Gorion filed for bankruptcy?

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Unless he didn't wish to alert anyone about your exit

An innkeeper marvelling at a sudden windfall may do the trick on that one.

 

Valid point. Very valid point. But that would happen regardless. Why would you be buying that stuff otherwise?
What about the different amounts of starting gold for the different classes that's listed in the PHB?
My whole take on it is that they should have given you more. Maybe 500 or something. So you could actually buy some GOOD equipment if needed depending on your class. The 100gp works fine for some of the classes but the fighter/paladin/ranger/cleric types need more for better armor and such.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure it's actually possible to get fully equiped for 100gp. Maybe weapons, but definitely not that much in the way of armour.

 

It's enough to fully equip an average soldier. You can even go for something as extravagant as a chain mail. If you stop looking at it from the perspective of a D&D adventurer, it's more than a reasonable amount of money.

Of course, the price of equipment is rather unfortunate both in IE games and D&D in general. I can sort of get behind a chain mail costing you a small fortune, but most weapons should be affordable in that price range. And yet, a scimitar has its value set at 55 gp when it should be the same price as a longsword and a katana costs 500 gp even though it's just a sharpened slab of poor-quality steel (it's not even masterwork). And don't even get me started on those absurd bow prices...

Why should you be given good equipment? That doesn't make any sense. Not from an in-story viewpoint since Gorion didn't plan on sending you to war, you were simply gonna go traveling, and it certainly doesn't make sense from a game system viewpoint. And by that logic, it's the spellcasters who would need a lot more money because they'd need a bunch of magical gear to be on par with any warrior or even cleric type for the first several levels.

Also, even going by PnP rules, warrior classes get 125 gp on average and at best 200 gp as starting gold if you're incredibly lucky (like 0.1% chance). Ironically, thieves get less.

 

But Thieves that start with a high enough score in lockpicking can grab the gem on the 2nd floor of the inn, that's wirth 500 GP and can be sold to winthrop.

 

Not the point. Things you get after the game has started don't count as starting money/gear.

 

Eh, i still regard it as starting capital for the thief, since they're pretty much the only class that get access to it.
Pure and simple however, while it might have made sense for items to be cheaper or for the PC/gorion to have more gold on hand at the beginning of the game, looking at it purely from a gameplay perspective it would take a lot of the challenge out of the lower levels.

 

When I say good equipment I don't mean magical.
I just checked using Abdel who has a charisma of 14 and chain cost him 112gp and a scimitar cost 82gp. I don't see how that's affordable??
A katana cost 750gp but a wakizashi only cost 75gp? What's the reasoning behind that. Just curious here.

 

Availability - supply and demand.

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A Katana is similar to a longsword equal in damage to a Bastard Sword and a wakizashi is more like a shortsword but doing the damage of a longsword. So it should be no surprise that the latter is cheaper. Both are exotic weapons so it´s natural that they are more expensive than their standard equivalent.

Charisma alone does not make the price, it´s a function of Charisma and Reputation with starting reputation depending on the PC alignment
http://www.forgottenwars.com/bg1/miscellany.htm

Abdel has 14 CHA and a Reputation of 11 (Chaotic Good).

Meryll the Paladin has 17 CHA and a Reputation of 12 (Lawful Good) and for him the Katana only costs 675 instead of 750 gold.