The dragon lies beneath your feet. It was an arduous battle, but you and your companions prevailed. Now come the spoils of your victory. The glittering hoard upon the vile beast now lies in its final rest. If you thought that money will solve your problems, you were gravely mistaken though. They only just began.
It is a mistake to think, that you can now spend your new found fortune in the next village. Not all treasure comes in the form of coin but rather in gem and art objects too. So they need to be either traded or sold. And you can't expect that the village is able to provide you with that sweet Orcslayer+5 sword.
So there are two things to keep in mind: How much gold do I get and what can I actually buy with it?
Wealth by Settlement or Tiers
I came across a nice video that outlined some of these problems exactly:
Let's have a look at some examples given in Symbaroum and D&D 3.5 (as outlined in the video).
Each settlement type is given a limit of a single item. If the base price would exceed that limit, the settlement would not carry that item. There's also a limit on how much of an item you can buy (D&D 3.5 calls it community wealth - and has some math behind it).
Castles and Crusades goes one step further and defines Tiers of wealth. They don't attach it directly to settlements, but rather regions or kingdoms. We can use these definitions to map it to the Tiers we defined for factions.
| Tier | Item Limit | Description | Trade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 5sp | basic services (food and lodging), simple adventuring gear | none |
| I | 5gp | simple weapons, light armours, leather helms, wood shields | local |
| II | 10gp | simple weapons, light to medium armours, wood helms and shields | short distance |
| III | 100gp | exotic materials and weapons, medium to heavy armours, steel helms and shields | medium distance |
| IV | 500gp | all weapons, armours, gear, mounts, special items and siege weapons are available | long distance |
| V | 1000gp | magic items and services | long distance |
The specific values for the Item Limit in each Tier might vary, depending on the kind of setting and system you play. In general you can orient yourself according to the description and offer items in that range.
Above table for example fits for Shadowdark RPG pretty well. A Tier 0 settlement can only provide you with the bare minimum of adventuring material: Torches, Rations, etc. Armor beyond Leather Armor can only be acquired from Tier III settlements and so forth.
The Item Limit is also limiting on what you can sell. If an item is worth more than the Item Limit you will not find a buyer.
Community wealth is always 10 times the Item Limit of that Tier. That means you can maximally buy or sell 10 items of the same type. You can roll 1d10 (or 1d6+4), so determine the actual number of items available for more variance.
The Item Limit is always to be applied before haggling. Even if you would manage to haggle down a 12gp item to below 10gp, a Tier II settlement would still not carry that item in the first place. Similarly when selling items. If a gem is worth 20gp, you could not sell it to a Tier II settlement, even when the shop-owner is haggling you down to 10gp. You always take the base price to determine if it fits into the limit or not.
Specialists
Even though you might be limited on what items are available in a Tier, you can still allow for certain items to be acquired, even if it does not belong in that Tier. This can be achieved by so called specialists.
For example an old witch, that brews curious potions in their hut next to a village. The villagers go to the witch to cure their ailments and more. So even though the village might have Tier 0 or Tier I, you could still get some potions from that witch - which normally cost more than the Item Limit.
However she might not want coin or gems for their services, but require other favours or trades in exchange. Or they just require the ingredients which are hard to get.
Tiers in action
The nice thing about defining wealth in Tiers is that we can attach it to so many things.
Obviously you can give every settlement a Tier. Bigger settlements will most likely be in a higher Tier. But they can also be lower (a big town doesn't mean it wealthy). Tiers can drive your description of a settlement. So immediately the players would know if they can get rid of their stuff here or not.
It gets interesting when you look at factions. Remember that the Tier of a faction is representing their wealth amongst other things. This dictates what rewards and aid they might give you, or what opposition you encounter. A Tier V faction has magic items at their disposal, so fighting them can be quite a challenge - and should be. It also applies to your Company. The Tier represents the price you could set and expect for your services.
But why stop there: Dungeons have a rank. Rank correlates with Tiers pretty nicely. Trivial would be Tier 0 and Extreme Tier V. So when determining what treasures you might find you can orient yourself according to that Tier.
The Tier can also be modified by rolling a d12 if you want a bit more randomness in your rewards.
| d12 | Reward |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Tier - 1 (min 0) |
| 3-7 | Tier |
| 8-11 | Tier + 1 (max 5) |
| 12 | Tier + 2 (max 5) |
Progress Tracks also have ranks. So reward is again tied to Tiers. And depending on the roll for conclusion, you can again shift the Tier up or down.
You start to see Tiers almost everywhere once you get used to it.
Treasure Hoards
As shortly mentioned, Tiers are also giving you the value of a treasure. The exact composition of said treasure is up to your specific system and needs. Generally you should use the treasure hoard tables from your system and use the Item Limit as your rough guideline - remember that 10 time that limit is your upper bound. You probably have to figure out which table fits to which Tier.
Once you have it, it will be much easier for you to come up with a treasure on the fly. Instead of trying to find the right table you can just cross-reference your Wealth Tier and roll on that table.
An alternate way is to use Treasure by Courtney Campbell. It is a bit of an elaborate way to generate treasure hoards. In it, we have to come up with a Treasure Unit. You can just use the Item Limit as that Unit and you should be good to go. Easy conversion.