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

[payn]

Without monster math assuming a certain level of PC power drawn from magic items the GM is no more free to "make it a thing" than the Weimar Republic was to just make a thing. Worse is that now the gm must track any power they grant the PCs from magic items and boost the monsters in order to counter balance the excess by rebuilding the broken game engine.

Why must magic items do more numbers instead of doing cool things?

 

[M_Natas]

Wealth by level was a bane on 3E, but a necessary one. I am very glad the days of WBL are gone. Players feel entitled to certain amounts of gold and thus certain items because the books says so. What is worse is the game math works assuming it. 5E has killed that dead, and its a feature. Players dont need gold so the GM is free to make it a thing if they want to, or ignore it as the boring bookkeeping task that many folks see it as. Options are open.

Oh, I wouldn't put a Wealthy by level table player facing. But the problem now is, if a new DM uses the treasure tables of the DMG he will not know how much money the players will get approximately. They wouldn't even know that this is important, because the DMG has like nothing on spending all that money that is given out.

This is exactly what I mean about the above. You felt it was needed and you figured it out. I dont want anything like this in the rules for my game.

The 2024 DMG deserves at least a page on what to do with all the money the treasure tables doll out.

This would be perfect for a modular supplement, however, that idea died on the vine when 5E became so popular without it.

It should be. Life as a wizard is already too easy.

There is a lot of weird stuff here. Its cool, but its unusual, and I dont know that any DMG guideline could be specific enough to cover velociraptors ridden by children. If the DMG needs to prepare GMs for anything, its how to make up curveball stuff like this on their own. Personally, I dont put prices on stuff like this, I make adventures out of it. Help A stop B, go to location X and find Y, etc..

The DM put Velociraptors and disfranchised Orphans into the City! What else was my Wizard supposed to than build a Militia out of it?
My DM trough is into a Dungeon Delve right after so he can figure out how he wants to handle the Velociraptor Child Army.
But yeah, the DMG needs some general advice/guidelines on how to handle such stuff. I don't expect the DMG to give me price ranges for buying Velociraptors or wages for Orphans turned Militia Men.
But my actual point was: My Characters always find ways to use money. Because Money is Power. Even in D&D except for maybe the most ... uncivilised campaigns. It can be as simple as giving a guard a sure bribe of 1000 Gold (depending on the salary 3 to 30 years of wages) instead of charming or killing him or as complex as building and financing your own Militia and bribing the population to win a power struggle against a crime syndicate and a wizard academy.
Because for me Money is a tool and I will find ways to use that. Like the DM didn't plan for me to raise a Velociraptor-Orphan Cavalry. He just put in a fun Velociraptor Merchant I helped with the bureaucracy while waiting for the Bard to get his license to play on the streets and when the power struggle became clear I was like: Hey, Velociraptor Cavalry! So even if the DM doesn't plan Money Sinks into the game, I will give him some.

Again, this is a bit of a gaming philosophy thing. All of this would be adventure as needed and not adventure for money to buy what you want for me. Though, if spelljammer has ships as money sinks specifically, it should be in the campaign setting material and not the generic DMG, IMO.

I would be totally fine with" Goldilocks Chest to everything valuable", "Xram Lrak's guide to Classwarfare" or "the Capitalists Workbook to D&D" or something like that, that collects everything people need to make money matter in their campaign.
Like, with all the people I always hear about how Money doesn't matter in 5e I would think that would become a bestseller.
Throw in good rules for crafting magic items (like with actual recipes for ever Magic Item) and I would buy it even if it would be again an overpriced Box Set with 3 Books instead of one.

 

[MGibster]

My character made friends with a Velociraptor Merchant and wants to build up her own Cavalry made up of Orphans who ride on Velociraptors. That cost a lot of money.

Q: Why orphans?
A: Nobody cares if the velociraptors eat them.

 

[payn]

Oh, I wouldn't put a Wealthy by level table player facing. But the problem now is, if a new DM uses the treasure tables of the DMG he will not know how much money the players will get approximately. They wouldn't even know that this is important, because the DMG has like nothing on spending all that money that is given out.

The 2024 DMG deserves at least a page on what to do with all the money the treasure tables doll out.

The DM put Velociraptors and disfranchised Orphans into the City! What else was my Wizard supposed to than build a Militia out of it?
My DM trough is into a Dungeon Delve right after so he can figure out how he wants to handle the Velociraptor Child Army.
But yeah, the DMG needs some general advice/guidelines on how to handle such stuff. I don't expect the DMG to give me price ranges for buying Velociraptors or wages for Orphans turned Militia Men.
But my actual point was: My Characters always find ways to use money. Because Money is Power. Even in D&D except for maybe the most ... uncivilised campaigns. It can be as simple as giving a guard a sure bribe of 1000 Gold (depending on the salary 3 to 30 years of wages) instead of charming or killing him or as complex as building and financing your own Militia and bribing the population to win a power struggle against a crime syndicate and a wizard academy.
Because for me Money is a tool and I will find ways to use that. Like the DM didn't plan for me to raise a Velociraptor-Orphan Cavalry. He just put in a fun Velociraptor Merchant I helped with the bureaucracy while waiting for the Bard to get his license to play on the streets and when the power struggle became clear I was like: Hey, Velociraptor Cavalry! So even if the DM doesn't plan Money Sinks into the game, I will give him some.

I use action and narrative in place of money in my games. Sure, you may bribe a guard narratively speaking, but the cost isnt the interesting part of the adventure. I mean, why are you adventuring in the first place? To build a war chest to build carseats for velociraptors for your orphans? Sounds like delving and chore doing to actually get to what you really want to do. Why cant your level simply be the limit of your capability? Want more? Do stuff and gain levels. I formed this philosophy and opinion after decades of bad economic systems in myriad of RPGs. Just finally cut out the middle man.

I would be totally fine with" Goldilocks Chest to everything valuable", "Xram Lrak's guide to Classwarfare" or "the Capitalists Workbook to D&D" or something like that, that collects everything people need to make money matter in their campaign.
Like, with all the people I always hear about how Money doesn't matter in 5e I would think that would become a bestseller.
Throw in good rules for crafting magic items (like with actual recipes for ever Magic Item) and I would buy it even if it would be again an overpriced Box Set with 3 Books instead of one.

Other than Reddit and ENworld I don't hear people complain about nothing to do with money. I think part of it is the rise of the adventure path has taken a bite out of west marches style games. Players have things to do already, so they don't need to make things up with money, nor do they need it as they progress in levels because items are no longer math assumed. I do think a book on campaign design and wealth would have a market though.

 

[tetrasodium]

Why must magic items do more numbers instead of doing cool things?

The kind of items you are trying to switch tracks to were not really a thing that meaningfully impacted WBL unless they actually impacted the numbers in some way... Context matters, you seem to be making an effort to change it. The WBL tables & magic item costs made an (imperfect but genuine) effort to provide some level of guidance to the GM on how much power a PC should have from magic items. Things don't end there though because d&d is not a system with mechanical hooks for "doing cool things", in fact it omitted the once present subsystem a GM could choose to use when a player feels that their "cool thing" item was relevant enough to have an impact.

 

[M_Natas]

Q: Why orphans?
A: Nobody cares if the velociraptors eat them.

I actually asked the DM to search the City for suitable candidates. Like wreckless people who wouldn't really question being recruited to ride Velociraptors and fight the most dangerous crime syndicate ... we landed in front of the Orphanage.

 

[Alzrius]

The kind of items you are trying to switch tracks to were not really a thing that meaningfully impacted WBL unless they actually impacted the numbers in some way... Context matters, you seem to be making an effort to change it. The WBL tables & magic item costs made an (imperfect but genuine) effort to provide some level of guidance to the GM on how much power a PC should have from magic items. Things don't end there though because d&d is not a system with mechanical hooks for "doing cool things", in fact it omitted the once present subsystem a GM could choose to use when a player feels that their "cool thing" item was relevant enough to have an impact.

One minor point of note is that WotC kept analyzing and tweaking the WBL sub-system in small but notable ways throughout the life of 3.5. The culmination of that was largely found in the Magic Item Compendium, which had some very insightful reworkings of how much various magic items (and related effects) were worth in terms of gp value, a lesson that was unfortunately undercut by the book needing several pages of errata to correct the values that it had when it went to press (and worse, the "premium reprint" several years later was advertised as having the errata incorporated, but actually didn't).

 

[tetrasodium]

One minor point of note is that WotC kept analyzing and tweaking the WBL sub-system in small but notable ways throughout the life of 3.5. The culmination of that was largely found in the Magic Item Compendium, which had some very insightful reworkings of how much various magic items (and related effects) were worth in terms of gp value, a lesson that was unfortunately undercut by the book needing several pages of errata to correct the values that it had when it went to press (and worse, the "premium reprint" several years later was advertised as having the errata incorporated, but actually didn't).

Agreed, I think that WBL & 3.x magic item crafting gets a lot of undeserved hate for the results of the GM enabling unchecked rampant minmaxing by being too hands off with the process. That MIC you note was also notable for items that required specific yet completely nebulous components like the sigh of a cat & similar that gave the GM a lot of control over if a players creative idea will work or if a strangely creative adventure for a macguffin or whatever was needed as part of the process

 

[Willie the Duck]

Agreed, I think that WBL & 3.x magic item crafting gets a lot of undeserved hate for the results of the GM enabling unchecked rampant minmaxing by being too hands off with the process. That MIC you note was also notable for items that required specific yet completely nebulous components like the sigh of a cat & similar that gave the GM a lot of control over if a players creative idea will work or if a strangely creative adventure for a macguffin or whatever was needed as part of the process

I mean, I think it is certainly the case that many-to-most people didn't play to the strict formulaic potential outcome of the rules any more than people actually played in the Tippyverse. OTOH, I think there was plenty of 'okay new(to this group)bie, bring in a Xth level character with Y GP worth of gear, I'll look it over and veto items like I will abusive builds*.' Likewise, I certainly think there was some unintended incentivization structures that came into play, such as 'I can't spend my GP on bribing the guard/investing in a merchant ship/bling/the other things we did with gold in 2e, that gold has to go towards magic items so I stay at parity with the challenges we're going to face.'
*each table having different standards

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why must magic items do more numbers instead of doing cool things?

Tradition!

Tradition: Ruining everything since 50,000 BCE.