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

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I always liked D20 Modern’s wealth stat.

Instead of paying for every inn, pint of beer and quiver of arrows you are assumed to be able to live at an appropriate level for your wealth. With a chance to requisition special, or expensive one off items depending on your wealth level.

Major treasures would increase your wealth for a certain number of levels for a certain duration or permanently for exceptional hoards.

I think it’s an interesting concept.

Blue Rose does something similar. For most 5E games, after Tier 1, just abstracting character wealth to a not-particularly-granular wealth stat is fine.

 

[tetrasodium]

I guess I'd prefer the numbers to be built into character progression and leave the magic items to doing cool things. I want cloaks of arachnidia and not cloak of resistance +x. YMMV.

d&d is math. Even this item is math that exceeds what is allotted to PCs. Worse it's a massive improvement in almost every way.

Spoiler: 3.5dmg version

Item, eagle’s splendor; Price 4,500 gp.
Cloak of Arachnida: This black garment, embroi-
dered with a weblike pattern in silk, gives the wearer the
ability to climb as if a spider climb spell had been placed
upon her. In addition, the cloak grants her immunity to
entrapment by web spells or webs of any sort—she can
actually move in webs at half her normal speed.
Once per day, the wearer of this cloak can cast web. She
also gains a +2 luck bonus on all Fortitude saves against
poison from spiders.
Faint conjuration and transmutation; CL 6th; Craft Wondrous
spider climb, web; Price 14,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Spoiler: 5e version

• You have resistance to poison damage.
• You have a climbing speed equal to your walking speed.
• You can move up, down, and across vertical surfaces and upside down along ceilings, while leaving your hands free.
• You can't be caught in webs of any sort and can move through webs as if they were difficult terrain.
• You can use an action to cast the web spell (save DC 13). The web created by the spell fills twice its normal area. Once used, this property of the cloak can't be used again until the next dawn.
  

Notes: Resistance: Poison, Set: Innate Speed (Climbing), Control, Buff, Movement, Warding, Outerwear

+2 to save becomes immunity. moving half speed in webs becoming as if difficult terrain is still a massive improvement because web no longer slows targets to 5 feet for each full 5 points by which the check result exceeds 10 on a failed save, nor does it impose a bunch of penalties on a fail like it once did.

Cast web1/day to cast web 1/dawn is still an improvement because combat is now designed to ensure strategic use of crowd control is a relatively unimportant factor on the adventuring day combined with the ease of having the perfect number of web spells with the shift from vancian slot by slot prep to flexible spontaneous/neovancian ensuring that it will never be needed as a flexibility expansion or backup ace in the back pocket

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Never mind that DMs also felt limited in what they could (or couldn't) give out as treasure. I too don't see much use in WBL rules or guides.

However...

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.

...I do think there needs to be some sort of player-side tracking of character wealth, along with the game not just providing a number of viable options as to how to spend it if-when acquired but putting those things front and centre: henchmen, strongholds, spell research/acquisition, training, downtime activities, religious sacrifices, etc. are just a few options among many. And they can all be ignored in a game where the DM doesn't give out much if any treasure.

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

On this we agree.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

More to the point: adventure-path play has taken downtime activities, along with the associated in-character involvement in the setting outside the actual AP, and shoved them into a dark closet. Everything is so focused on the adventure path that even if players do come up with other things to do (e.g. build a stronghold) the run of play just won't let them.

And it's mostly in downtime and non-adventuring activities where character wealth comes in useful.

 

[Lanefan]

They would need to put in a serious commitment to executing 5e's "magic items are optional" self inflicted wound first as part of that. Simply adding an economy for them without creating a need just causes the math to collapse once it starts getting used. I don't think I've seen wotc hint at any willingness on that front though

The other option is to just not worry so much about the math collapsing - if it's all that finely tuned that just adding some magic items is going to break everything, then IMO that's poor design rather than good design.

 

[Lanefan]

The framing of this discussion seems very odd to me.

If you go adventuring to find gold and are then expected to spend most of that gold on enhancing your adventuring abilities (so you can find more gold and enhance your adventuring abilities even more...), that's a treadmill. If gold is primarily used for purposes orthogonal to adventuring capabilities, that's getting off the treadmill.

Thus, getting off the treadmill seems to me like exactly what 5e has already done. I understand the desire for clearer suggestions about what to replace that treadmill with, but it seems like most of the discussion in this thread is about how to reinstate the treadmill.

Not so much to reinstate the looping treadmill of your first paragraph, but reinstating the idea that the game needs to provide means for in-character income to become in-character outgo: there need to be ways and means of parting PCs from their wealth.

Never mind the original treadmill's one redeeming feature has been shoved aside through all WotC editions: the requirement of training to level. Not only does training represent a good money sink in itself, it also forces parties to take some downtime now and then; and downtime is when money gets spent on other things.

 

[Lanefan]

I always liked D20 Modern’s wealth stat.

Instead of paying for every inn, pint of beer and quiver of arrows you are assumed to be able to live at an appropriate level for your wealth. With a chance to requisition special, or expensive one off items depending on your wealth level.

Major treasures would increase your wealth for a certain number of levels for a certain duration or permanently for exceptional hoards.

I think it’s an interesting concept.

So how does this work in practice? More specifically:

If a character is "wealth level" X does that mean said character can afford a certain lifestyle for a certain period of time?
Is every character just assumed to be living that lifestyle?
What if a character wants to live below its wealth level?
Corollary to the last: what if a character wants to save up long-term for something big e.g. a castle? How does the amount of savings get tracked over time with any accuracy, or is it just hand-waved?
How many assumptions does this make as to how (and-or how often) the party divide their treasure?

 

[payn]

More to the point: adventure-path play has taken downtime activities, along with the associated in-character involvement in the setting outside the actual AP, and shoved them into a dark closet. Everything is so focused on the adventure path that even if players do come up with other things to do (e.g. build a stronghold) the run of play just won't let them.

And it's mostly in downtime and non-adventuring activities where character wealth comes in useful.

Good riddance. Give me adventure not ledger maintenance.

...I do think there needs to be some sort of player-side tracking of character wealth, along with the game not just providing a number of viable options as to how to spend it if-when acquired but putting those things front and centre: henchmen, strongholds, spell research/acquisition, training, downtime activities, religious sacrifices, etc. are just a few options among many. And they can all be ignored in a game where the DM doesn't give out much if any treasure.

I've never really seen the point of cost and upkeep tables other than to gate items from PCs, and/or make them a PITA to maintain. This isnt a D&D thing either, I dont like in any RPG I have played. I take that back, I dont mind it in video games for time sink, but table time is more valuable and Id rather spend it on adventure. The simulation take isnt convincing either as economies never make sense in D&D. YMMV.

 

[Lanefan]

Good riddance. Give me adventure not ledger maintenance.

Give me character development outside of the adventuring routine. The only time that can happen is downtime.

I've never really seen the point of cost and upkeep tables other than to gate items from PCs, and/or make them a PITA to maintain. This isnt a D&D thing either, I dont like in any RPG I have played. I take that back, I dont mind it in video games for time sink, but table time is more valuable and Id rather spend it on adventure. The simulation take isnt convincing either as economies never make sense in D&D. YMMV.

Gating items from PCs is itself not a problem; and also just happens to be realistic: "No, you can't afford that, no matter how hard you dream about it"; just like me not being able to afford to buy a Bentley or Rolls Royce.

I agree that D&D economies often don't make a whole lotta sense, but having no economy at all isn't the answer IMO.

 

[tetrasodium]

The other option is to just not worry so much about the math collapsing - if it's all that finely tuned that just adding some magic items is going to break everything, then IMO that's poor design rather than good design.

You are wayy off with that statement. With 5e it assumes zero magic items and unoptimized PCs. Start changing that without significantly changing bounded accuracy crippled monsters and the math grossly collapses somewhere in mid to late tier 2 or early tier3 depending on how many players have a smidgen of thought to their build before magic items were added.