[d20] Wealth Bonus

[Ernir]

I am curious about the Wealth Bonus system presented here (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/MSRD:Wealth), as an alternative to keeping track of hundreds of thousands of gold pieces in a regular D&D game.
Has anyone tried applying this to a fantasy setting? How did it work out? What did you like, what didn't you like?

[Savannah]

No, I've never seen it. I've seen the reverse, however. People using regular dollars (or whatever currency you prefer) in a d20 Modern game. I've seen a lot of people who really dislike that system, although I think it makes sense for modern games.

The idea behind that system is to measure wealth in a modern world where you have bank accounts, investments, credit cards, and the like. In D&D, you can simply count your current wealth, and you probably have it in your hands. In the modern world, you may or may not be able to access all your funds (or access them without penalties) right at this moment. You probably don't have very much of your money as cash. Thus the d20 Modern wealth system.

[Fax Celestis]

To be fair, in a world like Eberron and its resident banker-dwarves House Deneith, a wealth check system might actually work out okay.

[Savannah]

Fair enough. But Ebberon isn't exactly the "typical" medieval fantasy setting. :smalltongue:

I've also fluffed it as a bartering system in post-apocalyptic future worlds. Your wealth represents the amount of stuff you have on hand to trade with. Wealth checks essentially check to see if you have what the other person wants/needs in sufficient quantity to convince them to give up what you want/need.

[Tyndmyr]

Technically, it's RAW in D20 past, no?

And given that even D20 modern has a spellcasting supplement, it could be argued to be somewhat of a fantasy setting. Now, I've never used wealth in D&D...but it could be used somewhere like Eberron, sure.

However, it doesn't mesh well with things like magic item crafting.

[Ernir]

No, I've never seen it. I've seen the reverse, however. People using regular dollars (or whatever currency you prefer) in a d20 Modern game. I've seen a lot of people who really dislike that system, although I think it makes sense for modern games.

The idea behind that system is to measure wealth in a modern world where you have bank accounts, investments, credit cards, and the like. In D&D, you can simply count your current wealth, and you probably have it in your hands. In the modern world, you may or may not be able to access all your funds (or access them without penalties) right at this moment. You probably don't have very much of your money as cash. Thus the d20 Modern wealth system.I assumed as much. It's not

The reason I'm asking is that I'm pretty of tired of keeping track of gold encumbrance, and perhaps more importantly, how completely borked things end up being if you start thinking about GP in any kind of larger context. Saying "wealth is an abstraction anyway" should fix most of it (in my mind, anyway).


To be fair, in a world like Eberron and its resident banker-dwarves House Deneith, a wealth check system might actually work out okay.
Fair enough. But Ebberon isn't exactly the "typical" medieval fantasy setting. :smalltongue:

I've also fluffed it as a bartering system in post-apocalyptic future worlds. Your wealth represents the amount of stuff you have on hand to trade with. Wealth checks essentially check to see if you have what the other person wants/needs in sufficient quantity to convince them to give up what you want/need.
Yeah, I'm not too worried about the fluff aspect, that can always be worked around. I was trying to fish for something like experiences with trying to set a purchase DC on Vorpal swords with a system that seems to have been thought of for AK-47s.

Technically, it's RAW in D20 past, no?

And given that even D20 modern has a spellcasting supplement, it could be argued to be somewhat of a fantasy setting. Now, I've never used wealth in D&D...but it could be used somewhere like Eberron, sure.

However, it doesn't mesh well with things like magic item crafting.
Magic item crafting (and crafting in general). Good point. This would mess that up a bit...

[Knaight]

I can verify abstract wealth working in fantasy, the d20 modern system and D&D fantasy are both outside of the specifics I've seen.