How to make D&D loot matter

I kind of feel like magic items should be kind of like a secoundary class. Like you pick where your magic items come from (you build them yourself, making the items you own dependant on you to work; or made a pact with an entity who became a sword that becomes more and more powerful as the PC do, or is part of an organisation that let you borrow their own stash as you earn glory and influence). That class level up as you gain treasure. And in-lore they can't really be bought and sold most of the time or wouldn't work in other people's hand. It avoid PCs carrying bling expensive enough to buy a castle while also having no issue with them having very little gold on them.

first section on gold unironically is great advice for billionaires

I am an accountant professionally. I have to constantly remember that no one else in my game is. No one but me loves the profit-and-loss statements I made for the party.

😊

You look like a totally different human in your thumbnail. I had to do a double take, I thought it was a different person entirely for a second.

One fun option for loot:

Give them an art piece with a signature. On its own its not worth much, but if they can pass a history check or find a reputable appraiser they can find that its actually made by a famous artist increasing the value of the item by a hefty amount.

One of the expensive services that my DND homebrew is going to offer is ressurections. They can pay a pretty hefty price for one cast of true ressurection.

My PCs once were given a boat by some kids who thought they wanted to be pirates but changed their mind. They then sold the boat when they no longer needed it for 60k gold (it was a nice boat). This then allowed them to use teleportation circles which opened them to the full of Fearun and my story to so many new places. I def didn't preplan to have them make this much money but it was nice to be able to essential give them fast travel with the caveat they could only do it so many times (2500gp for each teleport at my table)

Pact initiate sorc.

Twin spell hex vs save score two targets
Burning ray or burning hands.

Loot was a lot more fun back when you could have more than 3 magic items at once.

I had a campaign where our DM basically never handed out gold. We constantly had to ask people we helped for resources and because the world was at war with demons, everyone was hard up for cash. It actually made money matter. Sure 200 platinum is a lot, but that’s also only like plate mail and several healing potions. And when that’s all the money you get for a whole arc, it can get tight.

My party once decided to rent a boat to smuggle some dragon wyrmlings. Since they are now at 3rd lvl, they are in a big debt xD

I get the professor tree joke. For those who want to know, all pokemon professors are named after trees.

I like the carousing rules in Shadowdark RPG, it allows you to burn through gold and gain xp.

In my past one shot all three of us players got addicted to drugs so we spent all out gold on it 💀

Quaal's tree feather token was used in a fun way in my game too when the rogue dimension doomed through a fortress wall and off a cliff and used the tree to catch their fall

My sister and I are trying to make our own dnd home brew world rn and I'm looking for things to spike things up, We use gold/currency for travels, Property,Food and lodgings

If you have extra coin, donate to your magi. Their costs are forever out of their reach.

My first ever game was a one-shot, and right before the final boss I picked up a Magic Missile wand with 7 charges. Now, we were level 3. I didn't really understand spellslots and all that malarkey, but one friend explained it as such, and google seemed to agree, so I killed the final boss in one shot. Pretty anticlimactic. This wand was supposedly preset loot too lol

The spider climb slippers made me start thinking of a variation of winged boots just while watching this video. Let's call them "Oobloots." Oobleck is that cornstarch/water "Non-Newtonian Fluid" that you can run across. These boots let you run across liquids as long as you keep moving your feet (like a mini version of that monk feature). But also once per long rest, you can gain a fly speed equal to half your walking speed for a number of minutes equal to your con modifier. Half your walking speed and using your con modifier just to emphasize how difficult it is to try and run through the air. It would be slower and more taxing on your stamina. Thanks for the creative spark!

The plushie is cute and it reminds me of pokemon. I'm new to dnd haven't played yet. Adding a cute pet is a good idea for in game. We're can I get that plushie?

“A name change is cheaper than college.” 😂 If I had been drinking something right now I’d have had to spit out my drink. That line is GOLD! And in a video about loot…Well played Ginny Di. Well played.

These are great ideas! Thank you so much!

I trust you alot less because of your in video ads. TY for what you do; it’s valuable. 🤘

so, this makes me really want to play a character who's only goal is to earn enough gold to gentrify an entire town in a game :P

I personally love building webs of character relationships, favors, promises, etc. and would definitely say that it could be a great way to keep your party invested, but typically this only works for groups that enjoy roleplaying and don't resolve every problem with: "I don't care how big the room is, I CAST FIREBALL!"

also a great way of making personalized items/magic items for characters is the simple formula of (mundane thing + magic spell effect). an example of this would be (a copper ring + guiding bolt), then you just slap on a charge system or whatever you want and boom, you have a quick way to create magic items that you can use or build upon.

3 tips i use for loot
1) Unless gold spending races hang out there "treasure" is rare. You can find various ore, gems, potion and food ingredients across the world and those are worth something. Theyre worth more if you attempt to craft them but a treasure chest or gold coins are not carried by most monsters because they have no interest in spending it. (apart form the odd hoardy monster)
2) Disposable items are king. Potions galore and single use scrolls are again worth money, and are far more common than magic items. They also keep your martials relevant having the barbarian drink a wildshape or heat resist potion is great and so is having the enemies do similar stuff.
3) Encumbrance. Use some form of encumbrance, I dont worry too much about weight but an amount of items equal to their strength score plus up to 8 equipped which includes the back pack. Arrows count as 1 item so does 1k gold (but they can get it converted into diamonds). If you use actual weight it takes too much maths, just decide how much each item should weigh in terms of item slots and your good.
Bonus tip: If your players have too much money and no urge to spend it, rob them, or rob the bank theyre using, and they get to go on a mission to retrieve it.

Quick tip. When I roll for a dungeon treasure in Dungeon Master's Guide tables, in table for levels 0-4, I take only 10% of treasure if the dungeon/quest is lvl 1, 25% if lvl 2, 60% for lvl 3 and 100% for lvl 4. Same for other tables, because it makes no sense to do a lvl 2 dungeon and get 1500 gold and a +2 armor fighting a few monsters...

The longer the editions go on, the more I understand why 1st edition emphasized gold for XP.

I have a strategy I’m going to implement soon (I hope it works) Im making a bag full of paper slips that acts as randomized loot, a player could get anything from a dead rat to a useful weapon or potion, I’ll have 3 bags. Common/uncommon, Rare/very rare, and magic item.

Common/ uncommon has a variety of tools, weapons and Munda in items as well as moderate amounts of gold and the occasional consumable or low level magic item. As an object is taken from the bag it doesn’t go back in until the dungeon is cleared. This ensures that no player is stuck getting the same dead rat over and over and gives the affect that as you weed through the bag you are more and more likely to get something good.

Rare/ very rare contains god amounts of coin and consumables, as well as pricy tools and weapons. With a regular amount of magic items sprinkled in. This is good for end of dungeon chests.

Magic item bag contains only moderate to high level magic items. The players pick from the bag when you are intending to give them a magic item and only a magic item.


I hope it works!

This is one of my favorite aspects of the Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign -- gold is meaningless in the feywild, and the fun little trinkets the party finds and valuable keepsakes they hold are a valuable form of trade-based currency. And if you don't have the "funds" to buy something... you could always pay with a fey bargain.

I love the line “a name change is way cheaper than college”

Our party owns a ship, sooo we are always short of funds. Plus when we are in a friendly port, we tend to spend like drunken sailors.

You could alter the exchange rate, like Game of Thrones where 1 gold piece is worth 11,760 copper pieces. That one coin Tyrion gives Bronn for his room could feed him for a year. Then make gold scarce in hoards, so that when your PCs find some, it's important.

One way I made loot have important. They have 4 mini realms they have to open, and each one has a unique ritual that has to be performed. Each on needs an item that properly represents the realm so I have a bunch of silly common magical loot that doesn’t seem like it would matter but it can be used in the ritual

Ultimate Kingdoms from Legendary Games introduces a lot of amazing tools for many of the options discussed here. I highly recommend it.

Yeah but did you know that... 3.5 DID IT BETTER!!! 😅😅

I remember when we were fighting a dragon and one of the characters had an immovable rod. The dragon actually swallowed him whole. His response.. activated the immovable rod and effectively grounded the dragon. Poor dragon was Not Happy when it Struggled to finally get airborne, only to have the rod rip through its stomach. And the player ends up hanging in the air from the rod

So basically DnD is merging with Pokémon..? 😅

How boring would it be to play as an npc? And what if players did both?

In one game we got 2000 Gold from one quest because one of us was a Thief and wanted to steal the giant golden Bell.

Pooh heeel yeah!! You just saved me as a DM. Our game just started to get boring and you just come up with some dnd Pokemons? That's what I want! Thank you very much.

My dm gave us a "magic dagger" in our one shot because because our cleric accidentally stole it and then handed it to me and i just kept it. We didnt know it was a plus one until i did an arcana check on it and the irony of my druid having 2 light melee daggers is I'm not even combat based and will opt for persuasion and intimidation in most situations.

Yes! I love having a black market in campaigns. It's all very well kleping loot from places but then just simply walking into a shop to offload those goods is just too easy - making ties with shady dealers is so much more fun and you never know, they might have a lucrative quest for you down the road once you have earned a reputation with them.

Said side quest/side hustle could even be made into a separate one-shot or something.

In one game I played in our DM used a Reputation system. We arrived in town with zero Reputation. Nobody knew us, which was both good and bad. Our Bard made some quick coin performing around town and then promptly spent it on the poor. This got him noticed by the local clergy who approached him to help them retrieve a missing artifact. Boom...our first job. We got the thing back and soon the clergy was raving about us. +5 Reputation with the clergy and +3 with everyone else.

I love players who complain about how there is nothing to do with the money they get in game and how 3.5 does it better. That isn't a flaw. That is a design choice. They didn't want players to feel like they had to have an arsenal of magic items to play the game. Why did Wizards make that choice? BECAUSE 3.5 PLAYERS COMPLAINED ABOUT NEEDING GOLD AND MAGIC ITEMS TO REMAIN RELEVANT AT HIGHER LEVELS!

Where Wizards fell down was helping players figure out how to add items in if you want them. Something you didn't mention (and I didn't think of until you made this video) is that if you want to have players use gold to buy magic items like they did in previous editions, you need to give the NPCs magic items. That's how NPCs remained relevant at higher levels in 3.5. The DMG even had tables that told you how much money you should spend on their equipment and the types of equipment to give different classes. You add that in and it fixes 'the problem,' because players now have to spend their gold on magic items to keep up with the bad guys.

Honestly, though, I don't give out gold. I just give the art and gems listed on the magic item tables. It gives players just enough that they can buy the occasional magic item, but not so much that they're basically walking banks.

I cannot stress this enough

Cape of Billowing

I miss the Magic Item Compendium from 3.5 and their random loot tables.

1e is the best ways and means.

An Ogre with 100gp of 'loot' could be a fur worth 75gp and a decent scabbard and maybe a couple of shinies.

Forcing characters to have to pay for training as they level up... yes! That's a great way of making them use it.

Buying potions, spell and item research, sages, and paying for Hirelings.

1e, in my humble opinion, manages the PC wealth better. 2nd and 3rd end up more like running rivers of gold.

Anyway... yes, yes, yes... I prefer 1e, bring on the hate (after 42+years, I'm used to it).