Moneyer (5e Background)

Moneyer

Edogreed

Despite their ubiquity in daily life, so many people never stop to consider how the precious metals they carry around in their pockets and pouches go from lumps of stone to flat disks with pictures and writing on them. You weren’t involved in the first few steps like mining and processing, but you were one of the moneyers that worked in a mint to change copper, silver, electrum, gold, and, on very rare occasions, platinum, into recognizable symbols of value. Most of this transmutation involved batch work using molds and hammers amid molten metal, but when dealing with coinage even tiny mistakes can result in major shifts in value. Plus there were all the recastings, investigating claims of counterfeiting, and general suspicion from your employers about thieves. It is really no wonder that you’ve decided to cash out and become the one collecting coins rather than making them.

Skill Proficiencies: Investigation and Sleight of Hand

Tool Proficiencies: Smith’s Tools

Languages: Choose one of Draconic, Dwarven, or Infernal

Equipment: A chest containing an abacus, a hammer, a merchant's scale, a small set of lead weights (10 0.1lb., 4 0.25lb., 3 0.33lb., 2 0.5lb., and 1 1lb.), common clothes, and a pouch containing 1 cp, 1sp, 1ep, 1gp, and 1 pp.

Employment

What sort of operation were you making coins for?

d8	Specialization
1	A nation or city-state for general distribution and commerce. You left or were let go for political reasons.
2	A private organization with enough resources to create their own coinage and get it trusted broadly.
3	A syndicate of counterfeiters seeking to launder the fruits of crime or make money out of junk. Sometimes both.
4	A very picky dragon who wanted a smoother hoard to sleep upon. You were allowed to leave when you finished the reforge.
5	A trading house that verified and standardized various exotic currencies for adventurers and merchants.
6	A spy agency devaluing an enemy’s economy through sabotage and financial warfare while funding their operations.
7	A cult redecorating the spoils of their faith and fury to better appease their otherworldly patron’s insatiable greed.
8	A gambling house that needed someone to inspect and sort the clientele’s money to verify they could pay for their losses.

Feature: Currency Exchange

With 1 hours of work and another hour of cooling, you can use smith’s tools to turn 1lb., usually in bar form, of pure copper, silver, electrum, gold, or platinum into 50 coins of the same type of metal. The coins you make will be blank disks perfectly measured to be equal in value to any other standard coin of the same metal. With this process, you can also convert up to 50 coins into such blanks in the same amount of time with no change in their value or composition. If you gain access to the proper coin molds, or make some of your own, you could even mint coins of more specific origins.

Alternate Feature: Mint Condition

Thanks to your years handling all sorts of coins, you can immediately tell the country or organization of origin of any coin you across, plus information such as its general age, what caused any damages to it, and any languages written upon the coin, though not the content of any language you are not literate in. Additionally, you can immediately spot most marks of tampering with the coin’s value such as paint, debasement, and obvious counterfeiting mistakes like misspellings or bad carving.

Suggested Characteristics

Moneyers are often minor nobility or skilled craftsmen, so feel free to use their Criminal, Guild Artisan, or Noble background Suggested Characteristics. However, some moneyers approach the craft with more enthusiasm than such an anonymous, if important, role would usually warrant.

d8	Personality Trait
1	I’ll go into exhaustive diatribes about the history of numismatics, the study of currency, when I see an interesting coin.
2	Whenever I’m faced with a tough binary choice, I flip a coin to decide which fork to take.
3	I am very careful whenever I need to measure something.
4	What’s that behind your ear? A silver piece? How did that get there?
5	The smallest flaws can reveal volumes about those that cause them.
6	Nothing in life is free. If you think that something is, you just haven’t realized what the price is or how it will be paid.
7	I could write a poem on the edge of a coin, but I prefer more practical grooves.
8	There are two sides to every argument. I must consider each with both my head and my heart.

d6	Ideal
1	Change. You can never have too much change! (Neutral)
2	Charity. Whenever asked to donate to a worthy cause, I always give whatever I can spare. (Good)
3	Greed. Money makes the world go ‘round. Anyone that tells you differently is running a scam. (Evil)
4	Law. Rules are meant to be followed; else we would live in a horrible wasteland where no one knows which weights and measurements to use! (Lawful)
5	Luck. How one’s life goes is mostly down to the unknowable forces of fate and destiny. We only think we have a say in our paths. (Neutral)
6	Procedure. There is a right way of doing things. Deviations from it leads to errors. I don’t do errors. (Lawful)

d6	Bond
1	I still have the first copper I ever minted on my own. I wouldn’t spend it even to save my own life.
2	I have a perfectly circular scar with a face indented into it from where a coworker dropped a red-hot coin upon my skin.
3	I surreptitiously put my own face on a few coins I made. I’m hoping they eventually become collectors’ items.
4	My tools were given to me by my parent, whose trade and honor I have done my best to uphold until now.
5	I have a favorite coin design, but unfortunately it is only forged in a faraway land, so I’ve only seen a few examples on traders.
6	I enjoyed performing coin tricks for the local street urchins. Those that could find the coins I made “disappear” got to keep them.

d6	Flaw
1	I have to carefully check every single coin I pick up to see if it is true or inaccurate in its value.
2	I tried to get into economics, but all the big numbers made my head hurt. Now math scares me.
3	I like to collect shiny things, even if they are in other peoples’ possession.
4	I have no loyalty to my friends, only institutions.
5	If I collect enough money, I will one day transform into a dragon! Preferably a metallic one.
6	I’m a two-faced liar. Or am I?

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(0 votes)

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