D&D 5E Magic Items, Gold, and 5e!

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I mean… Hiring an army and sending them to do the adventuring for you could certainly be effective, but it’s kinda optimizing the fun out of the game, isn’t it? Like, I want to go on adventures when I play D&D, not pay other people to do it for me.

True, but if hiring a bunch of soldiers is what the character would do...

A not-so-nice character would size up the mission and then hire not quite enough soldiers to get through it. They go in, they die, then their "boss" follows up to mop up what's left of the adventure and then loot the soldiers and foes alike.

 

[Charlaquin]

Thing is, adventure-path type play simply doesn't lend itself to the sort of non-adventuring activities that can burn away wealth. I'll go a step further and say that if the players complaining they've nothing to spend their wealth on are the same players who always play adventure-path campaigns, then on their own heads be it.

Agreed. It's what they want to do - if anything - between adventures that makes a lot of the difference here, and whether the game and-or the DM encourage/allow such downtime activity or not.

Not as written, but allow even limited purchase and-or sale of magic items with random availability and they'll burn that gold away in a flash.

Yeah, I think you and I are pretty much on the same page here.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I think you and I are pretty much on the same page here.

I'll enjoy it while it lasts...

 

[Voadam]

I played in a 1e game for four years as a merchant prince magic user. It was a lot of high level politics in a D&D world with a heavy emphasis on roleplaying. I was making deals, setting up trade networks, balancing mercantilism, politics, magic, and high level adventuring. I was fabulously wealthy. I was patron to multiple PCs and NPCs. I dealt with dragons and liches and a vampire ruler and archmages and Gods and Dream and Chaos. It was a ton of fun. I never tracked specific gp value game money once in those four years. It also used the Arduin xp charts and flat xp awards each game (modified by possible bonuses for tactics and or roleplay) so killing stuff and looting was not the incentive model that showing up and playing well was.

Narrative can handle really fun money stuff easily enough without nitpicking personal accounts down to the electrum piece or involving specific defined systems.

1e realism of record every scrap of equipment down to the waterskin and weight of your coins can be fun.

Old school heisting in dangerous areas for xp can be a fun gaming model.

Downtime systems using money, time, skills, and rolls can be fun.

3e loot and item treadmilling with spell resource costs can be a fun paradigm.

Full on freeform narrativism can be fun.

Lots of different ways to go about handling money in D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

Gold isn't an issue in my campaigns. My players find uses for it without any difficulties.

As for Wishes, I never had a problem with them personally. My philosophy is use it now, because you may be dead in the future and never use it. Over the years that have been a few times that I almost wished that I had held on to it(I say almost, because it helped when I used it), but never a time where ended the campaign with the wish still in hand.

 

[Shiroiken]

Wait, have you actually worked this out? I’ve tried to fo so myself quite a few times but there are too many unknown variables. I’d love to see your work on this, if you’re willing to share it.

You're supposed to get about seven 0-4 CR hoards, so I used those going up to level 5 (you could have a CR 5 hoard before hand, and a CR 4 hoard afterwards, but I went with simplicity). I totaled up the value available from gems/art, then divided by 100, then did the same for treasure per monster. I then divided by 5, assuming the party did an even split. Individual monsters I left as a variable, since the number of monsters that have treasure is going to vary greatly by DM. I take the amount of monsters in an adventure and determine the total treasure to place throughout the adventure, but other DMs are going to vary. Obviously this is only using the DMG assumption of treasure from monsters, which doesn't take into consideration rewards from NPCs.

Umm… You do know the RPG in CRPG stands for roleplaying game, right?

Yeah, but there is a significant difference between the limited focus of a CRPG than an open RPG. No one looks into the aspect of the character's outside of the adventuring itself, which is the style I was referring to. Since my playstyle is different, my bias was showing.

That's pathetic, by the standards I run by!

Next time someone challenges my assertion that 5e is very skimpy with its treasure, can I point them at the post I'm quoting?

Absolutely. You can see my methods I used above.

Why would you be out (most of) the investment? Unless the plate armour gets destroyed along with its wearer what's to stop you looting it, cleaning it up, and selling it* next time you're by a fighters' guild or some minor noble's castle in order to recoup your investment?

* - or at the very least trading it for items-supplies-considerations of somewhat-equal worth that are more useful to your now-fighterless party.

Given that you'll get at best half the value of the armor, that's a loss of about $35,000 across the party. With a party of 5, that's about $7,000 out of a $14,000 investment, minus the amount the PC "paid the party back" (which IME is never). It's a construct of how modern players view game currency vs. IRL currency. As an old school gamer, this bugs me.

 

[gorice]

Yeah, I mean… Hiring an army and sending them to do the adventuring for you could certainly be effective, but it’s kinda optimizing the fun out of the game, isn’t it? Like, I want to go on adventures when I play D&D, not pay other people to do it for me.

I agree that using hirelings to do everything for you is boring. But, using your hired muscle and clout to influence local politics, carry your stuff, and maybe check that sketchy looking chest is another matter. And maybe, you know, fight a battle against a force your party couldn't otherwise handle, while you lead from the front in shining armour...

Late-game, high-wealth situations open up so many cool possibilities that seldom seem to be realised in play.

 

[Voadam]

Given that you'll get at best half the value of the armor, that's a loss of about $35,000 across the party. With a party of 5, that's about $7,000 out of a $14,000 investment, minus the amount the PC "paid the party back" (which IME is never). It's a construct of how modern players view game currency vs. IRL currency. As an old school gamer, this bugs me.

In 3e where purchasing power really mattered the groups I was in usually handled things by a) having a designated group share of loot for party resources like cure light wound wands, and b) splitting everything else up equally. Magic item loot was valued at its 1/2 price sale value. If someone wanted a particularly expensive magic item like a good sword that they could not afford from their share plus their personal wealth they would go into debt to the party and would not get a share of new loot until their new shares paid off their debt.

This way people came out with equal loot over time and good singular items did not need to be sold to be equitable in dividing the spoils. With 3e's escalating loot values over levels debts were paid off fairly quickly with new loot shares.

In my experience under this system everybody did pay off their group debts over time and it worked out well.

 

[Umbran]

Thing is, adventure-path type play simply doesn't lend itself to the sort of non-adventuring activities that can burn away wealth. I'll go a step further and say that if the players complaining they've nothing to spend their wealth on are the same players who always play adventure-path campaigns, then on their own heads be it.

Specifically, adventure-path play generally has some urgency, such that if you take on a side-project, you are at risk of repercussions for ignoring the main problems. If the group goes off on a two-week trek so that the Artificer can get an ingredient for a magic item they want to craft, and then takes more weeks to craft that item, the BBEG will move forward unopposed.

This is generally solvable - the GM has to look for moments on the path to say, "Okay, folks, what you have done has put a dent in the bad guy, and you will now have X weeks for downtime activities before they will act again."

 

[Maxperson]

That's pathetic, by the standards I run by!

Next time someone challenges my assertion that 5e is very skimpy with its treasure, can I point them at the post I'm quoting?

First, his numbers don't take magic items into consideration. Some will be found and sold. That raises the numbers quite a bit actually. The gold amount also goes up significantly in the 5-10 range, though. You get 18 rolls on that horde chart which includes even more money. In cash alone, you're looking at an average of 12000 gold a PC for a 5 man group, + gems and art, + better magic items, some of which will be sold.

The money amounts in 5e start slow, but take off quickly.