D&D 5E XP for gold 5th Edition campaign

I know there are a few threads on this subject, but none that actually discusses the practical do's and dont's of an actual such campaign. So let me describe one way to do it, and you can comment on what you think will work well and less well.

This assumes a sandbox type of campaign, where you explore the map and involve yourself wherever you like. And walk away from anything you don't like to do.

The party gains no XP from me, the DM. Instead the rule is:

Every gp spent on carousing gives you 1 xp.

"Carousing" should be taken in its widest sense. I just dislike the term "downtime". So you can spend gold on building a church, or attend fighting school, or build a wizard's tower, or set up a thief's guild. Whatever. Or you can simply buy beers and wenches for thousands of gold, I'm no judge.

Spend 1 gp, gain 1 xp.

This means you don't have to fight the dragon. If you can get away with just stealing its treasure, fine. Don't complain if the dragon burns down the next village if you do, however.

It's not enough to do the looting. If you lose the gold before you get back to the village, you gain no xp. If you never spend your gold, you gain no xp.

The only exception to what you can gain xp for is equipment (services, information etc). If you buy a magic sword or a scroll, that means you get better as an adventurer. If you pay 3000 gold to learn the secret password to the back door into the enemy base, that means you made the next adventure that much easier. You do not gain any xp for this.

So if you actually gain anything for your gold, then you get that something and no xp. It is when you basically "waste" your gold without getting anything in return you gain XP.

Each character decides for herself which is most useful - a new level or a new item.

Edit: crosslink to corresponding Pathfinder 2 discussion:
https://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?660762-XP-for-Gold

This leads to a few practical questions:

How much gold should you hand out? Well, the simplest answer is "look at the xp tables".

You could probably be slightly generous, assuming players will not want to plow all their loot into xp, at least once they're past the dangerous first few levels. I mean, if we use the standard 5e rarity costs, a mid-level character will want to have a magic item worth, say, 50000 gp. So you could hand out 50000 gp more than the xp needed to level to level 11.

(On the other hand, if you plan on handing out magic items as loot, you don't need to be generous. But I think part of the fun is to require players to make this judgement call, so my primary advice is to hand out as loot mostly items the players would not have purchased on their own)

In the end, I would probably set a baseline that makes for speedy levelling at first, but then not increase that too quickly, so that the players spend considerable time on the "sweet spot" levels of 4-9. Do note that sandbox adventures kind of break once players are high level enough to teleport freely, since a core gameplay feature is the exploration part.

I would probably add more money sinks than just xp and magical items. I would probably place a couple of portals on the map, anticipating that once a part of the map is thoroughly explored, players will want to pay for "fast travel". I specifically mean things like finding an ancient druidic stone that, if you make offerings worth 1000 gold (say) you instantly teleport to the druidic circle just outside town. Making return trips fast and convenient once 1000 gold for a party has become pocket change. (and so on).

What kind of adventure does this work for?Right now I can only come up with Vault of Larin-Karr but I'm sure there are dozens wonderful sandboxy (if not outright hexcrawley) D&D adventures out there. Please add your recommendations!

What should magic items cost?Sadly, this is the achilles heel of 5th edition. There simply does not exist any good framework for helping you set prices that match cost to utility.

5th edition is even further from providing you with a pricing system that actually allows players to build their own items. (By this I mean what does each +1 cost? What does the flaming component cost? What does each +1 AC of a shield cost)

One wild proposal is for items to have essentially random prices (such as the rarity based price bands of the DMG).

One thing is absolutely clear, though: consumables must cost WAY less than the DMG suggests.

(The 5E DMG suggests a consumable costs half of a permanent version. Contrast that with 3E, where a consumable could cost as little as 1/50th of the permanent version, and you'll see what I'm talking about)

One proposal is to start high, and then lower the prices on stuff the party doesn't buy. That way, a potion might start out outrageously expensive, but ten sessions later, it costs 10% of its original asking price.

This way, you don't have to do any real math. You just rely on the player's decisions.

Do add a rival band of NPC heroes though, if only to put a bit of time pressure on the players to buy the good stuff before it becomes dirt cheap (which is when the product is sold out, and the next batch starts at the high price again).

Interestingly enough, this lets PCs negotiate for their XP from an adventure when undertaking mercenary work.

I love it, I love everything about it. I have moved towards milestone leveling for quite some time, but this might be good enough to be worth dealing with individual xp again.

I tend to be a bit free with the money though, I would have to be a lot more careful about what my players were able to find and extort. Or I can have a wizard hold a magic item auction and them be tripping over themselves to not gain any xp for a session.

My favorite thing about this is that it means the adventurers usually go out with empty pockets. The mind boggles at the storytelling opportunities.

View attachment Sane_Magical_Prices.pdf

Re: Magic item pricing, Have you seen the above, by chance? It's fairly spot on.

Capn Charlie said:

Interestingly enough, this lets PCs negotiate for their XP from an adventure when undertaking mercenary work.

I love it, I love everything about it. I have moved towards milestone leveling for quite some time, but this might be good enough to be worth dealing with individual xp again.

I tend to be a bit free with the money though, I would have to be a lot more careful about what my players were able to find and extort. Or I can have a wizard hold a magic item auction and them be tripping over themselves to not gain any xp for a session.

My favorite thing about this is that it means the adventurers usually go out with empty pockets. The mind boggles at the storytelling opportunities.

Click to expand...

two more bleedin' characters

Capn Charlie said:

View attachment 79345

Re: Magic item pricing, Have you seen the above, by chance? It's fairly spot on.

Click to expand...

Yes, I have.

It is better than what we have fo sho.

The most distressing part, however, is that it is pretty much the ONLY serious attempt at fixing 5E magic pricing I've seen...

But that's a discussion for another thread. Thanks.

I've been planning on implementing the "gold for XP while carousing" rule for my next game (which is intended to be sandbox/exploration driven). I AM planning on giving a partial return on funds spent for practical purposes (training, buying potions, recruiting crew and repairing the ship, etc.), probably in the nature of 20% or so. So, 5gp spent on practical objects gives 1 XP, if the normal return is 1 XP = 1gp. Working on the exact rate of exchange is the sticking point right now, as I also need to figure out a good conversion of wealth to magic items.

I think this approach to XP awards has a lot of potential.

Primeval Thule suggests using XP for Gold.

Rather than 1 GP = 1 XP, they suggest that an amount of treasure equal to one roll on a treasure table = one easy encounter of XP.

CapnZapp said:

What should magic items cost?Sadly, this is the achilles heel of 5th edition. There simply does not exist any good framework for helping you set prices that match cost to utility.

Click to expand...

Edit: didn't see CapnZapp's post about sane magical prices.