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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8956883" data-attributes="member: 6877472">It depends on what role money has in your game.  In 1e, amassing wealth gave you experience points.  In 2e, however, it did not.  Some classes needed money more than others; if you're a Fighter or Cleric, for example, you might want that suit of full plate, and saving up for it will take awhile.For all of my AD&D characters, saving up for a horse was usually the first hurdle.  And then maintaining a "new horse fund" in case the DM decided that it was time for your horse to make the pilgrimage to horse heaven- I'm convinced the Horse Lord has it out for me!Ironically, a lot of the DM's I knew had a vested interest in keeping me poor.  And if I did acquire money, they demanded to know where I was keeping it.  If I tried invest, my investments failed.  Buy a house, it burns down.  Or I get hit with taxes.  You go for a walk in the market, you can expect 30 pick pocket attempts.  Inns would charge outrageous prices for services, and nobody was buying or selling magic items (but if you got too many magic items, you can bet that some event would remove them from your inventory once the DM started griping about it; never no mind that he was the one who put them in adventures in the first place!).After awhile, I just started donating all my money to churches.  I had a DM want to run an adventure where we would need to get on a ship.  "Oh, that's unfortunate, I can't afford it.""What do you mean you can't afford it?!  You're rich!""I'm afraid not, I donated most of my money to that church of Pholtus, remember?"DM: "Argh, fine, they let you work on the ship for passage."You just accepted it as part of the game loop.  Most of the things you wanted once you got past the big purchases were cheap anyways, and anyone who played an archer in 2e got wise and took Bowyer/Fletcher proficiency and made their own arrows.  Players would always go hunting for stray arrows after fights.  You accepted that you couldn't use a shield or a two-handed weapon in a dungeon since you needed a torch hand; no big loss really, the shield was only +1 AC and the two-hander only did 1 more point of damage on average against normal foes.Every time a magic weapon dropped you'd ask if it shed light; typically it didn't.  Eventually a Cleric would get high enough level to start casting Continual Light, and that generally stopped being a concern.  Or you'd get a party of all Half-Elves for the infravision.It was usually the DM's who stopped tracking rations; they'd start some epic adventure with "you've traveled for three weeks across the plains, when...""Uh, hang on.  We can't travel that far.  We don't have enough rations for the trip.""Oh for the...look, you make it, ok?""Sure", we said and that was that.None of this really bothered me until 4e, when spellcasters could shoot magic all day long, but our ranger had to track arrows.  That seemed a bit unfair to me; it wasn't like it was a huge drain on resources, but it seemed rather imbalanced.  When I asked, I always got "well, the bow has more range than the at-will".  "Yeah but, how often does that matter?"  crickets(Most DM's learn really quick to never let players engage foes at long range; you end up with a bunch of dead orcs, lol).At this point in my gaming career, I can honestly say that the only reason to track stuff like this is for verisimilitude.  Game balance isn't wrecked by ignoring most of it, and if you present players with a logistics problem, they'll typically find a way to solve it forever because the constant resource drain annoys them, lol.What I've taken to do is tell my players up front that I'll be deducting a set amount of money from their earnings each in-game month for "maintenance costs".  This includes rooms at Inns, meals, and little details like ammunition and spell components.  If they don't like this, they are free to track these things themselves.  There is the caveat that if they do become wholly separated from civilization for more than a month they might run into problems, but that's a rare event.I typically take the money directly out of their treasure without even telling them about it; so far everyone seems happy with this arrangement.</blockquote>

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