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

[MerricB]

If your way to make wealth matter is to have living expenses, taxes, etc... you've failed.

That's just a way of taking away wealth. If you give the players money, then take it away, you aren't doing anything interesting.

To make wealth matter, you need several things the players can spend it on, and they have to make a hard choice between them.

"I could buy this +1 sword, or have this alchemist makes potions of healing for me for a year".

Once you have that choice, then wealth matters.

 

[TiQuinn]

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?

Yeah, Paladins had to tithe 10% of any money they found.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Yeah, Paladins had to tithe 10% of any money they found.

In Dragonlance, the Knights also had to tithe, with Knights of the Rose giving up all their cash other than 20 steel pieces. This was not a fun thing to find out in the Gold Box CRPGs, when suddenly when you went to town, your overall funds were lowered because the Knight gave away most of their money they had! You basically had to move any cash around, away from the Knight, right before you entered town...

Also, if you want to find uses for party money, have the party invest in the Waterdeep stock market, petition against the city's capital gain taxes, and perform leveraged buy-outs of other adventuring groups.

 

[cbwjm]

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.

In games I've been in, I guess it still mattered, but we used it for bribes or to cover costs for things. I never really cared about it because I didn't have much else to spend it on so basically just threw it at problems.

 

[R_J_K75]

In games I've been in, I guess it still mattered, but we used it for bribes or to cover costs for things. I never really cared about it because I didn't have much else to spend it on so basically just threw it at problems.

D20 Modern had a wealth check system which I've taken inspiration from for my D&D games over the last 10-15 years. Right now, I'd have to find it on my hard drive because it's been so long since we needed to reference it. It's just an abstract way to deal with money when we need to solve problems or make purchases without all the pencil pushing.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Give out less gold, reduce prices of magic items. It's that easy. See: Baldur's Gate 3

 

[Lanefan]

I could see a base price package on some spending. How much to buy a simple house? What about fix one up? How about an Inn or tavern?

Yes, this. Also, how much to build such things from scratch, as opposed to buy or repair them? The 1e (DMG? PH?) has a few prices for such things, also for things like carts and wagons and ships, but there's lots of room for expansion on the theme.

A player in my game had his PC build a pub with rooms attached, intending (successfully, as it turned out) for it to become a base of party and general adventuring operations in the area. All of this was a half-mile or so outside the town they'd been using as a de-facto base for some time. Other PCs built add-ons e.g. a PC mage built her research lab out back, another PC built some cottages across the road as temporary housing for transient adventurers or parties, and so on.

For some of this I already had costs, based on what 1e used, but for other bits I was completely winging it.

 

[Lanefan]

I have struggled with this very issue many times. On occasion I have found something the players are interested in investing in, like a keep or a ship, but usually they just want to buy magic items. But I find that any time I allow that, it hurts the game—both by slowing things fine with shopping trips and with the detailed exploitation of the system (no one even thinks about buying one rare item when they can get like a half a dozen uncommon ones). I’m toying around with only having consumable items available for purchase. I’d like to hear things others have had luck with.

My answer here is to make what's available at any given time completely random, determined on a table* weighted toward common items. They get to a town and ask if there's any items for sale, I quickly roll to get a general idea of how much happens to be available right now vs what one might expect in a place this size, then generate that many items and there's yer shopping list.

* - note: unless you really like dice-rolling you'll want to use a spreadsheet for this, and the spreadsheet is also immensely faster. Inputting all the data, however, takes ages; you've been warned.

 

[R_J_K75]

A player in my game had his PC build a pub with rooms attached, intending (successfully, as it turned out) for it to become a base of party and general adventuring operations in the area. All of this was a half-mile or so outside the town they'd been using as a de-facto base for some time. Other PCs built add-ons e.g. a PC mage built her research lab out back, another PC built some cottages across the road as temporary housing for transient adventurers or parties, and so on.

I've had players do this and been a player in parties that did similar things. Fixing an old keep or bar, or building from scratch, or buying property, etc. It's always been a double-edged sword IME. Sometimes the minutia of it dominated and took away from the actual campaign and other times the resulting structure/business added to it.

For some of this I already had costs, based on what 1e used, but for other bits I was completely winging it.

The frustrating part is that even when they gave rules and guidance it was never enough. Thats why I stopped using these types of things in my games, becomes too much work. I really wish they would come out with an extensive book on the topic as well as one for merchants, trading companies and trade routes. Not here are examples, but how to create them.

 

[Zaukrie]

Nothing. What they get and what things cost are completely in the GMs control.