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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 9616138" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Good point, thanks!Sorry, I was being overly flippant. (Also, I haven't followed the thread, and I don't know what the state of the conversation is so far. I was mostly responding to the topic, and similar ones from the past.)Here's what I want to convey:(A) The codified rules of the game provide a use for wealth at low to mid levels in the form of maintenance. Food/lodging (or lifestyle expenses), NPC spellcasting services, expensive components, and to a lesser extent non-magical consumables like healer's kits and ammunition. At higher levels these do become a much smaller percentage of your adventuring income.(B) D&D provides a vibrant world to immerse oneself in, through the PHB, DMG, MM, and published settings and supplements. Interacting with that world naturally can inspire all sorts of ways of using your money. I feel like not taking advantage of that is missing half of what D&D has to offer. There are other RPGs more focused on just the action and the adventure that skip and/or don't have 50 years worth of building up those elements to interact with. This is something you can only get from certain RPGs, and D&D is one of them.However, as Matrix Sorcica brought up, what I was missing is that the official 5e campaign adventures provide little or no opportunity for using wealth to interact with (B).I think there is a place for fast-paced action-focused adventures that don't really leave time for (B). I've created and run such things in the past, primarily when what I wanted to explore was the mechanics of the game rather than the other elements. But it is definitely a failure on 5e WotC's part to give us (B) in the sourcebooks, and then make basically all of the adventures they produce ignore it completely. (Unless otherwise noted, all references below will be to the 2014 books, since 2024 has taken a lot of this sort of thing out.)1) WotC could encourage the usage of their wealth in their published adventures by...-Making half or more of the adventures not be a race against the clock. Make it clear within the adventure (and if needed, as a directive for the DM to straight up tell their players before they start) that there will be pauses in the action and time to smell the roses.-Put inspiring examples and activities in the adventures, preferably ones that reference the material in the sourcebooks. The section on lifestyle expenses in the PHB says on page 157, "Your lifestyle choice can have consequences. Maintaining a wealthy lifestyle might help you make contacts with the rich and powerful, though you run the risk of attracting thieves. Likewise, living frugally might help you avoid criminals, but you are unlikely to make powerful connections." Lots of adventures have the PCs working with the rich and powerful of the world. Put in potential interactions that differ (or only occur) if the PCs are maintaining certain lifestyle expenses. Ideally, these are custom outcomes, but they could also say that any checks to attempt to get members of the Waterdhavian nobility to do any of <a list of things> have Advantage if your party are maintaining an Aristocratic lifestyle, and Disadvantage if your party is not maintaining at least a Wealthy lifestyle, for example.-MM page 174 talks about griffons as trained mounts (though it neglects to give us prices). An adventure could tell us that there is a location in the town that has a certain number of trained griffons for sale (and give some prices). Then make that a rumor the PCs are likely to overhear. Players can then go buy themselves griffons if they want. Adventures should avoiding making every such instance something they need for the adventure. It entirely defeats the intent of (B) above, if overhearing that there are griffon mounts immediately makes players think, "Looks like we'll have to fly in this adventure!" Rather, they should have the opportunity to buy the mounts because they want them, not because they have to have them. Making the rumor available fairly early, and the price steep so that they might have to save up and come back later, can help with this.-DMG page 128 has (flawed, see below) rules about building strongholds. Another bit of rumor or news PCs could be likely to hear about is available real estate, whether already built, or available plots of land. Again, this shouldn't be required for the adventure, but it could be mentioned that owning and maintaining a manor (for example) can give someone the benefits of an aristocratic lifestyle quickly and in a visible way.2) WotC could give wealth more attractive uses by...-Going back to some of the great original ideas from the (2014) PHB and DMG, and smoothing out the flaws.-The 2024 Bastion rules highly mechanize things, seeming to me to manage to give benefits that aren't terribly compatible with the general rules structure, while feeling overly constraining at the same time. The original 2014 DMG rules for strongholds and businesses are a better starting point, but they need tweaked. The numbers should be changed so that businesses are actually profitable. The stronghold building rules need cleaned up in general. And there should be pre-made "packages" that tell you what is included. For instance, there could be a manor, and tavern, and temple package. It tells you the cost in time and money to build, as well as any other less quantified requirements that probably need to be met (permission from authorities, etc), and ideally suggestions on what happens if you try to do it without meeting those requirements ("you just can't" isn't fun). It also gives you cost to just buy a pre-built one, if available. Then it tells you what sort of income you can expect, with both a default non-random number per time period, and a random income roll per time period that the DM can choose to use instead, which probably offers slightly better results overall, but has the chance of doing worse. It also tells you how many employees of various types you have, and what other resources are available. If you have a country estate, you likely have X number of horses available to you most of the time, and all the produce of a certain type of crop that you could wish for for personal use, in addition to Y number of guards, and a listing of various household staff and other resources. The rules should make it clear that all of these figures are approximate. You might be able to find or build a cheaper or more expensive one. You might have two rival chamberlains for some reason, or a host of servers at your tavern with their own mini-guild (or only one server who is heavily overworked, but you're having a hard time hiring more because of the rumors that your establishment is cursed.) There could be random tables for all sorts of fun things like this, and for goodness sake make the randomness representative. Most of the sorts random tables in 5e books past the core (and some in the core) would give an equal chance of a demi-god trying to claim ownership of your tavern as an ale shortage reducing revenue. Good random tables don't say "roll a d10" and have there be 10 equally likely results, but that's exactly what has been done starting with Xanathar's at the latest.-I really liked the original magical item rules in the DMG. In 3e, 4e, and Pathfinder, the possession of magical +x items were assumed in the game's math, and they were treated as gear. You needed them, and they were easy to get. And in general, most magic items were that way. You could make or buy whatever you could afford, so it became part of your character build. 5e intentionally went a different direction and made magic items treasure. You couldn't necessarily choose which items you got. Randomness and effort became factors, in addition to reducing the number of items in general, and reducing the dependence on those +x's. (I should point out that, although magical items are described as "optional", that's really opt-out, rather than opt-in. The default assumption is rolling on the treasure table will provide a good number of random magical items. How many magical items of what power levels they provide are spelled out in XGtE on page 135. The published adventures also include magic items.)I was going to go into detail on the magic item creation and purchasing rules and how they could be spruced up, but I think the 2024 DMG actually does an overall better job than any of the prior 5e material on it. The prices are way too low though, and some other stuff could be added, but I don't want to describe how to build a better magic item economy right now. The basic point, though, is that you can player-driven magic item purchase and creation be a thing while still keeping it as treasure rather than gear, if you carefully implement the rules in such a way as to support that. I would post my own "magic item economy" rules once I have them completed, but they rely so much on the nuances of my personal preferences, that I'm not sure whether other people would find them terribly useful.-A full-on Birthright style domain management system with armies and such could give you something to use that money for.</blockquote>

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