Not so. If the things you’re spending gold on have an actual impact on the game,
Not having exhaustion from not eating is pretty significant.
and they cost a significant enough amount of the gold you make that you have to think critically about what to spend it on, then it’s not monotonous bookkeeping, it’s meaningful resource management.
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.
If you made significantly less gold, if lifestyles cost significantly more to maintain, if the lifestyle you maintained made any difference on gameplay, and if there was something other than lifestyles that also cost a not-insignificant amount of the gold you made, it would make wealth a meaningful part of the game.
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.
It’s nothing whether you keep track of it or not, that’s the problem. If I make thousands of gold each adventure and I have the option to spend maybe 200 of it for the privilege of being able to say my character maintains an artistocratic lifestyle between adventures or spend none of it and have to say my character has a wretched lifestyle between adventures... so what? It literally does not make any difference because neither expense puts a dent in my character’s wealth, neither option has any benefits or drawbacks of any kind, and there’s nothing else to spend the money on anyway. You might as well just take the gold tracking part out of the equation and just give me a line to write in my lifestyle right next to hair color, eye color, and alignment.
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.
Which is fine, but then don’t act like it’s a baseless assertion to say that gold doesn’t matter. You just explained why it doesn’t.
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.
That would be a significantly better way to handle wealth in 5e. Or they could actually include meaningful things to spend meaningful amounts of gold on in the game. Both are perfectly valid options, but this awkward half-measurewhere the game tells you to track individual gold pieces and then gives you nothing to spend them on is stupid.
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.