Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
It's trivially easy to come up with ways to spend the gold. The book really doesn't need to provide those ways, especially in an edition that's all about getting away from rules for everything.
D&D 5E What's the point of gold?
It's trivially easy to come up with ways to spend the gold. The book really doesn't need to provide those ways, especially in an edition that's all about getting away from rules for everything.
Jester David
Hero
Not having exhaustion from not eating is pretty significant.
Right. But that level of metagame is not something that needs to be in the base game. Or the game at all. Going through a list of thirty or forty magic items to buy the one that is most optimal for your character. Yaaaawn. That's needless busywork that gets in the way of actually playing. And it just makes magic items boring AF and just a mundane, mandatory character choice like feats.
So... give out less gold.
And do things like apply taxes, require training to level, and the like. That stuff isn't hard. It's literally in the core rulebooks.
Then your character is wretched, covered in filth, and the DM describes everyone as looking down their nose at them.
Whatever floats your boat.
At least there's the option for people who WANT to have the aristocratic character rather than mechanically penalising them for not investing every gold piece into gear. Or having to force mechanical bonuses and perks for choosing not to sleep in a gutter.
It matters as much as you CHOOSE to have it matter. The game doesn't come out and hold your hand and tell you to prioritise gold. It doesn't tell you characters need to have a set amount of wealth, and that the DM absolutely must award treasure.
That it's going against the rules to have a cash strapped band of adventurers having to tighten their belts and always being broke.
Y'know... like pretty much every band of adventurers in every fantasy story ever written.
Seriously, name one fantasy novel where the heroes have thousands of gold pieces and stop in a city to buy a half-dozen magic items like shopping for groceries.
For those who want to, there ARE things to spend gold on. MAGIC ITEM SHOPS ARE IN THE CORE RULEBOOKS!!! You do own a DMG, right?
The differences are twofold:
1) Magic items are not assumed, nor are magic item shops mandatory. So you can spend your money on things like a keep or living as a noble without being penalised or throwing off wealth by level.
2) The DM can award things worth lots of money without worrying that the players will just sell it off and break wealth by level.
The best example of how this affects the game is Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. You get a manor. In 3e/4e every single group of PCs would have immediately flipped the house for profit to buy a shiny new magical item. Because the 10,000 they could sell it for was too damn tempting not to, and the benefit of that amount of static bonuses made them powerful.
Adding magic item shops where you can buy bespoke magic items designed just for you just throws off the balance, so the DM needs to adjust some encounters. But it's pretty doable.
Really, the big difference is that the rules just don't pretend there's a firm, absolute price for magic items, and you can declare an exact value of an item. Which is true. Because the value of items will vary depending on the character and the campaign.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
5e removed them unless the DM specifically adds them back in. Even then there are no prices given in the core 3 books, but then pricing has been bupkis since 3e anyway. Most prices are too high or too low.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Except that nothing you can spend your gold on really does anything. Sure, I can say I bout some real expensive art, or built a castle or whatever, but none of that matters if it doesn’t affect actual gameplay. Spending useless money to buy useless trade goods and/or useless real estate isn’t my idea of making gold meaningful.
But the cost of a ration is not, so there’s no meaningful decision to be made.
Certainly not. But if there’s no gamification to the exchange of wealth, then why does it get so much attention in the rules? Like you said, why bother counting every coin? Just make it an abstract value like you said, or hell, leave it entirely to roleplay.
I never advocated for a list of thirty or forty magic items to buy the one that is most optimal for your character. I agree that was boring in 3e and 4e. This conversation will be much more productive if you address the arguments I actually make instead of raging against strawpeople.
Right. So like I’ve been saying this whole time, if the DM wants to make wealth matter, they have to put in that work.
Sure. Or I can spend an insignificant portion of the gold I have nothing better to buy with in order to for my character to be dressed in the finest clothes, dining on the rarest delicacies off the purest silver tableware. Since there is no advantage or drawback to either, it’s purely a roleplaying choice. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but why is there so much bookkeeping involved? I don’t have to track a resource to make sure my eyes stay green.
How could you possibly invest every gold piece into gear? Everything is so dirt cheap compared to the amount of gold you make. If you want a character’s economic class to be a roleplaying choice instead of a gameplay one, that’s fine, but then what’s the point of counting individual gold pieces? Alternatively, if you want earning and spending currency to be part of the game, then it needs game rules to make it relevant.
Nope, it sure doesn’t. It makes the DM do all the work if they want to run a game where how to spend your gold is an actual decision with meaningful consequences.
Again, you’re assuming a motive for wanting gold to matter more that I do not hold. Kindly set your assumptions aside and engage with ME instead of an imagined enemy.
And again, magic item shops are not a thing I want. That said, for the people who do want them, the books offer no advice on how to price them. As I’ve been saying all along, the DM has to do that work themselves if they want that.
I’m just not going to address this, because you seem to be arguing with someone other than me here.
Jester David
Hero
Then what do you want?
You haven’t said.
You want something that mechanically benefits the characters for spending gold, offers meaningful choices, adds resource management to gold, but isn’t a magic item shop.
Such as... what?
Can you point to a game that does this?
DMG page 135.
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Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
I have said, if you’d been paying attention. Reduce gold rewards and/or increase lifestyle costs. Give meaningful (as in, with direct impact on gameplay) consequences, whether positive, negative, or both, to lifestyles. And add other meaningful (again, mechanically relevant) things to spend gold on. Maybe higher quality mundane equipment. Maybe material components for spells. Maybe goods and services. Hell, even increasing the delta between the cost of starter gear and the cost of the best (mundane) gear. Crucially, make sure that these costs are significant compared to the amount the character’s make. In this way, you insure that the players can’t just buy whatever they want. They have to prioritize and make difficult decisions. If a better weapon is the obviously best choice, the system isn’t working right. Every purchasing decision should be a trade off.
Or, alternatively, just stop trying to pretend gold matters. Just make wealth a totally abstract thing that informs roleplaying and stays out of the way of the actual rules.
Not off the top of my head. I’d bet Torchbearer probably does it pretty well, I dunno, haven’t had a chance to play it.
The chart that recommends charging 501-5,000 gp for rare magic items with absolutely no guidance for how to evaluate whether a given item should cost 10 up to times more than any other given item? This is no more useful than just saying “charge more for items of higher rarity” and leaving it at that. Especially in a game that prides itself on not having any guidelines for how much gold to award.
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Jester David
Hero
That’s a pretty vague idea.
Just seems like it would add a tax on playing the game at higher levels. Pay to do what you used to be able to do for free. Especially for casters.
At best it’s just add a treadmill to gear.
Alternative, just stop pretending that limiting gold is some kind of hardship.
If you want less gold… give less gold. It’s ridiculously simple and is actually less work since you’re skipping a step as DM. And at higher levels, you can just continue to use the low level hoards.
Gold does matter. Just not to the combat pillar. It matters more to the roleplaying pillar of a ROLEPLAYING game.
Plus, tracking gold pieces is a traditional part of game. It’d be hard to get away from.
But, hey, other people have already done alternate wealth systems:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/177820/5MWD-Presents-Variant-Rules
If you don’t like gold, there are options.
It’s about as good of guidelines as you can manage.
Which is worth more, boots of winterlands or slippers of spiderclimb? They’re both uncommon, so they’re the same “price”.
But which is more valuable if your playing Storm King’s Thunder? But how about Tomb of Annihilation? What if the PC is a aarakocra? Would they pay the same for the slippers as the boots?
Price is too variable. It changes from campaign to campaign, and character to character.
jgsugden
Legend
D&D is a role playing game. Your characters play a role in a story.
How the trucking hash can you not see how a huge amount of money can give you a plethora of story options? People want your money! You can use it to solve so many problems in the world! Even if you have no immediate use for it, what are you going to do if someone steals it? And buying and paying for a mansion, keep, temple, monastery, brothel, or amusement park can give you a huge set of story options.
Gold, like everyting else in the game, is something you can use to win by creating the most legend - wait for it - dary story for your PCs that you can... one you'll remember for years to come.
How the trucking hash can you not see how a huge amount of money can give you a plethora of story options? People want your money! You can use it to solve so many problems in the world! Even if you have no immediate use for it, what are you going to do if someone steals it? And buying and paying for a mansion, keep, temple, monastery, brothel, or amusement park can give you a huge set of story options.
Gold, like everyting else in the game, is something you can use to win by creating the most legend - wait for it - dary story for your PCs that you can... one you'll remember for years to come.
My group has no wizard pcs.
My group makes no effort to find wizards, why spend time on that when there are monsters yo beat gp out of.
When my group kills wizards and gets spellbooks in their loot, it's useless to us.
So ***clearly*** the 5e dedign is the worst evaaah cuz it does not have detailed rules for us selling wizard spell books to farmers for magic potions or st least give us rules to use those magical pages to make magical spitballs we can shoot out of blowguns st resistant creatures.
My group makes no effort to find wizards, why spend time on that when there are monsters yo beat gp out of.
When my group kills wizards and gets spellbooks in their loot, it's useless to us.
So ***clearly*** the 5e dedign is the worst evaaah cuz it does not have detailed rules for us selling wizard spell books to farmers for magic potions or st least give us rules to use those magical pages to make magical spitballs we can shoot out of blowguns st resistant creatures.
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