Orlanthi don't use coinage much. The typical Orlanthi may own a few coins, but they'll be stored away somewhere and won't be relevant to every day life. A character's wealth may consist of a couple of items of jewelry, a gold arm-torc, a dozen cows, a debt from the neighbours for helping build their new pig shed, rights to the use of common land, and favours that they can call on from the clan ring. Can this character afford a chainmail shirt? There's no way that I as a player want to tally up the relative worths of all these factors. A wealth rating suits me fine. The main problem with the current system is that it falls into the classic trap of applying multiplicative factors to an already logaritmic scale. It should be noted as well that acquiring items doesn't increase your wealth rating - I interpret "buying a chainmail shirt" as "exchanging some existing wealth for a valuable item". If a character gets robbed and loses a valuable item like a chainmail shirt, I would reduce their wealth rating. You could even say that not only have they lost a valuable item, but they may also have lost financial standing in the community. Who'd lend money to the merchant that is always being robbed?
Phil.
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