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In fifth-edition D&D, what is gold for?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7001436" data-attributes="member: 6778044"><p>OK, I'm not entirely sure what posts are problematic to you. But I'll readdress the original post.</p><p></p><p>First, I think the "problem" is in part based on the expectations of the players, and that, in part, is based on how/when they learned how to play D&D. </p><p></p><p>If you started during AD&D, particularly if you approach it with the original Arneson/Gygax approach using hirelings, paying sages for information, building strongholds, etc., this has remained possible through all editions of the game, with the possible exception of 4e (I don't know it well enough to comment). This also applies if you were from the Greenwood style of play, with your characters cemented firmly in the world, with regular lives, expenses, etc. There weren't a lot of rules to support this (although as 2e progressed there were rules for just about everything), you just understood that life costs money, and you spend it. Also characters have personalities, and some of them have expensive tastes, in addition, with things like the Volo's Guides you had lots of things to spend money on each time you went to town.</p><p></p><p>If you started in later editions of the game, such as 3/3.5e when magic item purchases were expected, or 4e with its own method for addressing gold, then you may not have been introduced to either of those earlier play styles.</p><p></p><p>The 5e rules specifically introduce hirelings, monthly expenses, and downtime activities, including magic item creation and some fashion of pricing magic items if you want to have magic items for sale. These are scattered through the DMG and PH, and are little more than a paragraph or two on each subject. Seemingly because (and they even state this is some cases) that people find these types of activities boring. Some of us don't. But if you take the expenses rule (PHB 157, DMG 126), the downtime activities rules (PHB 187, DMG 127) and hirelings (PHB 159 under Services and DMG 94), you actually have most of the rules that existed in AD&D.</p><p></p><p>So the real issue seems to be one of focus.</p><p></p><p>You have gamers from earlier editions with expectations that are not met in a manner they expect. For example, magic item trade/sale. WotC has mentioned that they aren't interested in reprinting everything that's been published before, nor do they intend to write rules for every possibility that exists in the game. They have provided a framework, with the expectation that you will determine what works for your campaign, or you can go back to earlier editions (the 3.5e SRD is readily available online, and most of the books are available to purchase digitally) to flesh out what you want.</p><p></p><p>You have new gamers who are picking up from 5e. The presentation of how to play the game is done through the rule books and published adventures. The APs don't spend a lot of time in town, or fixing the characters within the campaign. They are designed to keep you on the adventure, and "skip past the boring parts" although not as much as 4e tended to. But that play-style also assumes that you will gain a level every several sessions, and reach the end of the AP around 15th level within, say, 3-12 months depending on how many sessions, and how long your sessions are. With that approach, relieving the characters of their gold is irrelevant, because you're about at the point when you'll retire that character, which is further encouraged by the next AP requiring characters of 1st to 5th level. So the design of the game itself in this case has removed the need for gold.</p><p></p><p>Another source of player expectations are those that come from other games, or video games. Many provide some method for spending gold, almost always centered on the goal of improving your character and their capabilities. This is similar to the 4e method of building magic items directly into the character advancement scheme, where they are expected and have an associated cost in gold. This doesn't have a direct correlation in 5e, but you can use the basic framework to determine the cost of magic items. You as a DM are required to determine what might be available, although there are guidelines on DMG pg 130 for selling them.</p><p></p><p>Those guidelines highlight the problem I have with all of these types of rules, though, and why rules regarding sales of magic items, item creation, etc. are extremely difficult to write. Their rules base the price, and how long it takes to find a buyer based on the rarity of the magic item. You can make a check once every 10 days. So it might take some time to sell it. But if you're new to D&D, and you don't have a group of existing players to help you learn, how do you learn the game? Using the core books and an adventure. None of the adventures present much in the way of spending time in town, much less a home. The non-adventure parts of the campaign are all lumped into the Downtime Activity umbrella and occur largely off-stage. So taking 10 days or 30 days is irrelevant as long as the players agree that they aren't going anywhere until the process is done. In other words, there really isn't any point in a process that takes time unless that time means something in your campaign.</p><p></p><p>This approach works very, very well with the Gygax approach, where people have multiple characters, and there's a large group of players and each session typically involves different players. Gary recommended a 1 day real world = 1 day game world approach for characters that weren't in play, so that all characters would be on the same time scale. Otherwise not so much.</p><p></p><p>And really that's the crux of the problem in designing a system. It is highly dependent on the play style of your campaign. My players have characters that have a life and like stuff. Think about this world, what do people spend money on when they win the lottery? Trips, fun, houses, cars, more expensive stuff like bigger TVs, computers, expensive furniture, jewelry, etc. If you were an adventurer and came back with a bunch of gold, what would you spend it on? Most people would spend it on things like those. My treasures often include things like rugs from Calimshan, tapestries, sets of bowls handcarved from rare Chultan wood with dinosaur motifs, jewelry (which in my campaign, unless it's a "known" piece can be purchased for 10x or more their weight in gold and value in gems, but if you want to resell it can only be sold for its weight - just like real life...), and all sorts of other things besides just coins. Monstrous humanoids almost never have coins in my campaigns, because they don't have a coin-based economy or a society where money matters. No orc in their right mind would trade a human-forged steel sword for coins. They pay taxes and fees, and a % of coins when they change it into local currency. My rules require wizards to have a library and laboratory to learn spells and craft items, and that requires a building to put them in, with regular expenses to stock it, etc. They have families that they give coin to, farms, businesses, and homes. They host parties and go on hunting trips. Much of the adventure occurs when they are doing something else, like taking a vacation to Cormyr. Occasionally they might be the target of thieves or bandits.</p><p></p><p>If your campaign doesn't play out the periods between adventures, and you don't concern yourself with downtime much, then just go through the rules once as a DM and determine what amount or percentage of coins to relieve them of each month. Then decide what magic items you want to be available to purchase. I'd recommend consumables, weapons and armor be the most common. I'd also recommend non-recharging magic items (like wands). If the prices in the DMG don't work, check out 3.5e prices or 2e prices and see if they work better as a rough guideline. If you aren't playing out the lives of the characters outside of the dungeon, than things like economy and whether the gold of the adventurers mean anything is irrelevant.</p><p></p><p>The basic framework <em>is</em> in the game. But it's scattered in several places and not built upon or designed for an in-game approach. It's also considered entirely optional because the game is more centered on a design of rapid level advancement, where gaining experience and new abilities is more of a focus than gaining treasure. A strict reading of 6-8 encounters per day and recommended experience per player per day, a character can go from 1st to 15th+ level in a month, and 20th level by 35 or so days. For all practical purposes you <em>are</em> winning the lottery, and you do what everybody does when they win the lottery. You retire.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ilbranteloth, post: 7001436, member: 6778044"] OK, I'm not entirely sure what posts are problematic to you. But I'll readdress the original post. First, I think the "problem" is in part based on the expectations of the players, and that, in part, is based on how/when they learned how to play D&D. If you started during AD&D, particularly if you approach it with the original Arneson/Gygax approach using hirelings, paying sages for information, building strongholds, etc., this has remained possible through all editions of the game, with the possible exception of 4e (I don't know it well enough to comment). This also applies if you were from the Greenwood style of play, with your characters cemented firmly in the world, with regular lives, expenses, etc. There weren't a lot of rules to support this (although as 2e progressed there were rules for just about everything), you just understood that life costs money, and you spend it. Also characters have personalities, and some of them have expensive tastes, in addition, with things like the Volo's Guides you had lots of things to spend money on each time you went to town. If you started in later editions of the game, such as 3/3.5e when magic item purchases were expected, or 4e with its own method for addressing gold, then you may not have been introduced to either of those earlier play styles. The 5e rules specifically introduce hirelings, monthly expenses, and downtime activities, including magic item creation and some fashion of pricing magic items if you want to have magic items for sale. These are scattered through the DMG and PH, and are little more than a paragraph or two on each subject. Seemingly because (and they even state this is some cases) that people find these types of activities boring. Some of us don't. But if you take the expenses rule (PHB 157, DMG 126), the downtime activities rules (PHB 187, DMG 127) and hirelings (PHB 159 under Services and DMG 94), you actually have most of the rules that existed in AD&D. So the real issue seems to be one of focus. You have gamers from earlier editions with expectations that are not met in a manner they expect. For example, magic item trade/sale. WotC has mentioned that they aren't interested in reprinting everything that's been published before, nor do they intend to write rules for every possibility that exists in the game. They have provided a framework, with the expectation that you will determine what works for your campaign, or you can go back to earlier editions (the 3.5e SRD is readily available online, and most of the books are available to purchase digitally) to flesh out what you want. You have new gamers who are picking up from 5e. The presentation of how to play the game is done through the rule books and published adventures. The APs don't spend a lot of time in town, or fixing the characters within the campaign. They are designed to keep you on the adventure, and "skip past the boring parts" although not as much as 4e tended to. But that play-style also assumes that you will gain a level every several sessions, and reach the end of the AP around 15th level within, say, 3-12 months depending on how many sessions, and how long your sessions are. With that approach, relieving the characters of their gold is irrelevant, because you're about at the point when you'll retire that character, which is further encouraged by the next AP requiring characters of 1st to 5th level. So the design of the game itself in this case has removed the need for gold. Another source of player expectations are those that come from other games, or video games. Many provide some method for spending gold, almost always centered on the goal of improving your character and their capabilities. This is similar to the 4e method of building magic items directly into the character advancement scheme, where they are expected and have an associated cost in gold. This doesn't have a direct correlation in 5e, but you can use the basic framework to determine the cost of magic items. You as a DM are required to determine what might be available, although there are guidelines on DMG pg 130 for selling them. Those guidelines highlight the problem I have with all of these types of rules, though, and why rules regarding sales of magic items, item creation, etc. are extremely difficult to write. Their rules base the price, and how long it takes to find a buyer based on the rarity of the magic item. You can make a check once every 10 days. So it might take some time to sell it. But if you're new to D&D, and you don't have a group of existing players to help you learn, how do you learn the game? Using the core books and an adventure. None of the adventures present much in the way of spending time in town, much less a home. The non-adventure parts of the campaign are all lumped into the Downtime Activity umbrella and occur largely off-stage. So taking 10 days or 30 days is irrelevant as long as the players agree that they aren't going anywhere until the process is done. In other words, there really isn't any point in a process that takes time unless that time means something in your campaign. This approach works very, very well with the Gygax approach, where people have multiple characters, and there's a large group of players and each session typically involves different players. Gary recommended a 1 day real world = 1 day game world approach for characters that weren't in play, so that all characters would be on the same time scale. Otherwise not so much. And really that's the crux of the problem in designing a system. It is highly dependent on the play style of your campaign. My players have characters that have a life and like stuff. Think about this world, what do people spend money on when they win the lottery? Trips, fun, houses, cars, more expensive stuff like bigger TVs, computers, expensive furniture, jewelry, etc. If you were an adventurer and came back with a bunch of gold, what would you spend it on? Most people would spend it on things like those. My treasures often include things like rugs from Calimshan, tapestries, sets of bowls handcarved from rare Chultan wood with dinosaur motifs, jewelry (which in my campaign, unless it's a "known" piece can be purchased for 10x or more their weight in gold and value in gems, but if you want to resell it can only be sold for its weight - just like real life...), and all sorts of other things besides just coins. Monstrous humanoids almost never have coins in my campaigns, because they don't have a coin-based economy or a society where money matters. No orc in their right mind would trade a human-forged steel sword for coins. They pay taxes and fees, and a % of coins when they change it into local currency. My rules require wizards to have a library and laboratory to learn spells and craft items, and that requires a building to put them in, with regular expenses to stock it, etc. They have families that they give coin to, farms, businesses, and homes. They host parties and go on hunting trips. Much of the adventure occurs when they are doing something else, like taking a vacation to Cormyr. Occasionally they might be the target of thieves or bandits. If your campaign doesn't play out the periods between adventures, and you don't concern yourself with downtime much, then just go through the rules once as a DM and determine what amount or percentage of coins to relieve them of each month. Then decide what magic items you want to be available to purchase. I'd recommend consumables, weapons and armor be the most common. I'd also recommend non-recharging magic items (like wands). If the prices in the DMG don't work, check out 3.5e prices or 2e prices and see if they work better as a rough guideline. If you aren't playing out the lives of the characters outside of the dungeon, than things like economy and whether the gold of the adventurers mean anything is irrelevant. The basic framework [I]is[/I] in the game. But it's scattered in several places and not built upon or designed for an in-game approach. It's also considered entirely optional because the game is more centered on a design of rapid level advancement, where gaining experience and new abilities is more of a focus than gaining treasure. A strict reading of 6-8 encounters per day and recommended experience per player per day, a character can go from 1st to 15th+ level in a month, and 20th level by 35 or so days. For all practical purposes you [I]are[/I] winning the lottery, and you do what everybody does when they win the lottery. You retire. [/QUOTE]
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