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

[Derren]

No we're not- most of the conditions I pointed out do not require global catastrophe, and that list was non-exhaustive.

If the catastrophe is not global then the knowledge of making magic items is not lost as nations not affected by the catastrophe keep this knowledge.

Disaster, War and Plague are catastrophes, Cultural upheaval, Religious opposition and materials getting expensive are local factors which can not wipe out knowledge on a more than local scale unless that knowledge is useless anyway (not the case with magic items).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If the catastrophe is not global then the knowledge of making magic items is not lost as nations not affected by the catastrophe keep this knowledge.

Disaster, War and Plague are catastrophes, Cultural upheaval, Religious opposition and materials getting expensive are local factors which can not wipe out knowledge on a more than local scale unless that knowledge is useless anyway (not the case with magic items).

Disaster, war and plagues ARE catastrophes, but not:

...gigantic catastrophe(s), much more destructive than anything humankind experienced in the real world.

Knowledge is not uniformly and universally distributed. Never has been. Just because a nation has an item, it does not follow that they know how to make said item. Even in the Information Age, nations have managed to keep technological secrets to themselves.

And if a local event such as listed above struck such a nation, those secrets could be lost for decades. Or even forever. Sure, someone might discover some way to do what they did, but it won't necessarily be the same as the way their predecessors did it.

How long did Asian nations keep gunpowder from spreading West? What if, before it did, the Black Death had wiped out those who knew its secrets? What if gunpowder had been declared religious anathema? An affront to the gods?

Neither of those happened, but could have- the number of alchemists keeping the working formulae was not huge, and some of that knowledge was kept compartmentalized. And it would be hard to argue that the secret of gunpowder was "useless".

On to magic in particular: what if Spell X requires the eye of a particular bird? Said bird is tasty, slow moving, and has no fear of humans, so is hunted to extinction. Spell X is lost unless someone can find a substitute for that bird's eye. And even if a substitute IS found, the new component's nature may be different enough that the spell functions differently...

Someone upthread suggested that magical arms and/or armor might only be made from meteoric iron or "starmetal". Starmetal is pretty rare, its distribution is random, and is usually only found in very small amounts. Given the amount of water on the typical game world, most of it is probably sub urged beneath hundreds if not thousands of feet of water. Unless you find a big, terrestrial strike, it might take you YEARS to find enough starmetal to make a single sword.

Have we, for all out technology, figured out how ancient societies around the world built mega-structures with precision out of massive carved stone that wasn't locally sourced? That would seem to be useful to know, wouldn't it? Sure, we have some educated guesses that have been tested, but no theory thus far is without flaws. (AFAIK.)

 

[Kikuras]

I kinda want to go back to ideas like using gold to be a patron of the arts for the purpose of strengthening political power. Or establishing a Templar-esque banking system. Or hoarding wool to create market demand. Things that would be fun to do, but that really require a lot of bothering the DM make stuff up, but may also have game-influencing implications.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Or hoarding wool to create market demand.

Make sure you corner the market on amber, too...

 

[Remathilis]

If the catastrophe is not global then the knowledge of making magic items is not lost as nations not affected by the catastrophe keep this knowledge.

Disaster, War and Plague are catastrophes, Cultural upheaval, Religious opposition and materials getting expensive are local factors which can not wipe out knowledge on a more than local scale unless that knowledge is useless anyway (not the case with magic items).

That is assuming the knowledge was theirs in the first place.

1.) Cultural Heritage: Humanity never master ring-making. All the magic rings were made by elves, who guard their secrets well. There is some prescient for that: Githyanki jealously guard their silver swords and hunt down missing ones until returned.
2.) Rare material: The wood needed for binding magic to staves is found in a remote valley of the world. Other wood cannot hold such magic without exploding.
3.) Unique Origin: The wise solar Guaram taught a single dwarven smith with the power to create vorpal weapons. After his death, the knowledge was lost. Similarly, those who wish to create a circlet that beguiles the mind had best strike a deal with the Prince of Lies for said knowledge...
4.) Fluke: How did the wand of wonder get made? By accident, and no caster has found a way to replicate it.
5.) Somethings Missing: Ancient wizards knew how to hold enchantment to an item for eternity, but modern attempts to recreate only lasts for a few years before fading.
6.) Deific Blessing: For a magic item to work, the God of Creation must bless it. He blesses very few items, and only those which will be used for a great purpose. Those simply replicating the formula for profit find their efforts in vain.
7.) We Never Thought of it: You mean you can write spells on magical paper and use them later? We never tried THAT!
8.) Cultural Heritage: No Elf of the Western Kingdoms would DARE use magic to create a wand. That's HUMAN magic!
9.) Trade Secret: Only Fromzan the Blue Wizard of Oakshire figured out how to create a folding boat, and your DAMN sure he ain't teaching it to no rival wizard!
10.) The Long Game: Elves and dwarves, agreeing humans are too impulsive and prone to violence, never showed them that you can make magic items beyond simple alchemy. Besides, most humans would be dead before that mastered the complex stuff.

Toss in a few calamities, and viola, some excuses for why magic item create is rare or unheard of these days.

 

[jgsugden]

If you find yourself asking who a PC needs gold, you might want to (re)read pages 5 and 6 of the PHB. Go ahead. I'll wait.

You're telling a story when you play D&D. Your PC lives in a world. That world (usually) has an economy and the character is going to have goals (or interact with others that have goals) that can be achieved with money. The gold is something that opens doors for the PC to interact with that world.

No, there are not a lot of price tags in the DMG or PHB that use up a lot of the treasure a PC has collected. That means that you need to look for the pages without price tags to resolve those mysteries. There are lots of discussions of how your PC(s) can interact with their world that give ideas on how money can be used.

 

[Hussar]

Otherwise, its the DM Cockatrice-blocking you.

Money quote.

Welcome to the GM's job. If it looks like something is going to be a detriment to the campaign now, that GM should be blocking it.

But, that's the point that we're trying to make. If we don't have fungible magic items, then we don't have to block anything.

 

[Shasarak]

Have we, for all out technology, figured out how ancient societies around the world built mega-structures with precision out of massive carved stone that wasn't locally sourced? That would seem to be useful to know, wouldn't it? Sure, we have some educated guesses that have been tested, but no theory thus far is without flaws. (AFAIK.)

Yes we have through the magic of Engineering.

 

[Hussar]

No, our experiences DO differ: "play" or "not play" are your options as a player because DM's don't design their campaign rules by committee.

The length of campaigns had ZERO to do with the DMs having it "all their way" with the rules and everything to do with things like players not liking the story arc or the system in question, DM fatigue, and real-world commitments.

For example, my M&M game died primarily because most of the players hated the lack of iterative attacks, especially when applied to weapons capable of automatic fire. I suspected they would, and had initially offered to run the game in HERO, but nobody wanted to learn to play HERO. C'est la vie.

And I doubt your group would run a game in which fully half of your group would not be participants.

I'd say the difference is simply scale though. You'd end a campaign where you lost half the group. Celtavian would end the game if he lost one. The difference is where you draw the line, not that the line exists. The DM is still, as you say, "held hostage" to the players. The difference being in Celt's game, one player can make the difference, in your game, it would take two or three (or however many). At the end of the day, the DM is still forced to either compromise with the players or not run the game.

Which brings us back around to fungible magic items. If the group advocates that buying and selling magic items works in a certain way, and the DM wants to go in a different direction, the DM has to get enough players on board with his idea to keep the campaign going (presuming of course that this is an important enough issue that players would stop playing over). DM's rarely can make any sort of campaign decision completely in a vacuum. The DM is pretty much obligated by the social contracts of the table to keep at least half an eye on the players before making any changes. A DM who doesn't quickly finds that no one wants to play in the campaign.

 

[Derren]

1.) Cultural Heritage: Humanity never master ring-making. All the magic rings were made by elves, who guard their secrets well. There is some prescient for that: Githyanki jealously guard their silver swords and hunt down missing ones until returned.
8.) Cultural Heritage: No Elf of the Western Kingdoms would DARE use magic to create a wand. That's HUMAN magic!
10.) The Long Game: Elves and dwarves, agreeing humans are too impulsive and prone to violence, never showed them that you can make magic items beyond simple alchemy. Besides, most humans would be dead before that mastered the complex stuff.

Okay, so the party sends in the member with the correct race to commission an item. The knowledge is there, there are just a few more barriers for the PCs to access it.

4.) Fluke: How did the wand of wonder get made? By accident, and no caster has found a way to replicate it.
6.) Deific Blessing: For a magic item to work, the God of Creation must bless it. He blesses very few items, and only those which will be used for a great purpose. Those simply replicating the formula for profit find their efforts in vain.
7.) We Never Thought of it: You mean you can write spells on magical paper and use them later? We never tried THAT!

So someone had to make magic item on a regular basis as otherwise the god could not bless some of them or a fluke can't happen. Again, the knowledge is there.

2.) Rare material: The wood needed for binding magic to staves is found in a remote valley of the world. Other wood cannot hold such magic without exploding.
3.) Unique Origin: The wise solar Guaram taught a single dwarven smith with the power to create vorpal weapons. After his death, the knowledge was lost. Similarly, those who wish to create a circlet that beguiles the mind had best strike a deal with the Prince of Lies for said knowledge...
9.) Trade Secret: Only Fromzan the Blue Wizard of Oakshire figured out how to create a folding boat, and your DAMN sure he ain't teaching it to no rival wizard!

And again, the knowledge is there, the price will only be higher. On the upside it is now rather easy to know where you likely will get certain magic item. Want a stave? Visit city near the valley.

5.) Somethings Missing: Ancient wizards knew how to hold enchantment to an item for eternity, but modern attempts to recreate only lasts for a few years before fading.

That is just another way of saying "Modern people simply can't do that stuff without any real reason. Deal with it". But as with all other points, the knowledge is there and a D&D adventuring career is usually short enough that such a magic item would last at least 10 levels if not more.