Proposal: Time Gold

Forked from: Leveling and Items

covaithe said:

About how to actually accomplish giving more treasure, I have two ideas.

First, time gold. Part of the problem with the disparity between XP and treasure awards is that DMs are constantly forgetting to factor in time XP in their treasure plans. Also, time XP isn't easily predictable in advance, and DMs also consistently underestimate how long their game is going to take in calendar time. But DMs are pretty good at calculating treasure packets for the actual encounters in their games. So, if were were to award gold along with XP for calendar time spent adventuring, it would go a long way towards fixing the balance. Time xp is basically 1/12 of a level per calendar month, so we could calculate time gold that way, too. E.g., the difference in expected wealth between level 10 and 11 is 19900g, so each month of play for a level 10 character would earn them 1658.33g. We'd have to adjust a bit at low levels, since the curve gets strange there, but it's doable.

Thematically, the idea is that, contrary to appearances, adventurers don't spend their downtime between adventures just sitting on their butts drinking, they do odd jobs. Cleaning rats out of the cellar, cleaning skeletons out of old tombs, cleaning excess gold out of unwary merchants' purses, threatening small children for their lunch money; that sort of thing. For this, they get a steady trickle of xp -- and gold. Time XP is an imperfect model of this sort of thing, but... *shrug*.

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There seems to be a bit of consensus that this is a good idea, so we might as well look at adopting it officially.

Now, the main question before a proposal is formally written is how to determine the increase in wealth a character is supposed to experience over the course of a level, so that we can determine how much time gold is given per month.

I'm personally a fan of ignoring magic items and just looking at the monetary parcels for a level, and leaving the main magic item dispensation to DMs. However, there are other ways we can do this, and I know not everyone is a fan of ignoring the magic item parcels. Discuss.

A couple ideas that occur to me:

There are basically two ways to calculate the expected wealth of a character at a given level. One is to calculate the expected treasure found through each level according to the DMG parcels, the second is to calculate the wealth possessed by a new character created at a higher level (adding the value of the level n+1, n, and n-1 magic items and gold equal to an item level n-1).I think the better of these to use for time gold is the former, since it shows what the PC could have expected to gain from adventuring for their time XP.

Next, assuming we use the expected parcel income over a level, if we include the wealth gained from magic items found as loot then DMs have to be more careful handing out magic items. For example, if their adventure awards 500 XP plus 500 time XP to a level 1 party, that's a whole level. However, what does he do for magic items? If he just looks at the XP awarded from his adventure, he should only give out half a level's worth of items, ie two. Yet each character will get the same amount of time XP, so this puts the two who get items a good deal ahead of the others.

For that reason, I think it would be better to calculate time gold on the basis of only the monetary parcels, excluding the magic item parcels.

Last idea: whichever way we go about doing this, I think it would be good to allow DMs to award magic items as part of the time gold for a character, if their time gold value was high enough. For example, if a character was to get 700 gp for their time gold (just a number pulled out of nowhere), then the DM could instead award them a level 2 item (worth 520 gp) plus 180 gp. Since time XP is awarded at the end of an adventure I assume we're doing the same with time gold, so it's still sort of in the hands of the DM.

Lord Sessadore said:

For that reason, I think it would be better to calculate time gold on the basis of only the monetary parcels, excluding the magic item parcels.

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But, the PCs are not getting any additional magic items for this time; nor are DMs spending credits. I single character in a 5 person party should expect 1 item 3 every 4 levels of in range of n+1 to n+8 during that period. I think this should be accounted for somehow. As I suggested previously, GP with time (and DM credits) is good. I might take the monetary treasure and the gp value of one level n+1 or n+2 item to account for item discrepancy especially in the case of DM credits.

Lord Sessadore said:

Since time XP is awarded at the end of an adventure I assume we're doing the same with time gold, so it's still sort of in the hands of the DM.

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Time isn't always given at the end; its been given partially before (such as when earned XP + current time XP = a new level). Handing out an item instead of gold is fine if the PC wants.

stonegod said:

But, the PCs are not getting any additional magic items for this time; nor are DMs spending credits. I single character in a 5 person party should expect 1 item 3 every 4 levels of in range of n+1 to n+8 during that period. I think this should be accounted for somehow. As I suggested previously, GP with time (and DM credits) is good. I might take the monetary treasure and the gp value of one level n+1 or n+2 item to account for item discrepancy especially in the case of DM credits.

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Hmm ... good points. I had forgotten about the DM credits factor, so I suppose it would be better to account for magic items as well.

stonegod said:

Time isn't always given at the end; its been given partially before (such as when earned XP + current time XP = a new level). Handing out an item instead of gold is fine if the PC wants.

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Right, and at that point it's clearly still within the adventure, and in the hands of the DM (in my opinion).

Especially if time gold is meant to account for the items a character would usually get, I think it should almost be a best practice that DMs give items as part of a character's time gold.

I've been hoping that someone would go through and actually calculate the expected wealth by level, by adding up suggested treasure parcel value and dividing by 5. Doing the same for just monetary treasure parcels would be helpful, too. I'd like to be able to say that I'll do it myself, but it's not exactly my top priority just now.

Anyway, part of the reason we're talking about time gold in the first place is that DMs pretty consistently forget to take time XP into account when calculating treasure. If we have time gold only account for monetary treasure, then DMs still have to remember to give extra magic items, and that leaves the problem unsolved.

Your wish is my command:

Expected wealth for level 2: 752 gp, 608 from items and 144 from actual gold.

Expected wealth for level 3: 1072 gp, 864 from items and 208 from actual gold.

Expected wealth for level 4: 1519 gp, 1248 from items and 271 from actual gold.

I'll cross the other 26 bridges when we come to them.

Thanks, that's helpful. So we're talking about time gold at

level 2: 63g/month if we include items, or 12g/month if we don't
level 3: 89g/month, or 17g/month

etc.

That seems pretty reasonable.

So, assuming this passes, would Hrav then get (89 x 9) = 801 GP with the spending of his DM credits? I think that's also the intention, yes?

If so, I'm going shopping for an amulet as soon as this passes.

Actually, I think the levels in cov's post are one too high. If a character is expected to gain 752 gp by the time they hit level 2, then it would be 63 gp/month for level 1, not level 2. So it should look like this:

Level 1: 63 gp/month including items, 12 gp/month if we don't.
Level 2: 89 gp/month, or 17 gp/month.
Level 3: 127 gp/month, or 23 gp/month.

So, if we include magic item value with time gold, Hrav should get 127 gp for each DM credit you spent, for a total of 127 x 9 = 1143 gp. Wowzers!

Lord Sessadore said:

Actually, I think the levels in cov's post are one too high. If a character is expected to gain 752 gp by the time they hit level 2, then it would be 63 gp/month for level 1, not level 2. So it should look like this:

Level 1: 63 gp/month including items, 12 gp/month if we don't.
Level 2: 89 gp/month, or 17 gp/month.
Level 3: 127 gp/month, or 23 gp/month.

So, if we include magic item value with time gold, Hrav should get 127 gp for each DM credit you spent, for a total of 127 x 9 = 1143 gp. Wowzers!

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Okay. Well, then...

I vote Yes!