D&D 5E Deconstructing 5e: Typical Wealth by Level

So, I told myself... What about... NOT HEROES people? How much money do they have?

Let's imagine a wealthy - or really motivated - collector who just wants to have that magical item. How much money does she have?

THE ASSUMPTIONS:

1: This collector is 60 years old, and has been saving since she was 20, so 40 years of savings
2: This collector has managed to save 10% of their income by living frugally for their wealth level. Nothing "bad" has caused them to lose their savings
3: They are willing to now spend this money on collectibles - magical items, or maybe those art objects the PCs found?

The math is:

Income x 0.1 X 365 X 40

I won't calculate for the poor, they don't have the income for such frivolities.

1 gp a day (modest): 1460 gp
2 gp a day (comfortable): 2920
4 gp a day (wealth): 5840
10 gp + a day (aristocratic): 14 600 +

So it's not *that much* really. However, this is also a good reminder of how much characters will need for the rest of t heir lives - they too have living expenses to pay! (take the above and multiply by 10....)

I'll also note that the wealthy and aristocratic probably have capital (businesses, land etc) on top of that, but it's something if they sell they will take a permanent hit on their income.

Thank you for taking the effort to do these calculations! Much appreciated!

Wylliam Judd1 said:

Thank you for taking the effort to do these calculations! Much appreciated!

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You may enjoy this - a few others of these calculations

https://slugsandsilver.blogspot.com/search/label/economy

CapnZapp said:

This, very much this.

The vibe I'm getting is that things aren't truly well thought through.

And that is a big problem for me.

They removed the magic shoppe, but they did not come up with a directly comparable alternative.

Not all groups care for building castles or starting churches. Lots of groups just want to move on to the next exciting adventure, the next monster-filled dungeon.

For these groups, there really isn't anything to spend your gold on past, perhaps, level five. Having a guild or a wizard tower simply have no bearing.

Having a brand new +1 longsword would.

I haven't found a good solution yet. Adventurers will collect hundreds of thousands of gold: but if you don't care for a new castle, there really isn't anything to spend it on. Not that can match the utility and therefore desirability of a magic shoppe.

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Let them hire powerful hirelings, pay for expensive pets and exotic and/or very well trained mounts (including familiars), and raid the 4e Rituals for powerful and useful Magic’s that can only be performed ritually at the cost of material components that are consumed in casting.

Also, a stronghold or other home base can be made to provide adventuring benefits, such as training in new proficiencies faster, crafting magic items, upgrading existing magic items (either via a variant of crafting or by training with the item and unlocking greater power), researching in a library and gaining meta monster knowledge, advantage on exploration Checks in the next adventure, etc.

You can also replace magic items with other rewards, like training a bonus feat, a class feature from another class, a spell that isn’t on your class skill list (or once per day use even tho you don’t have spellcasting as a feature), etc.

You can also, in a pinch, give less treasure.

But I prefer consumables, rituals, companions, training in obscure techniques, upgrading magic items, and also adding a magic item economy to the game, along with adventuring benefits for having and investing in a stronghold of some kind.

doctorbadwolf said:

You can also, in a pinch, give less treasure.

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Or it can be there & PCs can ignore it.

Re the OP, IME PCs aren't that rich at level 18-20, and they aren't that poor level 2-5. Actually finding a full Tier IV hoard is pretty rare and tends to be a campaign-changing event.

Overall I'm glad there is no such thing as WBL in 5e.

doctorbadwolf said:

Let them hire powerful hirelings, pay for expensive pets and exotic and/or very well trained mounts (including familiars), and raid the 4e Rituals for powerful and useful Magic’s that can only be performed ritually at the cost of material components that are consumed in casting.

Also, a stronghold or other home base can be made to provide adventuring benefits, such as training in new proficiencies faster, crafting magic items, upgrading existing magic items (either via a variant of crafting or by training with the item and unlocking greater power), researching in a library and gaining meta monster knowledge, advantage on exploration Checks in the next adventure, etc.

You can also replace magic items with other rewards, like training a bonus feat, a class feature from another class, a spell that isn’t on your class skill list (or once per day use even tho you don’t have spellcasting as a feature), etc.

You can also, in a pinch, give less treasure.

But I prefer consumables, rituals, companions, training in obscure techniques, upgrading magic items, and also adding a magic item economy to the game, along with adventuring benefits for having and investing in a stronghold of some kind.

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Just want to chime in and say I don't have the energy to revisit this other than to say all of you are essentially saying "so there is no strawberry flavor. But have some chocolate then. Or this flavor, or that flavor..."

This isn't helping if strawberry is what you want.

None of the alternatives help when you're not interested in downtime. None of the alternatives help when it is the fun mini-game of building your character's gear loadout from a given gp budget and shoppe availability.

The fact remains:

WotC took a significant aspect of 3E play and just removed it.

CapnZapp said:

Just want to chime in and say I don't have the energy to revisit this other than to say all of you are essentially saying "so there is no strawberry flavor. But have some chocolate then. Or this flavor, or that flavor..."

This isn't helping if strawberry is what you want.

None of the alternatives help when you're not interested in downtime. None of the alternatives help when it is the fun mini-game of building your character's gear loadout from a given gp budget and shoppe availability.

The fact remains:

WotC took a significant aspect of 3E play and just removed it.

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That's a good thing. Giving PCs easy access to magic items was a bad idea in 3E and 4E.

Note WoTC barely follows their own rules for items, money and encounters.

Zardnaar said:

That's a good thing. Giving PCs easy access to magic items was a bad idea in 3E and 4E.

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No, nobody wants WotC to give out candy to their players despite the Dungeon Master's objections. Just shut that straw man down, thank you very much.

If you'd said "I don't like magic shoppes" that'd be okay, but no - there is nothing wrong with providing the DM with a workable framework for purchasing magic items.

After all, a reasonably strong DM will then use that framework to answer the question "but what do you DO with all that gold" in campaigns not interested in downtime, without wrecking said campaigns.

The argument "we can't print the advice because players will bend their DMs arms to get all the good stuff and unbalance play" is utterly nonsensical.

This isn't about giving up on 5E's ethos "magic items aren't required for the game to work".

This is realizing that the magic-less campaign is a fantasy only perpetuated by the rules, not supported by any official campaign.

This is just WotC wanting to keep handing out items and gold like they used to, but not take the responsibility to provide an actual mechanism to get that to work. They're dumping all the work on us DMs. They're ignoring the sizable segment of the customer base that isn't satisfied with castle building and thieves guild opening for their gold, and they're doing so simply because getting it right is hard, and requires work, which means costs.

All the official campaigns I've read (almost all of them) have zero provisions for "okay lets put the story on hold for a month or three while we build a castle each, which then have absolutely zero impact on the rest of the story".

Every campaign is still written exactly as before, where you could convert your tens of thousands of gold pieces into useful adventuring gear. Except the system for doing so is not even half-arsed, as the (now years old) "sane magic pricing" system so clearly illustrates.

CapnZapp said:

WotC took a significant aspect of 3E play and just removed it.

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Was it a significant part of 3e? I skipped that edition so I don't really know. How was it significant? What impact did it have on play?

Personally I stopped giving out treasures hoards back in our 1e/D&D days in the 80's. We didn't really track treasure in 4e or now in 5e. It has never been a significant or interesting feature of the games I have been a part of.