D&D 5E Is Treasure and Magic Items Important To You?

[Charlaquin]

Yeah for a long time I tried to give PCs things to spend gold on in the form of special materials, hiring crafts folk to work on crafting jobs while they adventure and other hireling expenses, strongholds and businesses, buying land, investing in people and businesses and towns, etc, but I’m finding that actually tracking the gold for that sort of thing is awful gameplay. I’d rather abstract it somehow into macro resource points that you can spend.

1 macrocoin pays a single skilled hireling for a season of work. etc

Yeah, that definitely works.

My ideal would be more that no PC ever has a magic item they don’t want, because their magic items are specific to them, but yeah I’m all for that or a 4e style “break it down into residuum and use it to make what you do want” system.

Yeah, tailoring loot to the players is an option, and a good one in my opinion, though there are lots of folks who find it feels too artificial. Being able to sell unwanted loot and use the money to buy wanted loot (or break down unwanted loot and use the materials to craft wanted loot - 6 of one, half a dozen of the other) is mostly for if loot is awarded randomly, and in that case it’s essential, in my opinion.

 

[Charlaquin]

In one game I was a player in there was always exactly one item that was perfect for each player. It felt way too gamey for me. So in the game I run for my son I mix the generally useful with the random with the specifically useful. Not everyone gets something they really want every time, but they all eventually do.

It’s interesting that this kind of thing gets called “gamey,” when I’m not sure I can think of any game that’s like that. I can definitely see how it would come across as artificial, but not in a way that I think “gamey” describes well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, that definitely works.

Yeah, tailoring loot to the players is an option, and a good one in my opinion, though there are lots of folks who find it feels too artificial. Being able to sell unwanted loot and use the money to buy wanted loot (or break down unwanted loot and use the materials to craft wanted loot - 6 of one, half a dozen of the other) is mostly for if loot is awarded randomly, and in that case it’s essential, in my opinion.

Yeah I don’t like tailoring loot drops to PCs, which is why I largely just let PCs craft or commission magic items, and other magic items are tailored to the NPC that will be using them.

 

[Asisreo]

I mix random treasure with treasure curated for the adventure, not the players. For example, a Trident of Fish Command might be a precious heirloom from the Sahuagin Nation, whether the players obtain that depends on their actions.

But when making rooms with treasure chests, I mentally unwind by rolling and changing anything that makes absolutely no sense.

Sometimes, I'll let the monsters use the magic items but I try to be careful since it does affect challenge ratings.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I like fun toys and am way more concerned about 'fun to use' rather than 'special'. I not only have magic items, but alchemical, mechanical, steam, and mastercraft items as well. All available for sale so the players can have what they want. I never roll random treasure (because no one has ever been delighted to get an extremely magical exotic weapon no one in the party is proficient with) and have banished +X garbage that does nothing interesting to the shadow realm.

 

[TerraDave]

I like them. I also like money to have some separation from items, and to be used for life-style, training, carousing, etc, and sometimes when I DM I encourage this. Though I also have the occasional magic shop.

I think old editions emphasized the too much, 5e maybe not enough.

 

[Malmuria]

but I’m finding that actually tracking the gold for that sort of thing is awful gameplay. I’d rather abstract it somehow into macro resource points that you can spend.

1 macrocoin pays a single skilled hireling for a season of work. etc

I was toying with the idea of having a wealth "score" that increases by level. So instead of tracking gp, a player would try to buy something, roll a die and add their wealth bonus. It would have to be structured so that commonplace things were an automatic success (e.g. you are third level yes you can afford a candle), but if they wanted to buy something more expensive like plate mail, they would need a lucky roll or a higher wealth score. Granted, common sense would need to apply to make sure the players didn't abuse this mechanic ("yes, I'll take 500 flasks of oil please, thank you").

 

[Malmuria]

Does anyone have experience playing an inventory-centric game like knave or into the odd over the long term? I'm wondering viable/interesting is it for "advancement" to generally take the form of more powerful items rather than through a character class.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I was toying with the idea of having a wealth "score" that increases by level. So instead of tracking gp, a player would try to buy something, roll a die and add their wealth bonus. It would have to be structured so that commonplace things were an automatic success (e.g. you are third level yes you can afford a candle), but if they wanted to buy something more expensive like plate mail, they would need a lucky roll or a higher wealth score. Granted, common sense would need to apply to make sure the players didn't abuse this mechanic ("yes, I'll take 500 flasks of oil please, thank you").

That is interesting. Could use the math of a skill with a stat that goes up by a couple modifier points over 20 levels, so start at +5, hit +10 or +11 by level 20, with opportunity to get “expertise” by doing very lucrative jobs.

My current thought is more along the lines of gaining 1mc from completing a quest, and like I said hiring a professional worker for a season costs 1mc. So to pay someone to help you craft magic armor that will take 3 months to craft, you could spend 2mc to have a team of crafters, ingredients aquirer, and some assistants, and go adventure while the NPCs do most of the boring work.

Or you could hire a skilled quartermaster to run a mercantile business for you.

More MC means more room to get and do cool things, without the hassle of counting.

Does anyone have experience playing an inventory-centric game like knave or into the odd over the long term? I'm wondering viable/interesting is it for "advancement" to generally take the form of more powerful items rather than through a character class.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Another thread made me wonder about this.

5e doesn’t make either actually necessary. The only things that rely on money don’t need amounts anywhere near the kind of loot the DMG tells you to hand out, and the game is built so that magic items are purely a bonus.

So how about y’all? Have you run campaigns with little or no treasure incentive? What about campaigns without magic items?

For me, I almost never roll on a treasure table, and I’ve been reducing my usage of magic items in every new campaign. I’m starting to think that waaaay less is more, in terms of magic items. Or at least anything bigger than common magic.

I find my players aren't particularly interested in wealth or magic items, which sometime makes providing plot hooks tricky. Generally, what they want to do is save the world.