So what's gold gonna be for?

[Crazy Jerome]

But gold isn't identical to power and it's that lack of identity that's the problem. Because while in the real world gold might easily purchase power, in DnD being a DM is power and the DMs rulings can nerf what gold is capable of doing. A real world politician just sends 100 soldiers after the renegade soldier and the situation is taken care of.

Right. And in the real world, or in a game that cares about money in any kind of logical way, the key word in "gold might easily purchase power," is "purchase". When you purchase power, you had to buy it from someone. That means, that someone might not follow through, or more people know, etc. Or in other words, wealth has characteristic limits, same as any other avenue to acquiring power.

You can't get elected, for example, President of the United States, without a bunch of people contributing a lot of money. OTOH, there is no amount of money that will get Bozo the Clown elected President.

Really, I think a big part of the problem is the attitude that spending money will always translate into results. Make purchasing even semi-realistically unreliable, and a big part of the problem goes away.

 

[Kraydak]

Well, sure, you can. But it's not a viable option in 3E - by spending your gold on anything other than magical items, you wreck the curve and, especially if everyone doesn't do the same, you can no longer contribute in the same fashion.

The point from folks saying "you can't do that in 3E" isn't that you're outright inhibited from doing so, but that if you do, you can't play in the same game as anyone else. A 10th level character with recommended items is challenged by a CR10... a 10th level character without items often can't hurt it. That is a problem, and makes that option a non-solution.

If you are an adventurer who doesn't invest in adventuring but rather something else, then you are a part-time adventurer, who doesn't adventure as well as a full time one, but hopefully has other benefits.

I'd point you towards reality, and the fact that a trained soldier can easily manhandle most rulers/politicians, but it's the latter who have power... and the money. Gold is power, without it being just XP or magic items.

In the real world, large numbers of weak goons can take small numbers of elite troops. In DnD no number of lvl 1 goons can take a CR 15 entity. If there are lvl 15 people running around, then having the ability to hire large number of lvl 1 people becomes politically irrelevant. In RL, money buys power because you can (almost always) find people willing to fight for you if you pay them. In DnD, gold buys power only if powerful people want gold. For them to want gold, they need to have a use for gold. Creature comforts don't count, because powerful people can simply *take* the creature comforts (if they do it through political channels, its called taxes). DnD is a world with primative grunts with spears coexisting with mecha-pilots. If there is no gold to xp/item equivilancy, then the grunts with spears use gold as a currency while the mecha pilots use intergalactic credits, with no currency exchange. You won't be able to hire the mecha pilots with gold. And, as mecha pilot trumps goon with spear, political power won't flow from a gold mine.

 

[Mallus]

Because while in the real world gold might easily purchase power, in DnD being a DM is power and the DMs rulings can nerf what gold is capable of doing.

Then the problem is the DM.

 

[gizmo33]

Summary: No direct, personal power from weath. Allow wealth to be an aid towards indirectly accumulating some personal power, but not without risk.

The visceral reaction that a peasant in folklore has when standing before a big mound of gold (or holding a leprechaun, or commanding a genie, or any of the equivalents) has been one of extreme avarice. Now granted, the outcomes are not always pleasant because many of these stories are morality tales of some sort (no one wants commoners to get all uppity). But IMO the reaction of people to huge mounds of gold is a consequence of reality, and the reality is that money makes things better across the board in all ways. Regardless of what a lord would want his serfs to believe.

So if players don't see money as potentially fulfilling any of their desires (proportional to the amount of course) then money loses the effect that it has in the real world. Part of the problem IMO is that ale in DnD doesn't taste like anything to the player.

No, I am not happy with the current "Christmas Tree" situation in 3E. I would like power levels to be less dependant on gadgets. But if I my players can't find anything to do with gold that appeals to them, I can't expect them to value gold much.

 

[Nifft]

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.

If you read a bit further, you'd see we agreed about that.

He's arguing that if you force the system to allow only one

Who's forcing what now?

Originally, he was dismissing something as useless, and I was arguing that it is indeed useful. Specifically, bribes and influence.

This is a bit of a gloss, though, because really what the PC's gold would buy is narrative influence for the player. That's why I've been calling this Plot Hacks rather than just bribes.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Mallus]

Yes, that's how it works in 3.5e. And it's bad.

-- N

You are correct, sir.

Personally, I don't like the explicit monetizing of character abilities in 3.0/3.5. Let wealth buy what wealth buys in the real world, or at least in Middle Earth.

 

[gizmo33]

Really, I think a big part of the problem is the attitude that spending money will always translate into results. Make purchasing even semi-realistically unreliable, and a big part of the problem goes away.

But purchasing isn't unreliable except in the most extreme cases. For the most part you just hire people to do the thinking for you. Now some DMs will handle this by having this person screw you over, and certainly that does happen from time to time in real life, but while the DMs NPC can rip off a player and then slip back into the faceless masses, a real consultant will have a community, a reputation, relatives and friends, etc. and the situation is much more complicated IMO than DMs make it.
(BTW - elections/politics are probably a bad example because there are laws to make sure that money has only limited usefulness. It's a testament to the power of money that campaign finance laws exist.)

 

[Mallus]

Originally, he was dismissing something as useless, and I was arguing that it is indeed useful. Specifically, bribes and influence.

This is a bit of a gloss, though, because really what the PC's gold would buy is narrative influence for the player. That's why I've been calling this Plot Hacks rather than just bribes.

Cheers, -- N

Of course, if you play in a game where there is no plot to hack, per se, I can see the appeal of using gold to transform your character into a human-shaped Abrams tank. The question is "should the rules assume that is the dominant mode of play?"

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You are the first person to bring a Paladin into this discussion. Paladins are different, and have their own set of baggage.

Paladins are a nice acme of lawful good behaviour because:
1. lots of parties have them
2. they aren't allowed to bend and break their moral code like other LG characters are

If the adventure design specifically hoses paladins because they are paladins, there's something wrong with the adventure design. The same goes for garden-variety LG characters, just to a lesser extent because they are allowed to tread into grey areas a bit.

Again, Paladins are special. We weren't talking about them.

However, honestly, you are describing Lawful Stupid to a tee. Let me show you how the Most Sinister Fiendish Thaumaturge turns your predictable behavior into an iron-clad Paladin detector: he sets up toll bridges at regular intervals within his kingdom, and binds Imps to collect the tolls.

Now you have a choice: pay a toll to a being of pure Evil, or out yourself as a Paladin whenever you cross a river.

-- N

That sounds less to me like a problem and more like reasonably competent behaviour by a boss villain. It's a "loyalty test" of the kind that gangs run on their new members: do something that you know is wrong to show that we can trust you. Heck, make sure that the imps describe exactly what the administration plans to do with the money, to see if the visitors squirm. On the other hand, if heroes of low moral fibre can just buy their way to your front door, you've got a different kind of security problem.

Even if you're not a paladin, handing over cash to help pay for a new soul-powered pain engine is going to leave some black marks on your conscience. If you don't like it, either stay out of hell, kill the thing that's asking for it, or find another way to navigate the plane. But this isn't an argument in favour of a gold = travel equation.

 

[gizmo33]

Then the problem is the DM.

This is a little vague but the tone of what you're saying here I don't agree with. Yes, the choices that the DMs make affects the way that money is used in the game. But the DM can't be blamed for wanting his players to have some fun. If every game session that I DMed involved me saying "ok, well, you spent your 100,000 gp on an army, they went out, raided a country, and brought back 300,000 gp. See you next week". Then neither me nor my players would have fun, and in the long run it wouldn't matter whether or not these scenarios conformed to real life.

Sure, there are ways to turn this sort of thing into a game I guess. Palace intrigue and such could become the focus of the game. But then "dungeon crawls" seem to be the lowest common denominator, so at least one of the players would probably be shouting at the others "look, I don't care about the machinations of your concubines this week, can't we go out and kill a dragon!?"

So the DM isn't the problem, but the problem must ultimately be mitigated by the DM in some way if the rules aren't going to magically fix it.