As the most common item to reward adventuring parties with inDungeons & Dragons, gold is a key treasure to understand if we want the rewards our players find in our games to feel meaningful. Gold is the currency through which the party interacts with the rest of the world and if its distribution feels arbitrary so too does the commerce of our worlds.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide presents treasure tables in chapter seven which are a useful lens we can use to understand gold as well as the amounts of it creatures of a certain power level might carry or hoard. However, this table does ultimately supply players with an overwhelming amount of currency. As a result, it requires closer examination to use properly. Let’s begin.
Types Of Coins
There arefive different types of coinagein D&D though many gamessimplify coinage by only using three. The three most popular types of coin are the well-knowncopper, silver, and gold, and if you want to further confuse your players though, feel free to introduceelectrum and platinumto your games as well.
The conversion rates for most coins are rather simple;ten copper equals a silver, ten silver equals a gold, and ten gold equals a platinum, with electrum being the oddball of the bunch, as two electrum equals a gold.If we keep electrum out of the equation, this makes converting other coinage to gold a relatively simple process.
An easy comparison you may use to explain how gold works is tothink of copper as pennies, silver as dimes, and gold as dollar bills.If you’re using platinum, a single platinum piece would equal a ten-dollar bill.
Aside from inducing a mathematical headache, introducing electrum into your game as a coinage that non-player characters (NPCs) despise dealing with can be a funny gag.
It’s also important to note thatfifty coins of any type weigh one pound.If your party ever encounters an excessively large treasure hoard and doesn’t have access to abag of holdingor some other magical means of carrying the gold, this could become an issue.
Some dungeon masters also use the variant rule for encumbrance which results in your character suffering penalties for carrying too much weight. Ask your table about how they rule coin weight to avoid being surprised by this issue.
How To Use Treasure Tables
You can use the treasure tables found in chapter seven of the Dungeon Master’s Guide togenerate loot for your encounters or get an idea of how much loot each encounter should feature.Treasure tables are separated into two kinds: individual treasure and treasure hoards.
Use the individual treasure table when determining treasure for a singular creature or a small group of creatures.Match the monster’s challenge rating with the proper individual treasure table and roll a d100 to generate how much treasure the creature was carrying. Alternatively, you can skip the rolling and simply choose how much treasure you believe the creature might be carrying from among the options available on the table.
Some monsters have no interest in treasure. While having your players encounter some monsters who carry no loot can be an interesting change of pace, remember you’re able to still use treasure tables to generate loot left behind by the monster’s previous victims.
There are too many treasure tables in chapter 7 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide to list them all here. However, here is what the first individual treasure table looks like to give you a better idea of how they work.
d100
01-30
5d6 (17)
31-60
4d6 (14)
61-70
3d6 (10)
71-95
96-00
N/A
1d6 (3)
you’re able to convert electrum or platinum piece rewards to gold pieces before putting them into the game if you aren’t using these currencies or wish to avoid troubling your players with the conversions.
Use the treasure hoard table any time your party accomplishes an important goal or defeats a powerful opponent.Examples of when to reward your party with a treasure hoard include completing a lengthy quest for a wealthy individual,defeating a dragon, or raiding a goblin tribe’s home.
Use the challenge rating of the monster that leads the groupto determine which treasure hoard table to use. Like the individual treasure table, you can either roll on the treasure hoard table or choose the amount of loot you believe the group would have amassed from the options available.
Using the platinum piece rewards column in these treasure tables will result in your party amassing an absurd amount of gold. If you wish to make gold more difficult to come by, ignore the platinum piece rewards and eliminate them from the loot you distribute.
How Much Gold Should Your Party Receive?
If you use the treasure tables talked about here andeliminate the platinum pieces column,you and your players will likely be content with the amount of gold they receive. That being said, a more concrete answer can be provided by looking at the section for awarding magic items in the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and comparing it to the cost of magic items of each rarity.
Contextualizing gold by using magic items is useful as magic items are the objects the party will most likely end up purchasing with their gold.
The table found in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything separates magic items into two categories:major magic items and minor magic items.Minor magic items refer to the magic items found onmagic item tables A through Ewhile major magic items refer to the items found onmagic item tables F through I.
Below is a table presenting how many items of each category a party should receive at different tiers of play:
1 - 4
9
2
11
5 - 10
28
6
34
11 - 16
24
30
17 - 20
19
25
80
20
100
It’s also important to remember that magic item rarity matters for tiers of play as well.Magic items are priced by their rarity.Below is a table examining the price ranges for each rarity.
100 - 500gp
501 - 5000gp
5,001 - 50,000gp
Legendary
50,001+gp
Consumable magic items, like potions and scrolls, are typically worth half the value of lasting magic items.
Now that we understand how many magic items a party should receive at certain levels as well as their worth, we can determine how much gold a party ought to receive so that they can purchase this amount of magic items. For the most part, minor magic items are consumable magic items and their value is reduced by half; for example, a party that wants to purchasenine minor magic items from levels 1-4 will need to accumulate a total of 2,250gp assuming each minor magic item comes at 250gp.
The same party willneed around another 1,000gp to purchase two major magic items.In other words, an adventuring party should accumulatearound 3,000gp by the time they reach the 5th level.
Magic items should have costs that vary more than 250gp for a consumable item and 500gp for a permanent item. The costs have been simplified above to make the math easier and err on the side of your party having more wealth.
Below is a table examining the amount of wealth a player character should accumulate by the end of each tier of play. These values were calculated using the same method as explained above.
5
1,000gp
750gp
600gp
500gp
3,000gp
28,000gp
21,000gp
16,800gp
14,000gp
84,000gp
17
170,000gp
127,500gp
102,000gp
85,000gp
510,000gp
20+
1,000,000gp
750,000gp
600,000gp
500,000gp
3,000,000gp
By the time your party reaches the highest two tiers of play, the amount of gold they have amassed will be truly absurd. Unfortunately,this amount of wealth is difficult to compare against the wealth of civilizations and kingdomsas it will likely result in your adventuring party being more wealthy than entire countries if not entire worlds.
Whether this is the fault of the designers for not designing a better currency system or an intended measure of truly how powerful a high-level adventuring party should be is up to you. However, one thing is for sure.A party that wants access to the regular amount of magic items available at their level will need this much gold to purchase them.
Variant magic items and gold distribution amounts for low-magic and high-magic campaigns can be found on page 38 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
The currency of Dungeons & Dragons is an imperfect system, butit will serve your needs just fine as long as your players are more interested in adventure than geopolitics.Reward your players properly, and you’ll likely see no end to the adventures they undertake beneath your heavy dungeon master helm.
