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In fifth-edition D&D, what is gold for?
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<blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 6980601" data-attributes="member: 6777052"><p>Because it comes under the heading of "power", which I did list. Magic items and costly equipment make your character mechanically more powerful. That's what they do. In fact, that's <em>all</em> they do. If one of your motivations for playing D&D is the satisfaction of making your character more powerful (and I'm including magic, here, as a form of personal power) that's fine, I can sympathise with that. No problem.</p><p></p><p>Gold is only valuable in the sense that other people (i.e NPCs) are willing to do things for you or give your their stuff in exchange for it. If your idea of personal power is a <em>+2 Sword of Goblin Smiting</em> and someone has one for sale, that's okay but just trading gold for it isn't very heroic in itself; if you can employ someone to make, steal or recover one for you from the Uttermost Caves of Doom, that adds a little of flavour to the narrative although possibly only a little. Spending the gold on sages to discover where to find the Caves of Doom and potions to keep you alive while you go and get it yourself is more indirect way of achieving it and generates more story, thereby making the game more interesting, at the expense of taking longer. It depends on how much you and your DM want to spin out the story. And that comes right back to the question "what is D&D <em>for</em>?"</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BoldItalic, post: 6980601, member: 6777052"] Because it comes under the heading of "power", which I did list. Magic items and costly equipment make your character mechanically more powerful. That's what they do. In fact, that's [i]all[/i] they do. If one of your motivations for playing D&D is the satisfaction of making your character more powerful (and I'm including magic, here, as a form of personal power) that's fine, I can sympathise with that. No problem. Gold is only valuable in the sense that other people (i.e NPCs) are willing to do things for you or give your their stuff in exchange for it. If your idea of personal power is a [i]+2 Sword of Goblin Smiting[/i] and someone has one for sale, that's okay but just trading gold for it isn't very heroic in itself; if you can employ someone to make, steal or recover one for you from the Uttermost Caves of Doom, that adds a little of flavour to the narrative although possibly only a little. Spending the gold on sages to discover where to find the Caves of Doom and potions to keep you alive while you go and get it yourself is more indirect way of achieving it and generates more story, thereby making the game more interesting, at the expense of taking longer. It depends on how much you and your DM want to spin out the story. And that comes right back to the question "what is D&D [i]for[/i]?" [/QUOTE]
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In fifth-edition D&D, what is gold for?
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