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

[Sorinth]

Bribes are a great way to get advantage on social checks.

FYI perfume is only 5GP and does pretty much exactly that.

 

[Blue]

Ah, the old "you're a bad DM because you can't come up with pointless money sinks" strawman. It's been a while since we last saw that.

Ah, the old "I'll insult the poster because I don't have a point". Unfortunately, it hasn't been a while since we last saw that.

We know that you are making up this strawman for multiple reasons. The most glaring is that I never said anything about the DM having to make anything up. Second, I never talked about money sinks, there are a lot of useful and proactive things character can spend money on, from during an adventure like bribing a way past an encounter, to longer term goals like gaining favor, glory or access, to furthering other, personal, goals of the characters.

And then, with points you wholly made up, you declare it the logical fallacy of a strawman. Projecting at the very least.

If you have zero to add to a conversation except to try to make up things just to throw out an insult, please think twice before hitting post.

 

[Blue]

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?

Hmm, you bring up differences between editions, but when someone else talks about that in a way that doesn't support your point, you call it an edition war. Maybe dial back the rhetoric.

I'm not threadcrapping, I'm debating your foundational point.

Please can you explain how, once you remove magic item purchasing, money is less worthwhile in 5e than 3.x? It's your thesis statement as put in context of designer intent for 5e. It should be simple to give examples if it's "not a controversial statement".

How was money more useful back in 3.x?

 

[FrogReaver]

Note: This includes 5E 2024.

It is pretty well agreed upon that monetary treasure and wealth does not have much use in 5E (especially compared to 3.x era games). So what could 5E do to make money matter? What would you like to see? What things could help motivate the going into the holes and killing the monsters and taking their stuff?

Broadly there's 3 possible player motivations:
1. PC power
2. PC goals (not more power)
3. PC characterization (usually a distant third)

D&D players usually don't have tangible PC goals and usually have even fewer connections to the world. Instead PC Power is the go to expenditure because it directly effects the game loop. (Power being gear/magic items, spy networks, henchmen, and pretty much anything that can aid them with adventuring).

The real trick to having players spend gold is get them to make PC goals unrelated to pc power and then have options to spend gold to progress those goals.

 

[dave2008]

Create training rules and a Downtime action that requires spending money on actually attaining the next level and the abilities. This could be paying someone of higher level to train you, tithing to a church of your religion, paying an arcane academy or library for access to their restricted section, etc.

That is exactly what we do!

 

[dave2008]

Would you mind sharing these?

I'm not @TiQuinn , but we did exactly what they suggest. Unfortunately I am not sure those rules made to Seattle when I moved last spring and had started handwaving* the gold requirements for a while before that. When I get some time I will look to see if I saved them somewhere other than my lost D&D flash drive.

*Basically my group go tired of tracking gold & treasure. So we just said they had the money to do what they wanted. This included all expenses, not just downtime & leveling

 

[Distracted DM]

Create training rules and a Downtime action that requires spending money on actually attaining the next level and the abilities. This could be paying someone of higher level to train you, tithing to a church of your religion, paying an arcane academy or library for access to their restricted section, etc.

That is exactly what we do!

I recall there being mention or rules like this in the Revised AD&D books, maybe the PHB? Didn't clerics and/or paladins have to tithe?

 

[R_J_K75]

Hear me out: Expensive magical hair plugs.

Seek out the all-powerful Arch Barber Sy Sperling, you'll be copperless in no time, but a hit with the ladies

 

[Zardnaar]

I've personally done 3 things:

- used the downtime activities in Xanathar's Guide and some 3rd party books

- used the 2024 Bastion rules (reasons to spend money to upgrade their homes for mechanical benefits)

- added some magic items to shops for purchasing (as we got in Baldur's Gate 3). Gives the PCs something to save up for while ensuring that it isn't a free-for-all buy anything in the DMG game.

I'm doing this.

 

[R_J_K75]

So what could 5E do to make money matter?

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.