So what's gold gonna be for?

[Li Shenron]

Like my son plays a Paladin, has a 100 square miles of prime land. He even has several mines (lucky friggin percentile rolls), and has built a Castle and fortified town over a 5 year period. He has gone aon "recruiting" campaigns where he entices people to move to his lands, because he needs more bodies to work the land to its fullest potential.

There is a party member who plays a Druid (my Daughters). The druid and the paladin works together to make sure the land doesn't become overworked and ruined.

The Ranger (my other son), before he died, was helping develop the animal husbandry aspects, to make sure lands weren't over hunted, and even the herd animals were cultivated at the most balanced rate possible.

Whats their motivations? Money. Creating the best living conditions possible for their people and even their live stock. Not to mention the prestige they now have among the nobility. Plus enemies.

So they have many things to spend money on. Roads, Dovecoats, mills, fortifications, soldiers, churches and temples, recruiting new citizens, helping them set up homes, farms, and businesses.

So they not only go into "adventures" and slay demon princes (just finished DCC 18 last night) but they also take on the challenges of cultivating their lands, protecting their citizens, and dealing with jealous nobles who hate them for their successes, and so vividly illustrating their failures to properly manage their lands to the Empress.

Thats the kind of game I like to run.

* I think that is really cool *

 

[AllisterH]

Funny, 1st and 2nd edition D&D seemed to do just fine without having a magic item market. And all you need to do is read this thread if you're looking for suggestions on what to do with that hard earned gold other than spending it on magic.

).

However, in those earlier editions, gold WAS useless unless it was for training/xp (personally, I alwats thought that weird since you're basically adventuring to find money to train so you can adventure once again. HUH?!?!?).

The suggestions posted all basically say "Ok, you're adventuring to be a landholder". What happens if the player isn't interested in that? That _IS_ a style of campaigning and given how badly Birthright did, I don't think even in 2E many people were interested in that type of campaign.

 

[Reynard]

The suggestions posted all basically say "Ok, you're adventuring to be a landholder". What happens if the player isn't interested in that?

The idea is, I think, that if gold isn't useful for increasing character abilities, but is useful for running guilds or building domains, then players who don't care about those things won't have to go fishing for loot.

 

[FireLance]

I think it would be interesting if gold was the "roleplayer's reward" in that it will allow the player to make broad changes to the campaign setting. So, while XP measures a character's personal power, his weath is a (crude) measure of the degree of influence he has over the world.

Say, at about 5th level or so, the average character will have enough gold to make changes at the local level: a cleric could set up a village church, a fighter could attract the patronage of the local baron and be made a sheriff, etc. At 15th level, perhaps an average character would have enough wealth to raise armies for a crusade, or to carve out a dukedom, or to win the hand of a princess.

Writing out actual rules for this (as opposed to each individual DM setting out the "cost" of the changes that the players want to make to his campaign) would be rather difficult, though!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

No, I see what you're doing there is basically taxing characters for going where they have to go in the adventure. "You want to follow this adventure? Fine, you're going to lose money for it."

Lots of "old school" DM's love "scrabbling dirt farmer" type games. Lets them keep a better stranglehold on their so-called friends. Were I collecting treasure for a zero sum game of bribes and taxes, I'd walk pretty fast.

Also consider that weapon choices matter more in 4e. Spear fighters are rather different from sword fighters. So unless the DM stops rolling for treasure, or only has you fight guys who conveniently use the same weapons and armor as you, you'll end up with a bunch of crap no one can use. What then? You certainly cant sell if for some stupid reason (despite the fact that you'd want to buy something along those lines). Loot distribution gets that much harder when you cant tailor anything.

 

[Nifft]

A Game of Thrones has a wealth dot system and in my opinion it's the best d20 wealth system I've seen yet for Fantasy purposes. (edit: it even resembles Exalted enough that I wonder if it isn't an indirect port.)

Ooo, awesome. I have that but didn't get much past the artwork & flavor text.

Time to dig.

Thanks! -- N

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I agree that it comes down to play preferences, or "styles", but 3E definitely did not support my preferred style, where the players play "characters" who have a long history and a worked out personality.

It supported this style just fine, it just offered OTHER playstyles a chance as well. You can have a keep, or spend hours detailing your militia's scabbards and what not. I'm not sure where you are getting that it doesnt.

 

[Reynard]

Lots of "old school" DM's love "scrabbling dirt farmer" type games. Lets them keep a better stranglehold on their so-called friends. Were I collecting treasure for a zero sum game of bribes and taxes, I'd walk pretty fast.

One might conclude that not walking by some players would indicate it isn't just passive agressive DM types that enjoy this type of game.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

One might conclude that not walking by some players would indicate it isn't just passive agressive DM types that enjoy this type of game.

Sure, there are a lot of players willing to take any game they can get. I'm not a fan of chasing a carrot perpetually held out of my reach, and I readily admit that. I like my characters to see gains from adventures, rather than get just enough cash to scrape by, pay my fines and buy my adventure boarding pass to the next round.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't see the point in tying magic items to the 3E/3.5 suggest wealth guidelines, except as a small nod towards a simulated economy. It would be better, from a balance and clarity POV, to cut out the middle man. Instead of, "PC Level N should have about X gold, which means he can buy these particular magic items," it should be, "PC Level N should be able to have X major items appropriate to his level, and a lot of minor items." Since they are giving magic items "levels", it appears they are doing the hard work to make this possible. Not only does this cut gold out of the equation, it makes it easier to balance. (A 10th level D&D character with a +3 sword and 3 minor potions isn't noticeably more effective than the same guy with the sword and 20 minor potions. Let the guy convert 17 potions into gold, and then into something nice, and you'll see a difference.)

Then if the group wants a greater or lesser amount of equipment, simply change the number of major items allowed, and tell the DM to be generous or stingy on the minor ones. This is orthogonal to wealth accumulation, as it should be.

To simulate the economy, return to some first principles that makes sense in a game world's model economy. Wealth is for buying expertise that you don't have. Wealth is for buying time. That's pretty much it. Without the personal power to take over a small duchy, a mercenary army brings handy expertise. Without the ability to make a sword, a swordsmith brings the necessary expertise. Contrawise, maybe the character does have the ability to take over a small country or make a sword, but has better things to do with his time.

Wealth is also useful for getting even more wealth, but if you never do anything else with it, that's rather pointless.

To this end, I'd like to see a lot of suggestions for using money to buy time. Maybe there is never a +3 sword for sale. You can go take one of the known ones, and make some enemies, which you would rather not. Or you can spend months digging up tedius information about where one might have disappeared into a dungeon. Or you can spend a lot of gold to have some researchers do the tedius investigation, perhaps leaving one or two exciting bits for the party. That doesn't turn gold into a sword. But it does tell the party a better place to adventure to get one.

If a character spends all his money on ale and whores, it's because he doesn't value the expertise or the time savings (much less straight wealth accumulation). And if you think about such a character's personality, he'd probably be perfectly willing to go get the first +3 sword that came to his attention, enemies or not.

Either way, all types of characters can thus play in the same campaign, without power imbalance. The wealthy ones simply have some different options to pursue on the kind of adventures they would like to do.