D&D 3E/3.5 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Thomas Shey]

I never had problems about getting my 3e Era players excited about magic items. What I missed was the 1e Era excitement about finding gold.

I suspect only reason anyone even cared there was because gold translated into experience.

 

[Celebrim]

I suspect only reason anyone even cared there was because gold translated into experience.

Almost certainly, but that was a major incentive to interact with the environment that was missing from later editions. I didn't like what gold for XP did to any adventure format that wasn't haven/delve (what is today called West Marches), but I did miss that enthusiasm for poking around to try to find treasure. Much of the exploration pillar of the game turned out to be built on that mechanic, and it wasn't easy to replace it when it was gone.

 

[Alzrius]

Primeval Thule (the Pathfinder version, written by Rich Baker) has an optional rule to use gold and treasure for XP, at the same ratio as 1e. I have imported it in my 3.0 games, and it works very well in a "standard" campaign.

I personally like "carousing" rules, where it's not the treasure that the PCs take home that counts for XP, but the money they spend on inconsequential things (i.e. things with no mechanics under the game rules).

If you spend 100 gp on new weapons, that 100 gp earns you no XP whatsoever. But if you spent another 100 gp on the stereotypical ale and whores (or anything that results in the money being essentially thrown away; tithing it to a church works just as well), then you get 100 XP for it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Almost certainly, but that was a major incentive to interact with the environment that was missing from later editions. I didn't like what gold for XP did to any adventure format that wasn't haven/delve (what is today called West Marches), but I did miss that enthusiasm for poking around to try to find treasure. Much of the exploration pillar of the game turned out to be built on that mechanic, and it wasn't easy to replace it when it was gone.

I can see that argument, but it always ended up feeling oddly perverse in OD&D, because people would go to a lot of trouble to get gold (for the experience yield) and then, well, leave it sit around because nothing they could do with it was all that compelling for anyone who wasn't big about running their own business and the like.

Even for characters for whom "getting rich" is a motivator, by any reasonable standards it was not hard for OD&D characters to be "rich" by fifth or sixth level, given the treasure tables. The contrast between people's attitude toward treasure in OD&D and RuneQuest (where you were getting copper and silver most of the time, and there were things like mounts and heavier armor that were actually expensive enough to use it) was pretty striking. And even there at some point money would stop being a motivator (fortunately in early RQ religio-political power and its personal expression was more of a driver anyway).

I personally like "carousing" rules, where it's not the treasure that the PCs take home that counts for XP, but the money they spend on inconsequential things (i.e. things with no mechanics under the game rules).

If you spend 100 gp on new weapons, that 100 gp earns you no XP whatsoever. But if you spent another 100 gp on the stereotypical ale and whores (or anything that results in the money being essentially thrown away; tithing it to a church works just as well), then you get 100 XP for it.

Non-mandatory training rules (in that you don't have to do it to level, it just gives you more experience moving in that direction) also can have this effect from what I've seen in other game systems.

 

[Pedantic]

I personally like "carousing" rules, where it's not the treasure that the PCs take home that counts for XP, but the money they spend on inconsequential things (i.e. things with no mechanics under the game rules).

If you spend 100 gp on new weapons, that 100 gp earns you no XP whatsoever. But if you spent another 100 gp on the stereotypical ale and whores (or anything that results in the money being essentially thrown away; tithing it to a church works just as well), then you get 100 XP for it.

It felt under-supported by the vague scene rules, but I directionally liked Fantasy Craft's Prudence/Panache system. You got points modified by your class, level and Charisma you invested between those two stats. Panache gives you a lifestyle bonus to social rolls and a pool of starting money at each adventure, Prudence determined the percentage of treasure you managed not to blow on luxuries and could keep long term, with everything else disappearing during downtime.

Combined with an extensive equipment and equipment modification list, money was targeted as a resource players would care about.

 

[rabindranath72]

Almost certainly, but that was a major incentive to interact with the environment that was missing from later editions. I didn't like what gold for XP did to any adventure format that wasn't haven/delve (what is today called West Marches), but I did miss that enthusiasm for poking around to try to find treasure. Much of the exploration pillar of the game turned out to be built on that mechanic, and it wasn't easy to replace it when it was gone.

Yes it doesn't always work thematically (see e.g. Dragonlance) but it gives players a simple, self-sustaining objective.

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah. I did like the concept of the epic destiny that 4e added when you reached high levels.

As a note, Dragon #363 had an article that back-converted several epic destinies to 3.5E.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Even for characters for whom "getting rich" is a motivator, by any reasonable standards it was not hard for OD&D characters to be "rich" by fifth or sixth level, given the treasure tables.

It depends on what standards one considers 'reasonable.' There's a tricky non-intuitive difference between "wealth" and "income" and I figure "rich" for a fifth level character to be accumulated wealth of close to half a million gold pieces, or close to two million for a tenth level character.

In 3.5e, that's about 50 times the expected wealth-by-level values. And so two ugly issues raise their heads again: The issue of wealth-in-gold being made the official limiting factor of how well-equipped PCs are, and the issue of magic items being enormously valuable for their size and weight.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It depends on what standards one considers 'reasonable.' There's a tricky non-intuitive difference between "wealth" and "income" and I figure "rich" for a fifth level character to be accumulated wealth of close to half a million gold pieces, or close to two million for a tenth level character.

Given you can live a pretty good life for a pretty long time with far less than that, I think I stand by my statement.

In 3.5e, that's about 50 times the expected wealth-by-level values. And so two ugly issues raise their heads again: The issue of wealth-in-gold being made the official limiting factor of how well-equipped PCs are, and the issue of magic items being enormously valuable for their size and weight.

I'm not talking about the money needed for active PCs. I'm talking about "I want to get rich enough to go do other things without worrying about it ever again." Whatever one can say about 3e, the amount of money gained was easily burned by an adventuring PC in an ongoing fashion, but that's got nothing to do with how ridiculously wealthy they are in a mundane sense.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Given you can live a pretty good life for a pretty long time with far less than that, I think I stand by my statement.

But I don't accept that as given: See below.

I'm not talking about the money needed for active PCs. I'm talking about "I want to get rich enough to go do other things without worrying about it ever again." Whatever one can say about 3e, the amount of money gained was easily burned by an adventuring PC in an ongoing fashion, but that's got nothing to do with how ridiculously wealthy they are in a mundane sense.

The assumptions I'm making are:
1. The median income for characters of Nth level is N-squared gp per day. That applies to NPCs and NPC-class NPCs as well as to PCs and retired PCs. I drop the conceit that "1 gp is big money! Enough for an average 1st level NPC to live on for a week or more!"

So a typical fifth level character will have an income of 9125 gp per year. And those characters aren't all, or even mostly, adventuring PCs or PC-class NPCs. They're mostly things like 5th level NPC Experts (wealthy merchants) and 5th level NPC Aristocrats (members of the landed gentry and minor nobility).

2. The median income for the population overall will be between 1 gp/day (1st level) and 4 gp/day (2nd level). Or between 365 gp and 1460 gp per year.

That means a typical fifth level character has an income of about 10x that of the global median income. Rich, but not outrageously so - very roughly equivalent to a modern American making a salary that's well up in the 6 figure range.

3. Income from passive, abstracted, guaranteed-not-to-be-used-by-the-DM-as-a-plot-hook investments will return 2% per year.

That calls for 456,250 gp in such passive investments to produce 9125 gp in income per year, which is where I get my "close to half a million gp" from.

Now the "by the book" D&D background material tries to force the contradiction of D&D being simultaneously a Realm of Golden Glamor & Wealth and a Dung Age Place. If you really want to keep the second part, with its conceit of "1gp is enough for a 1st level peasant to live on for a week, 10 days, or even two weeks" then that calls for cutting my assumed figures by a factor of 10. And then yes, the wealth required to retire "rich" is cut down to something obtainable by a 5th level character with only a little more wealth grubbing than normal for 5th level adventuring.

But I find "1gp is a lot of wealth, in the mundane sense" to be an assumption that unnecessarily makes already-crazy D&D economics even more so. My judgment, my aesthetic sense - my taste, if you will - says to drop that assumption and so make things slightly less crazy.