D&D 5E Wealth by level

Honestly, it depends on the game your running. If your players love micromanaging their inventory and purchases, then use the lifestyle rules, nickle and dime them on purchases, and generally make money important and something to seek out. If they don't, play it fast and loose. Make it a skill check like it was in D20 modern. D20 with proficiency bonus against purchase DC. Train the skill to represent wealth, probably intelligence or charisma based.

ZickZak said:

Hello,
what amount of gold will a PC have by the time they are level 6?

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In this edition, there is no given amount.

In one campaign the heroes might be poor; in another richer than in their wildest dreams.

The reason you "had" to have a certain wealth by level in previous editions was because a character was assumed to have a certain amount of gear (=magic items) which in turn provided large bonuses to things like attacks, saves and so on.

A character without that gear would be significantly weakened (behind the "curve") while a character with much better / expensive gear would be much stronger.

Now, all you arguably need in 5E (as in "must have" rather than "nice to have") is a magic weapon if you're a warrior. And that need certainly doesn't set in already at 6th level.

You could even say not even that +1 Longsword is absolutely required, since there does exist solutions even for the completely magic-item-free campaign. You could always have the party wizard cast - and concentrate on - Magic Weapon the spell, for instance.

The reason for this is that there is no official way to transform gold into magical bonuses (or as you might say "buy magic items"). This essentially means gold lacks any intrinsic game value above pure role-playing. Sure it might feel nice to donate to a church or build a tower, but there is no longer any connection between your character's stats and gold.

This is why the answer is "no given amount".

Tallifer said:

I miss the 4th Edition chart of expected wealth and the corresponding gold-piece value of magical items for ease of calculating appropriate rewards. Nowadays I just rely on bounded accuracy to make up for the fact that my players get very little treasure beyond some fluff items and necessary supplies.

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In my campaign, I'm very roughly assuming "expected gp" to be equal to "current xp".

In other words, using the xp level table in the PHB to also mean "wealth per level"

Nevvur said:

Get ready for the "it depends" and YMMV responses to roll in.

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But this is truth not opinion.

The way 5th edition is set up makes characters independent of gold and items. Sure they want both, but in the sense they're required they're not: the game doesn't stop working even if the DM completely forgets to hand out either.

Coroc said:

Wealth by Level requires a well founded economic System. this is not included in RAW.

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No it does not. D&D has never included anything even close to a "well founded" economic system.

The issue isn't what wealth by level requires - it's the other way round!

The game has previously required wealth by level, because you could translate wealth into power. Wealth by level was thus required to help avoid underpowered and overpowered heroes.

Here's the formula you should be using to determine this:

X divided Y = ?

X: The total amount of treasure the DM (or module writers) have included.
Y: The # of players.

4 assumptions:
1) The # of players remains constant throughout the campaign.
2) The players have received all of the treasure.
3) The players divide all treasured equally.
4) Magic Items do not have a GP value. For those that do, divide by # of players.

ccs said:

Here's the formula you should be using to determine this:

X divided Y = ?

X: The total amount of treasure the DM (or module writers) have included.
Y: The # of players.

4 assumptions:
1) The # of players remains constant throughout the campaign.
2) The players have received all of the treasure.
3) The players divide all treasured equally.
4) Magic Items do not have a GP value. For those that do, divide by # of players.

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The trouble is, this formula is useless for GMs who don’t already have a value for X. Sure, you can set X to any value (including 0), and you won’t break the game. 5e is designed to give DMs total freedom in how they want to distribute wealth, and that’s great. But it doesn’t give any guidelines for DMs who don’t already have an idea how they want to distribute wealth. Lots of folks would appreciate a baseline they can choose to deviate from than to be left to make it up completely.

ZickZak said:

Hello,
what amount of gold will a PC have by the time they are level 6?

I ve calculated 1,000 - 2,680 gold on this site, depends on what "cumulative" means really...
And here on EnWorld some guy says they should have 4,500 gp.

So considering you play over a course of campaign and reach level 6, what gold should one PC have?

Thank you

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There is no wealth by level.

They get what they get.

Charlaquin said:

The trouble is, this formula is useless for GMs who don’t already have a value for X. Sure, you can set X to any value (including 0), and you won’t break the game. 5e is designed to give DMs total freedom in how they want to distribute wealth, and that’s great. But it doesn’t give any guidelines for DMs who don’t already have an idea how they want to distribute wealth. Lots of folks would appreciate a baseline they can choose to deviate from than to be left to make it up completely.

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Yeah, only problem is anything official will then be taken as the holy word.

I mean, you could suggest 1,000 gp per level (so you have about 12,000 gp at 12th level)... or you could go for something more exponential (where you might have almost a hundred thousand at 12th level, and end up in the millions at 20th level).

There really is no impact to it - it's just numbers.

Well, except at the lowest levels, where your wealth dictates when you'll be able to afford a full plate armor.

If you absolutely don't want to make up numbers yourself, my only suggestion is to look at what the official treasure tables of the DMG yield. That stuff has been calculated already.

Only problem with that... is that you'll quickly end up with more gold than you can spend, since there is no magic item economy in this edition. I mean, if you hand out 25,000 gp, you also need to be prepared for the players' question "great, so what can we spend it all on?".

And I lied about it being the only problem Another issue is that official published hardback campaigns vary hugely. Out of the Abyss, for instance, gives out very little loot overall. Storm King's Thunder is by comparison Monty Haul (and is the only official hardcover module using the DMG treasure tables to any great extent).

The Adventurer's League has its own solution, which is to be incredibly stingy with monetary awards and to keep the heroes perpetually scrounging (relatively speaking at least, I'm not suggesting level 17 heroes have to beg for food). Perhaps you can ask over in the AL subforum for the particulars. (I can't remember any wealth by level guidelines leaking out, but I'm pretty sure they exist internally.)

Then you have another possible solution. If you feature magic shoppes in your campaign, you could do worse just lifting the 3rd edition prices. And if you do, you could do worse than boldly importing the d20 wealth by level figures.

I guess this is what happens when the game designers keep silent on the issue.

CapnZapp said:

Yeah, only problem is anything official will then be taken as the holy word.

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I do not buy that. If the text is explicit that wealth and magic item distribution is entirely up to the DM and that the system math does not require or expect any particular amount of gold or magic items by any particular level (which it does), then I don’t see any problem with giving an example of how a DM might choose to distribute wealth and magic items throughout the campaign. Or better yet, multiple examples. Heck, the treasure hoard tables are effectively one such example, except that they aren’t any use to as an example to anyone who wants to design their own campaign and fill it with loot that isn’t randomized. At least not without having to do a hole bunch of math to reverse-engineer the expected values from those tables, which yes, people have done, but the point is they shouldn’t have needed to. That should be the book’s job.

CapnZapp said:

I mean, you could suggest 1,000 gp per level (so you have about 12,000 gp at 12th level)... or you could go for something more exponential (where you might have almost a hundred thousand at 12th level, and end up in the millions at 20th level).

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You sure could, but the books don’t do that, for some reason.

CapnZapp said:

There really is no impact to it - it's just numbers.

Well, except at the lowest levels, where your wealth dictates when you'll be able to afford a full plate armor.

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And at the high levels, where your wealth dictates when you’ll be able to afford to build a castle or whatever. Or at all levels in campaigns where the DM allows players to buy or craft magic items using any of the, what, three optional rules systems for allowing such things. Basically any time you want treasure to have actual value to the PCs.

CapnZapp said:

If you absolutely don't want to make up numbers yourself, my only suggestion is to look at what the official treasure tables of the DMG yield. That stuff has been calculated already.

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But those calculations should have been in the book. That’s what a dungeon master’s guide is supposed to be for - guiding the dungeon master. Now, granted, Xanathar’s Guide has finally given us these calculations (for the Magic Items at least, but not for the treasure for some reason). About five years after the forum community had already worked out almost identical numbers. Better late than never I guess, though for

CapnZapp said:

Only problem with that... is that you'll quickly end up with more gold than you can spend, since there is no magic item economy in this edition. I mean, if you hand out 25,000 gp, you also need to be prepared for the players' question "great, so what can we spend it all on?".

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Yes, that is another problem with D&D 5th Edition. A problem that could be resolved with more big-ticket items (mundane ones included, so that buying magic items can still be kept fully optional) for the PCs to buy and guidelines for wealth distribution. Something that DMs have been forced to homebrew because D&D didn’t include it for them, and homebrewers have been forced to endure a million commenters saying “it depends, just do whatever suits your campaign” as if that wasn’t exactly what they were trying to do with their homebrew.

CapnZapp said:

And I lied about it being the only problem Another issue is that official published hardback campaigns vary hugely. Out of the Abyss, for instance, gives out very little loot overall. Storm King's Thunder is by comparison Monty Haul (and is the only official hardcover module using the DMG treasure tables to any great extent).

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I don’t see how that’s a problem at all. If wealth and magic item distribution is intended to be variable from campaign to campaign, it makes perfect sense that different modules would have different wealth and magic item distribution rates.

CapnZapp said:

The Adventurer's League has its own solution, which is to be incredibly stingy with monetary awards and to keep the heroes perpetually scrounging (relatively speaking at least, I'm not suggesting level 17 heroes have to beg for food). Perhaps you can ask over in the AL subforum for the particulars. (I can't remember any wealth by level guidelines leaking out, but I'm pretty sure they exist internally.)

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That’s another possibility, and one that probably should have been in Xanathar’s, alongside the rest of the guidelines for running an AL style open table campaign.

CapnZapp said:

Then you have another possible solution. If you feature magic shoppes in your campaign, you could do worse just lifting the 3rd edition prices. And if you do, you could do worse than boldly importing the d20 wealth by level figures.

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You could do that, although you would get some wonky results due to the different platinum exchange rates. And different magic item lists. Also feels pretty dull. I bought 5e to play 5e, not to play 3.5. I also don’t own 3.5 and don’t particularly want to buy it just to make up for 5e’s glaring lack of treasure distribution guidelines.

CapnZapp said:

I guess this is what happens when the game designers keep silent on the issue.

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My point exactly.