D&D 5E Why I think gold should have less uses in 5e, not more.

MNblockhead · May 2, 2024

Not only do I want gold to have more uses, I want more things to REQUIRE gold. This is one of the heaviest areas I homebrew in my 5e games.

If I go back to 5e with the 2024 rules, I'm going to revamp my 5e homebrew rules, stealing heavily from Warhammer. Good + time to level, status rules and the need to spend gold to maintain your status (I'll likely tie this in to my reputation/infamy/organizations rules). I'll also adopt Warhammers "between adventures" games to revamp how I've been handling downtime. In my prior games, downtime was an entire subsystem leaning heavily on stronghold and followers rules, which only works well for certain campaign themes. And it becomes a between-session bookkeeping game that half of my players like and half ignored.

I'll also take the Warhammer approach of coin being bloody hard to come by and hard to keep.

Horwath · May 2, 2024

Jefe Bergenstein said:
I'd argue playing D&D for 20+ years sucks the fantasy out of magic items. +1 swords are never going to feel cool again.

There is still that factor with +1 sword that you finally got rid of that naughty word sword you got from boot camp.

Yes, +1 sword is boring maybe, but it is still a clear sign that you are advancing as character together with your new character features.

GrimCo · May 2, 2024

Gold is worthless in 5e after level 2-3. Yes, there are couple of things you can spend it that are usefull for adventuring, but that's it. What's the point of having couple of grands in gold if you can't buy new shiny toys?

There is very little interesting things to spend money on in 5e, specially for people not interested in playing "landlords and business owners". I wanna go out, kill things, get cool magic stuff, kill stronger thing. My magic items are my 401k fund. When i decide to build stronghold or run a tavern or fantasy laundromat, i'll sell my stuff. But in tier 2 play, gold is not really issue anymore. You have best non magic gear for your class. You have enough to cover consumables. Anything else is just money sitting around.

Last edition in which gold was actually usefull was 3.x/PF1. You beg, borrow, and steal anything that isn't bolted down with adamantium bolts ( sometimes, you pilfer those adamantium bolts too) to get enough cash for those cool new magic items. I had characters with items worth couple hunderd grands. Couple of my caster pc-s became liches ( 100k gold to become the lich) on top of all the magic gizmos.

Since we ditched xp use long time ago and switched to milestone leveling, gold for xp is not my bang.

Staffan · May 2, 2024

I think it might be cool to have a secondary currency used for magic and the like, with no official way to convert between normal money and magic-money (and unofficial ways having exorbitant exchange rates). I'm thinking something like the gold coins in John Wick – a special currency used by the assassin subculture. This would let PCs earn a lot of regular money to spend on regular things and/or partying, but not on things to actually boost power.

GrimCo · May 2, 2024

Staffan said:
I think it might be cool to have a secondary currency used for magic and the like, with no official way to convert between normal money and magic-money (and unofficial ways having exorbitant exchange rates). I'm thinking something like the gold coins in John Wick – a special currency used by the assassin subculture. This would let PCs earn a lot of regular money to spend on regular things and/or partying, but not on things to actually boost power.

Yes, but on what would PCs spend that cash? What can FE lv 8 fighter buy for 20-30k gold if magic items aren't available?

Blue · May 2, 2024

Asisreo said:
To keep the post brief, I think gold should be used as an exchange of intangible experiences in a game rather than mechanical benefits like trading it in for magic items or XP.

Luckily the designers agree with you. There is no mechanism for trading it for XP, and being able to trade it for magic items, witht he exception of basic healing potions, is extremely curtailed.

Glad they were able to solve this 10+ years ago.

As in, this is the default for this edition, what prompts this post? I agree with you - gold is an in-game currency and useful for a huge amount of in-world things. 5e took out magic item pricing and markets when it took out magic item math from character advancement expectations, which had been included implicitly/explicity with D&D 3.x and 4e. DMs who still hold to the old paradigm don't actually understand the designer intent for this edition. Which isn't a bad thing, designers have messed up in plenty of places such as expected number of encounters per long rest, but still means they are off the designed track and need to adjust other things to recalibrate. (Or just complain 5e is "easy mode" when really it's their own doing.)

Jefe Bergenstein · May 2, 2024

Lanefan said:
Maybe so, but after 40+ years I still like getting it!

Definitely! But letting players pick their rewards doesn't make them not a reward. I'm not going to try and force the players into buying non-magic items "for their own good".

Undrave · May 2, 2024

Asisreo said:
To keep the post brief, I think gold should be used as an exchange of intangible experiences in a game rather than mechanical benefits like trading it in for magic items or XP.

The reason is that when players realize they can expend gold for concrete buffs to their character, they will hoard and only spend their gold on those buffs. But if they don't have that option, and (key point) they are aware that they can expend gold on fun intangible experiences, they will expend it there, increasing immersion and engagement with the world, as well as being a more fun experience having and spending gold.

For instance, rather than spending gold on buying a magic sword, they could go on a vacation to a mystical land where they recieve incite on their own character's magical affinity. Or something to that effect.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think Gold is anything but XP by a different name. If you can't improve your character in someway it's basically useless. Might as well be rewarded in favours instead.

Yaarel said:
A setting that only have levels 1 thru 8, can increase the number of encounters necessary to advance to the next level.

Then gold can be a reward instead of advancing levels.

And you do what with that gold?

Bacon Bits · May 2, 2024

Lanefan said:
Is it possible your DM was stripping out some of the treasure? 'Cause now you have me curious...

<pulls out N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God and checks>

...and it would seem there's more than enough wealth there. Using 1e DMG pricing*, the final hoard in the dungeon has about 56,500 g.p. worth of treasure in it; the module states an NPC ally takes a ring and a potion worth in total about 5500 as his share, leaving the party still north of 50K in treasure just from that one hoard. For a 7-member party, each gets a share worth over 7000 g.p., and if you can't pay for training with that then I don't know what to tell you.

However, on a quick glance through the rest of the module it would appear that final hoard represents most of the available treasure; if you somehow missed it, or never got that far, I could see how you'd think it's a skimpy adventure.

Hm. I do remember finding a bunch of gold at the end, but not that much.

I wonder if our DM was looking through what we had completed so far. We were probably part way through the module when we found the rule and someone wanted to level up. We were used to leveling up midway through the adventure. Most of us were more familiar with B/X or B/E or even 2e or the Gold Box games. Kind of the whole problem with starting D&D in the late 80s.

Yaarel · May 2, 2024

Undrave said:
You're kidding yourself if you don't think Gold is anything but XP by a different name. If you can't improve your character in someway it's basically useless. Might as well be rewarded in favours instead.

And you do what with that gold?

Economic pursuit can be their own minigame, similar to building a fortress etcetera at the middle tier.

D&D 5E Why I think gold should have less uses in 5e, not more.

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