So what's gold gonna be for?

[Rechan]

I also anticipate that many want "A functioning D&D economy".

Which makes me wary.

Among other things, it makes me think of Knights of the Dinner Table. They charged into a dragon's lair, to find the dragon sitting there in an empty lair. "WHERE'S YOUR HOARD?" "Hm? Oh. It's tied up in investments, bonds, and stocks in the neighboring kingdoms." "... What?"

 

[A'koss]

What I used to do, pre-3e, when the PCs started becoming high level was to encourage them to create something for the campaign - something that would outlast the character who built it.

In the past I've seen PCs create their own knighthood in their name, a multiplanar spy network, a city of their own design (which took 3 generations of PCs to finish), an underground fortress, a merchant/war fleet... I even a had one player (a very HL Paladin) who's sole mission in life was to create the most lavish Inn/Gambling House in Greyhawk - the Golden Lyric. In every adventure he'd be out looting the furnishings from our enemies. He even refused to allow the wizard to cast any fireballs in rooms he saw stuff he liked. By the time he finished building the Golden Lyric, he poured something like 1.2 million in gold into it.

Even today the Inn is still a prominant feature in my GH games, even though no one can remember the name of the Paladin who built it...

 

[Treebore]

No. Gold was worthless in 2nd edition. In 1st at least you were expected to equip and cart around a ton of mooks to set off traps. As D&D got away from a wargame model, that fell by the wayside. With nothing practical to spend it on, gold sat unused for the most part.

Really? My players in 2E, and 1E, spent it on building temples, castles, MAnors, towns, even a city or two.

One group even built a certain High Clericists tower from DL in Faerun. On the ocean front area to the east of the Giant's Run mountains. Then a town, which turned into a city, with a nice harbor, developed around it. Much to the dismay of a certain city to the north of them.

The tower is also dedicated to "The Triumverate", Tyr, Helm, and Torm. Cormyr likes them too, since they are friends with several important personages in the Cormyrean nobility, and are a strong and staunch allie against the chaos, corruption, and evil around them.

I wasn't able to make that happen in 3E. They spent their money on making items, or having them made. No one wanted a castle or temple unless it was Daern's Instant Fortress.

So I am glad to have a ruels base that takes me back to that. Which is C&C, but 2E, 1E, and OD&D certainly support it as well. OD&D probably best of all. I certainly use a lot of its guidelines for my C&C game.

 

[Rechan]

What I used to do, pre-3e, when the PCs started becoming high level was to encourage them to create something for the campaign - something that would outlast the character who built it.

Honestly, I think you're able to do this as early as possible.

Set a goal, and work towards it, and all that. Accomplishing things that don't involve the DM's plots that are handed to you, but instead say 'I want to redeem this race of damned people so that they will no longer be tainted', or 'I want to overthrow that tyrant and make that country just and for the people.'

I know it's a different setting and different expectations, but in the Exalted game I played in, we made our own empire. We walked into a place with lots of warlords in little fiefdoms, and started toppling the despots, making deals with neighbors, improving the standard of living, and doing favors for Entity X to get Aid for Goal Y. We were doing this to Combat certain entities in the setting, and also offering a safe haven for others of our kind. But we started out small and, many small actions built up.

One example of something that I personally did was, while looking through a book of important cities, I came across the entry for a city state. It had apparently been attacked, or fended off an attack recently, and so the city state had practically no standing army. This city-state also had a HUGE population of spirits (magical entities like elementals and outsiders in D&D); its rulers were three powerful spirits.

One of the small fiefdoms our empire dealt with was an independent town of about 50 Aasimar (equivalent) warriors who bred heavily with Spirits, hoping to create offspring with unique abilities. One power that characters can have (including the Aasimar) is the ability to quickly and efficiently train mortals to become elite fighters.

What did I Do? I approached my GM and said, "Hey. City-state has no army, but lots of spirits. Our neighbor can train an elite army real fast, and likes to breed with spirits. I'd like to broker a deal between City-state and our neighbors, so that our neighbors can train City-state's army in exchange for spirits to breed with. I'd like to get something from both of these guys in exchange for brokering the deal."

 

[WyzardWhately]

Okay, so, there's a choice between having gold be spendable to improve your character in substantial ways (buy magic items) and not.

If you can't, then gold becomes uninteresting to players who only want to optimize their characters. I'm going to submit this isn't a problem, because that just means they don't care about the piles of money. They can sure as hell still care about any magic items on the pile, or XP, or, y'know, accomplishing whatever it is they're trying to accomplish. So, this doesn't actually create any problems for them.

However, if gold CAN be used to buy magic items, it DOES create a problem for those PCs who would like to be building temples, raising armies, and establishing kingdoms. Because they have to make their characters weaker as a price for doing all those cool roleplaying things that add something to the campaign.

So, given a choice between these two consequences, I'd easily say that magic items shouldn't be purchaseable. Maybe the kinda weak, disposable things like healing potions and stuff, because nobody high level can use many of those anyway.

 

[Gundark]

Ask Iron Heroes players.

And use it for maintenance (food, inns, potions), fun (bling up your armour... and get a big gem for your wizard's staff, get better clothes), built your own empire (stronghold, hirelings, whatever).

Yeah a variantion on these rules would be cool

 

[Rechan]

So, given a choice between these two consequences, I'd easily say that magic items shouldn't be purchaseable.

To be quite honest, I never looked at magical items as "purchasable". I'd never have a character walk into a shop and say "Give me that holy avenger there on the wall, shop keep!"

I just viewed the pricing for magical weapons as a way to balance 'what level are magical items appropriate' by their Pricing and how affordable they are when you look at PC wealth levels. A 6th level PC is expected a wealth of 13,000 - this seems a reasonable time to get a +2 weapon, as that's about 8,000, which gives them 5,000gp for any other equipment.

The pricing also helps when you y'know, get a magical item in the dragon's hoard no one int he party wants, and thus need to sell it.

 

[Wormwood]

Another vote for the *awesome* Conan rules.

 

[Nifft]

Among other things, it makes me think of Knights of the Dinner Table. They charged into a dragon's lair, to find the dragon sitting there in an empty lair. "WHERE'S YOUR HOARD?" "Hm? Oh. It's tied up in investments, bonds, and stocks in the neighboring kingdoms." "... What?"

IMC, Dragons are bankers. You give them your gold, and they sit on it. In return, they give you little bits of paper with their arcane mark on them. Each dragon ensures that his currency is accepted by all merchants within three day's flight -- beyond that, you're on your own. (Deposited money does earn interest.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[shadewest]

Let's get back to the ale and whores for a moment. I can see a rule that gives a +1 morale bonus for each consecutive evening of carousing, decreasing by one every day since the last night of carousing. Of course, that sets a certain tone for the campaign...