Low Wealth Campaign Setting?

[Talos]

The "best armor" thread brought up the topic of whether or not the "Goblins" setting is low-wealth or not, that is, whether or not expensive equipment is available and if there is sufficient gold that can be reasonably obtained from the setting to acquire such equipment.

I'm going to say that while many of the characters in the setting are low-wealth themselves (such as the goblins), the setting is not a low-wealth environment. Many of the other characters appear to live in higher-wealth environments (such as Brassmoon city), and high-level, expensive equipment certainly exists.

[SccrD25]

Well the goblin war camp did have a fair amount of gold in the poorly locked chest. There was just no way they could use it. Not that they would know what to do with it. http://www.goblinscomic.com/01272007/

Brassmoon was able to build a dungeon and house/feed/equip all the elites just because the mayor decided on it. That giant wooden statue of Goblinslayer, how much did that cost? There are so many magical items just laying around (gob camp, yellow musk cave, WoD, etc) that it implys at least SOMEONE was rich as hell at some point. And if someone built the Well of Darkness (rather than wizarding it up) then damn.

So yeah, I'd agree, low wealth characters, higher wealth world

How do treasure plants affect this math?

[HerdsCats]

As far as I know, they don't. Assuming I understood Kin's explanation properly, treasure plants aren't actually treasure, but rather are simply plants that are designed to LOOK like treasure in order to lure fools to their death. Kinda like how an angler fish has that glowy bit on her head to lure fishes to their doom.

[spiderwrangler]

Kinda like how an angler fish has that glowy bit on her head to lure fishes to their doom.

Except the fish wasn't designed...

[vector010]

I don't really think it is a low wealth campaign setting. I think it is just a matter of keeping in mind who the story is following. We've got two groups of low level adventurers (Level 3 now for them all I think). There is dies and fox, and they are really much higher technically. They had the opportunity for a lot of higher wealth stuff in their dungeon crawl, but they missed out on it.

So really, I think who we are focusing on might give the impression of lower wealth campaign setting, but it is just because those they are at the lower end of the wealth spectrum.

[Zwums]

Brassmoon was able to build a dungeon and house/feed/equip all the elites just because the mayor decided on it. That giant wooden statue of Goblinslayer, how much did that cost? There are so many magical items just laying around (gob camp, yellow musk cave, WoD, etc) that it implys at least SOMEONE was rich as hell at some point. And if someone built the Well of Darkness (rather than wizarding it up) then damn.

I heartily agree with the "at some point." It seems that this enigmatic wizard at the very least had a lot of power and wealth.

And factor in Kore. Shiny = magic for items in Thuntverse, if I am not mistaken? And Kore is very shiny. Assuming that the items were crafted, them seem pretty fitted to Kore. So the production of items like that exists somewhere, at some point. But maybe not anymore...

[Hippo]

i assumed Kore's gear was all "master crafted". i don't know offhand how much a suit of mastercrafted full plate plus tower shield costs, but it's not cheap. that could just be down to Kore being a mid-high level character, or a Dwarf, but there's no solid evidence that his armour/shield/crossbows/axe are magical.

[SccrD25]

Masterwork Full-plate: 1,650 gp
Masterwork Tower Shield: 180 gp

That's for normal stuff, not his custom versions. Still, not too bad for a @lvl 14

[Amara]

Depending on the campaign setting, yeah... By level 14 I'd assume most would have masterwork stuff at LEAST.

By level 3 I've been able to start mithril chain in several campaigns. Of course, I've also had unforgiving campaigns where we all started with no gold, too.

Cleric, Monk, Rogue = 5d4 x 10 gp so min 50, max 200. And that's first level. After that its gm discretion. Paladin I think is 6d4x10?

[HerdsCats]

Kinda like how an angler fish has that glowy bit on her head to lure fishes to their doom.

Except the fish wasn't designed...

Well, no, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make Despite their vastly different origins, both have bait to lure fools to their doom. One uses shiny shiny gold and the other uses glowy light, but they both like to eat whatever is lured in. Or at least I ASSUME they like what they lure in. Who knows? Maybe angler fish prefer soybeans but never got the chance to taste them

[Miryafa]

Depending on the campaign setting, yeah... By level 14 I'd assume most would have masterwork stuff at LEAST.

By level 3 I've been able to start mithril chain in several campaigns. Of course, I've also had unforgiving campaigns where we all started with no gold, too.

Me too. I've been in games where the DM didn't hand out appropriate WBL and the PCs were dirt poor. Shopping wasn't a big part of those games.

5d4x10gp at level 1 jumps up to 1000gp at level 2, and by level 4 its about 9000. GAP had 5 PCs, so it'd be about 45,000gp total. Unless they're considered NPCs, in which case it drops significantly and it's not odd that they don't have that much.

At level 14 it's in the hundreds of thousands (don't have a table atm), so if Kore has even minimum WBL, he could empty Brassmoon's coffers with some left over. He can do much better than masterwork weapons/armor, it should be at least +1 with several special abilities.

[spiderwrangler]

Or at least I ASSUME they like what they lure in. Who knows? Maybe angler fish prefer soybeans but never got the chance to taste them

Haha! Or maybe they have a sweet tooth and would really go for some chocolate...

[ActsStupidly]

In D&D 3.5 Wealth By Level (WBL) grows exponentially each level. It starts at most about 500 gold depending on class and roll and DM rules at level one and ending somewhere around 800,000 Gold pieces(GP) at level 20 and that's only what they are expected to have by the time they HIT that level, not what wealth they gain after. Keep in mind the scales here:

1 pound of cinnamon or other "common" spice= 1 GP
1 pound of pepper or other "rare" spice= 2 GP
1 pound of gold= 50 GP
+1 magic weapon(no other bonuses)= 1,000 GP
Most expensive item expected to been seen in a small town= 800 GP
Most expensive single item found in a large city(brassmoon)= 40,000
As last but the Grand capitol of the richest country in the setting= 100,000-150,000 GP(most likely the work of some really powerful wizard or something)

BTW Kore's expected wealth as a level 14 PC(if he is a PC) is somewhere around 140,000 GP. He could very easily buy/build a castle, hire 50 servants and live comfortably for the next 150 years purely on his adventuring gear. And that's expecting the %50 reduction in value the typical merchant would buy his gear for. PCs be rich...

[Hippo]

Damn, i'm in the wrong job. I should go adventuring. by the time i'm level 14 i could buy America!

[ActsStupidly]

Damn, i'm in the wrong job. I should go adventuring. by the time i'm level 14 i could buy America!

Bill Gates, based solely on his personal wealth which was made public somewhere in the late 90s, would be a level 12 Expert. My best guess anyway. Might be higher actually.

But yeah by level 14 you really could and most DMs would let you.

[Talos]

In D&D 3.5 Wealth By Level (WBL) grows exponentially each level. It starts at most about 500 gold depending on class and roll and DM rules at level one and ending somewhere around 800,000 Gold pieces(GP) at level 20 and that's only what they are expected to have by the time they HIT that level, not what wealth they gain after. Keep in mind the scales here:

1 pound of cinnamon or other "common" spice= 1 GP
1 pound of pepper or other "rare" spice= 2 GP
1 pound of gold= 50 GP
+1 magic weapon(no other bonuses)= 1,000 GP
Most expensive item expected to been seen in a small town= 800 GP
Most expensive single item found in a large city(brassmoon)= 40,000
As last but the Grand capitol of the richest country in the setting= 100,000-150,000 GP(most likely the work of some really powerful wizard or something)

BTW Kore's expected wealth as a level 14 PC(if he is a PC) is somewhere around 140,000 GP. He could very easily buy/build a castle, hire 50 servants and live comfortably for the next 150 years purely on his adventuring gear. And that's expecting the %50 reduction in value the typical merchant would buy his gear for. PCs be rich...

Wait... how is a super-expensive capital worth only about 4 times as much as a single item?

[willpell]

I feel like the wealth system in D&D is fundamentally broken, and am always trying to get a bead on exactly what I don't like about it. Does anyone know of any homebrewed systems related to money and goods? This seems to be something which homebrewers seldom involve themselves with, which puzzles me given how wonky the base system is.

[cliffracer]

The problem I always found was that it's inconsistent. Terribly so. See: http://www.goblinscomic.com/09092006/

[willpell]

The problem I always found was that it's inconsistent. Terribly so. See: http://www.goblinscomic.com/09092006/

That's nothing. The nonsensical ways of turning a 5-GP profit don't mean much when any really meaningful improvement in your abilities is measured in thousands of GP. Really, the lowest levels of wealth don't need to exist, and I'd be in favor of getting rid of all the miscellaneous adventuring tools, since they really only exist to let players give the GM headaches by McGuyvering crap. The idea of adventurers being thousands of times wealthier than anyone else and Magic Marts existing...it just hurts my head. I'm trying to come up with a way to make things even out a bit without turning into a complete Tippyverse.

[cliffracer]

The problem I always found was that it's inconsistent. Terribly so. See: http://www.goblinscomic.com/09092006/

That's nothing. The nonsensical ways of turning a 5-GP profit don't mean much when any really meaningful improvement in your abilities is measured in thousands of GP. Really, the lowest levels of wealth don't need to exist, and I'd be in favor of getting rid of all the miscellaneous adventuring tools, since they really only exist to let players give the GM headaches by McGuyvering crap. The idea of adventurers being thousands of times wealthier than anyone else and Magic Marts existing...it just hurts my head. I'm trying to come up with a way to make things even out a bit without turning into a complete Tippyverse.

The solution is to find a DM that runs in a low wealth, low level, low magic setting ... pretty hard to do. D&D 3.x was surprisingly sensible up to about level 5, in skills, personal power, and so on. Having all that stuff everywhere is great for a Diablo-style dungeon crawl game, but it doesn't really make sense if you're looking to plot, development, and player ingenuity to drive the game.

[willpell]

The solution is to find a DM that runs in a low wealth, low level, low magic setting ...

See, that's not at all what I want (you might have been speaking to the OP more general, but you quoted me so I assume). If anything, that kind of game only encourages players to do the various degrees of optimizing, minmaxing, munchkinning and just plain cheating which are strictly necessary to succeed when the deck is badly stacked against them.

I want magic, I want a reasonable level (starting lower than about level 5 seems really punitive to me, characters just can't do much before that and they die to a stiff breeze with only one HD, nothing interesting can fight them without disaster), and I'm even okay with some of what wealth can do. It's more that I want to tweak the wealth rules to make them more of a resource of balance. Like how HP and weapon proficiencies work, where classes with little to do other than fight get more HP and better equipment, and how the fighter's feats should have worked but the wizard's spells actually do, where classes that specialize in a single resource get a lot of it, while multiclassers have more variety but less power. I want wealth to be just part of that calculation; I want Aristocrats to be valid player-character choices because they can hire enough mercenaries, UMD enough scrolls and wands, and occasionally even bribe enemies as a way to end encounters, enabling them to contribute on the order of other characters. In essence, "money" should be a power source like "divine" or "nature" or "psionic"; its effects on the game ought to be commmensurate with what any other class can accomplish, every class should have some but there should be some for whom it is their main shtick.

I also want better mechanical social, political, and similar roleplay concerns, to make combat less monopolistic as the center of the game. But that's more of a pipedream, very hard to ever hope to accomplish without entirely ditching the rules we know. WBL at least could be retooled into some sort of flexible game stat.

[Mereneth]

I once played in a campaign as a silver half dragon that was decently wealthy. We went up against this one dungeon with a giant sludge like humanoid in the end riddled with gems, though we couldn't safely get into melee to engage it; warrior almost died in the attempt and he was our tank type. Got a nat 20 with a frost breath attack a few rounds in and froze it solid, which our ranger then shattered it [don't rem how]. The two of us were given the bulk of the wealth we got from killing it. Was able to afford a permanent spellcast [can't remember the spell and my dnd books aren't easy to reach atm] that took advantage of my halfdragon blood to turn me into a full dragon, much to the DM's surprise when I presented him with what I wanted to do.

The DM then had me spend the rest of the game being incredibly stingy with any acquired wealth since it represented my hoard at that point. Had to convince the rest of the group to keep it secret from one player [IC] or he'd have likely been pulling my scales out to craft stuff,