D&D 5E No Magic Shops!

[Matrix Sorcica]

What the CapN is alluding to but yet not dares mention apparently, is the fact that there's very little to spend gold on if you're not interested in henchmen/keeps/domains/inns/tax collectors/etc. or any of the other money sinks that always gets touted as the solution to the worthlessness of gold. The official adventures from WotC (not AL) allows very littel if any downtime, making gold worthless in the published adventures.

 

[The Big BZ]

What the CapN is alluding to but yet not dares mention apparently, is the fact that there's very little to spend gold on if you're not interested in henchmen/keeps/domains/inns/tax collectors/etc. or any of the other money sinks that always gets touted as the solution to the worthlessness of gold. The official adventures from WotC (not AL) allows very littel if any downtime, making gold worthless in the published adventures.

Fair enough but I have played in or run every released campaign so far and that hasn't been my experience.

 

[Tanin Wulf]

The last time I had magic shops in a campaign (as opposed to people who you could omission for magic items - system was 3.5 for context)... the whole campaign actually revolved around currency manipulation using the magic item market (similar to Spice & Wolf, in terms of it being a fantasy campaign that was economics driven).

I am rather happy with 5e's approach to the whole thing. It's a good return to one of the few things I liked better about 2e than the systems beyond it.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

What the CapN is alluding to but yet not dares mention apparently, is the fact that there's very little to spend gold on if you're not interested in henchmen/keeps/domains/inns/tax collectors/etc. or any of the other money sinks that always gets touted as the solution to the worthlessness of gold. The official adventures from WotC (not AL) allows very littel if any downtime, making gold worthless in the published adventures.

I suppose. But really the decision to spend money is up to the PC. "I'm not interested in investing my money in anything that doesn't increase my personal power", is a choice made by the PC. However nothing says that opportunities for that use of wealth must exist or if it does, be something akin to Walmart. It's completely up to the DM or organized play authority on what that system is.

Access to many magic items in some games can be akin to the rare art market IRL. A Staff of the Arch Mage becoming available for sale would be something like Van Gogh's Stary Night coming onto the market. It will only happen occasionally, be unbelievably expensive and have other competitors who wish to buy it as well.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I suppose. But really the decision to spend money is up to the PC. "I'm not interested in investing my money in anything that doesn't increase my personal power", is a choice made by the PC.

There is no choice is the point. There is only downtime. In many of the official adventures, there's no downtime to speak of. So even WotC throws treasure at the PCs with nothing to spend it on.

 

[Demetrios1453]

So by official campaigns you mean Tomb of Annihilation etc? Surely the amount of downtime in these is largely down to how the DM chooses to run them?

Well, if you have a lot of downtime during ToA, lots of people are going to die, so unless the DM alters the main plot of the campaign, downtime isn't going to work in that one at least.

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[delericho]

What the CapN is alluding to but yet not dares mention apparently, is the fact that there's very little to spend gold on if you're not interested in henchmen/keeps/domains/inns/tax collectors/etc. or any of the other money sinks that always gets touted as the solution to the worthlessness of gold.

Presumably, in that case, you're supposed to use it the same way as the ultra-rich in the real world: a means of keeping score.

In this instance, it's a feature not a bug - WotC have provided a bunch of suggested uses for gold. If you don't like those, you can either homebrew up your own ones, or just treat gold as worthless (and find some other motive for adventuring). Personally, I would have preferred to see magic item prices (for Eberron if no other reason), but WotC chose not to provide those, and indeed gave their reasons for doing so.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Presumably, in that case, you're supposed to use it the same way as the ultra-rich in the real world: a means of keeping score.

In this instance, it's a feature not a bug - WotC have provided a bunch of suggested uses for gold. If you don't like those, you can either homebrew up your own ones, or just treat gold as worthless (and find some other motive for adventuring). Personally, I would have preferred to see magic item prices (for Eberron if no other reason), but WotC chose not to provide those, and indeed gave their reasons for doing so.

You shold read this. http://theangrygm.com/nothing-here-but-worthless-gold/
It explains the problem better than I can, if you diregard the foul language and longwindedness.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

There is no choice is the point. There is only downtime. In many of the official adventures, there's no downtime to speak of. So even WotC throws treasure at the PCs with nothing to spend it on.

As the DM you have the power to insert downtime or extend the timeline where ever you want. In a non-organized play WOTC adventure nothing prevents the DM from tacking on options for the use of treasure, too. The fact that WOTC doesn't do so is simply an omission to allow for DM world-building choices as they wish to do so.

 

[delericho]

You shold read this. http://theangrygm.com/nothing-here-but-worthless-gold/
It explains the problem better than I can, if you diregard the foul language and longwindedness.

Yeah, I've read that. And one of the key things he says there is "There’s nothing wrong with NOT having that. Seriously. I don’t want to sound down on it. It’s perfectly fine that D&D doesn’t really care what you do with your money."

It's not a problem that gold is worthless in the game. After all, it's not like any of us actually play to get these entirely imaginary rewards.

What's sub-optimal (and what Angry also says) is that the game pretends that gold is in some way important when it really is not. But, honestly, so what? Surely the reason you play the game isn't so you can accumulate imaginary rewards anyway - it's the adventures that are actually the fun bit, and those work just as well whether you get to buy magic items or you have to adventure for them.