Why D&D’s Economy Is Broken (And Why That’s Actually Fine)

Your players just asked how much a war elephant costs, and you’re frantically researching “medieval livestock prices” while they wait. Meanwhile, another player wants to know why the village blacksmith has better inventory than the city’s trading guild, and honestly, you don’t have good answers.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: D&D’s economy is broken. The designers basically admitted as much in the DMG, essentially saying ‘we know there are infinite wealth loopholes. Sorry.’ Luckily, you don’t need economic precision to create meaningful balance. You need adventure-driving scarcity, and relationship-based pricing.

How Economics Can Kill Your Game

Economic inconsistencies don’t just break immersion, they destroy player agency. When your fighter realizes that a handful of carrots or dining silver costs more than a ruby (looking at you, BG3), or when your party accumulates 500,000 gold pieces with nothing meaningful to spend it on, players stop making interesting economic choices.

Broken economies eliminate a fun avenue for strategic thinking. When prices are arbitrary and wealth has no consequences, you lose an interesting dimension of gameplay that drives exploration, creates social conflicts, and provides natural adventure hooks.

Unfortunately, the economy in Dungeons & Dragons (especially 5th Edition) feels less like a functioning system and more like a loose framework for adventurers to spend gold.

“The Game Is Not an Economy

The rules of the game aren’t intended to model a realistic economy, and players who look for loopholes that let them generate infinite wealth using combinations of spells are exploiting the rules.” -DMG p19

_{This quote is under the ‘Players Exploiting The Rules’ section of the DMG, and TBH this section is worth re-reviewing occasionally as you get into heated discussion with your players.}

The State of the Game

To be fair, this is by design, and my opinion is that the designers actually did the right thing here. They focused on the gameplay instead of attempting to model a realistic medieval-fantasy economy. However, this means that all DMs face a common set of problems that can really hurt player immersion and engagement. Things like:

• Inconsistent Pricing: The costs of things are static, and based on a desired character progression rather than a real economic system.
• Adventurer-Centric Economy: The economy is designed around adventurers, so the cost of items, services, and wages aren’t logical. Commoners would struggle to afford basic things. Healing potions, weapons, and armor are priced in ways that would make them inaccessible to almost all of the population, and there would be little actual incentive to create most of the interesting things players shop for.
• Gold Inflation: Adventurers accumulate vast amounts of gold, but there’s little in the way of meaningful sinks to remove that excess wealth from the game (although callout to the new Bastion and updated Crafting systems from 2024, I see you trying). Over time, your campaign will evolve into an economic imbalance where players have more money than they can reasonably spend.
• Lack of Economic Rules: The game doesn’t provide detailed mechanics for trade, taxation, or economic stability. This does keep the focus on adventuring, but it makes world-building difficult for DMs and players who want more realism.

Many DMs just hand-wave these issues, or they house-rule basic economic rules (usually adding sinks) to make things more coherent. Some common tricks I’ve seen being used:

• Revised Item Pricing: Adjusting the cost of goods and services to make them more realistic.
• Taxation & Fees: Introducing taxes, guild fees, or maintenance costs for bastions to create meaningful gold sinks.
• Living Expenses: Requiring players to pay for food, lodging, and lifestyle expenses regularly to simulate a functioning economy and create more sinks.
• Magic Item Scarcity: Limiting the availability of magic items for purchase or crafting (this one is probably the most important, since it has a much stronger effect on all aspects gameplay).

All these are good options, and we’ll talk more about these issues and solutions in future posts.