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

[CapnZapp]

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 all people want to spend time and energy on finding uses for their gold that's "orthogonal to adventuring capabilities".

If you want to, say, build an orphanage with all your gold, good for you. One group might even make an adventure out of it, and that's equally good.

But WotC have removed the choice and they don't even want to admit they have done so.

All the groups that just want to get back down the dungeon might not have the interest in spending time on orphanages. They just want to convert their gold into stuff that helps them in the next dungeon. Magic weapons, for instance.

WotC should provide all these groups with what they need, and what they need is magic item prices that result in balance.

If you don't want or need this info, then don't use it - but don't claim it needs to be gone from the game. That is precisely what WotC has picked up on. They want to get away scot free with no longer providing reasonable balance in pricing items.

And they have used the argument "its what people want" while deliberately ignoring that its what some people want (and that these people should not get what they want when that means other people don't get what they need).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So the your wealth level would split everything into 3 categories. I’ll give an example of a Comfortable wealth level.

- Things you can buy as a matter of course: A regular inn stay, a good meal, any items worth 5gp or less.

- Things there is a chance you can buy: A horse, a suit of chainmail - with a successful wealth check.

- Things you can’t buy at that wealth level. Full plate armour.

Expensive things outside your purchasing power like a castle might require maintaining a certain wealth level for a period, or agreeing to a drop in wealth for an agreed time.

This is very similar to how it works in Blue Rose, I believe.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

WotC should provide all these groups with what they need, and what they need is magic item prices that result in balance.

Turning gold into combat ability -- and making that not wreck the game balance -- would require making dramatic changes to the base level math of the game.

It simply will not happen with 5E or the 2024 books, since it would require tossing everything else they've produced to date, since suddenly, the assumption would be that groups will be much, much more robust.

Folks wanting a D&D that works this way should pick up one of the earlier versions of D&D, which are happily almost all available via PoD from DriveThruRPG and DMs Guild.

 

[CapnZapp]

Turning gold into combat ability -- and making that not wreck the game balance -- would require making dramatic changes to the base level math of the game.

It simply will not happen with 5E or the 2024 books, since it would require tossing everything else they've produced to date, since suddenly, the assumption would be that groups will be much, much more robust.

Folks wanting a D&D that works this way should pick up one of the earlier versions of D&D, which are happily almost all available via PoD from DriveThruRPG and DMs Guild.

No nothing of that is true.

You don't need to change diddly squat. GMs are already allowing players to turn gold into combat ability. The only difference is that instead of thousands of GMs having to reinvent the wheel over and over, WotC would perform that hard work (and do it better than most GMs). After all, we all purchase D&D in order to not have to come up with our own rules.

If you don't offer any way for your players to "turn gold into combat ability", don't use the official magic item prices. Just don't stand in the way of all of us who believe the omission of rational pricing is one of 5th Editions biggest failings. Simple.

WotC don't want to do this, because it is hard. The sentiment you're expressing is precisely what they are using in order to get away with it.

Suggesting "just go use old stuff" is incredibly dismissive, and does not merit a comment.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You don't need to change diddly squat. GMs are already allowing players to turn gold into combat ability. The only difference is that instead of thousands of GMs having to reinvent the wheel over and over, WotC would perform that hard work (and do it better than most GMs). After all, we all purchase D&D in order to not have to come up with our own rules.

The game's math is built around the assumptions that PCs will get zero magic items between levels 1 and 20. Balance in 5E, such as it is, is predicated on this.

Compare to 4E, where PC progression doesn't keep up with monster progression without magic items boosting stats and combat effectiveness at a predictable rate.

Not being happy about this doesn't make it not true. (Good lord, there are a lot of things in this world that I don't like, but that hasn't made any of them stop being true.)

Just don't stand in the way of all of us who believe the omission of rational pricing is one of 5th Editions biggest failings.

I don't disagree with this, especially since most of the fan-made ones wildly underweight or overweight certain effects.

WotC don't want to do this, because it is hard.

They literally built game balance around magic items in 4E. It's not hard. It's elementary school math.

Suggesting "just go use old stuff" is incredibly dismissive, and does not merit a comment.

Well, you did comment. And I wasn't being dismissive.

If the D&D you want exists, you should play it, instead of being mad that the D&D you don't like isn't the D&D that you do.

I love butterscotch pudding, but I don't get upset that chocolate pudding isn't butterscotchy enough. I just go and eat butterscotch pudding.

 

[Lanefan]

All this just tells me you don't have much experience with adventure path style of play.

Where the path is the whole of the campaign? No.

Where the path is embedded within a bigger campaign? Yes. And after a while, all adventuring all the time gets stale; particularly when some of us have characters with goals and plans in the setting that are outside the specific series of adventures we're undertaking at the moment, and want to get on with them.

 

[MGibster]

This is very similar to how it works in Blue Rose, I believe.

And Call of Cthulhu. In the last D&D campaign I played in, Eberron, the DM just said, "Assume you can pretty much buy whatever mundane equipment you want. Don't worry about tracking gold when you stay at an inn, buy a meal, etc., etc." And it worked just fine. We didn't get gobs and gobs of treasure either.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And Call of Cthulhu. In the last D&D campaign I played in, Eberron, the DM just said, "Assume you can pretty much buy whatever mundane equipment you want. Don't worry about tracking gold when you stay at an inn, buy a meal, etc., etc." And it worked just fine. We didn't get gobs and gobs of treasure either.

It works just fine, it's just not what everyone wants.

 

[Retros_x]

Treasure is the most important thing in the game.

It's a big failing of 5e design that it gives no good places or reasons to spend it.

Its only a big failing in design if your assumption is true, but you could easily assume otherwise that the treasure is not the important thing in the game from the perspective of the designers and they did actually succeed in their design goals (to make it less important).

 

[tetrasodium]

Its only a big failing in design if your assumption is true, but you could easily assume otherwise that the treasure is not the important thing in the game from the perspective of the designers and they did actually succeed in their design goals (to make it less important).

We don't need to make any "assumptions" anything wotc loved to brag about it being done deliberately over the last several years as if there are no problems with those design choices.

back in the 2e DMG there was a great page on the importance of having enough treasure & risks of having too much/too little, someone at 5e ignored that or never read it & felt they knew better... Said page is here. 5e ignored that & designed for the worst of both while stripping the GM-Toolbox of things like bonus type conflicts & slot conflicts to make the already tenuous tightrope the GM needed to walk in fixing that deliberately created problem into a needlessly difficult one. Even things that5e did add went practically unused as treantmonk succinctly describes here