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

[Derren]

The characters' stat blocks may not increase but the gold does increase the characters' effectiveness through more control of the narrative. To use secondhander's and Lancelot's players as examples the ships and pegasi they now own give them more freedom and options for traveling. The ship captain and owner of the shipbuilding business will have more influence on the community and have hirelings at their disposal. The monk will wield considerable influence as the Grand Master for an entire order of monks. The money certainly increases the effectiveness of these characters, even if their stats remain the same.

And yet we all know that in the typical campaign the characters will be able to go to where they are needed without the ships or pegasi, too or that all adventures they go on can be solved without additional influence and hirelings.

 

[Sailor Moon]

And yet we all know that in the typical campaign the characters will be able to go to where they are needed without the ships or pegasi, too or that all adventures they go on can be solved without additional influence and hirelings.

Don't know about you but this doesn't sound like one of my campaigns. The players in my games don't always end up where they need to be, if they want to go somewhere then they need to find a means of transportation.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Can we please dispel this myth? I was looking at running the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth the other day, and the amount of magical crap you get in that is anything but rare. The human/orc hippogriff poachers have splintmail +2, a crossbow of speed, a shield +1 and a few consumables.

And before we get to the standard grognard tall tale of how hard it was to find anything... no it wasnt. Half this crap is just lying on a body or in a monster nest. There's a longtooth +2 dagger guarded by a clay golem. Bracers AC 5 on a dead elf called out in boxed text. A couple of formians guard boots of levitation and cursed boots of dancing. Hey, there are TWO +2 battleaxes, just in case you need a spare! There's about 20-30 other permanent magic items sprinkled around. That's more than 5E suggests you award in an entire campaign, so maybe for the first time in D&D, magic might actually be rare again.

They talked a big game in the DMG about how rare magic items should be, but that's not how it played. RAW by the treasure tables and in published adventures, magic items were hardly "rare" in AD&D. There's this tired old revisionist idea that they walked uphill through 20 levels to catch a whiff of a potion of healing... I have no friggin idea what AD&D these guys played, but it sure as hell wasn't like the adventures TSR published. We had so much +1 garbage that our henchmen's henchmen were tired of it, yet the books tried to tell us they were such rare special snowflakes we should gush over each one, that wars were fought over a single +1 dart, and that no one could think of buying or selling them.

True, but also 1e assumed usually around twice as many people playing, many modules were written for 6-10 PC's with possibly henchmen instead of around the 4 player group. But you are right, magic was not super rare in 1e in most games. Hell in my first 1e campaign they assumed you could wear plate over chain mail since if you looked at plate armor you could see mail in between plates, and it seemed every PC had a -10 AC. Of course we were in grade school still.

Ultimately it doesn't appear that RAW 5e caters much to the 3e/4e/PF assumption of D&D. I don't think that is changing any time soon but it is easy for a DM to fix himself I think. As a side the 5e DM needs to run better adventures I think since less of the game focus is tweaking your build when you level or buying that artifact you had your eye on.

 

[miniaturehoarder]

Question?

What's actually stopping some of you from creating a magic item value chart and adding magic items shops to your 5th edition games?

1. It is a LOT of work to make accurate prices based on factors beyond merely rarity.

2. Players who liked being able to choose their items over the way OD&D & AD&D was know that many DMs will not be even bothering to try.

 

[Sailor Moon]

1. It is a LOT of work to make accurate prices based on factors beyond merely rarity.

2. Players who liked being able to choose their items over the way OD&D & AD&D was know that many DMs will not be even bothering to try.

What sort of hard work are you talking about?

And there is nothing stopping you from doing that now except for your DM.

 

[Fralex]

But if I wanted to allow the purchase of magical items, I think I could pretty easily backward engineer the 5e rules for selling magic items. And I'd probably just allow +1 weapons and armor to be bought, but anything else had to be found while adventuring.

I did this! It's very easy! Just replace "buyer" with "seller" each time it's mentioned, take the final table you roll on to see how good a deal you're getting, and reverse the order the results are listed in! Then adjust which sellers would now be considered "shady" (the guy selling you a magic item 90% off is gonna be pretty sketchy).

I tried it out, and managed to find a shady seller offering a Wand of Magic Detection for a tenth of the base price. I decided the reason it was so cheap was it had the "Quirk: Makes an irritating noise whenever it's used" and when that didn't seem like enough of a downside I looked at the table for artifact Minor Detrimental Properties and decided that when not fully charged nobody in a 500-foot radius can rest due to a pervasive hum just outside human hearing, except for the closest creature. I haven't revealed this yet. This will be fun.

 

[MoonSong]

Perhaps to some, or many. But in my world, I like that powerful magical items a rarity and can't be purchased in a store. I like that in each campaign, with random rolls, you never know what you might come upon in a deep dungeon. So for me, it adds to the game. To each their own.

But if I wanted to allow the purchase of magical items, I think I could pretty easily backward engineer the 5e rules for selling magic items. And I'd probably just allow +1 weapons and armor to be bought, but anything else had to be found while adventuring.

But why? math items are boring, quirky items are the ones we want, if you want a certain item is in order to enjoy it during gameplay, not as a pointless macguffin you never get to actually use because it is so important, so woundrous and special you only get it at the end if the campaign if ever.

I disagree completely. I hate magical item shops. I have had numerous players (myself included) who enjoy buying castles, ships, land, etc... far more than buying +x swords of murdering.

Again who says that wanting a "magic mart" means you want to spend your gold in boring plusses? I want magic marts so I can buy fun items! Figurines, boats, floating lanterns!

Question?

What's actually stopping some of you from creating a magic item value chart and adding magic items shops to your 5th edition games?

There is a huge problem with having to homebrew important stuff, how do you do it? what is fair? without a good baseline this is difficult

 

[Staffan]

Again who says that wanting a "magic mart" means you want to spend your gold in boring plusses? I want magic marts so I can buy fun items! Figurines, boats, floating lanterns!

The problem is that once you assign prices to magic items, you will immediately create a sense of "I have so and so much gold, that means I can afford either item X or item Y." When that happens, people will start looking at which item benefits them the most. That is, after all, the whole point of economics - using price as a means of prioritizing scarce resources.

That's what happened in 3e, where "Big Six" items (weapon, armor, cloak of resistance, ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, stat-booster) edged out pretty much every other item. How many PCs did you see who took a folding boat over a ring of protection +2? Or a helm of underwater action over a cloak of resistance +5? I mean, in a 3e campaign where I found a folding boat I'd almost certainly keep it rather than sell it, but it's not something I'd spend character gold on.

 

[Authweight]

"The money is just an illusion, a whim of the DM." - me.

Yes I understand having ships, pegasi, businesses, hirelings, monasteries, and castles all change the narrative but since the DM is in charge of how much gold is given out, how much is taken away, how much things cost, and what things are available for purchase the amount of wealth is just an illusion.

If you want the party to have pegasi, they do, same with a castle.

The pegasi could be free or cost 100,000 gp each, the castle and land could cost them money every month or give them money from collected taxes, all is possible in the wide spectrum of DM fiat and they change to fit the DM's narrative and story he wants to tell.

The players know this, so don't give a damn if they find 1,000 gp or 100,000 gp.

In a world that follows the rules of 3rd editon for example, there were purchase limits on towns, expected wealth by level, and magic item purchase/construction prices. The players were empowered to make significant changes to the effectiveness of their characters with said wealth. Treasure just fueled your next shopping spree but the results meant something and was in the players hands how to spend it and what to spend it on.

First off, I don't think the DM necessarily should be seen as controlling the amount of wealth the characters have. In many games, it will be common for players to be able to make decisions about whether they will spend time pursuing wealth, or if they will go for other things instead. The DM can say, "well, here is a very dangerous place with a chance for a lot of gold, here is a safe place with less gold." Or the DM could offer a choice between advancing the story further or doing something else for a payoff. Just because the DM controls the options available to the players doesn't mean he has full control over what happens. Wealth can be more than just DM whim. It can be the result of a character choice.

Also, if the DM establishes a price for something and sticks to it, that isn't especially different from it being set in the book. It's not part of the rules, but it can definitely be an important part of the game at that table.

If the DM has decided the players will have pegasi, then sure, that makes the gold kind of meaningless. But if he lets them choose between buying pegasi or buying a ship, that's a pretty interesting choice. If he lets them choose between buying a ship to go out exploring, buying a castle to establish their own lordship, or buying a monastery to run their own temple, that means the players get to decide what their adventures will be like for the foreseeable future.

When you make gold part of character advancement, you damage the ability to tell stories around it. When you make gold crucial to the story, you hurt its ability to be used as a form of character advancement. There's a tension between the two, and you can't have both.

My general thought is that we already have a perfectly good means of character advancement in leveling up, we don't really need another in gold. I sympathize with the fun of using gold to buy cool items, but ultimately I like what 5e does better.

 

[Saeviomagy]

You tax and fine your players instead of giving them less treasure because they might decide not to pay...