D&D 5E Thievery in 5e - still relevant?

[Bacon Bits]

A conversation with a friend about wealth in D&D in our games vs 5e led to this series of points and questions:

Given that there really isn't much in 5e to spend money on other than relative trivialities such as inn rooms and mundane gear, and given that 5e as written places very little emphasis on downtime between adventures, does the traditional "Thief" archetype within the Rogue class even have a place in the game any more?

Put another way, If money has so little use in 5e, what's the point of stealing it (or in stealing goods that can be liquidated into it)? And if there's no point in stealing, does that spell the end of true thieves? If yes, is that a good thing? If no, how can they be made viable?

I think the lack of avenues for spending gold definitely detracts from the concept of adventuring for treasure, but D&D has also generally shifted more towards high fantasy over sword & sorcery. Most of the published modules that WotC has released are about saving the world in some way. You might get rich along the way, but the PCs are motivated by bigger things than just lining their pockets.

I don't think that makes the game better or worse, it just makes it different. It's a different taste and a somewhat different style of play, but it's got the same setting.

If you want to encourage it again, then I think you simply re-introduce the core elements. Add in XP for GP. Add in training costs and other costly downtime activities, as well as giving the PCs time to actually do them. Add in meaningful hirelings. Add in titles and domains. Add in army and levee costs. AD&D wanted you to claim a fortress north of Dyvers, raise an army, and bring it to bear against Iuz. 5e D&D wants you to go underground for a month and come out 20 levels later with a trophy and a blue ribbon.

I think MCDM's Strongholds & Followers and Kingdoms & Warfare add a lot of stuff to do that could be a good way to dispose of gold and wealth. Stuff that makes you better adventurers instead of merely richer nobles. But you could just grab all that added crap from BECMI.

I do think 3e was the absolute worst for treasure though, precisely because gold could be turned so readily into items. Everything not nailed down was ripped up and stuffed into a bag of holding so that it could be distilled into magic essence between adventures to get an extra +1 here or +1 there. I was glad 5e didn't emphasize loot so much when the edition released, and I think it's easy to forget how much it was a breath of fresh air in 2014.

By the Thief archetype I mean the character who is the typical party Rogue while in the field but when in town between adventures pulls off a few 'jobs' or heists to enhance either its own personal wealth or that of the party; or who buys and sells information on the side; or who has contacts in many shady places the rest of the PCs might not want to know about.

And note I'm specifically not referring to characters who steal from the party itself.

I think the game has steadily walked away from Thief and towards Rogue in part because of intra-party nonsense. It's also resulted in the Thief getting steadily better in the combat side of things, while also steadily sharing out more and more of those unique abilities. I think that's a good thing, as I think one of the most damning criticisms of B/X and AD&D was that nearly all characters should be trying to do things in dungeons that the game essentially said only Thieves could do.

I don't think D&D is entirely well suited to heists as a focus for gameplay. Partially because the stealth mechanics are sparse, but also because lighting and vision are annoyingly complex in D&D. Deception, concealment, and misdirection can also be complicated. And you're likely have a mix of extremely stealthy characters and extremely noisy characters. It's already bad enough telling the Fighter she's barely passable in social situations; telling her she's also useless for exploration is the last straw.

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Money has as much use in D&D 5e as the DM and players decide. In some games, it doesn't get a lot of focus. In other games, it's front and center. People play their characters accordingly.

Eh. This feels a little disingenuous. Beyond spell components, healing potions, silver blades, quivers, and full plate armor, there isn't much that you can buy that helps with the core gameplay loop of being an adventurer. For most characters, the first 5,000 gp you get will get you through an entire campaign and then some, provided you don't die.

"There's nothing to buy," is a fair criticism. There's no more domain management retirement game. There's no mass combat rules or castle rules. There's hardly any siege weaponry rules. Hirelings aren't really written to adventure with you. Outside of mounts and vehicles, there aren't even extraordinary purchases in the PHB or DMG. Sure, you can invent things all on your own, but isn't not needing to do that kind of why we bought books? Like why doesn't the game also say, "Magic can do wonderous things," and then let you write all your own spells with no examples? The books are there to guide the players and DMs and show what you will probably want or need.

When we played Out of the Abyss, we got to a certain level (early teens) and the party looked at our treasure and realized that we probably couldn't actually spend it all before the campaign ended. At that point we cast Heroes' Feast literally every adventuring day. That sounds excessive, but in reality it was like 12 adventuring days, and it was only 1,000 gp a day! 12,000 gp to be immune to poison, fear, have advantage on Wis saves, and get 10 extra hp every day. Covering like four experience levels! Oh, and it also provides food and drink. "Oh, but how did you have that many gem chalices?" "We have teleport! We go buy a gem-encrusted dinnerware set, and throw away everything except the bowls and cups!"

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Stares in Gygax

Eh. The reason Gygax is infamous for having monsters and traps that subvert the dungeon tropes is because he was there for the tropes to be established. Sure, in a Gygax dungeon the door is a mimic, the treasure is an illusion covering a pit of green slime, and the monsters are polymorphed nobles that you were in the dungeon to rescue... but he did know what you expected to find!

 

[iserith]

Eh. This feels a little disingenuous. Beyond spell components, healing potions, silver blades, quivers, and full plate armor, there isn't much that you can buy that helps with the core gameplay loop of being an adventurer. For most characters, the first 5,000 gp you get will get you through an entire campaign and then some, provided you don't die.

"There's nothing to buy," is a fair criticism. There's no more domain management retirement game. There's no mass combat rules or castle rules. There's hardly any siege weaponry rules. Hirelings aren't really written to adventure with you. Outside of mounts and vehicles, there aren't even extraordinary purchases in the PHB or DMG. Sure, you can invent things all on your own, but isn't not needing to do that kind of why we bought books? Like why doesn't the game also say, "Magic can do wonderous things," and then let you write all your own spells with no examples? The books are there to guide the players and DMs and show what you will probably want or need.

When we played Out of the Abyss, we got to a certain level (early teens) and the party looked at our treasure and realized that we probably couldn't actually spend it all before the campaign ended. At that point we cast Heroes' Feast literally every adventuring day. That sounds excessive, but in reality it was like 12 adventuring days, and it was only 1,000 gp a day! 12,000 gp to be immune to poison, fear, have advantage on Wis saves, and get 10 extra hp every day. Covering like four experience levels! Oh, and it also provides food and drink. "Oh, but how did you have that many gem chalices?" "We have teleport! We go buy a gem-encrusted dinnerware set, and throw away everything except the bowls and cups!"

So what you're saying is you found stuff to spend gold on.

 

[bloodtide]

That all depends of course.

Curious, why do people think PCs are swimming in gold? That is pretty much entirely up to the DM isn't it.

My PCs have to really work to get enough gold to afford the things they need to level up and generally adventure.

It's fairly common in a lot of games. DMs give out a lot of treasure for lots of reasons, and to make it worse most characters have little to spend money on.

And most published adventures give out a ton of treasure to make the adventure "appealing" and "fun".

And the 'default' setting has a super broken economy, with 'rich' folks having lots of money and lots of treasure existing in the world. The type of crazy stuff where a single guy with a gold diamond ring can buy a city.

 

[James Gasik]

Is that true? I've heard of DMs taking some liberties with AL material. No really something I am worried about though

What the DM is allowed to do is make changes to the encounters to adjust for the power level of the party, but the rewards for the adventure are set in stone. Also, when I ran AL, when I did make these sorts of changes, I got a lot of pushback from the players, who felt that my adjustments were somehow "unfair" (the argument basically came down to the idea that I was negating their optimization and player skill, and it couldn't possibly have anything to do with running for a level 1-4 adventure that can be played by three to seven players that clearly states it was optimized for five level 2 players, lol).

And I can tell you, by level 12, my AL character was sitting on 14 thousand gold pieces, as the only things I could do with it were buy items from the PHB (all the arrows and healing potions I could want), limited spellcasting services, a few mostly useless magic items available from my faction (of which, the only one I acquired was a shortbow +1, and even then, shortly after buying it, a "weapon +1" came up as an award), and to help pay for costly material components, which only came up once, when I was in a session with a Cleric who could cast Heroes' Feast (which I happily paid for completely out of pocket). Now that having been said, since I left, I heard AL has overhauled the treasure rules, so it might be different now.

The point being, however, is that there's a lot of people who play in the program, so "just change it" isn't always on the table. Further, there's a lot of DM's who don't have pre-5e experience who could seriously use more guidance on what the heck all this money is for, since expensive items are optional with no real guidance for how/when/why they should be employed in the game in the DMG (despite Xanathar's saying, "oh hey, if you don't have magic weapons in your game, that changes the balance of various abilities"), especially with several older DM's saying "yeah! no magic items! they'll ruin your game!" out there.

Thinking back to my AD&D days, the usual answer to prevent players from having money sitting around was, in general, to be stingy as heck, forcing players to fight 300 kobolds in order to fight over a few dented copper coins (hyperbole, but not as much as you might think) in order to keep players poor and desperate.

I remember being told often that "magic items are rare, and treasure is scarce" until I started to DM myself, and I started reading published adventures that were positively dripping with loot, +1 long swords, rings of protection +1, and potions of healing, let alone started to use the random treasure generation to see what came out; it was enlightening, to say the least. And often blatantly ridiculous, lol, like the time I foolishly let a 2nd level Wizard have a Staff of Power! : )

The purpose of adventuring can't be simply to acquire treasure, because once it's acquired, then what? Build a house you'll never visit and fill it with trophies?

 

[Lanefan]

I dunno man, if you roll a thief type guy your DM should have some thief type encounters to show case their abilities. Can you manage without? Sure! Like if you don't have a dekker your DM shouldn't give you dekker only solvable challenges. Party mostly fighter type? Lots of fights. No monks in your party? Very few abandoned monastery based encounters.

You can do without a lot in 5e. Play what you like and your DM should play to your strengths.

I agree with "play what you like" but I disagree that the DM should change anything based on what we play. Instead it's on us to find and take on those tasks that we can handle and avoid those we cannot, or are not well-suited for.

The adventure is the adventure, and if we happen to bring the wrong lineup of characters then so be it - we're hosed. Ideally every class will have (or will create!) moments to shine in any case, but sometimes there'll be times when you just ain't got it either as an individual character or as a whole party.

The classic example is running an Illusionist (or worse, a whole party of them!) into an adventure full of mindless undead who are, of course, immune to illusions.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the lack of avenues for spending gold definitely detracts from the concept of adventuring for treasure, but D&D has also generally shifted more towards high fantasy over sword & sorcery. Most of the published modules that WotC has released are about saving the world in some way. You might get rich along the way, but the PCs are motivated by bigger things than just lining their pockets.

The published modules (which are just about all full-campaign adventure paths) don't go in for downtime as an element of play at all; the table - be it the players, DM, or both - has to force it in somehow.

And spending money is very much a downtime activity.

I don't think that makes the game better or worse, it just makes it different. It's a different taste and a somewhat different style of play, but it's got the same setting.

If you want to encourage it again, then I think you simply re-introduce the core elements. Add in XP for GP. Add in training costs and other costly downtime activities, as well as giving the PCs time to actually do them. Add in meaningful hirelings. Add in titles and domains. Add in army and levee costs.

Other than xp-for-gp (the advancement rate in the WotC editions is already way too fast!) that's a lot of "add in"s; and while I could do them I'd prefer they be done in the official rules such that everyone can see - and thus have cause to at least give these things some thought, even if by individual choice they don't get featured in every campaign.

I do think 3e was the absolute worst for treasure though, precisely because gold could be turned so readily into items. Everything not nailed down was ripped up and stuffed into a bag of holding so that it could be distilled into magic essence between adventures to get an extra +1 here or +1 there.

Agreed. 3e went way overboard on this.

I was glad 5e didn't emphasize loot so much when the edition released, and I think it's easy to forget how much it was a breath of fresh air in 2014.

Pendulum swung too far the other way, I think.

I think the game has steadily walked away from Thief and towards Rogue in part because of intra-party nonsense. It's also resulted in the Thief getting steadily better in the combat side of things, while also steadily sharing out more and more of those unique abilities. I think that's a good thing, as I think one of the most damning criticisms of B/X and AD&D was that nearly all characters should be trying to do things in dungeons that the game essentially said only Thieves could do.

That came from DMs and players reading rules that said a class could do something as implying other classes could not, rather than the (I think intended) idea that anyone can still try this but this class is much better at it.

I don't think D&D is entirely well suited to heists as a focus for gameplay. Partially because the stealth mechanics are sparse, but also because lighting and vision are annoyingly complex in D&D. Deception, concealment, and misdirection can also be complicated. And you're likely have a mix of extremely stealthy characters and extremely noisy characters. It's already bad enough telling the Fighter she's barely passable in social situations; telling her she's also useless for exploration is the last straw.

To a point I agree, but even a fighter can get its AC from bracers and dex rather than clanky armour, and thus be at least somewhat quiet. A true heist-based campaign (like, say, trying to roleplay something akin to the Gentlemen Bastards series) would require some serious pruning of the spell lists, however.

Eh. This feels a little disingenuous. Beyond spell components, healing potions, silver blades, quivers, and full plate armor, there isn't much that you can buy that helps with the core gameplay loop of being an adventurer. For most characters, the first 5,000 gp you get will get you through an entire campaign and then some, provided you don't die.

"There's nothing to buy," is a fair criticism. There's no more domain management retirement game. There's no mass combat rules or castle rules. There's hardly any siege weaponry rules. Hirelings aren't really written to adventure with you. Outside of mounts and vehicles, there aren't even extraordinary purchases in the PHB or DMG. Sure, you can invent things all on your own, but isn't not needing to do that kind of why we bought books? Like why doesn't the game also say, "Magic can do wonderous things," and then let you write all your own spells with no examples? The books are there to guide the players and DMs and show what you will probably want or need.

It comes down to the game assuming the only roleplayed activity happens in the field, and that downtime is irrelevant. Fine for hard-line APs, not so great for anything bigger.

 

[Lanefan]

Thinking back to my AD&D days, the usual answer to prevent players from having money sitting around was, in general, to be stingy as heck, forcing players to fight 300 kobolds in order to fight over a few dented copper coins (hyperbole, but not as much as you might think) in order to keep players poor and desperate.

Keeping the characters poor and desperate only works until they start robbing towns.

I remember being told often that "magic items are rare, and treasure is scarce" until I started to DM myself, and I started reading published adventures that were positively dripping with loot, +1 long swords, rings of protection +1, and potions of healing, let alone started to use the random treasure generation to see what came out; it was enlightening, to say the least. And often blatantly ridiculous, lol, like the time I foolishly let a 2nd level Wizard have a Staff of Power! : )

Thing is, in 1e all you had to do was hit that MU with a fireball (or wait for him to hit himself with one!) and have him fail a save, on which that staff would have to save or be destroyed.

This is what people seem to forget about 1e (or intentionally ignored at the time) - magic items were inherently fairly fragile.

The purpose of adventuring can't be simply to acquire treasure, because once it's acquired, then what? Build a house you'll never visit and fill it with trophies?

Build a stronghold for yourself and-or your party; or save it up for something big after your adventuring days are done; or commission the making of a magic item or the design of a spell; or whatever. The thing is, having lots of money allows both in-the-moment purchases and long-range planning and goal-setting; and that long-range planning piece is where players get to interact with more of the setting than just the adventure-y bits.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Posting this cause I would be remis otherwise...

 

[Larnievc]

The classic example is running an Illusionist (or worse, a whole party of them!) into an adventure full of mindless undead who are, of course, immune to illusions.

How’s that fun? As a DM I do my best not to have the PCs have to search for the fun.

 

[Larnievc]

There will always be a need for a stealthy urban thief. Wasn't there a whole book about heists recently published?

Stealing a few silvers from the peasantry's pockets isn't worthwhile, no. But now you're stealing things of far more interesting value: signet rings that prove heritage, damning love letters, a potion of wisdom just as it is completed, planting damning love letters, &c. The rest of the party are lookouts and distractions acting cotemporaneously.

During downtime, thieves talk to fences, smugglers, and compatriots to figure out the next score or info for whatever malarkey that the paladin wants to do.

Yeah, but as a DM I know enough about my player’s characters to know what they want to be doing. If there are no larceny oriented characters why am I going to out the time and effort into building encounters they aren’t geared up for?