“Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment and with the desire of dwarves; and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, at the gold beyond price and count.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)
“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
—Thorin Oakenshield, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)
Four great villains seek a glimmering treasure hidden within the city of Waterdeep. Five hundred thousand gold coins have been secreted away, and now the Xanathar, Lord and Lady Cassalanter, Jarlaxle Baenre, and Manshoon the Manyfaced seek that wealth… but so do the player characters, as well as several other factions, such as the Harpers and their allies within the Masked Lords. It seems anyone who’s anyone in Waterdeep has heard of this hidden cache, and they will stop at nothing to find it.
The only question is, what will they do with it when they find it? Half a million gold pieces is a regal sum, especially in the hands of a group of 5th-level adventurers. If the four antagonists of this adventure get the money, there’s no doubt that they will use it to advance their own sinister motives—no spoilers on this one, you’ll have to wait ‘til Waterdeep: Dragon Heist hits D&D Beyond’s digital shelves at 12 AM Eastern on September 7th, or the very same date at your friendly local game store. If the Lords of Waterdeep (or the Open Lord, Laeral Silverhand) acquires this gold, it will likely go straight back into the city’s coffers, and Waterdeep’s wealthiest will live a little more comfortably for the next few years.
What if you could get that gold? What could you possibly spend it on? Now there will probably be caveats; a windfall of that size will surely create problems and expenses all on its own, and you will surely have to spend a fair sum of it just to protect yourself from enemies, politicians, and “long lost cousins.” But what if this were a perfect world, and you could keep it all? Let’s speculate on the sheer magnificence of 500,000 gold pieces, and what a group of adventurers could do with it all.
Divided up Among the Party
Let’s be real, every member of the party is going to want to get their own special thing. The wizard will want a staff of power, the fighter will a fortress and a retinue of loyal knights, and so on and so forth. So if you’re just one player in a party of four characters, that means you’re (ideally) going to walk away from the Dragon Heist with 125,000 gold pieces to your name. What could you spend that on? Well:
Live in Luxury for the Rest of Your Days
According to the Player’s Handbook, an aristocratic lifestyle costs a minimum of 10 gold per day. Let’s do the math. If you spend an average of 10 gold per day on lifestyle expenses, how many years can you live in the lap of luxury on 125,000 gp? (This isn’t taking into account the many ways the rich stay rich, such as investments and interest, making this a rather conservative estimate.)
125,000/10 gp per day = 12,500 days/365 days in the Faerûnian calendar = just over 34 years. Assuming your character is a young adult of about 18 to 25 years, your character will live in a lavish lifestyle for until the middle or end of their fifth decade without lifting a finger before their haul runs out. Older characters could easily ride this wealth to the end of their natural life.
Magic Items
As a general rule, magic items aren’t widely purchasable in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, but hey, your DM might allow it! You might have to go on a quest to find the person selling such rare artifact, but that’s a small price to pay.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide provides very loose guidelines on the price of magic items based on rarity. By these metrics, the most expensive very rare magic items cost 50,000 gp, and legendary magic items cost an undefined amount upwards of that. With a tidy 125,000 gp in your pocket, you could easily buy two very rare magic items (and maybe a third) and perhaps one legendary magic item—depending on your DM’s attitude towards the purchasability of magic items.
Keep in mind, though, that no amount of money can buy artifact-level magic items. Relics such as the rod of Orcus or the eye of Vecna cannot be bought in any shop, and can only be discovered through dedicated adventuring.
Adventuring Equipment
When you have 125,000 gp in your pocket, you don’t buy adventuring equipment like rope or lanterns. Or, you do, but you don’t worry about the handful of coppers you pay for them. You set your sights on larger things. You look at elephants. If each elephant costs 200 gp plus an extra 60 gp for an exotic saddle, you could spend your cut of the treasure on an army of nearly 500 war elephants.
Or you look at a galley. Do you want to start your own pirate crew or Viking-style raiding ship? Buy a galley for 30,000 gp, and save another 30,000 for repairs, or just in case your ship is totaled and you need to commission a new one. Acquiring a crew is another big expense. In the Classical era, many galleys were powered by slaves, but you’re an adventurer of some moral character, right? And after all, you have enough money to pay your hard-working crew.
In the real world, we have surviving example of a Byzantine galley from the late 17th century that was powered by 144 rowers. It could probably carry about as many crew, including warriors. If you paid each member of your crew (288 people, at full capacity) 2 sp per day to maintain a “Poor” lifestyle, you would spend about 58 gp per day on crew alone. If you didn’t plan on fighting or doing any rigorous activity, you could probably cut back and maintain a light crew (144 rowers and 72 crew), dropping your costs to just over 43 gp per day. As long as you returned to Waterdeep, Neverwinter, or Baldur’s Gate every few months or so for repairs and shore leave, you could keep up your raiding vessel, pleasure barge, or exploratory craft for about four years! To be exact: [125,000 gp – a 30,000 gp galley = 95,000 gp / 58 gp per day / 365 days] = 4.4 years. Acquiring some form of income, either through adventuring, raiding, or a wealthy patron would offset these costs a little, of course.
If you want to live a little less large, a simple sailing ship (the Player’s Handbook doesn’t elaborate, but let’s assume that a “sailing ship” is a caravel) would let you sail along the Sword Coast with up to 50 people, including crew and passengers. Such a vessel would be strong enough to sail along the Sword Coast and perhaps even cruise through the Moonsea or the Sea of Fallen Stars. You could operate this small vessel for about 31 years. To be exact: [125,000 gp – a 10,000 gp sailing ship – 115,000 gp/ 10 gp per day / 365 days] = 31.5 years.
As a Group
On the other hand, let’s say that your party has come together as perfect family unit, and is willing to spend the whole half million on one big expense.
Run the Best Pub in Town
In the run-up to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist’s release, the Waffle Crew (the cast of “Dice, Camera, Action”) came into possession of a run-down tavern in Waterdeep’s North Ward. If your party was to acquire a tavern, and wanted to invest all 500,000 gold into its operation, you could afford to renovate the entire tavern and easily pay off all of the operating costs in advance, all while living comfortably. If you wanted to cater to an elite clientele, you could definitely afford the startup costs of high-end food, the best chefs in Faerûn, and art and décor to suit such a fancy establishment.
But maybe you’re not so fanciful. Perhaps, just like Durnan of the Yawning Portal Inn and Tavern, you want to serve all kinds of folk without pricing out the common people who just want a cold pint and a hot bowl of stew.
When you’re half a million gold coins rich, you can afford to go all out. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist contains information pertaining to the expenses of running a tavern, but making your tavern the best pub in town tends to cost a little extra. Performing a simple renovation of a tavern costs only 1,000 gold—a huge expense to 1st level characters, but easily doable for those with a dragon’s hoard of gold at their disposal, plus an additional 250 in guild fees and such. Upgrading a tavern to contain real finery, such as elaborate suits of armors, the finest beds money can buy, and gorgeous hardwood chairs and tables could easily cost 10,000 gp. Running a modest tavern costs about 60 gp per tenday for expenses, but hiring expert chefs, full cleaning crews, and purchasing the best cuts of meat and the juiciest fruit and crispest vegetables could easily cost 300 gp per tenday.
Of course, running a tavern like this attracts wealthy customers. At the end of every tenday, look at the Running a Business table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. For a tavern like this, roll 1d100 and add 20 (+10 for the tenday spent operating it, and a +10 bonus based on the high quality of your establishment) to the result.
Adventurers running a tavern like this are, barring major accidents, never in danger of running out of money. With 500,000 gold at your disposal, you can cover just about any disasters that befall the tavern. You could even commission a few suits of animated armor or even a helmed horror to guard the place against thieves—or worse. Adventurers like you will make some nasty enemies, after all.
Create a Fortress
D&D doesn’t have rules for creating fortresses these days, but most adventurers dream of owning their own stronghold. If you complete Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and earn the favor of the Lords of Waterdeep, you may find yourself knighted or even granted the rank of count or countess somewhere in the lands of the Sword Coast. And such nobility requires a keep.
In third edition Dungeons & Dragons, a book called the Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook offered rules for building and maintaining a stronghold. You could use this book and update the rules (and fudge the numbers somewhat) to work in a post-Dragon Heist game. However, earlier this year, Matthew Colville completed one of the most successful RPG Kickstarter campaigns of all time: Strongholds & Followers, a book which details how to create and maintain a stronghold using fifth edition rules. The book isn’t out yet (at the time of writing), but it will be soon enough. Probably by the time you complete your Dragon Heist campaign and want to spend all your hard-earned gold, anyway.
What Would You do with 500,000 Gold?
I have plenty of ideas of my own, but what would you do with all this cold, hard cash? In truth, the amount you will truly get discovering from Waterdeep’s hidden treasure will probably be much less than the full half million, but it’s fun to dream, isn’t it? And who knows… maybe your cut of the treasure will help you finance an expedition into Undermountain, where even greater treasure awaits in the Dungeon of the Mad Mage…
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and his two sparkly ball-hoarders, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
Yes.
Yeah but the rules are super vague and not detailed is says how much it costs to build it however what happens if they want a different size fort or differrent defences, guards, etc running costs it is not helpful in the slightest. There is a reason it took a book in 3rd ed for making strongholds. So while technically there are rules there are not enough for me to say it really counts.
I would definitely just buy 2 rods of security. Not only does that provide any kind of housing and food my group could need for the rest of our lives, it gives us the ability to no longer age. Every day spent in the plane created by the rods doesn't count as time passing for you.
You get 200 days per rod, divided by the number of players in your group, so lets say 50. It has a 10 day rest period, which is why you need 2.
I'm a bit confused, this article says that it's available on the 7th but everything else I find says it's not available till the 18th? When Dragon's Heist come out?
7th on dndbeyond and game stores
18th everywhere else
I'd spend it all on ale & "companionship."
I play as a fighter and would probably spend it on hobgoblin warriors to try and take control of part of the Sword Coast.
My lizard man would take his start up food cart out out Port Nyanzaru to a global franchise. You mammals really don't know how to keep the dead from piling up all around you (Do you WANT to get undead? *Pointing at graveyard*. THIS IS HOW YOU GET UNDEAD) I know the undead are a bit spicy, but totally not worth it. Anybody want to try BBQ halfling in a stick? More tender, less cooking time than a dwarf. How about elf with mint glaze?
I had a 3E character who was part of a party that killed a dragon and raided the hoard. We did, in fact, build a keep with the money. My group has long since split up, but my character has become a major NPC for the group I now DM. I wrote the dragon-slaying into his background and elevated him to a noble position (thanks to the services he and the party rendered to the kingdom).
The most fun part was coming up with the various staff members. The gruff dwarven barkeep. The tough-as-nails female soldier who serves as captain of the guard. The absent minded alchemist and his horribly awkward wizard apprentice. The elegant and educated bard who retired from life on the road to run the library.
All in all, it was a much more rewarding experience than I think a magic item would have been, especially given how well outfitted the character was by the time we killed the dragon anyway.
4 iron golems
25,000 feet of rope.
One of my party members recently spent about two thousand gold on ducks he was going to have raised on his families land, he bought them at 2sp each, so I'm guessing with half a million in gold he'll probably buy something like 2.5 million ducks....
'_'
It hurts so much, man. Thankfully that shouldn't last.
Using DMG rules:
Commission a Shield Guardian (10k for the medallion, unspecified for the machine itself)
Build a fort (15k, 100 days) Town (5k) with Guildhall(5k) Trading Post (5k) Temple (5k) all simultaneously (60 days)
Construct a Noble Estate with a Manor (50k)
Leaves me with 25,000 to live out the rest of my days in my manor with the citizens of my town.
Remember that until 3e, there were no magic item shops and there was even MORE gold since in 1e and prior editions gold was basically the only source of XP. So if you had 40,000 XP, odds are you had at least 36,000 gp.
It's not a weakness, it is part of the design of the game.
Other things to do with your gold:
Purchase expensive cheeses
Purchase expensive wines to drink with said cheeses
Hire someone to figure out why all your clothes aren't already ermine-trimmed
Hire someone else to correct the problem
Hire minstrels to travel the land telling tales of your exploits
Get books written about your exploits
Jewel-Encrusted Ear Hair Plucker
Send money home to the husband and kids
Build a shrine to your favourite deity
Build a shrine to your second favourite deity
Build a temple to the pantheon of your favourite deities around these shrines
When it turns out these deities aren't part of the same pantheon, fund an entirely new church that claims otherwise. You can even name the heresy after your character!
Acquire a taste for imported fish eggs
Experiment with strange and foreign narcotics
Establish an espionage agency
Hire mercenaries and send them on vacation
Get involved in local politics
Get involved in regional politics
Get involved in national politics
Get involved in international politics
Get involved in transdimensional politics
Run for president of Mechanus
Purchase a distillery and then hire away the best distillers from their existing employers to take over as the source of elite spirits.
Hire a team of exorcists to make sure everything you own, buy, touch or look at is not controlled by evil spirits.
Buy wedding presents.
Buy birthday gifts.
Pay the dowry on your child's wedding.
Buy a boat.
Buy a fleet.
Man that fleet.
Send them off to explore.
Invest in local business.
Bribe the king.
Hire an assassin to take care of that person that insulted you at level 1.
Invest in high grade halfling pipeweed
Smoke your investment - trust me, totally worth it.
Grind up gold into powder and then see if it gets dwarves high when they snort it.
Establish trade routes with nearby cities.
Establish trade routes with distant cities.
Establish trade routes with nearby planets.
Establish trade routes with the outer planes.
Tithe to the church you claim to worship at, the cult you actually worship at, the local baron, the king, and your guild (there goes 50% of everything)
Get married.
Get divorced.
Have children.
Establish a network of informants.
Solve homelessness in your city.
Feed the poor.
Feed the rich.
Build a mansion with a massive banquet hall and ballroom.
Host grand balls with all the most elite families invited.
Host great banquets with all the movers and shakers invited.
Hire watchmen to make long rests safer.
Hire rangers to hunt while you travel so you don't have to bring rations.
Hire a wagon train to carry rations for those rangers and watchmen.
Buy nicer furniture for your home.
Hire the weird architect that draws really messed up designs, and give him a huge budget to actually make them real.
Hire a team of scribes to follow the weird homeless guy around writing down everything he says.
Buy yourself a title (this takes a lot of money, since you basically have to make yourself be the "right kind of person" to get a title, and then likely bribe all the people above you to get it).
Hire sages in every major field so when an adventure hook lands on your lap you can spend money hand over fist to learn more about it.
Buy art.
Commission art.
Get a life-sized statue of yourself made of solid gold (that's 1,500 pounds of gold... that's a LOT of gold pieces).
Get a larger-than-life-sized statue made of yourself in solid gold.
Platinum cutlery
Gem-encrusted platinum cutlery
Buy the cricket in the silver cage that the seller claims was caught on the moon and can tell your future.
Set up a crazy wizard in a tower for you to consult on an as-needed basis.
Start a gladitorial stable and get involved in the local gladitorial combat scene at the management / owner level.
Ivory playing cards
Has no one named a town after your character yet? FIX THAT IMMEDIATELY, make your own town! With blackjack and hookers!
Assemble incredibly ornate and overly-detailed "kits" for various things. Like your silver-plated vampire-hunting kit in an expensive wooden case that contains a set of stakes made of pungent foreign woods, a hand-crossbow with six different holy symbols on it, a variety of garlic-delivery devices, holy water in expensive bottles, etc.
Equip an expedition to find the centre of the planet.
Hire dwarves to construct a massive dungeon complex for you to import monsters into.
Get involved in horse-racing.
Become a respected horse-breeder.
Collect a stable of well-bred horses.
Hire jockeys and race your stable of horses.
When you are bored of your horses, invest in a glue factory.
Experiment with exotic perfumes made from monster parts.
Flood the healing potion market with cheap knock-offs (guaranteed not to kill you, or your money back!).
Hire a team to go into every town before you and equip the town with gold-plated spitoons for your convenience.
Outsource the protection of the local forest to high-priced elven mercenary druids.
Life insurance in the form of pre-purchased resurrection spells & components.
Be the "cool aunt" or "cool uncle" and blow a few grand on each niece or nephew's birthday.
Create a new school of wizardry.
Build Hogwarts.
Hire a team of gnomes to try to figure out the mechanics behind a man-portable fire-blasting gattling-crossbow
Go dragon-turtle hunting.
Invest in the dragon-bellies market.
Build a flying dragon-turtle-shell boat with ballista turrets.
Hire sages, magi, and engineers to explore the option of "nuking the site from orbit".
Commission statues of your adventuring companions in heroic poses.
Pay to have all your enemies stuffed and mounted after killing them.
Hire monster hunters to increase the size of your stuffed monster collection.
Invest in the lead-into-gold alchemy "business".
Make sure your spellbooks have dragon-leather covers, pages of the rarest fine leathers, and ink made of gold and celestial blood.
Make a warhammer with a 15 pound solid emerald head.
Build the tallest tower in the world.
Have masterpieces painted on all your armour.
Establish a huge network of mirror-towers to transmit information around the world.
Hire shipbuilders and a madman to build the largest ship ever.
With sails made of dragon wings.
Lashed to a score of water elementals to pull it.
Hire a tutor.
Hire translators.
Learn an exotic language and stop speaking common, instead having your translation team to translate to common, dwarven, etc for you.
Get your adventure maps drawn by the renowned cartographer Dyson Logos.
Fletch your arrows with phoenix feathers.
Hire engineers and try to make every trap from the Grimtooth's Traps series.
Raise an army.
Raise a second army.
Build a nice vantage point from which to watch your armies clash.
Hire a third super-secret army to swoop in and crush the remaining forces.
Hire seven soothsayers to examine and interpret your dreams.
Buy only the best poisons to feed to the soothsayers who fail to properly interpret your dreams.
Pay for the most grandiose funerals for the failed soothsayers so everyone knows how seriously you take this stuff.
Bribe the right people to have your horse knighted.
Collect the instruments of long-dead famous bards.
Buy an inn at every town on the map (or have one built) so you always have a place to stay where they know your name.
Griffon-Egg Omelettes.
Wereboar Bacon.
Mithril chainmail for your pets.
Diamond-encrusted cockatiels.
Finest marble stables for your horses.
Finest marble statues of your horses to go in those stables.
Purchase a set of ever-grander mausoleums to eventually bury your worldly remains.
Once the biggest mausoleum is done, put smaller ones inside it. Matryoshka Mausoleums!
Fund that crazy guy who is building a volcano lair - you know he'll be a good adventure seed later on!
Fund a death cult. This is one that takes care of itself when you get bored.
Build a legacy in the form of a travelling halfling circus.
Hire someone who's job it is to hire the exact someone you need.
Set up effective counter-espionage to deal with John Creed's spy network.
Try gold-plating your enemies.
Hire a team to bring your gold-plated enemies back home and have them jewel-encrusted.
Feed your new best friend, the Xorn you adopted in the Elemental Plane of Earth.
Start collecting "freaks and oddities" to accompany you and show off just how perfect you are.
The material components for "Summon the World Emperor" is a billion gp. There's no ritual, just have a billion gold and the World Emperor is pretty much certain to show up to claim it.
Have a lovely palanquin built so you don't have to get your very expensive shoes dirty.
Buy exotic slaves to carry that palanquin.
Start minting coins with your face on them. Sell them at reduced prices to get them into circulation.
Etc.
I think the elephants are a pretty good idea. If you spend 500,000 gp on elephants and saddles, you get ~1,923 war elephants. Training them to fight would cost more, but if you just had them stand in front of a city's gates during a war, you could wait for the enemy to come to the gates and once the enemies start hurting the elephants, they get trampled.
Option two is spending some of the money of elephants and saddles, and the rest on ballistae. Unfortunately, 5e doesn't give us a cost for a ballista. It's still a fun idea though.
Charlie Bronson always had a coil of rope.
DysonLogos, you are freakin' inspirational.
I couldn't stop laughing.
There are magical items that grant near or full immortality something like that probably