D&D 5E Do We Really Need a Lot of Gold? (D&D 5th Edition)

[jmartkdr2]

Very few of the things the rich buy in our world are by default considered important to adventurers. You as the DM have to make them important, and the players have to willing to go along or suggest their own ideas. The text should be helping a lot more than it does.

I'm going to slightly disagree: the players can choose to make stuff that isn't directly related to adventuring important, simply by deciding that their character cares about more than just adventuring. But if no one cares, then no one cares. And if that's happening at your table along with no magic item shops - then yes gold doesn't matter once you got yourself the best armor you can buy.

I'm not sure this is a failure of the system. It makes money, as a motivation, optional.

 

[NotAYakk]

Very few of the things the rich buy in our world are by default considered important to adventurers. You as the DM have to make them important, and the players have to willing to go along or suggest their own ideas. The text should be helping a lot more than it does.

I mean, real world adventurers also used insane amounts of money. They went on exploration trips to crazy places, sometimes involving insane amounts of resources.

Do you find PCs have motivations beyond "kick down door, kill monster"?

If not, then I can see how a lack of "magic item mart" could make gold worthless.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And relatedly, MOST magic items should have nothing to do with adventuring. Nobles would be purchasing things that are either impressive indulgences to show off to their friends and rivals (animated statues that cost orders of magnitude more than a "mere" living butler) or exotic but useful things (the tankard that automatically chills the beer poured within).

I loved the examples of non-adventuring magic items in the 1E Rogues Gallery. I'd love to see more magical items like that for 5E.

 

[MGibster]

I agree...but what's an example of problems in a typical 5e game that need money to solve? It's easy enough to create money sinks, but ultimately that just adds a layer of bookkeeping.

Bingo. I know some players love poring over their character sheets and keeping track of every last little bit of copper coin, gems, or other shiny objects in their possession but it's not for me.

Blue Rose 5E abstracts wealth with a "narrative wealth" system -- characters have a wealth level and they are assumed to be able to get anything on that wealth level without an issue -- that I think ought to be baseline.

I tend to prefer abstract wealth systems in lieu of keeping track of individual units of currency.

 

[NotAYakk]

Blue Rose 5E abstracts wealth with a "narrative wealth" system -- characters have a wealth level and they are assumed to be able to get anything on that wealth level without an issue -- that I think ought to be baseline.

I play a character in an urban campaign. Not only does he not want a stronghold, he has nowhere to put one. And even buying a mansion in the city is far less expensive than even a modest castle.

Build an entire new city quarter.

Build a palace.

Buy out a religion. Or fund a cathedral. Same difference.

Fund a merchant guide, or a museum.

Construct a 400' tall statue to yourself to guard the gates, that says "mess with this city, mess with me".

Fund soup kitchens. Get the masses on your side.

Found a combat training school, a monastery, or a wizard's spire.

Comission great works of art.

Improve the roads to and from the city.

Rebuild the aquaduct.

Dredge the harbor.

Build a new harbor.

Fund research into airships.

Found a library.

Find some shyster who will take your gold and promise you the moon, and give that person your gold.

Gold is power -- not the only power, but a kind of power -- and power shapes the world.

And if gold is otherwise useless to you, if you fund an explorers ship and nothing comes of it, well, nothing of value was lost. Try something else!

 

[Reynard]

I agree...but what's an example of problems in a typical 5e game that need money to solve? It's easy enough to create money sinks, but ultimately that just adds a layer of bookkeeping. Further, in a phb-based economy the players can afford a "comfortable" lifestyle by level 3 or 4, which could happen in a week of in-game time. In the real world money=power, but PCs acquire power by killing monsters and leveling up. Campaigns can also have characters travel a lot across the map, which makes strongholds not as appealing. It's not even clear the average group of PCs could be trusted to take care of a boat.

One thing that I find totally archaic are the treasure tables. If you are playing older editions with xp for gold, then it's a good way of stocking a dungeon and allowing for some randomness, though it's still tedious. But it's a complete waste of space in the 5e dmg. Nobody wants to carry around 1800 copper pieces and a large painting of an aristocrat out of a dungeon. Just write an optional wealth-by-level and a few examples of evocative treasure hoards. Even the magic item tables could be streamlined.

I think "complete waste" might be overstating it, but there is definitely a conflict between the tools and the stated goals. If the DMG presented multiple progression systems -- milestones and challenge xp, but also treasure xp and personal goal xp and faction xp -- folks could decide for themselves and have the tools on hand. In other words, the problem isn't that the random treasure tables are included, it is that the reason to have them there isn't and it seems like it would be easier to just include the "GP=XP" option.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Build an entire new city quarter.

Build a palace.

Buy out a religion. Or fund a cathedral. Same difference.

Fund a merchant guide, or a museum.

Construct a 400' tall statue to yourself to guard the gates, that says "mess with this city, mess with me".

Fund soup kitchens. Get the masses on your side.

Found a combat training school, a monastery, or a wizard's spire.

Comission great works of art.

Improve the roads to and from the city.

Rebuild the aquaduct.

Dredge the harbor.

Build a new harbor.

Fund research into airships.

Found a library.

Find some shyster who will take your gold and promise you the moon, and give that person your gold.

Gold is power -- not the only power, but a kind of power -- and power shapes the world.

And if gold is otherwise useless to you, if you fund an explorers ship and nothing comes of it, well, nothing of value was lost. Try something else!

None of those are interesting to my character. They'd definitely be interesting to some characters, but even that comprehensive list is by no means one that suggests that every character should care about it.

 

[Reynard]

None of those are interesting to my character. They'd definitely be interesting to some characters, but even that comprehensive list is by no means one that suggests that every character should care about it.

So if your character doesn't care about abstract temporal power or building monuments to their lasting legacy, your character is a) probably not going to bother hauling out more gold than they can realistically spend, and b) not feel put out when the cleric is an order of magnitude wealthier and more influential because that character does want those things.

What is a bad idea, and 3E made this clear, is putting that sort of setting based narrative power in the same resource category as individual combat power and utility in the form of craftable or purchasable magic items. When that happens, the treasure hoard serves to give one PC a more interesting story and another a huge boost in prowess. That leads to the story player feeling pressured to not do that stuff and to spend that cash on character enhancement.

And the easiest way to avoid that? Don't let PCs buy or create magic items to order.

 

[Malmuria]

Build an entire new city quarter.

Build a palace.

Buy out a religion. Or fund a cathedral. Same difference.

Fund a merchant guide, or a museum.

Construct a 400' tall statue to yourself to guard the gates, that says "mess with this city, mess with me".

Fund soup kitchens. Get the masses on your side.

Found a combat training school, a monastery, or a wizard's spire.

Comission great works of art.

Improve the roads to and from the city.

Rebuild the aquaduct.

Dredge the harbor.

Build a new harbor.

Fund research into airships.

Found a library.

Find some shyster who will take your gold and promise you the moon, and give that person your gold.

Gold is power -- not the only power, but a kind of power -- and power shapes the world.

And if gold is otherwise useless to you, if you fund an explorers ship and nothing comes of it, well, nothing of value was lost. Try something else!

One related issue is the relative absence of downtime. I've never run (or read) an official 5e adventure book, but from what I understand most of them will be over by the time the aqueduct/harbor/statue is built. Even if you have downtime, it might be a week or a month--not a year of the characters sitting in their strongholds before going on the next adventure. Finally, aqueduct-building and harbor-dredging is not really a part of heroic fantasy.

 

[jgsugden]

I've always considered adventuring to be the core game play experience of D&D. I can see how gold might be used to support that core game play experience, but as it currently stands I don't believe the rules are very supportive of this.

D&D is an RPG. A role playing game. Characters play a role in a story. That is the core of the game, as directly stated in the name, and as described in the core books. The first line of the introduction of the PHB says it: "[D&D] is about storytelling..."

Adventuring is a large part of many D&D stories, but these characters have lives outside the dungeon. You can ignore those lives, and focus on their tales only during their time with weapons in hand, but the game is designed to cover more than just the combat pillar. There are the exploration and social pillar experiences in the game, and there are a lot of rules that support those elements. Money can play a huge part of the social pillar (especially in a political context), and also a large role in the exploration pillar. A party with no money that finds a ruin and decides to explore it does so by themselves, but if they have the money, they might have a base camp set up, or hirelings to perform tasks for them.

If you find the money doesn't make any difference in your story, my advice is to consider what stories could you add to your tales that do revolve around money. As there are so, so, so, so, so many options, there is likely to be something to capitalize upon that can make your game even more fun. In my experience, when money doesn't matter, it is because the DM and players are not collectively utilizing the full breadth of the game options available to them, and are missing out on fun elements.