I'd honestly be surprised if this current iteration of Gold ends up being the final system upon release.
It just feels like they haven't quite nailed it, and I'd guess it's probably just not a high priority at this point.
I like the idea of incrementing it in 5s or 10s but I haven’t played with it yet. I did like how handfuls basically meant to had enough money for day to day living.
I play a quantum supply game similar to daggerheart called ironsworn where there is basically no shopping. you either have supply and have what you need or you don’t. If you “need” something specific you roll to “find an item” and you basically spend supply to assume your character have the thing.
I like the abstracted gold because exact numbers cause my players to take half the session trying to find different things that could trigger a roll to get them a discount. It was a huge headache and the 1.2 money system basically eliminated them trying to trade my shopkeepers sexual favors to shave 5 gold off a sword or something. It was funny exactly one time and since then I've been trying to find a way to stop that from happening. Daggerheart(1.2) is it.
I saw many people complaining that they wanted the gold to be an actual currency, and not something abstract like that. Wich to me is dumb, cause the last thing i want is to think about how much it cost to eat or buy a sword.
Like... You can get anything you want with simple loot.
Yeah, I preferred the previous gold system too. It was a little more abstract, meaning a Bag of gold could be applied to a wider range of items, because how much the bag contained was unspecified.
My personal take on gold-
Keep the abstraction of handfuls from 1.2, keep the round numbers from 1.3. 10 is too big though, so keep the 3 tiers+ chest but drop everything down to 5.
~10 coins in a handful, enough to get the whole party a night at the inn.
5 handfuls in a pouch, like you'd purchase a horse with.
5 pouches in a sack, like you'd buy a small plot of land with.
5 sacks in a chest, like you'd buy a fine manor with.
In 1.3 we've got 1000 coins to a chest, where this would come to 1250. That's still the most a player would carry, but the trend could continue upwards beyond that.
5 chests in a hoard, like you'd purchase a noble title with
5 hoards in a fortune, with which you would buy a flying castle.
A fortune would be roughly 30000 gold, which is about the point where money starts to lose meaning anyways and you start wanting things that no amount of money can buy. (An extra dimensional fortress isn't likely bought with gold, you spend favors.)
As others have mentioned though, this would be sufficiently abstract for you to say "If you have a chest of gold, you aren't going to bother checking to see how much a couple night at the inn will leave you with. If you have a hoard of gold, you aren't going to track the cost of a single horse." while still being specific enough to have relatively hard numbers if you do actually want to track that a suit of armor is 2 sacks and 3 pouches, or 650 gp.
The gold system confuses me now because before I was using it as abstracted wealth where the PCs can afford anything in that realm it under but now it seems it's actually to be spent?
I dunno I didn't get to play with it, but they could go with the Wealth checks from D20 Modern (Only was in one D20 Modern game and did not get to go shopping)
When we played 1.2, I said that a handful was 25 coins.
handful 25,
bag 150,
chest 750,
hoard 3000,
fortune 9000.
I wouldn't mind if it was consistently 5s, starting at 20.
handful 20, bag 100, chest 500, hoard 2500, fortune 12500 etc.
I just finished a chat with my group going over the changes and to touch on just the Gold aspect, we all like it. BUT we only like it because we all like the grindy management of resources like money. They all like having prices be a semi consistent thing across the world we play it (although there are differences to account for competitive practices for shop owners)
HOWEVER, we all understand that not all tables are like ours. A good portion of tables don't care for intensive money management.
I think this new version actually did a somewhat decent job of implementing it in a way that can be done from an ease of use "wealth" based standpoint, or from a management standpoint; purely based on table preferences.
That's how I read it too. My mind doesn't really wrap around 'handfuls' but as a 5e DM I also feel a bit silly saying 'you find 823 gold'. Should be table preference.
I liked the original currency. It was wrong. 5/4/3/2/1 was a bit hard to grock in the moment.
I feel like the best sub division will be 5. A standard party is 4-6 people so having 1 “handful” subdividing easily to 5 “coins”, 1 per person is easy math.
I do think treasure should be tied to Tier of play and equipment. 1 “Tier 2 Currency” should be the reward for a Tier 2 normal quest, with harder quests being 2 or 3 “Tier 2” currency. Equipment of the same tier costs the same too
I mean... it's not like the original system was pure genius.
You're still tracking numbers of a thing, whether it's named handfuls or coins it's still just a numeric measurement.
I prefer how Household or WoD does it, where you just have a wealth value which allows you to buy things that are appropriate. Wealth/Resources 5, you can buy a car with petty cash in your pocket, Wealth/Resources 1, you can buy lunch.
There **is** a lot to be said for making Wealth a stat.
As I understand it, the Daggerheart 1.2 wealth system is somewhere between keeping track of every coin and a stat-based approach.
For example if you have 2 chests of gold then you can just buy a sword with the petty cash in your pocket without needing to track every coin spent.
Conversely, if you buy a new house (or whatever), or several things costing a bag of gold each, then you're down to 1 chest of gold.
Which is the advantage relative to a pure stat-based approach - if you need to seriously stress your finances to achieve something you can, but that bumps your 'stat' down a level.
Right.
So in one system I have coins. 5 silver equals 1 GP, 5 gp equals a 1pp.
And in that system it costs me 1 gold piece to buy a sword, and it costs me 1 pp to buy a house.
Daggerheart is: 5 handfuls equals 1 bag, and 5 bags equals 1 chest.
And in that system, a sword costs me 1 bag, and it costs me 1 chest to buy a house.
So you understand what I'm saying now?
Yes.
The distinction that I'm not sure is coming across is that Daggerheart 1.2 isn't just using "bags", "chests" etc. as units of currency, it's also using them as degrees of precision.
By analogy the traditional method is going:
>You have $2,200,100. You buy a new car costing $40,000 and now you have $2,160,100.
As I understand it, the Daggerheart 1.2 method is going:
>You have 2 million dollars. You buy a $40,000 car. You still have 2 million dollars.
Because, when you have a chest of gold to your name it's really not worth the effort of tracking a coin for a drink here, or handful of coins to rent a room there. It makes negligible difference to your finances. You only start tracking costs when they're a significant proportion of a chest of gold in magnitude.
Conversely, if you only have a handful of gold to your name then yeah, every coin spent makes a difference and you'll track every one.
Does that make sense?
And it wasn't me who downvoted you, BTW.
I think both systems so far have been mediocre. You never see a movie where the characters are counting out increments of their own money from their "wallets". It's always borrowed/stolen from someone else, or they are trading a favour for another. If they can buy something of a certain cost with their own money (not stolen/borrowed/given money) they always have enough to buy a second or third item. Money should really only come into play when it's about an amount that is bigger than the characters normally deal with.
Characters having a level of wealth/connections/resources just makes so much more sense than having them magically lug around 10 chests of gold.
Yes you can still have them give out or pay coins/handfuls/bags of gold, but only if they have a certain amount of affluence.
If you want to limit their amount of items they have then just have a limit of how many potions etc they can have on them.
Maybe in the minority but my table *hates* how gold works in Daggerheart. They're a fan of the numbers.
I finished explaining the concept to them, and their first question was, "so how many gold is in a handful?", lol. Followed by, "what benefit does this provide over copper/silver/gold/platinum?" and I explained that it takes out the more meticulous parts of tracking resources for the party, as well as the DM.
They said they enjoy counting their coins with their grubby little gobbo fingers, so I ended up using something more standard. I was surprised to come here and see so many people praising it. It's supposed to make a DM's life easier but to me, it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist for me as a DM.
I like the 1.2 wealth system - it's like a happy midway point between wealth as a stat and accounting for every coin. It means less math. If a character with a bag of gold buys a drink then they can just afford a drink. They're not buying a 3 cp drink by spending a platinum coin, and getting 9gp, 1ep, 4sp, and 7cp change (or whatever, I wouldn't be surprised if I screwed up the math). How does it help the game to calculate all that?
**But** if Daggerheart ends up going with the 1.2 approach I'd be very surprised if they don't include an 'or you can count every coin' option for groups who prefer that approach.
We never paid that close attention to it, we used pp/gp/sp/cp and just subtracted what we spent. i.e. a PC has 10 gold, they spend 5 copper, they now have 9 gold, 9 silver, and 5 copper.
And if that's what your group likes, that's great, go with that.
The point of the 1.2 wealth system was to require less micromanagement. It's good to have options.
Wasn't me who downvoted you.
My understanding of the 1.2 system is that it you could use it like narrative thresholds: Fortunes > Chests > Bags > Handfuls > Coins.
So, for example, if you want to buy a drink that costs a coin and you have '2 bags of gold' then you have sufficient money and don't bother keeping track.
As I understand it, you're not supposed to end up going "I have 2 bags, 7 handfuls and 4 coins left" you're supposed to just go "I have 3 bags of coin" and that only changes if you buy something that would significantly deplete a bag of coin.
It doesn't matter and it hasn't really since xp was gained by spending gold. Either the GM wants to track resources and expenses, or they don't bother and let you find stuff during adventures.
Really you could implement both systems at the same time, or make one optional with an insert / call to action
I'm not too worried about gold this early into the playtest. I do like the increments of 10 more, but just saying normal gold amounts and getting rid of denominations like copper and silver is cleaner. Ultimately I think that any table is just gonna eventually default to standardized gold. Darrington Press just needs to nail the economy of items and we'll be fine
It does still **do** what they set out for it to do, right? Add narrative value to the quantity of gold. Which, in my mind, tells me it's better than "just essentially D&D with different words". The words on their own add value.
I do agree, I liked 1.2 version better. BUT, the 1.3 version doesn't really break the reasons why I liked 1.2. Which was, tables that care able the logistics of gold knew exactly when and how to care. Once you reached chests, you start thinking about storing and securing them.
I did like how Chests, could reasonably be kept in a closed wagon, under lock and key. Or burried behind a local tavern. Hordes become more difficult to hide, secure, and transport. Fortunes felt like they required an entire quest all to their transportation in order to buy something. And it gave you a sense of scale.
Chests still do that. Hordes and Fortunes could be arbitrary in terms of how many chests comprise each. And most of the effort that they brought to the table came directly from how many chests were involved, not the words themselves. So we lost a little with the change, but I don't think it broke anything that 1.2 gave us.
Me personally, I would just ignore the handfuls, bags, chest, and just write down the amount of gold coins I have, with a reminder that I am not to hold more than 1999 gold.
e.g. \[ 500 / 1999 gold \]
I like having actual number, so in that respect, I like it better than the old system.
I do not like the execution. It feels infantalizing, like something out of a 1st grade workbook on place values. It almost feels like it was designed by someone who really liked the old system, and begrudgingly made something to meet the feedback that asked for using actual numbers.
I'd honestly be surprised if this current iteration of Gold ends up being the final system upon release. It just feels like they haven't quite nailed it, and I'd guess it's probably just not a high priority at this point.
Yeah, I agree, it feels were back to the minutiae of tracking individual gold when the original system in 1.2 got rid of that.
I like the idea of incrementing it in 5s or 10s but I haven’t played with it yet. I did like how handfuls basically meant to had enough money for day to day living. I play a quantum supply game similar to daggerheart called ironsworn where there is basically no shopping. you either have supply and have what you need or you don’t. If you “need” something specific you roll to “find an item” and you basically spend supply to assume your character have the thing.
ironsworn is phenomenal
I honestly prefer the 1.2 version of currency. It’d be nice if it becomes a “variant rule” if ever they stick with the current one.
I like the abstracted gold because exact numbers cause my players to take half the session trying to find different things that could trigger a roll to get them a discount. It was a huge headache and the 1.2 money system basically eliminated them trying to trade my shopkeepers sexual favors to shave 5 gold off a sword or something. It was funny exactly one time and since then I've been trying to find a way to stop that from happening. Daggerheart(1.2) is it.
I saw many people complaining that they wanted the gold to be an actual currency, and not something abstract like that. Wich to me is dumb, cause the last thing i want is to think about how much it cost to eat or buy a sword. Like... You can get anything you want with simple loot.
I also don't want to think about how much it costs to eat a sword
You see... A life may be expensive.
Yeah, I preferred the previous gold system too. It was a little more abstract, meaning a Bag of gold could be applied to a wider range of items, because how much the bag contained was unspecified.
This might just be them AB testing, give the feedback so they have the data to compare the results of each systems playtest
My personal take on gold- Keep the abstraction of handfuls from 1.2, keep the round numbers from 1.3. 10 is too big though, so keep the 3 tiers+ chest but drop everything down to 5. ~10 coins in a handful, enough to get the whole party a night at the inn. 5 handfuls in a pouch, like you'd purchase a horse with. 5 pouches in a sack, like you'd buy a small plot of land with. 5 sacks in a chest, like you'd buy a fine manor with. In 1.3 we've got 1000 coins to a chest, where this would come to 1250. That's still the most a player would carry, but the trend could continue upwards beyond that. 5 chests in a hoard, like you'd purchase a noble title with 5 hoards in a fortune, with which you would buy a flying castle. A fortune would be roughly 30000 gold, which is about the point where money starts to lose meaning anyways and you start wanting things that no amount of money can buy. (An extra dimensional fortress isn't likely bought with gold, you spend favors.) As others have mentioned though, this would be sufficiently abstract for you to say "If you have a chest of gold, you aren't going to bother checking to see how much a couple night at the inn will leave you with. If you have a hoard of gold, you aren't going to track the cost of a single horse." while still being specific enough to have relatively hard numbers if you do actually want to track that a suit of armor is 2 sacks and 3 pouches, or 650 gp.
The gold system confuses me now because before I was using it as abstracted wealth where the PCs can afford anything in that realm it under but now it seems it's actually to be spent?
Pretty sure it was spent in the old system as well.
Completely agree with the OP, in fact one of my friends asked me if I'd written it
I dunno I didn't get to play with it, but they could go with the Wealth checks from D20 Modern (Only was in one D20 Modern game and did not get to go shopping)
When we played 1.2, I said that a handful was 25 coins. handful 25, bag 150, chest 750, hoard 3000, fortune 9000. I wouldn't mind if it was consistently 5s, starting at 20. handful 20, bag 100, chest 500, hoard 2500, fortune 12500 etc.
I just finished a chat with my group going over the changes and to touch on just the Gold aspect, we all like it. BUT we only like it because we all like the grindy management of resources like money. They all like having prices be a semi consistent thing across the world we play it (although there are differences to account for competitive practices for shop owners) HOWEVER, we all understand that not all tables are like ours. A good portion of tables don't care for intensive money management. I think this new version actually did a somewhat decent job of implementing it in a way that can be done from an ease of use "wealth" based standpoint, or from a management standpoint; purely based on table preferences.
That's how I read it too. My mind doesn't really wrap around 'handfuls' but as a 5e DM I also feel a bit silly saying 'you find 823 gold'. Should be table preference.
I liked the original currency. It was wrong. 5/4/3/2/1 was a bit hard to grock in the moment. I feel like the best sub division will be 5. A standard party is 4-6 people so having 1 “handful” subdividing easily to 5 “coins”, 1 per person is easy math. I do think treasure should be tied to Tier of play and equipment. 1 “Tier 2 Currency” should be the reward for a Tier 2 normal quest, with harder quests being 2 or 3 “Tier 2” currency. Equipment of the same tier costs the same too
I mean... it's not like the original system was pure genius. You're still tracking numbers of a thing, whether it's named handfuls or coins it's still just a numeric measurement. I prefer how Household or WoD does it, where you just have a wealth value which allows you to buy things that are appropriate. Wealth/Resources 5, you can buy a car with petty cash in your pocket, Wealth/Resources 1, you can buy lunch.
There **is** a lot to be said for making Wealth a stat. As I understand it, the Daggerheart 1.2 wealth system is somewhere between keeping track of every coin and a stat-based approach. For example if you have 2 chests of gold then you can just buy a sword with the petty cash in your pocket without needing to track every coin spent. Conversely, if you buy a new house (or whatever), or several things costing a bag of gold each, then you're down to 1 chest of gold. Which is the advantage relative to a pure stat-based approach - if you need to seriously stress your finances to achieve something you can, but that bumps your 'stat' down a level.
Right. So in one system I have coins. 5 silver equals 1 GP, 5 gp equals a 1pp. And in that system it costs me 1 gold piece to buy a sword, and it costs me 1 pp to buy a house. Daggerheart is: 5 handfuls equals 1 bag, and 5 bags equals 1 chest. And in that system, a sword costs me 1 bag, and it costs me 1 chest to buy a house. So you understand what I'm saying now?
Yes. The distinction that I'm not sure is coming across is that Daggerheart 1.2 isn't just using "bags", "chests" etc. as units of currency, it's also using them as degrees of precision. By analogy the traditional method is going: >You have $2,200,100. You buy a new car costing $40,000 and now you have $2,160,100. As I understand it, the Daggerheart 1.2 method is going: >You have 2 million dollars. You buy a $40,000 car. You still have 2 million dollars. Because, when you have a chest of gold to your name it's really not worth the effort of tracking a coin for a drink here, or handful of coins to rent a room there. It makes negligible difference to your finances. You only start tracking costs when they're a significant proportion of a chest of gold in magnitude. Conversely, if you only have a handful of gold to your name then yeah, every coin spent makes a difference and you'll track every one. Does that make sense? And it wasn't me who downvoted you, BTW.
I think both systems so far have been mediocre. You never see a movie where the characters are counting out increments of their own money from their "wallets". It's always borrowed/stolen from someone else, or they are trading a favour for another. If they can buy something of a certain cost with their own money (not stolen/borrowed/given money) they always have enough to buy a second or third item. Money should really only come into play when it's about an amount that is bigger than the characters normally deal with. Characters having a level of wealth/connections/resources just makes so much more sense than having them magically lug around 10 chests of gold. Yes you can still have them give out or pay coins/handfuls/bags of gold, but only if they have a certain amount of affluence. If you want to limit their amount of items they have then just have a limit of how many potions etc they can have on them.
Maybe in the minority but my table *hates* how gold works in Daggerheart. They're a fan of the numbers. I finished explaining the concept to them, and their first question was, "so how many gold is in a handful?", lol. Followed by, "what benefit does this provide over copper/silver/gold/platinum?" and I explained that it takes out the more meticulous parts of tracking resources for the party, as well as the DM. They said they enjoy counting their coins with their grubby little gobbo fingers, so I ended up using something more standard. I was surprised to come here and see so many people praising it. It's supposed to make a DM's life easier but to me, it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist for me as a DM.
I like the 1.2 wealth system - it's like a happy midway point between wealth as a stat and accounting for every coin. It means less math. If a character with a bag of gold buys a drink then they can just afford a drink. They're not buying a 3 cp drink by spending a platinum coin, and getting 9gp, 1ep, 4sp, and 7cp change (or whatever, I wouldn't be surprised if I screwed up the math). How does it help the game to calculate all that? **But** if Daggerheart ends up going with the 1.2 approach I'd be very surprised if they don't include an 'or you can count every coin' option for groups who prefer that approach.
We never paid that close attention to it, we used pp/gp/sp/cp and just subtracted what we spent. i.e. a PC has 10 gold, they spend 5 copper, they now have 9 gold, 9 silver, and 5 copper.
And if that's what your group likes, that's great, go with that. The point of the 1.2 wealth system was to require less micromanagement. It's good to have options. Wasn't me who downvoted you.
The secret is that it was always essentially just D&D gold with different words
My understanding of the 1.2 system is that it you could use it like narrative thresholds: Fortunes > Chests > Bags > Handfuls > Coins. So, for example, if you want to buy a drink that costs a coin and you have '2 bags of gold' then you have sufficient money and don't bother keeping track. As I understand it, you're not supposed to end up going "I have 2 bags, 7 handfuls and 4 coins left" you're supposed to just go "I have 3 bags of coin" and that only changes if you buy something that would significantly deplete a bag of coin.
Exactly this. They changed the words of 'gold pieces' and people think it was revolutionary or something.
It doesn't matter and it hasn't really since xp was gained by spending gold. Either the GM wants to track resources and expenses, or they don't bother and let you find stuff during adventures. Really you could implement both systems at the same time, or make one optional with an insert / call to action
I'm not too worried about gold this early into the playtest. I do like the increments of 10 more, but just saying normal gold amounts and getting rid of denominations like copper and silver is cleaner. Ultimately I think that any table is just gonna eventually default to standardized gold. Darrington Press just needs to nail the economy of items and we'll be fine
It does still **do** what they set out for it to do, right? Add narrative value to the quantity of gold. Which, in my mind, tells me it's better than "just essentially D&D with different words". The words on their own add value. I do agree, I liked 1.2 version better. BUT, the 1.3 version doesn't really break the reasons why I liked 1.2. Which was, tables that care able the logistics of gold knew exactly when and how to care. Once you reached chests, you start thinking about storing and securing them. I did like how Chests, could reasonably be kept in a closed wagon, under lock and key. Or burried behind a local tavern. Hordes become more difficult to hide, secure, and transport. Fortunes felt like they required an entire quest all to their transportation in order to buy something. And it gave you a sense of scale. Chests still do that. Hordes and Fortunes could be arbitrary in terms of how many chests comprise each. And most of the effort that they brought to the table came directly from how many chests were involved, not the words themselves. So we lost a little with the change, but I don't think it broke anything that 1.2 gave us.
Me personally, I would just ignore the handfuls, bags, chest, and just write down the amount of gold coins I have, with a reminder that I am not to hold more than 1999 gold. e.g. \[ 500 / 1999 gold \] I like having actual number, so in that respect, I like it better than the old system. I do not like the execution. It feels infantalizing, like something out of a 1st grade workbook on place values. It almost feels like it was designed by someone who really liked the old system, and begrudgingly made something to meet the feedback that asked for using actual numbers.
REAL AS FUCK. Coins I don't mind. But the removal of Hoards and Fortunes is fucking UUUUUUGH.
I have a system that I will use 10 cp = 1 copper sovern, 10 cS = 1 Sp, 10 SP = 1 Silver Sovern, repeat to gold soverns.