Player problems

[Reprimand]

So my player is both out of control and yet doing nothing wrong in game.

Let's say his name character's name is Tim.

Tim is 16th level and has saved existence at least twice. People revere him as a hero and idol.

Tim wants to immortalize himself and so he is creating Tim action figures, clothing lines, reap (halloween) costumes, Tim brand cereal, Tim watches. Everything you can think of. I've actually done the math and rolled for this stuff. and he's looking at a lump sum larger than bill gates in gold, and that's only like five years of selling this stuff. My player isn't doing anything WRONG but this is getting out of hand. I want to talk to him about it but he's not it the wrong he's just playing his character and succeeding astronomically. It's not a party problem either, everyone is fine with it and thinks it's awesome.

How should I approach this?

[NecessaryWeevil]

Can you say more about why it's a problem for you?

[Reprimand]

Well he's breaking the game. I'm not sure if it's on purpose or not but it's like he can buy ANYTHING. Got a problem? Let me just reach into my wallet. It's kind of against the spirit of the game. And his fellow members of his party are just kind of collecting on his success. They no longer have a need or drive to do anything. They've won D&D they are rich and successful fatcats that don't have to do anything.

[Ceaon]

What exactly is the problem? That he uses his money to cheat the WBL?
How much money is there in action figures..? Not more than in adventuring, I'd guess.
Level 16 characters have ridiculous amounts of money anyway.

[Reprimand]

They're not worth much but when you have entire countries of people buying these things... He basically has a monopoly on every economy and trade.

and yeah he's basically cheating wbl

The other thing is he can completely bypass quests by teleporting capable npcs around and paying them to do something while charging people for a teleport spell + "Shipping and handling" as he put it.

[JusticeZero]

If you aren't post scarcity by 16, you're doing something wrong. By level 16 you should be plotting how to overthrow gods. Seriously, everything they are doing is normal and expected for a character of their level.

[LoyalPaladin]

They've won D&D they are rich and successful fatcats that don't have to do anything.
I would almost say this "/campaign" right? Near epic level, rich, the world is safe, etc. Unless the next villain is an equally rich guy who bought the rights to all his products from under Tim's nose. Pull a Saint's Row: The Third. PC is high and mighty? Bring in a bigger power and freeze his assets.

[Reprimand]

I would almost say this "/campaign" right? Near epic level, rich, the world is safe, etc. Unless the next villain is an equally rich guy who bought the rights to all his products from under Tim's nose. Pull a Saint's Row: The Third. PC is high and mighty? Bring in a bigger power and freeze his assets.

Why didn't I think of that... o.o

[Troacctid]

Sounds like the natural end of the campaign. Start a new one with the old characters as NPCs. The campaign setting has a new monolithic megacorporation.

[Reprimand]

Sounds like the natural end of the campaign. Start a new one with the old characters as NPCs. The campaign setting has a new monolithic megacorporation.

uhhhh crap that's also a good one. I've only been DMing a few years this is the first one we've made it to such a high level so I lack experience in this area.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Or just prevent him teleporting to the nearest MagicMart next time he has a problem.

[LoyalPaladin]

Why didn't I think of that... o.o
Nothing motivates adventurers more than protecting their hoard. If you haven't read the plot (http://saintsrow.wikia.com/Saints_Row:_The_Third), you should. The game wasn't anything ground breaking, but it should do the trick. I don't see why you couldn't copy paste it...

Just leave him with 100gp to buy some ammo at friendly fire. Haha.

When he has to sleep on the ground for a night, he'll get motivated.

[prufock]

Is this turning into Royalties: The Roleplaying Game? Introduce competition. Remember that most popular products are fads, only popular until something bigger, better, more exciting, or better marketed comes along.

Give them bigger problems to face.

Finally, maybe it's time to start a new campaign.

[Reprimand]

Or just prevent him teleporting to the nearest MagicMart next time he has a problem.

I don't like playing the DM veto card it tends to be anti fun and again the guy isn't really doing this on purpose I think. He works a marketing job irl so I think his brain does it unconsciously or something.

[JusticeZero]

What you experienced is typical for that power level. At 16,they should have all sorts of bypasses for traditional adventure elements. They're hunting gods and suchlike now. Adapt or reboot.

[Sir Chuckles]

You control the cash flow.
did you cobsider shipping, salesmen, repairs, replacements, materials, taxes, corruption, ect.?

And, again, you control the flow of the money. Do the whole "litterally everyone has four of those, nobody will be buying them for the next decade".

Or you could even tutn this around on him. Let him have ghis cash. Then make it completely moot. The much money makes him a target. Lotta good an army does in single combat. Factories and employees? You mean industrial sabotage? Let them be complacent, and then show them why they should have been building magic castles and portals instead of toys and trinkets.

[Reprimand]

What you experienced is typical for that power level. At 16,they should have all sorts of bypasses for traditional adventure elements. They're hunting gods and suchlike now. Adapt or reboot.

I guess that's fair. I'll have to get a vote on it.

Thank you all for the help!

[happygoluckytro]

Well if he's not doing anything wrong, then there's nothing to talk to him about. He is simply living the dream, and as a DM you can't punish him for that... But such a game would get stale...
All of that fame and gold is bound to attract some advisaries, why not use this as an opportunity to build more story? Have a villain who craves power more then wealth, so he can't buy his way out. Or move the campaign to a different plane. I doubt outsiders will care much for measly gold pieces especially demons.

[Reprimand]

You control the cash flow.
did you cobsider shipping, salesmen, repairs, replacements, materials, taxes, corruption, ect.?

And, again, you control the flow of the money. Do the whole "litterally everyone has four of those, nobody will be buying them for the next decade".

Or you could even tutn this around on him. Let him have ghis cash. Then make it completely moot. The much money makes him a target. Lotta good an army does in single combat. Factories and employees? You mean industrial sabotage? Let them be complacent, and then show them why they should have been building magic castles and portals instead of toys and trinkets.

Ha I know but I usually use percentile charts for that stuff and I rolled 90+ 5 times in a row (each year) for each country and rolled for public opinion (85+) fives times.

The chances of getting that were so loaded that I HAD to reward him.

@happygolucktro yeah I know demons might be a good alternative since they don't have a cleric or a paladin which might make their lack of a knowledge more interesting.

[LoyalPaladin]

I don't like playing the DM veto card it tends to be anti fun and again the guy isn't really doing this on purpose I think. He works a marketing job irl so I think his brain does it unconsciously or something.
Oh man. Play on that. Get a guy to invest in him and offer him more factories in other countries for a small percentage of the work done there. After he signs (and believe me, he will.) and returns to his home, have him locked out and tossed out by some powerful constructs saying that the guy owns everything now.

If you want to set it up for epic level, have Tim re-read the card of the investor. Here is what it should read.

Front:
A. Devile (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Asmodeus)
CEO
Nine H L.E.

Back:
"Read the Fine Print"

[Karl Aegis]

How did they circumvent 90% of the world not being able to afford more than their basic needs? Commoners have to have around 900 gold last at least 40 years.

[JusticeZero]

He is covering the world in idols of himself. Clearly he is making a bid for becoming a literal God. The next steps of working his way into the office are worth an entire campaign of trudging around the planes, and the Gods are certainly already sure he has started plotting already and are working against him as we speak.

[Reprimand]

How did they circumvent 90% of the world not being able to afford more than their basic needs? Commoners have to have around 900 gold last at least 40 years.

Ah my fault I should have specified. Commoners make more than usual due to the economy lots of his products provided lots of well paying jobs and such and employee discounts so i put a base amount for each 2/4 npcs in the world assuming each npc is female adult male adult and two children. So when I say he controls the economy I wasn't joking those commoners we talked about? They're new standard of living depends on this man now.

@Justice Zero: that's not a bad one. I rather like that!

[Xelbiuj]

Set him up to fail or have his reputation ruined.
Have his wealth mismanaged, stolen, etc. . .
Hostile yet legal takeover of his company.
Have his wealth draw the ire of powerful and jealous beings, Smaug his ass but with Tiamat.


Finally, start managing his income properly, he shouldn't be able to make billions selling action figures.

[Segev]

It's worth noting that the kind of wealth Bill Gates enjoys was literally impossible 300 years ago. No, really. Mighty kings and potentates with vast, vast wealth and power actually didn't have the sheer wealth of Bill Gates. They commanded more manpower, but that's not quite the same thing.

Economies just didn't exist which generated that kind of wealth.

I would re-examine your assumptions about how much he can sell and to whom. REmember that, in your classic medieval fantasy, most people are dirt poor. Action figure? Even at a copper a dozen, that's a copper that isn't buying their next subsistence-level meal.

[Sam K]

You could just have some other "hero" show up and steal Tims thunder. Tim merchandice is suddenly growing cold because this new guy, lets call him Biff, is all the rage recently! Whenever Tim tries to solve a problem by throwing money at it, it seems Biff has already solved it (in person). If Tim has a weakness, then make sure to point out how Biff seems to be really strong in that area (while still being as good as Tim on everything). Make it frustrating...

...but also let him suspect rather quickly that there's something off about Biff. Maybe the people he help seem to disapear shortly thereafter? Or maybe the party never actually see him, they just hear the stories of what he's done, but he's never to be found? Divinations do not work, or they give strange results every time you use them. All the while, Tims empire is crumbling, and unless he acts very quickly to liquidate his assets, he may be running up huge losses.

Who is Biff? Maybe he's just a more powerful adventurer. Or maybe he's a GROUP of adventurers all changed to look the same. Maybe Tims popularity was beginning to rival a god, so now the god is trying to undermine him. Pick whatever will get your players into gear faster!

[Denver]

It's worth noting that the kind of wealth Bill Gates enjoys was literally impossible 300 years ago. No, really. Mighty kings and potentates with vast, vast wealth and power actually didn't have the sheer wealth of Bill Gates. They commanded more manpower, but that's not quite the same thing.

Economies just didn't exist which generated that kind of wealth.

I would re-examine your assumptions about how much he can sell and to whom. REmember that, in your classic medieval fantasy, most people are dirt poor. Action figure? Even at a copper a dozen, that's a copper that isn't buying their next subsistence-level meal.

That is also credited to the implementation of usury and going off of the gold standard for currency. The idea that the entire pool of money should be smaller in a medieval fantasy setting is the beginning of a slope that is not-so slippery, and would logically end with the PCs having almost no money and finding almost no expensive loot.

While I certainly can't disagree that the real world follows a pattern of (1) an increasing money supply wherein (2) each unit slowly loses value due to 1, followed by (3) a decrease in hoarded money and an increase in the general quality of life for every class.

--

However, D&D has items that cost hundreds of thousands of pieces of gold. Even a campaign that runs a tight and well-thought out economy could *still* very easily end in more physical gold existing than has ever been mined from the Earth.

I'm not against the idea of economic considerations when dealing with D&D, but since the world we all play in is invariably built by people, and every person who has made a D&D setting in the last 41 years has lived in a modern world with modern economic behaviors - we somewhat have to accept the assumptions that underlie a modern economy as existing in a D&D setting, with the result being a fantasy world that is not representative of true medieval considerations.


--

For the OP:

One thing to consider is that the PHB itself notes that very rarely are large sums of gold every transferred in a real sense, instead noting that wealthy merchants and royals often use promissory notes that have value equivalent to the called for amount of gold. If it isn't too late, you could have "Tim" be paid in these promissory notes. And when he goes to "cash in" too many at once? He runs the gold-holders out of gold, crushing the economy in the area and making all his precious gold worth no more than a metal that weight a lot.

[Segev]

That is also credited to the implementation of usury and going off of the gold standard for currency. The idea that the entire pool of money should be smaller in a medieval fantasy setting is the beginning of a slope that is not-so slippery, and would logically end with the PCs having almost no money and finding almost no expensive loot.You misunderstand. I am not speaking about money supply. I am speaking about what money represents: real goods and services.

There simply was not as much stuff, nor as much time to provide more specialized services, as there is today.

It has little to nothing to do with the value of the dollar vs the pound sterling vs a literal pound of silver, and more to do with the availability of more resources overall. Economies provide growth in literal wealth through the improvement of efficient use thereof and the freeing up of manpower to provide more specialization.

Thish as nothing to do with slippery slopes of "PCs have no money." It has everythign to do with "Peasant Family can't afford an action figure at the price it cost to buy one and still make Tim a profit for having had it made." In literal "it would take food out of their mouths" levels of subsistence, here.


There just isn't the wealth in most fantasy worlds to support what you're describing, unless you're selling to Smaug for huge chunks of his hoard. (In which case we get into "is gold still worth what it says it is if you have more of it than exists on Earth?)

[Denver]

Segev:

But the very idea of arguing for a more limited money supply (to more accurately represent the real world) would mean that a party of fantastical adventurers would have no cash. Their value would be tied up in arms, armor, horses, and other necessary supplies. They wouldn't find money on the vanquished. They wouldn't get rewarded in exorbitant sums of money. The very idea of there existing "shops" would be (pre)anachronistic.

Trying to apply the real pattern of money supply from our world to the D&D world just does not quite fit, without first putting a decent amount of thought into it.

[Orderic]

Sure, they have a lot of money. So? That doesn't mean it is going to help solve ALL problems. Throw something at them that they can't handle with money. Atropus! A fre Pandorym! All Elder Evils at once! Gods see competition in his popularity and send out their aleaxes and other assassins! Big A himself decides to teach that uppity mortal a leson and sends his lawyers from hell. Literally.


Money may be useful for most people. But for the really powerful items? No. Those require more.
If he tries to buy epic items, tell him that his money is wothless here and he should return when he has the dreams of a dying god, gems found only in the heart of a dying star that has vanished millenia ago or a fabric woven from paradox to offer.


Also, something that is also important: If he can easily replace his equipment, you can use disjunction far more often. Sure, his items just become useless, but he can easily buy more.

[Barstro]

They're not worth much but when you have entire countries of people buying these things... He basically has a monopoly on every economy and trade.

You allowed that to happen by not looking at all consequences.

I assume this is a universe where there are hordes of poor people and failing crops while random level-1s can walk around creating gallons of clean water at will. Keep that fact in mind when you think about how magic throughout the world works when the players argue how things "should" happen.

The workforce to build all his crap costs a lot, both in wages and waste from no longer having enough people to tend the land. The PC would have to pay higher prices to keep the workers fed by buying food from distant lands.
He will have to make sure other governments actually enforce his copyrights (as if such a notion exists) or else he gets no income from anywhere more than two kingdoms away.
Someone with that much wealth on his person will be a target for armies, not just bandit groups. Being on guard and maintaining real protection will cost a lot.
If he's keeping the money in a financial institution, he also needs to grease enough palms to keep that system clean. Otherwise, the heads in that system will find it worth the risk to take it.
Markets get saturated. Unless he's paying people to come up with new ideas, his market will dry up and he will no longer have an income.
Many, many other things.

I agree that at level 16 (despite the fact that there are thousands of level-16+ in the world, since we all also play there) should be quite wealthy. If it's hurting the game, get creative with the semi-dues-ex-machine. Army attacks and takes his gold. If he's just using payable notes, the banks here do not accept it. People know who he is and charge more for services (he broke the economy, this is what happens). People hear about an even better hero from somewhere else and they buy his toys instead (major lawsuit and costs to your PC).

I would talk to the player OOC and say that one of two things happens; rumor that six armies banded together to kill him so that THEY can split the wealth of half the world (armies wouldn't even be evil, just typical anti-capitalists) and the party will have to find a way to stop it (thus spending all the gold), or he can hire someone to take care of his finances during an audit and live on a standard allowance that is remarkably close to wealth-by-level.

[Oddman80]

he has become world famous and loved... and what does the public like more than a beloved famous person?
.
.
.
.
.
the FALL of a beloved famous person...

where is the paparazzi making him look bad do to the recording of out of context incidents?
where is the family members that all start begging for cash?
where is the "new hot item" that people want because they are ficke - and he was "so last year"?
TAX EVASION! what do you mean "you didn't know you had to send in ______ amount of your wealth as a donation to the god of Wealth? Ignorance is no excuse!!!!
SEIZURE OF PROPERTY! what do you mean you didn't know your underlings were using your manufacturing business to smuggle illegal drugs!?!?!? why did you think people kept buying your stuff long after it had gone out of fashion?
BETRAYAL you might need to recruit another player for this - and pitch him the idea hard - allow him to be the JUDAS and get the glory. (my last campaign ended grandly with an amazing betrayal at level 20 - i did not see it coming - it was horrifying and exquisite)

[Shining Wrath]

Some ideas


The multiverse is a big place. Someone, somewhere, is threatened by Tim. Someone with enough power to do something about the threat he poses. Invent a new, bigger, badder BBEG.The first strike by the BBEG destroys most of Tim's accumulated wealth: start with multiple Disjunction spells, follow up with traps that dispense gold bars to anyone who asks all over the world so that gold becomes as valuable by the pound as dung. New campaign header for epic levels
Time for a new campaign. Deity of appropriate alignment approaches the party with an offer they can't refuse: they ascend to demi-godhood, or the entire pantheon will act to annihilate the party. New campaign with new characters
A new, even more heroic figure appears on the scene, and Tim is now yesterday's news. Sales plummet. It turns out that his workshops and so on were heavily leveraged and had run up debts assuming the good times would last forever, and now he's paying for raw materials he'll never use and so on. Continue this campaign but the cash flow is cut off

[Oddman80]

Some ideas


The multiverse is a big place. Someone, somewhere, is threatened by Tim. Someone with enough power to do something about the threat he poses. Invent a new, bigger, badder BBEG.The first strike by the BBEG destroys most of Tim's accumulated wealth: start with multiple Disjunction spells, follow up with traps that dispense gold bars to anyone who asks all over the world so that gold becomes as valuable by the pound as dung. New campaign header for epic levels
Time for a new campaign. Deity of appropriate alignment approaches the party with an offer they can't refuse: they ascend to demi-godhood, or the entire pantheon will act to annihilate the party. New campaign with new characters
A new, even more heroic figure appears on the scene, and Tim is now yesterday's news. Sales plummet. It turns out that his workshops and so on were heavily leveraged and had run up debts assuming the good times would last forever, and now he's paying for raw materials he'll never use and so on. Continue this campaign but the cash flow is cut off


Not just cash flow cut off - businesses have a huge need for money in... he might go into massive debt as the value of his holdings plummet.

Also - the love he had might not just fade away... if all those jobs suddenly dissolve (not because some other company is making a better/more desirable product(s) - that would just shift the jobs) but because in all of his haste to self-promote and turn himself into a world wide idol, he didn't take the years and years that would be necessary to ensure a sustainable business plan. he didn't go through all the right channels - he just WANTED IT NOW! big businesses take decades to build. if this just blew up over a few months or a year - there is no way he was being careful with his growth / expansion planning. Factories would be built in unsafe manners - rushed through so as not to delay production. unsafe materials are found in the toys... one by one his factories collapse both literally and figuratively... his name becomes that which is synonymous with GREED. he was the snake oil salesman - making empty promises to the world. He will forever be reviled.

[happygoluckytro]

In response to the (beautifully thought out) d&d economy conversation; I think the real issue is not whether or not the system makes real world sense, so much as how can the DM make it work in the given framework of the campaign. I'd hate for a good campaign to get ruined for questions over wealth distribution.
And Wouldn't changing the rules of the economy irk the players more than a good story of a fallen hero?
Original poster; keep the economy the way it is, and storytell/fluff your way back to a reasonable WBL and give your PC's something to do. This way you're not just making new rules up ( from the players view) and you get a new, dynamic adventure.

[Aegis013]

that's only like five years of selling this stuff.

I find this incredulous. Many points have been made that dirt farming peasants can't afford action figures, but based on your responses it about sounds like he started the industrial revolution with his antics. However, keep in mind just how long it takes to create the infrastructure and how much overhead and upkeep will cost him. He's not going to get 100% of the profits from any of his endeavors, for certain. He's also unlikely to get very much money at all in only 5 years, unless you mean 5 years of operating at full capacity after 20 years of building up to that point.

First he has to set up a base of operation. As an adventurer, he can go slay the inhabitants of an area and claim them or buy some out of pocket. Then he has to hire people to create the creation places, hire people to get the materials for what he wants to make, hire people to make the things he wants to make, pay for ways to get goods from A(creation) to B(first target market) to C(second target market) and pay for places to sell from, bribe government officials to let him bring goods across borders, etc. There are tons of costs to factor in if he goes the mundane route. He pays for all this without getting a copper back. It's his overhead cost. Depending on approach, as a 16th level character this could be pretty variable. Is he going premium set up with teleportation circles and fabricate traps to reduce upkeep costs? If yes, after his magic items he may not actually be able to afford it at all! If not, his upkeep will be enormous.

Once items start selling he still needs to fund his ventures from the profits he gains. He can't refuse to pay the workers and make money. He can't refuse to purchase the materials and make products to sell. Well, technically he can through things like casting Gate on a Solar and ordering it to Wish stuff into existence for you, but that has its own heaping helping of problems, which ends up being plenty of plot hooks on its own. So this is going to eat into his earnings enormously. If he's doing this the mundane way, he might have a cash flow that looks pretty impressive. It might even be a billion gold coming in a year, but it's also 999 million gold going out to fund all of this junk. Not to mention, if he's literally creating "everything you can think of" then he's not doing things particularly efficiently. If you sell tea and coffee those items share a very similar customer base (hot caffeinated drink consumers), you're likely not going to get enough new sales to justify the expense of expanding your operation into the new product.

If you said that the amount he makes after 5 years and continuing on would basically be WBL, and he'd also gain any loot he finds adventuring, he'd likely be the most successful businessperson on the material plane. That's when you can start getting really crazy with the business side. The material plane is pittance on a grander scale, but it'll attract the attention of devils and outsiders who run massive-mega-conglomerate super corps across various planes. They'll begin trying to shut him out, take him down, etc. Plenty of people have offered advice on that front, so I'll leave it there, but I wanted to point out that the timeline this appears to be happening on could only happen if he was revolutionizing the world with magitech (magic traps and the like, basically heading on into that Tippyverse). The problem with that is it really doesn't get any better. Another Wizard will come along and pull the same stunts, and will be exactly as competitive, because they're doing exactly the same stuff, until too many spellcasters have done it and it's no longer profitable - thus you've reached post scarcity, or an environment where competition doesn't matter because competitive advantage can't be gained.

[Segev]

Segev:

But the very idea of arguing for a more limited money supply

I...still didn't make that argument.

I said there was less WEALTH in the world. Less food. Less clothing. Less livestock. Less cultivated/developed land. Fewer high-quality items of any sort. Fewer tools. Fewer experts in using those tools. Fewer farmers. Fewer farms. Fewer man-hours of labor in a day. Less produced per average man-hour of labor.

This isn't even doing anything to change the fantasy setting. This is a fact of the setting as presented.

This PC literally cannot extract a Bill Gates-like fortune from these economies, because such a fortune literally has not been produced. I don't care how you measure it, or what your monetary units are.

[atemu1234]

Pull a Ted and remember, no matter how famous you are, eventually, "no one gives a ****."

[Vhaidara]

I recommend ending the campaign, and make the new one an evil campaign. Some third rate villain who escaped them/got jailed early in their career hires the party to bring Tim down. Slow but steady sabotage as the new party works their way up the levels eventually culminates with a fight to the death against the old characters.

[Denver]

I...still didn't make that argument.

I said there was less WEALTH in the world. Less food. Less clothing. Less livestock. Less cultivated/developed land. Fewer high-quality items of any sort. Fewer tools. Fewer experts in using those tools. Fewer farmers. Fewer farms. Fewer man-hours of labor in a day. Less produced per average man-hour of labor.

This isn't even doing anything to change the fantasy setting. This is a fact of the setting as presented.

This PC literally cannot extract a Bill Gates-like fortune from these economies, because such a fortune literally has not been produced. I don't care how you measure it, or what your monetary units are.

Oh, forgive me. One of the underlying assumptions regarding societal wealth is that if there is less fungible wealth in a society, the money supply is comparatively smaller, as a tautological by-product of that lesser wealth. (You don't need a large supply of money to represent a comparatively smaller share of physical wealth.) Further, arguing that the upper limit of human production is lessened would also reduce the comparative money supply of a society at large, for the same tautological reason: fewer produced goods of value means fewer needed units of currency, because there are fewer goods of value to be "valued" by a representation.

If I misunderstood your initial assertion that the vast wealth of the past was represented in a different kind of way (i.e., not in money - in manpower, as the example you gave) because there was not as much "money," and then again with the example of the poor family who is unable to generate money (due to a small money supply, since that society does not represent wealth in money) and would not spend that one copper on a doll, but instead on needed foods; then I apologize for misunderstanding, but both of those are examples of making an argument for a smaller money supply. (Since part of arguing for "Less overall wealth, and productivity" results in "reduced money supply.")

And, it is also why the PHB notes that vast sums of wealth in D&D are rarely physically moved, instead being represented by legal documents or deeds or holdings that represent large values. Of course, then the game starts and it is quite easy for a 4 person party to acquire more measured wealth and more physical gold than such an "economy" could support. But, hey, it is a fantasy game.

[Segev]

I'm...not sure if we're seeing eye to eye, so I will try to clarify. Hopefully, it's unecessary, but in case it's not...

The OP made the statement that this PC is wealthier than Bill Gates based on his sale of merchandise related to himself and his exploits. That he has so much money that he basically runs economies the way Scrooge McDuck does.

If we take the "richer than Bill Gates" statement literally, then worrying about "money supply" (as you define it to include all wealth in the world, if I understand you correctly) being smaller than the wealth of modern-day Bill Gates is a valid concern.

Entertainment products - what merchandising is - are a net drain on economies which are at or below subsistence. They do not, by themselves, increase productivity, and are thus a sign of surplus wealth.

For an empire based on merchandising to have made somebody so wealthy that he is running economies, he must already have extracted more wealth - in the form of money or whatever - from those economies than is left in them after they buy his wares.


I have made the perhaps-erroneous (but I suspect quite accurate) assumption that the DM has not come up with the wealth that this PC has obtained by subtracting it from the material wealth of all the nations which buy his goods. In fact, if it's the way a lot of games run, the actual "count" of gp value wealth this PC commands was simply fiatted into existence by the DM assuming that "somebody" paid it for the goods bearing this PC's likeness.


Therefore, the point I was trying to make was that, if the PC really has this kind of wealth, the DM needs to re-examine where it's coming from and rethink people's ability, let alone willingness, to buy these goods at a price that the PC can make a profit in selling them.

Now, if the PC has used magic in some industrial-level capacity to make freebie items he's selling fo a pittance, then we've reached post-scarcity production for these kinds of tools and goods and people are probably buying them more because they're the most efficient means of getting producitivity-multipliers, and he's sparking an industrial (or at least massive economic) revolution in these nations, and the wealth of the nations is magnifying.

At this stage, he should absolutely be the mover and shaker he's made out to be, and a hero to the world to boot for making everybody, all the way down to the common peasant and serf, many times wealthier than they'd ever hoped to be.

At that point, you ahve an entirely different game. He's basically a walking Pope of Money that kings andp otentates want to court for better deals and to get his wares and services to make sure they keep up with their neighbors in this economic boom.

[Denver]

I'm...not sure if we're seeing eye to eye, so I will try to clarify. Hopefully, it's unecessary, but in case it's not...

The OP made the statement that this PC is wealthier than Bill Gates based on his sale of merchandise related to himself and his exploits. That he has so much money that he basically runs economies the way Scrooge McDuck does.

If we take the "richer than Bill Gates" statement literally, then worrying about "money supply" (as you define it to include all wealth in the world, if I understand you correctly) being smaller than the wealth of modern-day Bill Gates is a valid concern.

Entertainment products - what merchandising is - are a net drain on economies which are at or below subsistence. They do not, by themselves, increase productivity, and are thus a sign of surplus wealth.

For an empire based on merchandising to have made somebody so wealthy that he is running economies, he must already have extracted more wealth - in the form of money or whatever - from those economies than is left in them after they buy his wares.


I have made the perhaps-erroneous (but I suspect quite accurate) assumption that the DM has not come up with the wealth that this PC has obtained by subtracting it from the material wealth of all the nations which buy his goods. In fact, if it's the way a lot of games run, the actual "count" of gp value wealth this PC commands was simply fiatted into existence by the DM assuming that "somebody" paid it for the goods bearing this PC's likeness.


Therefore, the point I was trying to make was that, if the PC really has this kind of wealth, the DM needs to re-examine where it's coming from and rethink people's ability, let alone willingness, to buy these goods at a price that the PC can make a profit in selling them.

Now, if the PC has used magic in some industrial-level capacity to make freebie items he's selling fo a pittance, then we've reached post-scarcity production for these kinds of tools and goods and people are probably buying them more because they're the most efficient means of getting producitivity-multipliers, and he's sparking an industrial (or at least massive economic) revolution in these nations, and the wealth of the nations is magnifying.

At this stage, he should absolutely be the mover and shaker he's made out to be, and a hero to the world to boot for making everybody, all the way down to the common peasant and serf, many times wealthier than they'd ever hoped to be.

At that point, you ahve an entirely different game. He's basically a walking Pope of Money that kings andp otentates want to court for better deals and to get his wares and services to make sure they keep up with their neighbors in this economic boom.

I am not saying that money supply represents all the wealth in the world (it does not), but I was, and am, responding to your initial assertion that a classic medieval setting should fit certain economic characteristics in order to have greater verisimilitude, and one of those characteristics (for you) is a world where economies cannot support "that kind" of wealth. Taking "that kind" to be referring to the OPs example of Bill Gates level wealth. However, there are some historical examples (the Biblical account of King Solomon, Mansa Musa, King Croesus) who were not simply wealthy, but measured their wealth in the quantity of gold they had, which was sufficiently legendary to mention them to this day, and was a currency in their economies - meaning "that kind" of wealth *could* have existed.

Those historical examples really don't matter, though, for reasons I stated earlier:


I'm not against the idea of economic considerations when dealing with D&D, but since the world we all play in is invariably built by people, and every person who has made a D&D setting in the last 41 years has lived in a modern world with modern economic behaviors - we somewhat have to accept the assumptions that underlie a modern economy as existing in a D&D setting, with the result being a fantasy world that is not representative of true medieval considerations.

Bolded section for clarity.

[Zirconia]

Ha I know but I usually use percentile charts for that stuff and I rolled 90+ 5 times in a row (each year) for each country and rolled for public opinion (85+) fives times.

The chances of getting that were so loaded that I HAD to reward him.

@happygolucktro yeah I know demons might be a good alternative since they don't have a cleric or a paladin which might make their lack of a knowledge more interesting.

Rewarding him was not necessarily a bad idea, but a "reward in the top 99th percentile" for something like this might be 500k gold, not 500 million gold. As others have pointed out, the only way to get anything like a "copyright" on your action figures would be a government granted monopoly (the forerunner of today's patents), and a typical government of the day would want a large, like 40-50%, share of any money you made for a monopoly. I'm also a little doubtful about the idea of a self sustaining "make the peasants wealthy" economy based on action figure manufacture. . .

That said, it is water under the bridge. Cross dimensional invasions, whether from the lower planes or elsewhere, could be a good way for him and the group to have to unite their enterprises, organize troops to defend their interests, and generally spend money like water. If they are hitting multiple cities and countries, those teleports get used up quickly.

Remember, you can invent foes as powerful as you need if they are from another dimension. Spell resistance, teleports and plane shifts of their own, the works. A couple dozen Balors crack open Tim's vaults and raid his factories in multiple locations simultaneously, and the adventurers will have to take notice. Maybe they start spending money on magical communications devices and such.

[yellowrocket]

He could be fighting all the clerics. His popularity is over shadowing the worship of their gods. That's provide a variety of enemies as each god and their clerics are all differently equipped.

[LoyalPaladin]

Was there ever an update post on how this was resolved? I'd love to know.