D&D 5E In fifth-edition D&D, what is gold for?

Yes, the pre-5e game. But 5e changed the rules.
It's talking about D&D as a game.

It's preposterous to treat 5th edition as a completely different game separate from D&D.
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I don't think it does. Some DMs may choose to hand out excessive amounts of gold and they may be unwise to do it. But the game itself doesn't cause that.


No, it puts the spotlight on DMs who choose to give out lots of gold.
No.

It shows that the game, on its default settings, hands out lots of gold. Or, if you absolutely cannot accept the DMG Awards chapter as "default", let's call it "showcase setting". As put into practice by the 100% official adventure module Storm King's Thunder, which relies heavily on DMG random treasure awards.

If you don't use these, it's your choice. If you don't even run prepublished modules, it's your choice. We aren't discussing your campaign. We can't. The only campaigns we can discuss is the ones WotC supplies, and Storm King's Thunder is far from obscure or special-niche.

In short, I can't have this discussion with you if you cannot accept the claim made by the blog: that 5th edition - just like every previous edition - hands out lots of gold.

Which makes the question of what to do with it central to the game. The following assumes you're still here and that you have dropped the notion of 5E being somehow different than AD&D, d20 or 4E.

The blog very commendably talks us through the various reasons why the gold has been handed out. And then we get to the truly interesting part, because it puts the finger on the fact that every such reason no longer applies.

Yet a tier III hoard is on average 36370 gold pieces. That's enough to buy almost everything in the entire Player's Handbook!!! (Regardless of whether you need it or not)

And that's just a single treasure hoard. Over thirty five thousand gold. That a party could conceivably get their hands on already at 6th level (if we can agree that it isn't beyond the realms of the possible that a lucky and resourceful L6 party can defeat a CR 11 encounter).

Of course, a high level party can easily end up with a million gold to each hero's name (even though I will immediately concede this is a much less pressing issue, since there are no official material that uses the DMG tables at this level range yet).

In this context, that you might provide lots of fun ways to spend the gold isn't relevant. That your players might be happy just hoarding the gold isn't relevant. That you might not even hand out the gold at all isn't especially relevant either.

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I want to discuss the fact that the game no longer provides any non-downtime means of spending all the gold that the game does give out. Questions like:

Isn't this disconnect something we ought to hold the designers to? Why would we let them off the hook without any explanation?

What do you feel about the DMG treasure tables? Are they useful to you? If you don't use them, why not? How do you feel about not using the treasure tables as given?

Assuming your players are like most players (as hypothesized by the blog) in that they're not overly interested in either the gold itself, or spending downtime to get rid of it, what do you feel about the fact that you need to solve this problem yourself instead of relying on official support?

If you have run a module such as Storm King's Thunder, how did your players react to the treasure? What did they do with it? What can they do with it, assuming the adventure story is on a tight timeline?

To me these are highly relevant and topical questions that need ventilating :)
 

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I want to discuss the fact that the game no longer provides any non-downtime means of spending all the gold that the game does give out. Questions like:

Isn't this disconnect something we ought to hold the designers to? Why would we let them off the hook without any explanation?

That's rather melodramatic. Especially considering that not everyone is convinced that this is an actual "problem". Even among those that agree that this is a problem, do they all want the same "solution"?

The real question seems to be, what do you (and others that find this a problem) want non-downtime gold expenditures to be for?
 







A lot of text for such a small topic.

Wealth is used for: Downtime, Restock potions, Write scrolls, Spell research, Building castle and tons of other activities.
Players would be wise to pay a resurection in advance just in case. Cloning or whatever means are necessary might be necessary to be brought back from the dead if something goes wrong (tpk) and it costs a lot. And giving a pound of flesh might necessecitate a regenerative spell not to suffer some penalties.

Wealth will pay for mercenaries, soldiers, henchman, stewards and zounds of other much needed employees the characters may acquire during their careers.

Enchantments do not come cheap. Dwarven work can be quite expensive.

And if all else fail, theft protection comes at a price. No protection might mean waking up very broke and depending on the amount, the thief might have paid for teleportation and he could be far, far away adventure site.

And all these ideas do not cover every possibilities.
 
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