Money in game

[KaussH]

So i read over and over that with the lack of magic item shops, there is too much money in the game, so I have to ask, what do you all track money for in game? In my games people build inns, buy bathhouses, set up shops, make a fortress, invest in wizards, ect. As they get higher level and see more things, they tend to want to buy stuff. But we also have food, drink, stay, expensive spices and the like, replacement stuff, riding beasts, ammunition, so on and so forth. Leaving them flush but often not wealthy any more.

[Hurrashane]

So i read over and over that with the lack of magic item shops, there is too much money in the game, so I have to ask, what do you all track money for in game? In my games people build inns, buy bathhouses, set up shops, make a fortress, invest in wizards, ect. As they get higher level and see more things, they tend to want to buy stuff. But we also have food, drink, stay, expensive spices and the like, replacement stuff, riding beasts, ammunition, so on and so forth. Leaving them flush but often not wealthy any more.

In most of the games I play in we don't usually get cash as treasure. It's usually just items, magic or mundane. I don't think we've ever sat on more than like 1000 gold per character. Usually we end up giving money away to worthy causes or just over paying for things. A character of mine liked to buy souvenirs of the places he went.

[Sandeman]

I once played a half-orc fighter named Quintus.
After a long campaign, the other PCs were mostly buying magic items for their gold. Quintus shocked everyone when he instead spent everying on buying a town house in Waterdeep.
People then begged him to let them have their own rooms in the house.
Now, long after the campaign ended, no one remembers what the other PCs bought, but everyone remembers the town house.

[Schwann145]

I think the problem is likely that many people aren't playing "people," they're playing "classes." The definition of "role playing game" has deteriorated so much over the years that it has basically all but vanished.
As long as the Fighter is fighting, and killing enemies, then they are 100% satisfied in their existence. What do they want/need when they aren't fighting? Irrelevant.
In Gauntlet Legends, you never "go to town." You never have greater ambitions. You only ever slaughter the enemy and collect upgrades and/or loot.

D&D, even in it's very design, is basically just that now. There are basically zero guidelines on economy or suggested avenues of progression that aren't "kill the monster/get it's treasure."

As such, it's entirely on the DM to (basically wholecloth) create the reason(s) why you would even want gold/money/wealth after being able to purchase your desired adventuring gear (such as affording Full Plate).
It's a ton of work that most DMs just don't want to wrestle with, and the game itself lends no support, so it's generally glossed over. Which, unfortunately, leads to what we have now - a general feeling like wealth stops being valuable very quickly.

[Slipjig]

I guess the question is, "Is accumulating wealth the primary motivation of all of the PCs?" If so, let the players figure out what they are spending it on. Or, alternately, let them retire when they accumulate a big enough pile of money. If you don't feel like tracking it, just handwave the bookkeeping and just assume they have a certain level of lifestyle narratively built in. And the fact that they have a "mid-tier merchant lifestyle" doesn't mean money can't be tight: maintaining a sizeable house in town with a servant or three can get expensive REAL fast if they don't have other sources of income.

And even if money is the PCs primary motivation, you can hold off on the big score until the end of the campaign (or the story arc). If they are looking for the Lost City of Gold in the jungle, it makes a lot more sense for their rewards to be map pieces, clues, and alliances than smaller stashes of gold in the meantime.

If your characters have a primary motivation OTHER than money, then I'd suggest avoiding handing out big piles of cash as quest rewards. Rescuing a couple of missing peasant children is certainly worth plenty of goodwill and may earn you some favors, but those probably aren't convertible to cash unless you want to paid in turnips when the harvest comes.

Also, if the PCs are typical adventuring murderhobos, then fines, court-ordered restitution (including the material components for Raise Dead), and forfeited bail can be a HUGE cash sink.

[Hurrashane]

I think the problem is likely that many people aren't playing "people," they're playing "classes." The definition of "role playing game" has deteriorated so much over the years that it has basically all but vanished.
As long as the Fighter is fighting, and killing enemies, then they are 100% satisfied in their existence. What do they want/need when they aren't fighting? Irrelevant.
In Gauntlet Legends, you never "go to town." You never have greater ambitions. You only ever slaughter the enemy and collect upgrades and/or loot.



I don't know if that's the case, at least not in my experience. A lot of times when I see people talk about their characters their class is one of the minor things they mention if at all. Unless they're specifically looking for like, mechanical build advice anyway.

At least in my group the players have a character concept then they go looking for what fits mechanically. Or it's like an afterthought "I think I'm going to play a big buff lady who [backstory], so I dunno maybe a fighter? Or paladin? I guess barbarian could work..."

[Laserlight]

I'm in a Rise of the Runelords (Savage Pathfinder) campaign, and at the end of Chapter 2, we have basically Enough Money. The paladin is getting masterwork plate, the rogue is getting an adamantium rapier, everyone has rings of Protection and Featherfall. I don't have enough to buy a tricked out wizard's staff, but even if I did, I wouldn't see the point in spending 400+ pounds of gold for a shiny stick with a few charges of spells.

So, it's a problem, but not unique to DnD.

Generally when I run a game, I don't track money except for certain cases. If I want to nudge players towards taking a job, "You're running low on cash and you need to score some loot soon." If they've been shipwrecked and have just arrived at the nearest town with nothing but shorts and sandals, "You have X silver and here's a price list". If they want to buy something big, they'll need to go find the gold. Otherwise, they just have what they need. I figure most people have a budget in real life, they don't need an RPG for that.

[Leon]

It can end in too much money but also if the DM is being stingy with both coin and items you get unhappy players who are sick of finding and being rewarded with the joke currency of war bonds with no value. There might be no "magic mart"* but there is plenty of things a party of adventures is going to want to buy and use so a steady income of some sort is welcome.

That 5e doesn't even come with a guide on how much a character starting above level one should have is but one of many many little flaws in the edition, thankfully older editions were not so scant.




* Never actually played in a game with a "magicmart" no matter the edition, specialist Blacksmiths in big population centers were as close as it got

[NecessaryWeevil]

Expensive material components are a thing.

[Zevox]

I guess the question is, "Is accumulating wealth the primary motivation of all of the PCs?"
This, or perhaps simply the more general "what are the motivations of the PCs and how does money factor into that?," I think are kind of important to this. I've personally never played a PC who would have any reason to buy a building of any sort. I tend to play characters that are primarily altruistic and trying to do good in the world for its own sake, or ones that are more thrill-seekers and would be more interested in fame and glory than money or owning property.

My current character is a very idealistic Halfling Paladin whose goals are basically one, find a cure for a curse that has afflicted some of his family, and two, do as much good along the way as possible. When goal number two leads to him getting a lot of money as a reward, he's either going to spend it on better equipment so that he can more effectively do those things, or he's going to give it away to others who have more need of it than him. (He also comes from a nomadic society where trade is more barter-based, so money is inherently of less interest to him, to top that off.) The rest of my current group is a Kobold Druid who escaped slavery and came to live with some fey in the wilderness and is primarily an altruistic sort, and an Elven Ranger who is a little crazy and could best described as "in it for the lulz." So none of us really care about money except for practical purposes that help our immediate goals related to the current campaign - i.e., getting better gear or useful magic items, mainly. Or paying fines that the Ranger incurs when he does something sufficiently illegal that he thinks would be funny, but he's honestly happier spending his money that way than even buying equipment.

[Lunali]

I think the problem is likely that many people aren't playing "people," they're playing "classes." The definition of "role playing game" has deteriorated so much over the years that it has basically all but vanished.
As long as the Fighter is fighting, and killing enemies, then they are 100% satisfied in their existence. What do they want/need when they aren't fighting? Irrelevant.
In Gauntlet Legends, you never "go to town." You never have greater ambitions. You only ever slaughter the enemy and collect upgrades and/or loot.

D&D, even in it's very design, is basically just that now. There are basically zero guidelines on economy or suggested avenues of progression that aren't "kill the monster/get it's treasure."

As such, it's entirely on the DM to (basically wholecloth) create the reason(s) why you would even want gold/money/wealth after being able to purchase your desired adventuring gear (such as affording Full Plate).
It's a ton of work that most DMs just don't want to wrestle with, and the game itself lends no support, so it's generally glossed over. Which, unfortunately, leads to what we have now - a general feeling like wealth stops being valuable very quickly.

You say this like it's a new thing that's developing. If anything, it's the opposite. RPGs developed from combat simulators and it's only recently that we really have systems that are focused on the role playing. D&D has been adapting with the times so it now has some support for non-combat activities, but it's still far short of actually encouraging role playing with the rules.

[da newt]

For some Players, loot is how they 'keep score' or how they know they are winning. For some Players $$ is just a resource or tool to get the thing you need/want. For some players $$ means very little. To each their own.

As DM, I don't worry about $$. I drop a little loot and cash/gems as rewards/prizes for successfully doing a thing, and let the Players figure out if they want to use it to set up a retirement, buy more weapons, end hunger, or buy themselves a title or influence.

Yeah - most adventurers do get excessive amounts of loot/$$ over time. Enough to be very much part of the 1% as they get up in level. What that means for your game / world - only you can determine.

[tieren]

In our current campaign the DM messed up and gave us access to a ridiculously large horde of diamonds. We filled a bag of holding and left with 500 lbs of diamonds. He's treating the conversion rate as 1 lb of diamonds is worth 5000gp, but if we try to exchange more than a pound or two depending on the size of the town, we flood the market and the value drops a lot. So on the one hand we're sitting on more wealth than we know what to do with, but whenever we go into a town we each get a few thousand gold to buy stuff with (spell transcription ink for me (wizard)), and it generally gets spent (items, gambling, consumables), I don't think any of us have more than 200 g in our own inventories usually.

Its motivating us to travel more to exchange in larger cities. We can do side quests to find wealthy merchants or nobles who can exchange larger quantities at once.

[Mastikator]

You say this like it's a new thing that's developing. If anything, it's the opposite. RPGs developed from combat simulators and it's only recently that we really have systems that are focused on the role playing. D&D has been adapting with the times so it now has some support for non-combat activities, but it's still far short of actually encouraging role playing with the rules.

Indeed, AFAIK 5th edition is the only edition with Personality Traits on the character sheet and suggestions for character personality and NPC personality in the books. Roleplaying has never been so good IMO.

-

To the original question of what to do with money. I run a game with magic shops, they sell only common magic items to regular people. To gain access to uncommons you need good standing with the guilds to even peruse the items. To me that's a way to spend money and a plot hook. I can also add high level merchants such as nobility/royalty and secret societies that become relevant in T2 and magical creatures that become relevant in T3. And things like houses, castles and (flying) ships can serve as base of operation, all of which costs money to build/buy and have upkeep cost.
I think the "players have too much gold and nothing to do with it" problem is really a symptom of "players are not allowed to shape the world".

[Willie the Duck]

I think the problem is likely that many people aren't playing "people," they're playing "classes." The definition of "role playing game" has deteriorated so much over the years that it has basically all but vanished.
As long as the Fighter is fighting, and killing enemies, then they are 100% satisfied in their existence. What do they want/need when they aren't fighting? Irrelevant.
In Gauntlet Legends, you never "go to town." You never have greater ambitions. You only ever slaughter the enemy and collect upgrades and/or loot.

D&D, even in it's very design, is basically just that now. There are basically zero guidelines on economy or suggested avenues of progression that aren't "kill the monster/get it's treasure."
Cute. I remember posts almost verbatim the same as this on D&D-related newsgroup threads on UseNet in the mid 80s (along with a 'it's role-play, not roll-play' admonition to theoretical other gamers).

As others have mentioned, D&D started as a dungeon-crawl simulator (spun off from a combat simulator) and has been gaining role-play and narrative heft ever since.

For oD&D and the basic-classic line, plus AD&D (and optionally for 2E), just getting the gold (back to town) was the primary goal -- in that treasure gp (at 1:1) was the primary source of XP. There wasn't specifically a need for a 'what do you do with it?' because getting it was the point and after that each group could figure that out for themselves. Mind you, people did ask, and EGG&co experimented with some options*, before landing on AD&D's training under an expensive mentor to level-up** -- that so many of us never used (making it 'an answer (to what you do with money),' but maybe not 'a good answer.'
*IIRC including things like 'you only get XP for gold you spend frivolously, Conan-style'
**until name level, when everyone undoubtedly was going to want to build keeps and support armies, etc. as a money-sink

AD&D 2e made gp=xp optional*, making xp for monsters defeated the only default** xp and everything else pick-and-choose from class-specific bonuses (extra xp per HD of monster defeated for fighters, per spell level cast for wizards, for healing and turning undead for clerics, etc.) to adventure goal rewards and such. This could be seen as one of the more RP-centric iterations, or as just a great big grab bag***. This was another place where getting the treasure (or not, as you decided) had structure, but not much on what to do with it once you got it (until/if you wanted to do the name level keep & army game). 2E (and 5e, which shares this feature) is kinda more RP-friendly in that it lets you not worry about acquiring money (and thus running more different types of scenarios) without having to override basic rules structures of the game (mind you, you can add in milestone xp into AD&D or Holmes Basic or any of the other TSR-era games almost as easily as you can read the xp rules in 2e, but it is published in a rulebook instead of homebrew, for whatever that is worth).
*and then again as an option for thieves in the class-specific xp-awards
**but using just this would be glacial advancement
***2e was very good at communicating 'we don't know what you like, here are a bunch of options, do whatever'

3, 3.5, and 4e have solid answers for what to do with money -- you can spend it on making yourself more effective (at going back out and acquiring more money). It's not like that hadn't been the case since the beginning, just with xp as a proxy, but this added a lot of complex fiddly bits with which to play around. This one actually makes the what-money-is-for answer feel more thought-out. However, it can also be a bit of a straightjacket. With B/X or the like, I could just fiat dictate, 'okay, this adventure is more LotR than the Hobbit -- no treasure hoards, and xp will be for advancing towards the primary adventure goal.' With (as an example) 3.0, if the party isn't facing baddies in their lairs and taking their gold, they will be relatively behind on magic item loadout (since they otherwise could have purchased some). That by itself isn't horrific, but some of the monster target numbers (CR, AC required to hit, magic plus required to bypass DR, etc.) were developed with certain assumptions about what the PCs would be carrying. As a DM you can make adjustments if you want a treasureless adventure, but then you have to. What I noticed most is that players felt like that because they could be spending their money on adventuring gear, they couldn't play the guy with the townhouse in Waterdeep or the wastrel who ended every month penniless (no matter how much they pulled out of the dungeon), or the like.

5e seems to be leaning back towards the basic-classic/2e/AD&D-without-training-costs model -- there is no specific use for money, so the group gets to/has to figure it out themselves. In theory, I think that is best as it lets money act like, well, money (as opposed to a parallel advancement metric alongside xp) -- free for the PCs to do with based on what they value. What I would like would be for there to be some more systemized ways to do that, such that people can pour over the minutia of whichever endeavor they like-- rules for blinging out your outfits (and maybe situational benefits for doing so), rules for pricing out buildings by the square foot and composition (for the enterprising graph paper artist who likes designing buildings), rules for starting your own medieval business and how to run it/determine how profitable it is. Xanathar's Guide to Everything gives a little attention to this, but not really enough for people to make different interesting decisions (which in general I think is what people most want).


So i read over and over that with the lack of magic item shops, there is too much money in the game, so I have to ask, what do you all track money for in game? In my games people build inns, buy bathhouses, set up shops, make a fortress, invest in wizards, ect. As they get higher level and see more things, they tend to want to buy stuff. But we also have food, drink, stay, expensive spices and the like, replacement stuff, riding beasts, ammunition, so on and so forth. Leaving them flush but often not wealthy any more.
I let the players decide what is important to them (hopefully giving me some warning) and wing a system for it. The most prevalent ones include:

Bling. Someone always wants to be a clothes- or jewelry-hound. Scaling that up, sometimes people want to be immortalized in statues (or carved into the side of cliffs).
Vehicles. At low levels the non-riding animals get a cart; and then it becomes a wagon; then a prairie schooner pulled by horses with pots and pans, 8-person tent and hammocks, and a barrel of ale; then a hard-shelled doublewide 16-wheel wagon pulled by 8 warhorses with arbalest cupolas, trap & magic runes protected lockbox, fireplace, bathtub, and tun of wine. At higher levels it becomes an ocean-going vessel (naval or merchant-focused) with the same attention to detail.
Buildings. Be it a townhouse in Big City, a walled estate in a smaller city, or a full on keep in the wilderness.
Businesses. Someone always wants to be an fighter-armorer, or be from a brewing monastery (monks or clerics), or the last dungeon was set in a mine and someone is sure it can be made profitable again, or something along those lines
Being a courtier. Bling is spending a lot of money to show the world that you have it (and can protect it). Doing so in front of the powers that be can communicate that you have power and influence, and should be trusted with more of the same. About every other long campaign, someone wants to try to be nuevo riche or even edge their way into the nobility (and about 1/2 of those try to court a major nobles second child, or the like).
Access or paying tolls/gate fees. Sometimes people just want their campaign to be more far-reaching, and thus want passage on ships, access to teleport spells, license to do X, bribes to be allowed to do Y, and so on.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think the "players have too much gold and nothing to do with it" problem is really a symptom of "players are not allowed to shape the world".

I agree with this entirely. But could also add "or encouraged" after allowed.

[Schwann145]

snip

To clarify my position:
When I lament about "role playing games," I mean the genre as a whole, not just the D&D part of it.

Yes, D&D has moved more favorably towards more support for "role" vs "roll" playing in 5e (at least officially - whether the community actually follows suit is a different story), but there are other games that are drastically more supportive of roleplay than D&D has ever been, even at it's best. It's these that come to mind when I get bummed that D&D isn't doing enough, IMO. And it's how many of these games are disappearing, or changing to be less "roleplay," more "rollplay," (in tabletop, videogames, all sorts of mediums) that makes me feel like, these days, "playing a roll" means "this is what class I picked" rather than "this is who my character is."

Or, tl;dr - It seems more popular to say, "I'm playing the role of Fighter," and I think to myself, "Fighter isn't a role! Fighter is your role's profession."

[Dork_Forge]

Basics are cost of living, entrance fees at certain cities, rations for both PCs and mounts.

Players will often seek out more luxurious accommodation, gifts or commissions that are purely RP in nature, one Bard with spend thousands upon thousands of gold on 'drip. '

More impactful stuff includes equipment for more specific endeavours, like climbing kits for everyone when ascending a mountain. Keeping potions stocked up, material components for spells, poisons, gear upgrades, pets, mounts, vehicles.

I don't do magic item shops really, there might be a mage you can buy certain scrolls from, or a variety of alchemists that sell different potions, but for permanent items it's taking a chance on the Xanathars downtime rules.

I don't tend to have the players have too much cash problem in games, I wouldn't say I'm stingy with loot, my parties just tend to have interests to spend it on.

[KorvinStarmast]

So i read over and over that with the lack of magic item shops, there is too much money in the game, so I have to ask, what do you all track money for in game? In my games people build inns, buy bathhouses, set up shops, make a fortress, invest in wizards, ect. As they get higher level and see more things, they tend to want to buy stuff. But we also have food, drink, stay, expensive spices and the like, replacement stuff, riding beasts, ammunition, so on and so forth. Leaving them flush but often not wealthy any more. Buying spell component gems has been a significant use of gold in mid to late game.
Bribes.
Down Time Training in a proficiency like languages. (One of our DMs uses a UA on down time training)

[Trask]

Money has been a huge factor in my now 5 year long game. We've all been the equivalent of "epic levels" for about 2 or so of those years. Money has never mattered more in a D&D game than this one. Our DM runs on the assumption that precious metals and gems are a universally valuable across the multiverse, so from bribing Mammon to recover souls of loved ones, all the way to hiring an army of mercenaries (yes a literal army) to defend Waterdeep, money has been pretty huge. My character is the ruler of an island kingdom in the Sea of Swords so we have a little simple trade system mostly driven by RP to bring in wealth for me, which has caused some complications when it was revealed by trading partner was draconic Laerkond, the virtual "East Bloc" to the Lord's Alliance's NATO. Not to mention simply being able to buy whatever random magic item we need (lots and lots of sending stones...) and equip our followers and friendly NPCs with good gear.

That is all to say, money can be very cool and exciting, but its basically entirely up to the DM's prerogative and the PC's creativity to make it happen.

[Waterdeep Merch]

As a DM, I've found that detailing things to buy tends to make players buy them. Magic items and gear will always be popular additions, and they are. As are buildings and businesses, like others have said.

But for a weirder example, I designed a few couture shops recently and priced out a few dozen pieces of fancy clothes, with little more than a description, weight, and gold cost (plus multiple shops with differing clothes and sometimes prices). Most of my party has bought something just to say they have it, while one in particular has gone out of her way to buy entire outfits piecemeal, purely for her own self-satisfaction.

In turn, I've had a lot of NPC's remark on her fashionable attire and given advantage on Charisma checks when talking to certain people, or automatic success to pass as high nobility. I like looping player choices back into the gameplay, gives decisions like that a bit of heft.

[firelistener]

As a player, I often feel that the DM is too generous with gold. I rarely play official adventures, but when I have, the gold limit and shop availability feels very constrained. In homebrewed adventures, I have had most DMs just make up an arbitrary amount of gold that sounds good as rewards, which has almost always meant we have people buying plate mail and ridiculous amounts of magic items or potions by level 3.

When I am DM, I always try to stick to the books even though I homebrew a lot. The treasure amounts in the DMG, based on my experience, are very well balanced. I also give plenty of opportunities in town or cities for players to buy anything in the PHB item list. Once the players get far enough, I might throw a big boat or an airship at them for purchase. When they have those, I prefer to track the crew's pay and ration expenses so they have a nice money sink that is also very useful. And on top of that, I like to give downtime where they can suggest something cool to do from the DMG or XGE, or I might even give a few.

But yes, ultimately, I watch a lot of players sit on their gold like dragons because they are less comfortable with role play. The more theatrical or experienced players tend to have big ideas about what to do with their money and need little help from me.

[Kane0]

Potions
Components
Alchemical supplies
Expensive armor
Bling
Hobbies and pet projects
Sidekicks and their equipment
Luxurious food and accomodation
Drugs and alcohol
Espionage and bribery
Acts of charity and goodwill
Founding organizations to secure your legacy

[EggKookoo]

So i read over and over that with the lack of magic item shops, there is too much money in the game, so I have to ask, what do you all track money for in game?

My solution depends on certain assumptions in the setting, but you might be able to find something useful in it.

First, villages and even most towns simply can't handle large amounts of cash/coin, gems, or magic items. The town may have a half-dozen smiths, but none of them can really afford to take that +1 shortsword off your hands. A smith might have the coin on hand, maybe, but then what? He's not going to be able to sell it easily. That sword is probably half of his net worth. Way too much money tied up in a single item that's hard to move. Same with just dumping tons of gold. You could buy up the entire town, maybe, but that's only if they're willing to sell. Towns and especially small villages are peoples' communities. They're not going to just sell to whoever dangles gold in front of them. If nothing else, now they need to move and find a new village, and displace those currently living there. No motivation to do that. Staying at a town's inn is no real cost to successful adventurers, so they definitely get the best rooms, best cuts of meat, etc., for whatever quality that may be.

So this means to sell your treasure, or to spend lots of gold, you really need to go to one of the bigger cities. But those cities are organized. There are rules. To be specific, there are rules about buying and selling magic items. You can't buy unless you're authorized via a license and being part of a particular union. Fine, you bring your +1 shortsword to an authorized buyer and they offer... 35gp. Wait, you-the-player thinks. The DMG says +1 weapons should be somewhere more like 300gp (average of 100gp and 500gp). Yeah, but the buyer has union fees to consider. You can, of course, turn him down, but where else are you going to take it? Unions like colluding prices. You're not going to (legally) get more than 35gp or so.

Okay, you take it to a non-union smith. That smith would gladly pay you a price closer to something the DMG says, but, well, there's that whole going-to-jail thing if she gets caught. So, no, sorry, can't do it.

Of course, if you go to a union shop to buy a magic weapon, the price-fixing goes the other way. A +1 shortsword will be ~3000gp (basically imagine the rarity going up). And the selection for purchase won't be amazing. Any really good, useful, and truly rare item will have already been snapped up by some noble for his son to show off at parties. It's good to be in charge of the unions!

So how do adventurers move items? In general, they don't, at least not for much profit.

In my setting, there are these underground auctions where people can "gift" items to each other. Since the laws governing magic items only specify buying and selling, it's legal to give items to one another. The auctions are held in secret locations because they're totally unregulated. The town watch not only won't provide protection, but may even "accidentally" raid them. So how do adventurers gain access to these events? You guessed it, by paying through the nose. Hundreds of gold per person, maybe even thousands if the next event features very rare items. And that's just for access.

What's fun about these auctions is they make for great encounter fodder in and of themselves.

[Burley]

In my current game, "money" isn't coins or paper. It's all gemstones of different size and clarity, which can be traded for goods and services, at rates congruent with traditional GP/SP/CP values. (Diamond and Ruby dust are used as spell components, so, even the smallest gems can be valuable.) So far, it works ok, but the group has been roughing it, mostly. And, while my campaign doesn't have "magic item shops," there are artisans and mages everywhere who would be willing to craft and/or enchant items. Some mixture of different gemstones may be required as payment and reagents.

This also helps a lot in price negotiations. Since we're not talking about set values, shop keepers aren't going to want to be Diplomanced into losing 150gp on a magic weapon. Magic Item stores that allow haggling are going to have really slim margins. But, using gems that have been polished or shaped can have an impact on the haggle in a way that both parties will feel like they got value.

[Beleriphon]

D&D, even in it's very design, is basically just that now. There are basically zero guidelines on economy or suggested avenues of progression that aren't "kill the monster/get it's treasure."

As such, it's entirely on the DM to (basically wholecloth) create the reason(s) why you would even want gold/money/wealth after being able to purchase your desired adventuring gear (such as affording Full Plate).
It's a ton of work that most DMs just don't want to wrestle with, and the game itself lends no support, so it's generally glossed over. Which, unfortunately, leads to what we have now - a general feeling like wealth stops being valuable very quickly.

I don't think that's really true. Dragon Heist drops an inn in the group's lap and even has some suggestions for how to upgrade it a bit. Aqusitions Inc. is outright about how to spend (and hopefully make) money. AI is certainly goofy, with a very specific humour running through it, but if you just use the rules they're actually pretty good.

[Rukelnikov]

To clarify my position:
When I lament about "role playing games," I mean the genre as a whole, not just the D&D part of it.

Yes, D&D has moved more favorably towards more support for "role" vs "roll" playing in 5e (at least officially - whether the community actually follows suit is a different story), but there are other games that are drastically more supportive of roleplay than D&D has ever been, even at it's best. It's these that come to mind when I get bummed that D&D isn't doing enough, IMO. And it's how many of these games are disappearing, or changing to be less "roleplay," more "rollplay," (in tabletop, videogames, all sorts of mediums) that makes me feel like, these days, "playing a roll" means "this is what class I picked" rather than "this is who my character is."

Or, tl;dr - It seems more popular to say, "I'm playing the role of Fighter," and I think to myself, "Fighter isn't a role! Fighter is your role's profession."

While I agree that DnD has never been a roleplay focused game, regardless of which edition had more rleplay (for me it was 2e, but 5e is pretty close), and there are systems out there far more focused on roleplay, I don't think its the case with the genre as a whole, all the spawns of Apocalypse World and FATE-likes are roleplaying first rolling second, and in the videogame space, there's alot of RPGs where combat is secondary or barely even there (Disco Elysium is less than 5 yo and one of the most interestingly written games out there).

[Veldrenor]

Apothecary shops - super basic potions.
Lifestyle expenses - staying in the city between adventures isn't free.
Spellcasting services - the party has made several donations to the church of Hekate to get curses broken and party members raised.
Downtime activities - carousing, gambling, research, etc. Not all downtime activities have their own separate cost, but even "free" activities have the lifestyle cost for the time spent pursuing them.
Travel - horses, caravans, ships, anything that allows for longer/faster travel has a cost.
Supplies - this doesn't come up much because there's always someone in the party with goodberry but they still have to occasionally buy rations or specialized gear.
Magic item shuffle - Players can select a magic item they own and then spend a week of downtime and pay a bunch of gold to get a list of 5 random items of comparable rarity. They can then trade their chosen item for one of the random items.
Player-driven stuff - My players latch on to random stuff in the world that doesn't have a defined cost. The sorcerer wanted to start a newspaper. The party is building alliances to found an adventurer's guild. The wizard tried to build a tower without getting permits or a land grant first. Who knew that kings own the land in their kingdom and building without permission is frowned upon.

[DomesticHausCat]

I like to steal the magic item enchanting system from 3.5/pathfinder. That way you got tons of already nifty enchantments and their pricing structure. Plus a plethora of magic items can be bought there. You could compare this list to the magic items of 5e and sell them of similar value to the Pathfinder equivalent.

[Silly Name]

D&D, even in it's very design, is basically just that now. There are basically zero guidelines on economy or suggested avenues of progression that aren't "kill the monster/get it's treasure."

As such, it's entirely on the DM to (basically wholecloth) create the reason(s) why you would even want gold/money/wealth after being able to purchase your desired adventuring gear (such as affording Full Plate).
It's a ton of work that most DMs just don't want to wrestle with, and the game itself lends no support, so it's generally glossed over. Which, unfortunately, leads to what we have now - a general feeling like wealth stops being valuable very quickly.

I don't really agree with this. While it's not incredibly in depth, the DMG and PHB have the following rules:

- Cost of living expenses
- Cost and time of building fortresses/headquarters/guildhalls/temples
- Rules to run a business "on the side", with upkeep costs and the chance to turn a profit
- Rules to hire hirelings, buy horses, pay for passages on a ship or even buy one outright
- Consequently, costs to hire a crew to man your (air)ship
- Rules for crafting mundane items (expanded in XGE)
- Rules for training to obtain a tool or language proficiency (reworked in XGE)

Also, XGE includes rules for crafting magic items and also seeking out magic items to buy. It also has rules for research, crafting scrolls, carousing, pit fighting, gambling and so on. Some of those options are in the DMG as well, but XGE dramatically expands on that.

Is your DM enforcing the cost of living expenses? Do you pay to sleep and eat at the local inn? Do you buy new ammunitions for your ranged weapons? Do you buy horses? Rations? Do you hire people?

Now, sure, high-level adventurers often have ways to circumvent a lot of smaller expenses like food and water (Druids with Goodberry, Rangers foraging, Clerics with Create Food and Water), or transport (Phantom Steed, Find Steed, Teleport), but players should spend their gold on a variety of things.

Recently, my players performed the following expenses:

- Starting to build a guildhall (2500 gp paid upfront, 2500 gp to pay later)
- Hire a ship's crew for the next month(20 crewmembers at 2gp/day = 1.200 gp)
- Commission weapons and armor (1500 gp for a plate armor, 2000 gp on a magic axe)
- Buy new clothes (30 gp total)
- Buy rations for a month (750 sp)
- Spend money on a month of Comfortable lifestyle (2 gp/day each, so 60 gp each)
- Training (475 total)
- Research (50 gp)
- Be on the prowl for a Bag of Holding (successful, 500 gp total spent), and various spell scrolls and potions (mixed bag of results, 800 gp spent)
- Shop for expensives spell components (1.200 gp)

TOTAL = 10.580 gp spent

All this stuff sensibly cut on their shares of a dragon hoard, and apart from enforcing lifestyle expenses, they all asked me to do this.

If your games don't do downtime, there's no good way to spend money, on that I agree. But that's why downtime is important: it allows players to quite literally invest in the world and in their characters past their class features and how to be good at combat and dungeoneering. The DM should also enforce various expenditures unless the players have features or ways to negate them (e.g., the Acolyte background lets you lodge at a temple, negating lifestyle expenditures).

[EggKookoo]

If your games don't do downtime, there's no good way to spend money, on that I agree. But that's why downtime is important: it allows players to quite literally invest in the world and in their characters past their class features and how to be good at combat and dungeoneering.

The problem I see with 5e (and maybe D&D overall) is that there's very little incentive for players to invest in the world. Their PCs are so jam-packed with features that they don't need the DM to drop magic items. Wizard need scrolls, so (in my experience) players just opt to play sorcerers or something, rather than build a PC around future hypothetical DM conscientiousness. D&D 5e very actively disconnects the PCs from the nuts & bolts of the world.

At most, PCs need to eat, but what's the cost there? A silver piece for a good meal (the PHB says the daily cost of "modest" meals is 3sp, so is that 1sp per meal)? That's a rounding error at even just 2nd or 3rd level. They don't need to buy housing. In fact, they're encouraged not to, since that would tie them down to a specific location. So 5sp or so a day to stay at inns. These costs are only an issue right at the start with 1st level PCs, but they don't scale the same as PC wealth even by 2nd or 3rd level.

By the time PCs get to >10th level, sure, they might have narrative reason to settle down and build a stronghold, or even just buy an estate or something. But by then, they're rolling in tens of thousands of GP. That's also about the time most players stop playing those PCs and start over with new ones.

In my experience, the resistance to the bookkeeping and overhead of downtime activities isn't coming from the DM. It comes from the players, who ain't got time for that. And the rules encourage that kind of thinking. Simply put, that's not why they play the game.

[Silly Name]

The problem I see with 5e (and maybe D&D overall) is that there's very little incentive for players to invest in the world. Their PCs are so jam-packed with features that they don't need the DM to drop magic items. Wizard need scrolls, so (in my experience) players just opt to play sorcerers or something, rather than build a PC around future hypothetical DM conscientiousness. D&D 5e very actively disconnects the PCs from the nuts & bolts of the world.

[...]

In my experience, the resistance to the bookkeeping and overhead of downtime activities isn't coming from the DM. It comes from the players, who ain't got time for that. And the rules encourage that kind of thinking. Simply put, that's not why they play the game.

I don't want to come across as callous, but a lot of those issues are often tied to adventure and campaign design:

- Do PCs never have to travel over long distances? Do they never have to pay for passage on a ship, or buy one themselves and hire a crew?
- Do they never buy horses? Armor for their steeds?
- Do they never plan expeditions? Don't they buy resources like torches, ropes, tents, thieves' tools, disguise kits, etc?
- Don't they buy new weapons, ammunitions, armors and shields?
- Don't they train to learn languages or pick up tool proficiencies?
- Don't they spend time researching about their enemies, the artifacts they heard about, and so on?
- Don't they buy healing potions, anti-toxins, holy water, alchemist's fire?

Why aren't PCs investing in the world? Don't they roleplay with the NPCs? My PCs often pay bribes, give donations, fund rebuilding houses or give a boost to a business they like.

The fact that the PCs are very much self-sufficient doesn't mean they can't engage with the wider world of the campaign. If they only want to zoom from one dungeon to the next and fight enemies all day long... well, if everyone's having fun, the DM included, there's really nothing wrong with that, but of course that sort of campaign has the PCs finding themselves overflowing with more money than they can spend. But at the same time, it feels like the sort of campaign in which the players wouldn't actively mind not spending their gold.

[Amnestic]

- Do they never buy horses? Armor for their steeds?
- Don't they buy new weapons, ammunitions, armors and shields?
- Don't they train to learn languages or pick up tool proficiencies?

Just on the quoted notes:-
Buying barding, unless you've got Find Steed, is going to be a waste of time and resources since they mounts don't scale HP and will die to one AoE just the same. You can say "well you've got nothing else to spend your gold on" and...okay, true, but if it doesn't actually help at all, it's not really a worthy expenditure.

Generally people are disincentivised from dragging an endless stable of new horses to the battlefield because players don't like seeing their pets die over and over again. If there was a way to invest gold into giving the horse more hit points then that'd be more viable, but there isn't. As the other recent thread indicated generally the best way to address this would be to give it Sidekick levels, but that's not really spelled out, and also isn't a thing you spend gold on.

Assuming no magic item shop, buying new weapons/armour/ammunition/shields is dealt with by 5th-6th level max if you're a plate wearer, and before that if you're not. A rogue could be set with their nonmagical equipment by 2nd level.

Ammunition as an expense is just not notable at all. A character can drop 10gp on 200 arrows at level 1 from their background funds and never run out. 200 (+100 from recovering arrows post-battle) is more than sufficient. Perhaps once you get to level 10 you might need to restock, but at that point, is 10gp an investment to make note of? You're rolling in the thousands. I'm sure someone could calculate the average number of rounds spent firing arrows per level between 1-20, I'd be surprised if even a pure Fighter with up to 4 attacks per turn plus Action Surge on the regular needed to invest more than 50gp (which is 1500 arrows) over the entirety of their career.

Also if you know you're an archer, you can craft your own arrows with woodcarving tools and adequate wood - 5 per short rest, 20 per long rest, so an average of 30 new arrows per day, with tools you can start with at level 1.

Downtime training costs significant time - 250 days, or the better part of a year. So, no, most characters will not do so, because a lot of campaigns don't just have the opportunity to take a year out. Some will, but I expect most will not.

[EggKookoo]

- Do PCs never have to travel over long distances? Do they never have to pay for passage on a ship, or buy one themselves and hire a crew?
- Do they never buy horses? Armor for their steeds?
- Do they never plan expeditions? Don't they buy resources like torches, ropes, tents, thieves' tools, disguise kits, etc?
- Don't they buy new weapons, ammunitions, armors and shields?
- Don't they train to learn languages or pick up tool proficiencies?
- Don't they spend time researching about their enemies, the artifacts they heard about, and so on?
- Don't they buy healing potions, anti-toxins, holy water, alchemist's fire?



By and large, these are trivial expenses, and no, in general they don't do most of these things. They book travel sometimes, but they often just hoof it. Figuratively, I mean. They walk. They used mounts once, I think, just for the novelty. I don't know why they'd armor them up. It's not like they take mounts into dungeons or other locations. Seems like a thing you'd do because "that's what you do in fantasy settings."

Regarding armor and weapons, there's no real reason to spend money to upgrade gear if all you're going to get is more of the same. What they want, of course, is cool magical gear, but you don't get that at shops. You get that from adventuring. In fact, that's part of the problem. They find treasure and have to sell it.

When it comes to supplies and such, PCs are so self-sufficient that most of these things are redundant. Who needs torches? Most PC races can see in the dark. Who needs tents once someone can cast tiny hut? Okay, maybe ropes are usefull since not everyone can levitate, but it's not like you need to constantly re-buy those. Even food can be handled with magic, but even if not, we're talking about small change in terms of expense. One dungeon can give each PC hundreds of gold in treasure at like 3rd level.

The people I play with, including myself, play these games mostly to go on adventures. That doesn't just mean fighting, but it does mean engagement and some kind of action. Questioning NPCs, following clues, investigating mysteries -- that's what we want. I mean as well as fighting enemies from time to time. But we don't play the game to manage mortgages, calculate taxes, and deal with bureaucracy (unless doing that stuff is done in the service of questioning NPCs, following clues, investigating mysteries, and fighting enemies, of course). I don't think this is an uncommon attitude. What percentage of players deal with encumbrance and worry about finding spent arrows?


Why aren't PCs investing in the world? Don't they roleplay with the NPCs? My PCs often pay bribes, give donations, fund rebuilding houses or give a boost to a business they like.

No, they don't donate money or fund anything. Why would they? Even the 5e paladin isn't tied to an institution or faith. They're likely to do stuff along these lines as part of the adventure, but not as a matter of course.

Bribing happens, but again, what's that cost? One GP is a small fortune to a town guard. Bribing him with 5 GP is almost guaranteed to make a faithful servant out of him for the short term, but that's couch cushion change for a successful adventurer.


The fact that the PCs are very much self-sufficient doesn't mean they can't engage with the wider world of the campaign. If they only want to zoom from one dungeon to the next and fight enemies all day long... well, if everyone's having fun, the DM included, there's really nothing wrong with that, but of course that sort of campaign has the PCs finding themselves overflowing with more money than they can spend. But at the same time, it feels like the sort of campaign in which the players wouldn't actively mind not spending their gold.

The thing is, engaging with the NPCs doesn't typically equate to spending large amounts of money. Spare change here and there, sure. And yes, at 1st level, these costs matter because you start off with such a small amount. But in the level range that most people play at, they don't.

I did end up getting my players interested in creating strongholds, using Colville's Strongholds & Followers. That will suck down a lot of their gold reserves. We'll see how it shakes out.

[Silly Name]

Downtime training costs significant time - 250 days, or the better part of a year. So, no, most characters will not do so, because a lot of campaigns don't just have the opportunity to take a year out. Some will, but I expect most will not.

It should be noted that XGE reworked this rule, down to ten workweeks (50 days), with a "discount" of a workweek for each positive point of INT modifier. I think "roughly a month and half", or even two months, is a reasonable downtime period, especially considering how most other downtime activities may end up requiring similiar timeframes.



No, they don't donate money or fund anything. Why would they? Even the 5e paladin isn't tied to an institution or faith. They're likely to do stuff along these lines as part of the adventure, but not as a matter of course.

Again, I don't want to come across as mean-spirited, but this type of attitude to me comes across as "the players aren't invested in the game-world". My players make donations because they want to help that temple which has been offering them healing and shelter; they gift hefty sums to struggling villages to help them get through a hard year, and they invest into training soldiers to aid the city resist the coming invasion.

They spend time pursuing their characters' own personal quests, and they spend money to collect things the characters are interested into: the bard has bought many rare and unique instruments and is always on the lookout for new musics and stories to add to his repertoire, as well as learning more about the secrets of magic, the paladin is always seeking to spread the word of his god, the barbarian funds the efforts of a group combating slavery, and the rogue spends his free time crafting poisons and sussing out rumours in town to find out where his archenemy is. That sort of stuff helps the players not only spend money, but immerse themselves in the world and "ground" their characters into it thanks to building relationships with the NPCs.

[da newt]

There is no right or wrong way to play the game. You live your best life, I'll try to do the same, and we shouldn't impose on each other.

Personally I like a bit of verisimilitude w/ my fantasy so my PCs don't carry more than I think any hero could stump around with - so massive amounts of GP are often too burdensome. I'll often look to buy gems or change to PP, just to make it feel reasonable that I'd have that with me.

This also incentiveses my guys to put their coin into something - whether beneficial to me/party or to the world we interact w/. But this is just personal preference.

I do have a 10th lvl gloomstalker who doesn't really value wealth much at all, and in his campaign there have been precious few opportunities to spend $$ on anything useful (we are rushing to deal with a cataclysmic upheaval and there are no magic item stores), so he's got ~12k gp worth of booty that he's gathered along the way. It bugs me, but the rest of the party seems happy that their GP score keeps going up ('cause that means you are winning, right?). My guys has left towns / villages with sacks of gold to re-build / build defenses as the party has to high tail it to the next crisis - but this is just a RP choice.

D&D economy is weird.

[Amnestic]

Again, I don't want to come across as mean-spirited, but this type of attitude to me comes across as "the players aren't invested in the game-world".

The player's first encounter with gold in the PHB is using it to buy items for themselves - in the form of weapons, armour, and adventuring gear. It's not great surprise if players take that as a hint that their gold's primary use is going to be on improving going on adventures and not nebulous money sinks of NPCs.

Yes, players certainly can do more, if they're not I would suggest it's because the game tells them that gold's primary use is their characters.

It's only after playing for a bit that the double-switch is revealed: gold is plentiful, and things to spend it on not-so-much.

[trtl]

To clarify my position:
When I lament about "role playing games," I mean the genre as a whole, not just the D&D part of it.

Yes, D&D has moved more favorably towards more support for "role" vs "roll" playing in 5e (at least officially - whether the community actually follows suit is a different story), but there are other games that are drastically more supportive of roleplay than D&D has ever been, even at it's best. It's these that come to mind when I get bummed that D&D isn't doing enough, IMO. And it's how many of these games are disappearing, or changing to be less "roleplay," more "rollplay," (in tabletop, videogames, all sorts of mediums) that makes me feel like, these days, "playing a roll" means "this is what class I picked" rather than "this is who my character is."

Or, tl;dr - It seems more popular to say, "I'm playing the role of Fighter," and I think to myself, "Fighter isn't a role! Fighter is your role's profession."

Honestly, why are you playing DnD then? I don't mean to be tongue and cheek, but dnd is overplayed, it's a great system, but there are other great systems out there as well, and you just said those systems appeal to you more (if it's inability to find a play group, then that's fair).

I will say, I'm sick and tired of the "role play, roll play" argument, mostly just a bunch of gatekeeping on both sides.

But seriously, there are some sweet systems out there, if you feel like dnd falls short and you aren't giving these other systems a shot, then you're doing yourself a disservice.

[EggKookoo]

Again, I don't want to come across as mean-spirited, but this type of attitude to me comes across as "the players aren't invested in the game-world".

In a sense, you're correct. My players aren't interested in the game world the same way you are (or the way you're describing, anyway). They're interested in their PCs. They like being adventure heroes. They'll do what it takes to further their goal of playing adventure heroes. If I have some setting detail, they parse it through the lens of "ok, how does interacting with this detail further my goal of playing an adventure hero?" I've learned, for example, if I want to get them interested in some bit of lore I've worked up, I can't just tell them about it or have it just... exist... I have to give them a problem, and at least part of the solution to that problem involves understanding the implications of that bit of lore. Then they get into it, because it has a function.

I don't mean to imply my players totally disregard setting details for their own sake. They do ask questions about how things work and how cultures do X and Y and stuff. But spending gold is a decision that usually comes with a question about the value gained. What are they getting in return? Will they need that gold later? Until they run into a problem, they don't see the reason to spend gold on things that don't unlock more "adventure hero" paths, or make traveling those paths easier.

You might see them as not invested, but to me (and to them) they're just being judicious about what they invest in. They have goals and they want to make sure their decisions further those goals.

[Silly Name]

You might see them as not invested, but to me (and to them) they're just being judicious about what they invest in. They have goals and they want to make sure their decisions further those goals.

I absolutely don't want to imply that your group is having wronbad fun - as long as everyone is having fun and enjoying the game, it's perfectly valid. I have played in similar groups and if the group dynamic is solid and the encounters and adventures are cool, it's still a blast!

I also would add that not being invested into the fictional world and the fictional people within it doesn't mean that people aren't invested in the game itself. Your players take a more "utilitarian" approach to spending resources, and won't spend them on things that don't directly provide them benefits at being actions heroes. That's still cool.

What I wanted to point is that the game has rules for money sinks and how to spend money, even to gain mechanical benefits (buying magic items, crafting them, researching important in-game knowledge, training for tool and language proficiency, buying and maintaining vehicles and hiring crews and hirelings). But as you point out, the game doesn't force the players to interact with those systems.

Is that a flaw or a virtue? Honestly, from how you describe your group, I would say that's a virtue for certain groups at least: if they don't want to deal with that, they aren't forced to, and get to focus on the stuff they enjoy and is very much mechanically supported. Groups that do like that aspect of the game, however, get to interact with them as much as they want. It's not a bad set-up, imho.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Going to be honest, I hate being poor IRL, the struggles, the fact that it takes away from being able to enjoy things I care about.

Money matters for the first 3-5 levels in my campaigns and then I tend to find some way for the PCs to be rich and not have to stress. They don't get infinite wealth and can't buy their way out of certain problems, but otherwise no issue.

Most recent? My PCs encountered a Patron in the form of a level 18 Genie Lock. They used wish over a few days down time and just rewarded each PC with essentially 250k in gold and jewels.

[deljzc]

If DM's and players are 90%+ invested in the campaign setting than money becomes a down time activity almost done as a minigame betwen the DM and individual players on their own time. Not in the official "game time" when everyone is together to move forward the storyline and campaign.

If the DM doesn't have that kind of friendship with the players outside of set play times than money/economy is a real hassel and should be done as close to RAW as possible. i.e. Players kind of keep track of "net worth" and subtractions are managed as quickly and easily as can happen. Items are puchased off of lists based on availability provided by DM's and set times during group "game time".

To me, I love talking both ways (DM to Player, Player to DM) about down time activities and mini games that might just involve one character and what he wants to use, invest or spend money on and what goals (political or otherwise) he might want to pursue outside or with no need of the group.

That's kind of fun. But you have to fiind a DM with the time and willingness to do that on top of all the other time requirements running a campaign can need.

[EggKookoo]

I absolutely don't want to imply that your group is having wronbad fun - as long as everyone is having fun and enjoying the game, it's perfectly valid. I have played in similar groups and if the group dynamic is solid and the encounters and adventures are cool, it's still a blast!

No worries. I'm not reading any of this as any kind of attack (hopefully the same is true for the reverse). It's all good!


Is that a flaw or a virtue? Honestly, from how you describe your group, I would say that's a virtue for certain groups at least: if they don't want to deal with that, they aren't forced to, and get to focus on the stuff they enjoy and is very much mechanically supported. Groups that do like that aspect of the game, however, get to interact with them as much as they want. It's not a bad set-up, imho.

The thing is, they want stuff to spend money on. They enjoy doing that as part of the game. But they don't want to spend it just to say they spent it. They want to basically buy more "adventure" with it, which I can understand.

For example, they don't seem interested in buying changes of clothing for their PCs. But a noble invited them to a party, and when the official messenger showed up at the tavern they like to hang out at, he not-so-subtly implied they would need something decent to wear. That kicked off a fun little side thing where they got to go shopping, and they were more than willing to pay for the good stuff. Then it all got trashed when a fight broke out at the party, but they loved it. Money well spent in their eyes. But they wouldn't have done it just for its own sake, I think.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I once put together a whole cost sheet for rebuilding a "town" (really a former rural temple + a couple outbuildings) into a fortified estate. That was fun. That same party had a player who ended up splurging a huge chunk of cash to win political favors for his post-campaign political career. And another who spent/made a lot of money doing touring, both in "downtime" and on screen and post-campaign. That one concert they put on in a capital city really made a giant-ape-sized splash.

A different party just bought an oversized wagon and hired a tender.

I also have tended more toward rewarding PCs with things other than straight cash. Recommendation letters, titles, boons (these go real nicely and customize way better, fictionally, than items), favors, etc. For example, KorvinStarmast's rune knight just got an additional custom rune based on an enemy who had crude elemental rune fragments.

That's not to say they don't get cash, but I've never seen the "drowning in cash and nothing to spend it on" issue unless the players aren't engaged with the world. Which, for me, is a game ender. If the players aren't actually mentally in the world and are treating it merely as an game-style "adventuring backdrop", I'm likely to not have any inspiration and so my games will suck.

I think it helps, for me, that the players all know that their efforts are persistent. Everything their characters do stays for other groups; the characters themselves become NPCs once the campaign ends. And their next campaign may see them[1]; so may other unconnected campaigns. So setting up for that becomes important to a lot of my players, which I appreciate.

[1] My Campaign 3 (3rd campaign with the same set of players) are working toward going to see their Campaign 1 characters (or some of them) perform on stage. And C2 met one of C1's characters in a cameo, despite being on a different continent. And all sorts of callbacks/references (aka "what mountain?").

[JonBeowulf]

Player-driven stuff - My players latch on to random stuff in the world that doesn't have a defined cost. The sorcerer wanted to start a newspaper. The party is building alliances to found an adventurer's guild. The wizard tried to build a tower without getting permits or a land grant first. Who knew that kings own the land in their kingdom and building without permission is frowned upon.

Completely different system, but way back in BECMI, local lords would help finance a wizard's tower. It's good to have a friendly high-level wielder of magic close by. Clerics, fighters, and rogues needed permission but magic users could do whatever they wanted.

They also had detailed rules for building a stronghold. Shockingly expensive and often required the party to pool their resources to build a monastery/cathedral (cleric) or keep/castle (fighter), or to found a new thieves' guild. And after it's built, the characters have to fund it's upkeep.

5e lost that massive money pit because leveling happens so quickly that there's no reason for players to look for a place to settle down. It's pretty easy to go from T1 to T3 in less than a game year and it may not even require traveling outside the current kingdom (or whatever).

[Kane0]

My players aren't interested in the game world the same way you are (or the way you're describing, anyway). They're interested in their PCs. They like being adventure heroes. They'll do what it takes to further their goal of playing adventure heroes. If I have some setting detail, they parse it through the lens of "ok, how does interacting with this detail further my goal of playing an adventure hero?" I've learned, for example, if I want to get them interested in some bit of lore I've worked up, I can't just tell them about it or have it just... exist... I have to give them a problem, and at least part of the solution to that problem involves understanding the implications of that bit of lore. Then they get into it, because it has a function.


So like in BG II where a faction will agree to help the party in exchange for 20,000gp.

[Schwann145]

Bribing happens, but again, what's that cost? One GP is a small fortune to a town guard. Bribing him with 5 GP is almost guaranteed to make a faithful servant out of him for the short term, but that's couch cushion change for a successful adventurer.
This is, frankly, the root of the problem and bears repeating. For example:
A retired Purple Dragon Knight of Cormyr can expect severance. That includes either a land title and 2gp/month or no land title and 6gp/month. If we look again at that price of a modest meal being about 1sp, then the retired knight with a home can feed themselves for a week before they're broke.
Well, no, hang on. That 1sp per modest meal is from a tavern. It's like the medieval equivalent of eating out instead of eating at home. So let's cut the cost of that knight's food expenses down by 75%. Now he can feed himself for the entire month and have zero money left for literally anything else.
This math just doesn't add up. Either the PHB prices are way too high, or the expectations set by the setting are way too low. Regardless, there's a disconnect.
But, we can only work with what we're given.
Now introduce a PC who needs to bribe this retired Purple Dragon Knight. 10g is pocket change to adventurers, and it's 5 months of living to the knight. You can see how that's not a reasonable money sink for the player!

On the one hand, it would be crazy to expect WotC to actually build a working economy. That would be so much work for something that almost never matters when it comes to defeating the bad guy, or delving the dungeons for treasure.
But for the groups that finances do matter, the minimal effort they did give the ruleset just... doesn't work.


(if it's inability to find a play group, then that's fair).
It's exactly that.

[Dork_Forge]

Completely different system, but way back in BECMI, local lords would help finance a wizard's tower. It's good to have a friendly high-level wielder of magic close by. Clerics, fighters, and rogues needed permission but magic users could do whatever they wanted.

They also had detailed rules for building a stronghold. Shockingly expensive and often required the party to pool their resources to build a monastery/cathedral (cleric) or keep/castle (fighter), or to found a new thieves' guild. And after it's built, the characters have to fund it's upkeep.

5E has rules like this in core and they're still expensive enough to make even very rich parties blush:

Temple costs 50,000GP to construct and up to 25GP per day to keep staffed, for example.


5e lost that massive money pit because leveling happens so quickly that there's no reason for players to look for a place to settle down. It's pretty easy to go from T1 to T3 in less than a game year and it may not even require traveling outside the current kingdom (or whatever).

I'd say this is more on table style rather than 5e as a system. If you're going 1-11 in less than an in game year, then you're most likely not experiencing any significant travel or getting a useable amount of downtime (bearing in mind that a lot of downtime activities operate in increments of work weeks).

Players that are happy at those kinds of tables probably aren't the same kind that wants to spend their gold on much that isn't essential or mechanically impactful.


This is, frankly, the root of the problem and bears repeating. For example:
A retired Purple Dragon Knight of Cormyr can expect severance. That includes either a land title and 2gp/month or no land title and 6gp/month. If we look again at that price of a modest meal being about 1sp, then the retired knight with a home can feed themselves for a week before they're broke.
Well, no, hang on. That 1sp per modest meal is from a tavern. It's like the medieval equivalent of eating out instead of eating at home. So let's cut the cost of that knight's food expenses down by 75%. Now he can feed himself for the entire month and have zero money left for literally anything else.
This math just doesn't add up. Either the PHB prices are way too high, or the expectations set by the setting are way too low. Regardless, there's a disconnect.
But, we can only work with what we're given.
Now introduce a PC who needs to bribe this retired Purple Dragon Knight. 10g is pocket change to adventurers, and it's 5 months of living to the knight. You can see how that's not a reasonable money sink for the player!


Whilst the rules we have aren't the best, this is still selling them short (I'm also not sure where you got those numbers from for the PDK, but I'll work with them).

As a modern society we are used to buying things in some degree of prepared state. Let's take a look at the PDK that took a parcel of land:

- It's very unlikely that it's just a modest house sized plot, they're most likely growing food and have cattle to some degree. That's just a norm, even for a lot of people in rural places today. So their total food budget doesn't need to come from their wages when they have eggs from chickens, milk from goats/cows etc.

- you cut the knights meal cost down from 1SP by 75%, so rounding down that's 2CP. 1lb of wheat is 1CP and is most likely going further than a single meal, particularly if oats are a similar price to wheat. A Chicken is 2CP and will produce eggs, or an entire chicken's worth of meat can be incorporated into several meals for an individual.

- A knight that has earned decent wages their adult life will likely have savings to jump start their own little cattle herd, bearing in mind that you really don't need a lot of cattle to sustain a single household.

- We get a blurb on self-sufficiency, it outlines that prices for food are to buy them in town, whilst hunting/gathering is time-consuming but free. A knight that has a garden and some cattle, say a henhouse and a couple goats, could easily spend a portion of their time hunting, drying/salting meat to be put away for winter.

However, given that an untrained hireling earns 2 SP a day, or 5GP 6SP a 28-day month, the PDK's pension seems about right. They get an income higher than an unskilled worker if they take no land, and if they get land then it's assumed said land will be a part of their livelihood with farming/hunting/taxes/lodging etc.

A PDK should be earning 2 GP a day during their career as a skilled hireling, or 56 gold a month. By the time they retire, they should be pretty well set for money for a nonaristocratic NPC. A PC bribing them 10GP is a work week of wages to them, some people may be willing to do whatever the bribe is for that little, others won't.

If what you're asking of them could be illegal, they may expect money that would have taken them months to earn, an amount that could actually impact their life in a meaningful way.

Personally, as a DM I would only see low end amounts (like 10GP) to be a meaningful bribe to either someone in the market of taking a lot of bribes, like a crooked guard, or someone with exceedingly low income, like an unskilled worker. But the bribe also needs to be proportionate to the reason they're being bribed.

[Schwann145]

(I'm also not sure where you got those numbers from for the PDK, but I'll work with them).
Transparency is important. ;)

They come from Ed Greenwood on his Discord server, and while not everyone cares what Ed has to say (which is fair), the fact that he wrote it makes it (legally) canon Realmslore.

[Silly Name]

The thing is, they want stuff to spend money on. They enjoy doing that as part of the game. But they don't want to spend it just to say they spent it. They want to basically buy more "adventure" with it, which I can understand.

How do they feel about the XGE rules for buying magic items, crafting items (both mundane and magical), and doing research? Do they find the workweek-based timeframe too "expensive" within the narrative of the game? Do they not enjoy the randomised nature of the buying magic item rules?

Those three are the main money-sinks that also provide pretty clear benefits for the heroes to invest time and money in. You pointed out how building strongholds "for their own sake", so to speak, didn't interest them, so you brought out Strongholds & Followers (which is a very neat book, in my experience, so totally worth it!), but I'm curious why some official money expenditures didn't interest them, or at least not satisfy them.

I also really want to insist on the Research option: while it's not particularly expensive, it's a perfect way to "buy" more adventure, or at least get benefits for the adventure they're planning on!


For example, they don't seem interested in buying changes of clothing for their PCs. But a noble invited them to a party, and when the official messenger showed up at the tavern they like to hang out at, he not-so-subtly implied they would need something decent to wear. That kicked off a fun little side thing where they got to go shopping, and they were more than willing to pay for the good stuff. Then it all got trashed when a fight broke out at the party, but they loved it. Money well spent in their eyes. But they wouldn't have done it just for its own sake, I think.

This kind of comes back to what I said earlier: having things to spend gold on is also a matter of campaign and adventure design. I don't mean you should bother your players with taxes and minute fees (although you can if you want them to get angry at a local government - just use that sparingly), but your players are receptive to being prompted to spend money on more intangible benefits, such as dressing appropriately for an event.

I think a good principle of campaign design is that players should feel the benefits of the riches they accumulate: maybe part of the campaign involves a military engagement, and the players can devote some of their coin to training, equipping and building warmachines for the side they pick. Maybe they find themselves arriving in a town having been devastated by some cataclysm, and helping the town rebuild makes them local heroes and well-liked.
Maybe there's a plague in the region, and the PCs can devote time and resources to crafting a cure!

I don't think the issue here is "5e doesn't let player spend money on magic items in a fast and easy fashion". I actually really enjoy that paradigm, and think it works to the game's benefit. The issues of "I have a billion gold and nothing to spend it on" arise when the characters don't find themselves prompted to spend that gold on stuff that reasonably interests them.

Even in the examples of my player investing gold in non-utilitarian ways, they still do it because it fits with their characters, or advances their long-term goals and interests. They don't spend gold just to say "I spent it", but they are ok with the consequences of that expense coming in during the campaign epilogue. But even then, it boosts their reputation, and makes them well-liked while also creating rivals.

[EggKookoo]

Maybe they find themselves arriving in a town having been devastated by some cataclysm, and helping the town rebuild makes them local heroes and well-liked.

So this is actually my current plan. Part of the city (it's a fairly urban campaign) was devastated a while back during a war. The city is divided into districts, with each having its own identity and with friendly (and maybe not so friendly) rivalries between them. The district that got badly hit is now becoming home to gangs and other problems, but it's also something of a campground for the homeless. Yes, I'm stealing this from Sharn.

I've already proposed to the players that they could go through it and clean it up, and they're open to the idea. If things go well, my intention is to have the nobles grant them some of the land afterward, and they can spend their own money building up estates, which is where Followers & Strongholds comes into the picture. The players are excited for this, and I have warned them that this will probably drain much of their current cash, but they're good with it. Of course, two players want to open "establishments" which will theoretically draw in more income over time, but we'll get there when we get there.

I'm looking forward to the identity and personality they give to the refurbished district. One of the PCs is a bard, so there could be some fun stuff there.

One of the problems I'm running into with crafting is power creep. If the PCs craft stuff, is it better than the stuff they find while adventuring? If so, what does that do to encounters? Once we start down that path, the PCs will become increasingly overpowered. Adventuring becomes a way to find more treasure and resources to craft into items to make themselves more powerful, which in turn makes adventuring more and more trivial. Or, are crafted items essentially replacements for their existing stuff? In which case, why spend the extra time and money?

I ran into this with the artificer player, who wanted to craft some personalized spells. So, we did that, ending up with spells that were okay, but in the end really weren't any better overall than the official stuff. They had to be bound to the same power-per-spell-level rules as any published spell, and it wasn't like he got extra spell slots or extra prepared spells. Preparing his custom spell meant one less spot for an official spell. In the end it was underwhelming, and didn't seem worth it to him.

This is part of what I was referring to when I said PCs are too self-contained in 5e. They don't need anything that their class features don't already provide. You can play a perfectly viable 5e campaign from 1 to 20 with exactly zero magic items. Honestly it's probably my biggest complaint about the system (not specifically the lack of need for magic items, but the hermetically sealed PC design).

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is part of what I was referring to when I said PCs are too self-contained in 5e. They don't need anything that their class features don't already provide. You can play a perfectly viable 5e campaign from 1 to 20 with exactly zero magic items. Honestly it's probably my biggest complaint about the system (not specifically the lack of need for magic items, but the hermetically sealed PC design).

Personally, I find "sealed" PC design to be insufficiently done in 5e. And it's a strong feature, not a bug, in my eyes.

The system's expected baseline/floor should be "what you get if you only have your required features (class/species/background) and don't intentionally anti-optimize[1]". And that should be completely, 100% playable at all points. May not be optimal, but the system shouldn't expect more than that as a minimum.

The system's expected ceiling should be somewhere above that, and may involve optional features (such as magic items, feats, multiclassing, boons, money spent, etc). It doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) arbitrarily high--it's totally fine in my eyes to have a "ok, we don't directly support being stronger than X. Proceed further at your own risk". But the ceiling and the floor should not, generally, be the same.

If magic items, feats, etc are strictly bonuses (ie not expected), then different groups can opt in to how much they want. If, on the other hand, the system's expected baseline is above the mandatory-option floor (ie requires some of those "missable" things), then you end up with opportunities to fail the baseline. And/or false upgrades. 4e required that you have specific magic items at specific levels, otherwise you fell short of expectations and your life would suck. PF2e has similar (but slightly looser) requirements. 3e had all the mandatory items. This meant that the bulk of your "rewards" were mandated by the system...without actually being mandated. So you could, simply by inexperience on someone's part, not have what you need to continue. And you were on a forced gear upgrade treadmill. And all the consequences of the WBL curve and the consequences of being able to break that curve. That, in my mind, is a huge flaw.

I can give out tons of money or very little and everything still works. Because you can't, by default, turn money directly into power. It means I can run a "tribal" campaign where cash money isn't really a thing and most rewards are in the form of spirit boons or other esoteric stuff...and it works. I can run a "rich civilization" game where everyone is noble and has basically unlimited wealth...and it works.

The consequence of this is that you can't have V-shaped balance curves (ie everyone is balanced to a tiny narrow window at each level). Instead you need to have broader ranges of balance, effectively a U shaped curve. And that, in my mind, is a good thing.

[1] ie don't use weapons you're not proficient in or have disadvantage with, do put your best score into (one of) your prime stat(s), and generally don't do obviously blatantly dumb things with your character building (like the halfling barbarian/cleric who never cast spells and wielded a greatsword with low STR I once played with). The bar is very low here.

[EggKookoo]

If magic items, feats, etc are strictly bonuses (ie not expected), then different groups can opt in to how much they want. If, on the other hand, the system's expected baseline is above the mandatory-option floor (ie requires some of those "missable" things), then you end up with opportunities to fail the baseline. And/or false upgrades. 4e required that you have specific magic items at specific levels, otherwise you fell short of expectations and your life would suck. PF2e has similar (but slightly looser) requirements. 3e had all the mandatory items. This meant that the bulk of your "rewards" were mandated by the system...without actually being mandated. So you could, simply by inexperience on someone's part, not have what you need to continue. And you were on a forced gear upgrade treadmill. And all the consequences of the WBL curve and the consequences of being able to break that curve. That, in my mind, is a huge flaw.

Right. I'm aware of the problem that 5e is trying to solve. And I won't disagree that 5e solves the specific manifestations in previous editions of that species of problem. You no longer need the DM to hand out magic items at a particular cadence. Solved.

I don't think the solution isn't without big problems of its own.


The consequence of this is that you can't have V-shaped balance curves (ie everyone is balanced to a tiny narrow window at each level). Instead you need to have broader ranges of balance, effectively a U shaped curve. And that, in my mind, is a good thing.

The other consequence is that the PCs no longer need to actually interact with the world aside from earning XP. Experience points turn into levels which provide all of the PCs' needs.

"Hey, rogue, that's a cool backstabby thing you can do. How did you learn how to do it?"
"Uh... I dinged."

"Hey, paladin, how come you can do that cool charge-around-a-retreating-enemy trick?"
"Uh... I dinged 7th."

I know players can insert their own meaning behind class features. But those end up being arbitrary ancient-tradition-I-just-made-up kinds of things. They weren't things that happened at the table that the players remember or shared. No "this sword was handed down to me by my ancestors, it is the source of my power!" No "hey, Ralf, remember when you fell in the Sacred Pool of Whatever?" "Yeah, that sucked, but now I can do this once a day!" [proceeds to light up with holy light]

That's what I mean by hermetically sealed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The other consequence is that the PCs no longer need to actually interact with the world aside from earning XP. Experience points turn into levels which provide all of the PCs' needs.

"Hey, rogue, that's a cool backstabby thing you can do. How did you learn how to do it?"
"Uh... I dinged."

"Hey, paladin, how come you can do that cool charge-around-a-retreating-enemy trick?"
"Uh... I dinged 7th."

I know players can insert their own meaning behind class features. But those end up being arbitrary ancient-tradition-I-just-made-up kinds of things. They weren't things that happened at the table that the players remember or shared. No "this sword was handed down to me by my ancestors, it is the source of my power!" No "hey, Ralf, remember when you fell in the Sacred Pool of Whatever?" "Yeah, that sucked, but now I can do this once a day!" [proceeds to light up with holy light]

That's what I mean by hermetically sealed.

That's the thing. If a player wants to play video-game style...they will. No matter the game. The same sort of thing happened in earlier editions identically, just with different trappings (4e had the ritual to disenchant loot and re-enchant it, 3e and 2e had magic item marts, etc).

The way to engage players in the world is...engage players in the world. Refuse to take video game answers. Reject "player entitlement" (the idea that because it's written in the PHB they have a gods-given right to it). Or find games that do cater to that style. And on the flip side, actually creating a world worth engaging with. I find most players don't engage with the world when the world is just an adventuring backdrop, a facade, a Potemkin setting. And, frankly, that's the case for most of the published settings.

My games and players all thrive on engagement with the world. In part because worldbuilding (both macro and micro) is 90% of what I do for prep. I try not to focus on "farm things for XP"--in fact, I don't use XP (either combat-based or milestone) at all--leveling is entirely session based. So they progress just as much for putting on a big concert as by killing a BBEG. All that matters is that the narrative moved somewhere.

[EggKookoo]

Reject "player entitlement" (the idea that because it's written in the PHB they have a gods-given right to it).

Does that include class features?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Does that include class features?

Depends. There are certainly cases where I'd say "the world doesn't support that class feature". Especially when you consider spell lists are a class feature. Or ask that people justify (via backstory or in-game events) why certain things make sense. And then be open to modifying those things so that they do make sense.

But generally, class features are fine. As I said, engagement happens in large part by making engaging worlds that demand (edit: and reward!) engagement and don't respond to the "press video game button, get result" mode of gameplay.

[EggKookoo]

But generally, class features are fine. As I said, engagement happens in large part by making engaging worlds that demand (edit: and reward!) engagement and don't respond to the "press video game button, get result" mode of gameplay.

Well, okay, I guess we've veered off-topic quite a bit. I just want to say I don't run games in "video game" mode like that, and my players try their hardest to see their PCs as actual people in an actual world. So my position isn't exactly as you might be seeing or suggesting it as. But I'll let it go for now and maybe try to reformulate what I'm getting at for a new thread at some point.