I've been toying with doing away with coinage for higher-levels, and converting it, essentially, to an ability score. Pinching pennies and counting silvers is for people where daily expenses are a drain on their funds. This is a per-individual score based loosely off of Matt Colville's Treasury mechanic that he uses on The Chain campaign.

Here's what I've gotten so far, please let me know what you think:

The Wealth Modifier system

This is for those players who have enough wealth they can pre-pay a year of expenses (loosely based on the SRD expenses table, multiplied by 360 for an annualized expenses), which allows them to access lines of credit, and roll on the wealth table when they're purchasing things, as a "wealth check".

Once you've gotten on the table (that is, Modest), you no longer have to keep track of your funds on a day to day level. You also don't have to worry about conversions at that level either - your wealth mod may include gems, art, solid bars in addition to coinage. If you don't want to carry expensive crafting or spell components, you can choose to rely on a Wealth check, with the understanding that you may fail to have them that day.

The Task Difficulty table applies to it as you get to percentages above the Expense Level. Purchasing anything at or under the value of your Expense Level is essentially a Wealth Check DC of 10 if you have the funds available for it at that moment. Anything under 50% of the value of the Expense Level is a DC of 5, 50% more is a DC of 15, twice as much is a DC of 20, and so on. For example, a Comfortable PC will still have a tough time reliably picking up a full plate armor, as it'd be a DC 21 Wealth check (as 1500 is 208% of your wealth level).

Things to note:
  • You can only receive a Help action (advantage) by another PC who has your wealth level or higher.
  • You can't reroll your wealth die multiple times while attempting to purchase the same thing on the same day.

Like the STaRs system, if you meet or beat the DC, you can afford it. If you fail you can either not purchase it at all OR you can buy it, but it would reduce your wealth modifier by 1. You'd have to collect in reward materials the equivalent of the next level's Expense Level number to bump your wealth mod back up to what you want. Alternatively, you can use credit.

Credit is something that you unlock starting at the comfortable level. That allows you to tap into your line of credit to succeed on a roll, at the cost of upcoming treasure. Credit caps out at your expense level, and the Payment Per Credit Usedis your Expense level divided by the Credit Die. You can add your credit die after finding out that your wealth check would cover the cost of the option. Whatever you roll with credit is paid back in increments of yourExpense Level- for example, a +1 Wealth character has a d4 of potential credit, so each payment is 900g (3600 divided by 4). You only have to pay back the credit you use. You'll notice that the credit gets slightly cheaper as you become more wealthy... but that's life.


Modifier

General Label
Expense Level
(Prepaid Year of
expenses, in GP)

Credit/Die

Payment per
Credit used
-5 Squalid N/A N/A N/A
-4 Poor N/A N/A N/A
-3 Modest 360 N/A N/A
-2 Comfortable 720 +1 720
-1 Upper Class 1440 +1d2 720
0 Wealthy / Estate Owner 2880 +1d3 960
+1 Aristocratic / Manor Level 3600 +1d4 900
+2 Aristocratic / Duchy Level 5500 +1d6 916
+3 Provincial Governance 11000 +1d8 1375
+4 Colonial Governance 22000 +1d10 2200
+5 Highest Authority 44000 +1d12 3600


Some examples
  • Hilgya Firehelm, the dwarven cleric, and the fighter in her party died (again) while they separated from their party, and she just has a Modest -3 Wealth Modifier. Thus, her Wealth DC is 8 (Revivify requires diamonds worth 300gp, 300/360 is .83, or 83% of the DC) so she'd have to roll an 11 or higher on a wealth check to have access to those diamonds to cast revivify and get Roy back on his feet.
  • Scrooge McLuck, the aarakocra bard, has a +3 wealth level and wants to buy a boat. A longboat or sailing ship is 10kGP, so that'd be a DC 10... but they want a warship. That is 25kGP, so the Wealth DC is a 23 (25 divided by 11 is 227% of their Expense Level, rounded up to 230%, or 23). Scrooge McLuck rolls a 17 - they only have a +3 wealth modifier, which still isn't enough. Not wanting to go down a level, they instead roll a d8 credit die, and get a 5, which allows them to purchase it. However, they only used 3 of the 5, which requires them to pay back 4125gp worth of treasure (as the payment per credit used is 1375, and 3 were used) within the year.


I suppose if you wanted to use it for a group, you'd just multiply the respective values by the number of members.