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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7517898" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Again, I’m not going to design a system for you just because you stubbornly insist on “nu-uh”img everything I say. But if you want a basic example, maybe a table you roll on after each month of downtime with a modifier based on the lifestyle you maintained during that month (or the lowest one you had at any point during the month, if you paid daily or weekly instead of monthly). Low results cause mishaps like diseases, long-term injuries, or loss of resources or equipment, such as getting robbed. Medium results have neutral effects. High results have positive benefits like gaining new NPC contacts, earning discounts on equipment purchases, etc. That way you have an incentive to spend your money on better lifestyles instead of saving it all for weapon and armor upgrades.Such as goddamn equipment, goods, and services. There are plenty of examples in the book, the f*** more you want from me?I suppose if you consider any form of upgrade path a treadmill, then yes. I would only consider it a treadmill if you need to upgrade to keep up with the escalating challenges. Fortunately, we have bounded accuracy making uogrades actual upgrades instead of taxes to keep up with the expected progression.*gasp* you mean players making decisions based on the needs of their character in a given campaign? How DARE they! Oh, so you were aware of a system like the one I was suggesting, but decided to insist on me making one up to prove it was possible. Thanks for that.Here’s a novel idea, provide guidelines for roughly how much wealth characters can earn by what level without breaking the economy system?No, it’s a system for giving players decisions to make regarding how they imagine their character would allocate their resources given the demands that their economic situation places on them (i.e. roleplaying). The bonuses and penalties are just to make sure there are practical consequences for the decisions you make, (i.e. gamifying them).Now, to be fair, not everyone would find that particular sort of economy minigame interesting, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with taking the game out of the D&D economy and making it a purely roleplay thing, no mechanical consequences for choosing to play a wealthy character or a poor character, just keep it all in the narrative. That’s 100% a valid way to play. But, if that’s the case, why bother counting coins?Very true. What the rules can do, however, is give consequences to the decisions you make as your character. Pursuing your goals (which are your own) should have benefits, and come with costs. That’s what makes it a game instead of just a story. If you want to tell stories with your friends, be my guest. Personally, I pay money for RPG books because they offer me something I can’t get out of simply telling stories (which I could do for free). It adds an element of consequence and challenge to the story. They gamify it.Owning a business could be a way to make more gold, which if there was a meaningful economy in the game, would be reward enough on its own. Funding a project to renovate a town could give you allies that offer you free food and lodging, discounts on your equipment, or might lend you their services in aid of your other pursuits. If the game has a functioning economy, you don’t need to provide +2 to persuasion on the town’s citizens for renovating the town to be rewarding.I’m not suggesting a system where you can just sell magic items and buy better +# gear with the money. I’m not suggesting a system where Xth level characters are screwed if they don’t have Y gold worth of gear. All I’m suggesting is an economy where there are many things you might want to spend money on that affect the game, and that these expenses come at the opportunity cost of other game-affecting things you might want to purchase.I’m talking about the section that describes how to distribute magic items by level in an adventure you’re writing, and the buying magic items activity in the downtime section.It’s considerably better advice than what’s in the DMG because it actually gives me a not unreasonably broad price range for items of each rarity, a formula for setting a price (even if randomized, I can figure out the probability distribution and find an average and standard deviation). And the other section gives me a concrete example of a method of distributing magic items of certain rarities by certain levels.It doesn’t have to be arbitrary, though. It could be based on a specific set of assumptions about how much the players can expect to afford at what point in their careers. You could even create different sets of guidelines for different assumptions to suit different campaigns. Here’s how much to hand out and how much to charge for things of this rarity  if you want a super low-wealth, scraping by campaign. Here’s a set of numbers for a Monty haul campaign. Here’s an average between the two.It gives you a minimum and a maximum, but no advice on a baseline or a standard deviation. At least with a dice formula, I can work out what the mean cost would be, and get an idea of how frequently outlying prices should be expected to come up.</blockquote>

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