D&D (2024) Gold & Other Treasure (Can we get off the treadmill?)

[Chaosmancer]

I didn't see where consumables are half in the DMG, but I was skimming while looking it up. So my apologies.

Yeah, it is stupid easy to miss. Took me a while to notice it.

 

[Scott Christian]

Yeah, it is stupid easy to miss. Took me a while to notice it.

Agreed. That would be a good change to the DMG, and might help the situation out for some - clear price levels (varied of course) for different types of items.

 

[tetrasodium]

Being able to purchase items - assuming that's the brick wall to which you refer - can and does certainly affect a lot of non-downtime play but that actual buying (and selling!) is almost without exception a downtime activity. Thus, it again comes back to a design-level de-emphasis on downtime.

It is this one. Not only that, you and I have pretty much gone over this specific clarification earlier

Spoiler: here

You are wayy off with that statement. With 5e it assumes zero magic items and unoptimized PCs. Start changing that without significantly changing bounded accuracy crippled monsters and the math grossly collapses somewhere in mid to late tier 2 or early tier3 depending on how many players have a smidgen of thought to their build before magic items were added.

 

[CapnZapp]

At the end of my list, I stated it could go on and on. Also, I never said only? I was just giving examples of how the gold economy in D&D does work for people that use all pillars of play. If you just go from dungeon to dungeon killing and looting, then many of the spells, abilities, backgrounds, and racial characteristics are worthless too.

Fair enough.

If you just go from dungeon to dungeon killing and looting, then many of the spells, abilities, backgrounds, and racial characteristics are worthless too.

That's reductive. Many groups enjoy varied activities.

Point remains the same: adventures give out gold, but there aren't any rules for purchasing magic items worth a damn in this edition.

 

[CapnZapp]

That said, if a DM cannot find any reason to institute gold from a character's actions outside of buying potions and magic items, then I am going to say that character is a static character. That is not a bad thing. Some of my favorite characters have been static. But to have an entire group of static characters is surprising. Rare even. Like having an entire player group that only want to play clerics.

If not that, then the DM should respond to the player and put a little effort into that part of play.

Now you're veering dangerously close to telling people if they just want to purchase items for their gold, they're playing the game wrong.

All the groups that find gold to be interesting mostly or solely because it can buy them great gear doesn't need you telling them they need to "put a little effort" into it. What they need is a stable magic item economy. If you find that your time is taken up with so many other ways to spend gold, then great, you can ignore this aspect of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

Point remains the same: adventures give out gold, but there aren't any rules for purchasing magic items worth a damn in this edition.

This is, it's not just magic items: there's not much core-game guidance for purchasing anything much bigger than mundane adventuring gear.

 

[James Gasik]

I sometimes think that WotC fully intends on people to dust off their old books like Arms & Equipment or Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue to fill in these sorts of gaps.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I sometimes think that WotC fully intends on people to dust off their old books like Arms & Equipment or Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue to fill in these sorts of gaps.

Or if not intends, says "eh, if they're really worried about it, they'll just go to DMs Guild and buy a bunch of stuff to fill in the gaps for themselves."

 

[Micah Sweet]

I sometimes think that WotC fully intends on people to dust off their old books like Arms & Equipment or Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue to fill in these sorts of gaps.

Those are great books. I used them both to fill out my master equipment list.

 

[James Gasik]

Those are great books. I used them both to fill out my master equipment list.

Even older PHB's have way more going on in the equipment list than 5e. We used to have a plethora of alchemical items, for example. Sunrods, thunderstones, smokesticks, tanglefoot bags...it really feels like 5e was built with the idea that you scrounge for a few levels to buy better armor, then you're meant to forget money is a thing!