D&D 5E (2024) Gold & Other Treasure (Can we get off the treadmill?)

[Mistwell]

How important is treasure in a campaign really?

If I am going to kill things and take their stuff, I want their stuff to be cool stuff that I actually want!
I'd like a good set of magic item creation rules to make magic items not even listed there, with price guidelines.

 

[MGibster]

Has anyone tried an abstract wealth system in 5e? Like, rather than tracking gold, you have a wealth score, and can just assume to be able to buy certain items, expensive items require a wealth check and will reduce your score ... that kinda thing? Does it work?

Yeah, sort of. In the last Eberron campaign I played, the DM just said, "Hey, we're not going to worry about gold. Pretty much any mundane item or service you want is within your means." Now that I think about it, that's less of a system and more we're just flat out ignoring things. Call of Cthulhu has an abstract wealth system that depends on a character's Credit Rating. You might get to the point where you can essentially purchase all the small items you want without ever having to make a roll. While you might purchase a big ticket item that actually drives your Credit Rating down.

If I am going to kill things and take their stuff, I want their stuff to be cool stuff that I actually want!
I'd like a good set of magic item creation rules to make magic items not even listed there, with price guidelines.

I've had characters who care about looting cool stuff, but as a player, I don't really care all that much these days. But I'm in agreement. If we're going to be on that treasure treadmill then make it worthwhile.

 

[Vael]

Yeah, sort of. In the last Eberron campaign I played, the DM just said, "Hey, we're not going to worry about gold. Pretty much any mundane item or service you want is within your means." Now that I think about it, that's less of a system and more we're just flat out ignoring things. Call of Cthulhu has an abstract wealth system that depends on a character's Credit Rating. You might get to the point where you can essentially purchase all the small items you want without ever having to make a roll. While you might purchase a big ticket item that actually drives your Credit Rating down.

Eberron would be a world where I'd consider it. Given that there is a stable banking system in place, one can have the idea of credit and non-coin based currency. I could see a Sharn based campaign with abstracted wealth.

 

[tetrasodium]

Blue Rose 5E uses a narrative wealth system that looks like it works well. I've informally moved my higher level campaign to such a system, since they can afford all of their day to day needs and aren't interested in buying castles, making counting copper pieces a waste of everyone's time.

I've tried it using patrons as a concept from ECS/ECG prior to getting them in 5e. Everything seems to look ok at first but it quickly runs into the problem of 5e's design itself being built for the assumption that PCs have no feats & no magic items. Very quickly the Patrons have nothing to offer& the PCs have nothing to risk or lose if they decide to act like a free agent with no ties rather than someone with important ties to their patron's well being/interests. It wound up encouraging players to think of themselves as Main Characters & become subverters. I was never really able to get the RfTLW patrons to work much better because of the original lack of needs/leverage.

 

[Laurefindel]

Treasure in D&D (and most TTRPG) is a bit weird.

Treasure should be something adventurers aspire for as a mean to live in comfort, possibly retire and not have to risk their life all the time. Instead, it mostly exist (since 3e era at any case) as a mean to be better adventurer and keep on risking their life against more powerful adversaries.

I can understand that, to a certain extent, if you’re stuck adventuring you’d need basic survival tools. But adventuring for the sake of becoming better adventurer? That’s a bizarre mindset. Unless you’re treating adventuring as a profession, but then again I haven’t seen a lot of characters dealing their wages with their patrons and employers, nor do I really want to. I’m also not too keen on going back to my early D&D days where characters were looking for a fight, making sure to annihilate the camp because there might be good loot.

On the other hand, the gamist in me like these kinds of minigames. I’d like to have guidelines that can be followed or ignored, and perhaps a list of perks that one can «purchase» to reflect quality of life (got a high quality tent and bedroll? Bonus hit die. Spent winter living confortable at the inn? Advantage against fear or something). I just don’t want a game where you’re penalized if you do not play the treasure minigame.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

In the real world, once I accumulated a fortune and had my own keep, I'd probably stop adventuring. It's a risk job, why not just be fat an comfortable running the local area from my keep?

You can try but once your DM watches Yellowstone, they'll have grand ideas about how hard it can be to settle down and run an estate, when everyone, rich and poor alike, want a little piece of what you have!

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can try but once your DM watches Yellowstone, they'll have grand ideas about how hard it can be to settle down and run an estate, when everyone, rich and poor alike, want a little piece of what you have!

I love Yellowstone! Its a whole series about the classic D&D domain game.

 

[James Gasik]

Generally, once you're a high level adventurer, your activities and accomplishments should have garnered you enough glory that people in power notice, and you'll no doubt find yourself recruited by a monarch or some faction or another, also making it hard to retire.

While it's unusual because the players start at low level, something like what happens in Kingmaker, where your king tasks you with founding a vassal nation out of unclaimed wilds seems like just the sort of thing high level characters find themselves doing.

So in addition to treasure not having enough weight, the effects of the player's growing fame could stand to be better taken into account.

Honestly, I wonder if something like gp = xp would be enough to make players sit up and take notice of their loot. It's something I'd like to try, at the very least.

 

[overgeeked]

XP for gold spent on things that do not improve your combat stats is the best advancement system I’ve seen in any version of D&D. It solves so many problems and it offers the players interesting choices.

 

[James Gasik]

XP for gold spent on things that do not improve your combat stats is the best advancement system I’ve seen in any version of D&D. It solves so many problems and it offers the players interesting choices.

So say, training, donation to churches or the poor, that sort of thing?