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

[TaranTheWanderer]

Part of the issue is there’s no advantage to owning many of the things that cost money.

Adventures take you all over the map and having a home base to invest in is inconvenient.

Camping out or living in the Inn has no drawbacks. Why invest on a home base?

I do like the idea of training because that does two things:
1. Slows progression down in the fantasy timeline. You won’t go to 20th level in 1 year game time because you need to take weeks off to train

2. Gives a reason to actually make a home base.

One thing to do is enforce the ‘standard of living’ but give some penalties and f the he players insist on living the worst lifestyle.

Making living in a gutter or constantly living on the road have a game effect could encourage PCs to find more comfortable lodgings whether that be investing in a home base or paying lavish amounts on expensive inns.

I like the previously mentioned using money to increase your reputation. Doing so could open the doors to more profitable adventures. Now instead of merchants hiring you, nobles hear about you and seek you out. Not sure how that actually can play out as you don’t want to gate adventures behind reputation but having more profitable jobs or having access to fancier things or more influential people can be useful for all kinds of things.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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

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

1XP=1GP was a an incredibly elegant solution Gary stumbled upon for the fun little treasure-hunting game he and Dave cobbled together. In hindsight a simple lesson -- use your incentivization structure to reinforce the central gameplay loop that you expect people to enjoy about playing the game.

The only real problem is that it breaks down* if you want to play something other than a treasure-hunting game. You can play something that looks like The Hobbit or Conan/Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories easily, but doing something like a faux Lord of the Rings means you are deliberately forgoing treasure (and the advancement mechanic associated with it) to go save the not-shire from not-Sauron. Early Alarums and Excursions indicate that people were doing that long before things like the Dragonlance modules came out. As always, no one right way to game, but also easy to see how one advancement mechanism has trouble accommodating all styles.
*or at least advancement and incentivization mechanisms break down.

I think AD&D 2e had a good starting notion -- set up multiple possible XP paradigms. It just needed to spell it out more, explain what each choice did for your game, etc. Just saying 'here's a bunch of options, find one that works for your game' didn't help 15 year old me who hadn't clicked in with what gp=xp did for my game, much less what I wanted out of it. Mind you 2e was perhaps the worst about what to do with wealth, especially if you didn't go gp=xp -- similar issue as 5e, but with ginormous treasure piles after a few levels.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

They have the option in my game of not training and - as a result - advancing slower, if they're that poor or are that desperate to keep their money for something else.

And yes, it is a gold sink - that's the point of this whole thread: providing options for where characters in a 5e or 5e-like game can spend their wealth rather than just watching it uselessly accumulate.

Its a thread on what players can spend rewards on. Burning it to get what they should otherwise get for free isn't exactly my idea of a reward. Rewards should be rewarding.

 

[Stalker0]

So a simple idea is X amount of gold = 1 inspiration.

Flavor it how you want, perhaps its players tithing to a temple and getting a local boon, or it was a training lesson with a master, whatever makes sense.

But the advantage of that is:

1) Its a concrete benefit that players can appreciate
2) Its a consumable item, unlike magic items that tend to just perma increase their strength, inspiration points are consumed and so always provide a sink for your money

 

[Zardnaar]

What are you on about? I said that money is less worthwhile in 5E than 3.x. This is not a controversial statement. nor did I say a single word about whether the uses for wealth in 3.x were good, bad or otherwise.

If you want to reject the premise, go ahead. But maybe do it without bothering to threadcrap and edition war next time?

You statements fair enough.

Personally I'm starting to sell magic items again a'la BG3. Curated list though and you have to find the vendor. I try to put several in major areas.

Work in progress.

 

[Zardnaar]

1XP=1GP was a an incredibly elegant solution Gary stumbled upon for the fun little treasure-hunting game he and Dave cobbled together. In hindsight a simple lesson -- use your incentivization structure to reinforce the central gameplay loop that you expect people to enjoy about playing the game.

The only real problem is that it breaks down* if you want to play something other than a treasure-hunting game. You can play something that looks like The Hobbit or Conan/Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories easily, but doing something like a faux Lord of the Rings means you are deliberately forgoing treasure (and the advancement mechanic associated with it) to go save the not-shire from not-Sauron. Early Alarums and Excursions indicate that people were doing that long before things like the Dragonlance modules came out. As always, no one right way to game, but also easy to see how one advancement mechanism has trouble accommodating all styles.
*or at least advancement and incentivization mechanisms break down.

I think AD&D 2e had a good starting notion -- set up multiple possible XP paradigms. It just needed to spell it out more, explain what each choice did for your game, etc. Just saying 'here's a bunch of options, find one that works for your game' didn't help 15 year old me who hadn't clicked in with what gp=xp did for my game, much less what I wanted out of it. Mind you 2e was perhaps the worst about what to do with wealth, especially if you didn't go gp=xp -- similar issue as 5e, but with ginormous treasure piles after a few levels.

I'm going to use the 2E optional rogue rules. 1 go=2xp.

 

[Lanefan]

Part of the issue is there’s no advantage to owning many of the things that cost money.

Adventures take you all over the map and having a home base to invest in is inconvenient.

Camping out or living in the Inn has no drawbacks. Why invest on a home base?

There is one key thing a DM can do to encourage-assist the PCs to work from a home base, and that's to throw in to some adventure or other's lootable treasury a device that provides long-range travel either to that device's location, from it, or both. Then, all the PCs have to do is place that device* in their base and their travel issues are largely solved.

* - two I've seen:
--- a wall-size tapestry, the viewer looks at it and visualizes a known place and the tapestry's "scene" changes to show that place, the viewer then has 30 seconds to step through or can "hold the window open" as long as required for others to go through, one per round. Safe arrival not guaranteed in that the tapestry shows you an idealized and unoccupied version of the arrival point while in reality there might be a tornado going through or 27 guards wandering around. One-way only, you have to get back on your own; and the taprestry can't go "through itself".
--- a floor-length mirror in a big heavy frame, same sort of visualization-then-step-through process only this one allows two-way travel (someone at the mirror can open a "window" allowing someone remote to step through to the mirror's location) and can also be used as a scrying device as it shows the arrival point in real time.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Store it away for later retirement.


Once you realize that gold is fairly pointless after like 3 levels, game makes more sense.

 

[Lanefan]

Its a thread on what players can spend rewards on. Burning it to get what they should otherwise get for free isn't exactly my idea of a reward. Rewards should be rewarding.

That's just it - I don't see fast adventuer's-speed advancement as something they should get for free. If they want to advance for free it should take much longer; what they're paying for is the saved time and-or more well-rounded/competent training.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its a thread on what players can spend rewards on. Burning it to get what they should otherwise get for free isn't exactly my idea of a reward. Rewards should be rewarding.

Perhaps the argument is that for some folks, setting logic suggests you shouldn't be getting it for free.