How do you and your players deal with the huge amounts of cash that they loot from monsters
I mean it's not like they can put it in a bank and then go to the nearist ATM when they need it
Your thoughts please
Also, Temples of Abadar should function as a kind of banking system. Allowing a person to deposit funds at one and receive a bearer note for the amount which can be presented at another Temple to withdraw a similar amount.
The system goes back (IRL) to the Crusades and the Templar Order, so it's entirely feasible for a fantasy setting.
And with Temples of Abadar in most cities, and small chapels present likely in most large towns, the players have access to cash that they don't have to carry. And have it where they need it, in town.
Basically my answer is "have less of it". I'm leaning more and more toward trying to find or make a working loot/equipment system that relies less heavily on magic items, so I can feel better about not handing out tons of cash/coin. I'm currently testing it out on my PbP game, and if it works well I'll probably port it to my live games.
It's more focused on making magic items unique and interesting rather than hum-ho "+1 this or that", and trying to kill the Christmas Tree Effect, but I like the side effect of making coin a little harder to come by and making enemies with massive hoards, such as dragons, a little more worth the victory by eliciting "What are we going to do with all this money???" responses.
I like the cut of your jib orthos I think the root of the problem with the huge amout of money monstars have stems from basic D&D
Where player where awarded 1 xp per. GP value of treasure found which ment to gain xp
You needed shed loads of cash
I also tend to be a bit frugle on the cash side of things and I also limit what magic gear is avabile to buy
As to my way of thinking major magic items should be rare and wonderus not some thing you pick up at the market
Am I the only one here who has characters keep stuff in chests or bags or hidden compartments at home?
Coins are heavy ... and not very mobile. For the first few levels, characters are generally light enough on cash to carry it and/or spend it immediately. However, pretty soon they start gathering a treasure horde of their own and that gets dumped into a 'home base' of sorts most of the time.
That home base is also subject to being robbed sometimes (unless, of course, NPC guards or servants are hired to be there while characters trek around the world).
Who else read the thread title, and suddenly had Pink Floyd playing in their head?*raises hand*
Am I the only one here who has characters keep stuff in chests or bags or hidden compartments at home?
Coins are heavy ... and not very mobile. For the first few levels, characters are generally light enough on cash to carry it and/or spend it immediately. However, pretty soon they start gathering a treasure horde of their own and that gets dumped into a 'home base' of sorts most of the time.
That home base is also subject to being robbed sometimes (unless, of course, NPC guards or servants are hired to be there while characters trek around the world).
And this is why most Players are loathe to leave their swag in such a place. Unless they can put it in an immensely secure vault behind various deadly traps and sharks with beam attacks. Which costs them money (just as hiring a bunch of near-worthless 0-level guards costs some money, and guards who would be as effective in securing their money as they themselves would be - by, say, carrying it somewhere on their person) cost even moar money; PCs don't like having their hard-earned ill-gotten swag stole by some other band of bandits.
Of course this is why things like Leomund's Chest (er, Secure Chest) were invented, too. And creating a secure vault a good use for a Permanent Magnificent Mansion or private Demiplane, once characters get to that level.
Easiest way for a DM to goad/troll their players into going off on a merry chase is to have some random NPCs rob them.
And this is why most Players are loathe to leave their swag in such a place. Unless they can put it in an immensely secure vault behind various deadly traps and sharks with beam attacks.
That all depends. If you don't put thieves on them every time but only once in a while for plot hooks or to clear out excess wealth, it works alright. And that means not even robbing them every campaign. Sometimes my players manage their home base without danger at all.
Plus ... there's the added awesome of a home base ... or even individual character homes.
Plus ... there's the added awesome of a home base ... or even individual character homes.
Oh I love home bases. I never leave home without one, as a player (well ok at noob levels I'm a itinerant hobo like every other vagabond who gives "adventurer" a bad name).
But I also tend to go to paranoid levels to secure my personal swag. Even though, if a DM really wants to "plot hook" steal your junk, he's gonna.
But the very fact that I like home bases is why I don't like them to be seen by DMs as "a hook to screw you over with." Plot hooks like you mention are one thing and if the PCs are gonna get robbed for the hook anyhow (or to relieve them of the burden of success, though, silly me, that's what I thought the purpose of building a kewl base was for. They don't call villas and other homes money-pits 4 nothin!), whether they had a base or not, that's one thing and fair enough.
But me as a player I always found it a way to sort of cooperate with the DM - I'll relieve myself of excess cash on my own, thankyouverymuch, so long as it's not used as an excuse to screw me over (in the "now that you have a home base, everyone knows where to find your swag, you'd have been better off not having one" sense). If it is, I'm better off investing the wealth in further magical gizmoes to insure I can keep it all and, by the way, do that much better in encounters.
All that said, I don't at all mind having my home bases be a location of non-combat adventures (interactions with NPCs, and the like), political intrigues, and, yes, if NPCs we've pissed off come a' callin' (as they might if we were staying in any other "safe house" or in rooms in an inn), that's all part of the game - don't get me wrong, I don't mind that, and thus the traps, guardians, and sharks with beam attacks.
Bags of holding, handy haversacks, gems, Secure Chest (my fave and current one). All of these do the job nicely to keep your goodies from gettin ganked.
Of course, usually don't have "alot" of cash on hand. if I get too much I go buy something. An item upgrade is far more useful than 400lbs of assorted coins stashed in some box on the astral plane.
-S
But me as a player I always found it a way to sort of cooperate with the DM - I'll relieve myself of excess cash on my own, thankyouverymuch
Honestly, that's all I've ever asked for as a DM. Let's work together to sink your money into stuff that's just fun to have (like a castle).
I also understand the idea of not wanting to get 'screwed over' with your base. I maintain that it's all a matter of balance and taking care of your players. If players know that the DM is going to ensure they have appropriate wealth levels and never actually 'screw them over', losing a bit of gold here or an artifact there as part of the storyline of a campaign isn't all that bothersome.
The real challenge is trust; players trusting the DM and the DM trusting the players. Once you have that, the whole money storage thing (including being robbed) just works itself out. Hell, I remember being a player and having our home base (we had occupied an abandoned fort several hours outside of a large city and even started growing crops) "reclaimed" by a noble lord and ourselves kicked out of it. We didn't mind as players (though we were PISSED as characters) because we trusted the DM to return things to us appropriately and knew the story we all told together would be awesome.
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I do two things really... atm I am running the Conquest of Bloodthorn Vale. Items in there are worth over 100,000 coins (so far and we aren't even done yet). So what did I do? Well the knight of the Vale is offering to "send for" items from his king's treasury (we have discoved two 15,000 gp Adamantine mines and left the other spots of interest alone per our agreement with the hermit). So what I said was basically anything "in trade" of 30,000 ish gold was doable. This meant the "half price for construction" cost was directly tradeable for. It may mean my gang is a little highly geared (allowing for essentially +6 weapons or +7 armors built to order). However, the items are going to take weeks to arrive. So its not instant gratification of a direct market system.
We all have Haversacks (first purchase) and convenient Quivers (second purchase, for arrows mostly, and for all those javelins we picked up off kobolds in Falcon's Hollow). A few of us also picked up BoH IIIs, so that we can carry anything that isn't nailed down...
For 65 pounds a BoH III holds 50,000 gp or 500k in plat. Atm one player has about 92k in adamantine bars (300 or so pounds, I rate Adamantine at 250 gp per pound , mithril at 105 gp/lb per item cost averages). Problem solved realistically...
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Well a lot of good stuff here but I'm sorry axebeard no merchant is going to buy anything at full price
They buy and sell for a living so will always look to buy as cheap as poss and sell for top dollar
Other wise they is no profit in it so they don't make a living I've been useing gems as a means for pc's to carry
Lots of cash but there is always a price for the service in fact I have a little table worked out if anyones interested
My world has an extensive banking system. A bank will hold their money for a fee, and will transfer their cash to another city for another fee.
It's a high magic world though, so it makes the logistics a lot easier. I can figure out the fee by figuring out how much it would take for a wizard to teleport their gold X distance, plus profit, plus the bank's cut.
Other suggestions such as conversion into gems and art is probably your best bet if you want to avoid a banking system.
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Gems and jewelry are great if the characters can get full price for selling them, but if in one's campaign they can't get full value for diamond dust, they won't/shouldn't (logically) get it for gems, jewelry, and art curios either. Then the PCs will want to keep everything in coin form because they'll always (well, almost always) get full value for coins (well, in some contexts maybe not entirely, but almost always nearly so even if they're forced to "convert to local currency at a fee"). Then shoving everything you can't fit in your bags of holding into a portable hole becomes the way to go. Also there used to be a magic item that mimics the Secure Chest: Leomund's Laible Locker. Then there was something like a Robe of Immediate Access (I forget the exact name) which had pockets where if you reached into them you were reaching into a cabinet (stashed elsewhere) to retrieve items from it.
Girdles of Many Pouches I always liked, and of course Heward's, as others have mentioned - anything where when you reach in, what you want is always on top, is great.
Portable Holes used to be fairly common in modules, given the value of the magic item; but their obvious usefulness is so you can carry all your swag and then sort it at home.
The real challenge is trust; players trusting the DM and the DM trusting the players. Once you have that, the whole money storage thing (including being robbed) just works itself out. Hell, I remember being a player and having our home base (we had occupied an abandoned fort several hours outside of a large city and even started growing crops) "reclaimed" by a noble lord and ourselves kicked out of it. We didn't mind as players (though we were PISSED as characters) because we trusted the DM to return things to us appropriately and knew the story we all told together would be awesome.
Yes this is good and you're right; it's the kind of distinction I was trying to get at - a base which becomes a legitimate part of the entire campaign RPing experience = something i'm happy with. And it is a matter of DM (and player) trust. But even a good DM is sometimes tempted (as an NPC. . .or player) might be.
But with a good DMin a good campaign things do usually work themselves out, and bases are a good place to secure all kinds of swag. Plus, I've done what your party did, too, from time to time - once you've cleared out some villian's cool lair, it's funs to transform that into a party base (and, yeah, before someone chimes in with the problems - it might be in an inhospitable locale, there might be others who come to claim it, and so on; all that stuff becomes part of the RPing experience).
My favorite character's favorite home base started out as getting a villian's nice villa in the campaign's main city as a reward for defeating his coup attempt. Another was a kewl large house/palace-like structure on an isle. These places then become not just "a place to stash swag in" but they're not "free" because there's always "re-design" costs and other costs for modifying it to suit the party, and so on, making improvements over time as the party levels and gets morefunds, and so on.