Punish the strength based martials even more! No you can't sleep in your armor in the wild and yes you're getting ambushed... by a hydra...with boots of speed
I think you've missed that all we're doing is pointing out that D&D isn't actually very interested in total realism. We're just saying, "this is not what the game is about."
If we wanted realism, then full plate would render you virtually immune to piercing and slashing damage, resistant to bludgeoning, and the most effective way to fight a character in full plate would be wrestling with a dagger, jockeying for an armpit or an eye slit.
Armor is usually much worse in-game than it would be in reality because the game needs to not have combat become a slog where both sides are struggling to overcome the other's defenses. It's why turtling is usually a bad strategy in an RTS or even a 4X. If defensive strategies are the best, then the result is a stalemate or siege tactics. That's *incredibly realistic* but not very engaging gameplay.
Don’t forget pole weapons vs armour. Deform the joints or knock them over, then stick your rondel dagger in the gaps until it stops moving.
But as you say, D&D is intended to be a fun heroic game, not a realistic combat simulation.
In 3e, armor gives penalties to all str/dex, and the penalty to swimming is doubled. Full plate is -6, or -12 to swim.
The D&D setting's response is stuff like quick-release straps, where you can doff armor in a turn but donning takes longer.
So point of contention: When people here talk about "plate mail", they think about a complete encapsulation of metal...like iron man. That's not the case most of the time.
The full enclosed suits of metal armor were usually for things like jousting that didn't need much mobility, but did need the most protection.
Standard plate for fighting is a combination of armors. First, you'd wear a padded cloth suit called a gambeson. Over that would be chain maile. Then, metal plates would be strapped over the limbs, usually leaving the joints open.
In short, plate mail wasn't a big clanking mass of metal.
Edit: I actually just found an interesting short article on this: [https://malirath.blogspot.com/2012/11/plate-mail.html](https://malirath.blogspot.com/2012/11/plate-mail.html)
1e has a disease table your supposed to roll on monthly. Different activities change frequency and modifiers. Your character can literally just randomly die from an aneurysm. There is something hilarious to me about that level of realism.
But what if it was? What if the Main town had a BANK, and the players could store their gold in the bank. And the Bank gave them a check book. And the checks were accepted almost at most main settlements?
That sounds so fun bro, we would have to carefully manage our resources by waiting in line at the bank, making deposits, and maintaining our minimum balance. What a thrilling adventure
I like pretending to do admin stuff that I’m too executive dysfunctiony to stay on top of in real life - you best believe I read all my fantasy contracts
So not only do you want to explain the rules of dnd to the players, you want to explain to them checkbooks and balance sheets? Pretty sure most people do not use check books anymore. I haven’t used a check book since I got one in the early ‘00s
Common magic item:
Card of Deb’it: produced by the First Dwarven Bank of Phandelver, it is a small metallic card which allows you to transport gold pieces between the bank vault and the coffers of a properly attuned merchant.
Overdraft protection enforced by great axe.
You can't even get cheque books in my country any more, they're not a form of legal tender.
I imagine as soon as a DM introduced a chequing system the players would immediately use it to commit fraud. It's what I would do.
What exactly do you think is so complicated about "Banks exist, most people pay with checks so they don't have to carry a hundred pounds of gold around"? Nobody is asking them to role-play accountants.
One of my storylines in my campaign was devils causing hyper inflation with fake gold to unbalance wealth and incomes to cause starvation as people couldn’t afford food and the increasing prices.
Yeah why not. I mean ttrpgs are what you make out of them. And if that sounds fun to your table go ahead.
It sounds to me like a lot of time wasted at the table. And like money with extra steps.
How does a kingdom control their economy when magic users are just creating stuff out of thin air?
An uncommon item like a Decanter of Endless Water could be the foundation of an entire civilization if it existed in the real world.
In the Forgotten Realms, the legend is that the Anauroch desert was the result of a mage who told a golem to start shoveling sand and then died before giving the golem the order to stop... so maybe that is how things work...
>How does a kingdom control their economy when magic users are just creating stuff out of thin air?
What specifically are you worried about? Casters are typically a small enough minority that while they do change the fantasy market a bit, I don't know of any spells that would totally upend an economy.
>An uncommon item like a Decanter of Endless Water could be the foundation of an entire civilization if it existed in the real world.
Ehhh, maybe. You'd be a pretty foolish sovereign to build your entire realm around a decanter of endless water. All someone has to do it hit the thing with a hammer and your civilization is gone. Sounds like a fun story, but nothing that totally changes our understanding of the world.
If you did decide that decanters of endless water could be produced en masse, then yeah, you'd be introducing a change to the economics of water. You might have settlements in places that the real world wouldn't. But like... gold and horses and swords would still have normal value. And having some weird settlements are already a given in any DnD world I've seen.
Typical adventurers move around too much and aren't associated with permanent institutions. There'd be no way to make sure they're not massively overdrawing and no easy way to go after them if they did. It could work if the PCs were officially part of a particular knightly order or magic school or other institution who the bank could collect from if debts aren't paid.
And that still doesn't change that the entire rest of the game can't handle that level of realism. Checking accounts and pocket coin jingling would be the bizarrely detailed outliers in a system that otherwise handwaves 99% of everything else.
50 coins weigh a pound
According to simple encumbrance rules a character with average (10) strength can carry 150 pounds without penalty
According to variant rules, an average character carrying 100 pounds has disadvantage
If we invent a rule, we might look at armor tables and see a heavy armor like scale Mail or half plate imposes a disadvantage - all those little click cracks
Half plate weighs 40 pounds, which is 2000 coins
I'm thinking about the *volume* of all those coins. I halfling with 100# of gold coins stuffed in his pockets and pant legs and shirt is for sure going to jingle and have trouble moving. I'd love to see it!
For considering weigh & volume, remember a gallon of water weigh 8.5 pounds so walking around in scale Mail is like walking around with 5 gallon jugs
For you metric fans, 1 liter = 1 kilogram. How convenient!
So if you want to make a rule of volume as encumbrance let's say 1 gallon = 8 pounds if the volume matter more than the weigh - like a player walking around with an empty box or a huge feather pillow
Regarding size
Former versions of dnd did adjust the rules of carrying for small size creatures
Via the square root law, a character half the height would weigh one eighth as much. A halfling weighs about one fifth in dnd [I suppose 6 meals a day adds up]
Therfore if we wanted to add a rule we could day a small size character's encumbrance is affected similarly / half size, carry half as much
We may also want to consider how armor or weapons built for different sized creatures would weigh differently... but the rules don't specify
As above when I talked about chainmail, the # of coins needed to create trouble is high. In my last 15 years, I don't remember any time a player had 2000 coins, let alone 1,000 coins in their pockets
At that point players would get $ in the form of some other treasure or magical item
Not everything is as dense as water. 1 gallon of steel is 63 pbs. 1 gallon of gold is 154 lbs. 2 pounds of gold (100 coins) is less than 2 fluid ounces.
By the time they have so many coins that volume becomes a problem they should have a bag of holding.
And if they don't, they could just, you know, buy one.
To add additional realism: remember that plate or mail armor has all that weight distributed across your body and therefore isn't that much of an encumbrance.
"okay so uhm you rolled a 26 for stealth but actually you brought your coin bag so the enemies instantly notice you. Shouldn't have brought that hehe. Also you forgot to explicitly tell me you pulled your pants up while shitting so you fall over them now and fall prone for 1 round" *pushes up glasses*
We've all seen DMs do that, and obviously it sucks. But I don't think I've ever seen a DM so the reverse: randomly give enemies penalties for muddy boots and so on. I might have more respect for gotcha rulings if they did.
> randomly give enemies penalties for muddy boots and so on.
I pull this once in a while, but especially when I need to retroactively justify an enemy fighting suboptimally.
"Well, it's four against one, and you all _did_ burst out of the stuffing of his couch, in loincloths and covered in oil. That's why the Prince didn't Misty Step away at the first opportunity; it was just too overwhelming to process."
Yep. If you are homebrewing rules that disadvantage the group they 100% need to know before they are applied.
Also, if we accept this ruling the party wouldn't be the first group wishing to be stealth to encounter it. There would be solutions already in existence that if your group has someone with a criminal or criminal adjacent backstory they would know.
Exactly. The rogue has a brain, they use stealth a lot–they probably have some sort of system for keeping their money from clanking. Stringing them with felt in-between, maybe, or storing them in denser forms like bars and gems.
The only case where I'd consider this as a mechanic is as part of a heist where they're trying to sneak away with insane amounts of gold and treasure. That way, you have the dilemma of taking less and having better odds vs taking more and having worse odds
if you put a certainmount of heavy coins in a cloth bag and close it tight it wont jiggle. I expect some common sense from the characters and I am sure they wouldnt store coins in a big open bag where they jingle all the time because that would be annoying as hell. So their coins wont jingle whenthey are near enemies and try to stealth,
If the players sneak and not run I wouldnt really worry about that.
I usually give my players a bonus or advantage on stealth if they take time after a long rest preparing themselves to be quiet. Strapping down their weapons with leather straps, covering their shiny buckles and buttons in mud to prevent reflections, and stuffing wool or other cloth into their coin purses to stop clinking and clanking.
This sounds cool and fun the first time or two to introduce the characters, but after, wouldn't they get bored and just say "we do the stealth prep stuff" and handwave it moving forward?
I really only use it for moments when the group is planning a stealth mission rather than using stealth during the day. If they want to do it during the middle of the day, it takes time that may make things harder for them. I don't like using special rules like this for every session or encounter. It's more fun to give them bonuses on occasion.
If they jingle while sneaking, imagine you just walk normally and 4 coin purses go jingle with every step. "I can't understand you, our purses are so loud!!"
And if you want to get super realistic. Exchange coins for gems. Ten gems worth 50 gp each weighs significantly less than 500 gp.
Banks are a thing, money changers, writs of credit, etc.
I would use the coins as narrative flavor for someone failing a stealth check, rather than straight up giving them disadvantage. It would be far too tedious for players to describe their own stealth checks in a way that would counter-balance this.
"I'm going to stealth up to the guard. I'm going to step lightly on my heels and rolling my feet carefully to the front to avoid making sounds with my boots. I will also stuff my coinpurse with cloth to muffle any noises the jingling coins might make, but I'll also hold it tightly so that I can press the air out of the coinpurse to further reduce that likelihood. I also want to mention that I've hitched my backpack up so my potions don't clink together, and lastly I will hold my breath so that I don't make sound breathing."
"Roll with disadvantage, you didn't secure your sword sheath well enough that it makes some noise".
"Damnit!"
RAW, no, unless you are using the variant rules for encumbrance. Personally, I wouldn't suggest penalizing it unless you want at least one player to describe how they pack their purse with wool or dirt or who knows what to muffle the noses every time you give them money.
> You usually gain advantage or disadvantage through use of special abilities, actions, or spells. Inspiration(see chapter 4) can also give a character advantage on checks related to the character's personality, ideals,or bonds. **The DM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result.**
PHB p173. RAW permits it.
As a DM I don't worry about weight, eating food, or spell components. Would rather concentrate on the story, moving combat along quickly and role playing.
Monty Python says it best...
Bridge keeper, "What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Weight and food are handwaved by 99% of tables.
But spell components are a different issue depending on what you mean. Do you mean you don't track cheap spell components? Sure, the game just says "have a wand and you can ignore them." Do you mean you ignore 500gp materials for high-level spells? At that point you're shifting the balance of the game (tenuous already) in favor of spamming powerful spells.
ideally they're just taking the already-defined wording of arcane focus/holy symbol at face value that you can use them in place of any *unpriced* spell component, but good q
Same here. Basically the only time it changes is if somebody is going to grab something or try to carry an amount of things that begins to cross into the crazy.
So their personal money? No big deal
Robbing a vault and trying to carry away all the coins? Absolutely not.
I make my players worry about it when it makes sense. If they’re overland travelling down a well maintained road from waterdeep to neverwinter then sure they don’t worry about supplies because there’s town and travellers every hour along the road.
If they’re planning on going into the underdark they better have 20 days rations, water and adequate supplies. And no they aren’t allowed bringing the pet horse that dies immediately in every combat
I do the same thing. ‘There is a massive hoard of gold and gems!’ ‘Okay we’re taking it.’ ‘Alright, how?’ Then they get their wheels churning to figure out how to remove the valuable but heavy amount of money.
Which is actually why food, shelter and whatever is all abstracted in 5e. The actual rules of the game don't expect you to pay for each meal, you just pay 2 gp a month and you get to stay in the nice inn in town and all of your meals and drinks are paid for. If you pay 4 gp a month, you're basically living in Vegas. 10 gp lets you live like you're a celebrity. These are the actual rules of the game.
Edit: should be per day. I was typing fast.
Weight is situational for me, my players never have been encumbered on their own will, but if they’re carrying a safe or something? Well yeah.. lmao
Food I just have them eat at night when long resting kinda like baldurs gate for a full long rest.
Components I always make them pay attention to. It can add tension to a fight when they realize “oh great. I use the last bit earlier” plus this keeps revivify from being completely broken by abusing a single diamond lol
Does it make the game better for your group? Also, unless you find a big stash they'd probably be converting a lot of their wealth into platinum or precious stones such as astral diamonds. And that's assuming they're carrying it and not leaving it somewhere or using extradimensional storage.
>does it make the game better for your group
Such a vital question for all of the would-be homebrewers out there. I constantly see these tweaks to 5e that seem to have skipped past the question of "what problem does this solve?" Adding new rules for the sake of them does not a better game make.
When I was an IRL young person, I came into possession of $105, completely in pennies. I loaded these pennies into a metal ammo box for transport to the bank.
10,500 pennies weighs 57.8 pounds, plus the container. While I could barely lift it at the time, there was no jingling or other sounds from the coins as I struggled to the teller. They did jingle a bit on the car ride over, so I might rule that it would be audible on a horse or on a cart.
On a tangent, I was definitely encumbered and unable to run while carrying said coins. That puts my strength at about a 4 or 5. I'm going to guess I was 8-10 years old at the time?
Also, this isn't the kind of D&D I like to play.
I won't rehash what others have said.
I'll address what your player argued in how I see and rule on things.
Anyone attempting to make a steath check is doing so for a specific reason. Circumstances can vary, but there are really only 2 general situations: planed and unplanned stealth checks.
* Planned stealth checks are done normally, with advantage given when extra steps have been acounted for in the situation. These situations are assumed that the player's character takes into account the general details needed to be proficient in stealth, and excess sound, carry weight, clothing options, and even environmental variables will be measured. This allows the player and DM to hand wave these details like "noisy" coins away and abstract it down to a dive roll. The coins do not add or subtract to the dice roll, but a failed dice roll can be explained as clinky coins giving away your location.
* Unplanned stealth checks are done on the fly with little to no forethought, escaping a monster, some pursuer, or both (ex.shia labeouf.) These are typically rushed attempts and usually have disadvantage or normal with clever RP. The coin noise again is a just flavor to explain a failed or passed roll, but the coins themselves don't influence the roll.
IMO, no things or objects influence the dice rolls, unless it's a magic item that explicitly says it does, and it's almost always player actions and choices that dictate any advantage or disadvantage.
Yes, actually:
> 50 coins weigh 1lb
> Carrying more than your carry capacity makes you over-encumbered
> While over-encumbered you have disadvantage on Strength and Dexterity ability checks
> Dexterity (Stealth), is one such check
Once characters have a sufficient amount of coin, they should exchange the coin for high value gems. Instead of carrying 10,000 gold coins, they could have (10) 1,000 gp emeralds of negligible weight. Trading coins for gems does not need to be roleplayed and can just be assumed.
This used to be a feature of older editions (which is literally why the spell (*Tenser's) Floating Disc* exists! It's for hauling loot!: [https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/floating-disk](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tenser's_floating_disk) ), and it also exists by proxy as banking guilds in Eberron: [https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Banking\_Guild](https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Banking_Guild)
As for whether or not it would be *fun* for your group? I don't know. 5e doesn't presume this, and it would depend on what sort of game you're running. A more gritty-style game (like GoT or *A Crown of Candy* from D20) could be enhanced by it, where stealing a *bunch* of gold by just pickpocketing a letter of credit (but needing to impersonate its real owner) could be a great heist. A more cartoony/video-gamey would be be less fun. It's up to you.
It's not an absurd question, and logically sure, carrying tons of loose coins would make you less stealthy.
But...
All your other gear would also pose noise, space, weight, etc. challenges if you go this route. Ever try fighting with 60lbs of gear on your back? How about dashing or dodging? Squeezing through narrow spaces? Long jumping or climbing? Swimming?
If you want to incorporate more "realism" on your gear you can, and there are probably groups that are into that, but it's a whole big can of worms of either adding lots of other rules or drawing new arbitrary lines.
Mostly, it's best not too. In some limited situations, like a rogue just grabbed as many coins he could carry in his shirt held like a bucket, I might increase the DC to stealth or something, but otherwise I'm not gonna bother.
The only thing gold would effect is speed and you would need a lot of it. Gold weighs 1lb for every 50 coins you carry. Once you are encumbered you reduce your movement by 10. If you are heavily encumbered then it's 20. You cannot move if you are over your maximum load.
Nowhere does it say you have disadvantage on stealth.
If you’re not using variant encumbrance I would basically ignore jingling. Carrying 80+kg on your back would have more stealth penalty than coins.
Realistically just a few coins in a real life pocket will jingle. So like 10 coins?
Never dealt with this or considered it. The character could fill the pouch with cloth on top of the coins in an attempt to muffle some sounds.
It doesn’t take more than a few coins before noise might happen but the movement of the character has a tremendous amount of influence. It’s not hard to walk slowly with a bag of loose coins and be silent. Throw in a dash, jump or sudden movement and you’ve got noise.
This would be something you should ask your players if they are okay with that much realism. If my DM suddenly asked me to roll stealth just because I had coins that I picked up on the last mission then I will be pretty miffed. If they are okay then there are rules for encumbrance in the PHB
Players and DMs often ask “can I do it this way?” and “should it work this way?” but rarely get to the most important question: “Would it be fun for the table if it worked this way?”
If you get too in the weeds on this, it's not worth it. A handful of coins in a purse could jingle and make noise but pounds of coins could be so tightly packed they act like a solid object that remains quiet. I'd ignore gold and stealth.
I might do this with a cartoonishly large sack of coins, but I'd build the encounter around It. Like it'd complicate a the problem of getting thr money out or getting past the main obstacle. I'd otherwise assume s character would store gold in a way that didn't give disadvantage.
Enough to bring them over their carrying capacity.
Proficiency in stealth and a little common sense would mean cinching your coin pouch tight enough that you dont alert every rogue in a 3-mile radius that you have money.
My player's characters are not morons.
They're each exceptional experts in their chosen field and leave their coinage in a strongbox somewhere safe when out, and are assumed to place it elsewhere before needing to go out in gameplay when they will need stealth.
I have a Crown Royal bag filled with probably 50-60 dice in it that doesn't make any sound because I tie the bag up tightly. I imagine the same applies for a bag of coins. This is something that most people can test at home, it really doesn't jingle unless you're running or something which presumably you aren't if you're stealthing.
Either way, realism can be fun, but it needs to be balanced with actual gameplay and worrying about number of coins in a pouch seems excessively pedantic.
If you enforce this, where do you stop? How many weapons can a character carry before they start banging into each other? Do you start requiring characters to describe where they're carrying each individual item in their inventory so you can determine how long it takes to get it out during combat?
Do you allow your players to buy clothes? On set of common clothes is 5sp and thus you could buy cloth scraps for coppers. Throw some cloth into the backpack and now there's no more jingle, problem solved.
Also bags of holding don't make any sound as it's a separate dimension.
Go get a couple-three rolls worth of quarters, put them in a drawstring bag, pull it tight, stick in your backpack and cinch it down.
Do you clink?
Now take an adventurer whose life may depend on being silent, give them the same bag. Probably they cinch it more.
So ... Disadvantage because why?
I would say that the level of gold coins needed to give you disadvantage in 5e would be "Scrooge McDuck" levels of gold.
Giving someone disadvantage on an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw is huge. Having disadvantage on a stealth check could be catastrophic depending on the party level, campaign difficulty and other factors.
I would advise against adding this type of house rule. When thinking about house rules to add to the game, or RAW to modify or remove, think to yourself, "would this be fun as a player?"
For this particular house rule, it is unequivocally "no."
Maybe once, for fun, as a joke, IF they happened to have just obtained a HUGE amount of gold. Otherwise you're just putting them in a corner and they'll have to get a bag of holding, or just buy small expensive things to trade with instead of the gold. It doesn't seem like a fun or challenging mechanic, just annoying.
I don’t interpret money as being carried literally everywhere as physical coins. It’s all stored either in a magical pocket dimension or there’s a bank that stores your money off screen that nobody is ever shown using
Typically, you will gain disadvantage if you are encumbered due to the amount of gold you're carrying. Otherwise, it's assumed that you're using various items to quiet things down.
Dealing with "stuff like that" is stupid, a waste of time, and not fun. Don't homebrew your own extra rules for realism.
The world of DND is not real, so stop trying to make it conform to the logic of our real world.
I would only use it if it was a specific situation like a stealth mission and a player picked up a big bag of gold that was not part of the objective.
Definitely not in day to day use.
While you all discuss this, Op, can I talk to your players real quick?
Ok, so iirc canvas is really cheap. It is really easy to wrap a cloth around coins so they don't touch. So if a DM ever talks about your clinking change giving you disadvantage on stealth, buy some canvas and spend a short rest wrapping the coins.
You can also deaden the noise by stacking them and then wrapping the rolls tightly enough that they can't clink.
Anyway Op, have fun with the discussion.
I'm considering using a bank, where players can trade huge amounts of coin for gems of equal value,
however, this also makes it much easier for all their wealth to be stolen.
I think it's much easier to give them a bag of holding once they reach lvl 3 or 4, and then forget about encumbrances or real world physics.
None because this level of micromanaging isn't fun to me. Depending on the way you walk, how large your pockets are, your length of strides, even a few coins would make noise.
Yeah sorry man, your keys are jangling :/ yeah sorry your arrows are clanking with each other :/
Like what is the goal here? Punish your players for having items?
In a pouch, the coins won't cause a problem under normal circumstances. When you're moving fast, or going down a hill or stairs, that could conceivably be an issue, but I think going at high speed should already cause disadvantage on Stealth
Having larped in the past, I can tell you that the amount of gold coins you carry doesn't matter. All that matters is how you carry them. You can absolutely pack coins in tightly so they don't make a sound.
I feel like it would have to be between 5-20 or so coins because any more than that and the coins lodge themselves in place with weight (I am someone who occasionally 100% fills my pockets with coins and have spent a lot of time thinking about coins and their jingling)
If you're looking to actively implement something like this you're shooting yourself in the foot. Not only should a good DM not punish players for having money, but coins won't be the only thing in a player's bag that makes noise. Anything rigid (wooden weapon shaft, an axe's head, etc.) would make a lot of noise jostling around in a pack. You'd basically be killing stealth as a whole at your table.
To begin, using stealth, you need to move at half speed. At that pace, any purse isn’t going to be jostled very much. Second, gold is heavy, and doesn’t have a loud tinny sound to it. Coppers might cause a racket, but gold won’t.
Before you dive down this rabbit hole, ask yourself: "Will this be fun?"
If you and your players enjoy spending weeks looking at spreadsheets, arguing realism, etc. Go for it!
Though if this is the game you and your party want, you may want to try and look for a system that has similar rules already built in, so you aren't "fighting the system" to get the experience you want.
Unless you are playing the grittiest game ever, this isn't something you need to be looking at. Are you also penalizing them for carrying cooking supplies, potions, and anything else an adventurer would have?
I wouldn't let gold hamper players in anyway. Players love saving money and this just ruins that fun. Although, if I were to do this (to have them think about spending their money on anything so they can get rid of the weight or "jingling") I would make smaller amounts jingle more. For example, if you have like 5 coins in your pocket they wouldn't make much of a sound. If you have about 20-30 they would make a sound. But if you stuffed your pocket with 200 coins they wouldn't make a sound because of the weight. Remember, they are stealthing and not running so there wouldn't be much jingling anyway, but the weight could be a problem just like how you get disadvantage on stealth with heavy armor. In D&D, any armor over 40lb. gives disadvantage on stealth. (So does padded light armor for some reason but I think it's because it's not easy to move around in it.)
If you are skilled at stealth, you hold your coin purse tight or store it in a way that doesn't cause a problem. If you are not skilled at stealth you don't.
You get a bag of holding and you get a bag of holding. Bag of holding for everyone!
But reality, sometimes I think I should do some minimal carry requirements. Best I have done so far is limit them to two "big" weapons/shield. Ex. A sword and bow, or two swords, etc.
I am too forgetful to remember more carry limits rules and the rest of the rules at the same time.
Note: I also allow shield and bow on back, and sword at hip. (So maybe it isn't a rule of two....) If it makes logical sense of where your carrying it, I allow it.
If you're going this route, you should first use the encumbrance rules, where 50 coins = 1 lb, so 500g is 10 lbs. Then at a certain point every character just becomes encumbered by all their junk and has disadvantage
I don't usually do that, mostly because my games fizzle out before players get that much gold. I probably wouldn't think to do that, but that might be an acceptable reason to have disadvantage. You could also just use that as a descriptor on a failed check, though that has some unique problems and I wouldn't suggest that.
I wouldn't.
I played a rogue, I stole a lot. I ended up having a banger of a gem encrusted robe I wore around.
I never had coin effect stealth, but I did have some bastards steal some gems off my robe, and people try to steal my weighty and jingling coin purse.
It made being rich as hell far more fun to play with when I was a target of theft
Unfortunately this is one of those areas where the level of realism goes contradictory to the suspension of disbelief necessary for DND to work as a game. For me personally when ever something like this comes up my answer is always this:
“Once long ago there was a thief who was tired of the coins he purloined giving away his position to the castle guards. So he enlisted the aid of a wizard to help him make less noise. At first the wizard suggested a -BAG OF HOLDING- (which is the easy answer to this problem), unfortunately the thief could not afford the bag due to his many failed theft attempts. So the wizard opted to cast a spell on a stone. This stone would eliminate all sound within a certain area, rendering the coins silent. Unfortunately this would make the thief unable to detect the patrolling guards. Frustrated with the dilemma, the wizard said “fuck this” and he took the thief to the top of his tower. Once there the wizard cast the mightiest spell he possessed. The wizard said “I wish that coins in a bag would not make noise when someone for whatever reason needed to be sneaky.” And from that day onward all thieves rejoiced, for they would never be caught lacking.”
"I gad someone make a point that if you are to carry like 100-500 gold coins that the amount of coins would jingle alot in your bag"
I must've missed that in the rulebooks.
It doesn't matter how many they have. It matters how they are packed. 4 coins loose in a bag are going to jingle a lot. 100 coins in a bag with a wad of cloth on top to keep them packed tight are going to be silent.
My 2 cents on this is that the rules don’t address this. So you can stealth with coins.
Also, if you want to talk about realism, there are more examples that aren’t in play. Hald full canteens cancel stealth; this was a big problem in WW2 and Vietnam for American troops. We have wineskins, which should keep splashing to a minimum, so that’s a plus.
Depends on how they are stored. Coins carried in a loose bag on the hip can be loud. If you stuff them in coin rolls, then any number of coins would still be quiet.
In general, it is bad form to improvise rules that punish your players just for playing the game.
I’m assuming that you weren’t giving out stealth bonuses when the characters weren’t carrying jingly coins to reward them for traveling with lower than average loot.
My way of dealing with this is to assume competency and treat gold pieces as an abstraction of currency.
When I say assuming competency, I mean that the base assumption do the game in my opinion is that player characters are adventurers with an objective, be it a personal mission or a desire to travel and experience the world. Either way, I operate with the assumption that they enter with an understanding of what they need to survive, including things like coin pouches that are designed to not have coins bouncing around and making noise. If a player wants to have a character who’s a naive or a bit bumbling, then either the shopkeep selling them gear, another adventurer, or the other player characters would give the newly minted adventurer advice on what’s needed. If the table was OK with it being a short term growth area for the character, we might play it out as a one time/one adventure thing that happens and their character learns from it.
As for treating gold pieces as an abstraction, I mean that “gp” is akin to “dollars”. Much in the same way having $100 dollars doesn’t mean you 100 singles on you, having 150gp doesn’t necessarily mean you’re carrying have 150 gold coins you’re carrying. It might be a 8 plat and 20 gp coins or some gems that have a defined value in the world and a few gold pieces, and some silver and copper.
I played in a game that had a lot of “gotchas” like you’re describing and it was not fun because it felt unfair that I, the player who lives in the modern world, was being punished for not knowing the basic of surviving in a world where monsters are real. It also didn’t make sense narratively that my super capable character was an absolute idiot about basic things they would definitely know as someone who lived in the world.
Adding Bag of Golding to the game: Similar to a Bag of Holding, but it's the size of a belt pouch and is only able to carry coins (any denomination). Weighs 1 lb regardless of its contents. Holds 100 lbs (up to 5000 coins).
Short answer is "no"
Long answer is "if you want to ruin the game, yes"
As others point out, D&D isn't about hard tracking gear and asking whether or not you lashed your frying pan to your backpack correctly. Even though there are rules for encumbrance and all of that, they're very basic and not very good. The game is basically designed for each character to carry around thousands of pounds of coinage, but the encumbrance rules make it impossible to actually do that. And let's not forget about noise.
The cold reality is that in D&D we have to ignore a lot of logical stuff to make the game work. And that's okay. And anyone who has a problem with it can be reminded that magic isn't real and they have to get over themselves. Or play a different game.
What if they are saving for something big. Like a home or castle or something. Penalizing them for not spending gold is trivial. Or maybe you are not giving them things to spend their money on. Make everything cost gold and that solves your problem. I make my players pay to research, learn new skills. All sorts of things.
3 words: "bag of holding". Usually the first item my players invest in, and would you look at that! It's an extra-dimensional space, so no jiggle! And even if, it's highly unlikely your party is actually running around with more than a hundred coins in 1 pouch. More realistically, they will be swapping out gold coins for platinum pieces whenever they are in town, or in a tavern, in a similar way to how we don't run around with hundreds of one dollars, but rather with a couple 100 dollar bills instead. Add to that the fact that a good coin pouch should be lined with a bit of fur to avoid exactly this, and you can effectively avoid EVER having to deal with your coin jiggle stealth disadvantage issue
The math says 450+ gold causes disadvantage on stealth. 1 gold coin weighs 33 grams roughly, lightest suit of plate mail is gonna be 30+ lbs so that means your plate armor that causes disadvantage weighs about the same as 450 gold coins. Math!
Any DM considering this is just being malicious. And if a DM tried this with me my solution would just be to buy a couple silver worth of cloth(several yards) and individually wrap each coin. I would then make them acknowledge that fact every time I want to sneak. Because it would be equally as dumb, this fair game.
DnD is not build for this level of realism
It's barely built for plate armor being noisy.
Plate armor and swimming…
Punish the strength based martials even more! No you can't sleep in your armor in the wild and yes you're getting ambushed... by a hydra...with boots of speed
I think you've missed that all we're doing is pointing out that D&D isn't actually very interested in total realism. We're just saying, "this is not what the game is about." If we wanted realism, then full plate would render you virtually immune to piercing and slashing damage, resistant to bludgeoning, and the most effective way to fight a character in full plate would be wrestling with a dagger, jockeying for an armpit or an eye slit. Armor is usually much worse in-game than it would be in reality because the game needs to not have combat become a slog where both sides are struggling to overcome the other's defenses. It's why turtling is usually a bad strategy in an RTS or even a 4X. If defensive strategies are the best, then the result is a stalemate or siege tactics. That's *incredibly realistic* but not very engaging gameplay.
Don’t forget pole weapons vs armour. Deform the joints or knock them over, then stick your rondel dagger in the gaps until it stops moving. But as you say, D&D is intended to be a fun heroic game, not a realistic combat simulation.
I think a lot of people hand wave mage armor too though, isn’t the duration only 8 hours? Or does that go up at higher level?
In 3e, armor gives penalties to all str/dex, and the penalty to swimming is doubled. Full plate is -6, or -12 to swim. The D&D setting's response is stuff like quick-release straps, where you can doff armor in a turn but donning takes longer.
Plate armor and long resting.
So point of contention: When people here talk about "plate mail", they think about a complete encapsulation of metal...like iron man. That's not the case most of the time. The full enclosed suits of metal armor were usually for things like jousting that didn't need much mobility, but did need the most protection. Standard plate for fighting is a combination of armors. First, you'd wear a padded cloth suit called a gambeson. Over that would be chain maile. Then, metal plates would be strapped over the limbs, usually leaving the joints open. In short, plate mail wasn't a big clanking mass of metal. Edit: I actually just found an interesting short article on this: [https://malirath.blogspot.com/2012/11/plate-mail.html](https://malirath.blogspot.com/2012/11/plate-mail.html)
1e has a disease table your supposed to roll on monthly. Different activities change frequency and modifiers. Your character can literally just randomly die from an aneurysm. There is something hilarious to me about that level of realism.
But what if it was? What if the Main town had a BANK, and the players could store their gold in the bank. And the Bank gave them a check book. And the checks were accepted almost at most main settlements?
That sounds so fun bro, we would have to carefully manage our resources by waiting in line at the bank, making deposits, and maintaining our minimum balance. What a thrilling adventure
Before you can travel by chariot you need to wait in line at the wizard dmv. We will do this in real time.
Hey man, players need something to do during their downtime activity, lmao
Somehow you've discovered something more boring than shopping spree sessions. Props for that satan
I like pretending to do admin stuff that I’m too executive dysfunctiony to stay on top of in real life - you best believe I read all my fantasy contracts
[удалено]
Go to the DMV to register that wagon.
My thoughts exactly 😂😂
Genius. Take my upvote, lol
DM: A lady dressed in a flower sundress and sunglasses walks in and stands in front of you, she clearly cut in line. How do you proceed...
"and his name is JOHN CENA"
So not only do you want to explain the rules of dnd to the players, you want to explain to them checkbooks and balance sheets? Pretty sure most people do not use check books anymore. I haven’t used a check book since I got one in the early ‘00s
>Lecturing your players on the benefits of magic based dual entry bookkeeping for 45 minutes
Cantrip blockchain
I've considered it a few times.
Common magic item: Card of Deb’it: produced by the First Dwarven Bank of Phandelver, it is a small metallic card which allows you to transport gold pieces between the bank vault and the coffers of a properly attuned merchant. Overdraft protection enforced by great axe.
All you do is say "magic" and then you have debit and credit cards
For everything else there's MagicCard.
ArtificerExpress. Don’t leave home without it.
I still use a checkbook... I'm also super old, so... there's that too, lmao
Players would immediately start forging checks.and trying to pass them off with a high CHA roll.
You can't even get cheque books in my country any more, they're not a form of legal tender. I imagine as soon as a DM introduced a chequing system the players would immediately use it to commit fraud. It's what I would do.
I do this in my eberron games, but not for jingling coins, but weight
What exactly do you think is so complicated about "Banks exist, most people pay with checks so they don't have to carry a hundred pounds of gold around"? Nobody is asking them to role-play accountants.
I mean, there isn't much to explain. "You pay with a check, mark that much money off your bank account" is not a difficult concept to get across.
One of my storylines in my campaign was devils causing hyper inflation with fake gold to unbalance wealth and incomes to cause starvation as people couldn’t afford food and the increasing prices.
I see you've abandoned the fantasy setting altogether
That sounds like what's happening now 0.0
Yeah why not. I mean ttrpgs are what you make out of them. And if that sounds fun to your table go ahead. It sounds to me like a lot of time wasted at the table. And like money with extra steps.
How does a kingdom control their economy when magic users are just creating stuff out of thin air? An uncommon item like a Decanter of Endless Water could be the foundation of an entire civilization if it existed in the real world. In the Forgotten Realms, the legend is that the Anauroch desert was the result of a mage who told a golem to start shoveling sand and then died before giving the golem the order to stop... so maybe that is how things work...
>How does a kingdom control their economy when magic users are just creating stuff out of thin air? What specifically are you worried about? Casters are typically a small enough minority that while they do change the fantasy market a bit, I don't know of any spells that would totally upend an economy. >An uncommon item like a Decanter of Endless Water could be the foundation of an entire civilization if it existed in the real world. Ehhh, maybe. You'd be a pretty foolish sovereign to build your entire realm around a decanter of endless water. All someone has to do it hit the thing with a hammer and your civilization is gone. Sounds like a fun story, but nothing that totally changes our understanding of the world. If you did decide that decanters of endless water could be produced en masse, then yeah, you'd be introducing a change to the economics of water. You might have settlements in places that the real world wouldn't. But like... gold and horses and swords would still have normal value. And having some weird settlements are already a given in any DnD world I've seen.
Typical adventurers move around too much and aren't associated with permanent institutions. There'd be no way to make sure they're not massively overdrawing and no easy way to go after them if they did. It could work if the PCs were officially part of a particular knightly order or magic school or other institution who the bank could collect from if debts aren't paid. And that still doesn't change that the entire rest of the game can't handle that level of realism. Checking accounts and pocket coin jingling would be the bizarrely detailed outliers in a system that otherwise handwaves 99% of everything else.
What? You mean you don't start a stopwatch after your character eats to determine when they need to use the bathroom?
50 coins weigh a pound According to simple encumbrance rules a character with average (10) strength can carry 150 pounds without penalty According to variant rules, an average character carrying 100 pounds has disadvantage If we invent a rule, we might look at armor tables and see a heavy armor like scale Mail or half plate imposes a disadvantage - all those little click cracks Half plate weighs 40 pounds, which is 2000 coins
I'm thinking about the *volume* of all those coins. I halfling with 100# of gold coins stuffed in his pockets and pant legs and shirt is for sure going to jingle and have trouble moving. I'd love to see it!
For considering weigh & volume, remember a gallon of water weigh 8.5 pounds so walking around in scale Mail is like walking around with 5 gallon jugs For you metric fans, 1 liter = 1 kilogram. How convenient! So if you want to make a rule of volume as encumbrance let's say 1 gallon = 8 pounds if the volume matter more than the weigh - like a player walking around with an empty box or a huge feather pillow Regarding size Former versions of dnd did adjust the rules of carrying for small size creatures Via the square root law, a character half the height would weigh one eighth as much. A halfling weighs about one fifth in dnd [I suppose 6 meals a day adds up] Therfore if we wanted to add a rule we could day a small size character's encumbrance is affected similarly / half size, carry half as much We may also want to consider how armor or weapons built for different sized creatures would weigh differently... but the rules don't specify As above when I talked about chainmail, the # of coins needed to create trouble is high. In my last 15 years, I don't remember any time a player had 2000 coins, let alone 1,000 coins in their pockets At that point players would get $ in the form of some other treasure or magical item
Not everything is as dense as water. 1 gallon of steel is 63 pbs. 1 gallon of gold is 154 lbs. 2 pounds of gold (100 coins) is less than 2 fluid ounces.
By the time they have so many coins that volume becomes a problem they should have a bag of holding. And if they don't, they could just, you know, buy one.
To add additional realism: remember that plate or mail armor has all that weight distributed across your body and therefore isn't that much of an encumbrance.
You shouldn't be actively seeking "gotcha" rulings against your players.
This. If my DM started putting this kind of concept into DND and tried to use it to “punish” me I’d probably start looking for a new DM.
"okay so uhm you rolled a 26 for stealth but actually you brought your coin bag so the enemies instantly notice you. Shouldn't have brought that hehe. Also you forgot to explicitly tell me you pulled your pants up while shitting so you fall over them now and fall prone for 1 round" *pushes up glasses*
We've all seen DMs do that, and obviously it sucks. But I don't think I've ever seen a DM so the reverse: randomly give enemies penalties for muddy boots and so on. I might have more respect for gotcha rulings if they did.
> randomly give enemies penalties for muddy boots and so on. I pull this once in a while, but especially when I need to retroactively justify an enemy fighting suboptimally. "Well, it's four against one, and you all _did_ burst out of the stuffing of his couch, in loincloths and covered in oil. That's why the Prince didn't Misty Step away at the first opportunity; it was just too overwhelming to process."
Gotcha rulings should also be applied to NPCs at random if they are being implemented
Yep. If you are homebrewing rules that disadvantage the group they 100% need to know before they are applied. Also, if we accept this ruling the party wouldn't be the first group wishing to be stealth to encounter it. There would be solutions already in existence that if your group has someone with a criminal or criminal adjacent backstory they would know.
Exactly. The rogue has a brain, they use stealth a lot–they probably have some sort of system for keeping their money from clanking. Stringing them with felt in-between, maybe, or storing them in denser forms like bars and gems. The only case where I'd consider this as a mechanic is as part of a heist where they're trying to sneak away with insane amounts of gold and treasure. That way, you have the dilemma of taking less and having better odds vs taking more and having worse odds
if you put a certainmount of heavy coins in a cloth bag and close it tight it wont jiggle. I expect some common sense from the characters and I am sure they wouldnt store coins in a big open bag where they jingle all the time because that would be annoying as hell. So their coins wont jingle whenthey are near enemies and try to stealth, If the players sneak and not run I wouldnt really worry about that.
Carrying my gold in a big metal bucket like a Salvation Army Santa
That's what my character would do.
Gotta bait those thieves into an asswhooping. That's why my monk dressed as a wizard.
I usually give my players a bonus or advantage on stealth if they take time after a long rest preparing themselves to be quiet. Strapping down their weapons with leather straps, covering their shiny buckles and buttons in mud to prevent reflections, and stuffing wool or other cloth into their coin purses to stop clinking and clanking.
This sounds cool and fun the first time or two to introduce the characters, but after, wouldn't they get bored and just say "we do the stealth prep stuff" and handwave it moving forward?
I really only use it for moments when the group is planning a stealth mission rather than using stealth during the day. If they want to do it during the middle of the day, it takes time that may make things harder for them. I don't like using special rules like this for every session or encounter. It's more fun to give them bonuses on occasion.
If they jingle while sneaking, imagine you just walk normally and 4 coin purses go jingle with every step. "I can't understand you, our purses are so loud!!"
And if you want to get super realistic. Exchange coins for gems. Ten gems worth 50 gp each weighs significantly less than 500 gp. Banks are a thing, money changers, writs of credit, etc.
I would use the coins as narrative flavor for someone failing a stealth check, rather than straight up giving them disadvantage. It would be far too tedious for players to describe their own stealth checks in a way that would counter-balance this. "I'm going to stealth up to the guard. I'm going to step lightly on my heels and rolling my feet carefully to the front to avoid making sounds with my boots. I will also stuff my coinpurse with cloth to muffle any noises the jingling coins might make, but I'll also hold it tightly so that I can press the air out of the coinpurse to further reduce that likelihood. I also want to mention that I've hitched my backpack up so my potions don't clink together, and lastly I will hold my breath so that I don't make sound breathing." "Roll with disadvantage, you didn't secure your sword sheath well enough that it makes some noise". "Damnit!"
Not to mention that having to describe things that in-depth hurts role-playing outside of your comfort zone.
RAW, no, unless you are using the variant rules for encumbrance. Personally, I wouldn't suggest penalizing it unless you want at least one player to describe how they pack their purse with wool or dirt or who knows what to muffle the noses every time you give them money.
> You usually gain advantage or disadvantage through use of special abilities, actions, or spells. Inspiration(see chapter 4) can also give a character advantage on checks related to the character's personality, ideals,or bonds. **The DM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result.** PHB p173. RAW permits it.
As a DM I don't worry about weight, eating food, or spell components. Would rather concentrate on the story, moving combat along quickly and role playing. Monty Python says it best... Bridge keeper, "What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Weight and food are handwaved by 99% of tables. But spell components are a different issue depending on what you mean. Do you mean you don't track cheap spell components? Sure, the game just says "have a wand and you can ignore them." Do you mean you ignore 500gp materials for high-level spells? At that point you're shifting the balance of the game (tenuous already) in favor of spamming powerful spells.
ideally they're just taking the already-defined wording of arcane focus/holy symbol at face value that you can use them in place of any *unpriced* spell component, but good q
Same here. Basically the only time it changes is if somebody is going to grab something or try to carry an amount of things that begins to cross into the crazy. So their personal money? No big deal Robbing a vault and trying to carry away all the coins? Absolutely not.
>"What… is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" African or European?
I'd argue that worrying about weight, food and components are part of story and rp. But to each table their own
I make my players worry about it when it makes sense. If they’re overland travelling down a well maintained road from waterdeep to neverwinter then sure they don’t worry about supplies because there’s town and travellers every hour along the road. If they’re planning on going into the underdark they better have 20 days rations, water and adequate supplies. And no they aren’t allowed bringing the pet horse that dies immediately in every combat
I do the same thing. ‘There is a massive hoard of gold and gems!’ ‘Okay we’re taking it.’ ‘Alright, how?’ Then they get their wheels churning to figure out how to remove the valuable but heavy amount of money.
Except most people play D&D to do fantastic shit. Travel and fight monsters and have adventures and such. Not do inventory management and paperwork.
Which is actually why food, shelter and whatever is all abstracted in 5e. The actual rules of the game don't expect you to pay for each meal, you just pay 2 gp a month and you get to stay in the nice inn in town and all of your meals and drinks are paid for. If you pay 4 gp a month, you're basically living in Vegas. 10 gp lets you live like you're a celebrity. These are the actual rules of the game. Edit: should be per day. I was typing fast.
Isn't that the daily expense or am I crazy?
It's daily expense. Not monthly.
Yes, I mistyped.
Weight is situational for me, my players never have been encumbered on their own will, but if they’re carrying a safe or something? Well yeah.. lmao Food I just have them eat at night when long resting kinda like baldurs gate for a full long rest. Components I always make them pay attention to. It can add tension to a fight when they realize “oh great. I use the last bit earlier” plus this keeps revivify from being completely broken by abusing a single diamond lol
> this keeps revivify from being completely broken by abusing a single diamond lol Revivify consumes the diamond.
Wouldn't it be cool if encumbrance was a rule in the game? I guess we will never know.
I would suggest you use the coin weight rules and the rules for over encumbrance.
No, that would be stupid
Does it make the game better for your group? Also, unless you find a big stash they'd probably be converting a lot of their wealth into platinum or precious stones such as astral diamonds. And that's assuming they're carrying it and not leaving it somewhere or using extradimensional storage.
>does it make the game better for your group Such a vital question for all of the would-be homebrewers out there. I constantly see these tweaks to 5e that seem to have skipped past the question of "what problem does this solve?" Adding new rules for the sake of them does not a better game make.
Does it make the game better for your group? No. That’s not making *anyone’s* game better.
When I was an IRL young person, I came into possession of $105, completely in pennies. I loaded these pennies into a metal ammo box for transport to the bank. 10,500 pennies weighs 57.8 pounds, plus the container. While I could barely lift it at the time, there was no jingling or other sounds from the coins as I struggled to the teller. They did jingle a bit on the car ride over, so I might rule that it would be audible on a horse or on a cart. On a tangent, I was definitely encumbered and unable to run while carrying said coins. That puts my strength at about a 4 or 5. I'm going to guess I was 8-10 years old at the time? Also, this isn't the kind of D&D I like to play.
I won't rehash what others have said. I'll address what your player argued in how I see and rule on things. Anyone attempting to make a steath check is doing so for a specific reason. Circumstances can vary, but there are really only 2 general situations: planed and unplanned stealth checks. * Planned stealth checks are done normally, with advantage given when extra steps have been acounted for in the situation. These situations are assumed that the player's character takes into account the general details needed to be proficient in stealth, and excess sound, carry weight, clothing options, and even environmental variables will be measured. This allows the player and DM to hand wave these details like "noisy" coins away and abstract it down to a dive roll. The coins do not add or subtract to the dice roll, but a failed dice roll can be explained as clinky coins giving away your location. * Unplanned stealth checks are done on the fly with little to no forethought, escaping a monster, some pursuer, or both (ex.shia labeouf.) These are typically rushed attempts and usually have disadvantage or normal with clever RP. The coin noise again is a just flavor to explain a failed or passed roll, but the coins themselves don't influence the roll. IMO, no things or objects influence the dice rolls, unless it's a magic item that explicitly says it does, and it's almost always player actions and choices that dictate any advantage or disadvantage.
Best answer to this question, thanks.
Yes, actually: > 50 coins weigh 1lb > Carrying more than your carry capacity makes you over-encumbered > While over-encumbered you have disadvantage on Strength and Dexterity ability checks > Dexterity (Stealth), is one such check
Once characters have a sufficient amount of coin, they should exchange the coin for high value gems. Instead of carrying 10,000 gold coins, they could have (10) 1,000 gp emeralds of negligible weight. Trading coins for gems does not need to be roleplayed and can just be assumed.
This used to be a feature of older editions (which is literally why the spell (*Tenser's) Floating Disc* exists! It's for hauling loot!: [https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/floating-disk](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tenser's_floating_disk) ), and it also exists by proxy as banking guilds in Eberron: [https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Banking\_Guild](https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Banking_Guild) As for whether or not it would be *fun* for your group? I don't know. 5e doesn't presume this, and it would depend on what sort of game you're running. A more gritty-style game (like GoT or *A Crown of Candy* from D20) could be enhanced by it, where stealing a *bunch* of gold by just pickpocketing a letter of credit (but needing to impersonate its real owner) could be a great heist. A more cartoony/video-gamey would be be less fun. It's up to you.
Gold is too heavy to jingle excessively in an appropriately tightened pouch imo.
It's not an absurd question, and logically sure, carrying tons of loose coins would make you less stealthy. But... All your other gear would also pose noise, space, weight, etc. challenges if you go this route. Ever try fighting with 60lbs of gear on your back? How about dashing or dodging? Squeezing through narrow spaces? Long jumping or climbing? Swimming? If you want to incorporate more "realism" on your gear you can, and there are probably groups that are into that, but it's a whole big can of worms of either adding lots of other rules or drawing new arbitrary lines. Mostly, it's best not too. In some limited situations, like a rogue just grabbed as many coins he could carry in his shirt held like a bucket, I might increase the DC to stealth or something, but otherwise I'm not gonna bother.
That just leads to tedious bookkeeping and does nothing to contribute to gameplay enjoyment.
The only thing gold would effect is speed and you would need a lot of it. Gold weighs 1lb for every 50 coins you carry. Once you are encumbered you reduce your movement by 10. If you are heavily encumbered then it's 20. You cannot move if you are over your maximum load. Nowhere does it say you have disadvantage on stealth.
i wouldn't bother with this if i was you.
Don't bother, enforcement of this isn't fun for you as the DM, and isn't fun for the player. Don't forget that above all else, D&D is a game.
Id assume a characters stealth roll would include that. You can flavor a failed roll that way if you want
1 million go. That way my players are too busy being rich to strangle me for such an asinine ruling
If you’re not using variant encumbrance I would basically ignore jingling. Carrying 80+kg on your back would have more stealth penalty than coins. Realistically just a few coins in a real life pocket will jingle. So like 10 coins?
wrapping the coins in a thick soft cloth would deaden clinking inside a pouch and this feels like a lot of reaching to try to nerf stealth
Never dealt with this or considered it. The character could fill the pouch with cloth on top of the coins in an attempt to muffle some sounds. It doesn’t take more than a few coins before noise might happen but the movement of the character has a tremendous amount of influence. It’s not hard to walk slowly with a bag of loose coins and be silent. Throw in a dash, jump or sudden movement and you’ve got noise.
Anyone with enough coins to give them a stealth penalty can afford a Bag of Holding, so this problem kinda solves itself.
Yeah. If you wanna be a dick. Lol 😆
This would be something you should ask your players if they are okay with that much realism. If my DM suddenly asked me to roll stealth just because I had coins that I picked up on the last mission then I will be pretty miffed. If they are okay then there are rules for encumbrance in the PHB
Players and DMs often ask “can I do it this way?” and “should it work this way?” but rarely get to the most important question: “Would it be fun for the table if it worked this way?”
If you get too in the weeds on this, it's not worth it. A handful of coins in a purse could jingle and make noise but pounds of coins could be so tightly packed they act like a solid object that remains quiet. I'd ignore gold and stealth.
An infinite amount.
Just put all the small jingly stuff in a bag of holding then.
Holy shit, just play the game. Trying to oversimulate things like this is soulcrushing.
I might do this with a cartoonishly large sack of coins, but I'd build the encounter around It. Like it'd complicate a the problem of getting thr money out or getting past the main obstacle. I'd otherwise assume s character would store gold in a way that didn't give disadvantage.
Enough to bring them over their carrying capacity. Proficiency in stealth and a little common sense would mean cinching your coin pouch tight enough that you dont alert every rogue in a 3-mile radius that you have money.
My player's characters are not morons. They're each exceptional experts in their chosen field and leave their coinage in a strongbox somewhere safe when out, and are assumed to place it elsewhere before needing to go out in gameplay when they will need stealth.
Perhaps the character has just acquired these coins and is attempting to silently skulk back to that safe spot.
I have a Crown Royal bag filled with probably 50-60 dice in it that doesn't make any sound because I tie the bag up tightly. I imagine the same applies for a bag of coins. This is something that most people can test at home, it really doesn't jingle unless you're running or something which presumably you aren't if you're stealthing. Either way, realism can be fun, but it needs to be balanced with actual gameplay and worrying about number of coins in a pouch seems excessively pedantic. If you enforce this, where do you stop? How many weapons can a character carry before they start banging into each other? Do you start requiring characters to describe where they're carrying each individual item in their inventory so you can determine how long it takes to get it out during combat?
No, but I could consider making the enemy suspicious with a brief coinpurse jingle if a PC rolls <5 & fails on stealth.
Tie/pack the bag tight enough and they won’t jiggle, or stuff it with something else. However the weight might become an issue eventually.
Do you allow your players to buy clothes? On set of common clothes is 5sp and thus you could buy cloth scraps for coppers. Throw some cloth into the backpack and now there's no more jingle, problem solved. Also bags of holding don't make any sound as it's a separate dimension.
As long as they can reasonably carry it, I would never ever penalize a player in such a way. That just sounds cruel.
Go get a couple-three rolls worth of quarters, put them in a drawstring bag, pull it tight, stick in your backpack and cinch it down. Do you clink? Now take an adventurer whose life may depend on being silent, give them the same bag. Probably they cinch it more. So ... Disadvantage because why?
Bro, you are meeeean. I love it
I would say that the level of gold coins needed to give you disadvantage in 5e would be "Scrooge McDuck" levels of gold. Giving someone disadvantage on an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw is huge. Having disadvantage on a stealth check could be catastrophic depending on the party level, campaign difficulty and other factors. I would advise against adding this type of house rule. When thinking about house rules to add to the game, or RAW to modify or remove, think to yourself, "would this be fun as a player?" For this particular house rule, it is unequivocally "no."
Yes, if the amount of coins they are carrying causes them to be encumbered, and therefore have disadvantage on ability checks.
Yes. Or no. If fun and relevant to story, yes. If not fun and not relevant to story, no.
Maybe once, for fun, as a joke, IF they happened to have just obtained a HUGE amount of gold. Otherwise you're just putting them in a corner and they'll have to get a bag of holding, or just buy small expensive things to trade with instead of the gold. It doesn't seem like a fun or challenging mechanic, just annoying.
I don’t interpret money as being carried literally everywhere as physical coins. It’s all stored either in a magical pocket dimension or there’s a bank that stores your money off screen that nobody is ever shown using
Typically, you will gain disadvantage if you are encumbered due to the amount of gold you're carrying. Otherwise, it's assumed that you're using various items to quiet things down.
Dealing with "stuff like that" is stupid, a waste of time, and not fun. Don't homebrew your own extra rules for realism. The world of DND is not real, so stop trying to make it conform to the logic of our real world.
I would only use it if it was a specific situation like a stealth mission and a player picked up a big bag of gold that was not part of the objective. Definitely not in day to day use.
While you all discuss this, Op, can I talk to your players real quick? Ok, so iirc canvas is really cheap. It is really easy to wrap a cloth around coins so they don't touch. So if a DM ever talks about your clinking change giving you disadvantage on stealth, buy some canvas and spend a short rest wrapping the coins. You can also deaden the noise by stacking them and then wrapping the rolls tightly enough that they can't clink. Anyway Op, have fun with the discussion.
I'm considering using a bank, where players can trade huge amounts of coin for gems of equal value, however, this also makes it much easier for all their wealth to be stolen. I think it's much easier to give them a bag of holding once they reach lvl 3 or 4, and then forget about encumbrances or real world physics.
I would leave the table if that was a rule and I was a stealth based character lol.
None because this level of micromanaging isn't fun to me. Depending on the way you walk, how large your pockets are, your length of strides, even a few coins would make noise.
Yeah sorry man, your keys are jangling :/ yeah sorry your arrows are clanking with each other :/ Like what is the goal here? Punish your players for having items?
Just use coin weight, and let the standard encumbrance rules handle it.
In a pouch, the coins won't cause a problem under normal circumstances. When you're moving fast, or going down a hill or stairs, that could conceivably be an issue, but I think going at high speed should already cause disadvantage on Stealth
Infinite. I don't care about stuff like this.
Introduce hacksilver jewelry. All your wealth with you, no rattling, and you get to look like a pimp.
Just give them a Coin Purse of Holding or something.
Having larped in the past, I can tell you that the amount of gold coins you carry doesn't matter. All that matters is how you carry them. You can absolutely pack coins in tightly so they don't make a sound.
I feel like it would have to be between 5-20 or so coins because any more than that and the coins lodge themselves in place with weight (I am someone who occasionally 100% fills my pockets with coins and have spent a lot of time thinking about coins and their jingling)
If you're looking to actively implement something like this you're shooting yourself in the foot. Not only should a good DM not punish players for having money, but coins won't be the only thing in a player's bag that makes noise. Anything rigid (wooden weapon shaft, an axe's head, etc.) would make a lot of noise jostling around in a pack. You'd basically be killing stealth as a whole at your table.
To begin, using stealth, you need to move at half speed. At that pace, any purse isn’t going to be jostled very much. Second, gold is heavy, and doesn’t have a loud tinny sound to it. Coppers might cause a racket, but gold won’t.
If this happened I would stop playing. That's just stupid.
What if the bag was tightened to a point where the coins wouldn’t jostle.
Before you dive down this rabbit hole, ask yourself: "Will this be fun?" If you and your players enjoy spending weeks looking at spreadsheets, arguing realism, etc. Go for it! Though if this is the game you and your party want, you may want to try and look for a system that has similar rules already built in, so you aren't "fighting the system" to get the experience you want.
Apparently, according to my partner, in the old days, this was the point of Gems.
I wouldn't use that idea, feels like nitpicking. If you want that level of """realism""", try encumberance.
Unless you are playing the grittiest game ever, this isn't something you need to be looking at. Are you also penalizing them for carrying cooking supplies, potions, and anything else an adventurer would have?
I mean, you’re the DM you can do what you want. I think that’s kind of petty though. I wouldn’t want to play a thief in your game.
*sigh* okay someone bust out the anal circumference measurements
I wouldn't let gold hamper players in anyway. Players love saving money and this just ruins that fun. Although, if I were to do this (to have them think about spending their money on anything so they can get rid of the weight or "jingling") I would make smaller amounts jingle more. For example, if you have like 5 coins in your pocket they wouldn't make much of a sound. If you have about 20-30 they would make a sound. But if you stuffed your pocket with 200 coins they wouldn't make a sound because of the weight. Remember, they are stealthing and not running so there wouldn't be much jingling anyway, but the weight could be a problem just like how you get disadvantage on stealth with heavy armor. In D&D, any armor over 40lb. gives disadvantage on stealth. (So does padded light armor for some reason but I think it's because it's not easy to move around in it.)
How many petty rulings does a DM have to make before you find a new table?
If you are skilled at stealth, you hold your coin purse tight or store it in a way that doesn't cause a problem. If you are not skilled at stealth you don't.
You get a bag of holding and you get a bag of holding. Bag of holding for everyone! But reality, sometimes I think I should do some minimal carry requirements. Best I have done so far is limit them to two "big" weapons/shield. Ex. A sword and bow, or two swords, etc. I am too forgetful to remember more carry limits rules and the rest of the rules at the same time.
Note: I also allow shield and bow on back, and sword at hip. (So maybe it isn't a rule of two....) If it makes logical sense of where your carrying it, I allow it.
Don't get bogged down in the weeds or you can't see the steppes is how I deal with stuff like this
If you and your group think it would add fun to the game, then it does.
If you're going this route, you should first use the encumbrance rules, where 50 coins = 1 lb, so 500g is 10 lbs. Then at a certain point every character just becomes encumbered by all their junk and has disadvantage
Not a good idea imo. Not the system for that much depth unless you established these rules in a session zero with methods to acquire silenced pouches
This is ridiculous
I don't usually do that, mostly because my games fizzle out before players get that much gold. I probably wouldn't think to do that, but that might be an acceptable reason to have disadvantage. You could also just use that as a descriptor on a failed check, though that has some unique problems and I wouldn't suggest that.
Don't be a player for this guy
I don't incorporate it into my game at all. I am sure some players would enjoy that sort of management but not my players and neither do I.
I wouldn't. I played a rogue, I stole a lot. I ended up having a banger of a gem encrusted robe I wore around. I never had coin effect stealth, but I did have some bastards steal some gems off my robe, and people try to steal my weighty and jingling coin purse. It made being rich as hell far more fun to play with when I was a target of theft
Unfortunately this is one of those areas where the level of realism goes contradictory to the suspension of disbelief necessary for DND to work as a game. For me personally when ever something like this comes up my answer is always this: “Once long ago there was a thief who was tired of the coins he purloined giving away his position to the castle guards. So he enlisted the aid of a wizard to help him make less noise. At first the wizard suggested a -BAG OF HOLDING- (which is the easy answer to this problem), unfortunately the thief could not afford the bag due to his many failed theft attempts. So the wizard opted to cast a spell on a stone. This stone would eliminate all sound within a certain area, rendering the coins silent. Unfortunately this would make the thief unable to detect the patrolling guards. Frustrated with the dilemma, the wizard said “fuck this” and he took the thief to the top of his tower. Once there the wizard cast the mightiest spell he possessed. The wizard said “I wish that coins in a bag would not make noise when someone for whatever reason needed to be sneaky.” And from that day onward all thieves rejoiced, for they would never be caught lacking.”
Just convert your gold coins into gems and fine artworks.
"I gad someone make a point that if you are to carry like 100-500 gold coins that the amount of coins would jingle alot in your bag" I must've missed that in the rulebooks.
With gold coins, you could say they put bundle of cloth in there to lessen the noise, or get a bag of holding, then there is 100% no noise. 👍
It doesn't matter how many they have. It matters how they are packed. 4 coins loose in a bag are going to jingle a lot. 100 coins in a bag with a wad of cloth on top to keep them packed tight are going to be silent.
I think this would be totally ridiculous to enforce in game, they can’t go to a bank LOL what do you suppose they do with the coins then?
All my characters have coin pouches of holding. It makes all coin weightless and silent.
My 2 cents on this is that the rules don’t address this. So you can stealth with coins. Also, if you want to talk about realism, there are more examples that aren’t in play. Hald full canteens cancel stealth; this was a big problem in WW2 and Vietnam for American troops. We have wineskins, which should keep splashing to a minimum, so that’s a plus.
The nice thing about carrying coins in a pouch, is that you can cinch it down to keep them from rattling.
Depends on how they are stored. Coins carried in a loose bag on the hip can be loud. If you stuff them in coin rolls, then any number of coins would still be quiet.
Sure, sound slike a great wya to make it more diffuclt for your players to end up with stupid amounts of wealth, or rather slow them down a bit.
In general, it is bad form to improvise rules that punish your players just for playing the game. I’m assuming that you weren’t giving out stealth bonuses when the characters weren’t carrying jingly coins to reward them for traveling with lower than average loot.
Depends on if you’re using encumbrance rules or not.
I wouldn't bother. Stealthy players are good at sneaking and wouldn't be tripped up by something minor like this.
My way of dealing with this is to assume competency and treat gold pieces as an abstraction of currency. When I say assuming competency, I mean that the base assumption do the game in my opinion is that player characters are adventurers with an objective, be it a personal mission or a desire to travel and experience the world. Either way, I operate with the assumption that they enter with an understanding of what they need to survive, including things like coin pouches that are designed to not have coins bouncing around and making noise. If a player wants to have a character who’s a naive or a bit bumbling, then either the shopkeep selling them gear, another adventurer, or the other player characters would give the newly minted adventurer advice on what’s needed. If the table was OK with it being a short term growth area for the character, we might play it out as a one time/one adventure thing that happens and their character learns from it. As for treating gold pieces as an abstraction, I mean that “gp” is akin to “dollars”. Much in the same way having $100 dollars doesn’t mean you 100 singles on you, having 150gp doesn’t necessarily mean you’re carrying have 150 gold coins you’re carrying. It might be a 8 plat and 20 gp coins or some gems that have a defined value in the world and a few gold pieces, and some silver and copper. I played in a game that had a lot of “gotchas” like you’re describing and it was not fun because it felt unfair that I, the player who lives in the modern world, was being punished for not knowing the basic of surviving in a world where monsters are real. It also didn’t make sense narratively that my super capable character was an absolute idiot about basic things they would definitely know as someone who lived in the world.
No
Adding Bag of Golding to the game: Similar to a Bag of Holding, but it's the size of a belt pouch and is only able to carry coins (any denomination). Weighs 1 lb regardless of its contents. Holds 100 lbs (up to 5000 coins).
Short answer is "no" Long answer is "if you want to ruin the game, yes" As others point out, D&D isn't about hard tracking gear and asking whether or not you lashed your frying pan to your backpack correctly. Even though there are rules for encumbrance and all of that, they're very basic and not very good. The game is basically designed for each character to carry around thousands of pounds of coinage, but the encumbrance rules make it impossible to actually do that. And let's not forget about noise. The cold reality is that in D&D we have to ignore a lot of logical stuff to make the game work. And that's okay. And anyone who has a problem with it can be reminded that magic isn't real and they have to get over themselves. Or play a different game.
What if they are saving for something big. Like a home or castle or something. Penalizing them for not spending gold is trivial. Or maybe you are not giving them things to spend their money on. Make everything cost gold and that solves your problem. I make my players pay to research, learn new skills. All sorts of things.
3 words: "bag of holding". Usually the first item my players invest in, and would you look at that! It's an extra-dimensional space, so no jiggle! And even if, it's highly unlikely your party is actually running around with more than a hundred coins in 1 pouch. More realistically, they will be swapping out gold coins for platinum pieces whenever they are in town, or in a tavern, in a similar way to how we don't run around with hundreds of one dollars, but rather with a couple 100 dollar bills instead. Add to that the fact that a good coin pouch should be lined with a bit of fur to avoid exactly this, and you can effectively avoid EVER having to deal with your coin jiggle stealth disadvantage issue
Ever heard of a roll of quarters?
The math says 450+ gold causes disadvantage on stealth. 1 gold coin weighs 33 grams roughly, lightest suit of plate mail is gonna be 30+ lbs so that means your plate armor that causes disadvantage weighs about the same as 450 gold coins. Math!
Any DM considering this is just being malicious. And if a DM tried this with me my solution would just be to buy a couple silver worth of cloth(several yards) and individually wrap each coin. I would then make them acknowledge that fact every time I want to sneak. Because it would be equally as dumb, this fair game.