D&D 5E (2014) Is there too much gold/reward?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

When does that actually matter in gameplay?

When your DM makes what you choose to do in-character matter.

 

[nswanson27]

When your DM makes what you choose to do in-character matter.

Perhaps I should say in the narrative in official adventures released by WoTC. Otherwise, it's at most a tiny detour that has to merge back to where we would have gotten to anyways, without any lasting effect. If the DM is making their own adventures, that's a whole different kettle of fish - then they're not restricted in any way, and this whole discussion is moot in that case.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Perhaps I should say in the narrative in official adventures released by WoTC. Otherwise, it's at most a tiny detour that has to merge back to where we would have gotten to anyways, without any lasting effect. If the DM is making their own adventures, that's a whole different kettle of fish - then they're not restricted in any way, and this whole discussion is moot in that case.

A DM running a published adventure is only restricted in whichever ways they choose to restrict them self.

 

[nswanson27]

A DM running a published adventure is only restricted in whichever ways they choose to restrict them self.

Not true if it's Adventurer's League. Otherwise yes, but the lack of form or guidance for those things to take shape, and just putting it all on the DM to come up with something, seems like they're having to do something that WoTC should have already done.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sorry, but my observation is that all these things doesn't add up to much compared to what you get. Also none of these things gets me excited about getting gold. There's nothing for me to "save for" that has any tangible effect on adventuring. So what if I own a whole city? When does that actually matter in gameplay?

WOTC made gold largely not matter by not connecting it to XP. I still count a stupid economy that applies to only a half dozen people in the world yet accounts for 90% of trade of any given kingdom to not really matter. Gear upgrades are the most boring uses of gold ever. That combined with so much table time shopping instead of adventuring leads to snoozefests.

I love treasure as XP. Do that and the excitement about finding treasure never goes away no matter how much the players accumulate. Thats what I'm planning for my next 5E campaign.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Not true if it's Adventurer's League.

Unless you are claiming DMs are forced to run Adventurer's League sessions against their will, then that falls within "ways they choose to restrict them self."

Otherwise yes, but the lack of form or guidance for those things to take shape, and just putting it all on the DM to come up with something, seems like they're having to do something that WoTC should have already done.

I will agree that better advice on how to incorporate these sort of things, or even better advice on how to DM in general, would be fantastic to have.

I can't agree, however, that there is any amount of universality to advice, which would be needed in order to make the advice given not have a high potential to not be useful to a significant portion of DMs. For example, I can give essay after essay on how to DM in the way that I DM - but if you are a DM looking for a game-play experience of a different sort, all of my advice will be useless (specifically, if you are looking for tightly balanced encounters and/or story-lines primarily devised by the DM rather than driven by the players, you won't be able to use much if any of the advice I would give).

 

[Jester David]

For me this just indicates that there isn't enough valid uses for gold in 5e. Any suggestions that I've heard to remedy this (that doesn't take this issue head-on) are anecdotal at best.

Kinda.
There aren't any uses for gold for optimizing in 5e. So if you only play D&D for combat then, no, there aren't a lot of uses for gold. Because once those purchases exist, they become mandatory.

This is a big change from 3e/4e where you got tonnes of gold but also had tonnes of magic items you had to buy in order to maintain the expected power level of characters. Characters effectively didn't *really* have any money, since the vast majority of gold went to purchasing gear; no one would spend money to buy a castle or a sailing ship as that meant not having a +4 belt or a +3 weapon (unless the DM was implementing house rules, such as not having magic for sale). Adventuring was a zero-profit business until you had all your slots filled and the price of upgrading items reached such ridiculous levels that your spare change was more money that a commoner saw in their lifetime and could be spent on frivolous things.
If you stripped out the assumed magic item purchases from 3e/4e and switched to an inherent bonus system there was just as little to spend money on.

I actually figured it out once, for a Pathfinder campaign. I removed 80% of the Wealth By Level and implemented an Inherent Bonuses point system. At level 10, the leftover money (20% WBL) they gained that level was 3,000 gp, and the characters each had something close to 13,000 gp, with the entire party having over 50k. Otherwise known as enough money for dozen commoners to live on a century.
Had they wanted, they could hire an army of 5,000 people, pay them 9 gold (over three-month's wages) and had them zerg rush the Big Bad.
And, again, that's just 20% of the expected money.

In 3.5e/Pathfinder, a good quality inn and meals costs 2.5 gp per day. An adult human in a D&D setting live for 15,000 days barring accident. So once you have 40,000 you can just retire and live in a *good* inn for life. Think 4-star all-inclusive resort. A 3e adventurer can hit that mark halfway through level 9. If they're willing to accept retirement at a Common quality inn, they can retire as low as 6th level. 4e only slightly delays the retirement age to 7th and 10th level.
Unless there's end-of-the-world type stakes, there's no reason to keep adventuring in those systems.

 

[Jediking]

Sorry, but my observation is that all these things doesn't add up to much compared to what you get. Also none of these things gets me excited about getting gold. There's nothing for me to "save for" that has any tangible effect on adventuring. So what if I own a whole city? When does that actually matter in gameplay?

There's been a lot of debate about this in other threads. If you want it to affect gameplay, you need the right table and DM (as always). You need to be interested in using it to do something. Some people might not care at all about saving for a stronghold, some might love it just for the flavour, others might want it but not enough to devote any rules to it.

A couple of my players look for any coppers they can get in goblin corpses, and are happier when I give them 100 silver pieces than 11 gold. But I don't really track gold too much. If they want to buy marital weapons or good armour, they usually have to wait or convince a smith to do it. Not a whole quest, but just a small amount of talking. For us it works, a little bit of roleplaying to get a weapon. If one guy just wants his Greataxe without being forced to talk, I just say "he picks it off the shelf and hands it to you." Gold and shopping can be fun if people enjoy managing it, but can also bog the game down for others. Like anything else, YMMV.

 

[Kite474]

Kinda.
There aren't any uses for gold for optimizing in 5e. So if you only play D&D for combat then, no, there aren't a lot of uses for gold. Because once those purchases exist, they become mandatory.

This is a big change from 3e/4e where you got tonnes of gold but also had tonnes of magic items you had to buy in order to maintain the expected power level of characters. Characters effectively didn't *really* have any money, since the vast majority of gold went to purchasing gear; no one would spend money to buy a castle or a sailing ship as that meant not having a +4 belt or a +3 weapon (unless the DM was implementing house rules, such as not having magic for sale). Adventuring was a zero-profit business until you had all your slots filled and the price of upgrading items reached such ridiculous levels that your spare change was more money that a commoner saw in their lifetime and could be spent on frivolous things.
If you stripped out the assumed magic item purchases from 3e/4e and switched to an inherent bonus system there was just as little to spend money on.

I actually figured it out once, for a Pathfinder campaign. I removed 80% of the Wealth By Level and implemented an Inherent Bonuses point system. At level 10, the leftover money (20% WBL) they gained that level was 3,000 gp, and the characters each had something close to 13,000 gp, with the entire party having over 50k. Otherwise known as enough money for dozen commoners to live on a century.
Had they wanted, they could hire an army of 5,000 people, pay them 9 gold (over three-month's wages) and had them zerg rush the Big Bad.
And, again, that's just 20% of the expected money.

In 3.5e/Pathfinder, a good quality inn and meals costs 2.5 gp per day. An adult human in a D&D setting live for 15,000 days barring accident. So once you have 40,000 you can just retire and live in a *good* inn for life. Think 4-star all-inclusive resort. A 3e adventurer can hit that mark halfway through level 9. If they're willing to accept retirement at a Common quality inn, they can retire as low as 6th level. 4e only slightly delays the retirement age to 7th and 10th level.
Unless there's end-of-the-world type stakes, there's no reason to keep adventuring in those systems.

You know I think that might actually be the big rub between systems, and the general stretching pains from switching.

5e Expects career adventurers who only retire when they are physically not up to the task, or when they just get enough gold to retire.

3.PF/4e Expects "once in a lifetime adventures" your off to save the world and the journeys over when its saved... Well when the worlds saved and you've finished your personal quest. Quest over, Que epilogue cards, Roll credits.

Both work well enough. It's just 5e's style has not really been part of the popular conception for a good while now.

 

[Bruce Vistani]

The first question a good dm asks is: how are they going to carry all this gold. The second question a good DM asks is: where are they going to keep it? The third question is: who is going to steal it?

A lot of newer players laugh when I say that in AD&D that gold has a 1:1 value in XP. Gygax wasn't stupid. He knew thats how you make gold important.