what to spend treasure points on dnd 5e

Dungeons & Dragons started as a game about treasure hunting. The rules awarded equally much of 80% of full experience points for finding gold, then no one missed the point. Co-creator Gary Gygax knew a thirst for gilded resonated with players. "If you, the existent you, were an adventurer, what would motivate you more than the lure of riches?" (See The Fun and Realism of Unrealistically Application Experience Points for Gold.)

D&D no longer awards experience points for gold, simply for all the game's storytelling and heroics, treasure hunting remains the game's cadre motivation.

Treasure drives characters to take risks. Safe characters leave the sarcophagus lone and the chest unopened. Safe choices brand D&D boring. A treasure hunter risks undead and traps for a take a chance at riches, which makes the game fun. But players who have risks for no chance of aureate experience similar chumps, and feeling similar a chump isn't fun.

In D&D, parties of characters join together in a group venture. Players can come upwardly with endless characters, just for the game to work, they must invent characters able to cooperate to achieve a shared goal. That's the magic of treasure hunting. Whether characters aim to feed the orphans or to swim in coins similar Scrooge McDuck, they tin all quest for gold. (See A Part-Playing Game Player's Obligation.)

Treasure hunting resonates. When our characters strike it rich, we all feel a vicarious thrill.

In a global campaign similar the D&D Adventurers League, treasure becomes a vital, universal aim. In a home game, the players tin can agree to create characters who only dream of defending the copse. Only in a game where players join strangers in an undertaking set past any chance the dungeon master prepared, treasure hunting gives everyone a goal we can share.

For the D&D Adventurers League'due south eighth season, the entrada's new rules cease characters from keeping the gold and magic they find in an adventure. Instead, for each hr of play, characters proceeds a treasure point spendable on magic items. When characters level, they get an allowance of gilt. (Run across My Dungeons & Dragons Adventurers League Quick Reference Canvas for a meaty introduction to the new rules.) When I counted four means the new rules reshape the campaign, I felt optimistic well-nigh the changes. I knew the bar on keeping treasure defied D&D's original nature, but maybe the game had outgrown base motivations. Players could still roleplay a hunger for aureate. At present, after seeing the rules for six months of play, I'm ready to rate the revised campaign.

The new rules reached their goals of opening adventures to more styles of play and reducing the exploits players used to claim the best magic items. (Meet The Adventurers League Campaign Rules Offered a Game. How Gamers Played to Win..) However, one change in particular hurt the league.

Preventing characters from keeping the gilt they find damages D&D'southward foundation.

Ironically, the new rules arrived with 2 hardcover adventures that showcase D&D'southward classic aim of treasure hunting. In Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, the characters race to claim a hoard of 500,000 gp—except league characters tin can't proceed whatsoever of it. In Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, characters risk the perils of a massive dungeon for riches, which league characters can't keep. The safe play sees characters working to monetize Trollskull Manor. Why brave dungeons when you tin can attain franchise agreements? "Our grouping isn't and so much an adventuring party as an adventuring sub-committee."

Because my players left habitation to play D&D, their characters ventured into Undermountain. Simply they kept asking why, and a little enthusiasm died. Players who take risks for no run a risk of gold feel like chumps, and feeling similar a chump isn't fun.

Season eight's gilt allowances brought ane positive change: Characters proceeds far less gold than they used to. For the league'southward first seven seasons, players gained tons of aureate, just found nowhere to spend information technology—except on healing potions. Before season 8, characters had access to effectively unlimited healing potions. (Come across D&D'southward Designers Tin't Determine Whether Characters Must Rest for Hitting Points and Healing, only Yous Can Cull.) Too earlier season 8, the cost of magic such as Heroes Feast and Simulacrum hardly dented the wealth of characters able to cast the spells. If a tier iii political party brought a cleric, they routinely ignored fright and poison and laughed at yuan-ti and light-green dragons. If they brought a level-13 wizard, they gained a spare and the pair won D&D for everyone. Before, gold served every bit a motivation that players roleplayed. Now, gilded becomes a motivation they value for spells, healing, and armor. The smaller gilded supply forces players into spending choices, and choices brand games fun.

A simple fix could solve the trouble. Make gold a reward that characters keep, and then write adventures that award less gold. The league could proceeds the benefits of limited wealth, without ripping the treasure hunting from the eye of D&D.

Of course, such a modify leaves years of league and hardcover adventures that honor mode too much gold.

Prolific league DM Tom Christy created a set of Adventurers League Recommendations that offers a solution: Limit the gold awards to a ready amount per advancement checkpoint earned. Alternately, the league'south content itemize could list updated treasure amounts for each hoard awarded in an adventure. The league administrators could avert this chore by giving volunteers a budget based on each risk's expected play fourth dimension, and letting them crisis the numbers. The hardcovers lack play times, simply the league boasts many members who recorded the times they spend playing each affiliate in character logs. Surely someone could collect the data.

As much as players seem to dislike the level-based gold allowances, they favor using treasure checkpoints to buy unlocked magic items. To players, finding and unlocking a useful magic particular feels rewarding, peculiarly at present that another player tin't snatch the particular away for "merchandise bait." Plus, the arrangement frees adventure designers from having to stock most scenarios with banal items similar +1 weapons only and so every grapheme can find usable items.

Still, the treasure-point system would do good from a couple of tweaks:

• Unlock superior items in adventures, while limiting the evergreen and seasonal unlock items to broadly-useful but less extraordinary items. At Wintertime Fantasy, players joked nigh all the adventures that unlocked drift globes and rings of warmth—groovy for cozy nights scribing franchise agreements. Some epic adventures failed to unlock anything at all. Call back when epics promised special rewards? Meanwhile, fifty-fifty for level-appropriate characters who play rubber, the season unlocks some of the game's most powerful items. Who cares what an adventure brings when anyone can claim a cloak of invisibility or staff of the magi?

• When characters unlock magic items during the course of an risk, allow them borrow treasure points to merits the item immediately. No one enjoys waiting to play with new toys. The need to banking concern treasure points peculiarly frustrates new and lapsed players returning to D&D. New players discover a toy they can't use because of legalese that makes no sense in the game world. Returning players just think D&D no longer resembles the game they used to honey. (Credit Tom Christy's proposals for this idea too.)

For most 50 years, the vicarious joy of finding treasure brought players to D&D. To thrive, the Adventurers League must recapture some of that thrill.

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