In Skies of Arcadia, you find the treasure trove of a legendary pirate that contains only a copper coin and a note saying “the real treasure is the friendship that led you here”. The heroes are naturally upset that they’re still broke. Luckily, it turns out the copper coin is recognisable as belonging to the legendary pirate, so it’s worth a significant sum by itself.
When we played Waterdeep Dragonheist I let my party keep 10% of the embezzlement money when they reported it to the city watch. That’s 50 000 good pieces. Didn’t derail the following campaign at all. DMs should stop being scared to give out some fat loot occasionally when appropriate.
Anytime the DM lets me get a lot of money I try to spend most of it on bling. Or at least not minmax too much with it
Why not both ?
I think the big problem is if you give the players too much money, then they have all the money they’d ever want, and it’s harder to reward them with money in the future. Of course, if you don’t reward them with money now, that just means you get that problem earlier.
If you give them things to buy with that money it can be fun. You can also have an ingame reason for that money. Like having a dragon threaten a kingdom for a humangus sum of money and it becomes an objective. The fun thing about it is, what happens if they keep some of it ? A lot of it ? Just bail and leave the kingdom to rot ?
I encourage them to buy castles and land.
Free plothooks and reasonable things for the players to sink gold into.
Please be my DM
If you play 5e, I would encourage you to check out the most recent UA play test with bastions.
I think the bigger problem is when you dangle a hoard in front of them and then make some bad excuse for why they can’t get it. That’s a bigger disappointment imo.
Adventuring is costly, make them blow all that hard earned loot on heals and buffs and a trip to the tavern where they have too much to drink and mugged.
My campaign economy cannot sustain an influx of funds, do you realize what an economic catastrophe that would be? I’m doing you the favor, I am controlling loot inflation!
“You find 100,000 gp”
“Oh!”
“You can now afford a loaf of bread”
“Oh.”
I remember I was playing curse of strahd and the dm had the travel rations cost like 80gold apiece. We argued and haggled to no avail. So we started butchering everything we saw, didnt matters what it was or what race it got butchered.
When werewolves die they turn back into their human form so we started knocking them out and butchering them while they were still alive, just to get some food and to avoid being seen as cannibals
“But the loaf of bread has incredible healing properties”
“Oh!”
“Except when it’s moldy, at which point it’s a mild poison. And it’s a bit moldy.”
“Oh.”
Riiiiight. So how about these dragon hordes ? Are dragons just F. A. Hayek’s representation in dnd ? Saving the economy from disaster ?
Ah, yes, the Sierra Madre trick.
But getting to it. That’s not the hard part. It’s letting go.
“I stash all 37 gold bars in my bag of holding. I then drink my potion of invisibility to sneak by the laser gate when Father Elijah passes through”
Hey cool a meme format inspired by the guys from Buzzfeed Unsolved, great show
I had that exact shit happen to me. Got to a underwater treasure filled with a dragon’s horde. And long story short, we get attacked, go back to the surface, hurricane we havent saw before right on us, and the onky things we kept was that IF you managed a save you kept 1 fucking item. Nevermind me saying to the DM : I put as many rings and necklaces and bracers on me as I can.
If you are going to give your party the allures of a big treasure and they beat your protections, you fucking better not pussy out and let them keep it all.
Right? Would be easy enough for a DM to just improvise if they don’t want the players using everything. Big ticket items have inscriptions that terrify anyone they try to sell it to, which is itself a plot hook. Maybe it’s all cursed. Or they get arrested by the local authorities on suspicion of trafficking in stolen goods. Or even just have another adventuring party steal it from them somehow.
Depends on the abilities of the party, but snatching away their spoils after they get away sounds even more fun than not letting them take it in the first place.
How about this. If youre gonna give them the option to get that loot, dont take it away. Taking away loot you gave your players is the same shit as having a cool weapon in a videogame and never giving ammo for it. Assume what you give your players for fun and up the challenge instead of taking away fun
I’m all for it! Balancing by buffing rather than nerfing seems to be best, in most cases.
leave the dwarf in there. he can dig himself out, and doesn’t suffer full encumbrance even carrying the entire dragon hoard single-handedly.
