Trickle Down Loot
You’ve risen from nothing. You’ve gained lands and tiles, saved nations, battled gods, and amassed a literal mountain of gold. But as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. At some point, the campaign is going to end. You don’t get any bonus points for unspent gold.
If you’re in the kind of campaign that uses magic item shops, you’ve already got an obvious loot sink. However, even if you do include a gold/power exchange rate in your campaign, there may come a time when enough is enough. You’ve got a boatload of wondrous items, a spellbook full of all the latest magic, and even a fully tricked out stronghold. What comes next?
This is exactly what happened in my long-running megadungeon campaign. After the party Lootsmeister finished the tally, the gang discovered that they’d accumulated nearly half a million GP in assets. After the spending spree was over they’d bought out the local magic merchant, got creative by commissioning combo items, and even purchased a crab tank. After they got done taking their newly acquired luxury items for a victory lap around town (“Suck it, anti-party!”) they still had too much money lying around. And that’s when they did me proud.
My selfish, penny-pinching, kill-a-goblin-for-his-last-copper PCs spontaneously turned to philanthropy. Guilty about all the times they’d lead monsters from the dungeon and back into town, they commissioned four watch towers and a garrison. Then they made a combination guildhall and inn. Next was an adventuring university, a monument, renovations for two local temples, a performance hall staffed by a troop of gnomish actors, and even free training for the local militia. I promptly changed the small town into a small city, and the world was summarily transmuted, shaped by the PCs’ will.
In the end, I think that is the best thing that GP can buy. Not shiny new items or a bragging rights, but an element of narrative control. You’re no longer an adventurer. You’re a world-builder. I can’t wait for the professors at the newly founded Adventurer U to ask the PCs to guest lecture.
How about the rest of you guys? How do you like to spend your loot when a campaign comes to its end-game? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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In the 5e tiamat campaign, at the end of it, my bard ended up donating 1/4th of my treasure to his old college, 1/2 to make a charity to help people rebuild and not starve to death after all the destruction and poor negotiations with the good dragons who helped and ended up taking alot of the gold stolen from the people by the tiamat cultists, spent 1k to get back to his old male half elf self after a reincarnation turned him into a female halfing with frog traits added on, and then gave the rest to his fiance to help start a trading empire since she was a merchant.
The rest of my party who had all turned evil by that time spent their money on their private army, on enforcing their new positions as top dogs within the evil zhentarim faction, and hoarding the rest, except for the barbarian trogzor who invested in a potion shop since he always wanted more potions.
Nice! Gotta invest that money.
Question though: How do you un-reincarnate yourself for 1,000 gp?
Kill yourself for another spin at the reincarnation wheel.
A kind DM is how.
Gee, you’d think that Cleric would be better about understanding the value of sharing: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-taste-of-greed
Completely different scenarios! Party loot is divided by special charter. Hirelings get paid a flat rate. So sayeth the rules!
In that scenario Fighter presumably spent his share of the loot on pizza and soda. If you need to share the things you buy with your shares then you’ve got an infinite loop and eventually the game will freeze and you’ll need to force-restart it.
Just blow in the cartridge. It acts as a breath of life spell.
Does the rules say anything about hirelings having undying loyalty to their boss?
That absurd! It’s like suggesting my sword — which i bought and paid for — might also turn on me!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/powerful-ego
While paying based on rules as written is totally in character for cleric, spending money on gold statues of themself seems like more of a Fighter/Thief thing to do.
Laurel must have run out of space in the composition. In the script, Thief and Fighter were raising statues of the whole party in the background. When you try to fit everything in a single panel, the subtleties sometimes get left on the cutting room floor.
This just showcases that Cleric literally has more money than he knows what to do with.
but this is this and that is that; rules are rules, and comedy is comedy.
Long story short, after acquiring and selling (swindling) a magic ring to a local lord, I made off with 80K in gold. Being still relatively low level (3 I think) I decided I didn’t want to retire to a life of relative luxury anytime soon and instead put out feelers for something interesting to invest in. Turned out the local wood elves were staging an uprising against the humans who were oppressing them. Being a half elf myself I felt for my forest brethren and gave them the gold to help with their uprising. And then promptly left town.
You are the premise of Just Cause: Faerûn.
I’ve yet to actually get to “endgame” in a campaign so far, so I can’t accurately say what I’d do. But my construct rider Constanze can never have enough money. If she gets enough time and money at endgame she’d create an army of golems and clockworks to assist in the fight. Cannon Golems, Warmongers, Clockwork Goliaths, etc. She’d make them all.
Yeesh. What are you fighting that you need a clockwork army?
Proteans, but anything can be helped with a clockwork army. Clockwork Dragons, Angels, Excavators, etc. So many amazing clockwork constructs
IIRC in either first edition or OD&D you actually did get bomus xp for your gold. I haven’t actually played 1e but that’s what I’ve heard
What we need is for a grognard to chime in and tell us of the before time. Of the long long ago.
Not a grognard, but I happen to know that income was EXP. If you looted 500 gp you got the experience worth that much loot. You could go murder all you wanted, but unless it was profitable you couldn’t level up.
This is scarily well-timed, as I’m about to ding 7th and get Leadership on my Magus in the megadungeon Rappan Athuk. My DM confirmed that yes, I’ll have to pay the salaries of all my followers.
I’m not even doing it for the minions, I just want a cohort to function as a 4th party member so I’m not stuck doing 70% of the party’s damage on my own.
Well I mean… I guess you don’t have to take the max number of followers, right? Keep in manageable and save a bit of money.
The Rules’ Prayer had me in stitches every single line. I had to stop laughing at parts long enough to be able to read the next parts several times.
“Well actually” however was an amazing capstone feature. It’s really the best since you really have to understand D&D style arguments grasp why that is the best version of “amen” you could use for that. Just… bravo.
Hmmm yeah, the one time I ended a characters journeys with actual amounts of wealth they started up their own inter-planar trading post with the full intention of thumbing their nose at Sigil based on the simple principle of “serving the same purpose but with none of the headache”. Of course it was still just a small town, but it’s the intention that counts. And the ability to taunt the Lady of Pain and get away with it. =P
From the earliest days of the comic to the present, you make me happy to write this thing. Thanks for the kind words, Ramsus!
Also, now more than ever, I want to make time to play Torment.
It’s kind of funny, really. My campaigns were either roleplay focused home games or PFS so I never ran into that problem of excess money.
That said, I actually find the low levels to be where I’ve done my flavorful spending. There’s this sweet spot before your gold hits four digits where you can afford just about every mundane loot and luxury but you can’t quite afford your first of the wonderful Big 6. Potions and scrolls are a thing, sure, but there’s room for fun.
My wayang summoner owns a carriadge. It holds her things, it lets her move about with a bit of style, and most importantly, she doesn’t have to walk everywhere. She even plans on hiring a longterm driver soon.
That would be a HUGE deal for anyone living in the world, but it is rarely a factor in play expectations. In fact, in the first PFS scenario I played with her ride, the GM had to modify the encounter to make it work. Apparently thugs that ambush you in the street never plan on their marks using basic transportation 😀
I think it’s always worth looking at the mundane options. For example, have you ever considered battle cattle?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/herd-animals/bison
That sucker is 75 gp when battle-trained. It’s rocking a 2d6+12 AoE as starting equipment. Just imagine what a team of them strapped to a battle carriage could do. >:3
Hahaha, funny you say that. For a little while, there was a problem in PFS where people would spend pocket change on critters that were head and shoulders above the monsters in the scenario. The organized play team had to lay down a new rule to limit them.
If I recall the rules correctly, you’re not able to buy a creature with a CR significantly above your character. Either that, or you can’t own anything with HD that doesn’t excel your character’s level by more than 1.
If we’re going by 5e rules then that hireling is quite right to complain; Hireling, Skilled: 2 gp per day. So sayeth the rules Mr. Cleric. If any of them were untrained however they’d actually get cut down to 2 sp per day. Perhaps Mr. Cleric knows none of them know how to read and is hoping that getting they’re getting confused between the town and don’t know how to read so that 3 sp per day feels generous?
Hirelings and the like following the party has never come up in the games I’ve played. It’s a combination of never remembering one could do that and not needing them in the games I’ve played.
Cleric is using Pathfinder rules. Commoner is using 5e rules, hence the disagreement. Poor Warrior on the other hand is playing Burning Wheel. He’s confused by the lack of cash dice.
Man, that story about the rogue improving the town makes me feel kinda bad; all my Antipaladin did with his riches was get into the slave trade.
Hey, you’re still improving the local economy, right? It’s pretty.much the same thing. >_>
I mean, it was in the Hold of Belkzen, and the orcs liked me. So I’m still going to call it a win.
Yeah man. You’re giving back to the community. And also you’ve reminded me to play Shadow of Mordor. You’re doing good!
I’ve always liked having characters that want to build up an area for one reason or another.
My current character is a necromancer who is adventuring to build funds to build and maintain an orphanage on the island he hails from.
Well now you’ve got me curious. Why would he do such a thing?
He spent the the large majority of his childhood as a streetrat orphan, fighting hard to survive and it was HELL.
He’s doing it so that no other child has to go through what he did to survive, and just maybe, open them up to opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise by teaching them to read and the like. Maybe even try to open the door for them to learn magic, though specifically not necromancy, as he’s not going to willingly lead anyone, ESPECIALLY not children, to an early death (Necromancy is strictly forbidden in basically all human lands in my campaign)
Cool to see a good-aligned necromancer. The best I’ve ever encountered in the wild is true neutral.
I need magic items in order to be effective in combat. If I am effective in combat, I can kill demons and devils that would otherwise open portals into the material realm and flood us all with fiends.
So, I will keep investing in myself until I am fully decked out in magic gear so that I can keep everyone safe from Asmodeous and the ruler of the Abyss. I get that investing in orphanages and churches and infrastructure is important, but the priority lies in not dying right now, so I can fight the good fight properly.
That’s the quick and dirty way to play it, sure. But when you’re already carrying a king’s ransom worth of magic items on your back, upgrading from a +3 to +4 whatever-who-cares begins to look a bit less like ‘investing in myself’ and a bit more like ‘letting the orphans starve.’
YMMV, but I like to keep a 5-10% fund for special projects in the non-adventuring category. It gives my character more of a stake in the world. And mechanically speaking, it can often pay dividends to be popular with the NPCs.
My group has been playing a Runelords game for years, and the players whose characters have lasted longest are already making plans for their characters’ retirements. Meanwhile, I’ve been imagining what these plans and everything else the PCs have done will affect the campaign world 30-50 years down the line.
Alright, Cleric is DEFINITELY a priest of Abadar.