D&D 5E Wealth by level

[CapnZapp]

Plus, Mona Lisa has no inherent value. It's an art object, which is appropriately considered equal to gold.

Magic items hold real power over life and death. They will definitely be assigned a value. More powerful items have higher prices.

The entire art analogy is flawed.

Magic items need to be valued on utility, not fleeting aspects like bragging power like the nebulous "rarity".

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[jasper]

Ideally, none. A hungry PC is motivated to go out adventuring.

I would gladly adventure Tuesday for a hamburger today!

 

[abirdcall]

If you wanted to sell the Mona Lisa, then you would be able to do so at an auction house. This is how things are done in the economy. Their is an entire industry built around buying and selling art that includes crazy expensive famous items.

You should read my post again.

I didn't say it was impossible to sell the Mona Lisa. I said it is silly to think that there should be a listed MSRP of the Mona Lisa.

Also there are art objects that are not allowed to be sold. These are typically ones that have been stolen at some point in time. It is entirely reasonable that if the PCs try to sell their items at an auction house the local ruler may step in and lay claim to the items as they were pilfered from their lands. PCs can't just go poking around in tombs for treasure then selling what they find openly.

I pay them to write rules.

They are not obliged to write the exact rules that you want. There are plenty of games out there, if the 5e rules don't cover the sorts of things you want in a fantasy game you should play one of them. 3.x comes to mind here.

The books don't have infinite pages. They have decided on a default way to handle magic items. They wrote a small blurb with optional suggestions about how to go about buying and selling them. They decided not to spend more page space on it. You aren't entitled to more magic item rules just because you bought the book. If it was a deal breaker on the edition you should have done more research.

Have you seen XgtE? They have downtime rules that address magic item buying and selling that I like. It takes one workweek to go about finding some for sale. An ability check is made to see what tables to roll on. Then the price is rolled for each one. Personally I think the GP value is a little on the low side, mostly for the uncommon items but it is easy enough to tweak. There is a complications table to represent the risks involved.

 

[darkrose50]

I can play another game, or make up my own numbers, but it is disappointing that they did not pay attention to the economics. They basically made the choice that economics did not deserve attention. Apparently they were correct enough, as D&D 5e is doing quite well without magical economics being sufficiently covered.

 

[darkrose50]

Plus, Mona Lisa has no inherent value. It's an art object, which is appropriately considered equal to gold.

Magic items hold real power over life and death. They will definitely be assigned a value. More powerful items have higher prices.

The entire art analogy is flawed.

Magic items need to be valued on utility, not fleeting aspects like bragging power like the nebulous "rarity".

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Especially healing items or items that would extend ones life span. Warren Buffet would certainly pay a beguiling amount of money for potion of youth.

 

[Oofta]

I have. I moved off of the gold standard, and onto the silver. There are 260 (or whatnot) coins to a pond. Enchanted steel is valuable by the pound so that the heavier magical arms and armor are more valuable than the lighter. Dwarves can produce and field more suits of armor (being shorter), and this is part of why they are seen as masters. Mana spirits seek to unlock magic trapped in items and return it to the ecosystem. Possession, attunement, wards, and ledged keep an item from being deconstructed. Wards can drive the spirits into rage or madness. Wealthy families or powerful organizations often need to hire powerful souls to attune a magical item, if they lack the capacity. Trade, danger, intrigue.

So you created your own variation, something that works well for you and then ...

I pay them to write rules. I half-expect some-sort of economic magical rules at some point. Not having them was likely a combination of marketing, putting it off or perhaps being lazy.

Huh? What's wrong with your home-brew? It sounds interesting, iconic and unique. Maybe I just get tired of people claiming WOTC is "lazy". If there were big enough demand to justify the development cost, they would probably do it. But just like every business they have to do cost/benefit analysis. There's not enough demand to develop a system that would make sense that hasn't already been covered by free material.

Magical items interacting with the economy should be a baseline expectation especially as The Forgotten Realms is the assumed base-line setting.

It is a very commonly held belief that paradoxically magical treasure should not be valued or that somehow its value is priced so high that it does not make economic sense with the simple idea of supply and demand.

For me for a world to feel immersive it needs to have people acting like people. People would figure out a way to sell magical items (auction houses, agents, mages guilds, merchants, collectors, the royalty, the nobility . . . basically people). People not bartering things of value is not something people do not do. Magic should be valued. Treasure should be valued. If anything the demand should outpace the supply for it to be considered treasure.

So what kind of system do you propose?

For my next campaign I'm considering two quite different options. The first is kind of a steampunk version of D&D, magic is ubiquitous, there will be a magic-mart option to purchase items (although I'm still debating limitations). The other is a very low magic world where the ability to create magic items has been lost, and items are incredibly rare.

In the first world, a +1 sword could be bought and sold on the open market. In the second? Finding any magic at all would be momentous, flaunting the use of the item would make you a target of thieves and if you can find someone willing to part with a magic item it would probably require a significant amount of gold and some type of service or favor.

Both campaigns fall within the boundaries of D&D, but I don't see how you could have one system that covered both. In addition, if they did publish such a list then the expectation becomes that you will be able to use it. According to interviews, it was a conscious decision to not include it.

But there are a lot of options out there. I created one of my own I'll use for my current (fairly high magic) world based on consumable vs permanent and rarity. No "official" document could have done better; as other posters have pointed out there really wasn't a lot of thought put into the 3.5 version. It may have been different of course, but there's no way a single list or even set of lists could satisfy every player or every campaign.

To call WOTC "lazy" because they don't create something you personally would like is ... well ... lazy. I also disagree that The Forgotten Realms is the "default setting" for everything, there is no default setting.. There are things I'd like added to the games as well. More high level non-fiendish monsters for example. But you know what? I can get that by building my own, utilizing the dm's guild or purchasing from Kobold Press.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Just to point something out.

Economic systems are generally based on the common folk, the cost to feed and clothe them, and generally to provide productivity to the next strata.
The next stratas economic system is generally based on the cost to protect and support the lower caste such that they don't rise up.
The next strata up cares about keeping the immediately lower one in line and needs to be able to bribe them with land.

Where magic items fit into this varies, but it's generally the premise of the third strata. If too many exist in the middle then they'll rise up. Often times this pressure is forgotten when DMs make their economic systems and it results in creation of one that doesn't make sense.

Where adventurers fit into this varies as they level but it should be generally the premise of the first and second strata for as long as they are active adventurers. They shouldn't be groveling for food, but if their wealth can rival a duke or king then they'll be the first people the nobility will try to gain favor with. If they don't kiss the ring.. they better be ready to have enemies.

Regardless, no noble is going to be ok with the free sale of magic items. Beyond this any economic discussion that is not also a political discussion is missing half of the system. A feudal society by itself will not support capitalism on a grand scale unless industrialism (perhaps in D&D industrialism is replaced by magic) takes over and when it does, the middle class is created that eventually overthrows the feudal system as the standard of living rises independent of royal fiat. Land, Labor, Capital = death of kings.

So much better to just treat magic items like wonders created by brilliant craftsmen and have them pool at the top of the chain to be stolen or taken through killing the owners. Wait, that sounds like D&D..

Back to the point though. Depending on what level 6 means in your campaign will determine the appropriate amount of wealth. If you want them to be burgeoning nobles at this point they'd need the amount necessary to maintain the lifestyle appropriate for that level of nobility in your game. If you want them to be adventurers, they need enough to maintain travel, retainers and a support system such that they don't need to work in the fields and can hone their skills. In the real world, folks like that had patrons.

Two cents.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

In my campaign, I'm very roughly assuming "expected gp" to be equal to "current xp".

In other words, using the xp level table in the PHB to also mean "wealth per level"

Bringing this interesting thread back to ask if you can elaborate on how this works? You hand out treasure as you describe in a later post (doubling monetary etc.). Do you combine this with Sane Prices or how do you do pricing compared to this WBL? Thanks.

 

[Kobold Boots]

And... to get back to what we discussed previously, instead of using a table meant for a different edition, you could just use the XP table in the 5E PHB to mean "gold" too.

In other words, an XP = GP campaign.

A 6th level character would then have 14,000 gp, not 13,000 gp. While this might be an inconsequential difference, the numbers do diverge at higher levels. A d20 character would max out at 760,000 gp; a 5E character gains 360,000 xp or gp over her career.

If nothing else, that's half as ridiculous! (But still a wee bit ridiculous)

Now then, the big question. What changes, if any, do you need to make to the standard DMG guidelines for awarding treasure?

The good news is: not too much!

As you know, the hoard table you use to generate a treasure is based on the monster's Challenge Rating (and not the level of the party). What you would want to do is double the monetary amount for any CR in the upper half of its respective tier.

Sounded complicated? It's really not. It means that hoards have twice the gold (jewels, artwork etc) if the monster is CR 8, 9, or 10 for the tier II table. The first half of that tier is CR 5, 6, 7. The second half is CR 8, 9, 10.

Example. Googling "5e treasure generator" Donjon is the first hit. Generating a CR 8 hoard randomly I get this:

700 cp, 6000 sp, 2200 gp, 110 pp, Rabbit Fur Belt (25 gp), Ceramic Urn (25 gp), Polished Stone Jar (25 gp), Iron Ewer (25 gp), +1 Shield (uncommon, dmg 200), Boots of Elvenkind (uncommon, dmg 155)
​

What I need to do is simply double the monetary rewards (but not the magical ones):

1400 cp, 12000 sp, 4400 gp, 220 pp, Rabbit Fur Belt (25 gp), Ceramic Urn (25 gp), Polished Stone Jar (25 gp), Iron Ewer (25 gp), +1 Shield (uncommon, dmg 200), Boots of Elvenkind (uncommon, dmg 155)
​

Note how I don't even bother with art objects. This isn't an exact science, the point is merely that to keep up with the XP/GP table, the DMG tables need the occassional "topping up".

And oh, one more thing. Never use the tier IV hoard table. At least not for gold.

That's it. This way you don't have to do anything special. You can keep using the DMG tables you've spent money to buy. The casino effect of random loot is fun. And by using Sane Magic Prices you offer something WotC should have provided, namely a way to spend gold even if you're running a hardcover adventure with no downtime!



Full credit:

All this, and the full explanations, are taken from Blog of Holding:
http://blogofholding.com/?p=6760

This entire post is insanely great and makes things very simple from the perspective of targeted wealth. I'll have to do some work with it to determine if it's internally consistent and will stand up to macro econ, simply because of the following reality.

A level 20 adventurer under this method will have earned or spent 330,000 gold. Sounds right until you realize that the entire trade budget for the city of Venice in the 1500s at the height of their power was around 640000 (ducats) gold per year. Provided that adventurers become nobles and have to field armies etc, that number of 330000 may be low.

Of course, this only matters if you're trying to model something approximating medieval europe in the 15th-16th century. I "try" to. Go earlier than that (say 12th century) and you end up realizing that the majority of the gold in Europe was held in "hordes" by powerful people and barter was more prevalent. Of course, centers of trade where people were more likely to be literate had more coin flow occuring.

I digress - history degree.. blah blah
KB

 

[CapnZapp]

This entire post is insanely great and makes things very simple from the perspective of targeted wealth. I'll have to do some work with it to determine if it's internally consistent and will stand up to macro econ, simply because of the following reality.

Let me save you the trouble - it's not.

And it's not meant to.

Remember: D&d is a levelled game, where a high level hero has many many times higher overall capacity than regular folks. Such heroes need "levelled wealth".

If anything, having access to wealth rivalling entire towns or nations is more believable than having AC 25 or 150 hit points.

But that's all I am interested in saying on this topic, since I firmly believe trying to make sense of D&D game rules as a simulation is a fool's errand. The only interesting question in my opinion is if it works internally.

And as I said earlier (maybe in this thread?) you can re-scale the character wealth however you like. There really are only two data points to consider: the PHB equipment prices and the prices of your selection of magic items.

In the first case I'm going to assume nobody want to mess with the PHB prices - this gives us a hard data point where a character ought to achieve a total wealth not lower than 1500 gp by level 7 at the latest (or thereabouts), since full plate is the most expensive "expected" item in the PHB.

The second case is more fungible. You can award, say, 1000 gp per level, and make sure no item costs more than 20000 gp (just choosing a very simplistic example here).

Or you can have 20th level characters end up with millions of gold. As long as they can't actually buy better game stats (=magical bonuses), your game remains stable.

In no circumstance does "but doesn't this mean you can buy a million chickens" come into play. Feel free to think about such simulation issues, but you will have to do it without me. For me, it's simple: if that's a concern for you, then lower the expected wealth and take the trouble of recalculating magic item prices. Rather than worry about implications on the local economy, I mean.

As far as I am concerned, I'm having a game balance discussion. Essentially, I am talking about gold in and magic items out. You can think of it as if you couldn't buy anything else for loot gold.