So what's gold gonna be for?

[Rechan]

Given that magic items are going to be "nice, not necessary", I think there's still a lot of room for spending your loot on equipment. It's just not going to have the same christmas-tree effect as it does in 3.x. When you blow your loot on a suit of magic armour, it doesn't give you +X to AC, making you difficult to hit and necessitating an attack bonus/AC arms race. Perhaps it's "spiritual armour", and you can, as a swift action, trade the AC bonus it provides for Will defense until your next turn. Or maybe it lets you dimension door once per combat. Or something other nifty effect that provides a benefit but does not make you numerically stronger compared to a character with no magic items. I envision magic items increasing your versatility, not your raw mechanical advantages.

Know what that reminds me of?

King Arthur's scabbard.

Excaliber was a potent magical sword, yes. But the scabbard actually prevented Arthur from bleeding from a wound.

So you could have a magical item that auto-stabilizes you when you go past 0, and prevents you from ever being Wounded (1 point of damage per round). These two qualities are so infrequently applied, but when it happens it's real useful.

 

[Rechan]

Okay, I'm a paladin in hell. First of all, I expect that everything down here is pretty much going to want to kill me anyway, so I'm prepared to fight my way through. Second, I come across a fiend sitting in a toll booth. He asks for some ching. I know that every gold piece I fork over is going to mean pain and misery for some poor innocent somewhere, because I know that capital-E Evil is the only thing that fiends do with their money. If I give him the money, I'm willingly supporting evil, and so I violate my code, lose my powers, and feel like a jackass. I can either go back to plan A, and hack my way through, or I can find some way of circumventing the toll booth so I don't have to donate to the "Widows and Orphans: we need more of them" fund.

Not only that but:

1) If your paladin is using a toll road, that pretty much lets him get seen. That devil manning the toll bridge is going to send word to the higher ups that some guy in shiny armor that radiates Goody Good is comin'.

2) Why doesn't the toll devil just kill you? Or try to. The bounty he could get for you is probably more impressive than your measly pittance.

3) Killing the toll fiend - you get his bucket of tolls he's collected.

 

[Rechan]

- Any campaign where someone actually wears a Hat of Disguise or a Cloak of the Bat.

...

It would not support Eberron as-is. That's one of the reason I am worried it won't fully go my way, since I see that Eberron and post-3e Forgotten Realms (with its Thayvian Magic-Marts) are going to be the primarily supported settings.

It's actually kind've funny; the warlock in my Eberron campaign uses her hat of disguise all the time.

But then, it's a city based Mystery game, she's evil, and the only optimized character is the Cleric.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Actually, having good magic items is actually ideal. The 3e christmas tree only really comes into play when, at lvl 10 or so, it becomes worth it to blow 2k gp on an item, ANY item to go into your empty slots. Reducing the number of slots and increasing the non-slotted penalty would result in PCs with fewer, but more cherished and signature, items.

I would love it if most of the time a given character is the only one who has a particular sort of magic item. That's one of the things I liked the most about Weapons of Legacy, and I hope that that sort of system comes built into 4E. I like the idea of a player being proud that they own the only Staff of Boris in the world.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

There are countless things to spend money on other than property - say you want to start your own guild, your own knighthood, spy network, build a church, help the needy in a poor city, start your own merchant company, build a war galleon of your own design... As I said in my previous post, I would encourage PCs to come with long-term goals, to create something for the campaign that would outlive the character who built it.

And thats great. IF you're a type of player who enjoys empire building. I fully agree that there needs to be material that covers it. I bought Magical Mystical Society: Western Europe for that reason: to help facilitate one of my players style of play. Out of the other 3, one of them enjoys getting cool art objects and gems to show off. The other 2 are "but kickers" and routinely use gold for raw gear upgrades. All 3 styles of play are supported by 3rd edition. Take out the option to buy new gear and one play style is shafted. Arguably a play style that is more wide spread than the empire builder type of player.

In 3e, you're pigeonholed into doing just *one* thing with your money.

How so? You can spend it all on mega ale and mega whores, or windmills or whatever you want to in 3.5.

And it's not like adventurers are not finding magic items on their travels.

And what do you do with all that crap no one wants? Your 3rd sword +1? In 1st edition you gave it to your goons. In 2nd edition, it rotted in a bag of holding. In 3rd edition you traded it for something useful.

One of these lerads to useless treasure. 3rd edition may have had an unrealistic economy, but at least it was geared towards players. I personally dont care if the economy works for NPC's... IMO the system should be geared towards adventurers.

 

[Kraydak]

That's not how I'm reading it. He's arguing that combat enhancement is one of many valid ways to be allowed to spend accumulated wealth. He's saying that the 3.x system in which you force people to spend gold on combat enhancement is no good. He's also claiming that other gold sinks, as the sole option for players, are no good.

I've seen two other proposals for "gold sinks" in this thread. First is the "ale and whores" sink. You spend money on stuff that gets you absolutely nothing. You bought a set of satin curtains for your keep. That's awesome if you're the sort of player who loves that kind of thing, but not awesome if you don't care about it. Second is the "bribes, status, and power" sink. Gold translates directly into game-world influence, which means that gold allows you to dictate things about the campaign world that normally the DM would decide. Can you get into the party? Ching. Can you get past the toll booth? Ching. Can you get the duke to lend you some soldiers? Ching.

He's arguing that if you force the system to allow only one of these sinks, without allowing for other play styles, there is something wrong with the system. He's saying that there is something wrong with 3.x for precisely this reason, and that a fix does not amount to forcing your players to spend their money on ale and whores, or bribes, or magic items.

But if you can't turn gold into tangeable power (magic items, xp), you have to ask why anyone with power wants gold. Because low level characters simply don't register on the power radar, being able to hire large numbers of them is meaningless. But, as high level characters can't spend gold on boosting their power, they can't be bought with gold.

If you can spend money on making your character more powerful, most people will. If you can't, *no one significant* will care much for gold.

 

[Kraydak]

Another aspect of gold<->magic items I think a lot of people don't want to consider is the out of game issues. In MMORPGs, virtually every raiding level guild breakup is due, at its core, to loot distribution issues. In tabletop games, gross inequity is easier to handle. With face-to-face interactions you can notice problems building and deal with them before they explode (most of the time), but, without an actual magic item market, defusing a problem situation involves the DM placing specific items for specific characters in the loot piles. This can cause futher issues if the DM misinterprets what the players want (which happens all the time). A magic item market neatly circumvents the entire loot distribution fairness issue.

I know lots of people will say that loot distribution isn't a problem for their group. If so, it will be because any inequity was removed before it was too large a problem for too long. I have seen the issues explode in completely mature groups too often not to recognize the importance of percieved fairness, and greatly appreciate magic item markets as a way of not having to worry about it, ever.

 

[Stone Dog]

How does the Conan RPG handle wealth? I thought that there was an actual mechanical benifit for the Ale and Whores sink, but I can't remember.

 

[gizmo33]

But if you can't turn gold into tangeable power (magic items, xp), you have to ask why anyone with power wants gold.

I agree, no reason. Creature comforts just don't translate well into the DnD game, even though it's the bulk of what people IRL spend their money on (because hiring personal armies is frowned upon I suppose - well, mostly).

Because low level characters simply don't register on the power radar, being able to hire large numbers of them is meaningless.

If you use the Mob template you can actually turn 48 commoners into a CR 10 monster (or something like that). Then it's just about DM fiat. "But sending 48,000 commoners into the dungeon is not heroic!" I can hear the DM saying. Being rich and solving your problems by spending money isn't heroic I guess. If you can't spend money to solve your problems, I don't think money has much use.

 

[hopeless]

Interesting question

One of the things we keep hearing about 4E is that the "christmas tree" effect is gone (and good riddance, I say). One of the things that's weird about it is the question of what to do with the gold pieces.
This, of course, had the unfortunate effect of making the PCs dependent on their wardrobe (according to the RAW, we can quibble about how "good" DMs can tweak it somewhere else). If this is going away though, what do we do with treasure? I *like* getting treasure. It makes your pockets jingle, all jingly like. But if it's just so much debris...
I hear there are still ways to make magic items, but to be honest, I miss the "wow" factor of going out and actually finding one.
I dunno. What do you guys think?

Ever played Conan?
I have heard that in that game if it runs true to the stories it was based around then you would be lucky to have two pennies by the end of the adventure and more often than not that money was spent before you got into the thick of things that is if the dm would let you.
I suspect this might be the same except the treasure may not be as coin orientated as before.
After all dragons may sleep on beds of coins but nobody could ship away enough if they don't have something to carry it all in (Bags of holding for example) I suspect adventures should be keyed in on this so it might be a bad idea to grab all the loot you can carry if the villain made sure to curse the lot if anyone other than a true follower took it and even then they might not be spared!
Ultimately as always its up to the dm to decide, but time will tell which way they will decide to follow on this.