D&D 5E What's the point of gold?

[delericho]

It got to the point in my Pathfinder game that a PC interested in fixing up a broken manor home (about 2k in repairs) was chastised by another player for wasting gold on that when he could buy a +1 weapon with it.

Yep. It also doesn't help that 3e/PF has a "wealth per level" table that deals only in a single raw number, where there's a significant difference between a character who has invested it all in adventuring gear versus one who just has a big pile of gold.

Or, put another way: give a 1st level PC a belt of giant's strength +6 and you'll have a much more powerful PC. Give the same PC the treasure hoard in Moria (but don't allow him to spend it!) and it will make very little difference. WpL doesn't, or perhaps can't, deal with that distinction.

 

[Coredump]

http://pvponline.com/comic/1999/11/11/thu-nov-11

A true classic...

 

[Sailor Moon]

What I like about 5th edition is the fact that I can fully control the amount of actual gold I hand out. Technically I could in the other editions, but I don't have the WBL monkey on my back to worry about. I'm thankful PCs are based on their class and race instead of by their items. This allows me full control over the gold without any expectancy.

 

[Henry]

Why do I keep seeing this answer everywhere around internet?

Because it's a phrase that goes back over 25 years, and a meme that goes back thousands. Ale and Whores is equally ubiquitous, and Conan the Barbarian is the quintessential murder hobo who is king of both that trope and accumulating wealth.

 

[delericho]

Technically I could in the other editions, but I don't have the WBL monkey on my back to worry about. I'm thankful PCs are based on their class and race instead of by their items.

One of the dirty little secrets of 3e, that they did a poor job of making clear, is that in 3e (at least at the start) the balance is done assuming PCs don't have any specific items. The WbL table is actually built from the provided treasure tables, showing a progression from level to level assuming average treasure results for 13ish encounters of the appropriate level and a 4-way split.

It's a guide, "if you use our default assumptions and tables, your PCs will probably have roughly this much gear" rather than an instruction.

Of course, such things don't survive beyond first contact with the players.

 

[Fanaelialae]

One of the dirty little secrets of 3e, that they did a poor job of making clear, is that in 3e (at least at the start) the balance is done assuming PCs don't have any specific items. The WbL table is actually built from the provided treasure tables, showing a progression from level to level assuming average treasure results for 13ish encounters of the appropriate level and a 4-way split.

It's a guide, "if you use our default assumptions and tables, your PCs will probably have roughly this much gear" rather than an instruction.

Of course, such things don't survive beyond first contact with the players.

I'm not so sure about that. I had a DM who refused to follow the WBL guidelines (giving us very little treasure) and once we got past level 3 or 4 the game started to ramp up in difficulty big time, even though he did follow encounter guidelines. I don't think we ever made it past level 8 or 9 in his games; we always TPK'd or the campaign ended.

I didn't have the same experience when following the WBL rules. The game would change at higher levels, but the difficulty was relatively consistent.

 

[delericho]

I'm not so sure about that. I had a DM who refused to follow the WBL guidelines (giving us very little treasure)

Did he use monsters from books other than the first MM, though? Because once the players grasped the power of the magic item economy (and the optimisation that allowed), the designers countered by boosting the power of monsters in later books. That's why I included my "at the start" caveat.

If you're interested, the analysis of the power levels can be found in the first chapter of "Trailblazer". It makes for an interesting read, if you're mathematically inclined.

 

[Remathilis]

One of the dirty little secrets of 3e, that they did a poor job of making clear, is that in 3e (at least at the start) the balance is done assuming PCs don't have any specific items. The WbL table is actually built from the provided treasure tables, showing a progression from level to level assuming average treasure results for 13ish encounters of the appropriate level and a 4-way split.

It's a guide, "if you use our default assumptions and tables, your PCs will probably have roughly this much gear" rather than an instruction.

Of course, such things don't survive beyond first contact with the players.

Not quite true.

Lots of elements in the rules took into account certain "bonuses" coming from weapons (DR being the most blatant; 3.0 assumed +3 weapons by the time PCs were fighting balors), but monster saves assumed resistance items, their to-hit necessitated magic-augmented ACs, etc.

The Original "Asharadon AP" (Sunless Citadel -> Bastion of Broken Souls) which came out very early in 3.0's reign made it pretty clear you were supposed to augmenting your numbers fairly regularly. The NPC charts in the 3.0 DMG likewise assumed booster items.

I don't doubt that Monte, as part of his "game within a game", expected PCs to find neat-but-useless items like Elixirs of Love and Eversmoking Bottles and immediately cash4gold them into higher pluses on their swords, rings, and cloaks. Because if two 5th level Fighters have 9,000 GP in "expected wealth", but one gets a +1 longsword, +1 full plate, +1 heavy shield and a +1 cloak of resistance, and the other a horn of fog, golembane scarab, ring of climbing, elixir of fire breath, and hand of the mage, the first guy is in a infinitely better position to survive, despite having nearly the same amount of gp in magic items.

 

[Remathilis]

Did he use monsters from books other than the first MM, though? Because once the players grasped the power of the magic item economy (and the optimisation that allowed), the designers countered by boosting the power of monsters in later books. That's why I included my "at the start" caveat.

If you're interested, the analysis of the power levels can be found in the first chapter of "Trailblazer". It makes for an interesting read, if you're mathematically inclined.

I think the fundamental problem is that the game did not anticipate the level of optimization the game garnered. Then, the game became an arms race between monsters powers and PC optimization.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Did he use monsters from books other than the first MM, though? Because once the players grasped the power of the magic item economy (and the optimisation that allowed), the designers countered by boosting the power of monsters in later books. That's why I included my "at the start" caveat.

If you're interested, the analysis of the power levels can be found in the first chapter of "Trailblazer". It makes for an interesting read, if you're mathematically inclined.

I've read Trailblazer, and I agree it's an interesting analysis. Frankly, once I was burned out on 3e, Trailblazer almost convinced me to give it a second chance.

In his later campaigns he started using monsters from other MMs, but I believe his first campaigns were core only, because they took place not long after 3rd came out. This was a long time ago though, so it is possible that I'm overlooking the factor that the subsequent MMs played. I definitely recall that the monsters seemed to get deadlier as more MMs came out, although one core example of highly deadly creatures were the MM1 dragons. In any case, given the power level of the later MMs I think it's safe to say that unless you used core only, WBL was assumed.