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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7517829" data-attributes="member: 37579">Which works currently with less gold and if the pace of adventuring slows. If the characters take zero downtime and lurch from adventure to adventure they pay no downtime. If they have a few months off between major adventures, then downtime expenses accumulate. Such as....Such as....For the fighter, that is a goddamn treadmill. Chainmail then breastplate then plate then full plate. Etc.And the problem with that is it's an easy system to game. Combat heavy campaign? Go with option A. Every time. More roleplay heavy campaign? Go with option B that gives the social bonuses. And even if there were mechanical diplomacy bonuses for owning a church or carousing.This is a known problem. It existed in Living Greyhawk where you had to pay one of four lifestyle options, which gave you bonuses to social skills. Or could live off the wild. It became advantageous to dump skill ranks into Survival to live off the land and save that 10 gold, unless you were a party face at which point you focused on lifestyle as quickly as possible. It's just another avenue to min-max. And even if you did add side bonuses for spending gold elsewhere... there's still a finite number of options. How many armour upgrades can you justify for the fighter? Three? Four? And given gold tends to increase, that still means by level 8 or 9 they'll have everything. All it does is just add another way to stack bonuses on your character.The rules can't make you care about your character. They can't make you have a goal. One of my players is spending all their gold to rebuild his town that was destroyed by an undead attack. Another started a business. They didn't need to have their hand held or be bribed with a +2 to Persuasion to decide on that as a personal goal. They just decided to make that a personal quest and spend their money. Because that's the game. You get to decide what's important to you character. But if the game TELLS YOU how to spend your money and where, it's also penalising you for not picking one of their checkbox options. For not having the system mastery to realise that "owning a business" was a goal the designers didn't care about and wasn't one of the finite choices that gave you a mechanical boon. I love that about 5e. I love that I can give them a rare, cool magic item that has limited combat power knowing they won't dump it for better +# gear. I love that they can be invested in fixing up their hometown because that's what they want to do. I love that I can have the party stripped naked and largely broke at level 10 and doing odd jobs for cash to eat and it doesn't affect the balance of the game.Do you mean the random tables of prices?Or the table that just breaks down the math of the random tables but don't actually change the rate or number awarded? The advice there is super limited, and doesn't really go into setting the price of magic item and how valuable it is. So pick a number. 500? Split the min and max and go for 2,500? Whatever. It does not matter. It will be super arbitrary either way. And the effect is the same: you have a guideline to deviate from.The difference is, the rules give you the range of deviation. "Probably no less than X and no more than Y".</blockquote>

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