I guess I'll start by saying that even though I've been playing for about 5 years now (exclusively DM) I've rarely dealth with character wealth, I've ran mostly tomb of annihilation and some other modules where they spend a lot of time away from cities so it rarely comes to the point where they need to spend any of the money collected.
So I'm curious, in your experience, do you get to spend money earned in your adventures? and when you do, what's the main type of products that you purchase? I've seen that magic items are some sort of taboo where many DM's agree to sell them and many others would rather subscribe to the idea that those items are rare and mostly give them as rewards or hide them in dungeons.
Based on official modules a party of 5 characters might be getting close to a 400 - 500 gp mark + one or two magic items and from that point forward the treasure collected tends to be even more by level. So what do you main to get as players? castles? ships? what is more common for you to actually get (considering that many games will implode after real life shenanigans.
lastly, I'd like to add that I'm really curious but I'm also trying to figure out how players see this resource, is it a big let down when DM's won't have a magical items store? it feels that after certain level daily things like food or lodging won't really take a toll on character finances to the point that they'll just continue amassing wealth
Our party mostly spent money on luxury goods, stuff like nice dinners out and trips to the theatre and vacations in between adventuring. We also invested in strongholds and magic items, which there were no magic item shops but they were mostly sold by like private collectors and stuff.
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I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
I've found that in 5E the lack of a magic item economy means that after about 5th level there's not much to actually spend money on.
Right, this is what I've encountered so far. There's almost no intention of providing the magic shop options to players due to fear of items breaking the game but then it feels like money starts losing relevance...
Of course DM's can simply offer other kind of stuff, like getting strongholds and paying hirelings which is mentioned in the DMG, but there's a lack of motivation to do that... at least if we use their official modules or adventures.
There’s not much to spend it on. Healing potions, maybe. You can buy plate mail for the heavy armor types. Wizards pay for transcribing new spells they might find. And there are some other expensive spell components. Spelljammer helms can be pricey.
Personally, I’m not a fan of magic item shops. And they really seem like a charade, since the DM is going to be the one stocking the store. So, instead of putting the +2 sword in a treasure hoard, you put in enough cash to buy a +2 sword. I don’t get the point of that.
Otherwise there’s not much by RAW, so as DM you can get creative. If the PCs want to buy a house or a castle or something. Or buy a title and now they’re a baron. Or you can just let them be rich. It can be nice to have lots of cash and live out the fantasy of throwing money around. And then when the campaign ends, the players know their characters have enough money to retire comfortably.
My party can rarely afford the items offered in a magic store, and by the time we could we're beyond the level those items could be useful. The only magic items we buy are potions, and they're usually healing ones to save our spell slots for offensive/utility spells. Other than that spell components for those who need them: some diamonds for Revivify are the most common ones. A magical item's store only value for me is seeing the DM list a handful of the items I've bought on DDB, hoping that if my character shows an interest but not willing to buy it, it might appear elsewhere in the game's world.
My current character has the idea of crafting the perfect modular firearm, and so her gold sink will be crafting the stock, barrels, sights, scopes, firing mechanisms, reinventing bullets and so forth. Otherwise she'd choose to spend it on a permanent workshop, or base for the party. Failing that, bribes and tips are the most common means of getting rid of our gold.
I think our party is mostly interested in the little things: spending a wad of cash on the poor and needy, or a slap up meal for a single night. Sleeping soundly during our globe-trotting adventure is a far better offer than a stationary fortress that brings its own problems with the administration (which my character, and I as a player would love, but appreciate wholeheartedly how that gets in the way of, err, playing the game). The video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker kinda demonstrated that quite well: the barony was great but it didn't mesh well with the necessity to go out and adventure. Dragon Age: Origins' Awakening expansion pack did a better job of tying the two together but skimped out on the impressiveness of having a keep.
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Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
My party can rarely afford the items offered in a magic store, and by the time we could we're beyond the level those items could be useful. The only magic items we buy are potions, and they're usually healing ones to save our spell slots for offensive/utility spells. Other than that spell components for those who need them: some diamonds for Revivify are the most common ones. A magical item's store only value for me is seeing the DM list a handful of the items I've bought on DDB, hoping that if my character shows an interest but not willing to buy it, it might appear elsewhere in the game's world.
My current character has the idea of crafting the perfect modular firearm, and so her gold sink will be crafting the stock, barrels, sights, scopes, firing mechanisms, reinventing bullets and so forth. Otherwise she'd choose to spend it on a permanent workshop, or base for the party. Failing that, bribes and tips are the most common means of getting rid of our gold.
I think our party is mostly interested in the little things: spending a wad of cash on the poor and needy, or a slap up meal for a single night. Sleeping soundly during our globe-trotting adventure is a far better offer than a stationary fortress that brings its own problems with the administration (which my character, and I as a player would love, but appreciate wholeheartedly how that gets in the way of, err, playing the game). The video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker kinda demonstrated that quite well: the barony was great but it didn't mesh well with the necessity to go out and adventure. Dragon Age: Origins' Awakening expansion pack did a better job of tying the two together but skimped out on the impressiveness of having a keep.
Yeah, I’d love an expansion book about having a castle. But then having done base of operations used to be the standard in 1e, and once you got it, the game really shifted from “going and and beating up the bad guys” to “sending people out to beat up the bad guys on your behalf.” It really became a whole different game, and wasn’t nearly as fun.
My party can rarely afford the items offered in a magic store, and by the time we could we're beyond the level those items could be useful. The only magic items we buy are potions, and they're usually healing ones to save our spell slots for offensive/utility spells. Other than that spell components for those who need them: some diamonds for Revivify are the most common ones. A magical item's store only value for me is seeing the DM list a handful of the items I've bought on DDB, hoping that if my character shows an interest but not willing to buy it, it might appear elsewhere in the game's world.
My current character has the idea of crafting the perfect modular firearm, and so her gold sink will be crafting the stock, barrels, sights, scopes, firing mechanisms, reinventing bullets and so forth. Otherwise she'd choose to spend it on a permanent workshop, or base for the party. Failing that, bribes and tips are the most common means of getting rid of our gold.
I think our party is mostly interested in the little things: spending a wad of cash on the poor and needy, or a slap up meal for a single night. Sleeping soundly during our globe-trotting adventure is a far better offer than a stationary fortress that brings its own problems with the administration (which my character, and I as a player would love, but appreciate wholeheartedly how that gets in the way of, err, playing the game). The video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker kinda demonstrated that quite well: the barony was great but it didn't mesh well with the necessity to go out and adventure. Dragon Age: Origins' Awakening expansion pack did a better job of tying the two together but skimped out on the impressiveness of having a keep.
Yeah, I’d love an expansion book about having a castle. But then having done base of operations used to be the standard in 1e, and once you got it, the game really shifted from “going and and beating up the bad guys” to “sending people out to beat up the bad guys on your behalf.” It really became a whole different game, and wasn’t nearly as fun.
Indeed. To reference another game this became a huge problem for World of Warcraft wherein the Warlords of Draenor expansion, the final-level content was essentially entirely experienced within the Garrison. You'd send your Followers out to do things and bring back loot which made them better at doing things which had them bring back better loot, which made them better at...
It got so bad that people called the expansion's main feature "a prison". They felt trapped by the convenience. Why would they have to do the open world stuff when they could get the exact same or better rewards idling in their Garrison, barring the fact they paid a monthly fee to do so? As much as I like the idea of having servants taking all the risk, if they're having more fun than me... why am I here? My presence at the table is surplus to requirements.
The castle is a great way to end a story, but if the story has ended and there won't be a new one I haven't really benefit from spending my money barring a different ending, and as said before the people I've played with are perfectly content with a roof over their head and a hot bath.
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Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
I've found that in 5E the lack of a magic item economy means that after about 5th level there's not much to actually spend money on.
Right, this is what I've encountered so far. There's almost no intention of providing the magic shop options to players due to fear of items breaking the game but then it feels like money starts losing relevance...
Of course DM's can simply offer other kind of stuff, like getting strongholds and paying hirelings which is mentioned in the DMG, but there's a lack of motivation to do that... at least if we use their official modules or adventures.
I find this attitude so baffling. It is cash money. Do you find that you have this problem in the real world, where we also don't have a magic item economy? If so, I would be happy to relieve you of any excess currency you find useless. :) Well, not any currency; you can keep your Bitcoin.
In seriousness, I do tend to reduce cash rewards to my PCs from what is recommended in the DMG, because economics interest me, and I find it hard to ignore the chaos that the gold infusion from a single adventuring party could wreak on local commerce. How I do this varies from campaign to campaign, but I have had some luck switching over to a silver-piece standard from gold piece. Starting wealth remains the same, so PCs can still buy normal starting equipment, but from then on everything is cut down by 90%. Note that this still makes them fantastically wealthy very quickly.
Yeah, I’d love an expansion book about having a castle. But then having done base of operations used to be the standard in 1e, and once you got it, the game really shifted from “going and and beating up the bad guys” to “sending people out to beat up the bad guys on your behalf.” It really became a whole different game, and wasn’t nearly as fun.
Perhaps not, but I have to say that I don't think there is much of a game left in D&D5 after 13th level. The threats involved, and the encounters that make up those threats, just become increasingly ridiculous. Not even to mention the wealth involved.
I'd be the first to admit that the pivot to a management simulation at 10th level in 20th-century D&D was odd, but I think it represented a level of understanding about how the game works on the part of the creators that our current developers lack. They've removed the castle life sim, but haven't really replaced it with anything --- they just poorly upscaled low-level play.
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J Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
I've found that in 5E the lack of a magic item economy means that after about 5th level there's not much to actually spend money on.
Right, this is what I've encountered so far. There's almost no intention of providing the magic shop options to players due to fear of items breaking the game but then it feels like money starts losing relevance...
Of course DM's can simply offer other kind of stuff, like getting strongholds and paying hirelings which is mentioned in the DMG, but there's a lack of motivation to do that... at least if we use their official modules or adventures.
I find this attitude so baffling. It is cash money. Do you find that you have this problem in the real world, where we also don't have a magic item economy? If so, I would be happy to relieve you of any excess currency you find useless. :) Well, not any currency; you can keep your Bitcoin.
In seriousness, I do tend to reduce cash rewards to my PCs from what is recommended in the DMG, because economics interest me, and I find it hard to ignore the chaos that the gold infusion from a single adventuring party could wreak on local commerce. How I do this varies from campaign to campaign, but I have had some luck switching over to a silver-piece standard from gold piece. Starting wealth remains the same, so PCs can still buy normal starting equipment, but from then on everything is cut down by 90%. Note that this still makes them fantastically wealthy very quickly.
And what do they spend it on? Most players don't have any real interest in playing land baron simulator, and if they did there are much better games out there for that. Cost of living is low enough that you can live the high life pretty easily and if you're not buying magic items then what? You RP how much you're spending on hookers and blow? Fun for a little while if you've got that sort of game but that usually loses the excitement eventually.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
And what do they spend it on? Most players don't have any real interest in playing land baron simulator, and if they did there are much better games out there for that. Cost of living is low enough that you can live the high life pretty easily and if you're not buying magic items then what? You RP how much you're spending on hookers and blow? Fun for a little while if you've got that sort of game but that usually loses the excitement eventually.
I mean, here's the real question,: if you're not bothering to roleplay how much your players spend on hookers and blow, why bother giving them coin-value treasure at all? Just handwave lifestyle and equipment costs and save yourself the effort.
No duh, if you don't give your players the opportunity to buy things, they don't have anything to spend money on.
I once had a warforged storm sorcerer/forge cleric of Ronnie James Dio with a self-propelled rolling armored throne flanked by iron skulls that vomited lava. No followers or household management required.
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J Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
And what do they spend it on? Most players don't have any real interest in playing land baron simulator, and if they did there are much better games out there for that. Cost of living is low enough that you can live the high life pretty easily and if you're not buying magic items then what? You RP how much you're spending on hookers and blow? Fun for a little while if you've got that sort of game but that usually loses the excitement eventually.
I mean, here's the real question,: if you're not bothering to roleplay how much your players spend on hookers and blow, why bother giving them coin-value treasure at all? Just handwave lifestyle and equipment costs and save yourself the effort.
No duh, if you don't give your players the opportunity to buy things, they don't have anything to spend money on.
Dude, I'm talking about this as a player, not a GM. D&D is not a visual medium so having your character spend all their money on things that do not actually have an effect like buying artwork is not actually something that many players find entertaining, especially not when it starts eating up a big chunk of the weekly session: my time is valuable and I don't want to have 2/3rds of the game session devoted to characters doing stuff on their own. I can roleplay my party animal barbarian spending big money on all-night drinking contests and elaborate parties but honestly it gets boring after a few times.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Aquisitions Inc is ideal for this, at least if you clean it up a bit and Remove some of the cutie comedy nonsense. Because you have monthly costs that grow as your “company” grows it suck up a lot of that loose change. Building a base/stronghold is Always good as well then the upkeep and restorations after foes take the place apart ( just how many times has Avenger’s manor been destroyed/severely damaged anyway?) can eat up another good chunk of change. Getting involved ( accidentally or purposefully) in local politics in a real game world can also help drain coffers. That is actually a key point - in a real game world. If your just running modules and homebrew adventures then indeed you don’t have much of anywhere to spend cash. But if you have a real world (published or homebrew) then local activities economics etc can be a great way to both generate adventures and drain excess cash. Take Phandalin or Saltmarsh, multiple taverns, inns, merchant companies, mining groups etc. you grubstake a Dwarven prospector who actually finds something ( with oil wells it’s about 1 out of 10 exploration wells pans out to be producible) so a lot of the initial wealth goes down the tubes as you need to grubstake 10+ prospectors to expect to get a profit. But now your part owner of a Dwarven mine that a dragon raids - what are you going to do about it?
IMHO the answer depends on what version of D&D and how your group plays the game. If your group does not like $$$, selling stuff or just in it for social combat it is a vastly different game then how most people play D&D 3.x. Like wise if your game is focused on developing, building expansion then you probably deal with more $$$ then the other type of RPers.
in other words to me your question is very broad and can vary a lot and depend on a lot of things.
I charge them some to level up, for daily food, drink and lodging when they are in town, make them buy some new clothes or new (non-magical) armor every now and then. The biggest thing my party has spent their money on is some magical items that were not completed. They have had to buy the materials and the spell casting for completion (after going on some quests to find what the intended items were).
I think the importance of wealth, or lack thereof, really depends on the individual player. I prefer to play characters who aren't very interested in wealth. I also tend to play clerics. So as long as I've got enough to buy my necessary spell components, the rest is just superfluous, so I'll either give that extra to people in need (temples, charities, etc) or I'll just let the other player divy it up.
I also think certain classes need wealth moreso than others. Clerics need some expensive spell components, but gee whiz wizards get shafted with having to spend dang near every c.p. they find on parchment and inks and components and an extra book and whatnot. So wizards NEED a steady income of wealth just to function as a class. I feel bad for wizards.
In my campaign experience (as a player) as we got higher in level we got less interested in collecting and counting coins and rather found ourselves being rewarded (by the DM) or negotiating with NPCs for things like a house or a keep to be our base, jewelry and artworks, horses, and of course information.
The gathering, and more importantly the spending, of wealth is also a big motivator to explore new areas. Sure it's great to find 100 platinum pieces in a dungeon, but that's just dead weight in your backpack until you find a city with a big enough business district that you can find shops that can even make change for your platinum after you make a purchase. Not every shop keeps hundreds of gold and silver in the cash register. And you have to scale the availability of goods to the size and placement of the town/city. Sure, in a big city on a major trade route you could pretty easily find a shop where you can exchange your 100 pp for some adamantine armor or a wand of secrets. But when you roll into a swampside hamlet of a few dozen farmers, it doesn't matter how much cash you've got, there's just nothing comparable for sale.
So I personally see wealth as serving two functions. One - it helps pay for the cost of materials that the characters need to function in their classes (spell components, armor upgrades, and such). And two - it provides opportunities for role playing.
Because that's what the game is all about after all!
"So I'm curious, in your experience, do you get to spend money earned in your adventures? And when you do, what's the main type of products that you purchase?"
I think every adventure allows you to spend money. There's a lot of variables to the question such as what items are available in the world? If the items aren't interesting to the players they won't spend the money on them no matter the cost. What's the cost of the items because if you don't make/find much in the world you'll never be able to afford the item anyways so you feel even trying for it is pointless.
In general, I as a player do get to spend money in my game worlds. The purchases vary depending on my needs at the time. I think could be an armor upgrade because I want to increase my AC or health potions because those are always a good idea! :)
Depending on your world you could also have redundant items; why would a player want to buy a +1 longsword when they can loot it from a bad guy? So there's placement issues to consider if you want your shops to have more meaning. We have a campaign potentially coming up where the DM wants to introduce crafting more so shops might now feature the items we need if we didn't find enough in the wild or they might have something for sale even better than we thought before; but yeah usually it's all health potions and new weapons for my group because the players either want to hit harder or survive longer, sometimes both. Ha
It's not glamourous but it is what it is currently.
I will agree with others who say at a point it feels like you have more money than you know what to do with so you buy land you never really visit or items for a house you don't go into until the ending of the campaign just to say you did something with it. Even when you do businesses and have to pay workers you can still end up with lots of money yourself personally and so again it's like what do you do with it? Maybe that's something One D&D can look at - ideas for rewards beyond just coins and magic items; I know some people have ideas out there already but not everyone instantly has that spark so so some suggestions could be nice.
I had a cleric that was always looking out for others. I ended up giving different workers/families 100GP each to relocate to the village in which we had a fortified manor, to set up shop. We had our own blacksmith, bowyer/fletcher, baker, farrier and more. Kept me broke, but it was great in-game and the DM loved it.
Our main campaign group periodically arrives in a town or city with a well stocked magic shop and we can make changes to our kit there usually, swapping a sword for an axe or one trinket for another that we feel might be more useful. We buy potions almost all the time, as well as consumable spell components, all of which seem to require a LOT of gold. We have bought mounts a few times (mishaps and once being transported, leaving our mounts behind)
As stated by a few, Wizards should be going through gold pretty steadily, if the DM is providing scrolls and or spellbooks to expand his/her repertoire. Diamond dust, for the restorations and revival spells aren't cheap either, so it sounds like a decent amount of groups either don't use the spells or are having costly components hand waved away. We have also bought art-like things (paintings if I recall) I think, if the campaign looks to run a very long time, we will likely consider buying a place in the central city as a base of sorts.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Our main campaign group periodically arrives in a town or city with a well stocked magic shop and we can make changes to our kit there usually, swapping a sword for an axe or one trinket for another that we feel might be more useful. We buy potions almost all the time, as well as consumable spell components, all of which seem to require a LOT of gold. We have bought mounts a few times (mishaps and once being transported, leaving our mounts behind)
As stated by a few, Wizards should be going through gold pretty steadily, if the DM is providing scrolls and or spellbooks to expand his/her repertoire. Diamond dust, for the restorations and revival spells aren't cheap either, so it sounds like a decent amount of groups either don't use the spells or are having costly components hand waved away. We have also bought art-like things (paintings if I recall) I think, if the campaign looks to run a very long time, we will likely consider buying a place in the central city as a base of sorts.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
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Hello everyone,
I guess I'll start by saying that even though I've been playing for about 5 years now (exclusively DM) I've rarely dealth with character wealth, I've ran mostly tomb of annihilation and some other modules where they spend a lot of time away from cities so it rarely comes to the point where they need to spend any of the money collected.
So I'm curious, in your experience, do you get to spend money earned in your adventures? and when you do, what's the main type of products that you purchase? I've seen that magic items are some sort of taboo where many DM's agree to sell them and many others would rather subscribe to the idea that those items are rare and mostly give them as rewards or hide them in dungeons.
Based on official modules a party of 5 characters might be getting close to a 400 - 500 gp mark + one or two magic items and from that point forward the treasure collected tends to be even more by level. So what do you main to get as players? castles? ships? what is more common for you to actually get (considering that many games will implode after real life shenanigans.
lastly, I'd like to add that I'm really curious but I'm also trying to figure out how players see this resource, is it a big let down when DM's won't have a magical items store? it feels that after certain level daily things like food or lodging won't really take a toll on character finances to the point that they'll just continue amassing wealth
I've found that in 5E the lack of a magic item economy means that after about 5th level there's not much to actually spend money on.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Our party mostly spent money on luxury goods, stuff like nice dinners out and trips to the theatre and vacations in between adventuring. We also invested in strongholds and magic items, which there were no magic item shops but they were mostly sold by like private collectors and stuff.
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
Right, this is what I've encountered so far. There's almost no intention of providing the magic shop options to players due to fear of items breaking the game but then it feels like money starts losing relevance...
Of course DM's can simply offer other kind of stuff, like getting strongholds and paying hirelings which is mentioned in the DMG, but there's a lack of motivation to do that... at least if we use their official modules or adventures.
There’s not much to spend it on. Healing potions, maybe. You can buy plate mail for the heavy armor types. Wizards pay for transcribing new spells they might find. And there are some other expensive spell components. Spelljammer helms can be pricey.
Personally, I’m not a fan of magic item shops. And they really seem like a charade, since the DM is going to be the one stocking the store. So, instead of putting the +2 sword in a treasure hoard, you put in enough cash to buy a +2 sword. I don’t get the point of that.
Otherwise there’s not much by RAW, so as DM you can get creative. If the PCs want to buy a house or a castle or something. Or buy a title and now they’re a baron. Or you can just let them be rich. It can be nice to have lots of cash and live out the fantasy of throwing money around. And then when the campaign ends, the players know their characters have enough money to retire comfortably.
My party can rarely afford the items offered in a magic store, and by the time we could we're beyond the level those items could be useful. The only magic items we buy are potions, and they're usually healing ones to save our spell slots for offensive/utility spells. Other than that spell components for those who need them: some diamonds for Revivify are the most common ones. A magical item's store only value for me is seeing the DM list a handful of the items I've bought on DDB, hoping that if my character shows an interest but not willing to buy it, it might appear elsewhere in the game's world.
My current character has the idea of crafting the perfect modular firearm, and so her gold sink will be crafting the stock, barrels, sights, scopes, firing mechanisms, reinventing bullets and so forth. Otherwise she'd choose to spend it on a permanent workshop, or base for the party. Failing that, bribes and tips are the most common means of getting rid of our gold.
I think our party is mostly interested in the little things: spending a wad of cash on the poor and needy, or a slap up meal for a single night. Sleeping soundly during our globe-trotting adventure is a far better offer than a stationary fortress that brings its own problems with the administration (which my character, and I as a player would love, but appreciate wholeheartedly how that gets in the way of, err, playing the game). The video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker kinda demonstrated that quite well: the barony was great but it didn't mesh well with the necessity to go out and adventure. Dragon Age: Origins' Awakening expansion pack did a better job of tying the two together but skimped out on the impressiveness of having a keep.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Yeah, I’d love an expansion book about having a castle. But then having done base of operations used to be the standard in 1e, and once you got it, the game really shifted from “going and and beating up the bad guys” to “sending people out to beat up the bad guys on your behalf.” It really became a whole different game, and wasn’t nearly as fun.
Indeed. To reference another game this became a huge problem for World of Warcraft wherein the Warlords of Draenor expansion, the final-level content was essentially entirely experienced within the Garrison. You'd send your Followers out to do things and bring back loot which made them better at doing things which had them bring back better loot, which made them better at...
It got so bad that people called the expansion's main feature "a prison". They felt trapped by the convenience. Why would they have to do the open world stuff when they could get the exact same or better rewards idling in their Garrison, barring the fact they paid a monthly fee to do so? As much as I like the idea of having servants taking all the risk, if they're having more fun than me... why am I here? My presence at the table is surplus to requirements.
The castle is a great way to end a story, but if the story has ended and there won't be a new one I haven't really benefit from spending my money barring a different ending, and as said before the people I've played with are perfectly content with a roof over their head and a hot bath.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
I find this attitude so baffling. It is cash money. Do you find that you have this problem in the real world, where we also don't have a magic item economy? If so, I would be happy to relieve you of any excess currency you find useless. :) Well, not any currency; you can keep your Bitcoin.
In seriousness, I do tend to reduce cash rewards to my PCs from what is recommended in the DMG, because economics interest me, and I find it hard to ignore the chaos that the gold infusion from a single adventuring party could wreak on local commerce. How I do this varies from campaign to campaign, but I have had some luck switching over to a silver-piece standard from gold piece. Starting wealth remains the same, so PCs can still buy normal starting equipment, but from then on everything is cut down by 90%. Note that this still makes them fantastically wealthy very quickly.
Perhaps not, but I have to say that I don't think there is much of a game left in D&D5 after 13th level. The threats involved, and the encounters that make up those threats, just become increasingly ridiculous. Not even to mention the wealth involved.
I'd be the first to admit that the pivot to a management simulation at 10th level in 20th-century D&D was odd, but I think it represented a level of understanding about how the game works on the part of the creators that our current developers lack. They've removed the castle life sim, but haven't really replaced it with anything --- they just poorly upscaled low-level play.
J
Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
And what do they spend it on? Most players don't have any real interest in playing land baron simulator, and if they did there are much better games out there for that. Cost of living is low enough that you can live the high life pretty easily and if you're not buying magic items then what? You RP how much you're spending on hookers and blow? Fun for a little while if you've got that sort of game but that usually loses the excitement eventually.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I mean, here's the real question,: if you're not bothering to roleplay how much your players spend on hookers and blow, why bother giving them coin-value treasure at all? Just handwave lifestyle and equipment costs and save yourself the effort.
No duh, if you don't give your players the opportunity to buy things, they don't have anything to spend money on.
I once had a warforged storm sorcerer/forge cleric of Ronnie James Dio with a self-propelled rolling armored throne flanked by iron skulls that vomited lava. No followers or household management required.
J
Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
Dude, I'm talking about this as a player, not a GM. D&D is not a visual medium so having your character spend all their money on things that do not actually have an effect like buying artwork is not actually something that many players find entertaining, especially not when it starts eating up a big chunk of the weekly session: my time is valuable and I don't want to have 2/3rds of the game session devoted to characters doing stuff on their own. I can roleplay my party animal barbarian spending big money on all-night drinking contests and elaborate parties but honestly it gets boring after a few times.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Aquisitions Inc is ideal for this, at least if you clean it up a bit and Remove some of the cutie comedy nonsense. Because you have monthly costs that grow as your “company” grows it suck up a lot of that loose change. Building a base/stronghold is Always good as well then the upkeep and restorations after foes take the place apart ( just how many times has Avenger’s manor been destroyed/severely damaged anyway?) can eat up another good chunk of change. Getting involved ( accidentally or purposefully) in local politics in a real game world can also help drain coffers. That is actually a key point - in a real game world. If your just running modules and homebrew adventures then indeed you don’t have much of anywhere to spend cash. But if you have a real world (published or homebrew) then local activities economics etc can be a great way to both generate adventures and drain excess cash. Take Phandalin or Saltmarsh, multiple taverns, inns, merchant companies, mining groups etc. you grubstake a Dwarven prospector who actually finds something ( with oil wells it’s about 1 out of 10 exploration wells pans out to be producible) so a lot of the initial wealth goes down the tubes as you need to grubstake 10+ prospectors to expect to get a profit. But now your part owner of a Dwarven mine that a dragon raids - what are you going to do about it?
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
IMHO the answer depends on what version of D&D and how your group plays the game. If your group does not like $$$, selling stuff or just in it for social combat it is a vastly different game then how most people play D&D 3.x. Like wise if your game is focused on developing, building expansion then you probably deal with more $$$ then the other type of RPers.
in other words to me your question is very broad and can vary a lot and depend on a lot of things.
I charge them some to level up, for daily food, drink and lodging when they are in town, make them buy some new clothes or new (non-magical) armor every now and then. The biggest thing my party has spent their money on is some magical items that were not completed. They have had to buy the materials and the spell casting for completion (after going on some quests to find what the intended items were).
I think the importance of wealth, or lack thereof, really depends on the individual player. I prefer to play characters who aren't very interested in wealth. I also tend to play clerics. So as long as I've got enough to buy my necessary spell components, the rest is just superfluous, so I'll either give that extra to people in need (temples, charities, etc) or I'll just let the other player divy it up.
I also think certain classes need wealth moreso than others. Clerics need some expensive spell components, but gee whiz wizards get shafted with having to spend dang near every c.p. they find on parchment and inks and components and an extra book and whatnot. So wizards NEED a steady income of wealth just to function as a class. I feel bad for wizards.
In my campaign experience (as a player) as we got higher in level we got less interested in collecting and counting coins and rather found ourselves being rewarded (by the DM) or negotiating with NPCs for things like a house or a keep to be our base, jewelry and artworks, horses, and of course information.
The gathering, and more importantly the spending, of wealth is also a big motivator to explore new areas. Sure it's great to find 100 platinum pieces in a dungeon, but that's just dead weight in your backpack until you find a city with a big enough business district that you can find shops that can even make change for your platinum after you make a purchase. Not every shop keeps hundreds of gold and silver in the cash register. And you have to scale the availability of goods to the size and placement of the town/city. Sure, in a big city on a major trade route you could pretty easily find a shop where you can exchange your 100 pp for some adamantine armor or a wand of secrets. But when you roll into a swampside hamlet of a few dozen farmers, it doesn't matter how much cash you've got, there's just nothing comparable for sale.
So I personally see wealth as serving two functions. One - it helps pay for the cost of materials that the characters need to function in their classes (spell components, armor upgrades, and such). And two - it provides opportunities for role playing.
Because that's what the game is all about after all!
But that's just my 2 c.p. I hope this helps.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
"So I'm curious, in your experience, do you get to spend money earned in your adventures? And when you do, what's the main type of products that you purchase?"
I think every adventure allows you to spend money. There's a lot of variables to the question such as what items are available in the world? If the items aren't interesting to the players they won't spend the money on them no matter the cost. What's the cost of the items because if you don't make/find much in the world you'll never be able to afford the item anyways so you feel even trying for it is pointless.
In general, I as a player do get to spend money in my game worlds. The purchases vary depending on my needs at the time. I think could be an armor upgrade because I want to increase my AC or health potions because those are always a good idea! :)
Depending on your world you could also have redundant items; why would a player want to buy a +1 longsword when they can loot it from a bad guy? So there's placement issues to consider if you want your shops to have more meaning. We have a campaign potentially coming up where the DM wants to introduce crafting more so shops might now feature the items we need if we didn't find enough in the wild or they might have something for sale even better than we thought before; but yeah usually it's all health potions and new weapons for my group because the players either want to hit harder or survive longer, sometimes both. Ha
It's not glamourous but it is what it is currently.
I will agree with others who say at a point it feels like you have more money than you know what to do with so you buy land you never really visit or items for a house you don't go into until the ending of the campaign just to say you did something with it. Even when you do businesses and have to pay workers you can still end up with lots of money yourself personally and so again it's like what do you do with it? Maybe that's something One D&D can look at - ideas for rewards beyond just coins and magic items; I know some people have ideas out there already but not everyone instantly has that spark so so some suggestions could be nice.
I had a cleric that was always looking out for others. I ended up giving different workers/families 100GP each to relocate to the village in which we had a fortified manor, to set up shop. We had our own blacksmith, bowyer/fletcher, baker, farrier and more. Kept me broke, but it was great in-game and the DM loved it.
Our main campaign group periodically arrives in a town or city with a well stocked magic shop and we can make changes to our kit there usually, swapping a sword for an axe or one trinket for another that we feel might be more useful. We buy potions almost all the time, as well as consumable spell components, all of which seem to require a LOT of gold. We have bought mounts a few times (mishaps and once being transported, leaving our mounts behind)
As stated by a few, Wizards should be going through gold pretty steadily, if the DM is providing scrolls and or spellbooks to expand his/her repertoire. Diamond dust, for the restorations and revival spells aren't cheap either, so it sounds like a decent amount of groups either don't use the spells or are having costly components hand waved away. We have also bought art-like things (paintings if I recall) I think, if the campaign looks to run a very long time, we will likely consider buying a place in the central city as a base of sorts.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Our main campaign group periodically arrives in a town or city with a well stocked magic shop and we can make changes to our kit there usually, swapping a sword for an axe or one trinket for another that we feel might be more useful. We buy potions almost all the time, as well as consumable spell components, all of which seem to require a LOT of gold. We have bought mounts a few times (mishaps and once being transported, leaving our mounts behind)
As stated by a few, Wizards should be going through gold pretty steadily, if the DM is providing scrolls and or spellbooks to expand his/her repertoire. Diamond dust, for the restorations and revival spells aren't cheap either, so it sounds like a decent amount of groups either don't use the spells or are having costly components hand waved away. We have also bought art-like things (paintings if I recall) I think, if the campaign looks to run a very long time, we will likely consider buying a place in the central city as a base of sorts.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.