Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Standardization of Loot.......
Back in 4th edition, magic items had a relatively fixed.monetary amount and a character could sell an unwanted item for a decent sum of money and then convert lots of gold coins into platinum coins OR Astral Diamonds. (sigh) Those were the days...
Loot is somewhat standardized - in the dungeon creation sections and the monster CRs and treasures.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
With my characters, every time the DM announces "Long Rest", I deduct 2 gold from my money pot for the various (assumed but unlisted) life style expenses. It is tedious but honest. I can not control what other people do with their characters nor do I want to do so.
I also refrain from the juvenile prank of replacing the "z" and "s" in Wizards with a "$" and the "s" in Hasbro with a "$". It merely infuriates the moderators and cheapens the debate.
I believe that treasure is an underutilized component of D&D worldbuilding. But, I understand others are not going to enjoy interacting with a world with a dynamic economy that responds to player choices in the way I might.
I also think there are many relevant points made on both sides of this discussion. But like the OP, I'm a bit older.
I am running a game where my players have been wandering about with little money, but they have found a way to minimize their expenses. Currently they are in the wilderness where there is no shopping, and when they return to civilization I intend to reward them for completing a quest with a chest carrying 900 gp, 900 sp and 1000 cp. This is enough money for them to improve their adventuring kit, maybe not enough to get plate armor for everyone, but still make improvements. I'm interested in what they will do. I'm likewise interested to hear if they want to go to step 2 in this quest line thinking there could be another 1000 gp waiting for them? Or will they want to take another direction for the party?
I'm trying to explore the Bastion concept but I don't think my party wants to explore that.
But, I would like to adventure in a world with a dynamic economy. If my party rocks up in a village and spends 100gp, that is going to cause some temporary inflation. The nobility will want to know what is going on that this much money just seemed to fall out of the sky. Once the nobility find the party with bulging pockets of gold, the nobility wants to get their hooks into them; A tax for this or that, registration with the bankers guild, and stuff like that. I'm already building a system where banking goes on in my world. Will my players want to use it?
It is very natural for players to invest in their survival; buying armor, potions, exotic weapons, scrolls and other magic items. I guess there is a sweet spot for how much the players will want to spend their money this way vs. "enjoying" it. I remember in the first Conan Movie the hero was caught because the first thing he wanted to do was get very drunk and eat (a bit too much) good food.
So, I think money is an important subject to develop in a strong campaign. I certainly don't have all the answers.
You would like a game world with "banks"? Perhaps, some credit cards thrown in? Perhaps, an Internal (or, more likely, Infernal) Revenue Service? Perhaps, some "white collar" rogues, to swindle Player Characters out of their loot!?
Oh, my........
My rather foggy memory suggests that the old, long out of print Dragon Quest RPG by SPI had a "banking" system of a sort and the 4th edition of D&D also had such a "system" through the old E-Tools character builder/manager by Code Monkey Publishing (CMP) (their logo featured a monkey swinging through the trees while wearing a helmet, wielding a mace while farting a small fireball).
Seriously, though, you probably need to have a long, long discussion with an economist and an accountant, but definitely NOT with me because my degrees are in "simple" topics such as mathematics and computer science.
My gaming group has tried the Bastion concept. There is a problem, though. The DnD Beyond character builder/manager, at the moment, does not easily support Bastions. I have a "work around" of a sort: I simply defined my Bastion as a separate private Campaign, with which I can make notes about what goes on in my Bastion. It is definitely not perfect and it may well be vaporized with the next major update of the character builder.
Staffing the Bastion is another matter. Do you just use faceless, nameless NPCs off the street, anonymous entities that are essentially "window dressing" or do you roll up various Level 1 Player Characters to staff the Bastion with the expectation that these Level 1 characters will eventually ascend to Level 2, Level 3 and so on. This second option does give the party a reason for their "excess" wealth, that is, paying for their own upkeep, the staff's upkeep and the upkeep of the Bastion (assuming that none of the Level 1 characters have a side hustle, such as selling Level 1 Cure Wounds spells, or brewing Potions of Healing, or brewing beer and so on). The Bastion, if it has an attached Pub or an attached Library, could become a gathering place for low level adventurers, with various higher level PCs serving as Patrons. Just something to ponder.
Another poster in another thread, suggested plopping your character's Bastion notes in the Extras section of the character sheet. If your party has a shared party Bastion, then you might want to plop the Bastion into the Party Inventory section. There is a short novel series called "The Fallbacks" about a weird group of adventurers who have a version of a Daern's Fortress, called The Wander Inn. You might want to check out that series. (Those adventurers are definitely out of the ordinary; they have a faithful otyugh as a mascot.)
I think it's very useful to have analogs and comparisons as shorthand so we have some kind of grounding on which to decide how much power the adventurers are throwing around. 100 gp is certainly a lot of money, but in US terms that's only $10,000 in modern currency value, which after all isn't that much money at the level of villages, towns, and settlements. A small mountain village might not even have that much on sale in the first place. As in, they can't spend 100 gp value because there aren't enough goods and services available in the village that would cost that much.
Runaway inflation happens when large scale events or kingdoms move people, places, and things, and then people start charging more. By the time your mountain village has suffered through significant inflation, it's an adventuring town or a mining town or some kind of destination place. The repeated and very large influxes of gold pieces is what causes inflation. If adventurers happen upon some relatively normal village in the middle of bum**** nowhere with regular goods to sell that the normal population would purchase, they simply don't have enough of anything on hand to sell that would satisfy an adventuring party. They might charge the strangers 50-100% more of what they would ask for everyone else because strangers are bad juju, but they're certainly not going to expect those same people to be back two weeks later to do the same thing. Depending on random adventurers dropping into your small village to make a living off of is a bad idea.
The same thing happens with nobles. If your strangely unknown but relatively wealthy and powerful band of adventurers buys out all the local ale (or whatever) randomly in some village, the usual reactions runs along the lines of "Are these people a threat to my power?" and "How can I take advantage of the situation?" Even a bunch of level 5s aren't petty enough that a noble would raise taxes. That involves a lot of paperwork, it affects all the other normal, sensible people who have nothing to do with these reckless, dangerous people, and in the end all you get is money? Too much work, IMO, for not enough return. What a noble might do, is "grace" the adventurers with a visit and assess them personally for various things. They'll bring along whoever is the manager of their intelligence network and now the adventurers are known to them and will be tracked.
Why?
Because power is what nobles do. It's literally their job. The next time the adventurers are even a day's journey headed into the noble's territory, they'll know and will prepare accordingly. That could be word that the adventurers are wanted, or a "friendly" invite to the local chateau (that can't be refused), or a lot of astonishingly useful things to adventurers appearing at the market the next day.
I understand that being powerful but being relatively unknown is something a lot of people fantasize about. I would be willing to accommodate that in a game if that's what players want, so long as it doesn't get a little too ridiculous. You can't be leading an army of 10000 men at arms marching through the kingdoms of the North and not be known. That's just crazy.
Similarly, you can't purchase the only available Staff of Power in the kingdom from Duke Wellington at an astronomical price and not expect every noble in that kingdom to at least suspect that a deal like that has gone down and likely most of the more competent noble houses will at least want a name for who has gotten their hands on such dangerous weaponry. The King will definitely know.
Shouldn't there be an in-between? NPCs can have personalities without having levels in classes.
You are right, and there is such an option. You can do exactly what the DMG says in the bastion chapter:
“A player can assign names and personalities to hirelings in their character’s Bastion using the same tools DMs use to create NPCs (see chapter 3).”
The create NPCs link takes you to a page with done random charts to roll for names and personality quirks. But I can’t imagine a DM who would require you to develop the hireling that way.
There is no reason to give your hirelings levels. In fact, I’d say doing so would be a very bad idea. It will make the bastion more powerful than intended, and create a lot of bookkeeping for an NPC who will, if you’re using RAW, never do anything that would require a character sheet or class ability.
Valid point BUT that would mean a PC's Bastion will require the PC to ALWAYS be there for the defense of the Bastion. Besides, when the PC retires, who will continue the PC's work?
For me, it s fun to choose whom I hire for my Bastion.
Any more paper work than what is needed for a PC?
By the way, I am a retired civil servant and retired software developer. Paperwork is my middle name and my passion.
That is, of course, assuming that Duke Wellington is willing to sell a Staff of Power to any one with out putting a GEAS on the buyer. His Royal Highness will also want to plop a GEAS as well on the buyer.
There are actually a couple facilities that provide Bastion Defenders to offset random attacks. For scripted stuff, any meaningful battles will happen when the party is present and otherwise it’ll simply go the way the DM wants it to for a given plot beat.
Bastion hirelings are supposed to be workers, not minions equipped to actively participate in adventures.
More paperwork is more paperwork, regardless of complexity.
To each, his own, then.
You only have to do that if you don’t use the RAW. If you use the bastion RAW, you can have a barracks staffed with soldiers who guard the bastion. If there an attack, you make a couple rolls, maybe a couple of your redshirts die, and you recruit some new ones. If you don’t have that facility, one of your other facilities is damaged, but it’s fixed in a week at no cost to you. It’s all there in the rules.
I had always thought that dragons had a huge hoard of coins and gems because snoozing on bare rock is undignified and uncomfortable.
Oh, goody, I can treat my hirelings like mindless "cannon fodder". Sorry, but I am not built that way.
To be clear, as written the attack event- which only has a 5% chance to occur per roll if your DM bothers with it while the party is adventuring- only shuts down one facility for one turn. No mention is made of regular hirelings dying, so the only casualties will be if your base has defenders.