D&D 5e Gets Treasure Hoards All Wrong.

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Is treasure in 5E D&D epic enough for epic fantasy? This video argues coinage becomes useless at higher levels, non-magical loot like gems lacks narrative purpose, and magic items lack the power to enable legendary quests. It proposes we rethink how treasures are rewarded to better drive the fantasy epic adventures 5E is designed for.

[TimothyEdwards]

The art items become relevant and interesting if you're running an old school style long expedition / dungeon crawl that keeps track of carrying limits. Moving half a ton of gold pieces is far harder than a small bag of diamonds which have the same value.

[BainesMkII]

I've always viewed the role of artwork as treasure in an entirely different light. Treasure isn't designed solely for the convenience of players. Art isn't just a more realistic alternative to everyone/thing having only thousands of gold coins, the inconveniences and complications art can bring are *features* rather than detriments. The video mentions how quickly gold becomes meaningless; art handled correctly is a method of making substantial rewards available without actually giving the full value to the players. Art is often fragile, easily damaged or destroyed with combat or even travel. Art can be cumbersome and difficult to carry. The average adventurer isn't going to have a clue as to how much a piece of art is worth. Art can be difficult to sell without proper connections, as well as time, and adventurers may only receive a small fraction of its actual worth. And if the party is pressed for time, then its just tough luck that they don't have time to lug those life-size marble statues back to town before the evil snake god is resurrected...

[pdubb]

It feels like those stacks of gold that players acquire should have some local or regional political / economic significance, but it changes the natures of the game. Not everyone gets into the political and economic intrigues of the game world. Most players want to slay bigger and badder bosses. Note to Baron: I remember 88 HP for an ancient red dragon from the AD&D era. Your HP may be off, but the point still remains.

[MechaSpaceWhale]

Art objects like statues, wall tapestries, fancy rugs, etc become more exciting when you have a stronghold to put them in. By then gold has become so plentiful that a heavy art piece you don’t intend to sell has more value than coin. You want it as a display piece so you can flex on NPCs.

[GoblinsCorner]

Giving players ways to spend money is another good option. Lairs, bases, cool magic stuff, followers etc. all work fairly well to develop the game and the story. We mentioned this all last week fyi on our show...

[TimothyEdwards]

If you're running an "epic quest" style play, then I'd suggest abstracting high level gold and gems to the scale of person it can influence. "A bag of gold" is enough to set a commoner up for life, and can allow you to take over an inn for a month or have a farmer not mind if your alchemy lab in his fields blows up and takes out that year's crops. "A sack of gems" might buy the spying of a thieves guild, save an orphanage from a greedy merchant so a poor temple lends you a holy relic in thanks. A king's ransom - a cart of gold or sack of gems - can result in a city putting their best people to work, or a monarch putting their forces at your disposal.

Gold and gems are cool when there are story relevant things it can do. I think Pathfinder 2nd edition has a much cleaner "money can buy you items, and threats are built based on the assumption you'll have a certain level of gear" system if you're wanting to run the sort of game where counting the gold is a relevant and useful activity to the game.

[mikegould]

Okay. I call this entire diatribe "inflammatory", "declarative" and "argumentative". I've been playing since 1979. I remember older editions. I played them. Do you want treasure and magic to mean more? Easy. There's lots to do, and it all comes from older editions:
- Training to level. In 5E, leveling is instantaneous like a video game. Make it more like training for a promotion or a new rank in a martial art. Train. Finding a trainer, paying for that privilege, and funding the facilities that may be required costs money.
- Build a stronghold. I could go more into this, but Colville covered it.
- Establish contacts. Add political, criminal, business, or other contacts. Bribes, donations, financial support and the like can be expensive.
- Enact fines for damage. PCs break everything. Charge them for the repairs when they burn down a tavern.
- Tithes. Paladins, Druids, Clerics, or anyone with the Acolyte background might have connections to religious institutions of some kind that require a percentage of their funds.
- Taxes. They were real in the past. They're real now. Enforce them.
- Jealousy, covetous behaviors and greed: Just because the PCs won treasure doesn't mean others want to steal it after they've done the hard work. Banks or other secure facilities are expensive, and want a cut for what they protect. The PCs will become the targets of thieves and grifters. Protect your money.
- Enforce encumbrance. What's the point of 20000gp if you can't carry it? Now you have ANOTHER challenge to overcome.
- Enforce repairs. Any armor that suffers a crit will require repair or suffer a permanent penalty to AC. Weapons that Crit fail may become equally damaged. Acid, fire, and other damaging elements can adversely affect your kit. Make life harder.
The list can go on, but I know the reaction. The reaction will be a hew and cry from the 5E crowd about infringement on their power fantasy. I've already tried to enforce such things at one table and there were threats to quit....followed by complaints that money had no use. Some just want to bitch, but tend to refrain from actual solutions.
Giving PCs MORE power than they already possess will simply make things more difficult to adjudicate for some DMs. Most won't increase the threat level to truly add risk to the table, for the same reasons as mentioned above - many players don't want a challenge. They want a power fantasy, but become bored when they achieve it too easily, and become angry when it's not given instantly. It's the DM refrain I hear over and over.
Therefore, to truly address the "how 5E failed to do hoards right", maybe address the core problem: expectations vs execution. Maybe go into how to address things more practically than handing a + Holy Avenger to a PC. Hel, I home brew the magic items for my PCs and those items scale with each PC to make them signature items associated with each PC. They don't desire bigger and better, but instead want to see what unlocks next.
Add risk. Add repercussions. Promote struggles and challenges - then reward the PCs for heroically overcoming those challenges. Let them be hungry for more. Make them think about their choices. When you have the engaged, all of these issues disappear. That includes gobs of gold. When you add costs or financial challenges, gold becomes necessary.

[jasonreid]

People decided they didn't like tying up their character power in the GM fiat delivery of magic items. So WotC started pushing power from the magic items that e.g. martials expected to get in early editions directly into the class. At least as much as they could without changing the overall tone from S&S to Anime.

So magic items got toned down and class powers got toned up. A 5E fighter has more inherent power than a 2E one does.

[kerbalairforce]

If your players are hording gold, would that not attract goblins, thieves, and small dragons if there is enough? Or upset the balance of regional power?

[thekaxmax]

for going to magic shops, obv. 4E had the ability to upgrade gear, so money was vital to improve the kit.

[JMcMillen]

The thing about gold is that you can only carry so much of it, which is why encumbrance rules, while annoying, are needed. This is also one of the reasons why gems and jewelry become more important at higher levels as you get more cash for the weight you have to carry.
I remember that the old AD&D Gold Box games DID track encumbrance and carrying too much would slow characters down when engaged in combat. There were plenty of times I'd have to drop stuff so I could carry more valuable treasure instead. And that dropped stuff was permanently gone, as something else would have taken it before they party would have a chance to ever get back to it.

[tslfrontman]

Great point about the Holy Avenger. It influences the whole late game by its very existence, and the instant powerboost for a Pally is rather incomparable.

[tuomasronnberg]

Strong disagree. Magic items should be nice perks, not so powerful that they become character defining.

That's why Holy Avenger was the worst designed weapon in AD&D: it didn't matter who you were, because your blade was more important than the person swinging it. Have fun being upstaged by a lump of metal 😂

[nebiru]

Just because the players may find gold inconvenient doesn't mean the NPCs wouldn't include it in their hoard.

[cameronlapp]

Paizo's Skulls & Shackles campaign uses a much more interesting "Plunder" system for all the random treasure - each plunder is about 1000gp but value goes up or down depending on some sale factors and takes about a day to sell per plunder.

More of a kingdom builder game than 3 days to save the world, but it works well for those longer games.

[krinkrin]

The magic item I was most excited about was the Apparatus of Kwalish in 3rd edition. It was basically a mini submersible that could walk on land and attack for decent damage. It was also very fun to experiment with, as all you were presented with was a panel with some unlabeled levers, and had to figure out how it worked by trial and error.

[Keyce]

While I agree that treasure tracking can be a tedious affair, I think that the gold problem can be dealt with by making its use a more involved part of the game. For example, instead of awarding experience for defeating monsters or accomplishing story beat milestones, make gold the method by which the players gain exp. If they want to get better, they have to delve into ancient dungeons and bandit camps to scrounge for money, then find and pay for a trainer to teach them new skills so that they can level up. 300 gold pieces just to get from level 1 to level 2 might not seem like much at first glance, but it certainly will when you account for 4-6 players and that number jumps up to 1200-1800 gold pieces just to get everyone to level 2. Add in encumbrance rules, and now PCs have to pick and choose what loot they're going to take back home. Is it worth it to clean out the bandit's weapons racks of rusted swords, or backtrack for that valuable artwork and gems a few rooms back?

And what about the merchants? Of course, a blacksmith may not be interested in the gemstones or a painting the party brings home and will pay only a pittance for them (compared to their worth in the DMG), but a rich merchant travelling between two cities might know a place where gemstones and masterfully-crafted portraits sell like hot cakes, and even offer to pay the party more than what the DMG says they're worth.

Keeping track of living expenses can in this way be a good method for delivering plot hooks. Whatever the PCs don't sell, they have to stash the remainder somewhere - if it's not in their private home/fort, then it's on their person in whatever tavern or inn they're sleeping in. Low-level pickpockets might try to sneak into a PC's Squalid room if their purse has been jingling ever since they came back from the dungeon earlier. Perhaps a noble has discovered that the PC's have obtained a piece of a collection of their family's heirloom and left it in their Wealthy or Aristocratic place of rest. Said noble could send a very skilled (and very greedy) thief to snatch the goods under the cover of darkness - but what is to us DM's just a piece of art randomly rolled in the DMG treasure hoard table.

[VasTheScarlet]

The arguments presented in this video are the reason why I ran my last campaign with GP=EXP and I'm currently designing my next campaign to run with ICRPG rather than 5e

[davidwasilewski]

Doesn’t it entirely depend on how generous or not your DM is? I’m a 6th level fighter and have only recently been able to afford plate. We have about 4 magical items between the whole party, plus a few scrolls and potions. We play a gritty, low magic world (5th edition D&D). So for us, finding a humble 500 gp IS exciting.

[yourseatatthetable]

It's been that way since 1st edition. Mainly this is due to: 1) New or lazy DM's who take the treasure charts/formula literally; 2) DM's who embrace the Monty Haul style of play.

A common argument over the years has been my belief that Monsters, etc., generally don't lug a lot of treasure around with them, so if you have an encounter away from their lair, the loot should be minimal. This has helped to encourage PC's to track or follow said Monster back to their lair...

Then there's the legendary Dragon's Hoard. I often have to point out just how big a hoard can be; and that one only has to turn to Smaug's death in The Hobbit to understand both size and complexity of such finds. Word does get around that such a hoard is no longer guarded by the Dragon (or whatever), so you can't take it all with you; and you can't really defend it very well, especially if you plan on taking any treasure to town...

One tactic that I've used numerous times is that 'Oh, so your the great dragon slayers! Yes, yes, you are well known and the king would like to congratulate you in person. No, no, we insist... Guards!"

After all, just about every power of worth in the region will be looking for a share (or to simply take possession of the hoard) and it's just a mater of time before other Adventurers, Agents of the various regional powers; hell, even an army (or Orc hoard, or both) could be on the march within days of said Dragon's demise.