Comments on: TCCT and N: Excessive Wealth in D&D

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 03:16:11 +0000

In reply to Redwood Rhiadra. And it's always better to have a plot hook up your sleeve than to expend it on solving a problem! Thanks, Redwood. (PS: For those who don't recognize the point, she is talking about 5e D&D).

By: Redwood Rhiadra

Redwood Rhiadra — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 22:01:26 +0000

The 5th Edition solution is, in my mind, kind of elegant. Let the players figure out what to do with the money.

You pretty quickly run out of portable stuff on the mundane equipment list to buy. And in 5th Edition, it’s not only extremely difficult or impossible to buy magic items (by default), but there’s a hefty limit (attunement slots) on how many you can use anyway.

At that point, money stops being directly applicable to adventuring capabilities. So there’s no real game balance issue with them having lots and lots of money. It does mean it’s harder to lure them into an adventure with the promise of money, but by then they should hopefully have plenty of other motivations to adventure.

Let the players figure out ways to spend it – they usually will (building castles is pretty popular), and if they don’t, there’s not a great deal of harm.

(Which isn’t to say some of the above still isn’t useful sometimes, but more as a plot hook than a cash drain.)

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 09:04:12 +0000

In reply to 7thsealord. Good one :)

By: 7thsealord

7thsealord — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 00:24:36 +0000

One other approach, sort of brushed against very lightly here, is ‘The Money Sink”. Have the group find / acquire something both prestigious, valuable and useful – a cool castle is a good one, or a ship (refer my ‘Vehicle’ article) arguably even better.

It then becomes a matter of PCs needing to keep enough money and resources flowing to repair said item (what, you thought it’d be in PERFECT repair?) and to keep it operating at a level useful to the party.

In one of my D&D4 games, our mid-high level party acquired a small flying castle (courtesy of an “all in” bet on a longshot – which greatly surprised our GM, though he recovered well. Long story.). It was rather beat-up but, given that we are in the midst of an extra-planar adventure, serves our purposes very nicely.

But. here’s the thing. It makes travel very convenient (I think of it as like the Transporter in ‘Star Trek’, it’s there to get you “into” the story ASAP. It’s great for storing stuff, and impressing people. But, it sucks away money like you wouldn’t believe – there is all the money we spend for upkeep. and to fix the place up, and the “weird stuff” in it that we are trying to figure out.

To say nothing pof the ever-present possibility of theft or disaster.

Furthermore, and this is the biggie, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT DOWN INTO THE DUNGEON WITH YOU! Think on that. Given that the party’s focus is dungeon-bashing, one can appreciate the difficulty here. ;)