How much gold should players have?

Here is another post in which I ramble and finally decide on something - always make sure your players are dreaming big and having fun. - Stephen

There comes a time when your players do something impressive, like bring down a dragon or drop-kick an ambassador into a bottomless pit, and you start telling them all the treasure they are getting. The fighter, excitedly bouncing around in their seat, wondering if they'll finally have enough money to afford that sweet plate armor, while the wizard angrily yells at the rogue that they better not steal a single piece of that gold coin as the wizard needs to copy five more spells into their spellbook!

Well, how much gold are you supposed to be handing out to these bastards who keep claiming they are your friend but steal all the pizza while you are drawing the map.

I'll be using two books to discuss all this, and that way you can check my math - Player's Handbook (2014) and the Dungeon Master's Guide (2014).

On page 133 of the DMG, we are given a small peek behind the curtain about how often you are supposed to roll on the magic item charts. For those of you who don't have it, here it goes:

7 rolls on Challenge 0-4 table
18 rolls on Challenge 5-10 table
12 rolls on Challenge 11-16 table
8 rolls on Challenge 17+ table

Let's go look at what those rolls mean for a group. We will ignore magic items and focus solely on gold and gems/art accumulated for reasons I'll talk about later. For gems & art, I will be taking their average amount across every roll and providing an average amount of money the party would make if they sold it at full price.

TREASURE HOARD: CHALLENGE 0-4
Average roll:
2,100 Copper Pieces
1,050 Silver Pieces
70 Gold Pieces
1,340 Gold Pieces [Art/Gems]
---
1,536 Gold Pieces
x7 rolls on the Treasure Hoard
---
10,752 Gold Pieces
÷ party of 4 characters
---
2,688 Gold Pieces per character after 7 rolls 

Whew, that's a lot of gold just starting out. You can see my work above, and so you understand how I am getting my numbers. I am going to go ahead and do the other three treasure hoards without as much detail. 

TREASURE HOARD: CHALLENGE 5-10
Average Roll:
700 Copper Pieces, 7,000 Silver Pieces, 2,100 Gold Pieces, 105 Platinum Pieces, 675 GP Gems/Art
---
13 rolls provide: 81,576 Gold Pieces
20,394 Gold Pieces per character

TREASURE HOARD: CHALLENGE 11-16
Average Roll:
14,000 Gold Pieces, 1,750 Platinum Pieces, 4,687 GP Gems/Art
---
12 rolls provide: 245,250 Gold Pieces
61,312 Gold Pieces per character

TREASURE HOARD: CHALLENGE 17+
Average Roll:
42,000 Gold Pieces, 28,000 Platinum Pieces, 21,000 GP Gems/Art
---
8 rolls provide: 343,000 Gold Pieces
85,750 Gold Pieces per character

A character retiring at level 20, having the average amount of gold and artwork rolled for them, should retire with a total of 170,144 gold pieces. To put that into perspective, if a character wanted to retire with all their ill-gotten goods and live a Comfortable lifestyle of 2 gp per day (page 157 of the PHB) they could live for 85,072 days or 232.91 years off of their hoard.

A Wealthy lifestyle would be 4 GP per day - 42,536 days or 116.45 years
An Aristocratic lifestyle would be 10 GP per day (at least) - 17,014.4 days or 46.58 years

So what exactly can we do with this knowledge that our players are expected to get a lot of money even by level 4? Well, we can look at things that are available for buying in the PHB and the DMG and see how that affects our mechanics.

There are only two class features (OK, technically three) that require any type of gold value to actually function. Assassin rogues need 25 gp every time they want to use their Infiltration Expertise subclass feature where they can make an unfailing fake identity. Next are the Wizards who need to spend 25 gp per spell level for a spell they wish to copy into their spellbook. [And yes, the Warlock also must pay 25 gp if they take the Book of Ancient Secrets Eldritch Invocation.]

So, for a rogue, they probably make a handful of identities, but probably not enough identities to go through 170,000 gp. But what about Wizards, how much are they spending? Well, a Wizard gets 6 spells when they begin play and then 2 spells at every level up. For the sake of brevity, I'll just assume they always grab 2 new spells of their highest level they can cast.

By level 20, the Wizard will learn 44 spells.  [8 1st-level, 4 2nd-level, 4 3rd-level, 4 4th-level,4, 5th-level, 4 6th-level, 4 7th-level, 4 8th-level, 8 9th-level]

The total available spells in the PHB for a wizard is as follows, value in brackets is running total and when they get access to that spell level:
1st- 30 spells - 8 = 22 spells to copy times 50 gp = 1,100 gp [1,100 gp, 1st level]
2nd- 34 spells - 4 = 30 spells to copy times 100 gp = 3,000 gp  [4,100 gp, 3rd level]
3rd- 29 spells - 4 = 25 spells to copy times 150 gp = 3,750 gp [7,850 gp, 5th level]
4th- 23 spells - 4 = 19 spells to copy times 200 gp = 3,800 gp  [11,650 gp, 7th level]
5th- 23 spells - 4 = 19 spells to copy times 250 gp = 4,750 gp  [16,400 gp, 9th level]
6th- 20 spells - 4 = 16 spells to copy times 300 gp = 4,800 gp  [21,200 gp, 11th level]
7th- 15 spells - 4 = 11 spells to copy times 350 gp = 3,850 gp  [25,050 gp, 13th level]
8th- 13 spells - 4 = 9 spells to copy times 400 gp = 3,600 gp  [28,650 gp, 15th level]
9th- 12 spells - 8 = 4 spells to copy times 450 gp = 1,800 gp  [30,450 gp, 17th level] 

Total gold spent is 30,450 gp, meaning that they have 139,694 gp leftover from their hoard. If we go back and look at how much money a wizard will have after certain Treasure Hoards, we can easily see that by the end of 4th level, they should have 2,688 gold pieces which is enough to cover the cost of transcribing every 1st- and about half of every 2nd-level spell. By the time they hit level 10, they'll have enough to transcribe every spell they can cast, and by the time they hit level 16, they'll have way about three times as much money as they need to scribe all their spells.

[A major flaw in this is not talking about the price of scrolls, this is assuming you find a spellbook or scrolls for every spell.]

Now, this isn't me saying that a wizard should have access to every spell, but they should be given something to spend their gold on, just like fighters and barbarians should be given something to spend their gold on. 

Wizards of the Coast assumes that this gold is being spent, or they wouldn't leave your players with 170K+ gold pieces. So, what else can your players do with this gold?

Let's talk about equipment, now players all start with their starting equipment and while that equipment is good and useful, players will probably upgrade their equipment once or twice in total. Dex fighters/rangers will get a rapier or longbow/heavy crossbow; fighters, paladins and clerics will get the best armor they can, and maybe a big stick to hit people with. 

Based on the information provided in the DMG, by level 4 a character should have all the equipment they need. Why do I say that? Because by the end of 4th level, a character will have an average of 2,688 gold pieces to spend and the most expensive item equipment-wise is the Plate for 1,500 gp followed closely by a Spyglass for 1,000 gp. If a player wanted a plate and a spyglass, they could afford it easily. 

From this, it is assumed that anyone that can have plate should have plate by the time they are getting into 5th level because that is what the game is designed around as there is little to nothing else for players to spend their gold on. Once your players are getting into tier 2, they will have their preferred equipment and gold will start to become meaningless for many of the players because it doesn't actually matter how much gold they have. 

Well, that's disappointing you might be saying. They need to know the value of a gold piece! Even if they are 20th level they should know that that copper piece they turn their nose up is important! 

Well, fear not. There are ways to use your player's money beyond relying on the system to give a reason for gold. I'll go over a few ways to help you get an idea about money. 

If you are in a campaign world where you want to sell magic items, this provides a pretty good way of deciding how much to charge by simply you looking at the average amount of gold a character will have and then determining a price for it. Let's take a +1 magical weapon for example. If you want to price out a sword of magicalness, you need a benchmark first. At 6th level, a monk gets magical fists which means that by 6th level, characters should have a way of overcoming magical resistances meaning that you look at the total amount of money a 6th level character would have. By my count, they should have about 8,963 gold pieces plus or minus a few copper pieces. 

If you take out 1,500 for plate and another 500 in miscellany for taverns, inns, that one time they threw a gold coin on to the street and made the urchins fight over it, and everything else that I can't think of (100 gp per level) then they would have about 6,963 gp leftover to be spent on a magical weapon. 

Your price for that magical weapon would probably be used to bankrupt them as much as possible so they felt like accumulating all that wealth was important and necessary instead of them just like... that's it? that's all it costs? I could've bought that at level 3!

Or maybe, you have no interest in magic items being for sale, instead, you could point the characters over to a nice castle or ship and trick them into buying it. Now, those things take a long time to be built, so maybe it just needs a bit of love and work. The most expensive thing I could find in the PHB is on page 157 and is a Galley for 30,000 gp, which the party could buy, if they all go in on it, by about level 7. An individual could buy a galley if they saved all their money by the time they are getting into level 12. 

But let's think larger, the most expensive thing I could find in the DMG is on page 128 and is a Palace or large castle for 500,000 gp. An individual could not afford such a massive prize, but if the whole party gets in on it, they could afford it by level 18 if that was their focus. They'd then have about 9,000 gold leftover from the purchase to buy the most expensive furniture possible. All other buildings cap at about 50,000 gp, meaning a character could easily afford 2 or 3 of those buildings while still having plenty of leftover gold to retire on. 

What does this all mean for your table? How are you supposed to take the provided information and use it to improve or change up your games? Well, I think the first thing we can take away from this is to feel free to give a few scrolls to your wizard to transcribe and don't freak out if your fighter wants to get plate armor at level 4. The system is designed for that to happen. 

After that, encourage your players to dream big. They don't need to buy a palace but give them something they can start throwing their money at. A bar, a tavern, a ship, or maybe a few magic items. If players are getting this much gold, per the rules and suggestions provided to DMs, then they need to spend it on something or else it just feels pretty pointless to have 170K+ and not have anything to do with it.