D&D 5E Thoughts on spending gold ...

[Sunseeker]

Without tangible results on the characters stat block that improve his/her effectivness, the money is just an illusion a whim of the DM.

Only for powergaming optimizers whose goal is to "win" the game. Yes, that is a slam on powergaming.

I don't tax my players 50%, I hand out 50% less wealth if I don't want to them to have that much.

This has nothing to do with anything. I don't tax my players just because I gave out more gold. That's a waste of time.

I don't charge a 10% money changer fee to convert silver into platinum or gems, for easy transport. I just ignore encumbrance and let them buy and sell gems at full face value.

If I want my players to have gems, I give them gems. If I want them to have gold, I give them gold. If they want something specific, I help them find it. If you want your players to buy magic items, just give them to them. You talk about cutting out the middle-man and getting straight to the action, so why are you making your players "buy" magic items? If you want them to have them, let them have them.

I give my players gold to buy things they usually can't earn in game.

If you are going through barter sessions over the price of a sword, or worrying about the tax man, then you are not off going on adventure. I have never read a novel or seen a film about action heroes concerned with local taxes went up 2%.

You seem to be talking to someone else. Since I never mentioned doing these things, I'm curious as to what relevance they have to this conversation, or this thread.

I understand other people want to play Accountants & Landlords, but I want to play games about going into Dungeons and killing Dragons.

I don't understand why you want to talk about people doing things that they are not doing.

 

[Paraxis]

What the game lost when it got rid of the Magic-Toys-R'Us rules is dead weight. Not only magic feels magical again in D&D for the first time in a long, long time, but people who can't stomach the change can easily come up with the necessary rules themselves.

Isn't easier to just ignore magic item prices if you don't want to use them? I mean I have run plenty of campaigns where I changed/ignore the prices given during the 2e/3e/4e era, it was much simpler to do that, than it is to come up with a balanced individual magic item price for each item.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Isn't easier to just ignore magic item prices if you don't want to use them?

No, it's not. Rules set the tone of the game and engender expectations. In previous editions, rules about magic prices lead players to expect to have access to magic shops everywhere.

If there were rules about building and buying robots in the PHB, players would expect to be able to build and buy robots, and there would be robots in most D&D campaigns. It would not be "easy" to ignore these rules.

 

[Sunseeker]

No, it's not. Rules set the tone of the game and engender expectations. In previous editions, rules about magic prices lead players to expect to have access to magic shops everywhere.

If there were rules about building and buying robots in the PHB, players would expect to be able to build and buy robots, and there would be robots in most D&D campaigns. It would not be "easy" to ignore these rules.

This is exactly what all the great debates over classes, races and everything else have been over here on these very forums. The player expectation that because it's in the book, they can have it.

 

[Paraxis]

No, it's not. Rules set the tone of the game and engender expectations. In previous editions, rules about magic prices lead players to expect to have access to magic shops everywhere.

If there were rules about building and buying robots in the PHB, players would expect to be able to build and buy robots, and there would be robots in most D&D campaigns. It would not be "easy" to ignore these rules.

You're trying to tell me it is not easy to ignore something, that is pretty much always the easiest option. DM's having been doing it forever, saying things like "in this campaign world there are no half-elves or half-orcs." "Human only campaign" "There is not an eastern flavor in this world so you can not play a monk."
Sorry but that is horribly common and very easy to do.

Let's see how easy it is to not allow magic items to be purchased in a 3rd edition game.
Write the following in your house rules section of notes for the campaign and share it with players when they join.
-"We will not be using expected wealth by level, purchase expectations for settlements, and magic items will not be for sale."
Man that was hard.

Now to go through and add in a price to each individual magic item, and balance that price against every other magic item in the game, takes a lot more than a single sentence.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Isn't easier to just ignore magic item prices if you don't want to use them? I mean I have run plenty of campaigns where I changed/ignore the prices given during the 2e/3e/4e era, it was much simpler to do that, than it is to come up with a balanced individual magic item price for each item.

I think the problem I see with that statement is simply due to player and DM preference. From what it seems like to me, the OP has a game that is more "Lord of the Rings" based, and less "Your Highness". Two fairly different styles (both entertaining as heck...btw).

"Balanced Individual Magic Item Price" for each item wouldn't work in the spirit of the 5e rules. I see that sprit, in this regard, as being heavily tilted towards "It's your freaking campaign...who are we to say 100gp is right? Who are we to say 10,000gp is right? The designers? We don't matter because, as we said, it's your freaking campaign.". That said...

...With Magic Item Pricing, I think the DMG should have had a bit more meat on the bone, but I'd have liked to see a "variable price" scheme. Say, four differing "magic abundance" ratings for a campaign. A DM could use the "Magic Shop's are fairly common" rules, where a formula might be "100gp x XYZ", down to "Magic Items Very Rare" rules, where the same formula might be "10k x XYZ". That way a DM could, if he wanted, choose which level of 'availability' he wanted in his game and the players would *still* have no say in the matter (e.g., they couldn't point to the book and say "See! You're screwing us!"...ok, they could still say that, but you, as DM, could point right back and say "See! I'm not using the Magic Items are COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE rules!").

Anyway...the bottom line is this: A campaign is first and foremost, THE DM's, and then it's the players. The DM *is* the most important person at the table in terms of decision making. If a player doesn't like it, he can DM or find a different game. There's no point in playing in a DM's campaign if you don't like the DM's style. Kind of like signing up to play basketball when you really don't like it and would rather be playing golf. Just play golf.

PS: As for the "ignore the pricing"...yeah, I agree. That's easy. What isn't easy, however, is ignoring the endless whining, hemming and hawing, the sly-handed remarks ("Well, you probably wouldn't have died if you could have bought that ring of regeneration" ... *slight glare towards the DM*). That kind of stuff isn't easy to ignore. It also leads to harsh feelings on both sides of the screen. In that aspect, I'm glad there are no actual prices for magic items.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Sunseeker]

You're trying to tell me it is not easy to ignore something, that is pretty much always the easiest option. DM's having been doing it forever, saying things like "in this campaign world there are no half-elves or half-orcs." "Human only campaign" "There is not an eastern flavor in this world so you can not play a monk."
Sorry but that is horribly common and very easy to do.

No, he's saying it's harder because since players perceive it as being available to them, they will demand access to it.

Now to go through and add in a price to each individual magic item, and balance that price against every other magic item in the game, takes a lot more than a single sentence.

Or you could use magic items as treasure and not as dime-store commodities.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

You're trying to tell me it is not easy to ignore something, that is pretty much always the easiest option.

I'm not saying it's not easy: it's the easiest thing in the world. Unfortunately, it's not very efficient, because the rules set the tone, and trying to introduce anything that deviates from the rules is going to be an uphill battle. Of course, if you wanted to rule a D&D game where magic doesn't exist, you could ignore every rule about spells and magic items, but that's not what players expect when they read the rules. 5e has changed the expectations about how to acquire magic items, and it was the right thing to do.

 

[DaveDash]

Actually the right thing to do would have been to provide the default ruling that magic items can't be purchased, but also prices for each item to save DMs work. Instead we get a tiny little table that's basically next to useless.

Not ever DM had the time or will power to go and fill in all the blanks WoTC have left us. I've had to go back and use older edition DMGs to make up for the huge holes in the 5e DMG, and it really does open your eyes on how crunch/content lite 5e is.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Not ever DM had the time or will power to go and fill in all the blanks WoTC have left us. I've had to go back and use older edition DMGs to make up for the huge holes in the 5e DMG

Honestly, how much time and willpower did that take?