D&D 5E (2024) Ditching the Treasure Treadmill

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What carousing table(s) are you using? DCC Knights of the North?

Shadowdark and Pirate Borg. My players want to always make time to go back to town after an adventure and party.

 

[Xenophon223]

I think Magic Item "shops" can be done in a way that makes them fun. In my game it's not shops, but brokers and private collectors who bring stuff to auction. The shady backroom deals, cut throat bidding and skulldugery surrounding them are roleplaying gold. I do have one "shop" but it basically run by a Tommy Petty analogue and his succubus assistant. No one ever knows what they'll have in stock or where the items even come from. Players like to stop in just for the wackiness.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think Magic Item "shops" can be done in a way that makes them fun. In my game it's not shops, but brokers and private collectors who bring stuff to auction. The shady backroom deals, cut throat bidding and skulldugery surrounding them are roleplaying gold. I do have one "shop" but it basically run by a Tommy Petty analogue and his succubus assistant. No one ever knows what they'll have in stock or where the items even come from. Players like to stop in just for the wackiness.

I'm doing vendors myself kinda like BG3.
"Mubdane" items are generally available with 3 curated items. They'll restock occasionally.

Youll be able to find a +2 polearm for example but a specific type wh speed might be very hard to get.

Im honing to experiment with bastions and crafting as well.

 

[DammitVictor]

At the risk of sounding like a smug, pompous know-it-all--I don't want to come across that way, but I am one so I can't always help it-- the problem with 3.X style games is that treasure is too vital to character progression to either "feel special" or leave to chance, while in 5E style games PCs outgrow having a use for it while they're still in short pants.

Old School D&D used domain/political play to keep PCs hungry for treasure... but that didn't work well for players who didn't want to engage in it, or whose classes didn't grant domains and followers. Master and Immortal play im BECMI were another good money sink... but only for those extremely high-level games that used them.

We're not poring over ledgers managing estates, handling payroll for our staff, engaging in tedious research, etc., etc. We might establish shrines and temples, bribe politicians, and certainly live large, but these things are accomplished by adventuring.

It's a tricky problem, because the kind of accounting that matters when you're wrestling elderly goblins for copper pieces to stave off starvation penalties just... isn't well-suited to being fun and satisfying when playing reindeer games.

But having that kind of world-spanning political authority and influence is an important part of making "high level D&D" work. It's hard to bend the campaign setting over your knee and give it a firm thrashing when you only have your own physical--especially  martial--body to work with, and domain/demesne play is the primary/only means by which Fighters and Thieves could keep up with (or exceed) classes with 5th level spells in that arena.

---

It may seem odd that PF1 remains my favorite fantasy RPG, but yeah 3E pretty much made me hate gold and magic items. Precisely the need to improve your stats and defenses which meant you often sold immediately interesting items for power ups. Magic items that do more numbers instead of cool things are terrible. One thing 5e got right.

Late 3.5 and PF1 both had solid (and multiple) systems for replacing weebles with level-based "magical" benefits. It's easier to play those games that way than it is to adjust the gameplay assumptions of "old" or "new" D&D.

Also, +1. I don't like late 3.X uses per day magical items, but give me the "bat-utility belt of holding" and the alchemy jug over the +6 belt of magnificence any/every day. And twice on Sundays.

 

[MGibster]

I admit to liking a bit of domain play and proper war gaming in D&D sometimes but I think I basically agree with this. But I don't see big ticket items as antithetical to high adventure, but complementary.

I don't either. But you don't save up your copper pieces until you have enough gold to purchase the ship, that's boring. You steal it from a rival kingdom, accept it as a gift from the queen when you announce your intent to save the princess's fiancé from the Isle of Lemure, do a favor for a pirate captain, or something else that requires an adventure.

By the way, where are the PCs keeping all this gold? Bags of Holding? Aren't there planar moles that can burrow holes into those? If they're keeping it all in a bank, that bank needs hirelings, and the building will need upkeep. Plus if you don't hire a troubleshooter annually, the latest and greatest safecracker technology will come knocking . . .

These kinds of tactics are just a recipe for unhappy players in my experience. I want to adventure, not handle the mundane problems associated with managing hedge funds and commodities.

But having that kind of world-spanning political authority and influence is an important part of making "high level D&D" work. It's hard to bend the campaign setting over your knee and give it a firm thrashing when you only have your own physical--especially  martial--body to work with, and domain/demesne play is the primary/only means by which Fighters and Thieves could keep up with (or exceed) classes with 5th level spells in that arena.

Nobody plays high level D&D. Okay, okay, that's an exaggeration. It's a relatively low number of people who actually play high level D&D campaigns though. Once you get past level 10, the number of people playing drops quite a bit. Or at least it did a few years ago according to WotC's survey.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'd like to play in a system where, basically, "level" = "fame". (Which has interesting philosophical implications for whether the stories being told are actually true in the sense that your character is doing them, or if you are really just generating increasingly unlikely legends...)

In the game I envision, you gain "XP" not by killing things and achieving objectives, but by coming home and bragging about your feats, hosting extravagant feasts, giving gifts, and paying bards to sing about you. All of which consumes a lot of treasure..

You just described Earthdawn. There is no XP, there is Legend. You get more Legend by telling your tales to Libraries and such.

It has "attuned" magic items, casters who are slow but powerful and warriors who are lightning fast and can dance across water. Plus kaers; cities that hid underground from demons....many of which had their defenses breached and are now filled with undead, demons and a cities' worth of resources....if it isn't cursed that is.

 

[Clint_L]

At low levels treasure is fun because players are saving up for stuff and making choices. At higher levels, I am finding it more challenging to come up with gold sinks (though the airship they are trying to build should suffice for now). So yeah, at a certain point managing the inflation becomes an issue unless you are willing to put more effort than I am.

The weird thing is that I seldom use treasure as a primary motivator, so I don't know why I even bother with it a lot of the time. If I tell the story right, the players will want to invesitagte the missing kid because that's what their characters will do, not because they know the culprit might have a giant stash of gems. So this is a treadmill of my own creation. Probably because I have roots in early 1e, when treasure was everything.

 

[AlViking]

At low levels treasure is fun because players are saving up for stuff and making choices. At higher levels, I am finding it more challenging to come up with gold sinks (though the airship they are trying to build should suffice for now). So yeah, at a certain point managing the inflation becomes an issue unless you are willing to put more effort than I am.

The weird thing is that I seldom use treasure as a primary motivator, so I don't know why I even bother with it a lot of the time. If I tell the story right, the players will want to invesitagte the missing kid because that's what their characters will do, not because they know the culprit might have a giant stash of gems. So this is a treadmill of my own creation. Probably because I have roots in early 1e, when treasure was everything.

I don't remember ever using treasure as a motivator. Maybe when I was a teenager and first starting to play, but we didn't put a lot of emphasis on it even then. Sometimes pulling off a heist is the motivation but even when it was the journey not the destination so to speak.

Maybe that's part of why I don't have an issue with a magic mart. The what you get along the way is pretty incidental to the why.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Equipment degradation.
Every item starts with a d12 as it's quality die.
After every encounter, for every piece of equipment used rolled, roll the equipment's quality die. If it's a 1, it degrades down to a d10, or a d8, or a d6, or a d4. If you roll a 1 on your d4 quality die, the item is no longer functional.
Money can be spent to repair the quality.

I can't remember what game uses roughly this, maybe the Black Hack, or Knave.

[edit to fix a typo]

 

[payn]

Equipment degradation.
Every item starts with a d12 as it's quality die.
After every encounter, for every piece of equipment rolled, roll the equipment's quality die. If it's a 1, it degrades down to a d10, or a d8, or a d6, or a d4. If you roll a 1 on your d4 quality die, the item is no longer functional.
Money can be spent to repair the quality.

I can't remember what game uses roughly this, maybe the Black Hack, or Knave.

Forbidden lands uses it for supplies like water and torches.