D&D 5E Why I think gold should have less uses in 5e, not more.

[MGibster]

I can scarcely imagine how you'd make gold less useful than it already is for D&D. While I'm not a big fan of magic shops, I think having them would at least give players a reason to care about mundane treasure. As it stands now, when I play D&D I don't give a fig about gold after level 2 or 3.

 

[Reynard]

Wands of magic missile, cloaks of protection, dancing scimitar. Take your pick. After this long for many of us magic in D&D is old hat. Buying them isnt the issue.

I will say I saw a lot of excitement in BG 3 over item mechanics like lightning charges, reverberation, arcane acuity, etc. because it incentivized combos and different builds. It offered another pillar of character customization. But you can only have that if some of it is in the player's hands.

You seem to be arguing against a position I did not take.

I did not say bog standard D&D items are "wonder." I said being able to buy items --- no matter what they are -- kills wonder.

 

[Bacon Bits]

1. You stated that Gold was worthless in BX and AD&D, and that giving a use to gp after you acquired it was the reason for training costs as a common house rule.
2. Reynard stated that they were not a house rule in AD&D.
3. You made statements that, while interesting and most being true*, are not germane to whether the rules were listed in AD&D, and thus not house rules. *re: 1E being the one where everything was optional: 1e is perhaps the only edition where it's actually stated that you ought to follow all the rules. That no one did is true, but not specific to 1E.
4. Reynard pointed out that optionality does not change that the rules were there in the books, with the purpose of creating a use for the gp acquired.
5. You stated, without apparent evidence other than they did not agree with you, that Reynard must not have looked into the rules.

Also, outside of the ordinal count:

• At no point did you clarify that you were talking about some other training rules other than the published rules as the house rules; nor why the initial house rules do not count as a use for gold.

I think training costs and upkeep costs were a common house rule in part to suck away some measure of wealth and to encourage the PCs to keep gold on hand, but also just for verisimilitude. I'm pretty sure we settled on 100 gp / level, which I think is what the 2e optional rule is.

I call them a house rule because (a) most editions do not have them as standard rules, and, (b) I do not think the 1e DMG's formula for training costs is functional. It's either an absurd if not outright impossible amount of treasure for the modules we ran, many of which were written for Basic, 2e, or out of late 80s and early 90s Dragon. So, no, I don't buy anyone using that very long. I know nobody that used that rule as written.

In other words, I think people used the idea of them, but I think -- and my experience says -- people house-ruled them into something less stupid. Which is basically how all of 1e worked.

1E characters needed to acquire a bunch of gold to to level.

All this gold you'd be adding in isn't actually gold. It had to be added to the module specifically to cover training, and that money is already spent. It's just fodder that's earmarked for training. It's not there to give you a gold reward that the player can decide how to spend. It's there because it has to be there because if it's not, then advancement halts and XP progression halts. You had to add in gold so that the game functions with your training costs. But all the gold does is support the training cost system. Meanwhile, the rest of the game doesn't really function because of the way XP and gp interact.

There's not more stuff to buy in the game this way. There's not a new table of cool gear to pine for. It's like a loan from the DM. "Here, track and carry this gold for me until you get back to town, where you will immediately mark it off so you can gain a level and continue to earn XP." That's not treasure. That's an illusion. It's a false mechanic. It's putting boulders into the PC's backpacks so they feel like they accomplished something, while reminding them that encumbrance is an opportunity cost.

And even if the amount of gp required is so high "because the 'XP for gp' rule warps things," that still doesn't work because the amount of XP you need at high level is multiple orders of magnitude more than the amount of gp that training costs. The training costs are prohibitively expensive at low level, and totally irrelevant at higher levels because XP costs so out-scale them.

And if you look at the published adventure modules that Fighter probably went through to get to 5th level and see how much treasure they contain, you'll see that accruing 15000 g.p. over that span is child's play...provided the PCs are allowed to sell their excess magic.

It was Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Village of Hommlet, or something out of Dungeon that we were running when someone found the 1e training rule. The DM looked through the module and said that unless the PCs loot literally everything including all the friendly NPCs, then there wasn't enough gold to reach level 2 or 3 even though there's more than enough XP.

I do remember modules doing that thing where they tell you stuff like statues and doors are worth thousands of gp to the right buyer, but either it weighs several tons or you have to break it (and ruin it) to move it. Or they do obnoxious stuff like give you 50,000 cp (only 5,000 lbs!). Is that what you're counting? Because that's not actually treasure. Those are jokes and scenery. It would take months to extract it if at all. So... no. The modules we ran did not have anywhere near enough wealth.

You could certainly just run them as they are and whatever is there is there, and when you get done you just run whatever is appropriate. It "works" in that the game is playable if you ignore the stupidity, but it means you should just reliably stop earning XP fairly often at low-level.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

You seem to be arguing against a position I did not take.

I did not say bog standard D&D items are "wonder." I said being able to buy items --- no matter what they are -- kills wonder.

And I disagree, in part because I don't think there's much wonder in D&D magic, certainly not after playing for years (decades). Whether you find or buy that dancing sword, it's still just a sword that hits stuff for you.

 

[Zil]

If you play it straight, it doesn't just make gold mandatory for progression. It makes a lot of gold mandatory for progression. It makes gold functionally replace XP for the first 6 levels of the game. It's not a siphon for gold that would otherwise be there. It's a schedule. The costs are so high that they block and dictate advancement. At low level when you're less likely to have the XP earned pro-rated, it's often higher than the XP schedule.

• A level 1 Fighter needs 1,500 gp and 2,000 XP gained to reach level 2.
• A level 2 Fighter needs 3,000 gp and 2,000 XP gained to reach level 3.
• A level 3 Fighter needs 4,500 gp and 4,000 XP gained to reach level 4.
• A level 4 Fighter needs 6,000 gp and 8,000 XP gained to reach level 5.

By 5th level, a Fighter needs to have a total of 16,000 XP. However, to reach that point, they would have had to spend 15,000 gp just in training. (For reference, that's more total wealth than 3e characters should have access to by that level.)

Except... well, now there's a big problem, because you earn XP for gold. That means they should have gotten pretty close to 15,000 XP from gold alone. If the character has a Strength score of 15 or better -- which the 1e DMG strongly suggests they always should -- they would instead have 16,500 XP from the gold alone. That's before XP from monsters or magic items or anything else, never mind any gold that the PC could actually spend on supplies and equipment. And it's worse for Clerics and Thieves because they advance more quickly but their costs are the same.

And to top it off, this is the cheapest it can be. If the DM decides you weren't playing your class or alignment well enough or if no trainer is available, you can be required to spend up to quadruple the costs.

But it gets worse because, as I mentioned, 1e AD&D is unique in this training cost requirement. It doesn't appear in other editions except as an optional rule. That means any module for 2e AD&D or Basic D&D shouldn't have this level of treasure. That means any Basic module, including the entirety of the B and X series, anything set in Mystara, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, or Planescape, nearly all of Ravenloft, and nearly all of Forgotten Realms should not have the gold required to pay for this training.

That's why I'm saying I honestly don't believe anybody used this long enough for it to happen during play. The costs for a significant portion of play are completely outside the reality of gameplay, and it lasts until the PCs are mid-level.

If this is really how you say you played, then my question is: Why do your players put up with that much level drain? Because that's the only way I can imagine this kind of game working and not being constantly capped on XP.

Regarding the impact on training from the differences in wealth rewards from 2E adventures, I do not think this was as much a factor as you are making it out to be. There was a long period of time between 1E and 2E. During that period there were no second edition adventures available,. Most of our games were home brew with a few TSR or sometimes Judge's Guild adventures thrown in. Sometimes a basic adventure might be mixed in, but I don't ever recall that ever being an issue.

As for whether how often the 1E training rules were used, most of the gaming groups that I played with from the start of the 1E era through to the start of 2E did use the training rules as written.

 

[Lanefan]

Spoiler warning for N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God

It was Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Village of Hommlet, or something out of Dungeon that we were running when someone found the 1e training rule. The DM looked through the module and said that unless the PCs loot literally everything including all the friendly NPCs, then there wasn't enough gold to reach level 2 or 3 even though there's more than enough XP.

Can't speak to anything from Dungeon, but I've played through (but not run) both Reptile God and Hommlet and don't recall them being exactly treasure-poor. We were easily enough able to train afterwards, and had money left over; though I don't remember how much of the magic we sold off (probably a fair bit).

From what little I recall, Dungeon magazine modules were something of a crapshoot in all regards. I gave up on the magazine after the first dozen issues or so, and long since gave away those I had.

I do remember modules doing that thing where they tell you stuff like statues and doors are worth thousands of gp to the right buyer, but either it weighs several tons or you have to break it (and ruin it) to move it. Or they do obnoxious stuff like give you 50,000 cp (only 5,000 lbs!). Is that what you're counting? Because that's not actually treasure. Those are jokes and scenery. It would take months to extract it if at all. So... no. The modules we ran did not have anywhere near enough wealth.

Is it possible your DM was stripping out some of the treasure? 'Cause now you have me curious...

<pulls out N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God and checks>

...and it would seem there's more than enough wealth there. Using 1e DMG pricing*, the final hoard in the dungeon has about 56,500 g.p. worth of treasure in it; the module states an NPC ally takes a ring and a potion worth in total about 5500 as his share, leaving the party still north of 50K in treasure just from that one hoard. For a 7-member party, each gets a share worth over 7000 g.p., and if you can't pay for training with that then I don't know what to tell you.

However, on a quick glance through the rest of the module it would appear that final hoard represents most of the available treasure; if you somehow missed it, or never got that far, I could see how you'd think it's a skimpy adventure.

* - exception: I had to guess at the value of the spell scrolls; I used our own valuing for those which is 300 g.p. per spell level, though one of the scrolls would likely have been more given it has Heal on it.

 

[Lanefan]

And I disagree, in part because I don't think there's much wonder in D&D magic, certainly not after playing for years (decades).

Maybe so, but after 40+ years I still like getting it!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Saying magic items can't be bought isn't the same as saying you can't have magic, or magic items.

... Unless the only way to get magic in your games is by purchasing it from a shop.

Other options are 'pray the DM gives it to you, putting you more in the sway of 'daddy's' whims', 'hope to get it random instead of yet another magic sword your mace wielding hero doesn't want to use', and 'interrupt everyone else's story for a side dalliance to get the thing you want, fomenting resentment as is apparently the goal of certain design philosophies'.

So yeah, it's in granny's china hutch until something either beyond your control or time consuming comes along. Yay.

I'm a much bigger fan of buying the damn thing and getting to have fun using its cool abilities.

 

[Older Beholder]

Having my players try to argue, haggle and con every NPC gets old pretty quick for me*.

In theory, if reducing options to spend gold would shifts my players away from this as a default, then I'd be all for it. Although for me it’s more about finding other things to motivate my players rather than just coin.

*unless the campaign is built around the idea, like a thieves guild or something.

 

[Older Beholder]

I think it can be tricky, magic item shops can also harm verisimilitude in some cases.