D&D (2024) Gold & Other Treasure (Can we get off the treadmill?)

[Horwath]

Unlike prior editions, you can actually run a full campaign without non-magical treasure. However, there's always ways to spend gold. The two most common are Potions of Healing and expensive spell components. Potions of Healing can allow you to full heal after a combat without spending precious spell slots or taking an hour for a Short Rest. Some of the best spells have expensive spell components, many of which are consumed on use. Diamonds for Revivify/Raise Dead and Greater Restoration are by far the most sought after, but Identify requires a pearl, Augury requires expensive rune stones (or other divination tool), and many more.

running a campaign without magic items is booring.

What, you have same naughty word sword you got from boot camp?

Only as a heavy armor user can you hope for some advancement in form of full plate or if you manage to macgyver some cool things for your weapons(if allowed) as poison dispensers or similar.

Even the most basic, boring, inimaginitive +1 weapon is still advancement, you got something better, even if plain, bare minimum.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Money is a plot device. That's all. Whether or not the players have too much or too little cash depends entirely on what they wish their D&D adventures to include and where they want to go.

If players want to spend gold on something to further their story and adventure... they will. If they as a group want to buy a keep and run it? Then they will collect all the money they can, make all the connections to the nobility they can, and actually play their story to acquire / build / renovate their keep and lands. And thus all the gold you gave them as DM will see use.

But if the players don't care about that... if their reason for playing D&D is to just go out and explore the lands, find tombs, or interact with interesting people for example... then money will serve no purpose. Money doesn't give them that which they want and why they play. So there's no reason to consider that "reward" and little reason to give it to them. To them... new places to go and new locations to explore is the reward. That's why they are playing the game.

The age of nickle-and-diming your way through equipment tables is over. It's been done hundreds of times by every player for decades. So few players at your table probably care about going through that same exact "mini-game" again and again and again of "going out to acquire treasure and then coming home to spend it." That novelty is gone. So don't try and recapture that genie and stuff it back into the bottle. Instead... merely see what the players enjoy most about D&D and angle the stories of the campaign such that they get more of what they want.

 

[BrokenTwin]

We give bandits steel not gold!

Eh, most bandits are just desperate peasants with no other options. Give them enough to support their families and most will happily find less destructive things to do.
Unless we're talking traditional RPG bandits, in which case, chop chop.

 

[MGibster]

If I'm not including stronghold building or paying for training, then I don't use standard D&D treasure tables. I use modified 1e Warhammer tables instead.

How much is a stronghold in 5th edition?

 

[Horwath]

Eh, most bandits are just desperate peasants with no other options. Give them enough to support their families and most will happily find less destructive things to do.
Unless we're talking traditional RPG bandits, in which case, chop chop.

Then they can beg on city square or side of the road.
If someone pulls a dagger on you, proportional answer to that is to draw a greatsword.

 

[Horwath]

How much is a stronghold in 5th edition?

Stronghold Builder Tool | Level Up

a5e.tools

 

[Willie the Duck]

To a point, very much yes; and let the PCs sell their surplus items as well.

Beyond that point, no. The 3e system, where everything was available for a price and the pricing was...well, let's just say a bit wacko, went too far.

Training costs and strongholds are also very good money sinks.

Fundamentally I don't really see a real difference between those (the 1e and 3e models) as they serve the same function -- gold has to be put back into the character to advance in their functionality. That serves the goal of creating a defined purpose for the money acquired and also to keep the PCs hungry for the next big score (giving a solid answer to the question 'so why are we seeking treasure?'). The downsides are that 1) campaigns where you aren't accumulating treasure need workarounds (you can play The Hobbit, but not readily The Lord of the Rings); and 2) it strongly disincentivizes the characters treating massive treasure payouts as, well, massive treasure payouts. The later is (to me) a greater issue, because about half the players want to play around with the RP aspects of being treasure hunters who suddenly find a massive treasure score (rather than putting it back into getting better at being treasure hunters). Someone going to want to play the Conan-type (every payday is followed by carousing until they wake up penniless in the gutter and need to go get another payday). Someone is going to want to keep upgrading the pack animals and then wagons until the party is riding around on an armored triple-sized vardo with full-service bar, arbalest gunnery turrets, lock&trapped strongbox, and team of full-plate barded warhorses pulling it. Someone is going to want to put tens of thousands of GP into refurbishing the abandoned iron mine that was the site of adventure #12 (which will eventually be complete and start putting out hundreds of gp worth of ore per month, paying off well past the point when the campaign ends). Those are the things my groups have done with BX/BECMI, 2e, 5e, but not 3e (and 1e only when level-training and name-level keep&army play was abandoned).

 

[payn]

Treasure is the most important thing in the game.

It's a big failing of 5e design that it gives no good places or reasons to spend it.

I actually see it as a feature. It has freed the players from the treasure grind and allows them to just explore the world and their character's place in it. (Axing XP helps tremendously too).

Instead of adding a bunch of money sinks, I think they need to show folks faction play, plot development, and sandbox ideology instead. Like a game mastery guide that DMG II in 3E was like, or the one Paizo put out for PF1.

 

[tetrasodium]

Money is a plot device. That's all. Whether or not the players have too much or too little cash depends entirely on what they wish their D&D adventures to include and where they want to go.

If players want to spend gold on something to further their story and adventure... they will. If they as a group want to buy a keep and run it? Then they will collect all the money they can, make all the connections to the nobility they can, and actually play their story to acquire / build / renovate their keep and lands. And thus all the gold you gave them as DM will see use.

But if the players don't care about that... if their reason for playing D&D is to just go out and explore the lands, find tombs, or interact with interesting people for example... then money will serve no purpose. Money doesn't give them that which they want and why they play. So there's no reason to consider that "reward" and little reason to give it to them. To them... new places to go and new locations to explore is the reward. That's why they are playing the game.

The age of nickle-and-diming your way through equipment tables is over. It's been done hundreds of times by every player for decades. So few players at your table probably care about going through that same exact "mini-game" again and again and again of "going out to acquire treasure and then coming home to spend it." That novelty is gone. So don't try and recapture that genie and stuff it back into the bottle. Instead... merely see what the players enjoy most about D&D and angle the stories of the campaign such that they get more of what they want.

Why did you substitute the word "players" in place of "authors"? If an author wants to engage in that sort of director level control over a they might want to do that someplace like Lets become a novelist! or an english equivalent like Royal Road where readers of "their" story aren't simply misguided extras who thought they were fellow players & a GM. gamelit & RPGlit are quite popular on both sites.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've been working on a "better equipment list" to make things for my players to buy. I've found that there are a LOT of magic items whose effects don't seem all that magical to me (I noticed it first in 4e, when my character got a "magic" axe that gave me a 1/encounter power that allowed me to trip a target prone on a successful hit. Isn't that just a "bearded" axe?)

My point being: I'm working on a list of "soft" magic-item like effects that I plan to introduce to the game at lower levels in the form of "quality" or "masterwork" items that simply cost more money than level 1 characters have, but can easily be bought (or found in place of coins) at levels 2-6. THEN I'll start introducing actual magic items that do magical things.

I get what @DEFCON 1 is saying against the mini-game of treasure tracking, but two things: 1) In the 9 years that 5e has been out, I've had a LOT of players that want to go shopping, but they never find anything worth buying (Except for Studded Leather & Plate) I find that disappointing. And 2) It's been even longer since I've played that mini-game. If the mini-game was ANY GOOD, it might be fun to do. So I'm going to try it.

I'd wait for 2024, but I really doubt that they'll do much to improve it (I suspect that they'll do a little, but that it won't be enough to make my time wasted).