I told my players that the hord of gold they found was the wealth of a small nation. How much gold would a king have in YOUR game. Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
This is an interesting question. Judging by modern nations, you're looking at anywhere from the lower billions to dozens of trillions of dollars.
For my group, 1 gold generally equals about a hundred bucks, so I would say think of what a "small nation" in your campaign means (a city-state of 10,000 citizens, or an independent island empire of 1 million people +?) and then multiply their average wealth by the population. Say a peasant has maybe 20GP total in terms of the worth of their cottage, livestock and so on, and that gives you a range of 200k - 20M?
But as Big Lizard pointed out, I don't know what they're going to do with all that money, they'd be set for life!
Higher level wealth makes it hard to hold, move, or spend. I normally put kings as having access to 10s of thousands of gold fairly easily. However, most of their wealth is tied to the land. While they are worth millions of gold, they would have to sell land or increase taxes on the merchants and peasants to get it. Tax to much and the peasants are revolting. The large expenditures that the nobility and guilds do in my game are done with platinum, mithril, and adamantium, trade bars.
When I am using the Acquisitions Inc. rules so there is money involved with keeping up the franchise. They own land and they will have to deal with the costs of that. Giving them 8,000 in gold when they have 5,000 in monthly expenditures is not that much more than normal. I am still on the fence about the lack of magic items. It gave characters something to spend the hoards of money they got.
I rework my in game economy, much the same as itnige does, and that works pretty well.
It's an interesting mental exercise, but I don't think you need to practically work out how much gold the Monarch will have. The reality is that they will have as much wealth as you need them to have, for purposes of the Adventure, so long as it doesn't strain Player credibility.
You need the Kingdom to be able to refit its army in 6 months? OK - the King is wealthy enough for that.
You need the Kingdom to struggle with refitting its army so it imposes crippling taxes on the peasantry, complete with evil corrupt tax collectors, so that there is a popular but underground uprising movement for the Party to interact with? OK - the King is now less wealthy.
So far as doling out treasure to your Party - less is probably more until you figure out appropriate reward levels for your game. You don't want to be stingy, but be conservative at first, and then bump up treasure levels until you get to a level that works for your game.
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Well here is the actual scenario. One of my players wanted to write his character out of the campaign. He found the lost hold of his ancestors and he will be off setting up a kingdom in the underdark. The wealth they found is technically his.
The session is probably going to start with the party arguing shares, but there is more gold than they could possibly count in any reasonable amount of time, much less dole out.
The intention was to give them enough money to invest in land, we are about to start Red Hand of Doom and I want them to be tied to the land.
Instead of giving them enough to invest in land, you could just give them land. The title to a small barony is in the horde, and because reasons, it’s all nice and completely legally binding. The outgoing player takes the cash as the others basically buy out his share.
Instead of giving them enough to invest in land, you could just give them land. The title to a small barony is in the horde, and because reasons, it’s all nice and completely legally binding. The outgoing player takes the cash as the others basically buy out his share.
Yeah, there were story reasons I was doing it this way. I'm just going to declare my intentions out of game since I've made a mess of it.
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I told my players that the hord of gold they found was the wealth of a small nation. How much gold would a king have in YOUR game. Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
This is an interesting question. Judging by modern nations, you're looking at anywhere from the lower billions to dozens of trillions of dollars.
For my group, 1 gold generally equals about a hundred bucks, so I would say think of what a "small nation" in your campaign means (a city-state of 10,000 citizens, or an independent island empire of 1 million people +?) and then multiply their average wealth by the population. Say a peasant has maybe 20GP total in terms of the worth of their cottage, livestock and so on, and that gives you a range of 200k - 20M?
But as Big Lizard pointed out, I don't know what they're going to do with all that money, they'd be set for life!
Higher level wealth makes it hard to hold, move, or spend. I normally put kings as having access to 10s of thousands of gold fairly easily. However, most of their wealth is tied to the land. While they are worth millions of gold, they would have to sell land or increase taxes on the merchants and peasants to get it. Tax to much and the peasants are revolting. The large expenditures that the nobility and guilds do in my game are done with platinum, mithril, and adamantium, trade bars.
When I am using the Acquisitions Inc. rules so there is money involved with keeping up the franchise. They own land and they will have to deal with the costs of that. Giving them 8,000 in gold when they have 5,000 in monthly expenditures is not that much more than normal. I am still on the fence about the lack of magic items. It gave characters something to spend the hoards of money they got.
I rework my in game economy, much the same as itnige does, and that works pretty well.
It's an interesting mental exercise, but I don't think you need to practically work out how much gold the Monarch will have. The reality is that they will have as much wealth as you need them to have, for purposes of the Adventure, so long as it doesn't strain Player credibility.
You need the Kingdom to be able to refit its army in 6 months? OK - the King is wealthy enough for that.
You need the Kingdom to struggle with refitting its army so it imposes crippling taxes on the peasantry, complete with evil corrupt tax collectors, so that there is a popular but underground uprising movement for the Party to interact with? OK - the King is now less wealthy.
So far as doling out treasure to your Party - less is probably more until you figure out appropriate reward levels for your game. You don't want to be stingy, but be conservative at first, and then bump up treasure levels until you get to a level that works for your game.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Well here is the actual scenario. One of my players wanted to write his character out of the campaign. He found the lost hold of his ancestors and he will be off setting up a kingdom in the underdark. The wealth they found is technically his.
The session is probably going to start with the party arguing shares, but there is more gold than they could possibly count in any reasonable amount of time, much less dole out.
The intention was to give them enough money to invest in land, we are about to start Red Hand of Doom and I want them to be tied to the land.
Instead of giving them enough to invest in land, you could just give them land. The title to a small barony is in the horde, and because reasons, it’s all nice and completely legally binding. The outgoing player takes the cash as the others basically buy out his share.
Yeah, there were story reasons I was doing it this way. I'm just going to declare my intentions out of game since I've made a mess of it.