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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8290883" data-attributes="member: 93670">the 2e dmg had a good section about the importance of treasure & magic items on <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/giving-an-ad-d-feel-to-5e.679228/page-10" target="_blank">page 115</a> that is just as true today as it was then. Interesting treasure & magic items are important over the long term.   It doesn't matter how cool you describe a long who cares worth 73gp, what matters is the cool & interesting things you can put that 73gp towards.  You can't do anything with that 73gp if there is no room to do anything meaningful through expending it left.  Systems that do a good job of making money worthless tend to sidestep the specific coin/dollar/monetary unit value so the instead of arguing over if the price tag is 200gp or whatever it can be an interesting interaction.  Fate core page 204 has a good section on it[spoiler="from fate core 204"]"Though it may seem counter-intuitive, we find that creating minutiaelike that detracts from the verisimilitude of the game in play. As soon asyou establish a detail like, “Great Physique can dead lift a car for five sec-onds,” then you’re cutting out a lot of the variability that real life allows.Adrenaline and other factors allow people to reach beyond their normalphysical limits or fall short of them—you can’t factor every one of thosethings in without having it take up a large amount of focus at the table.It becomes a thing for people to discuss and even argue about, rather thanparticipating in the scene.It’s also boring. If you decide that a Fair (+2) Resources can buy anythingthat’s 200 gold pieces or less, then you’ve removed a great deal of potentialfor tension and drama. Suddenly, every time you have a Resources-basedproblem, it’s going to hinge on the question of whether or not the cost is200 gold pieces, rather than whatever the point of the scene is. It also turnseverything into a simple pass/fail situation, which means you don’t reallyhave a good reason to roll the skill at all. And again, this is not realistic—when people spend money, it’s not about the raw dollar amount as much asit is a question of what someone can presently afford.Remember, a skill roll is a narrative tool, meant to answer the followingquestion: “Can I solve X problem using Y means, right now?” When youget an unexpected result, use your sense of realism and drama to explain andjustify it, using our guidelines above. “Oh, you failed that Resources roll tobribe the guard? Guess you spent just a bit more at the tavern last night thanyou thought... wait, why is your belt pouch gone? And who’s that shadycharacter walking a little too quickly just past the line of guards? Did he justwink at you? That bastard... now what do you do?”[/spoiler]The same goes for magic items.  In order for a magic item to be interesting there needs to be room in the system for it to have some mechanical impact , the players need to be able to plausibly envision a situation where it can let them be cool, and the character needs to be capable of using it.  5e maes those conditions difficult due to bounded accuracy alongside the removal of anything but attunement slots that could limit them (ie like the old body slots & affinities allowed). Without all three of those things in reasonable degrees you run into a spectrum that ranges from the snide comments & cynicism mentioned on 2e dmg115 to trying very desperately to make a game walk a very difficult narrow line of repeatedly finding something else to regularly grab the interest & imaginations of the majority of your group often enough to counter the expectation that there is very little if any chance they will find interesting "loot".</blockquote>

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