Investment Opportunities

[Mr. Money Bags]

Hello, all!

The variant tavern thread got me to thinking:

What do all of you do with your gold at the conclusion of your adventures? Granted you repair/purchase stronger equipment, weapons, spells and perhaps hire people to train you in a skill you want more levels in i.e. lockpicking skill from a thieves' guild trainer for a thief.

But after a few adventures, your character is likely going to be sitting on a fairly significant pile of gold. What do you do with it?

The February 2000 issue of Dragon magazine had an article by Kevin Haw relating to investment opportunities. He suggested four things:

1. a Tavern/Inn
2. Trading expedition
3. PC organization (he provided the example of a Cartographer's Guild)
4. Mercenary unit

He suggests that investing in a weaponsmith's shop or a casino has a great deal in common with running an inn. Or someone could purchase a title of nobility.

Anyways....I thought it would spark an interesting discussion. What do your characters do with all their gold?

For me personally, I favor rogues and I like things that can serve as fronts for illegal activities. The best real world example I can think of off the top of my head would be a counterfeiting operation in the basement of a printer's shop.

Thoughts?

[Rackdam]

As a Paladin, I donate to the church/temple who follow my God. I also try to erect statue of my God in a few town if it's ok with the local authority.

As a Bard, I go all in at the gambling house. I have a gambling addiction ... the party know that so they don't let me keep gold piece :S

[Mark Hoover 330]

I don't get to play much. The game I'm running right now uses the Downtime system but involves 3 hour sessions 1/week with a lot of busy adults, so Downtime isn't really taken advantage of except as an afterthought.

The last time I got to really get into it though I played a low level half-elf wizard. She made it to level 3 before the homebrew campaign ended. During that time she was the party hoarder.

She collected everything of genuine value she could get off the sentient villains we defeated - weapons, armor, kits, books and scrolls, etc. She also grabbed a tapestry, 2 old pennants, and a bunch of other furnishings from a dungeon. All of these were damaged, sullied, etc.

The wizard had a cart she dragged around with the party. She also had the Floating Disk spell to carry stuff in that one dungeon. Every time we had Downtime I made a point to say I was using Mending and Prestidigitation to restore/recover the old stuff.

When we'd go back to the city I'd use Profession: Merchant and hawk the goods. I did it all legal-like; paid a tax the 2 times I did this in game. But it also got us a contact in the city that would deal in other weapons, the occasional magic item, and could provide extra intel on missions.

The extra gold I earned went towards securing a lot of extra spells my wizard transcribed and in turn made into a decent bandolier of level 1 scrolls...

[blahpers]

That McDuckian money bin isn't going to fill itself.

/need a feat that grants a burrow speed but only through coinage

[Hugo Rune]

Buy influence. Build a stronghold. Establish an organisation. Become a geopolitical power. Recruit adventurers to recover lost artifacts etc on your behalf.

As a player, play the role of the hired adventurer.

[Flyboy]

I've used the old Dungeon adventure "Keep for Sale," where the party could get the title to a walled keep, but the structure was heavily damaged. To fix it up would cost a lot in labour and materials. It also had a dock; acquiring and maintaining a ship and crew soaks up even more capital.