Wealth

OK, one of the staples of D&D is the collection of wealth, whether gold, silver and platinum coins, precious gems, ornate statues or prising the lead tiles from the evil overlords castle. The wealth rules in 4e assume that you are keeping track of this wealth accumulation mostly because they also assume you will be able to trade it in for gear of the appropriate level.

4e allows you to accrue gear in three ways. Prrise it from the cold dead hands of your enemies, make it with the Enchant Magic Item Ritual or buy it. Of the three I have no issue with one or two but I cant stand three. Magic item shopping is something which I intensely dislike and it clearly falls well outside the genre we are aiming for.

You could argue that wealth accumulation falls well outside the sword and sorcery genre. Certainly characters dont seem to retain money between books or even chapters, normally squandering it on cheap booze or loose women or being tricked out of it by scheming thieves and underhand prostitutes.

Having said that I dont really want to do away with the idea of money as a factor in the game. However, I dont particularly want to have to be tracking every last copper piece you get and turning the game into Shiny Gold Coins: the Accounting.

So, one option is to use a rather more abstract wealth system. You will be able to loot golden demon idols or pry the jewelled eyes from statues of the Serpent God but I wont necessarily give you an exact GP value. Instead I could work off a more abstract wealth level with six points:

0 - Destitute
1 - Poor
2 - Craftsman
3 - Merchant
4 - Merchant Lord
5 - Prince

You can always choose to live at the destitute level. Rewards will allow you to live at a particular level of wealth for a set period of time. You can choose to live a higher level for less time or at a lower level for more. Time would work on a scale of Day, Week, Month, Season, Half Year, Year. Large purchases (lots of property, giant golden battle barges etc) would cost a period of expenses or force you to live at a lower level for a time.

For example: If you receive enough cash to live like a Merchant Lord for a Week you could instead live like a Craftsman for a Season or like a Prince for a Day.

This does still leave the issue of how to deal with magic item creation (assuming anyone wants to do it) but I am sure I can come up with something reasonable.

So, any comments, queries or suggestions? Would people rather just stick with the economy system as set out in the books?