AD&D Training Costs: A Common DM Unforced Error

"you shall not crucify your PCs upon a cross of gold"

Training costs and their onerous burden is an issue that's arisen multiple times on the CAG Discord server, and is a perennial complaint in AD&D discussion space overall, so I thought it would be worthwhile to highlight the release valves built into the system that DMs often overlook.

To be exceedingly clear, training costs should never, ever, neverever, be more burdensome than you want them to be.  If they are more burdensome than you want them to be after reading this blog post then I want you to pull out a mirror, look into it, and complain to who you see there.  Because it's that guy's fault and no one else's.

It's not Gary's fault.

It's not the system's fault.

It's your fault.

I'm not even going to get into the possibility of doing odd jobs for people who could train PCs to reduce the gross training costs, I'm presuming that full retail AD&D training costs will be paid.

This means every PC will need a surplus of gold equaling 1,500 gp x their existing level prior to training.  Once you have the solution to the equation you can solve for X, and the preceding sentence is that solution.  It's nothing more complicated then that.

So identify what are the main drivers that reduce a PC's gold surplus at the lower levels that training costs really bite the hardest?  

• Upgrading equipment
• Identifying magic items
• Maintenance costs of 100 gp x level/month

One of these is entirely in your control and the other two are partially in your control.

• Upgraded equipment can be looted off of human enemies (presuming the party is mostly human), and you as the DM can certainly weight lower level adventures towards more human enemies from which plate mail, long bows, etc., can be taken from.  No one is forcing you to run humanoids exclusively at levels 1-3.

• Players can choose to taste potions or practice with magic weapons and armor to discover their properties instead of paying retail to ID them.  Wands can have command words carved into them and be test-fired.  This isn't entirely in your control as some risk-averse players will want to ID everything regardless, but they might be doing so because they think the risk of a curse is greater than it is, or the curses are more burdensome than they need to be.

• While players ultimately choose the tempo of their adventures, and so the DM is not entirely in control of how many adventures they go on per month, a DM can certainly put their thumb on the scale if they place adventure locations some distance away from home base unnecessarily, at least in the earliest levels, such that a week or more of each month is eaten up by to-from travel.

The first step is not to sandbag the above three factors anymore than necessary if training costs are a problem in your game.

But let's say you've done that, and training costs still seem to be high enough that every other session people are trying to borrow some amount of gold in the party, and as much time is spent tracking what PC owes how much to each player as they spend planning their next expedition.

First, ask yourself honestly if you're running a mudcore game.  Because the rules do not support mudcore games and combining those rules with that style if flat out a category error.

Second, if you are righteous and true and can answer "no" to the question of perfidious mudcore, then my friend I would almost bet my bottom gold piece that you are a DM who is averse to the advice in the DMG to deprecate treasure XP for difficulty and these PCs always earn 1 XP for every GP worth of treasure taken.

You might think you're doing your players a solid by always giving them a 1:1 gp/XP ratio, and/or never giving them so much XP at once that they "burn" some of it off the back end.  But you're instead just crucifying them upon a cross of gold (sorry WJB, had to borrow).

The game presumed that either

gold XP would not be 1:1 all the time

or

that players would score hauls that gave them so much treasure XP they would burn excess XP off due to the "can't level twice in one adventure" rule

Both/either of these are release valves for training costs.

I want to be clear to the mudcore-loving DMs out there: I am flatly not advocating for players to get the same amount of money and less XP for it.  That puts you squarely back into the monthly maintenance draining the surplus.

No, I am saying that however much XP you figure a given adventure location should be worth, that some of those monsters should have treasure rich enough that the PCs don't earn a 1:1 gp/XP ratio for that treasure taken.

If you want to put an adventure site nearby that's worth about 3,000 XP and place a small bandit hideout with 20 or so ne'er-do-wells, said bandits may have just scored looting a caravan for 12,000 gp - which might only be worth 3,000 XP.  But it still buys 12,000 gp worth of training, spell research, or mercenaries.

Problem solved.

"But I could just make the cost of training more realistic!"  

Sure, you could.  But this is a game with an essay in the DMG about vast sums of gold coming into the players hands, not a game with an essay about cheap service costs for adventurers.  Players enjoy feeling like ballers and spending lots of gold.  Don't be afraid of it.  Players having the cash to develop their characters is only going to open up your campaign.

You have control of your campaign's federal reserve.  Make Ron Paul want to audit it.