D&D 5E Starting Gold for Higher Levels - 5th Edition

[Tony Vargas]

During the playtest, WotC claimed that the game was being balanced without the assumption of wealth or magic items (even though armor-wearing characters' AC would only scale with the acquisition of fantastically expensive or magical armor). The armor table doesn't have fantastically expensive armor anymore, which is consistent with them 'tuning' the game closer to that statement of intent: that there's no particular assumption of wealth/level or magic-items/level built into the game.

Of course, RE is right in that any pattern of treasure or magic item distribution in the published adventures and/or organized play would constitute de-facto guidelines. And, if there are some such 'behind the scenes' guidelines being used to write adventures, they could conceivably find their way into a sidebar or something in the DMG.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The Encounters framework (or whatever it's called) has pretty clear guidelines on how many items you get and so on, and is designed to be used with WotC adventures (AFAIK)

Those "clear guidelines" for Adventurer's League are "You can't get a second permanent magic item unless everyone at your table already has 1."

It says absolutely nothing about how often you should get them. In fact, it is specifically designed to avoid getting too many.

And, having seen the monsters at higher levels, they are perfectly defeat-able without any magic items.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think it's better that starting gold is the same at every level.

Published adventures are likely to very rarely feature weapons and armors with a bonus higher than +1. Playtest rules only had a minor warning that those are rare, but this is my guess.

This means magic items have a minor impact on bounded accuracy. Part of them are consumable, they are supposed to be used up during adventuring (tho typically not completely used up), but you can assume that most of those found at previous levels have been used by now. Permanent magic items tend to provide more options rather than straight bonuses (at least compared to 3e), so at least there is no "vertical progression" with equipment that has to be assumed by the game.

Finally, as far as the playtest rules go, magic items don't even have a price tag in 5e (although this might have changed since then). This would mean you just can't buy them like in 3e, the DM has to make up a "price" which may or may not be monetary at all.

In this case, instead of "starting gold", the DMG might have "suggested starting magic equipment" straight away, like "At level X, pick one major permanent item, two minor permanent items, and six minor consumable".

For non-magic equipment, there can just be a rule that says "once you're 4th level or more, just pick your mundane equipment freely".

 

[Spreeth]

Thank you for the responses!

One of the issues that I am trying to adjudicate is when a character dies, and the rest of the party has varying amounts of gold (which they can at least spend on potions of healing), how do I decide the amount of gold that the new character will receive? It seems highly unfair to give a 6th level character the 1st level's starting gold when everyone else in the party has 750 gold more than that.

-- Spreeth

 

[pkt77242]

Thank you for the responses!

One of the issues that I am trying to adjudicate is when a character dies, and the rest of the party has varying amounts of gold (which they can at least spend on potions of healing), how do I decide the amount of gold that the new character will receive? It seems highly unfair to give a 6th level character the 1st level's starting gold when everyone else in the party has 750 gold more than that.

-- Spreeth

You could give them about 1/2 as much as the party member with the least amount (or 1/2 the amount of the average party member total).

 

[Paraxis]

I would suggest something like this.

1st = starting gold
2nd = +100 gp
3rd = +200 gp
4th = +300 gp
5th = +400 gp

continue getting (Lvl -1) *100gp for each level after that, and it is cumulative.

So I would start a 5th level character with +1000gp above starting gold.

I would probably give them a magic item of some sort for every 4 levels or so.

 

[the Jester]

Contrary to what people are saying, if you are using pre-written adventures, including those by WotC, there will be an expectation of certain levels of magic items and so on, even if it's only from previous adventures in the series, so giving them starting equipment is likely to be... unhealthy... for them.

I think you are wrong. WotC has said repeatedly that the game is being written and balanced with a "no magic items" assumption.

The Encounters guidelines exist to prevent big disparities at the table at organized play events. It's a completely different thing IMHO.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you are wrong. WotC has said repeatedly that the game is being written and balanced with a "no magic items" assumption.

Recalling the last discussion on this, I'm not sure that is actually correct - rather they aren't going to insist on a specific amount of items/level, but I'm not certain that means zero is the current assumption. So no 3E/4E-style stuff. OTOH, they have specifically said that magic items do influence balance and that they will have tools to allow you to account for them (unclear what those are). As it's fair to say 90%+ of D&D groups will have some magic items, I think it's unlikely the baseline for pre-written adventure encounters above level 3/4 will be 0 items.

I could be wrong - but so could any of us!

 

[Tormyr]

Thank you for the responses!

One of the issues that I am trying to adjudicate is when a character dies, and the rest of the party has varying amounts of gold (which they can at least spend on potions of healing), how do I decide the amount of gold that the new character will receive? It seems highly unfair to give a 6th level character the 1st level's starting gold when everyone else in the party has 750 gold more than that.

-- Spreeth

I would still give the player just the starting equipment and gold unless the character has gone through the same epic adventures that the rest of the party is going through. The other characters can offer up gear or gold. Presumably the last character's gear and gold are still available. The adventure probably has plenty of new items available. If there is not a story reason for the character to have more starting gold than normal, I would not give it to them. They do not really need it, and it takes away some of the progression that the character goes through.

Now having said that, if you had a 20th level character die and not be resurrected for some reason, the replacement character probably has at least the highest level mundane armor, weapons and equipment available. There probably is at least 1 magic item they picked up on their travels to level 20. That makes story sense to me, but making a lower level new character equivalent to all the others just because does not necessarily work for me.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I've been thinking about game economics myself - I have a plot point based on "bring me X gp. before the end of the winter or else" and I need to know what a reasonable X should be.

It has occurred to me that, without the need for magic treasure purchases, the question of wealth comes down to:

1) What lifestyle can the characters afford to lead? Do I want them to struggle or be affluent?

2) Can they afford raise dead in an emergency? At what level do I want them to have access to this?