D&D 5e Starting Gold: How Much Your Character Starts With (by Class and Level)

You are building a level 1 character. You make it down to the equipment line, and the sheet asks a question nobody explained at the table: do you take the gear your class hands you, or do you roll for a pile of gold and go shopping?

I have watched new players freeze on that exact step. It feels like it should be a small decision, and then someone asks "wait, how much gold do I even get?" and the whole table stalls while three people flip to different pages of the Player's Handbook and get three different answers.

So here is the clean version. How much starting gold every D&D 5e class begins with, whether you should roll or take the equipment, what the 2024 rules changed, and how to handle starting wealth when a campaign opens above 1st level. By the end you will be able to answer the question in about five seconds instead of stalling session zero.

How much starting gold does each class get?

If you just need the number, here it is. Under the 2014 Player's Handbook, your class gives you a number of d4 dice, and you multiply the total by 10 to get your starting gold in gp. The one exception is the Monk, who rolls 5d4 with no multiplier, which is exactly as poor as it sounds.

Class	Starting gold (2014)	Average
Barbarian	2d4 x 10 gp	50 gp
Bard	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp
Cleric	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp
Druid	2d4 x 10 gp	50 gp
Fighter	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp
Monk	5d4 gp	13 gp
Paladin	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp
Ranger	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp
Rogue	4d4 x 10 gp	100 gp
Sorcerer	3d4 x 10 gp	75 gp
Warlock	4d4 x 10 gp	100 gp
Wizard	4d4 x 10 gp	100 gp
Artificer	5d4 x 10 gp	125 gp

That gold is not free money on top of your gear. It is the alternative to it. You either take the equipment package printed in your class, or you take the gold and buy your own kit from the equipment list. You do not get both.

A quick gut check on the numbers: a 5d4 x 10 class can roll anywhere from 50 gp on a terrible night to 200 gp on a great one, which is a huge swing for something you decide before the campaign even starts. We will come back to that swing, because it is the whole reason the "roll or take equipment" question matters.

If you want to see where you land before committing, our d4 roller takes 5d4 directly and shows every die, so you can watch the spread rather than trusting the average. Every class rolls d4 here. Only the count and the multiplier change, and the monk is the one class with no multiplier at all.

Should you roll for gold or take the equipment?

This is the part that actually trips people up, so let me give you a real answer instead of "it depends."

For most classes, the default equipment package is worth more raw gold than an average roll. Your class hands you armor, a weapon or two, and a pack, and if you added up what all of that costs in the Player's Handbook, it usually beats the average gold you would roll. The designer Tony Casper ran the math on this at ThinkDM and found that the standard equipment comes out ahead for almost every class. The two exceptions are the Bard and the Sorcerer, whose average gold rolls edge out their packages by a small margin.

So my default advice at the table is simple: take the equipment unless you have a specific reason not to. It is worth more, it is faster, and it protects you from rolling a 50 on your Fighter and starting the campaign unable to afford the armor you actually need.

When does rolling win? Three situations:

• You want a loadout the package does not give you. A Wizard who would rather carry a light crossbow and a stack of spell components than the default kit is better off buying à la carte.
• Your DM lets you take the average or the maximum instead of rolling. That removes the gamble entirely, and at that point a 5d4 x 10 class taking 125 gp can shop smart and often match or beat the package.
• You genuinely like the risk. Some players want to roll, and a hot roll on a 5d4 x 10 class is a fun way to start rich.

This nine-minute breakdown from SkullSplitter Dice walks through the same decision with examples if you want to see it laid out visually:

What about gold from your background?

Here is the piece people forget. If you take the equipment package instead of rolling, you are not completely broke. Your background gives you its own small pouch of coins on top of your gear.

In the 2014 rules, most backgrounds include a modest 10 to 25 gp. An Acolyte starts with 15 gp, a Noble with 25 gp, a Soldier with 10 gp, and so on. It is not enough to retire on, but it covers a night at the inn, a few torches, and a hot meal before the first dungeon. Always check your background's equipment line, because that pocket money is easy to miss and it is genuinely yours to spend.

This is also why two Fighters at the same table can start with different amounts of coin. One took the gold and rolled well, the other took the equipment and is carrying a Noble's 25 gp. Same class, very different opening wallet.

How did the 2024 Player's Handbook change starting gold?

If you are playing on the 2024 rules, throw out the dice. This is one of the cleaner changes in the new Player's Handbook, and it is worth knowing because the old "5d4 x 10" muscle memory will steer you wrong.

In the 2024 rules, each class lists a single fixed amount of gold you can take in place of its equipment package. No rolling, no multiplying, just a number. Your background works the same way: it gives you either a small equipment kit or a flat 50 gp, your choice. Martial classes still get the largest gold figures and the Monk still starts lean, but the random swing is gone.

The practical effect is that 2024 characters start a little richer and a lot more consistent. Nobody rolls a 50 and limps into session 1, and nobody rolls a 200 and shows up in full plate before anyone has earned it. If your group is mixing 2014 and 2024 material, just agree as a table on which method everyone uses so one player is not rolling while another takes a flat figure.

How much starting gold for a character above level 1?

Plenty of campaigns do not start at level 1. Maybe you are joining an existing party, maybe your DM wants to skip the squishy early levels. Either way, "starting gold by class" stops being the right question, because a level 8 character built on 125 gp would be hilariously underequipped.

For higher-level starts, the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide gives you a table. Here is the shape of it:

Starting level	Starting gold	Magic items (standard)
1st to 4th	Normal starting equipment and gold	None
5th to 10th	500 gp plus 1d10 x 25 gp	1 uncommon item
11th to 16th	5,000 gp plus 1d10 x 250 gp	2 uncommon, 1 rare
17th to 20th	20,000 gp plus 1d10 x 250 gp	2 uncommon, 1 rare

Here is the catch I hit the first time I used it: this table tends to leave characters poorer than they would be if they had actually leveled up through play and collected loot the whole way. A lot of tables quietly ignore it and use a wealth-by-level guideline instead, picking a total gold value that matches roughly what a naturally-grown character of that level would be carrying. If you want the deeper reasoning, this rpg.stackexchange thread on starting wealth for higher levels is a good rabbit hole.

Whichever method you use, the golden rule is consistency. Pick one number for the whole party so the level 8 Wizard and the level 8 Fighter walk in with comparable buying power. Nothing sours a new campaign faster than one player realizing they got shorted at the door.

How much starting gold should a DM hand out?

If you are the one running the game, here is how I think about it.

For a normal 1st-level start, the book defaults are fine and you almost never need to touch them. The one tweak worth making: let players take the average gold for their class instead of rolling. It costs you nothing, it keeps a bad roll from kneecapping someone in the first hour, and it gets everyone to the table faster. A few players will still want to roll for the thrill, and that is fine. Offer the choice.

For a higher-level start, decide a single wealth number for the whole party and tell everyone up front. Then think about whether you want to hand out gold or actual magic items, because a level 11 party that buys whatever it wants plays very differently from one you outfit by hand. If your players are about to drop a few thousand gold on gear, our Magic Item Price Calculator gives you fair, rarity-based numbers so you are not inventing prices on the spot, and our full guide to D&D 5e magic item prices breaks down what each rarity should cost.

The deeper question hiding behind starting gold is "what is money even for in my campaign?" If gold only ever buys potions and the occasional sword upgrade, players stop caring about it. The tables where money matters are the ones where gold buys downtime activity choices, property, bribes, and influence. That is a worldbuilding decision worth making before session 1, not after.

Keep your party's gold straight from day one

Starting gold is the easy part. The hard part is what happens over the next thirty sessions, when the party has looted four dungeons, sold a magic sword, bought a boat, and nobody can agree on how much is actually in the shared pile.

I lost track of party gold more times than I want to admit before I started writing it down somewhere permanent. Whatever your party starts with becomes the baseline, and every purchase and payout after that has to track against it, or your economy turns to fiction. This is the same discipline that keeps a campaign alive in general, which I get into in how to keep track of a D&D campaign.

This is exactly the bookkeeping Saga20 handles for you. You run your session, it captures what the party earned, spent, and found, and the running total stays correct because you are not holding it in your head between games. If you would rather build your own toolkit first, our roundup of the best D&D tools for players and DMs covers what is worth your time. And if this starting-gold conversation is happening because you are kicking off something new, our step-by-step guide to starting a D&D campaign walks through the rest of session zero.

Settle the starting gold, write the number down, and let the rest of your campaign's economy take care of itself.