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shimmercat
2012-03-29, 10:28 AM
Anyone have any fun stories of large purchases done for RP (not mechanical) purposes? A time when you spent your loot on something that did not help you in battle but sure did make the game more interesting....

I didn't make the purchase myself, but my husband's character (LE Necropolitan spellthief, a banker, and kinda a mafia princess) recently bought 8000 animated skeletons. She got them for a good deal at 40g a skull. :smalltongue: While they could be used for an army, her intent is to use them for cleaning and chores... although her suspicious mafia Don uncle is going to see them as an army and wonder if she's finally moving against him. XD

What have been your experiences with large RP purchases?

Lemmy
2012-03-29, 02:38 PM
Not sure if it counts, but in one game, my Paladin bought a mountain from a LN red dragon.

The dragon was upset that humans had settled in his territory, and intended to get rid of them one way or another.

Once we realized the beast was not evil, and that he had in fact a very very large territory, we decided to do things peacefully. After some negotiation, my paladin spent 30.000gp buying the mountain from the dragon. Then, he allowed the villagers to live there freely.

The coolest part was being able to introduce the character as Sir Derek Silverblade, Champion of Pelor and Lord of the Silverblade Mountain. :smallcool:

After the end of the campaign, he retired to his mountain. He never demanded payment from the villagers, even so, they still decided tp supply him with food and services out of gratitude.

The neighboring dragon became his favorite chess opponent.

Dr Bwaa
2012-03-29, 03:03 PM
I have a wizard who spent upwards of 50,000gp on a single backup grimoire, covered in wards and stowed in a pocket plane. Note: this is her third level of spellbook redundancy, and the other ones weren't exactly cheap, either.

I had another character (another wizard) who spent 2k on his nonmagical staff, not to give it a +1 bonus or any other mechanical effect, but rather just to make it super high-quality and put a big honking emerald at the top. So basically he spent two grand to increase the likelihood of his walking stick being stolen.

Elyssian
2012-03-29, 03:50 PM
I had a CN cleric spend around $30K Gp on booze and food stuffs for a party in the woods just to get to party with the Fey and locals after an epic dungeon crawl. I didn't want to have to carry it around and figured any party worth having was going to be expensive anyway :smallbiggrin:

TheCountAlucard
2012-03-29, 04:19 PM
Well, in Exalted, one's finances aren't nickel-and-dimed; it's assumed that if one has dots in Resources, he can make an arbitrary number of purchases of things that cost less than his dots in Resources.

If you have Resources 3, and a sword's worth Resources 2, you can buy them as an out-of-pocket expense.

On the other hand, if you want to buy something with the same Resources value as you have dots, it's indicative of a more significant purchase, and actually temporarily lowers your Resources for the month.

So, if you have Resources 4, and a fancy yacht's worth Resources 4, it's going to be the major allocation of your funds for the month.

You can't buy something with a Resources cost higher than your dots in Resources; if you have Resources 2, then it's going to be simply beyond your ability to furnish a grand palace with your money.

With that in mind, I've had a number of characters make extravagant, frivolous purchases. :smalltongue:

Silverscale
2012-03-29, 04:53 PM
In our groups most epic game ever, we were collectively known as The Lords of Brightstone. At one point my character decided that we all needed to have a set of "Noble Outfits" that coordinated with each other yet also showed our own tastes as well, so he comissioned 4 sets of custom made Noble Outfits for the party for no other reason then to look good. They actually arrived just in time for us to host a Ball since the Druid/Ranger character didn't have any nice clothes the wear and would have looked out of place.

DaMullet
2012-03-29, 06:48 PM
One of the first magic items all my dramatic characters (especially bards) acquire, at whatever the cost, is a cloak that flows dramatically in the wind, regardless of how strong the wind is (or whether there is wind at all).

In the last game, the party wizard improved the enchantment to give me a 1/day Gust of Wind, but typically it's just the flowing.

Ravens_cry
2012-03-29, 07:18 PM
A character sunk a huge portion of his wealth into an item of tongues.
He was. and I was, frustrated at always been out of conversations.
Thinking back, I could have just bought a +2 intelligence item with ranks (this was Pathfinder) in Linguistics and spoken all the languages I could want, but at the time I was not aware of that rule.

Aidan305
2012-03-29, 07:39 PM
I once sunk a couple of hundred thousand gold in to a magical traveller's chest. I think it had seven different compartments, each the size of a large room and could shrink down to fit in the palm of your hand.

Oh, and a symbol of Insanity if you opened it wrong.

Other than that though, my purchases are more likely to be property, etc.

Rorrik
2012-03-29, 07:42 PM
In my first 1E campaign we were confronted by a group of freedom fighters who we donated 10k gp to in order for them to build a stronghold against the dark lord. We knew nothing about him and used the opportunity to gather knowledge about where we were heading. I'm pretty sure the DM rolled the whole encounter randomly on a table he had made, but it was a good plot hook.

Lhurgyof
2012-03-29, 09:22 PM
I remember my umberhulk accountant Mr Bumblebux bought a dress suit, top hat, and golden wrist-mounted sundial...


... the authorities still escorted me around town. Racism against Umberhulks and all. :smallmad:

Averis Vol
2012-03-30, 05:01 AM
i recently spent 15,000gp on the kings servants, yea i bought the kings servants to come cook and clean and do all the stuff i hate doing at my castle rather then his. needless to say when half his staff quit on him out of the blue he was a bit angry. earlier in that same game i bought 7,000gp worth of brown mold to keep in said castle to make a makeshift freezer to keep all of my perishable food in.

EccentricCircle
2012-03-31, 07:04 AM
I once started a game with very little in the way of adventuring gear. only:
my heirloom sword, a carriage, two horses, supplies, a folding table, a chalkboard, some merchants scales and a secure chest to keep the gold in when my Magic Item selling buisness took off.

it turned out I was five gold pieces over the limit for our starting level. the DM was happy for me to be in debt to a random NPC, after selling almost all my belongings to invest in said equipment.

I never quite got the Magic Item selling buisness off the ground in the course of the campaign, but did make a fair bit of money as an itinerant chef...

Kol Korran
2012-03-31, 07:50 AM
two occurances, by the same character.

A cleric of the Red Knight (forgotten realms) who came to also worship Lathander, thus being one of the few (perhaps the first?) cleric to worship two gods.

anyway, my Cleric invested quite a bit of money (don't remember how much) to try and build a temple for the faith of two gods, but the two separate religions made... um... arrangmemnts to prolong and withhold the building of the temple.

later we played "Shadowdale: Scouring of the land" which includes a town under occupation. this was at about levels 10 or so, so we had access to teleportation. i decided to start a rebellion, but all armors and weapons were taken.

so i teleported back to Suzail (a major city) and arranged through lots of haggling and diplomacy to acquire the equipment and transportation services (high level mages with bags of holding) to support the rebellion. that cost a HEFTY sum indeed.

Bagelson
2012-03-31, 09:50 AM
In a post-apocalyptic game me and another character spent the hard earned scraps we'd gotten on the parts for a machine to make ethanol, and used that to fund a company that supplied most of the nation with fuel for electrical generators and vehicles.

That in turn generated a hefty profit, which I spent on building and maintaining a massive mansion and an impeccable wardrobe.

Ravens_cry
2012-03-31, 09:57 AM
In the long term, that's actually fairly wise use of your money, as you are, though patronage, encouraging the development of the infrastructure of civilisation.

DontEatRawHagis
2012-03-31, 12:14 PM
I kept a large number of loaded dice on my character in order to swindle money out of careless NPCs, it was 50g for each die and I had about 20 of them. My DM didn't like it and everytime I brought out some dice he would have the NPCs roll ridiculous perception checks to figure out I was swindling them. I also carried around a crystal ball, that I couldn't use. I was going to use it to perform fake seances to get more in game money. But sadly the game ended before that.

The whole reason I did it was because the class I chose had already the best armor and weapons I could have. So why not make a few extra gold on the side.:smallamused:

JonRG
2012-03-31, 01:55 PM
I started play as a 4th level middle-aged elan. A bit low level, yeah, but he wasn't much of an adventurer. Remembering a story of my DM destroying WBL with Profession, I asked about doing the same. He really preferred that I didn't. :smallamused: So we compromised, and my character became the proud owner of the new local library.

Cieyrin
2012-03-31, 04:29 PM
A character I'm currently playing doesn't believe in any of this hardtack and trail rations nonsense that adventurers are supposed to eat and bought himself a masterwork field cooking kit, a month's worth of food for 4 medium adventurers (or in our case when we started the game, 2 humans and 3 halflings, which basically works out to extending a bit farther, since I figure halflings eat half as much as humans do, which is still quite a bit) and a donkey to carry it all on in a pack saddle, since as a halfling sorcerer chef he couldn't carry much weight anyways.

That's where most of his initial wealth went into. I've lost one donkey loaded with cooking supplies and bought a second one to replace it and lost that one, too. Also among those effects were a pound of halfling tobacco and a gallon of brown ale. At least I kept the pipe on me, for when I can brave going outside to go grab my supplies and bring them back with me into the dungeon complex so I can finally have a nicely cooked meal and a strong drink before delving deeper.

Zorg
2012-04-01, 10:22 AM
I lifejammer helm.

To power my jacuuzi.

That was filled with diamonds.

Siegel
2012-04-01, 03:03 PM
This really is just a big deal in DnD or things like it where you play Shotgun hobos. In other games you buy this stuff all the time.