My Tome Wealth System Kludge

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, there's the Economicon, and Book of Gears, that discuss economies.

For my own game, I pretty much use those, but have added some more rules on how to adjudicate what things are worth, how much PCs pay for them, and what PCs are expected to do with their treasure.


For starters:

[*] All current D&D items use their listed prices.
[*] Stuff under 15k is "cheap as free" in a [Wish] economy game.
[*] The "Level Appopriate" Magic Items described in Book of Gears have a set cost of 15,001 gp. You can't get them cheap as free.
[*] Stuff over 15k never loses it's value. A magical item that has value, will always have value, if you take "currency", you always get the items full market value, or a promissory note for the difference from the purchaser, possibly a business that buys and trade magic items. The note counts as currency, and there's probably a whole series of banks that sell adventurer's services in exchange for stuff
[*]The DMG listed WBL is how much value of 'real' items you are expected to have.
[*] When you finish an adventure you get "level appropriate" treasure, a set amount of gold based on the encounters that had treasure would have given the PCs. Most of the time, I just put the 'treasure' as the PCs payment for doing a job, so they get the money when they return.
[*] Upon leveling up, your current value is checked agains the WBL table; if you are over, you can't keep any treasure that will put you past the WBL, give it away, store it at home, sacrifice to a diety, give to a lower level NPC of an allied background, or turn hireling into a glass cannon a cohort. If you are under, you get a pile of treasure from someone you once helped.

The players don't know all of the steps, but so far it works. Stuff like Folding Boats and different grades of magical items abound in the party. Some have +2 weapons, others have +1/3 level ones; and others have the largest weapon they can afford.

Which is honestly something that I like. I like when the PCs feel that they have a lot of options, and that many of them are actually decent.