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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8451868" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Well first of all, I think the issue with your one-use super-wish was not analysis paralysis but the classic healing potion problem. In RPGs, players are often hesitant to use consumable items for fear that they might not have them at some hypothetical point in the future where they need them more, and end up not spending them at all. This is a very common phenomenon, but I don’t think it’s what’s going on with gold in 5e. I’ve never heard a player complain that they don’t want to spend their gold because what if there’s something better to spend it on later. What I do hear players complaining about is having so much gold and nothing to spend it on.Now, to some, the idea that there’s nothing to spend gold on seems like complete nonsense. Of course there’s stuff to spend your gold on! Strongholds, mage towers, hirelings, boats, a spyglass… How could anyone feel like there isn’t anything to spend gold on when there are tables and tables of big-ticket items to do exactly that?I think the real culprit is the shift in the game’s focus over time. As the game has moved away from troupe play in a shared sandbox and towards following the exploits of a particular group of characters, the things PCs used to spend their gold on has lost its value to most players. What do I care that my character owns a house if the gameplay entirely takes place away from that house? What use is a mage’s tower when I’m off on an adventure? And a boat is only useful if you’re specifically playing a nautical adventure, and if you are, you’ll get a boat anyway because otherwise the adventure can’t happen.This is also why no one pays any attention to the rules for Lifestyle Expenses. Who cares if I’m theoretically living an aristocratic life style? When the actual game is happening, I’m gonna be eating canned rations and sleeping on a bedroll in some haunted forest anyway.Hirelings can at least be useful on an adventure, but… They also take up mental bandwidth on managing them in combat, table time executing their turns, and spotlight time while exploring and socializing - or if they don’t, they’re boring and get forgotten about. Not worth it.So what does that leave to spend gold on after you’ve all chipped in to buy your party tank a set of full plate armor? Some ridiculously expensive poisons that will be useful for exactly one attack? Potions that I’ll just end up saving for some hypothetical future time when I’ll need them more? (Ooooooohhh, there’s the Wish connection!) No. All this gold feels useless despite the game giving you plenty of things to spend it on, because none of those things are useful in the game as it’s typically played nowadays.So, what’s the solution? Let players buy magic weapons and armor. Seriously, that’s the only thing that’s going to be valuable enough to the folks who finds gold useless for them to want to spend it on.</blockquote>

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