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

[James Gasik]

Oh no, I'm not asking for a realistic economy, I'm simply pointing out that what the game has doesn't even make sense. A big part of any RPG experience is immersion, being able to accept the fantasy world and imagine yourself as a character in an interactive story. But when your DM says "hey, I think I'm going to let people buy uncommon magic items for 500 gp", and you pass because you're scrimping and saving for your plate armor...and then the Cleric shows up wearing Adamantine Plate, well, there's no logic to that at all.

I feel that any guidelines for treasure have to take into account at what point should players be able to buy a given item. And further, that there should be milestone items for everybody, not just the heavy armor wearers. Way back in the distant past, when I first started playing this game, there were several such milestones, and reasons to want gold that had nothing to do with buying magic items. In addition to the best gear, you wanted a horse. Maybe you were saving up for that keep you wanted to build/refurbish/outright steal. A standing army doesn't feed itself, you know.

Right now, treasure guidelines in 5e have no basis in anything, because there is little use for money. The DM has to make money important in his game, with no real guidelines other than supporting one's lifestyle. Which is trivial after awhile. My highest level 5e character ended up sitting on 17,000 gp because there was literally nothing to do with it that mattered.

Gold needs to matter, there need to be factions to ingratiate yourself with, officials to bribe, churches to tithe to, NPC's to impress, titles to be won, boons to be acquired, training from powerful wizards and mighty warriors, renown to be earned, and ventures to invest in.

And not as "taxes" to divest you of your money (that would be a realistic economy, lol), but actual milestones to achieve. A lot of people say that 3e's big failure was that it made money another experience track. I don't think that's a wrong thing, but rather than make it about magic items, there are a lot of non-magical benefits that can be gleaned from large amounts of cash, and I think it's a damned shame that very little thought was put into this sort of thing in the game so far.

 

[Nevvur]

Question: why is having more money than you can spend a problem?

 

[lkwpeter]

I think these may be of interest:

http://dmdavid.com/tag/what-is-the-...in-a-fifth-edition-dungeons-dragons-campaign/
[...][/url]

Thanks for your reply. But unfortunately your links are dealing with treasure distribution by RAW ("How much treasure should my party possess" and such). They neither answer the question how to ever get rid of those thousands of gold, nor do they anylse if the treasure distribution by RAW is reasonable (it is not, it's absolutely broken).

We want a playable economy. Not a realistic one.

I'd like to please ask the thread not to go down the rabbit-hole that is "realism in fantasy gaming". So very many threads has lost their way that way, and none of them have ever come up with any kind of resolution.

No, let's instead focus on discussing the OP's original misgivings.

Absolutely! Thanks for your support, Zapp!

---

Please note, that it is NOT the intention of this thread to discuss whether or not prices and/or gold distribution of the RAW are broken or not. The assumption of this thread is that both are broken. I neither want to prove that nor do I want to discuss that. It's my intention to find out a reliable way of gold distribution concerning Sane Magic Item Prices. Please keep that in mind, because I don't want this discussion to take the wrong direction.

---

Actually, my hope was that we would be able to find something like a rule of thumb to give any DM an idea of how to handle item distribution. Therefore, I guess we have to seperate the whole issue into different pieces/steps:

Step 1: Setting consistent prices
First of all, prices have to be dependend among themselves, so that there is at least a tiny bit of consistency. I searched Google for about an hour and didn't find anything useful besides Sane Magic Item Prices. This is far away from being perfect, but the suggested prices are more reasonable than the ones in the DMG, because they are calculated by item power, not rarity. So, this step is already done.


Step 2: Adjusting treasure distribution
Going out from consistent prices (step 1), the DM can orientate himself on a rough gold-item-ratio. For example, he now knows that if he hands out the amount of 100G, the party will be able to buy 2x Potion of Healing or 1x Potion of Poison. The distributed amount is calcuable (what it wasn't before, because it was simply impossible to find out what 100G is actually worth).

Now there are two possibilites to set the amount of gold treasure per encounter (including gems).

a) Distribution based on decision:
The DM takes a look at the encounter and asks himself "How much do I want to reward the party for that encounter?". Because he has a gold-item-ratio, he does not need to pick a vague gold amount anymore. He instead is able to answer his question in many different ways. He might come to the conclusion that the encounter should be rewarded with an amount of gold that is worth 1x Superior Healing Potion + 1x 3rd level Spell Scroll. So, he hands out the amount of 450 + 200 = 600 GP. Of course, he could also directly hand that Superior Health Potion and a certain spell scroll to the party. But the idea behind distributing gold is, that the party is able to choose their spell scroll themselves or save gold to buy a more valuable item at a later time. Nevertheless, this should only be an example. Of course, it's absolutely imaginable that he does it either way. So, the advantage is that both ways (distributing consumables directly or gold) are legitimate whereas in the default system of the DMG gold is something abstract, because there is no gold-item-ratio.

b) Distribution based on encounter XP:
Like @Gansk suggested, another possibility is to base the amount of gold treasure on encounter XP. This would be especially useful when running official WotC campaigns, because any encounter is listed with XP, so the DM doesn't have to ask himself over and over again, what he wants to distribute. He simply divides the amount of XP by a fixed number. And if there is some extra loot like potions or scrolls, he substracts their value from the total amount of gold treasure. Unfortunately, this requires some math, because you would have to set the ratio between XP and gold. Is there somebody experienced and willing to do this? Furthermore, it would be perfect to have three different divisors, so the DM can easily adjust the wealth of the group: one divisor for "default loot", one for "reduced loot" and one for "increased loot".

Both variants are not perfect (which seems impossible without an economy system). But they give back a meaning/purpose to gold, what seems much better than giving away thousands of gold pieces, yet there is nothing to spend them on.

---

Side note: Of course, if you decide to offer magic items others than consumables for purchase, the amount of gold treasure has to be higher as if players were only able to buy comsumables. Actually, this is very tough, because the DM needs to have a very clear idea of which items should be affordable for the group. I noticed, that most DMs do not offer "real" magic items for purchase. So, maybe this problem isn't something we have to deal with in first place.

Regards!

 

[clearstream]

Hey there,

we are currently at the very end of the campaign "Princes of the Apocalypse". Our characters are level 13.

From the first beginning we realized that the price system of D&D 5E is somehow weird. There ist a lot of inconsistency. For example, regarding the price chart of the DMG on page 135, Glue (legendary) costs 50.000+G. In contrast, a Sentinel Shield (uncommon) costs only 100-500G.

We started using Sane Magic Item Prices to have more realistic prices. Furthermore I created a Flexible vendor system for magic consumables to provide a transparent ruling for buying consumables. But our problem is that although we build a stronghold and spend thousands of gold, we still have weigh to much gold (22.000G)! And that means that we can almost buy everything we want to. Our last two encounter gave us 1300G (including jewellery). Such high values given by an official WotC adventure are hardly ever spend.


So, there seem to be two problems:

1. There is a need for a consistent price system. Like the upper example (Glue vs. Sentinel Shield) has shown, it's not enough to calculate item prices by rarity, because there are legendary crap items and also powerful items that are uncommon.
2. Gold treasure and the price system have to be mutually dependent. Even if items are perfectly calculated among themselves, it's important to make sure that a price that is meant to be "high" really is hardly affordable. Therefore, you have to make the amount of gold treasure dependend from prices. Otherwise you run the risk that the group has too much money, so it can buy anything or the other way around.

In conclusion, the perfect amount of gold treasure is, if the players can easily buy "cheap" items and are hardly able to buy "expensive" items. That leads to the following questions.


Questions:

• Concerning 1.) There already are some homebrew systems that recaclulated prices. Though, I only know Sane Magic Item Prices. Which one are you using? Which ones have proven themselves?
• Concerning 2.) If you are using a homebrew price system, how are you setting the amount of gold treasure from encounters?
  a) For official adventures: Are you simply dividing the official treasure amount by a certain divisor?
  b) For unofficial adventures: How have you found the amount of gold treasure that fits your campaign?

Would be glad about answers!

Thanks in advance!

Hi, nice work on Sane Magic Item Prices. They seem a bit too low for me, but overall going in the right direction.

What I'm doing about gold piece income in my OOTA campaign is this: instead of a roughly 10x increase in the gold per hoard per tier, I'm making it 5x. For example, tier 1 hoards are worth about 375 gp. Instead of the RAW 4000gp or so for tier 2, I make it nearer 2000. It is that increase by an order of magnitude at each tier that seems to me to make gold earned crazy. This is (roughly) what it looks like



Left hand is increase by 10 (per RAW), right hand is increase by 5.

You can still generate parcels using the DMG tables: just reduce the value of fungible loot. Halve the value of tier 2 hoards, quarter the value of tier 3 hoards, and take one-eighth​ the value of tier 4 hoards.

 

[Phasestar]

Thanks for your reply. But unfortunately your links are dealing with treasure distribution by RAW ("How much treasure should my party possess" and such). They neither answer the question how to ever get rid of those thousands of gold, nor do they anylse if the treasure distribution by RAW is reasonable (it is not, it's absolutely broken).

Sorry they were not of use - I thought they would be a possible starting point for this request just as far as understanding how the original design does that: "Unfortunately, this requires some math, because you would have to set the ratio between XP and gold. Is there somebody experienced and willing to do this? Furthermore, it would be perfect to have three different divisors, so the DM can easily adjust the wealth of the group: one divisor for "default loot", one for "reduced loot" and one for "increased loot"."

 

[clearstream]

Sorry they were not of use - I thought they would be a possible starting point for this request just as far as understanding how the original design does that: "Unfortunately, this requires some math, because you would have to set the ratio between XP and gold. Is there somebody experienced and willing to do this? Furthermore, it would be perfect to have three different divisors, so the DM can easily adjust the wealth of the group: one divisor for "default loot", one for "reduced loot" and one for "increased loot"."

That's easy to do (the ratio), but can you summarise why we'd want to?

 

[Phasestar]

I was quoting from the OP's post, which states:

a) Distribution based on decision:
The DM takes a look at the encounter and asks himself "How much do I want to reward the party for that encounter?". Because he has a gold-item-ratio, he does not need to pick a vague gold amount anymore. He instead is able to answer his question in many different ways. He might come to the conclusion that the encounter should be rewarded with an amount of gold that is worth 1x Superior Healing Potion + 1x 3rd level Spell Scroll. So, he hands out the amount of 450 + 200 = 600 GP. Of course, he could also directly hand that Superior Health Potion and a certain spell scroll to the party. But the idea behind distributing gold is, that the party is able to choose their spell scroll themselves or save gold to buy a more valuable item at a later time. Nevertheless, this should only be an example. Of course, it's absolutely imaginable that he does it either way. So, the advantage is that both ways (distributing consumables directly or gold) are legitimate whereas in the default system of the DMG gold is something abstract, because there is no gold-item-ratio.

b) Distribution based on encounter XP:
Like @Gansk suggested, another possibility is to base the amount of gold treasure on encounter XP. This would be especially useful when running official WotC campaigns, because any encounter is listed with XP, so the DM doesn't have to ask himself over and over again, what he wants to distribute. He simply divides the amount of XP by a fixed number. And if there is some extra loot like potions or scrolls, he substracts their value from the total amount of gold treasure. Unfortunately, this requires some math, because you would have to set the ratio between XP and gold. Is there somebody experienced and willing to do this? Furthermore, it would be perfect to have three different divisors, so the DM can easily adjust the wealth of the group: one divisor for "default loot", one for "reduced loot" and one for "increased loot".

Both variants are not perfect (which seems impossible without an economy system). But they give back a meaning/purpose to gold, what seems much better than giving away thousands of gold pieces, yet there is nothing to spend them on.

 

[clearstream]

Questions:

• Concerning 1.) There already are some homebrew systems that recaclulated prices. Though, I only know Sane Magic Item Prices. Which one are you using? Which ones have proven themselves?
• Concerning 2.) If you are using a homebrew price system, how are you setting the amount of gold treasure from encounters?
  a) For official adventures: Are you simply dividing the official treasure amount by a certain divisor?
  b) For unofficial adventures: How have you found the amount of gold treasure that fits your campaign?

Looking deeper into this, I think one issue is that many or most DMs possibly aren't imposing the lethality and revivals that 5e expects. To give an example, with a lethality expectation of 1:100 for attritional encounters (easy to hard) and 1:10 for lethal encounters (deadly) we can see that a character would need to be revived about 24 times over their career. Let's say that 90% of those are Raise Dead, but 10% are True Resurrection (due to destroyed organs). That gives a cost of about 390,000gp on revivals per party.

Expanding on this further, let's suppose adventurers should have first a manor, then a keep and finally a palace or castle. That gives a cost of 575,000. (Assuming only one per party... I can't see why they'd need two but YMMV.) Thus, we expect a party to spend about 1m. The rest might go into crafting a Legendary item. Or a lot of consumables. Per Raw that is.

If we take my proposed rule of 5x instead of 10x the hoard value increase at each tier, then we find our party with about 60,000gp spare. That seems tight to me. It could be that RAW is fine, so long as you're killing your PCs at a reasonable rate... and allowing revival magic!

 

[Phasestar]

Good point about revival - if that's factored in, I would imagine this varies a lot by campaign and from past experience quite a few DMs tend to try to avoid character death. I tend to make my setting a bit more challenging than "by the book" and I still have not seen anywhere close to 24 deaths per character career. In some cases, of course, it only takes one but going back through past campaigns and characters that persisted through the setbacks, I'd say it's more like 0-3 between Level 1 and 15, after which we usually tend to restart. It's tough to imagine 24 survivable/recoverable character deaths between Levels 1-20 (more than one per level).

 

[clearstream]

Good point about revival - if that's factored in, I would imagine this varies a lot by campaign and from past experience quite a few DMs tend to try to avoid character death. I tend to make my setting a bit more challenging than "by the book" and I still have not seen anywhere close to 24 deaths per character career. In some cases, of course, it only takes one but going back through past campaigns and characters that persisted through the setbacks, I'd say it's more like 0-3 between Level 1 and 15, after which we usually tend to restart. It's tough to imagine 24 survivable/recoverable character deaths between Levels 1-20 (more than one per level).

24 seems a bit over the top to me, too, which tells us that chance of character death per attritional encounter (easy to medium) must be somewhere below 0.5%, and chance of character death per lethal encounter (hard to deadly) must be below 5%. Using those exact values (0.5%, 5%) it looks like it would take about 2 characters and 1 revival (or 1 character and 2 revivals) to get to level 15.

In my campaign I'm assuming casting cost = material costs for revival spells, so with using a 5x ramping across each tier for treasure hoard value (instead of 10x per RAW) the gold accumulation is looking sane.