Easy Money

by Sam Bosma

 

I refuse to count pennies anymore.

Lexi did advancement better than everyone else back in 2019, so I'm ditching XP for GP for my hack. Now I'm confronting the fact that I never want to count individual XP, GP or any sort of P again. So here's how I'm handling money in the new version:

The whole party shares a wealth level which represents their combined purchasing power and standard of living. There are five wealth levels: In Debt, Broke, Well-Off, Wealthy, and Extremely Wealthy. Each wealth level corresponds to a tier of purchases that can be made at that wealth level.

 

Wealth Level                 Approx. val/purchase     Example purchases

In Debt                           (<1gp)                            Rations, candles, lockpicks, rope, simple tools


Broke                             (<10gp)                          A raft, a month’s rent, a hireling, weapons & armor

Well-Off                         (<100gp)                       A horse, a house, henchmen, plate armor, spellbooks/ scrolls

Wealthy                          (<1000gp)                     A sailboat, a mansion, a construction team, magic items

Extremely Wealthy        (Go nuts)                       A ship, a castle, an army, really big magic items 

 

You increase your wealth by selling treasure. There are three categories of treasure, corresponding to the wealth levels they can move you to when sold. Selling normal Treasure makes you Well-Off, selling Big Treasure makes you Wealthy, and selling Epic Treasure makes you Extremely Wealthy. You must sell Epic Treasure to an NPC who could reasonably afford it, like a duke or a crazy rich wizard.

Whenever you make a significant purchase appropriate for your wealth level, make a CHA save. If you fail, the party’s wealth decreases by one stage. A significant purchase one stage above your wealth level always decrease your wealth. Purchases below your wealth level never decrease your wealth.

You can’t make purchases above your wealth level while you are In Debt. The next treasure you sell pays off your debt and leaves you Broke. (Alternatively, you can keep buying shit, at the risk of provoking your lenders.)

 

Anyway, that's that for now. Let me know if this smells right; I'm personally excited to playtest it. You might recognize a lot of it when I show it off; I've been doing a lot of "borrowing creatively" from other peoples' blogs. Portals and pegasi made some really good shit pretty recently and i plan to steal as much of it as possible.

Kekai Kotaki

my own creation for a campaign i'm running thru Roll20