D&D 5E Is there too much gold/reward?

Ancalagon · Mar 16, 2016

Hello

I didn't use to think much of this before, but I've spent a fair bit of time GMing the warhammer system and now that I'm looking back at D&D I'm aghast by the amount of gold being tossed around in treasure and offered reward.

(this came up in the decimal gold system but I didn't want to derail the tread too much).

In D&D, A poor person makes about 2sp/day. A common sell sword 1-2 gp/day (if he's lucky). so 50 gp is a months' wage - several months if you are a peasant. Yet it's not uncommon for low level adventurers to find or be rewarded with thousands of gp.

Now warhammer is a big grimmer than D&D (and gold is just plain worth a bit more) but if the party was offered a months' wage for a dangerous mission, they would go for it, and be fairly happy with the reward. And if after the adventure when they made that money and twice that in loot they would celebrate... without crashing the local economy with too much gold incidentally.

Is it just me?

77IM · Mar 16, 2016

I dunno, I've seen a lot of low-level adventures where the rewards are on the order of 50gp. I'm not sure where you are seeing rewards of thousands of gp. Now at slightly higher levels you might find treasure hoards of that magnitude, sure. But that's why it's a treasure hoard.

This doesn't make me aghast, but it does change the tone of the game considerably. In particular, that's the kind of score that would make a professional adventurer retire: "Whelp, I fought hideous monsters underground, and now I can afford to open a small business and live comfortably for the rest of my life without fear of being eaten alive. You guys have fun stopping the lich-lord or whatever!"

I've found two solutions to this. One is: the PCs are not in it for the money; the money's just a nice side benefit. They're in it to fight the lich-lord or whatever. The other solution is: the PCs need a LOT of money because they are building something big. A castle, a kingdom, a demiplane, etc. In other words, both solutions mean that the party is no longer functioning as "professional adventurers" but are aiming for something larger.

feartheminotaur · Mar 16, 2016

Short answer yes with an if; long answer no with a but...

Yes, if you consider the PCs to be equal to any other skilled tradesmen - blacksmith, doctor, etc.

No, because their market value and cost of living is more in line with elite level athletes than a doctor or accountant. They have pricey gear (it would take a sell-sword 4 years to earn a suit of plate, a commoner 20 years) and they have expenses normal folks don't (every try cleaning demon blood out of a carpet?)....But...the amount is ridiculous in and of itself. The more gold a PC acquires relative to the rest of the world, the less reason there is for them to remain PCs. If you have the wealth of a kingdom in your haversack, why risk losing the sack, your life, or both? Shouldn't that be helping the next ten generations of your family or friends or community instead of buying healing potions you wouldn't need if you just quit adventuring?

pukunui · Mar 16, 2016

Ancalagon said:
Is it just me?

Maybe just don't hand out so much gold? 3e and 4e both expected PCs to have a certain amount of wealth at a certain level. 5e doesn't really care about that. If you don't want your PCs to have as much money, you can always do what Mike Mearls does and keep your PCs poor. (Seriously. Check out his numerous tweets on his campaign.)

BoldItalic · Mar 16, 2016

How much gold the PCs get depends entirely on you as DM. They only get too much of you give them too much.

If you look at the treasure tables in the DMG, the average treasure hoard at low levels has a few hundred gp's worth of gems or art objects, not thousands, and that has to be split between the members of the party, giving them a few tens of gp each. And that's the reward for, maybe, a level's worth of adventuring.

You don't count the value of magic items because they can't be bought and sold unless you want them to be (it's an optional rule).

Al2O3 · Mar 16, 2016

I'm running the Starter Set adventure pretty much as written (except including a bunch more redbrands because it made sense to the players and seemed more satisfying). I also noted this "lots of gold" thing, in particular since the PCs haven't really had a reason to spend much of it yet. Instead we had to come up with a way to let them change the money into less heavy money...

The gold thing for me is that two PCs want to rebuild villages or towns, and one just want evermore valuables. The last is a druid, in it for killing the bad guys. So while at least two have "retirement plans" I don't think there's a risk it will happen during the published adventure.

What I would probably do if I planned an adventure with this much gold: allow lots of downtime. Sure, they earn a month's salary in a tenday. Then they need another tenday to get back to where they can find the next job, coming at about the time when the money is out.

S'mon · Mar 16, 2016

I've noticed this at least in low-level Pathfinder adventures that the rewards offered by NPCs are often ridiculous - "Gather me some soup ingredients & I'll pay you 500gp" is a side-quest in Kingmaker Book 1, I believe. Dividing these by 10 often works ok.

5e doesn't need monetary rewards to work, they can be reduced or eliminated entirely. In my Wilderlands game the rewards tend to be gifts, not cash - a suit of plate armour say, not 1500gp.

delericho · Mar 16, 2016

There's probably too much gold in 5e, but too little reward. Since all that gold doesn't actually do anything for you, there's not actually any real point in amassing it.

But...

One thing to bear in mind about D&D in general is that despite its medieval trappings it actually more closely resembles a Wild West town during a gold rush - there's loads of gold out there for those willing to risk life and limb to go get it... and all that gold does indeed (or at least should) distort the local economy.

Either that, or think of the PCs as being the rock stars of the setting - sure, they acquire amounts of gold that are beyond even the wildest imaginings of the regular folk, but that's not really why they do what they do. They tend to be more in it for the glory that comes from adventuring. (And, also, it tends to attract young and fairly poor people, for whom the opportunity, even at great risk, outweighs the potential cost of a life cut short.)

Psikerlord# · Mar 16, 2016

from memory there are no gold guidelines in 5e. I think as a general rule, hundreds of GP should be a big haul. thousands is a massive haul, which you shouldnt really see until the back half of the campaign. Keep those PCs gold hungry!

delericho · Mar 16, 2016

Psikerlord# said:
from memory there are no gold guidelines in 5e.

There are; they're just not spelled out as directly as some might prefer. The random treasure tables effectively serve to give a default guideline.

D&D 5E Is there too much gold/reward?

Ancalagon

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77IM

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feartheminotaur

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pukunui

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