D&D 5E What could 5E do to make wealth worthwhile?

[Sorinth]

I like the previously mentioned using money to increase your reputation. Doing so could open the doors to more profitable adventures. Now instead of merchants hiring you, nobles hear about you and seek you out. Not sure how that actually can play out as you don’t want to gate adventures behind reputation but having more profitable jobs or having access to fancier things or more influential people can be useful for all kinds of things.

You could easily tie spending gold into the DMG '14 Renown system, and since one of the suggested benefits of Renown is access to magic items, in a world without magic shops and random rewards this might be the best/only way to get specific items.

Similarly there's a Piety system from the Theros books where you could easily attach a gold cost as part of gaining piety or possibly just to advance to the next threshold.

Having quests have renown/piety requirements does make some sense especially for non-time sensitive ones. The famous explorer planning to find the lost city of gold won't hire you unless you have a big enough reputation even if that means they are effectively waiting around for weeks/months for the right folk to hire, after all it's not like the lost city is likely to be found, especially if the famous explorer has secret knowledge about it's whereabouts.

 

[Reynard]

Once you realize that gold is fairly pointless after like 3 levels, game makes more sense.

These replies are frustrating as hell the way they intentionally miss or dismiss the point.

 

[DarkCrisis]

These replies are frustrating as hell the way they intentionally miss or dismiss the point.

I did have a "I'm just here for gold and glory." thing added to the post but deleted it. IE "I adventure to adventure." It's a very old school philosophy. Sane people don't go fight Liches and Dragons.

Most adventures could retire very comfortably after their first goblin filled dungeon.

 

[Reynard]

It occurs to me that just having downtime, and having the characters actually live in the world, would encourage the idea of using wealth for "diagetic" things -- including just frivolous comforts. A game that only exists as careening from one desperate adventure to the next does not make people want to inhabit the world.

I mean, we know what rich adventurers do, because we had a load of them in history.

 

[MerricB]

It occurs to me that just having downtime, and having the characters actually live in the world, would encourage the idea of using wealth for "diagetic" things -- including just frivolous comforts. A game that only exists as careening from one desperate adventure to the next does not make people want to inhabit the world.

I mean, we know what rich adventurers do, because we had a load of them in history.

I've occasionally run a "Weekend Adventurers" campaign where each session is a dungeon delve, and then there's a week of downtime after each session.

I really enjoy that style of play. I need to do more of it.

The Cubicle 7 5E books were doing a lot of work expanding the downtime system; I don't always like their mechanical implementation, but they give inspiration for my own systems.

 

[GrimCo]

I mean, we know what rich adventurers do

They pay other people to go out, risk their life and health to acquire more riches for them while they live comfortable life on semi passive income? Cause any adventurer with enough common sense would do just that. Or retire after few good hauls. No point in risking your neck when you can live normal safe life. Or you mean the ones that are incurable thrill seekers which die rather young?

If we apply any sense of real world logic, most adventurers would be retired from that life by the level 5.

 

[Reynard]

They pay other people to go out, risk their life and health to acquire more riches for them while they live comfortable life on semi passive income? Cause any adventurer with enough common sense would do just that. Or retire after few good hauls. No point in risking your neck when you can live normal safe life. Or you mean the ones that are incurable thrill seekers which die rather young?

If we apply any sense of real world logic, most adventurers would be retired from that life by the level 5.

Rich people go on ridiculously dangerous expeditions and adventures all of the time. A few died at the literal bottom of the ocean not terribly long ago. Just because most people sit back and relax doesn't mean there aren't actual adventurous types. So if we are looking for analogs, Yes, there would absolutely be people that outfit a team to go kill a dragon on a hunt, or be the first to plant a flag in Avernus, or whatever.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It occurs to me that just having downtime, and having the characters actually live in the world, would encourage the idea of using wealth for "diagetic" things -- including just frivolous comforts. A game that only exists as careening from one desperate adventure to the next does not make people want to inhabit the world.

I mean, we know what rich adventurers do, because we had a load of them in history.

Agreed. The constant, nonstop adventure train is why "no one" has any use for gold. It didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't have to be that way now.

 

[JazzyBassy]

This is how I personally handle it, I know people have their own game styles and there isn't a universal solution, but I figured I would share one for my own more grittier games. I use a collection of house rules to make wealth matter, most of them are adapted from OSR D&D stuff or inspired by it since old-school D&D was known to actively incentivize the dungeon crawling for wealth game loop effectively. I have mostly playtested these in early game, where they are very effective at making dungeon crawling for wealth in itself an incentive, but I haven't tested them much in Tier 2 and beyond, so I am going to adjust them accordingly.

• In addition to Monster XP (1/2 the amount) and Milestone XP, players earn Treasure XP for wealth extracted from a dungeon and distributed evenly. Currently the amount I am using is 2XP per 1GP (or 1XP per 1EP) as it seems to map decently with treasure values to stock a dungeon to level up if monster XP is halved to make space for greater importance on wealth. This also adds more weight to the decision of avoiding some combats to get gold safely to level up.
  • I am considering dividing monster XP by 3 to place greater importance on Treasure XP and Milestone XP, which can be earned from social and exploration encounters, rewarding each pillar of play. But the numbers aren't as pretty, and 40% which does give better numbers is a hard calculation on the fly. My other solution that keeps the numbers the same, including those used for encounter balancing calculations, is to multiply the required XP to level up by 3, and changing 2XP per GP to 5XP per GP. But my VTT doesn't currently allow me to change this required XP to level up unless someone makes a module for it.
• Even when you have the right XP, downtime is required to level up. This is actually a variant rule in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, but IMO the gold cost is too minimal as it doesn't scale well to how hoards do, and the weeks might be too long. This downtime taken is passive, allowing players to take other downtime activities at the same time, encouraging spending more money and time on expenditures like crafting and research. This also offers some narrative theming of earning features and subclasses that are flavored up to the player. My downtime amount is the following:
  • Tier 1 (Levels 1-4) | Gold Cost: 10 x Target Level | 5 Days
  • Tier 2 (Levels 5-10) | Gold Cost: 50 x Target Level | 10 Days
  • Tier 3 (Levels 11-16) | Gold Cost: 250 x Target Level | 15 Days
  • Tier 4 (Levels 17-20) | Gold Cost: 1250 x Target Level | 20 Days
• Bastion Special facilities require gold to get based on their size, the same amount as room expansions if fully building it, half the amount if refurbishing an existing building. The special facilities per level table is instead a max amount of special facilities players can have while keeping them self-sufficient. I have adjusted a few of the orders match up with Xanathar's Guide to Everything so that I can combine both systems and reduce the mental load of learning two distinct ones, adding orders for XGTE activities that aren't represented. Additionally, attacks and some additional events threaten self-sufficiency, where hirelings and a cost based on the bastion must be paid until the threat is taken care of, and might risk the fall of a bastion if left too long without it. This places more importance on defense (which I am still on the process of reworking). A lot of the free "This facility recovers for free at no cost to you" are removed, to serve as an additional incentive for wealth.
• Additional services and downtime activities that players will find helpful, like the adventuring hirelings I mentioned, which use Tasha's sidekick rules, a free Carousing-like activity to find a set of them, and a 10GP per level for a dungeon expedition that's adjusted by their loyalty, based on the social interaction to hire them. They get half a share of treasure recovered, and half a share of XP from combats that they contribute to help. I also encourage other services that are suggested by the game, such as hiring skilled hirelings for certain non-adventuring activities, like scouting to find lairs in a hex or mercenaries to help defend an area or a person, or to cut crafting time in half. Other downtime activities I added are one to match the Intelligence-based research activity, I also provided Charisma-based rumor gathering, and a Wisdom-based scouting activity. I also have a spellcrafting downtime activity in the works for players can create their own spells (This is for Greyhawk so I wanted players tier 2 and up to get to do the same things that its famous wizards are able to do).
• This one I am still trying to refine, and it's not fully implemented yet: More incentives for lifestyle expenditures. In addition to gathering higher-power/importance contacts in carousing, there are other benefits to higher spending, such as higher quality adventuring and expert hirelings, and benefits based on my resting system and how I do HP rolls. I won't go into my resting system for wilderness as I am still refining it, but for downtime in a settlement I have players roll their HP at the start of every adventuring expedition, representing their luck and overall preparedness for the journey up ahead rather than an unchangeable health condition (This was the original reason why rolling for HP was implemented into the original game in the first place). Lifestyle expenditures on a settlement give a bonus (or penalty if it's wretched to poor) to the HP roll. Something to note is that some downtime activities, like crafting, give a lifestyle included in their cost, providing more incentive to spend on activities.
  • Wretched: Disadvantage on the HP roll, no food: rules for starvation apply for a whole week, start with half Hit Dice spent, no ability to do other downtime activities that cost money, with the exception of crime at disadvantage for not having the proper information, high chance of additional complications. (Rare to be here unless you lose work and housing due to a complication or for roleplay)
  • Squalid (7SP/Week): Disadvantage on the HP roll, level of exhaustion gained on a failed DC10 Con Save, medium chance of additional complications.
  • Poor (14SP/Week): Disadvantage on the HP roll, low chance of additional complications.
  • Modest (7GP/Week): Regular HP roll.
  • Comfortable (14GP/Week): Regular HP roll, re-roll 1's on the roll.
  • Wealthy (28GP/Week): Regular HP roll, re-roll 1-2's on the roll.
  • Aristocratic (70GP+/Week): Advantage on the HP Roll, re-roll 1-2's.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Perhaps the argument is that for some folks, setting logic suggests you shouldn't be getting it for free.

To paraphrase Don Draper... that's what the experience points are for! You're learning in the field. It's not like fighters need to pay for a license to hit some guy twice in a round.

As for worldbuilding, I guarantee that the DM 's who like this wouldn't let a PC take a week off and rake in thousands of gold risk free training lower level NPC's.