D&D 4E Abstracting Wealth in 4e: good idea or bad idea?

[Rechan]

Well honestly, aside from new dragon articles/what's possibly in MME, the only thing you can really buy with gp are magical items. So as soon as you say "You can't buy magical items", there's nothing you can really do with it.

And even if this changed so that there was lists and lists of mundane items you could spend your money on, that would mean jack once you hit a certain point because there's nothing truly expensive to use lots of treasure on. The total monetary treasure for a 15th level is 50,000gp. What can you spend that on if magic items are out?

So the system is sort of abstract in "Hey I want to buy a boat" "Uh... ok you do".

Also yes. It depends on the group. They may not know what to do with it. If your players are accountant/simulationist types (those who insist on listing every item in their pack, and get a calculator to split treasure to the copper), this will likely frustrate them.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As an aside, another idea that might be interesting to pursue would be to have an abstract magic item system with a detailed wealth system. In this idea, the detailed wealth system would be manageable because it only deals with the nitty gritty of the things subject to that, and thus presumably it doesn't need to scale with level at all.

For example, it costs a few silvers got get a meal and a room at the inn for the night. And it costs the same whether you are a 1st level character or a 30th level character. And while a 30th level character certainly has all kinds of means to do services for money if so inclined, a character can be easily envision that is too proud to do so, or otherwise constrained by social norms. The closest analog would be those noble families during the industrial revolution trying to keep up appearance without being so vulgar as working for money.

There are other things that move in the circle of the magic item economy, besides items, such as powerful spells cast for favors, access to portals, etc. (The DM would decide what went into each group based on the economy of the world.)

In effect, it is an attempt to set up two economies that very rarely cross. You can buy a peerage if you want and amass enough wealth, but if your goal is power or more money, there are better uses of the gold than that. Likewise, you can occasionally sell a magic item for money (or pawn it), but this is a desperation move.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

We have not been using accurate wealth tracking to varying degrees for many years now, and the net result of that is for players to use what gold they do get on more creative things, like, boats, starting a mercenary company, building a fortress, buying their way into a trading consortium, real estate, personal luxuries and extravagances - things like that.

Some changes needed to happen on the DM-end. We've never used the "magic item economy" as it didn't sit well with any of our sensibilities, so less gold is given out in the first place. We also adopted the inherent bonus system immediately, because this reduces the need for the ridiculous "christmas tree effect" and makes the lack of a magic item trade more logical.

The TL;DR version - The net result of abstracting PC wealth has been more creative ways to spend money, and magic items are special again.

 

[the Jester]

I like counting coppers, but I also like accounting for rations and arrows.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

D20 Modern has an abstract Wealth system, and it has some problems you'll want to avoid. Some seem to have been avoided in the above proposed system already.

Some PCs will want to adventure for wealth. They'll need to see a concrete increase in their station. They will also need to be spending money somehow (wealth sinks), which was something Modern was missing. (Once you had a wealth value of 14+, only items of 15+ ever cost you any wealth. Food cost nothing, and there were no maintenance or lifestyle costs.) This has little to do with game balance and much to do with motivation; once you're wealthy, why are you still adventuring? There's no such thing as a skilled private detective barely staying afloat. By contrast, it's easy to keep a DnD PC poor, while giving them the illusion they can be wealthy if they keep adventuring.

(D20 Modern made gaining wealth absurdly easy. The Profession skill simply gave you cash, and you didn't even need to go to work to get it. Employed heroes don't have time to be, well, working, unless adventuring is their job -- I suspect all playtested d20 Modern groups involved Department 7, which helps with the motivation anyway. *Sigh* And you couldn't lose wealth easily. There were very few things worth spending wealth on other than cars, and once you had a few expensive items that was it. You didn't lose wealth to taxes, rent or even medical care, since which group didn't have someone with Surgery?

Of course, at 1st-level, no one could afford anything but a gun and basic body armor. You had to take the bus, or steal cars. From my PoV this was a feature, not a bug, as I hate having to deal with vehicle combat, and it gets even worse if the PC group has more than one vehicle.)

An abstract wealth system does not work with game balance (at least not the way Modern did it). Since Modern didn't have worthwhile wealth sinks outside of FX-heavy settings, this was generally irrelevant. (In d20 Future, where you could bribe your way to victory, it caused massive balance problems if the GM wasn't stringent.) Use an inherent bonus system. Freed from being required to buy items, PCs can instead invest their wealth. Also note that some groups (or DMs, or some players in a group, etc) will not want to play a business game, which can be avoided by having PCs blow all their cash on magic items (or consumables like ale and something that will offend Eric's grandma).

I see why a lot of DMs don't like magic shops, preferring PCs find their items and spend their money on other things. In 3.x I believe they were required for game balance (to the point where I avoided games without them), but so far there's been none in my 4e campaign (it uses inherent bonuses) and I don't miss them at all. ^^

TLDR:

Have a maintenance cost system. This is for RP more than game balance, but you need to make getting rich difficult.

Decide on how magic items are purchased. If they can't be purchased, use inherent bonuses.

Determine if your PCs will turn into businessmen or not under such a system, and whether that's a good idea.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

The group I play with likes to account for GP.

Of course, they also like to account for XP, so those that recommend "ditch XP and level up when appropriate" also don't have purchase with the group.

Anyway, as said in reply #2: If the group wants to, sure.

 

[delericho]

What's your game about?

If it boils down to "kill things and take their stuff", then you really don't want to abstract wealth away - that's the means by which you keep score!

However, if your characters are off on some quest, be it "rescue the princess", "save the world", or "avenge my father", then tracking wealth is probably a distraction. In this case, I might even argue for just ignoring it entirely - let the player give his character whatever equipment he feels appropriate (subject to your approval, of course).

(In my games, I've abstracted wealth somewhat. We've eliminated all denominations other than gold, everything that costs less that 1gp is free, and treasures are given as "a bundle of poor loot", or whatever so we don't need to track every last item/copper that is recovered. IMO, the low levels largely are about the PCs establishing themselves as heroes, generally by "killing things and taking their stuff", and at higher levels gradually shifts to a more quest-based approach. So, this provides a happy medium of abstraction for us.)

 

[MacavityCat]

GPs equating to item levels sucks. My players prefer to acquire make items through other means such as deity gifts or scenario earned and have a money system that makes sense and acquire wealth for good gaming reasons like buying estates, building castles or paying hirelings. Ed4 permits this as a valid concept if one simply replace the 'gp' under cost by a 'magic value' then use transfer rituals and residium. The problem with making item level equals GP is it makes a farce of the wider rpg issues.