conversiond20-moderndnd-5ewealth
D20 Modern had a system where instead of tracking your money directly, it would track a "wealth" attribute. Transactions have a DC instead of price, and a Wealth check is made to determine if a character can afford buying something. The check can also alter Wealth representing excessive spending or profits.
Has anyone published something like this for D&D 5e? Or has anyone had success adapting it as a homebrew system?
The conditions required to get the maximum possible wealth bonus are very artificial, but for the sake of argument let's assume the following:
Such a character can start with a wealth bonus of +20 at 1st level (8 from the 2d4 roll, +6 for Dilettante, and +3 x2 from taking Windfall twice).
At level-up, there are three ways the wealth bonus might increase:
So we can figure out what the maximum theoretical wealth increase is for each level by tracking the things that give bonuses to the Profession roll (Wisdom, Windfall feats, and ranks in Profession), and comparing that to the current wealth rating (which is the DC for Profession checks when leveling up). We can then calculate the maximum bonus from the Profession roll, from new Windfall feats, and from the flat bonus from having ranks in Profession. That's summarised in the following table.
S Increases
t W ———————————————————————
C a e T M
L R F h B r a M | F R o | a B
e a e e o t l a R | R e a t I | x o
v W n a c n i t x o | o a n a n | n
e i k t k u n h l | l f k l c | u
l | s | s | s | s | g | l | l | s | s | r.| s
———+————+———+—————+——————+———————+—————+————+————+————+——————+——————
1: 18 4 x2 | — +20 — | — — — — | +20
2: 18 5 x3 | +12 +20 32 | +3, +3, +1, +7 | +27
3: 18 6 x4 | +14 +27 34 | +2, +3, +2, +7 | +34
4: 19 7 x5 | +16 +34 36 | +1, +3, +2, +6 | +40
5: 19 8 x5 | +17 +40 37 | +0, +0, +2, +2 | +42
6: 19 9 x7 | +20 +42 40 | +0, +6, +2, +8 | +50
7: 19 10 x7 | +21 +50 41 | +0, +0, +2, +2 | +52
8: 20 11 x8 | +24 +52 44 | +0, +3, +3, +6 | +58
9: 20 12 x9 | +26 +58 46 | +0, +3, +3, +6 | +64
10: 20 13 x10 | +28 +64 48 | +0, +3, +3, +6 | +70
11: 20 14 x10 | +29 +70 49 | +0, +0, +3, +3 | +73
12: 21 15 x12 | +32 +73 52 | +0, +6, +3, +9 | +82
13: 21 16 x12 | +33 +82 53 | +0, +0, +4, +4 | +86
14: 21 17 x13 | +35 +86 55 | +0, +3, +4, +7 | +93
15: 21 18 x14 | +37 +93 57 | +0, +3, +4, +7 | +100
16: 22 19 x15 | +40 +100 60 | +0, +3, +4, +7 | +107
17: 22 20 x15 | +41 +107 61 | +0, +0, +4, +4 | +111
18: 22 21 x17 | +44 +111 64 | +0, +6, +5, +11 | +122
19: 22 22 x17 | +45 +122 65 | +0, +0, +5, +5 | +127
20: 23 23 x18 | +47 +127 67 | +0, +3, +5, +8 | +135
Table key:
As you can see, the wealth bonus quickly becomes so large that it becomes impossible to beat the DC on the Profession check even when rolling perfect 20s. (And note that 20 is not an automatic success, see p. 44 Skill Checks.) After 4th level, only the Windfall feats and the flat bonus matter.
So, the maximum wealth bonus at 10th level is +70 (wealth bonus starts at +64, plus the total increase of 6), and the maximum wealth bonus at 20th level is +135 (wealth bonus starts at +127, plus the total increase of +8).
As for how much that is in real-world dollars, according to the system there is no way to translate it into dollars:
[The] Wealth bonus [is] a sort of composite of her income, credit rating, and savings. […] Wealth is not a direct representation of a character's salary or how much money the character has socked away in the bank. […] The Wealth bonus simply represents your character's buying power at any given time.
So a character with +70 Wealth is rich enough that credit is easy enough to come by that they almost never need to worry about money. For comparison, the table on p. 38 calls +31 and higher "Very rich". The only purchase that could even be noticed by such a character (i.e., which would drop their wealth by any amount) would have to have a Purchase DC of 85, which means they could have as many mansions (Purchase DC 36), Learjets (Purchase DC 40), or M1A1 Abrams tanks (Purchase DC 47) as they wanted to own. The only way money would ever be an object would be if the GM set an exorbitant custom DC for, say, buying a very large rival company.
A character with +135 Wealth is so exceedingly rich that they don't ever have to even think about money—their wealth is so great that everyone knows they're good for it, and their vast network of accountants pays for everything out of the complex financial empire they own. They probably don't even know exactly how much they're worth, and considering how the stock markets work, their exact wealth is probably impossible to know until they tried to use every last penny of it, at which point there would probably be world-wide financial panic. They can probably buy entire countries, unofficially.
In d20 Modern, there's no thing as "gunpoint" per se. There is:
Surprising someone and getting them flat-footed, in which case they lose their Dodge bonus. The problem is, it requires GM fiat to say "you're still flat-footed until someone twitches" instead of the first combat round going by, everyone rolling init, and rushing the guy. But, RAW...
You can ready an action to shoot someone. Of course, in d20 Modern one shot isn't likely to kill anyone, so it's not as intimidating as one might hope. And if you got them flat-footed or got initiative on them, then you can have a readied action before they get to act.
The fact that ranged attacks provoke attacks of opportunity is an additional wrinkle, but in the real world cops etc. know not to keep melee opponents at gunpoint at very close range because experience has shown a guy with a knife or whatnot can be on you before you can fire in many circumstances.
Best Answer
5e doesn't have that natively. But you've got two options...
The DMG gives good guidance on how to design it yourself. Check the DMG at pp.264-266: "New Ability Scores: Honor and Sanity."
It's a description of those two particular scores, but has enough commentary to use them as a good structure for designing your own score. (And remember, that's the purpose of the core rules: to give you an excellent example of a D&D game, so that you can craft yours.)
Published Wealth rules: On DM's guild you'll find 5-minute workday's variant rules. One of the variant rules presented is wealth, and it's explicitly modeled on the d20 modern system. Starting wealth, tie-in to 5e lifestyles, maintaining wealth, wealth checks, wealth saves (!), and business ownership: it's all there.
I will admit: I've not (yet) played with this variant. I've used others from this author and been generally pleased. And at $0.50, it's not too much to try out.
If I can throw a piece of advice out there: if you decide ot go option 2, spend ten minutes to make up your own first. In my experience you'll learn a lot more about how you want your game to work by comparing yours to 5MWD's--no matter which or what you nd up using--than if you just read someone else's work.