In this post I want to discuss how your spend and acquire wealth in Fantasy Dice (and so also Crimson Exodus). It might not make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn’t read the rules, and most players don’t need this much of an understanding of how the wealth stat works. This post is targeted at GMs and players who are interested in the mercantile aspect of roleplaying.

So, in Fantasy Dice what you can afford is determined by your wealth, and so the worth of everything is usually discussed in the term of who can afford it. For example, only the wealthy can afford alchemical ink, but even the poor can afford soot ink. In effect wealth is a stat which means that you don’t need to worry about counting coppers to see what you can afford.

There are nine levels of wealth, with the gap between each level of wealth increasing as you climb the wealth ladder. While a poor bondman man is only slightly better off than a pauper vagabond, a rich noble is much wealthier than a wealthy merchant. This logarithmic scale goes from beggary to legendary, for everything from penniless slaves to emperors with unbelievable riches.

When the price of something is discussed it is in terms of who can afford it, as already mentioned. This is great as you know that as long as you have the required wealth you can grab it – as long as you don’t go overboard or share too much – which can cause your wealth to drop. If you can’t afford it you might sacrifice some of your wealth for that object of desire and so drop your stat, or you may risk trying to haggle for what you want. This is all very easy to get the hang of, but when it can get slightly more confusing is how finding treasure, looting, robbing or receiving a well earned reward for a job well done affects your wealth?

Generally, acquiring coin and other stuff equivalent to your current wealth or below does not impact your wealth, unless it is in large quantities, but it could help to maintain it and so prevent it from dropping. You must acquire items worth more than you could afford with your current wealth to rise in wealth (how much you rise depends on its worth and your current wealth). This is still pretty obvious and if a wealthy man is worth a few gold coins and probably a pouch or two of silvers, then finding a treasure with that amount of coins will make anyone not already wealthy, well, wealthy.

However, finding an item with a worth making it affordable only to the wealthy will not make you wealthy, it will make you well off which is one level below wealthy. This makes sense when you think about that a wealthy character would be able to afford that item without dropping in wealth. A wealthy merchant buying a mail byrnie affordable to the wealthy will not drop in wealth because he has more wealth than the worth of the mail byrnie. Thus finding a mail byrnie will not make you wealthy, it will make you well off.

The wealth stat makes keeping track of finances a breeze and allows the players and GM to focus on the adventure and fun stuff without having to be accountants and track finances, but still makes it possible to keep track of value and engage in trade and less savoury endeavours.

I hope this post on wealth helps you handle treasure and wealth in your Fantasy Dice or Crimson Exodus game, and if you have any questions just drop them in the comments.