D&D 5E What could 5E do to make wealth worthwhile?

[Warpiglet-7]

Gold for experience made is lust after treasure. We were so pumped to find a trove…whether we fought a monster or avoided it did not matter…

It was almost addictive for my group. Once that went away I just stopped caring.

Add to that the amount of abilities characters have and buying magic items does not matter as much to me any more either.

I realize it is out of fashion but gold for experience was one way to make it oh so deirable…

 

[cbwjm]

One admittedly-arbitrary limiting option is to put a cap on how much % of a level's xp can be earned through non-adventuring activities. Another, more fiction-friendly, option is to have those downtime xp rewards be so small that to gain a level that way might take a few years instead of the usual few adventuring days.

I remember old dragon magazines mentioning this (though it was for NPCs) advancing by gaining xp but it was very slow, you need that practical application that comes through firled work (ie, adventuring) to really get the best experience. I don't think it's a bad idea, and could be used when you do a skip of a few years in-game before the old group gets back together having gained another level or two but otherwise not so much more powerful than when they took those years off.

 

[Lanefan]

Gold for experience made is lust after treasure. We were so pumped to find a trove…whether we fought a monster or avoided it did not matter…

It was almost addictive for my group. Once that went away I just stopped caring.

We dropped xp-for-gold in the early 1980s and the lust for treasure remained - and yet remains - as strong as ever.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

We dropped xp-for-gold in the early 1980s and the lust for treasure remained - and yet remains - as strong as ever.

Good for you! It just has not meant as much to my group.

Then again sense usually just adventuring with very little domain building and we don’t buy sell magic much either.

I like 5e…but a few things are less fun that they used to be (treasure, magic)

 

[Zanshin]

I let people train skills, at a geometrically increased cost according to the number of skills gained through this method.

I am toying with spell tattoos - pay for knowledge of a spell that is imprinted on your body - probably if its a setting fit.

 

[Scribe]

Gold for experience made is lust after treasure. We were so pumped to find a trove…whether we fought a monster or avoided it did not matter…

This actually solves a lot of problems. Adds some others for some people I'm sure, but thats life these days.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I've never experienced money not mattering in 5E. I don't give out a lot, and in many cases I don't give it out at all. I don't really care to take the time during prep to add it to treasure, my players don't really care about it, and no one on either side of screen wants to do the bookkeeping. We justify it like this, they are adventurers, as they increase in level, so should their wealth. So, we assume that they can afford whatever they need when dealing with mundane items, a few golds for information or to buy the taproom a few rounds of drinks. If there's a case where they need a large amount of money or need to procure an extremely valuable or rare item, we deal with it on an individual basis. We don't use downtime, training either, and keeps are a waste of time for us. In our case we don't need to make money matter because we rarely use it, it is substituted with other rewards.

contrary to what you claim when you open this paragraph the entire rest of this feels like an statement on how money doesn't actually matter in your game, like you're saying "money matters so little to us for us so we don't even bother tracking it"

 

[R_J_K75]

contrary to what you claim when you open this paragraph the entire rest of this feels like an statement on how money doesn't actually matter in your game, like you're saying "money matters so little to us for us so we don't even bother tracking it"

Not really sure what you're trying to say. We've played tracking gold, and we played where we didn't in both cases money was never a problem.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Not really sure what you're trying to say. We've played tracking gold, and we played where we didn't in both cases money was never a problem.

And the fact it was never a problem in either of those types of game speaks volumes to me on how little value or purpose it likely actually served in them.

if wealth was actually worthwhile you would have an active reason to desire it, you would want to track it because how much you had and could spend would be important, wealth could get you things, you would want to weigh up the benefits of spending your money on this thing now, that other thing instead, or saving it in case some unexpected situation came along.

like, look at how people have talked about gold for XP in the thread, in that situation people craved money, wealth was SO IMPORTANT there because it directly correlated to your ability to progress your character.

if you can dismissively say 'oh we had enough, we got by, didn't really spend it on much' then to me that sounds as if you're saying that no, having wealth was not really worthwhile in your games.

 

[R_J_K75]

if wealth was actually worthwhile you would have an active reason to desire it, you would want to track it

Right, we decided actively tracking wealth or total amount of coins each player has wasn't worth the effort.

if you can dismissively say 'oh we had enough, we got by, didn't really spend it on much' then to me that sounds as if you're saying that no, having wealth was not really worthwhile in your games.

We stopped tracking coins but still use an abstract system to represents wealth.