D&D 5E What's the point of gold?

[DaveDash]

The designers clearly intended for some sort of magic item economy to be in the game because they put rules in there for it. Poorly put together rules, but they are there non-the-less.

I raged about it in the other thread so I'm not raging about it here, but I do think that a lack of an in depth crafting system is a missed opportunity for not only adventure (collecting materials and such) but also as a gold sink, and reward for treasure accumulation.
Starting with scribing scrolls and brewing potions would have been nice (and other common minor magical items).

 

[Riley37]

You're looking at a very truncated list of what they said were their source material was. Gygax at the very least was very familiar with Moorcock's work- the alignment system was heavily influenced by it. And again, you can find people buying magic in all kinds of faerie tales and stories from all over the world.

Okay, the statements about breadth of source material, plus variation table to table, makes sense to me. You provide a few examples from literature, of mundane-to-magic commerce, and I'll take your word that you could list more if you spent a while digging up specifics from a wide swath of literature. But I'm still curious how often the protagonist is *spending adventuring loot*.

Juliet gets a Feign Death potion from Friar Lawrence, and that potion is either magic or sufficiently advanced technology... but she's not buying the potion with gold coins which she gained when she fought packs of kobolds, driving them from the outskirts of Verona so that humans can re-settle the area, is she? She's not balancing that purchase against a +1 sword or saving towards a Bag of Holding. She's not *upgrading*, is really my point. She's interested in a purpose other than incrementing her Challenge Rating.

***

When I wrote "5E PCs see gold as "useless" in a way which would have *baffled* Conan, Grey Mouser, Frodo, and Elric, as well as Arthur, Robin Hood, Beowulf and Odysseus"...

What protagonist, anywhere in ancient myth, middle-ages-Christian legends, pulp fantasy, Errol Flynn movies, or any other literature before CRPGs, says this:
"I found a few thousand coins in that dragon's hoard, and I might as well toss all the gold and silver into a privy, because no one's selling magic items, and without a magic item shop, there's *no other worthwhile way* to spend those thousands of coins."

I listed four mythical characters from magic-abundant settings, who I would never expect to say that; and four characters from magic-scarce settings, who I would never expect to say that. I don't mean that those eight are the entire list of sources of D&D. Gygax and Arneson borrowed far and wide. (All of my eight are Western; they used Western sources, and they also used non-western material such as djinn and rakshasa.) I'm using those eight as examples that one can go in eight divergent directions of the genre, without finding the premise that "gold, when not spendable on magic items, is worthless".

So, you and others have provided me with some excellent and instructive information and perspectives on magic stores, thank you, but I *remain baffled* by the idea that "gold, when not spendable on magic items, is worthless".

There's plenty of ways to D&D which I understand and happen not to share. To each their own. I get that. Some people love fire-arms in D&D, some find them abhorrent, and I understand both perspectives, without sharing both. Fine - their gaming table isn't my gaming table. However, the idea that "gold, when not spendable on magic items, is worthless", truly baffles me. I can't even. Help, please?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I find your post incredibly uncivil.

Stop deriding other people's wishes. Telling people to stick to board games can be incredibly offensive.

Providing a balanced set of rules to price magic items is not trivial. Your suggestion to leave it to individual groups is incredibly dismissive of a valid concern.

Even your final argument falls flat. Just because you can't please everybody you shouldn't even try? Sheesh... Just because there's no universally accepted price level doesn't mean many many groups would find any set of pricing guidelines incredibly useful.

There are pricing guidelines but you just don't happen to like them. My point about not being able to please everyone has been well made. Why does WOTC have to specifically provide the pricing guidelines that you want for your own game. Isn't that kind of the DM's job?

Not only do I expect WotC to set their prices in a way that accounts for the Big Six problem... I expect them to do better in most if not all regards than the 3E designers did back in, what, 2002? with almost no data or play experience at all*.

*) I know there was this thing called AD&D.... but d20 was a fundamentally different system (much more different from AD&D than 5E is different from 3E)... and since then this little thing called the internet have vastly increased the intelligence available to game designers... so, yes, I believe I have good reason to be hopeful

I want WOTC to do it!! WAAAAGGGHHH!!!!

Since XP for treasure isn't a standard rule anymore, and there aren't any hard and fast wealth by level rules, the only one creating the piles of gold with nothing to spend it on problem is the DM. Heck you can run all kinds of action filled campaigns without much treasure at all. So with treasure being kind of an optional thing to begin with, a hard coded pricing guide for that optional treasure seems even more frivolous.

 

[Jester David]

Ask yourself: if it really were as easy as you claim, why haven't the ENWorld fans done it over and over already?

Because there's not much demand for this?
And because you wouldn't use them anyway:

Now, what I am asking really isn't for the "the internet" to provide those prices.

So it'd be a waste of effort.
(I actually started. Had a Google Sheets going adjusting the base price by the percentage and which chart the item was found on. A good hour or 90 minutes would finish the project, and then it'd be simple to just run through the list and look for exceptions and outliers. Certainly workable. Likely won't bother finishing now though.)

What I want is an official, playtested, well-crafted but completely optional pricelist from WotC itself.

What I am asking of you and the internet, is acceptance of this want.

I accept that you want this. I disagree that it should be a priority.

I want a Ravenloft campaign setting. I want more examples of madness, disease, and unique monster powers & customization rules. I want official rules for Dark Power checks and corruption.
But I understand that this is a fringe desire and I should not expect WotC to prioritize this, and I should accept the horror and madness rules provided - which are adequate for most games - or be prepared to make my own content.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The designers clearly intended for some sort of magic item economy to be in the game because they put rules in there for it. Poorly put together rules, but they are there non-the-less.

I raged about it in the other thread so I'm not raging about it here, but I do think that a lack of an in depth crafting system is a missed opportunity for not only adventure (collecting materials and such) but also as a gold sink, and reward for treasure accumulation.
Starting with scribing scrolls and brewing potions would have been nice (and other common minor magical items).

It's also a loss for verisimilitude. Under the current rules there is almost no reason to ever create scrolls--so why are they so popular in the treasure tables?

 

[ExploderWizard]

It's also a loss for verisimilitude. Under the current rules there is almost no reason to ever create scrolls--so why are they so popular in the treasure tables?

No reason to ever create scrolls? I hope you are joking.

I am an adventuring mage with time and gold on my hands. I can only cast X number of spells per day before needing a rest to recover some magical energy. How would having a half dozen or more EXTRA ready to cast spells above and beyond that limit possibly help me? Nope can't think of anything. Yep. Scrolls are useless.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm kinda disappointed that no one has, so far, seriously answered any of the questions I've raised.

What loot did Achilles and Odysseus gain?
What magic items did they buy?

What loot did King Arthur gain?
What magic items did he buy?

Do you even recognize those names?
Are you aware of the genre of stories, "heroic fantasy"?
Is there now, or was there ever, any connection between D&D, and heroic fantasy?
WHERE THE F$%@! did you get the idea that anyone ever buys magic items in heroic fantasy stories?

D&D is pretty much divorced from anything but emulating D&D IMO. And unlike the dawn of the game where players were looking to add some Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to their tabletop game now players are coming from I'm guessing a more CRPG and MMO background with totally different expectations.

Me I'm at the point where I love D&D unless I think about it too deeply, then the tropes and things start to fall apart and I wonder why I'm messing with it. The idea that you come out of the dungeon with x number of gold which lets you live the high life for X number of months and then when the ales and whores have dried up you go back out looking for that next big score really doesn't resonate with players I talk to as much, even old school players who have been playing D&D since the 80's but playing the 3e+ versions of the game now for 15 years.

 

[Paraxis]

No reason to ever create scrolls? I hope you are joking.

I am an adventuring mage with time and gold on my hands. I can only cast X number of spells per day before needing a rest to recover some magical energy. How would having a half dozen or more EXTRA ready to cast spells above and beyond that limit possibly help me? Nope can't think of anything. Yep. Scrolls are useless.

Compared to making permanent magic items at twice the price, yes pretty useless.

Two scrolls of fly or a broom of flying for the same amount of gold and time invested, not a hard choice. If you don't like riding a broom go with winged boots, all of them are 'uncommon' magic items. Now was is very useless for the gold cost is making a couple potions of flying those things are very rare, for the price of one potion of flying you could craft FIVE brooms of flying.

 

[Celtavian]

No reason to ever create scrolls? I hope you are joking.

I am an adventuring mage with time and gold on my hands. I can only cast X number of spells per day before needing a rest to recover some magical energy. How would having a half dozen or more EXTRA ready to cast spells above and beyond that limit possibly help me? Nope can't think of anything. Yep. Scrolls are useless.

It is kind of lame that potion and scroll creation is available in some core fashion. Wizards should be able to write an occasional scroll.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Compared to making permanent magic items at twice the price, yes pretty useless.

Two scrolls of fly or a broom of flying for the same amount of gold and time invested, not a hard choice. If you don't like riding a broom go with winged boots, all of them are 'uncommon' magic items. Now was is very useless for the gold cost is making a couple potions of flying those things are very rare, for the price of one potion of flying you could craft FIVE brooms of flying.

This is assuming that permanent items can be crafted easily for standard costs. If that is the case then the broom is certainly a good choice for flight. There are other spells.