things to improve the situational condition, like spells, so they can carry more to a safehouse or a shop.
Hey, I also did a density calculation a long time ago to add descriptions to my equipment spreadsheet: cp - A tarnished coin about the size of a US dollar coin sp - A coin, a bit smaller than a quarter gp - A coin just larger than a dime pp - A coin just smaller than a dime IIRC these are all assumed to be the same "aspect ratio" (thickness to diameter) as the coin they're compared to. Here are the ft³ respectively: cp - 0.00003575259206 sp - 0.0000305404126 gp - 0.00001659751037 pp - 0.00001493540438
@@BobWorldBuilder That's right, while you were thinking of ways to make your encounters more "fun", I was calculating the volume of an authentic dark age era cabbage to see how many you could fit in a backpack. We are not the same.
@@BobWorldBuilder Tldr - Used old D&D article for generating a standard coin of 1" diameter and 1/20 an inch thick for all metals using alloys. Gives 20 stacked coins to a cubic inch and 14 coins to a cubic inch when they are loosely piled. D&D containers are constrained by the weight of the coins, instead of the volume. Oh, and your fighter can carry over 5 billion coins.* Actually, the math was done back in Dec 1983 in issue #80 of Dragon Magazine in the article, "How many coins in a coffer?" by David F. Godwin for coins in Advanced D&D. Those coins were 1/10 of a pound (1.6 ounces or 45.4 grams) each. Mr Godwin talked about the various densities of platinum, gold, electrum, silver, and copper and came up with an average of specific gravity of about 15 for a standard coin alloy (14.84). He went with a little higher at 15.66 to get a standard alloy coin of roughly the size of a US Eisenhower dollar coin. The standard coin he used was 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) in diameter and 1/10 of an inch (2.54 mm) thick for a volume of 0.177 cubic inches (2.9 cc). He experimented with stacked vs loose coins for loose coins and found loose coins taking up roughly 110% of the volume of stacked coins, although he rounded up for his standard coin. So he got 4 loose coins per cubic inch and 10 coins stacked in a 1.5 x 1.5 x 1 inch cube for Adv D&D. But we want 5e coins that are 50 coins to a pound, so we need something a lot smaller than an Eisenhower US dollar coin. I know that I don't want to deal with various sized coins for each metal type and I suspect many others don't want to either. So lets pick a nice sized standard coin that uses alloys (lots of handwaving here) for all the coin types to be the same size and weight. A US quarter is 0.955 inches (24.26mm) in diameter and just under 1/14 of an inch (1.75mm) thick and isn't far off the size of the 2 Euro coin, 5 ruble coin, 500 yen coin, etc, so it is a real world useful size. A US quarter is 80 to the pound, the 2 euro coin is just over 53 to the pound, the 5 ruble coin is 70-75 per pound, and the 500 yen coin is almost 65 to the pound. So if we use a coin 1 inch (25.4mm) in diameter and 1/20 inch (1.27mm) thick, then it is every so slightly larger than a quarter, but just under 3/4 as thick as a quarter. So your stacked standard coin is 20 to the cubic inch. Loosely piled, your standard coin is 13.72, so we can round up to 14 standard coins per cubic inch (just over 112%) as the 110% was a rough figure per Mr Godwin. This gives a specific gravity of 14.44, which is a slightly less than the average specific gravity for the 5 coin metal types that Mr Godwin used. The standard 5e backpack can hold up to 1 cubic foot/30 pounds of gear. So 1 cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches. Since 30 pounds of coins is 1,500 coins, at 14 loose coins to the cubic inch, the hoard of 1,500 coins only takes up 108 cubic inches of the backpack. Every container, with the exception of a scroll case, can hold less coins by weight, than will fit inside by volume. So if you want to know how many coins a pouch can hold (or anything else), multiple the weight it can carry, 6lb, by the 50 coins per pound for a total of 300 coins in a pouch. Container capacity is on page 153 of the PHB. If you really want to mess with your players, give them a wood chest (2x2x3 feet that can hold 300lb) filled with coins. Loosely piled, who's going to stack them, you have 290,304 coins in the chest. Of course the coins that chest weigh just over 5,806 lbs, so good luck carrying it without the bottom falling off, assuming you don't rip off the handles first. :) At 300lbs, you have 15,000 coins in a chest, but at 14 coins per cubic inch, you have 1,072 cubic inches of coins in that chest. So 15,000 coins takes up just over 1 1/4 inches of the bottom of the chest. Also, 5,806 lbs of coins would likely break the sides of the chest, turning the coins into a pile. Maybe have some wooden braces holding up the sides of the chest, if you want to give them a hint. *FYI, the portable hole is 6 ft in diameter and 10 ft deep and has no weight limit. So that is 488,580 cubic inches and at 14 coins per cubic inch is 6,840,120 coins. If you consider a portable hole to weigh 1/10 of a pound when folded up, then your average fighter you profiled, can carry 760 portable holes which is 5,198,491,200 coins. ;)
I can make it even simpler. US dimes, quarters, half dollars, and Eisenhower dollars all weigh 1 lb / $20, and have a density of around 7 g/cc, compared to copper being 9 g/cc, silver being 10.5 g/cc, gold being 19 g/cc, and platinum being 21.5 g/cc. So already, you can estimate the *weight* of any combination of D&D/PF coins by multiplying by $20 / 1 lb, and thinking about that many dimes or quarters. (D&D 1e is $2/coin, D&D 2e+ and PF 1e are 40¢/coin, and because PF 2e shifted to a more abstract bulk, I can't really comment on what "1000 coins/bulk" looks like) You have to multiply by a factor to estimate the volume, though. sp are almost exactly 2/3 the volume of equivalent US coins, which corresponds to either being 4/5 the diameter if you keep the thickness the same, or 5/6 the size if you scale everything. cp are 7/9 the volume (5/6 diameter, 9/10 scale), though I'd be comfortable just rounding to the same density as silver. pp are almost exactly 1/3 the volume (3/5 diameter, 2/3 scale). And finally, gp are slightly bigger than that, but feel even closer to pp than cp are to sp, so I'm not even going to bother finding approximate fractions. (36.8% volume, 60.7% diameter, 71.7% scale, if you're wondering. So I would instead say 1 cp or 1 sp is somewhere around 4 dimes in weight or a dime and a quarter in size, while 1 gp or 1 pp is against somewhere around 4 dimes in weight, but a smidge larger than a single dime in size. (Although I personally houserule coins to be 200 to the pound, which is closer to the size of actual historical coins, which puts 1 sp at close enough to a single dime in size that I don't even bother thinking about the exact densities, and just keep a bag of $5 in dimes for if I want a prop)
This problem actually came up when I was trying to homebrew a dragon sized version of the Bag of Holding, the Bottomless Bag of the Hoard (I also homebrewed dragons as a playable race), but I went with the density of silver, which is the basis of most real coinage. I still ended up with a ridiculous ≈225 short tons of mass for a space of 640 cubic feet (definitely enough to carry a dragon hoard until you have found a lair😁). If I had gone with gold, it would have been almost twice that… People tend to really overestimate the volume of precious metals.
Hello from Canada, the land of change! We have these large, rather heavy, two dollar coins (weight:6.95 g, diameter: 22 mm, thickness: 1.75 mm). A roll of 25 coins weights ~173 g or just over 6 ounces. Trust me when I say that carrying a few rolls in your pocket is not convenient.
Closest thing we'll see to a Shad-Bob Fantasy Video Crossover, so this is an absolute win. Also, the 'weird one nobody uses': - glad I'm not alone. Retconned Electrum out of my Faerun/Tethyr game, which has sadly become a meme at the table.
@@MagnusXL Isn't electrum just 1/2 a gold piece? It's still an absolutely stupid piece of currency but it's not that hard - imagine doing a campaign with currency based on pre-decimalized British currency, that would be a math nightmare.
Historically (if we take silver pennies from 11th century England, and gold pennies from their brief usage a few centuries later), the silver penny weighed about 1.4g and the gold penny about twice that (but the gold penny was worth 20 silver pennies). Before machine-stamping was invented, pennies even from the same mint would not be absolutely identical, nor would they have milled edges. One gold penny would have a volume around 0.15cc, which is a coin about 1.5mm thick and 12mm in diameter. A packing efficiency of 60% means that with care you can store as many as 4000 gold pennies in a one-litre volume, where the coins would weigh 11.2kg. Fifty gold pennies would therefore weigh 0.14kg, which is 0.3lbs, and easily fit into a coin purse (think something the size of your D&D basic dice set drawstring bag). Of course that's the high medieval period of England, where the coinage system of standardised minting, withdrawal and re-issue to control quality and fraud was very advanced. If you look back to nations in antiquity (such as the Roman Republic) coinage was more readily debased and the poorer metal quality would have meant coins tended to be made larger and heavier because they'd have to resist wear for longer.
To note though, you only have so much stackability of any solid, and in this case I think cylinders have a packing capacity of like 50% or something like that. So very important to retain when finding volume of solids in a hard container
50 coins per pound means that each coin weighs 1/50 pounds. The pounds per cubic centimetre as given would be about 19.3 g/cc, so that's about 7/9 cm^3 per coin. However, coins are not cube-shaped - the gold coin as pictured looks to have both height and length about 12 times what I would guess for its depth (it looks taller than it is long but I think that's an optical illusion - it's actually pretty much square without the cutouts). It also looks like the cutouts at the sides lose about 1/4 of the mass of the coin. So let's start by scaling up the target volume so that it includes the mass lost from the cutouts - to account for an adjustment to 3/4 mass, we just multiply by 4/3. So we're looking for a shape with a volume of about 7/9*4/3 cm if the cutouts had been included, i.e. 28/27 cm^3 (let's just round to 1 cm^3 for simplicity, since this is all an approximation anyway - suppose those cutouts are just slightly less than 1/4 of the mass). So then based on the observation that height and length are each about 12 times the depth, we can let x = height = length and say x^2 * (x/12) = 1 cm^3. We can then solve for x = (12)^(1/3) = about 2.29 cm, and the depth, x/12, is about 0.19 cm (or 1.9 mm) That's some mathematics about the size of an individual coin - in terms of the volume for 3800 coins, though, I think the approach this video takes is mostly fine. A fairly good packing density, if not the best, seems likely to be just to then place these coins in a cube, as much as possible - you would place an n by n base stacked to a height of 12*n, or get as close to that as possible; in this case, I'd say a 7 by 7 base of about 78 coins high (which leaves some spare room and isn't a perfect cube). Some space is lost due to the cutouts and the inability to form a perfect cube, but we can look at the dimensions we already have for the coins and conclude that this imperfect packing method takes up about (7*2.29)*(7*2.29)*(78*0.19) = about 3808 cm^3 (which is 3.808 litres). This is unsurprisingly similar to the 1 cm^3 per coin indicated previously, since that volume already took into account the space needed to accomodate the cutouts. It also tells us the dimensions of our coin collection which is about 16.03 by 16.03 by 14.82 cm (or about 6.31 by 6.31 by 5.83 inches). The real volume would probably be larger because the coins would not be packed efficiently.
Tungsten has almost the same density as gold, and is a hell of a lot cheaper. I got a science demonstration coin of tungsten for about $50 and it's fun to use as a prop.
I actually calculated out all containers for pathfinder 1st edition and d&d 3.5 and found out that no matter which type of coins you use, if you follow the rule of 50 coins per pound, then none of the containers are restricted by volume, but instead the weight. That includes when you factor in loss of volume efficiency because the coins cannot tesselate. The only container that I found where the volume was the most important factor was the portable hole... Because it doesn't have a weight limit :P. I have not looked at 5th edition rules, but unless those containers changed drastically it should still apply.
I find the best volume to weight conversion is by using the 25lb chest container, assume dimensions of 3x2x2 (12 feet cubed) it holds 300 lbs of stuff, so 50 pounds of coins (1/6 weight cap) would slide about and fill up the bottom 4" of the chest (2 cubic ft)
@@stevdor6146 Exactly. No container can actually be filled up according to the rules. At least not if you use 50 coins to the pound rule. Funny fact according to system rules copper coins are by far the largest coins.
i remember running some numbers on this and at the time I think the price for the most expensive magic items in pathfinder that one could purchase you'd have to roll through town with a buick's worth of gold by volume
I love to see a Shadiversity video reference! Whoo! Also interesting math breakdown. I didn't take the time to compare, but it sounded probable? However, I think the thing that many gamers keep ignoring (accidentally, I believe) and which games choose to ignore is the idea of banks and the bank note (ie: paper money system), which is something that has been around for centuries, well over 1000 years. Really, it just makes sense. Why WOULDN'T an efficient banking system exist in a magically-advanced world setting? No one can use the argument "oh, but then there would be differences in the paper moneys and issues with that between regions" because that same argument automatically applies to coins as well! Since the coinage system is already assumed to be universally shared across all cities, regions, cultures, planes, worlds, etc., there is literally no good reason to not incorporate paper money into the world at all. One of my favorite older games is Castle of the Winds (1 and 2), which is probably the only game I know of that both cares about things like this AND incorporates a Bank Note/credit system.
Hey, don't buy anything, go to the bank, and ask for $3800 in one dollar coins. When you are done, put it back, and you get a real life comparison using actual currency.
The problem that "facsimile coins" often have is that the density just doesn't come close to gold coins. The next thing is also that a coin doesn't actually have to be as big as a poker chip, remember how many currencies have coins which are actually quite tiny (and light). If I had to choose some examples: -1 yen, 1gram (aluminium) with 2cm diameter -1 eurocent, 2.3gram (copper) with 1.6cm diameter -2 euro coin, 8.5gram (mixture of copper, nickel, brass) with 2.2cm diameter -poker chip, 10gram with 3.9cm diameter (official standard) In fact medieval coins have been around the same size, even Roman coinage was around 1.6-2.5cm in diameter and weighed about 3-5gram. But there's even more to think about: Mint presses often made coins flatter than moder coins, especially towards the rim, which takes away even more weight. (We'll ignore the fact that such coins also often didn't end up round and perfect.) Therefor saying that 50 coins would weigh 1lbs is giving a wrong impression and should rather be at about 100coins per pound (4.5gram per coin).
I just want to mention that 1cc of gold is 19.3g. Per the D&D rules, a single coin weighs ~9g. It is not possible to have a usable currency of gold that only weighs 9g. That would be a solid coin of ~0.47cc, roughly the size of a "thicker" Canadian Penny (Penny: ~0.41cc). That's a super tiny coin for fumbling around in a pouch. So to that point, we should probably assume that gold coins are not pure but instead an alloy. Silver (~0.86cc) and Copper (~1cc) coins however are decent in size. If Gold was alloyed with copper and silver to maintain its gold luster, an 8k Gold/Silver/Copper coin would be ~0.78cc, which is about the size of a Quarter. Below is a list of Canadian and American coins, and their approximate volumes for comparison: $2 CAD ~1.1 cc $1 CAD ~1 cc (5e Copper Coin) .25¢ CAD ~0.71 cc (5e Silver Coin or an alloyed Gold Coin) .10¢ CAD ~0.31 cc .5¢ CAD ~0.62 cc .1¢ CAD ~0.41 cc (5e Gold Coin) $1 USD ~1.1 cc (5e Copper Coin) .25¢ USD ~0.81 cc (5e Silver Coin or an alloyed Gold Coin) .10¢ USD ~0.34 cc .5¢ USD ~0.69 cc .1¢ USD ~0.43 cc (5e Gold Coin)
@@BobWorldBuilder I remember watching a video about _The Weird One_ Pretty informative. Had a houserule suggestion to make it a forgotten coin that's used by thieves nowadays. Can't remember whose video it was though :(
Yeah, packing density is also a thing. That weight of coins will not be perfectly packed into a vacuum where there is no space between them. I would take the 1lb of coins, place them into a container as tightly as you can manage without too much strain (packing a pouch of coins as tight as you can with still being able to close the bag for example) then fill the container up to the top coin with water. Remove the coins and you will have your remaining space. Then you can safely approximate that density by volume into whatever size you need without needing thousands upon thousands of coins (and cost). Container + coins + water then subtract coins = remaining density or space unused per volume of coins/lb. EDIT: just saw another post give the same idea....i should read a few comments first
Next do a video about how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood! I'm sure there are entries in the Monster Manual for a woodchuck.
"Money Bags" is not just an expression. People have been storing and moving large quantities of coins for millennium. How long do you think they took to come up with a "tougher sack?"
For me the maths simple especially when using any kind of alternate carrying capacity rules. 5e states coins weigh 0.02lbs therefore 100 coins is 2lbs, 200 coins is 4lbs and for simplicity i say 1 slot of coins is 250 making 1000 gold take up 4 whole slots. (i give every character 12 slots +strength mod)
OK under 10 g pro coin.( In the German p&p TBE (The Black Eye) a coldpiece weights 25 g.) This is More realistic than i thought. In real medieval europe the Standard goldcoin (Gulden, Florin or Dukaten) had 3,5 g of weight. A later in some parts of Holy Roman Empire established Silvercoin with Same value Like the 3,5 g Goldcoin was the Taler and Had 17 - 26 g weight.
These are funny vids, Bob. What I also find funny is the guy (I'm assuming) at True Black Forge went on vacation yesterday. lol (Cool product nonetheless.)
Interesting. From the density of gold and the weight of 50 coins, we can retro engineer the size of the coin. I'll assume the gold coins are purely made of gold. It is actually unlikely because you could not use such a soft material as currency; it is too soft. But let's go with it. A pound is 453.592g. 50 coins to a pound, so each coin is 9.07g. density of gold is 19.6 g per cc. so a coin is 0.46 cc. Assuming the coin is round, we can approximate is as a cylinder of height h and radius r. The volume is pi*h*r^2. If you set height at 0.2cm, you get that put r at 0.86cm. That's about the size of a US dime. Gold coins in DnD are MUCH smaller than I expected! Think of the rolls of coins you can get at the bank. A roll of dime is $5, so 50 coins. you can easily hold 5 in your hand. And that's 250 coins right there. So carrying 1000 coins seems crazy when you say it. But that's only 20 rolls of coins. Carrying 5000 coins, which seems insane, is only a 10x10 grid of rolls. You can probably grab that with both hands. Well that's 100 100 pounds, so maybe not, but volume wise, it is pretty small. It makes me think that DnD universe would have the equivalent of bank rolls, maybe carved pieces of wood to hold 100 coins.
I believe that pure gold coins were an actual thing from history. The Aztecs used them I believe, and possibly some medieval countries as well, although many used silver instead
Instead of bank rolls, use coin poles! Japanese wadokaichin coins have a square hole in the center, i believe so they would carry coins threaded by string, or a stack of coins fitted to a square peg, similar to a coin roll
I find it funny and sad people trying to add realism to fantasy games. But we all have tried to calculate our stats in dnd terms. Good job on this series of videos. PS. As a soldier, I never did anything while carrying 150 pounds, even in full battle rattle(and SAPI plates) with ruck, if you had 100 lbs, you were taking yourself out of the fight. Most of that stayed in the vehicles. But hey, I was 19D.
I love your videos, and I have gotten a lot of in-game use from your ideas! Your volume calculation for the gold would be accurate if you melted down all of the gold into a single chunk. Coins lay in inconvenient ways, and even packing them in the most efficient way possible still leaves a lot of air in between. That's why it intuitively seems off.
So... I'm guessing once his character sheet is filled out you could introduce him as an NPC or a party companion. 🤔 He should encourage other D&D TH-camrs to do their character sheets and see how it plays out in a campaign. I'd like to see Joe Manganiello and Terry Crew's character sheets. 😂
I do love your video and all your facts seem to be accurate. My only problem is with the game. I agree with shadiverisity we put too much stock in gold coins . And it feels like it's used as a dollar when really we should be using it as $1000 or $5000 . P.S. keep up the Lord's work son!
@@danieldurham5891 Pathfinder chose silver as their standard coinage for this reason. It's also more historically accurate. 5e states that an average days wage for a labor is about 2 sp; equals 2 gp per 10-day. That's what many families live on!
@@BobWorldBuilder It's more like 550! Gold is 58.73USD per gram, so 9 grams per coin (0.45kg/50*1000 = 9g) means that a gold coin would be worth 528USD in the weight of gold alone. Plus whatever minting and fiet value is applied to it.
Crude calculation, it's not really a question of weight but volume. Roughly 50 gold coins equal a regular pound makin each coin roughly 0.32 oz. A gold blank of that weight would be roughly 0.0286 in^3. Making 1 lb of gold equal to 1 cubic foot. That is roughly 1 sack of gold! by 5th edition container volume.
first thing i always do, no matter the character is buy a mastiff and a small cart 40 gold in the PHB then i never have to worry about carry weight since the dog can carry 195 lbs or pull/carry almost 1000 pounds RAW
What I do in campaigns is covert Gold into US DOLLARS. One gold equals 20 bucks. Platinum equals 100. Makes it real easy to buy and sell stuff. Food, lodging. Save time and energy.
A good point to make here is that gold coins don't actually have just gold. The had impurities to decrease the cost of making them and increase the amount in the market.
A 20 count roll of 1 oz. gold coins is not much bigger than a roll of US quarters. That roll weighs 1.25 pounds, 567 grams. You can easily fit 4 rolls, 80 coins, in your upturned hand that weighs 5 pounds. Gold is very heavy.
Those real metal fantasy coins are twice the size of real medieval coins. Someone asked this same question on fascistbook the other day and many did the math for the weight. I did the math for the encumbrance. One half inch by one tenth inch by coin number divided by one foot equals space taken in feet. So your 3,800 coins would be just under 16 feet. Formula 0.5" x 0.1" x Coin number / 12" = Coin space of 15.83'.
I've made several mail shirts and they don't weigh anything close to 55 pounds. More like 25 depending on the size of the rings. Add to that the average roaming Human fighter will have his other gear. (Excluding a pack animal, horse, mule, donkey, goat, compliant campaign ). You play your games I'll play mine. ;)
Sure, but you’ve also got the gambeson, bracers/gauntlets, helmet, and greaves to factor in. Chainmail armor includes all those things in 5e, and is considered heavy armor. A chain shirt, on the other hand, is medium armor and weighs just 20 lbs, so they actually came fairly close to reality, I’d say.
Math: You (well, D&D5e) have already assigned the coins a weight of 1 pound to 50 coins, then you change the weight of said coins to the actual weight of pure gold - in effect reducing the number of coins carried _and_ compress them into a solid block - making that volume nowhere near what it would be.
this would be a 2"x5"x10" bar to be 70lbs if 50 coins is 1 lbs then if each coin is a .75 inch in diameter(assuming its a round coin and not a hexagon or square) then its depth would only be .0645"(1/16"), this is almost exactly the size of a penny, which is apx .24 troy ounces of gold per coin equally as of today 456.52 USD
ironically if you use the price of ale in 1500 in england 1 gallon was 1 shilling, 1/20th of a troy lb of silver so(1/25th pound of silver) 2sp =1 shilling (1/20 lbs of silver our currency) which is currently worth 14.68 USD which means that 50 sp is worth $367 which means in dnd you can buy a lock for $3670 dollars or 500 gallons of ale
The coins are likely to have a lot of empty space between them if you just throw them in a sack, so the real volume of those coins is probably much bigger than that!
So each coin is 1/50 lb, which is about 9g. At your density, which sounds about right, that makes each coin about 0.5 cm3. For comparison a British 5p piece is about 0.23 cm3 and a 1p piece is about 0.31 cm3. I can well imagine getting thousands of them in half a large bottle, if you removed the air gaps
Using D&D math a GP should weigh about 9 grams which is more than twice the weight of a Byzantine noisma, one of the most common gold coins in the middle ages. These coins were roughly the same diameter as a modern US quarter and about twice the weight. This makes a GP the same size as quarter but equal to the weight of a dollar. 2800 GP should take up as roughly as much space as 70 ten dollar bank rolls of quarters but weigh about as much as 280 of them.
Should we be using the density of a common gold alloy used in coinage? A pure gold coin is going to be deformed super fast, on account of gold being so soft.
Poker chips are the least expensive, get a 100 of them for a couple dollars, though they weigh 4x less than a dnd coin, you can simulate stuffing 50 coins into you dice bag/coin purse
@@stevdor6146 "least expensive"? you do realize 25 dollars worth of quarters costs 25 dollars? so FREE basically. and you can SPEND them when finished. you cant spent the poker chips, so that makes them MORE expensive.
Theres a better visualization, a coin purse holds 50 coins (1 lb) a coin pouch holds 300 coins (6 lbs) and 3800 coins (13 pouches) exceeds the weight capacity of a sack/pack (30 lb limit)... if a 25lb chest equates 12 cubic feet to 300 lbs, then 51lbs of coin is about 2 cubic ft, which even though 2 cubic ft fit in a basket, the 51 lb weight is over the 40lb capacity and would break your basket
LikedShad's vid, too, but, weight carried is related to how the weight is carried. Not gonna tote a 20lbs ma's on your waist for a 15-20 mi. stroll. Different individuals might manage 80-90 lbs for a days March, others more. Me? Know would have seals health issues with just moving my old carcass a Ile. Interesting vid, Bob.
Gold must be worth a lot less in fantasy settings than in our world. At the current spot price (at the time I am writing this) 146.5 lbs of gold is worth $4,250,468.96.
In AD&D 1e, a single coin of any metal weighed 1.6 ounces, or ten coins per POUND. By comparison, a US half dollar coin weighs .4 ounces. A single copper piece (or silver, gold, platinum, the one not used) is the weight of FOUR US half dollar coins. Without the use of the coin-never-used, it would have been impractical for the common peasant to physically carry the copper or silver coins needed for commerce in smaller denominations. The weight of the coins was extremely unrealistic. Also with this scale of weight to value, AD&D 1e coins would have the following values in a gold based monetary system using todays gold prices in US dollars: 1 gold piece = $2803.20 1 platinum piece = $14,016 1 electrum piece = $1401,60 1 silver piece = $140.16 1 copper piece = $14.02 Another perspective on the value of gold coins in 1e: 1 live chicken cost 3 copper piece or $42.06 1 long sword cost 15 gold pieces or $42,048 1 suit of plate mail armor costs 400 gold pieces or $1,121,280 1 suit of full plate armor costs 4000 gold pieces or $11,212,800
This is only part of it. First of all, for any Americans reading, dimes and quarters both weigh 1 lb / $20, as well as and half dollars or silver dollars (not Sacagaweas) you have. Also, while cupronickel is actually about 1 g/cc less dense than silver, it's close enough that I would consider those four coins a reasonable approximation of the "feel" of silver pieces. As a result, if you have some amount of silver pieces by weight, you can multiply by $20/1lb to get a reasonable approximation of what it looks like in US currency. For example, 1 3e+ sp (50/lb) is 40¢, or the size and weight of 4 dimes stuck together, while 1 1e sp (I genuinely forget if they'd made the switch by 2e, and don't have a 2e PHB on me) is $2, or that 4 half dollars you mentioned. Meanwhile, I've looked into historical numismatics, and the closest historical equivalent to an sp was about 1/200 of a pound, or about the size and weight of a dime. (This math also applies to copper, which is predictably just about the same density as *cupro*nickel, although the conversion would have been more like 5 cp = 1 sp) Meanwhile, gold is about twice as dense as cupronickel, so while those numbers work for weight, we need to halve them for size. 1 3e+ gp is 40¢ weight or 20¢ volume, so the weight of 4 dimes, but the size of only two, and similarly, 1 1e gp is the weight of 4 half dollars, but the size of only one. But yeah. They're only so big so that you can have Smaug-sized treasure hordes without exceeding the WBL of a level 20 character
I checked the math and it checks out, the reason the volume is so small is that a single coin is slightly more than 0.4ml (if we assume is pure gold because different levels of purity have different densities). that's either super thin or super small, as it turns out gold is quite heavy, you might have never have thought of it because it's quite rare to see so much gold, but to give you an idea, iron has an atomic weight of about 55uma, while gold is about 198uma, or put another way gold has a density of 19.3 g/ml and iron has a density of 7.87g/ml, this means any weight of iron would be more than twice (about 2.4x) larger than the same weight in gold.
My first question about this video concerns the strength to carrying capacity totals. Are you sure it makes sense that an average person can carry around 150 lbs all day while adventuring ?
Coin weight is why I moved away from coins and other material objects as rewards for adventures that I ran since 3e. Buying a fully maxed non-epic item back then cost 200,000gp. At 50 coins to a pound, that is 4,000 pounds of gold or 2 tons. It boggled my mind when this dawned on me. I know it is fantasy, but I like some degree of realism. So, while coins and jewels obviously still exist, adventurers no longer 'receive' such things as rewards.
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Looks like someone is buying some coins. 😏
@@rhylin26 it's not looking good...
Eventually we'll have a full character sheet for Bob
That’s the idea lol :)
I so badly want that
@@BobWorldBuilder do you give consent for use of you as a character once we have all of your stats?
@@erisavernus3549 which edition?
@@nowthenzen I would assume 5e given all the stats are calculated using the newest rules but any I guess
The Australian coins Shad used were actually pretty spot on for weight to coin ratio. 9 grams each. Worked out to almost exactly 50 coins per pound.
Except that as he said in the video, they were only half the weight of gold coins of the same size.
@@alistairgrey5089 D&D, DMG, 50 coins, any value (gold, too), is 1 pound. So, rules as written, 9 grams per coin is fairly accurate for the game.
@@fowlfables that's fine. But the real life weight of gold isn't what is written in the books. Shad said that the same size coins made of gold would have weighed double what his coins weighed.
@@alistairgrey5089 The purpose was the weight ratios, not the coin size.
@@alistairgrey5089 It was pointed out the coins all have the same weight, real gold coins would be smaller in size and would use half the space.
The only thing I would add is that coins have a “packing density”. Coins laid haphazardly will have roughly half the density of solid gold, so cut the final amount in half and you’re good.
Easy way to do packing density, fill up your container with the coins, then fill it up with water. Take the coins out, look at what fraction of space the water still takes up, then subtract that fraction of the weight. You’ll get a perfectly accurate density of packed coins in your specific container!
Building on the idea of packing density and density. For 50 gold coins to weigh one pound each coin should be around 1 cm across and 0.135 cm thick. That a little over half the diameter of a dime, though the same thickness. Which means a bag full of dimes might be a better analogue for a bag full of gold coins then poker chips or something (plus a bunch of weight of course). Dimes are still far too big though so maybe very small buttons?
edit: dimes are pretty close to the right size for silver or copper coins
Very true and a great solution!
Totally agree with Jordan👍
Eureka!
@@TasareAlda dimes would be too light, though, wouldn't they? Could he do dimes but add something heavy as part of that packing volume?
You can try getting tungsten, it's the same density as gold, and it should cost less than 20$ for a pound. You don't need a lot, maybe like 10 pound, just so we can actually see the size, how we could carry, maybe put in some pouches.
Yeah I might end up just using some kind of graphic showing the amount to-scale against a human
@@BobWorldBuilder William Osman has a video of people messing with a 4in cube of tungsten (~42lb), which might shed ome light on what 2100gp/pp would feel like: watch?v=9O551__3ppM
One thing I like to point out about D&D (at least in 3.5, I don't know about 5e) is that gems can be exchanged for full value and they value more per weight and volume than gold, so the book even recommends using it as equivalent, in travel.
Yes people in the world of d&d seem to accept gems as coinage for some reason. Despite how hard it is for a common person to tell how valuable a gem really is.
@@tyler1673, I'd say that the common person wouldn't deal with gems very frequently, you'd use gems as money when dealing with really expensive items.
Another stellar video! Can't wait to see the encumbrance video, I'm in between campaigns at the moment (just finished a 6 year long one), so all this meta math is a wonderful thought experiment before starting with level 1 PCs again!
Thanks man! The encumbrance one will be an interesting test for sure!
I found Shad's frustrating because he didn't address 5e, and nearly went the whole video without actually weighing any of his coins. Thanks BWB!
Based on the density of gold, and the weight of the coin, a gold coin would be a bit smaller than a US dime... that's a small coin
I've been trying to get head around this too! A wicked small coin. Though I wound up googling it and that doesn't seem to far from what existed historically. They also seem remarkably thin.
Still there's something to chuckle at when the barbarian has to spend a couple seconds fiddling with his tiny coin pouch to gingerly pluck out 40 dimes!
Based on the specific gravity of the metal and each coin being 9 grams (50 to the pound), these are good relatable (for the US at least) sizes of coins. If you just want a standard coin for all the coin metal types, the EP is a decent average of all of the coin metals for a standard coin if you don't want to deal in coins of multiple sizes. For containers in D&D 5e, the weight of the coins will fill up the container, before the coins ever reach the volume of the container. But the amount of stacked and loose coins gives you the ability to say how much space they take up if that is relevant. For example for the standard coin size (EP), it comes out to 6,840,120 loosely stacked coins to completely fill a portable hole.
PP - penny sized, but barely thinner than a penny. 17 stacked in 3/4"x3/4"x1" stack and 12 loose in cubic inch
GP - size of a nickel, but thin as a dime. 19 stacked in a 5/6"x5/6"x1" stack and 13 loose in cubic inch
EP - barely larger than a quarter, but barely thinner than a dime. 20 stacked to a cubic inch and 14 loose in a cubic inch
SP - barely larger than a quarter, but just barely thinner than a quarter. 15 stacked to a cubic inch and 10 loose in a cubic inch
CP - barely larger than a quarter, but just barely thicker than a nickel. 13 stacked to a cubic inch and 9 loose in a cubic inch
For people without access to US coins, you can use these measurements to relate them to coins you have access to. (diameter x thickness)
PP - 19.05mm x 1.47mm
GP - 21.21mm x 1.34mm
EP - 25.4mm x 1.27mm
SP - 25.4mm x 1.69mm
CP - 25.4mm x 2 mm
As a Canadian. We love coins and have both a 1 dollar and two dollar piece that are quite large and heavy; the weight of a pocket full of coins is very familiar!
@@eopatcjo the rough made coins of old were considerably bigger than modern dimes. The average size of a gold coin in the tenth century would be about the size of a modern quarter up to the size of a modern silver dollar.
Coins are usually alloys so gold coins in dnd are probably something like 30% gold 70% other metals (like copper, iron and other cheap metals) so it would make the coin bigger
Having a sponsor closely related to the video topic is smart and it stopped me from clicking off the video.
This may sound weird, but I can't describe what a delight it was to see sincere, enthusiastic people having fun. My first impression, in the very immediate seconds of watching my first video when I found this channel, was to smile. And I just kept smiling throughout each video I watched.
The moment you know Bob is an American: 'liters are easy to visualize because 1 Liter = HALF a soda bottle' lol
Don’t really drink soda anymore, but I really thought liters were pretty universal!
@@BobWorldBuilder they are! Not hating on soda, I just thought it was funny you chose to visualize with something that is apparently not in a 1 Liter packaging 😂
(forgot the emphasis on Half)
Unfortunately I can't find my calculation sheet anymore, but I did the calculation for coin weight, size and volume for my own game. And I found it extremely funny when my party defeated the massive dragon, charged into his lair and... found it empty. Except for a single vase, too heavy for them to lift, because it contained the WHOLE dragons hoard in platinum coins. They couldn't really believe it, but hey, they were rich. ^^
I'm not much of a math nerd myself but one thing you also have to consider for gold coins is that most of those coins are not solid gold, but an alloy. And according to Wikipedia, from 1526 onwards in England, for example, gold coins were usually 91.7% gold and 8.3% other metals to make it more durable. So you'll be having a mix of different metals to weigh out and calculate, which hurts my brain to think about already. But I suppose if you want to be true to form, that would be the way to do it.
Yeahhhh I will just continue to ignore that detail :P
Such a topical video when I was JUST making a magic item of a pouch of 200 magical silver pieces (it's supposed to be something this god Merces gifts you if you impress him).
You can toss out the coins to barrage them with animate objects, gain a bonus to your ability checks, drown them in a wave of coins, and more. Fun stuff.
Very creative! Remind me a little of an "item" that's a chest of gold, but the coins themselves (not the chest) are mimics!!
@@BobWorldBuilder :o
Such an evil little switcheroo, I like it.
Bob must have taken the Telepathic Feat because I heard him think "Nice".
Lol got me
The only thing I would ding on accuracy for the volume is that, coins are not smelted together and have air between them, which increases their volume by several factors, that being said, maybe a second backpack so it will still be relatively close to your estimates.
What I am not sure on (as I have never dug that deeply into the currencies of 5E) is whether or not gold coins are pure gold. In terms of real human history, coins were almost exclusively alloys as for one, precious metals are not very resilient and could bend or be defaced rather easily. Also, making coins out of alloys allows you to make a more consistent size for your currency. So if this is the case, the weight per volume of the coin will probably drop as you would be infusing iron and tin into the coins, once again increasing the volume.
All in all, good chuckle of a video, would love to see this actually acted out like your encumbrance and movement videos!
It’s at times like these when we remember why spells like tenser’s floating disc exist
When we started our sendbox campaign, we kept track of every type of stuff we where paid with (coins, gems, pearls, etc.) separate. But we eventually decided that we just have some amount of "gold" and can spend it just as modern money (just keep track of spellcasting component separate), cause money charge wasn't something worth roleplaying.
I checked the math using only metric system and Bob math looks right.
Excellent video once again, loving the overwhelming amount of math you’ve applied to this game.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it! This was definitely the most math-heavy one yet :P
You...know a pike is a 16' (ish - they varied a lot, historically) long pointy spear, right?
Nice video!
Hey Bob brilliant video and yes that number is correct from a maths standpoint your volume will be wrong. Due to the fact that you are storing coins separately and not as a singular mass there will be an inefficiency in packing those coins if for example it is a round coin 1cm in diameter and 1mm thick it would have a volume of 0.079cm3 but if it were square and of the same dimensions 1x1cmx1mm it would have a volume of 0.1cm3 which is 1.273 time larger while packing efficiency can change you would be looking at a required volume of 2.125L+ for those because they won’t be perfectly packed each time an adventurer goes out
hey Bob, a backup nerd with some math skills here, although I took a bit of a different route, - using just metric since I am European and don't know a thing about Imperial - I came to the same answer off 1.669 liters so your math is correct!
edit:
ps: last year I calculated the value of the money in dnd, using the cost of wheat in dnd and the time a farmer has to work for it in a medieval setting, compared to what wheat costs in real life and the time a farmer has to work for the same amount in 2020 (last year remember) and I came to a value of 263 euro's per GP, recalculating with inflation it is now 266,42 euros or 312.02 dollars. that means that this fighter can carry up to 1 million dollars worth of gold and that commoner 1.95 million. while if that fighter was living today it would be worth 1.85 million, gold is not worth a lot in dnd apperiantly.
That seems fairly reasonable for a medieval setting. Gold is much more valuable now than it was in the past because there are many more people wanting it, and new practical uses for it, but only a little more supply. The opposite is true for silver because such huge quantities of it were extracted from the Americas
That’s a crazy amount of money! I appreciate your research!!
@@BobWorldBuilder you're welcome, most of it I did a year ago, but spreading knowledge is alweys good. In this case more people can help to flavour there game with immersion for how much money there party actually has
So I took the liberty of checking other sources regarding coin weight and discovered that 5e rules for weight are slightly simplified (like many elements) compared to previous editions... it seems that back from 2nd through 4th edition, the standard gold coin size was equivalent to 9 grams, meaning that 1 pound of coinage would equal 50.3991111111 coins.
This seems inconsequential, but when you factor in large quantities as we are now, this becomes at least a little significant.
If we assume the carrying capacity is 71 pounds now, our adventurer will be finding themselves capable of hauling 3578 1/3 coins with them by these standards rather than merely 3550, or over half a pound of coinage... enough difference in gold to equal that crossbow at their waist and the ammunition for it.
Fun Fact: Assuming the coins are solid gold, the fortune in our adventure's pack would be worth $1,838,941.11 USD.
Oh man that last figure of the true cost is incredible xD
This is way Pathfinder used Silver as their standard coinage. It's also historically accurate; and lighter.
Correction: D&D 2e-4e and PF 1e both do the same 50 coins per pound as 5e, while PF 2e has 1000 coins as 1 Bulk, with no fractions. (PF 2e abstracts weight into Bulk, instead of acting like all things of equal weight are equally cumbersome) Also, while Melissa's right that PF **2e** uses a silver standard, PF **1e** is basically just a glorified set of houserules for 3.5 (there, I said it), and kept the gold standard
Not to be a sourpuss but, honestly... bag of holding, coin conversion (platinum), land vehicules (carts)/mounts, dragging rules and spreading it around the party... you are looking at a huge carry weight, barrelfuls of currency. And that's before using especific things to improve the situational condition, like spells, so they can carry more to a safehouse or a shop.
Hey, I also did a density calculation a long time ago to add descriptions to my equipment spreadsheet:
cp - A tarnished coin about the size of a US dollar coin
sp - A coin, a bit smaller than a quarter
gp - A coin just larger than a dime
pp - A coin just smaller than a dime
IIRC these are all assumed to be the same "aspect ratio" (thickness to diameter) as the coin they're compared to.
Here are the ft³ respectively:
cp - 0.00003575259206
sp - 0.0000305404126
gp - 0.00001659751037
pp - 0.00001493540438
You’re the real hero! This is so interesting!
@@BobWorldBuilder That's right, while you were thinking of ways to make your encounters more "fun", I was calculating the volume of an authentic dark age era cabbage to see how many you could fit in a backpack.
We are not the same.
@@BobWorldBuilder Tldr - Used old D&D article for generating a standard coin of 1" diameter and 1/20 an inch thick for all metals using alloys. Gives 20 stacked coins to a cubic inch and 14 coins to a cubic inch when they are loosely piled. D&D containers are constrained by the weight of the coins, instead of the volume. Oh, and your fighter can carry over 5 billion coins.*
Actually, the math was done back in Dec 1983 in issue #80 of Dragon Magazine in the article, "How many coins in a coffer?" by David F. Godwin for coins in Advanced D&D. Those coins were 1/10 of a pound (1.6 ounces or 45.4 grams) each. Mr Godwin talked about the various densities of platinum, gold, electrum, silver, and copper and came up with an average of specific gravity of about 15 for a standard coin alloy (14.84). He went with a little higher at 15.66 to get a standard alloy coin of roughly the size of a US Eisenhower dollar coin. The standard coin he used was 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) in diameter and 1/10 of an inch (2.54 mm) thick for a volume of 0.177 cubic inches (2.9 cc). He experimented with stacked vs loose coins for loose coins and found loose coins taking up roughly 110% of the volume of stacked coins, although he rounded up for his standard coin. So he got 4 loose coins per cubic inch and 10 coins stacked in a 1.5 x 1.5 x 1 inch cube for Adv D&D.
But we want 5e coins that are 50 coins to a pound, so we need something a lot smaller than an Eisenhower US dollar coin. I know that I don't want to deal with various sized coins for each metal type and I suspect many others don't want to either. So lets pick a nice sized standard coin that uses alloys (lots of handwaving here) for all the coin types to be the same size and weight. A US quarter is 0.955 inches (24.26mm) in diameter and just under 1/14 of an inch (1.75mm) thick and isn't far off the size of the 2 Euro coin, 5 ruble coin, 500 yen coin, etc, so it is a real world useful size. A US quarter is 80 to the pound, the 2 euro coin is just over 53 to the pound, the 5 ruble coin is 70-75 per pound, and the 500 yen coin is almost 65 to the pound.
So if we use a coin 1 inch (25.4mm) in diameter and 1/20 inch (1.27mm) thick, then it is every so slightly larger than a quarter, but just under 3/4 as thick as a quarter. So your stacked standard coin is 20 to the cubic inch. Loosely piled, your standard coin is 13.72, so we can round up to 14 standard coins per cubic inch (just over 112%) as the 110% was a rough figure per Mr Godwin. This gives a specific gravity of 14.44, which is a slightly less than the average specific gravity for the 5 coin metal types that Mr Godwin used.
The standard 5e backpack can hold up to 1 cubic foot/30 pounds of gear. So 1 cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches. Since 30 pounds of coins is 1,500 coins, at 14 loose coins to the cubic inch, the hoard of 1,500 coins only takes up 108 cubic inches of the backpack. Every container, with the exception of a scroll case, can hold less coins by weight, than will fit inside by volume. So if you want to know how many coins a pouch can hold (or anything else), multiple the weight it can carry, 6lb, by the 50 coins per pound for a total of 300 coins in a pouch. Container capacity is on page 153 of the PHB.
If you really want to mess with your players, give them a wood chest (2x2x3 feet that can hold 300lb) filled with coins. Loosely piled, who's going to stack them, you have 290,304 coins in the chest. Of course the coins that chest weigh just over 5,806 lbs, so good luck carrying it without the bottom falling off, assuming you don't rip off the handles first. :)
At 300lbs, you have 15,000 coins in a chest, but at 14 coins per cubic inch, you have 1,072 cubic inches of coins in that chest. So 15,000 coins takes up just over 1 1/4 inches of the bottom of the chest. Also, 5,806 lbs of coins would likely break the sides of the chest, turning the coins into a pile. Maybe have some wooden braces holding up the sides of the chest, if you want to give them a hint.
*FYI, the portable hole is 6 ft in diameter and 10 ft deep and has no weight limit. So that is 488,580 cubic inches and at 14 coins per cubic inch is 6,840,120 coins. If you consider a portable hole to weigh 1/10 of a pound when folded up, then your average fighter you profiled, can carry 760 portable holes which is 5,198,491,200 coins. ;)
@@btfx 1,500 coins in a backpack as it can only hold 30lb. PHB page 153
I can make it even simpler. US dimes, quarters, half dollars, and Eisenhower dollars all weigh 1 lb / $20, and have a density of around 7 g/cc, compared to copper being 9 g/cc, silver being 10.5 g/cc, gold being 19 g/cc, and platinum being 21.5 g/cc. So already, you can estimate the *weight* of any combination of D&D/PF coins by multiplying by $20 / 1 lb, and thinking about that many dimes or quarters. (D&D 1e is $2/coin, D&D 2e+ and PF 1e are 40¢/coin, and because PF 2e shifted to a more abstract bulk, I can't really comment on what "1000 coins/bulk" looks like)
You have to multiply by a factor to estimate the volume, though. sp are almost exactly 2/3 the volume of equivalent US coins, which corresponds to either being 4/5 the diameter if you keep the thickness the same, or 5/6 the size if you scale everything. cp are 7/9 the volume (5/6 diameter, 9/10 scale), though I'd be comfortable just rounding to the same density as silver. pp are almost exactly 1/3 the volume (3/5 diameter, 2/3 scale). And finally, gp are slightly bigger than that, but feel even closer to pp than cp are to sp, so I'm not even going to bother finding approximate fractions. (36.8% volume, 60.7% diameter, 71.7% scale, if you're wondering.
So I would instead say 1 cp or 1 sp is somewhere around 4 dimes in weight or a dime and a quarter in size, while 1 gp or 1 pp is against somewhere around 4 dimes in weight, but a smidge larger than a single dime in size. (Although I personally houserule coins to be 200 to the pound, which is closer to the size of actual historical coins, which puts 1 sp at close enough to a single dime in size that I don't even bother thinking about the exact densities, and just keep a bag of $5 in dimes for if I want a prop)
This problem actually came up when I was trying to homebrew a dragon sized version of the Bag of Holding, the Bottomless Bag of the Hoard (I also homebrewed dragons as a playable race), but I went with the density of silver, which is the basis of most real coinage. I still ended up with a ridiculous ≈225 short tons of mass for a space of 640 cubic feet (definitely enough to carry a dragon hoard until you have found a lair😁). If I had gone with gold, it would have been almost twice that…
People tend to really overestimate the volume of precious metals.
Hello from Canada, the land of change! We have these large, rather heavy, two dollar coins (weight:6.95 g, diameter: 22 mm, thickness: 1.75 mm). A roll of 25 coins weights ~173 g or just over 6 ounces. Trust me when I say that carrying a few rolls in your pocket is not convenient.
If Bob gets a back injury carrying all that money around, then we are all in trouble with Grace (World Destroyer).
I bet that’s been her destructive plot all along!!!
Closest thing we'll see to a Shad-Bob Fantasy Video Crossover, so this is an absolute win.
Also, the 'weird one nobody uses': - glad I'm not alone. Retconned Electrum out of my Faerun/Tethyr game, which has sadly become a meme at the table.
Watching some of my players try to figure out how much electrum is worth every time is pretty funny though, I'm not going to lie.
@@MagnusXL Isn't electrum just 1/2 a gold piece? It's still an absolutely stupid piece of currency but it's not that hard - imagine doing a campaign with currency based on pre-decimalized British currency, that would be a math nightmare.
@@williaml840 Correct, but they're used so infrequently that a few of my players tend to forget as it's the odd man out.
Historically (if we take silver pennies from 11th century England, and gold pennies from their brief usage a few centuries later), the silver penny weighed about 1.4g and the gold penny about twice that (but the gold penny was worth 20 silver pennies). Before machine-stamping was invented, pennies even from the same mint would not be absolutely identical, nor would they have milled edges. One gold penny would have a volume around 0.15cc, which is a coin about 1.5mm thick and 12mm in diameter. A packing efficiency of 60% means that with care you can store as many as 4000 gold pennies in a one-litre volume, where the coins would weigh 11.2kg.
Fifty gold pennies would therefore weigh 0.14kg, which is 0.3lbs, and easily fit into a coin purse (think something the size of your D&D basic dice set drawstring bag). Of course that's the high medieval period of England, where the coinage system of standardised minting, withdrawal and re-issue to control quality and fraud was very advanced. If you look back to nations in antiquity (such as the Roman Republic) coinage was more readily debased and the poorer metal quality would have meant coins tended to be made larger and heavier because they'd have to resist wear for longer.
To note though, you only have so much stackability of any solid, and in this case I think cylinders have a packing capacity of like 50% or something like that. So very important to retain when finding volume of solids in a hard container
50 coins per pound means that each coin weighs 1/50 pounds. The pounds per cubic centimetre as given would be about 19.3 g/cc, so that's about 7/9 cm^3 per coin.
However, coins are not cube-shaped - the gold coin as pictured looks to have both height and length about 12 times what I would guess for its depth (it looks taller than it is long but I think that's an optical illusion - it's actually pretty much square without the cutouts). It also looks like the cutouts at the sides lose about 1/4 of the mass of the coin.
So let's start by scaling up the target volume so that it includes the mass lost from the cutouts - to account for an adjustment to 3/4 mass, we just multiply by 4/3. So we're looking for a shape with a volume of about 7/9*4/3 cm if the cutouts had been included, i.e. 28/27 cm^3 (let's just round to 1 cm^3 for simplicity, since this is all an approximation anyway - suppose those cutouts are just slightly less than 1/4 of the mass).
So then based on the observation that height and length are each about 12 times the depth, we can let x = height = length and say
x^2 * (x/12) = 1 cm^3.
We can then solve for x = (12)^(1/3) = about 2.29 cm, and the depth, x/12, is about 0.19 cm (or 1.9 mm)
That's some mathematics about the size of an individual coin - in terms of the volume for 3800 coins, though, I think the approach this video takes is mostly fine. A fairly good packing density, if not the best, seems likely to be just to then place these coins in a cube, as much as possible - you would place an n by n base stacked to a height of 12*n, or get as close to that as possible; in this case, I'd say a 7 by 7 base of about 78 coins high (which leaves some spare room and isn't a perfect cube).
Some space is lost due to the cutouts and the inability to form a perfect cube, but we can look at the dimensions we already have for the coins and conclude that this imperfect packing method takes up about (7*2.29)*(7*2.29)*(78*0.19) = about 3808 cm^3 (which is 3.808 litres). This is unsurprisingly similar to the 1 cm^3 per coin indicated previously, since that volume already took into account the space needed to accomodate the cutouts. It also tells us the dimensions of our coin collection which is about 16.03 by 16.03 by 14.82 cm (or about 6.31 by 6.31 by 5.83 inches). The real volume would probably be larger because the coins would not be packed efficiently.
Tungsten has almost the same density as gold, and is a hell of a lot cheaper. I got a science demonstration coin of tungsten for about $50 and it's fun to use as a prop.
I actually calculated out all containers for pathfinder 1st edition and d&d 3.5 and found out that no matter which type of coins you use, if you follow the rule of 50 coins per pound, then none of the containers are restricted by volume, but instead the weight. That includes when you factor in loss of volume efficiency because the coins cannot tesselate.
The only container that I found where the volume was the most important factor was the portable hole... Because it doesn't have a weight limit :P.
I have not looked at 5th edition rules, but unless those containers changed drastically it should still apply.
I find the best volume to weight conversion is by using the 25lb chest container, assume dimensions of 3x2x2 (12 feet cubed) it holds 300 lbs of stuff, so 50 pounds of coins (1/6 weight cap) would slide about and fill up the bottom 4" of the chest (2 cubic ft)
@@stevdor6146
Exactly. No container can actually be filled up according to the rules. At least not if you use 50 coins to the pound rule. Funny fact according to system rules copper coins are by far the largest coins.
See? This is what happens when you actually read and attempt to understand the rules as presented! Very interesting and well done.
i remember running some numbers on this and at the time I think the price for the most expensive magic items in pathfinder that one could purchase you'd have to roll through town with a buick's worth of gold by volume
I love to see a Shadiversity video reference! Whoo!
Also interesting math breakdown. I didn't take the time to compare, but it sounded probable?
However, I think the thing that many gamers keep ignoring (accidentally, I believe) and which games choose to ignore is the idea of banks and the bank note (ie: paper money system), which is something that has been around for centuries, well over 1000 years.
Really, it just makes sense. Why WOULDN'T an efficient banking system exist in a magically-advanced world setting? No one can use the argument "oh, but then there would be differences in the paper moneys and issues with that between regions" because that same argument automatically applies to coins as well! Since the coinage system is already assumed to be universally shared across all cities, regions, cultures, planes, worlds, etc., there is literally no good reason to not incorporate paper money into the world at all.
One of my favorite older games is Castle of the Winds (1 and 2), which is probably the only game I know of that both cares about things like this AND incorporates a Bank Note/credit system.
Well, in a magic based world, why not just be able to access digitally based currency with the use of "banking spells."
Hey, don't buy anything, go to the bank, and ask for $3800 in one dollar coins. When you are done, put it back, and you get a real life comparison using actual currency.
That bank teller is gonna be so annoyed I mean even in 20 dollar bills 1k or more bucks is a hassle to count I can't imagine in singles.
@Carolyn Stell Oh okay that's convenient, wait what's a federal reserve bag like... wait cartoon money bags are a thing irl?
@Carolyn Stell that is very specific and niche information that I'm glad you had and bestowed on us.
Thank you (like seriously, nifty)
This poster must be a fellow Canadian! We have 1 and 2 dollar coinage that is actually quite large and heavy.
@@melissaharris3389 we have them in the US as well. We almost never use them, lol.
We used to carry 36kg of gear plus our weapons plus clothing back in the day, the numbers aren't that far off
Oof!
The problem that "facsimile coins" often have is that the density just doesn't come close to gold coins.
The next thing is also that a coin doesn't actually have to be as big as a poker chip, remember how many currencies have coins which are actually quite tiny (and light).
If I had to choose some examples:
-1 yen, 1gram (aluminium) with 2cm diameter
-1 eurocent, 2.3gram (copper) with 1.6cm diameter
-2 euro coin, 8.5gram (mixture of copper, nickel, brass) with 2.2cm diameter
-poker chip, 10gram with 3.9cm diameter (official standard)
In fact medieval coins have been around the same size, even Roman coinage was around 1.6-2.5cm in diameter and weighed about 3-5gram.
But there's even more to think about:
Mint presses often made coins flatter than moder coins, especially towards the rim, which takes away even more weight.
(We'll ignore the fact that such coins also often didn't end up round and perfect.)
Therefor saying that 50 coins would weigh 1lbs is giving a wrong impression and should rather be at about 100coins per pound (4.5gram per coin).
Awesome stuff my guy! Wanna see you carry those chips so good thing I was gonna like anyway
I appreciate your support! :)
I just want to mention that 1cc of gold is 19.3g. Per the D&D rules, a single coin weighs ~9g. It is not possible to have a usable currency of gold that only weighs 9g. That would be a solid coin of ~0.47cc, roughly the size of a "thicker" Canadian Penny (Penny: ~0.41cc). That's a super tiny coin for fumbling around in a pouch. So to that point, we should probably assume that gold coins are not pure but instead an alloy. Silver (~0.86cc) and Copper (~1cc) coins however are decent in size. If Gold was alloyed with copper and silver to maintain its gold luster, an 8k Gold/Silver/Copper coin would be ~0.78cc, which is about the size of a Quarter.
Below is a list of Canadian and American coins, and their approximate volumes for comparison:
$2 CAD ~1.1 cc
$1 CAD ~1 cc (5e Copper Coin)
.25¢ CAD ~0.71 cc (5e Silver Coin or an alloyed Gold Coin)
.10¢ CAD ~0.31 cc
.5¢ CAD ~0.62 cc
.1¢ CAD ~0.41 cc (5e Gold Coin)
$1 USD ~1.1 cc (5e Copper Coin)
.25¢ USD ~0.81 cc (5e Silver Coin or an alloyed Gold Coin)
.10¢ USD ~0.34 cc
.5¢ USD ~0.69 cc
.1¢ USD ~0.43 cc (5e Gold Coin)
@2:20 Correct description of all coins used in D&D. 🤪
Haha glad you appreciated that. I felt that it was pretty honest
@@BobWorldBuilder you nailed it.👌🏻
@@BobWorldBuilder I remember watching a video about _The Weird One_
Pretty informative. Had a houserule suggestion to make it a forgotten coin that's used by thieves nowadays.
Can't remember whose video it was though :(
Yeah, packing density is also a thing. That weight of coins will not be perfectly packed into a vacuum where there is no space between them. I would take the 1lb of coins, place them into a container as tightly as you can manage without too much strain (packing a pouch of coins as tight as you can with still being able to close the bag for example) then fill the container up to the top coin with water.
Remove the coins and you will have your remaining space. Then you can safely approximate that density by volume into whatever size you need without needing thousands upon thousands of coins (and cost).
Container + coins + water then subtract coins = remaining density or space unused per volume of coins/lb.
EDIT: just saw another post give the same idea....i should read a few comments first
Let’s go for those 2k likes. I want to see those poker chips piling
We’ll see! :)
Next do a video about how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood! I'm sure there are entries in the Monster Manual for a woodchuck.
Lol don’t tempt me
Reasons wizards have the polymorph spell...
I've been waiting for this video all weekend!
Thanks! Here at last!
"Money Bags" is not just an expression. People have been storing and moving large quantities of coins for millennium. How long do you think they took to come up with a "tougher sack?"
For sure I want to see you guys carry around that weight and see how doable it really is
For me the maths simple especially when using any kind of alternate carrying capacity rules. 5e states coins weigh 0.02lbs therefore 100 coins is 2lbs, 200 coins is 4lbs and for simplicity i say 1 slot of coins is 250 making 1000 gold take up 4 whole slots.
(i give every character 12 slots +strength mod)
OK under 10 g pro coin.( In the German p&p TBE (The Black Eye) a coldpiece weights 25 g.) This is More realistic than i thought. In real medieval europe the Standard goldcoin (Gulden, Florin or Dukaten) had 3,5 g of weight. A later in some parts of Holy Roman Empire established Silvercoin with Same value Like the 3,5 g Goldcoin was the Taler and Had 17 - 26 g weight.
These are funny vids, Bob. What I also find funny is the guy (I'm assuming) at True Black Forge went on vacation yesterday. lol (Cool product nonetheless.)
Yeah I think that was the case, even forge masters need a break!!
Interesting.
From the density of gold and the weight of 50 coins, we can retro engineer the size of the coin.
I'll assume the gold coins are purely made of gold. It is actually unlikely because you could not use such a soft material as currency; it is too soft. But let's go with it.
A pound is 453.592g. 50 coins to a pound, so each coin is 9.07g.
density of gold is 19.6 g per cc. so a coin is 0.46 cc.
Assuming the coin is round, we can approximate is as a cylinder of height h and radius r. The volume is pi*h*r^2.
If you set height at 0.2cm, you get that put r at 0.86cm.
That's about the size of a US dime.
Gold coins in DnD are MUCH smaller than I expected!
Think of the rolls of coins you can get at the bank. A roll of dime is $5, so 50 coins. you can easily hold 5 in your hand. And that's 250 coins right there.
So carrying 1000 coins seems crazy when you say it. But that's only 20 rolls of coins.
Carrying 5000 coins, which seems insane, is only a 10x10 grid of rolls. You can probably grab that with both hands. Well that's 100 100 pounds, so maybe not, but volume wise, it is pretty small.
It makes me think that DnD universe would have the equivalent of bank rolls, maybe carved pieces of wood to hold 100 coins.
I believe that pure gold coins were an actual thing from history. The Aztecs used them I believe, and possibly some medieval countries as well, although many used silver instead
Instead of bank rolls, use coin poles! Japanese wadokaichin coins have a square hole in the center, i believe so they would carry coins threaded by string, or a stack of coins fitted to a square peg, similar to a coin roll
poker chips?! Real pure gold! GOOOOOOLD :P
If Shad couldn't get real gold, I don't think any amount of likes would allow that in our budget :P
@@BobWorldBuilder at current prices, it’s only about $2 million for 3550 gold pieces worth.
@@BobWorldBuilder we could conquer a country, maybe then...
In my head I'm hearing an old timey gold rush era prospector say this.
The thing about gold, is it is just extremly dense, a better metal to use might be silver
Jeremy Crawford played previous editions of D&D to come up with that rule. It was a truly brilliant move.
Thanks for that article, I'm going to use it for my future characters!
I find it funny and sad people trying to add realism to fantasy games. But we all have tried to calculate our stats in dnd terms. Good job on this series of videos.
PS. As a soldier, I never did anything while carrying 150 pounds, even in full battle rattle(and SAPI plates) with ruck, if you had 100 lbs, you were taking yourself out of the fight. Most of that stayed in the vehicles. But hey, I was 19D.
I love your videos, and I have gotten a lot of in-game use from your ideas!
Your volume calculation for the gold would be accurate if you melted down all of the gold into a single chunk. Coins lay in inconvenient ways, and even packing them in the most efficient way possible still leaves a lot of air in between. That's why it intuitively seems off.
So... I'm guessing once his character sheet is filled out you could introduce him as an NPC or a party companion. 🤔 He should encourage other D&D TH-camrs to do their character sheets and see how it plays out in a campaign. I'd like to see Joe Manganiello and Terry Crew's character sheets. 😂
I'm going to take a guess that Terry's Str & Cha are both above 20. The scariest of sorcerers. Ah "Scary Terry"
I do love your video and all your facts seem to be accurate. My only problem is with the game. I agree with shadiverisity we put too much stock in gold coins . And it feels like it's used as a dollar when really we should be using it as $1000 or $5000 .
P.S. keep up the Lord's work son!
Haha yeah I don’t it’s quite a “dollar” in dnd, more like 10 or so
@@BobWorldBuilder I tell my players to imagine that the copper piece is equivalent of $1, silver piece $10, and gold piece $100 all US dollars.
@@danieldurham5891 Pathfinder chose silver as their standard coinage for this reason. It's also more historically accurate.
5e states that an average days wage for a labor is about 2 sp; equals 2 gp per 10-day. That's what many families live on!
@@BobWorldBuilder It's more like 550! Gold is 58.73USD per gram, so 9 grams per coin (0.45kg/50*1000 = 9g) means that a gold coin would be worth 528USD in the weight of gold alone. Plus whatever minting and fiet value is applied to it.
Crude calculation, it's not really a question of weight but volume. Roughly 50 gold coins equal a regular pound makin each coin roughly 0.32 oz. A gold blank of that weight would be roughly 0.0286 in^3. Making 1 lb of gold equal to 1 cubic foot. That is roughly 1 sack of gold! by 5th edition container volume.
first thing i always do, no matter the character is buy a mastiff and a small cart 40 gold in the PHB then i never have to worry about carry weight since the dog can carry 195 lbs or pull/carry almost 1000 pounds RAW
What I do in campaigns is covert Gold into US DOLLARS. One gold equals 20 bucks. Platinum equals 100. Makes it real easy to buy and sell stuff. Food, lodging. Save time and energy.
A good point to make here is that gold coins don't actually have just gold. The had impurities to decrease the cost of making them and increase the amount in the market.
A 20 count roll of 1 oz. gold coins is not much bigger than a roll of US quarters. That roll weighs 1.25 pounds, 567 grams. You can easily fit 4 rolls, 80 coins, in your upturned hand that weighs 5 pounds. Gold is very heavy.
Those real metal fantasy coins are twice the size of real medieval coins. Someone asked this same question on fascistbook the other day and many did the math for the weight. I did the math for the encumbrance. One half inch by one tenth inch by coin number divided by one foot equals space taken in feet. So your 3,800 coins would be just under 16 feet.
Formula 0.5" x 0.1" x Coin number / 12" = Coin space of 15.83'.
There is study where they measured the density of randomly packed coins and i think it was around 60%
A 1 inch cube of gold is over half a pound. Get some tungsten for a nearly 1:1 comparison.
I've made several mail shirts and they don't weigh anything close to 55 pounds. More like 25 depending on the size of the rings. Add to that the average roaming Human fighter will have his other gear. (Excluding a pack animal, horse, mule, donkey, goat, compliant campaign ). You play your games I'll play mine. ;)
Sure, but you’ve also got the gambeson, bracers/gauntlets, helmet, and greaves to factor in. Chainmail armor includes all those things in 5e, and is considered heavy armor. A chain shirt, on the other hand, is medium armor and weighs just 20 lbs, so they actually came fairly close to reality, I’d say.
Math: You (well, D&D5e) have already assigned the coins a weight of 1 pound to 50 coins, then you change the weight of said coins to the actual weight of pure gold - in effect reducing the number of coins carried _and_ compress them into a solid block - making that volume nowhere near what it would be.
this would be a 2"x5"x10" bar to be 70lbs
if 50 coins is 1 lbs then if each coin is a .75 inch in diameter(assuming its a round coin and not a hexagon or square) then its depth would only be .0645"(1/16"), this is almost exactly the size of a penny, which is apx .24 troy ounces of gold per coin equally as of today 456.52 USD
ironically if you use the price of ale in 1500 in england 1 gallon was 1 shilling, 1/20th of a troy lb of silver so(1/25th pound of silver) 2sp =1 shilling (1/20 lbs of silver our currency) which is currently worth 14.68 USD which means that 50 sp is worth $367 which means in dnd you can buy a lock for $3670 dollars or 500 gallons of ale
The coins are likely to have a lot of empty space between them if you just throw them in a sack, so the real volume of those coins is probably much bigger than that!
So each coin is 1/50 lb, which is about 9g. At your density, which sounds about right, that makes each coin about 0.5 cm3. For comparison a British 5p piece is about 0.23 cm3 and a 1p piece is about 0.31 cm3. I can well imagine getting thousands of them in half a large bottle, if you removed the air gaps
Using D&D math a GP should weigh about 9 grams which is more than twice the weight of a Byzantine noisma, one of the most common gold coins in the middle ages. These coins were roughly the same diameter as a modern US quarter and about twice the weight. This makes a GP the same size as quarter but equal to the weight of a dollar. 2800 GP should take up as roughly as much space as 70 ten dollar bank rolls of quarters but weigh about as much as 280 of them.
Should we be using the density of a common gold alloy used in coinage? A pure gold coin is going to be deformed super fast, on account of gold being so soft.
I always enforce variant encumbrance, so characters can only carry strength x5 before being slowed down
Quarters are a good way to visualize coins, and a relatively inexpensive way to simulate them
Poker chips are the least expensive, get a 100 of them for a couple dollars, though they weigh 4x less than a dnd coin, you can simulate stuffing 50 coins into you dice bag/coin purse
@@stevdor6146 "least expensive"?
you do realize 25 dollars worth of quarters costs 25 dollars? so FREE basically.
and you can SPEND them when finished.
you cant spent the poker chips, so that makes them MORE expensive.
Realistically, 50 gold coins weighing only one pound means some very small gold coins. On the flipside, older D&D have only 10 coins weight 1 lb.
It's okay Bob, four out of three Americans aren't good at Math! Keep the videos coming, you're great!
"Human Fighters pop out of the woodwork like rabbits on Viagra"
Theres a better visualization, a coin purse holds 50 coins (1 lb) a coin pouch holds 300 coins (6 lbs) and 3800 coins (13 pouches) exceeds the weight capacity of a sack/pack (30 lb limit)... if a 25lb chest equates 12 cubic feet to 300 lbs, then 51lbs of coin is about 2 cubic ft, which even though 2 cubic ft fit in a basket, the 51 lb weight is over the 40lb capacity and would break your basket
LikedShad's vid, too, but, weight carried is related to how the weight is carried. Not gonna tote a 20lbs ma's on your waist for a 15-20 mi. stroll.
Different individuals might manage 80-90 lbs for a days March, others more. Me? Know would have seals health issues with just moving my old carcass a Ile.
Interesting vid, Bob.
Rational Gold coins can weigh as little as 20 grains. There are 7,000 grains in a pound. Therefore, 350 gold coins per pound is reasonable.
Gold must be worth a lot less in fantasy settings than in our world. At the current spot price (at the time I am writing this) 146.5 lbs of gold is worth $4,250,468.96.
In AD&D 1e, a single coin of any metal weighed 1.6 ounces, or ten coins per POUND. By comparison, a US half dollar coin weighs .4 ounces. A single copper piece (or silver, gold, platinum, the one not used) is the weight of FOUR US half dollar coins. Without the use of the coin-never-used, it would have been impractical for the common peasant to physically carry the copper or silver coins needed for commerce in smaller denominations. The weight of the coins was extremely unrealistic. Also with this scale of weight to value, AD&D 1e coins would have the following values in a gold based monetary system using todays gold prices in US dollars:
1 gold piece = $2803.20
1 platinum piece = $14,016
1 electrum piece = $1401,60
1 silver piece = $140.16
1 copper piece = $14.02
Another perspective on the value of gold coins in 1e:
1 live chicken cost 3 copper piece or $42.06
1 long sword cost 15 gold pieces or $42,048
1 suit of plate mail armor costs 400 gold pieces or $1,121,280
1 suit of full plate armor costs 4000 gold pieces or $11,212,800
This is only part of it. First of all, for any Americans reading, dimes and quarters both weigh 1 lb / $20, as well as and half dollars or silver dollars (not Sacagaweas) you have. Also, while cupronickel is actually about 1 g/cc less dense than silver, it's close enough that I would consider those four coins a reasonable approximation of the "feel" of silver pieces. As a result, if you have some amount of silver pieces by weight, you can multiply by $20/1lb to get a reasonable approximation of what it looks like in US currency. For example, 1 3e+ sp (50/lb) is 40¢, or the size and weight of 4 dimes stuck together, while 1 1e sp (I genuinely forget if they'd made the switch by 2e, and don't have a 2e PHB on me) is $2, or that 4 half dollars you mentioned. Meanwhile, I've looked into historical numismatics, and the closest historical equivalent to an sp was about 1/200 of a pound, or about the size and weight of a dime. (This math also applies to copper, which is predictably just about the same density as *cupro*nickel, although the conversion would have been more like 5 cp = 1 sp) Meanwhile, gold is about twice as dense as cupronickel, so while those numbers work for weight, we need to halve them for size. 1 3e+ gp is 40¢ weight or 20¢ volume, so the weight of 4 dimes, but the size of only two, and similarly, 1 1e gp is the weight of 4 half dollars, but the size of only one.
But yeah. They're only so big so that you can have Smaug-sized treasure hordes without exceeding the WBL of a level 20 character
Will you and Grace do a dice tour of some of your favorite dice you have?
That's the irony of the dragon heist loot.
Another good one! I'm keen for the travel pace video, keep up the good work Bob (and team!)
I checked the math and it checks out, the reason the volume is so small is that a single coin is slightly more than 0.4ml (if we assume is pure gold because different levels of purity have different densities). that's either super thin or super small, as it turns out gold is quite heavy, you might have never have thought of it because it's quite rare to see so much gold, but to give you an idea, iron has an atomic weight of about 55uma, while gold is about 198uma, or put another way gold has a density of 19.3 g/ml and iron has a density of 7.87g/ml, this means any weight of iron would be more than twice (about 2.4x) larger than the same weight in gold.
Nice video!
But, is that what pike really looks like in D&D 4:25? Because that looks more like a poleaxe...
My first question about this video concerns the strength to carrying capacity totals. Are you sure it makes sense that an average person can carry around 150 lbs all day while adventuring ?
i think i recall always turning coins into gems at the 1st opportunity.
Me thinks nearly 4,000 poker chips will be interestingly challenging to carry in a backpack.
Coins scale with regards to the creatures that own them, it's why a Dragon horde looks so big
300 coins fit in a belt pouch. 1500 coins in a sack. 15000 in a chest. 25000 in a bag of holding.
Coin weight is why I moved away from coins and other material objects as rewards for adventures that I ran since 3e.
Buying a fully maxed non-epic item back then cost 200,000gp. At 50 coins to a pound, that is 4,000 pounds of gold or 2 tons.
It boggled my mind when this dawned on me. I know it is fantasy, but I like some degree of realism. So, while coins and jewels obviously still exist, adventurers no longer 'receive' such things as rewards.
as a quick and dirty out party hombrewd was you can carry about 5k of coins. Past that you are having issues.