Note this does not include magic items. This is the approx wealth (in gold) each individual PC should have (based on the 5e DMG & XGE) at the start of each level. It’s not exact but more an average to aim for so the players have an appropriate amount of money to spend at the proper levels. (ie: heavy armor users really shouldn’t be able to afford to purchase 1500g plate armor before level 6). You can also use this when making characters at higher levels.

*starting gear is not included in any entry after level 1

note: this only gives an average number for the wealth that players might find, it does not account for expenditures on gear, lifestyle expenses, etc.

I find those most useful for campaigns that start at a certain level.  I always struggled with how much wealth a character should have if they are starting at level 8 etc.  

Quote from Lyxen >>

For 5e, however, I’m not sure I’ll be using it, as magic items are not necessary for adaptation to one’s level of challenge..

One of those common assertions that doesn't really stand up to close examination. While magic items make far less difference in 5e than in 3.5e, a 17th level champion with a +3 weapon still hits about 50% harder (counting both hit chance and damage per hit) with a +3 longsword than with a non-magical longsword.

This is cool! Loot is something I am still awful at. Like, I'll under plan loot, then panic that I'm giving nothing out, then over distribute it!

Gotta work on that!

Quote from Lyxen >>

I think my experience is actually similar to you, we are old gamers and we are used to the fun of magic items, so they are fairly available in our campaigns. End the result is that, when our DMs are computing encounter difficulty, we always use at least deadly encounters, and most of the time at the lowest boundary of impossible.

 My point was less about whether the game is balanced than about whether magic items matter. I haven't actually played around with high level that much, though I expect it has the same problem as low level -- it's balanced on "6-8 encounters per day" and breaks when that doesn't happen.

With a little searching on the internet, I found this table, which seems very different than yours. Is the expenditure on gear causing the numebr here to drop, and the number on yours to be higher?

 This was just the first thing I found, so it's probably not the best thing to work off of, 

Quote from https://www.enworld.org/threads/deconstructing-5e-typical-wealth-by-level.402507/

Level| Typical hoard treasure acquired (gp)
1|0
2|140
3|280
4|420
5|560
6|4500
7|8400
8|12,300
9|16,200
10|20,100
11|24,100
12|42,400
13|60,700
14|79,000
15|97,300
16|116,000
17|134,000
18|362,000
19|590,000
20|818,000

Honestly Margaret22 I couldn’t tell you. I checked the article and the author didn’t elaborate much how they actually calculated the numbers. I took an average (Using the DMG and Xanathar) and rounded up so the numbers were easier to remember. But honestly the amounts are close enough that you could use either and it won’t break your game. These aren’t meant to be exact amounts anyways, it’s just a “ball-park” number for DM’s to use as a guide. 

Of course you are free to reward your players with as much as you feel is appropriate for your campaign. It can be fun to run a super-rich party and a super-poor party. They each have their own nuances that can shake things up for your players. Doing so is like a pre-built story element you can give to your players just by changing how much gold they have access to.  This list is more for DM’s who aren’t sure what an appropriate amount of gold would be at each of the levels. Or for starting players above level 1. This is just another option for DM’s to use (or not) as they see fit. It could also work if the DM can’t give out regular treasure over the space of a few level-ups. It would give an idea for how much wealth a character should have access too, for their level, when they finally can give them treasure. 

In my own projects (links in signature) I have used:

- 25 gold worth of rewards + found valuables per quest per character for levels 1-4. Campaign of 10 quests has total gold amount of 250 gold per character.

- 75 gold worth of rewards + found valuables per quest per character for levels 5-8. Campaign of 10 quests has total gold amount of 750 gold per character.

So, I am rewarding characters with less gold than table of the first post. However, players can't find use for their gold in general but that is conversation for another thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/6cgtq6/im_starting_to_feel_like_gold_or_any_form_of/

Quote from Lyxen >>

Thanks, it's an interesting table and something that I was carefully tracking in 3e for our huge shared campaign.

That being said, at the time, most of the wealth was in magic items, and was actually fairly important in checking that the characters were properly geared, although of course the precision was not fantastic, as it could not tell if the magic items were optimized for the build or not.

For 5e, however, I’m not sure I’ll be using it, as magic items are not necessary for adaptation to one’s level of challenge, as magic items do not have a price, and as gold, overall, it not much use in most cases unless you allow a lot of magic items buying and selling, which has its own difficulty. Wizards and their spellbooks are sort of an exception but still.

The only other case that you have rightly mentioned is about plate armor, although it's been my experience that PCs rarely buy it, there are often opportunities to be gifted one as part of a scenario.

Do you have other uses for this table that I am not aware of ?

Hey Lyxen, you are 100% correct. You don’t need any magic items to run a fun and successful campaign. And I would encourage you to try it. It can be a blast of gritty realism and lots of fun. And it can be empowering by encourage your players to work together and use good tactics and team work, rather than relying on magic items to “deus ex machina” them when they run into problems. Creature stats are calculated without factoring magic items, feats, or multi-classing as they are considered optional. I strongly believe that the benefits of using good tactics far outweigh using magic items.

  Magic items do have a gold price you can figure out; if you want to use it. Check out Xanathar’s under selling magic items for a base price.

Wizards and copying spells cost understandably aside (a cost my bladesinger knows all too well); I also find that gold, especially at high levels, becomes almost worthless. Because you have so so so much of it, it starts to lose its relevance. But that can be a GREAT thing. There is a part in a campaign where gold stops being the thing you buy equipment with, and shifts to being the thing you buy role-playing with. Higher level characters spend so little of what they make on their armor and weapons and ale and travel, that it allows them to spend their surplus on things like a castle, a sailing ship, a mage tower or a business.  It could be the money they use to run for political office or to raise a family of Owlbears. Now, having a castle won’t help much in your day to day adventuring or combat. But, the story and role-playing that it gives the players agency to create and use, can be priceless.

Sorry but I don’t really have any other uses for the table. To paraphrase Freud: “sometimes a table is just a table”. It tells you approximate average accumulated wealth in gold for a character at each level. If anything I’d say “let it inspire you”. Be creative. The table is just information, but as Jarlaxle would tell you “Information in the hands of a smart person can open up a world of possibilities”. And you seem like a smart person. I appreciate your insight and question. Cheers.

Quote from Ajexton >>

Honestly Margaret22 I couldn’t tell you. I checked the article and the author didn’t elaborate much how they actually calculated the numbers. I took an average (Using the DMG and Xanathar) and rounded up so the numbers were easier to remember. But honestly the amounts are close enough that you could use either and it won’t break your game. These aren’t meant to be exact amounts anyways, it’s just a “ball-park” number for DM’s to use as a guide. 

Of course you are free to reward your players with as much as you feel is appropriate for your campaign. It can be fun to run a super-rich party and a super-poor party. They each have their own nuances that can shake things up for your players. Doing so is like a pre-built story element you can give to your players just by changing how much gold they have access to.  This list is more for DM’s who aren’t sure what an appropriate amount of gold would be at each of the levels. Or for starting players above level 1. This is just another option for DM’s to use (or not) as they see fit. It could also work if the DM can’t give out regular treasure over the space of a few level-ups. It would give an idea for how much wealth a character should have access too, for their level, when they finally can give them treasure. 

 Yours is supported by an explanation of method, so I'll go with yours

Thank you for this compilation.

Personally, It think that DnD 5e showers players with a little bit too much gold making daily life expenses irrelevant anywhere beyond 3rd level.

Anyway, if you use the Sane Magic Items Table posted in this thread (which I highly recommend) you can use the following simple formula for the generation of Player Characters beyond 1st level:

Starting gp = Exp. for the given level / 10

The formula is especially useful if a PC dies and a player needs to make a new character. The new character will have enough gold to buy competitive equipment but will not overpower the other characters because the gold can be spend to perfectly suit the build. If you tend to give out a lot of loot, divide by 5 instead of 10.

Example: Character of Level 8 has 34.000 Exp (see PH), thus starts with 3400 gp. That's enough to get a plate armor or any other kind of armor +1 (~ 1500 gp), a +1 weapon or similar (1000 gp), some standard adventuring gear (100 gp), a warhorse or another minor magic item (400 gp), two Potions of Greater Healing (150 gp each), and still have ~100 gp left.

Quote from Nihilecas >>Starting gp = Exp. for the given level / 10

 

 Starting gp = Exp. for the given level / 10

Using the average hoard value method, a 6th level character should be able to easily afford Plate Mail and quite a bit more.  Using this exp divided by 10, a 6th level PC would only have 1400 gold, which isn't enough to buy Plate Mail.

If I were to use this, method, I'd probably divide by 8.  The result seems closer to the expected value for early levels where gold matters most.

Wow, I guess I am a miser. At 6th level my party has ~ 1,000 gp each, not including magic items, some gems, and a few oddities.

am i doing something wrong? at level 1 my players have 1,000 gp.

Looking at the higher levels, I keep wondering... what the Abyss are they going to spend 300,000 or 500,000 gp on??

Quote from Kalendraf >>

Using the average hoard value method, a 6th level character should be able to easily afford Plate Mail and quite a bit more.  Using this exp divided by 10, a 6th level PC would only have 1400 gold, which isn't enough to buy Plate Mail.

If I were to use this, method, I'd probably divide by 8.  The result seems closer to the expected value for early levels where gold matters most.

 Absolutely correct, as a good DM you will want to adjust the value to match the amount of gold that you usually hand out. Use any divisor that appears appropriate!

That being said, I personally think that a freshly made character should have slightly less gold available on character creation than a character who earned it over several levels, since the latter likely has found items that are good but suboptimal, while freshly made characters tend to have optimized builds.

Concerning your example of Plate Mail: From the perspective of available wealth, a Plate Mail is essentially equal to any other kind of armor +1 due to the enormous cost difference between Plate Mail and other armor. So the question boils down to: Do other characters (including Dex/Caster heroes) have access to +1 armor at Level 6? If yes, hand out more money and let the fighter have that shiny Plate Mail :-)

Quote from BioWizard >>

Looking at the higher levels, I keep wondering... what the Abyss are they going to spend 300,000 or 500,000 gp on??

 an airship. and the weapons to make it into a horror.

I see the table but, no reference as to why ou feel this is the wealth that should be accumulated? I feel 5e gold economy is bad. There is really few things to spend your gold on, and its almost an afterthought. Where gold was once part of your xp gains and an integral part of the game, it feels as though it is an afterthought in 5e.

There's nothing inherently wrong with random tables, but I note, it only takes at least 10 gold per day to live like an Aristocrat, and you can throw as much gold at it as you like.  I tend to base prices for things around the numbers that Lifestyle gives, and the awareness that you can hire someone for 2 gold per day to work for you.  With 10 gold you can hire 20 people who have enough training to be "skilled" and spend as much as you want for a wild party for your friends that day.

Has any new books or errata changed this in the past few years?