D&D 5E Forget about the treasure and pricing system of 5E!

[Stalker0]

I agree strongly with the premise of the OP. Ultimately to me the system can go one of two ways:

1) The gaining and spending of treasure are both loose constructs. Something like:

5th level: You live in comfort. You have hirelings for your house's needs, can afford lavish meals..etc etc.
20th level: You have several large mansions and castles, and armies of servants at your command.

So in this model, we don't track treasure. This is the lifestyle levels taken to a greater extent. We just assume that when the players reach a certain point they are rich enough to do X things.

2) The more accountant model, your treasure gains and expenditures are tracked.

a) In general you gain X per level or adventure.
b) You can spend X to gain Y.

The problem is 5th tried to go both ways. It used the accountant system to gain the gold, but then left its spending in vague, nebulous, or even absent terms. Hence the current issue.


Now, this is an gap in the rules. Not an unsurmountable gap by any stretch. Some have posted how they have handled it as a DM, which is always good. Some just ignore treasure, and the rest of the game runs without a hitch. But the OP wants to look at the system and try to make this aspect better.

The rules of an RPG exist so that the DM does less work...that's why it exists. The secret of Dnd is that you don't need Dnd. Give people time and they can create their own roleplaying systems if they want to. But most people don't want to make up all of their rules, they would like to pay someone to do that for them. That is why people buy tabletop RPGs.

So for the DMs and players who have found a solution to this problem....then enjoy your games....I just don't know why you are hanging out in this thread. This thread is designed to put a little more structure to the 5e economy so that Dms would like that can benefit and don't have to think of those things on their own.

Please allow them to do that.

 

[Stalker0]

So getting to the OP's question.

Ultimately what is needed is a general list of those key things that players would want. Not every little thing, that isn't needed. But a general list of things to give DMs a good gauge of what to price things out.

And in general these should be divided into 3 categories, each of which is optional depending on how the DM wants to structure their game. That way its easy for them to decide just how strong money is in their campaign.

Category 1: The "cool stuff". These are generally things that players might find cool to have, but don't necessarily translate into more power in the traditional adventuring sense.

1) A small mansion
2) Hiring a tutor to learn a language
3) Buying a business

Category 2: "Consumable Power". These are things that do get players some advantages to their adventuring, but its often a one time thing.

1) Potions
2) Hiring a spy to get some key intel on a person.
3) Buying a spell.

Category 3: "Invested Power". This is the power that you keep. It lasts or is even permanent, and directly increases your adventuring power.

1) A permanent teleportation circle.
2) Permanent Magic Items.


From there, instead of focusing on treasure tables, we need the old 3e money table, that showcased about how much money a player will have at any given level. And of course there could be 2 or 3 flavors of that table for "high money" or "low money" games.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Wat?! The DM narrates what players see because they create what players see.

I'd say the one creating the AP is the one that creates what players see. That's not necessarily the DM, even though in many cases the DM might also be the AP creator.

Not in my case, because I only run official APs, though. And if that store in that town says "He offers
[list of items] in his store.", then that's what the players see. Of course as DM you can "cheat" and add "He also offers these magic items:
[list of magic items]", but that's definitely not backed up by the rules that clearly state that most magic items are rare and can't be sold or bought with money.

Here are the quoted basic rules for reference (p.43):

Magic Items.
Selling magic items is problematic.
[...] Likewise, aside from a few common
magic items, you won’t normally come across magic
items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far
beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

From there, instead of focusing on treasure tables, we need the old 3e money table, that showcased about how much money a player will have at any given level. And of course there could be 2 or 3 flavors of that table for "high money" or "low money" games.

Such a list has been made. Google 5e wealth by level. Also think it's linked in this thread. One could create low and high money games by taking minimum treasure rolled and maximum treasure rolle, fx.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'd say the one creating the AP is the one that creates what players see. That's not necessarily the DM, even though in many cases the DM might also be the AP creator.

Not in my case, because I only run official APs, though. And if that store in that town says "He offers
[list of items] in his store.", then that's what the players see. Of course as DM you can "cheat" and add "He also offers these magic items:
[list of magic items]", but that's definitely not backed up by the rules that clearly state that most magic items are rare and can't be sold or bought with money.

Here are the quoted basic rules for reference (p.43):

But this is not the end, or a resolution.

This is where this discussion starts, it is the very problem.

(Read Angry GM's worthless gold rant to get up to speed)

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I'd say the one creating the AP is the one that creates what players see. That's not necessarily the DM, even though in many cases the DM might also be the AP creator.

Not in my case, because I only run official APs, though. And if that store in that town says "He offers
[list of items] in his store.", then that's what the players see. Of course as DM you can "cheat" and add "He also offers these magic items:
[list of magic items]", but that's definitely not backed up by the rules that clearly state that most magic items are rare and can't be sold or bought with money.

Here are the quoted basic rules for reference (p.43):

Unless you are running AL, which specifies adherence to treasure and encounters (with some leeway) as written in allowed adventures, there is nothing that requires you as a DM to take what's in an AP as anything more than a suggestion. You are free and clear to add, delete or otherwise edit that content to suit the game you want run.

As for "the rules clearly state...", I'd say that the phrase, "Rulings, not Rules" is a good guideline for you as a DM. In your own game, run from an official AP or not, you can have as little or much access to magic items, et al as you please as it fits how you see the game playing out. This is not cheating!

 

[Xetheral]

Every edition needs to be treated as its own system, even when the developers cast it as being inspired by various elements of its predecessors.

I strongly disagree with this idea. To me, D&D is a toolset I can use to help run the game at my table. Like any tool, I expect new versions of the tool to be useful for the same set of tasks as the prior versions. In the case of D&D, that means each version should be useful (ideally, increasingly useful) for telling the sames kinds of stories, in the same kinds of campaigns, in the same game worlds. (If the developer wants to create a new type of tool useful for a related but different set of tasks, I expect the developer to sell that tool as a new product, and not as a new version of an existing product.) I fully expect every user of a new version of a tool to use their own personal standards for judging the value of the upgrade, and, because personal preferences differ, I expect not everyone will agree on whether each upgrade is still useful for the same set of tasks.

D&D 5e faced the problem that previous upgrades did not emphasize this continuity of purpose to the satisfaction of a large portion of the userbase, creating a split in expectations for future upgrades. I personally think that the designers did an excellent job navigating this self-inflicted minefield, and that, overall, the current edition is the best yet at being useful for running the games I run at my table.

That being said, I wish there was more official content that supported portraying campaign settings with more economic depth and verisimilitude, for DMs like me who value such elements in our games. Yes, I can homebrew my own material, but this suffers from several drawbacks:

1. Homebrew requires greater player buy-in. It's easier to expect the players to read a section of the rulebook than it is to expect them to read (and keep track of) a printed handout.
2. Homebrew needs to be used judiciously. As a corollary to #1, it becomes harder and harder to expect players to master the homebrew rules as the volume of homebrew increases. For games near the (table-dependent) maximum, every homebrew rule you add to increase the depth of the economic rules is less homebrew one can add to customize other aspects of the game.
3. Homebrew isn't playtested. Official content is presumably playtested (just as any tool can be expected to be tested prior to release), and thus comes with an extra expectation that it functions well for its intended purpose. This means that the design tradeoffs in official content are thus more likely to be assumed to be well-informed, which makes such tradeoffs more presumptively acceptable.
4. Homebrew is held to a higher standard of customization. As a corollary to #3, no one expects official content to exactly match an individual table's idiosyncrasies, because it is undetstood to need to appeal to a diverse audience. By contrast, homebrew is, by definition, table-specific, and can be endlessly tweaked. Rather than trying to adapt to the tradeoffs in an official rule, the focus with homebrew is to adapt the homebrew itself. This sense of impermanence of the model being used can damage verisimilitude--it's harder to get engrossed in a setting if that setting is constantly changing. Conversely, if one does not adapt the homebrew as problems emerge, dissatisfaction with the homebrew can increase beyond the dissatisfaction of a comparably problematic official rule, because the people who could fix the official rule aren't sitting at the table with you.
5. Homebrew requires greater consensus. As a corollary to #4, it's easier to get everyone to agree to follow the rules set by an unavailable and neutral third party than it is to get everyone to agree to the minutae of rules written by the table, particularly when the drawbacks of those (unplaytested) rules start showing up in play.

I love homebrew and use a lot of it in my games. I also play fast and loose with the official rules. But I'd rather spend my time (and DM capital) developing elements specific to my game world rather than the robust price lists and basic economic guidelines that would help make gold more fun for me and my players.

 

[gyor]

I think that down time rules in XGTE will address these concerns.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Not if they only are like the ones from UA.

 

[Wiseblood]

As a player I like gold. I want it in my game.


That said, most of the time it's useless in my experience. In the majority of campaigns I have played or DM'ed you either had gold and didn't need it or needed it and didn't have it.

In one specific campaign it was useful. For a hireling and for buying potions. We also had a wagonload of mundane equipment. The hireling was a quartermaster.