Treasure Sucks.

[Tough Butter]

For the longest time, I've wanted to break free of a standard quest arc and missions and have a team of adventurers who are just in it for the money.

but going to lie, I hate treasure.

It's been hard trying to find fun in dungeon crawling when you have no purpose for the cash you make.

Food and drink are so astoundingly cheap that I finding measly amounts of GP from level 4 bandits would set you up for at least a month.

And with no adventuring purposes for the loot (Magic items, etc.,) I have no way to keep the party invested!

From this, I've decided that my group needs a couple of house rules to balance out the system.

A couple I've thought about:

1. What if spell casters started off with a limited knowledge of spells and could 'unlock' spells as rewards? This would provide interesting backstories for arcane casters.
2. Religious items could be recovered and used to give small bonuses to arcane casters.
3. Ways to buy magic items out of money from adventuring
4. Alternatives to money as rewards, other than the ones from the DMG, for use in hack-and-slash adventuring.

Other ideas would be well appreciated! If you can point out if this sort of thing has been done before, please let me know!

[JellyPooga]

Give them a goal;

- They have a debt that must be paid. Perhaps a mortage on their base of operations (extra funds can be spent on "upgrades").
- They are under a curse that can only be broken by an Efreet who is demanding vast sums of money to do so.
- The King is trying to raise an army to fend off the ravening Orc hordes, but needs funds. He's promised titles and land to anyone that provides significant funds.
- The conquering Warlord demands a tithe; raise the funds or the town will burn.

These don't have to be short term. Make the sums unreachable. Have the characters constantly searching for more loot, not for personal gain or power, but for the sake of the loot itself. Create problems with storage, raise the bar when they meet demands easily, have rumoured "windfalls" turn out to be copper and silver instead of gold and platinum...as you say, adventuring for loot without a goal is lacklustre, so give them a long-term mission that revolves around finding treasure, but don't make finding treasure easy.

[Captain Panda]

Money is only as useful as their need for it, and it's not realistic to expect the treasure acquired by people seeking out lost hoards of ancient kingdoms to struggle to pay for drinks at an inn (past a certain level, at least). There are still ways to give money value, though.

Just make sure there are things they want and need in the game that cost money, but they do not (and likely will never) have enough coin to actually buy all of it. Thus, the coin has value, and gives them the power to make meaningful choices. Magic items being for sale would be a way to do this, but other expensive options could be included to compete with magic items as a goal. Land, skilled labor required to build or improve a structure for their base on said land, the materials necessary for spells would all cost quite a bit. If you want to put a bit more work in, you could have a powerful wizard who works rune magic sell enchanted tattoos to people who can pay his outrageous fees. The tattoos look cool and add mechanical benefits (to be determined by you, based on the campaign), but also rapidly drain the coffers of the group.

You could have exotic animals for sale, and if they want to keep the exotic animals in their base they have to hire skilled laborers who can handle said animals safely, and that won't be cheap.

[RumoCrytuf]

For the longest time, I've wanted to break free of a standard quest arc and missions and have a team of adventurers who are just in it for the money.

but going to lie, I hate treasure.

It's been hard trying to find fun in dungeon crawling when you have no purpose for the cash you make.

Food and drink are so astoundingly cheap that I finding measly amounts of GP from level 4 bandits would set you up for at least a month.

And with no adventuring purposes for the loot (Magic items, etc.,) I have no way to keep the party invested!

From this, I've decided that my group needs a couple of house rules to balance out the system.

A couple I've thought about:

1. What if spell casters started off with a limited knowledge of spells and could 'unlock' spells as rewards? This would provide interesting backstories for arcane casters.
2. Religious items could be recovered and used to give small bonuses to arcane casters.
3. Ways to buy magic items out of money from adventuring
4. Alternatives to money as rewards, other than the ones from the DMG, for use in hack-and-slash adventuring.

Other ideas would be well appreciated! If you can point out if this sort of thing has been done before, please let me know!

Up General prices by a lot. Food and drink become extremely expensive, Innkeepers charge outrageous prices. Taxes are passed requiring anyone going in or out of a city or town must pay.

In order to level up, PCs must pay gold to train their skills in order to level up.

[mephnick]

I've basically reworked the loot tables to lower the amount of gold characters get while offering expensive upgrades to weapons and limited magical item sales. I don't think the Magic Mart was 3.5's problem (though it needs limits) and using gold to make yourself more mechanically powerful was a major incentive for a lot of players. It's also an RPG staple that I'm not really comfortable removing completely from D&D. My players can go all out on their weapons and armour, but it costs enough that it will be very hard to afford a lot else unless you're really lucky, so they have to decide where their priorities lie. To be fair, my setting caps at level 12 so the players never get to the insane amounts of gold of late game.

[Fishyninja]

One DM was extremely loot heavy everything from cold to scales from monsters, (also helped that our gnome was a bit of a pikey and would take anything that was nailed down).
What he would do would give us the monetary value of all the loot and actively encouragre us to sell the junk stuff like candlesticks, gems etc.

When it comes to the harder items or more esoteric items like the scales, he'll drop a hint in game to visit a blacksmith as someone might want shiny new armour.

Also as we realised soon enough is that Magic Items exist in this world but are rare and have to be identified so in our first town we got some really cool magic items and found an enchanter so we decided to experiment a little with it and found out the more gold you pumped into her the better enchantments you got, the enchantments were also helpful. For example we have been exploring lots of caves with pitfalls and I am the only character in heavy armour my enchanted shield allows me to fly 60ft in any direction as a reaction as it sprouts etheral wings.

One thing you could do in order to make them want to use/save their loot is (as mentioned before) have a variable tax setting for everything they buy, have fines for breaking minor laws in town, have their weapons and armour degrade forcing them to fix/buy new kit regularly.

[Sir cryosin]

They learn ancient knowledge as boon's or abilitys. I watch Matt colvillle and one he got me think about adding in is abilitys from 4e. Also do away with at dawn X-magic item recharge xDx+x and grant a player a boon to place the soul of a dying creature into a gem. And implement soul gems like elder scrolls to renechant magic items. But they need certain types of monsters Souls to replenish Certain Magical effects. Like if you want to replenish charges on a flametoung you need some kind of fire elemental or fire dragon, fire beetle, ect... That could send them on some cool Adventures.

[kenposan]

At some point I'm giving the warlock a scroll with instructions for making a Staff of Power/Magi type item. It's going to be really, really, really, expensive and the ingredients are going to require finding, gathering, purchasing, killing for. She'll be able to essentially level it up as the game goes on.

And what sellsword wouldn't want to commission a special weapon, one that is beautiful, elegant, and powerful.... same deal. What does it encompass? What does it cost? What special meteor metal from far lands of wherever does it need?

[RoutineInsanity]

At some point I'm giving the warlock a scroll with instructions for making a Staff of Power/Magi type item. It's going to be really, really, really, expensive and the ingredients are going to require finding, gathering, purchasing, killing for. She'll be able to essentially level it up as the game goes on.

And what sellsword wouldn't want to commission a special weapon, one that is beautiful, elegant, and powerful.... same deal. What does it encompass? What does it cost? What special meteor metal from far lands of wherever does it need?

Have her Patron give her a Rod of the Pact Keeper, but with none of the abilities. Have the scroll give instructions on what materials are needed to unlock the enchantment at the lowest level, or part of the enchantment. requiring multiple tasks to be completed to unlock/enchant the item fully.

Make the tasks depending on the patron:

Fiend: kill certain people, cause chaos, summon demons in the middle of a town to wreak havoc.

Archfey: destroy some type of dark entity damaging some mystic spring/forest

Great Old One:......no clue...unlock secrets? his desires are unfathomable.

[Arcangel4774]

Having the PCs create a base, with a price to upgrade and staff, is nice. Especially if you make the base matter. Have it attacked by bandits, villians, or just people they've wronged. Make them want to store something in the base so there is a reason to protect it. Say in alter that gives the whole party +2 on specific skill roll. Not overly game breaking, but something they would not want to lose.

[Kurt Kurageous]

It's a problem.

For an equally intelligent discussion of the problem, read http://theangrygm.com/nothing-here-but-worthless-gold/

For one solution, try this. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHVsiBMMb98MUZaRXZjNlZ2NUU/view?usp=sharing

It came from here.

Good luck.

[Capn Charlie]

An alternative is to abolish experience point rewards for combat, story and other encounters, and instead award XP on a 1:1 basis per GP that is "squandered" on living expenses, background purchases, carousing, gambling, etc etc.

A character that builds a temple or school gets a chunk, a would be warlord building a castle gets it per gp spent on construction, or even as wages for an army or endowments to followers and henchmen. Just don't count gp spent on personal upgrades, and even consider making magic items available for purchase. Would you rather level up and ding spending your gold on ale and whores, or buy a magic sword. Either way, track what level they "should" be at, and increase difficulty accordingly. Miserly characters that hoard wealth or spend too much on character upgrades will be behind the projected level curve for threats.

[Fishyninja]

It's a problem.

For an equally intelligent discussion of the problem, read http://theangrygm.com/nothing-here-but-worthless-gold/

For one solution, try this. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHVsiBMMb98MUZaRXZjNlZ2NUU/view?usp=sharing

It came from here.

Good luck.

Following on from the Angry GM article it seems that the problem he (the author) has is DM's not allowing magic equipment to be bought or sold? Now using my experience, I haven't been able to buy any magic gear but we can certainly sell it and also I have had only two campaigns where I have had starter equipment. The others we started naked......literally.

[Zanthy1]

There is no pint in having lots of money if there isn't anything to spend it on. A base of operations, magic items, servants, all of these can be useful purchases. One thing that I did for magic items was have modified versions be sold for excessive prices. After about 2 sessions the players might be able to afford 1. And to make sure that they didn't get to overpowered with them, each item only had a limited amount of uses, and once used up was gone.

[Vogonjeltz]

For the longest time, I've wanted to break free of a standard quest arc and missions and have a team of adventurers who are just in it for the money.

but going to lie, I hate treasure.

It's been hard trying to find fun in dungeon crawling when you have no purpose for the cash you make.

Food and drink are so astoundingly cheap that I finding measly amounts of GP from level 4 bandits would set you up for at least a month.

And with no adventuring purposes for the loot (Magic items, etc.,) I have no way to keep the party invested!

From this, I've decided that my group needs a couple of house rules to balance out the system.

A couple I've thought about:

1. What if spell casters started off with a limited knowledge of spells and could 'unlock' spells as rewards? This would provide interesting backstories for arcane casters.
2. Religious items could be recovered and used to give small bonuses to arcane casters.
3. Ways to buy magic items out of money from adventuring
4. Alternatives to money as rewards, other than the ones from the DMG, for use in hack-and-slash adventuring.

Other ideas would be well appreciated! If you can point out if this sort of thing has been done before, please let me know!

Uses for gold:
1) Improve your characters lifestyle - this is an unlimited sink as the wealthiest of aristocrats are going to be shelling out thousands of gold each month.
2) Pay for services - i.e. Maintenance on that castle you got as a quest reward for saving the kingdom, the listed fees for upkeep make it mandatory that your party take down at least 2 hordes each month just to break even!; Sometimes you will have to pay to revive a fallen ally, this is never cheap.
3) Buy equipment, spell components, and expendables: healing potions, you can really never have enough; armor is expensive; there are never enough arrows; and many of the gems required for spellcasting will never show up in a standard treasure horde.
4) Carrousing
5) Spreading Rumors

Etcetera. Any one of these could require the entire treasure horde, there is always something to spend gold on.

[Sigreid]

Set up magic merchants if you want to. Just control what you let them buy to what you are willing to let them have. Heck, if you want, don't have any magic loot in the treasure and make them spend time and treasure tracking down what they want.

If that doesn't work, there's always the old stand by of "I spent my reward on ale and whores!"

Or as W.C. Fields (I think) put it "I spent half my fortune on booze, gambling and fast women. And the other half I wasted."

[MBControl]

It seems the common theme to the suggestions is give the money meaning.

I agree.

A lot of the reasons are debts or requirements, but what about a juicy property that may take a very long time to afford.

Would your group not get gold hungry if they could buy a dragon hunting airship for 100,000 gp? A castle, or a thieves guild to be under your control.

Properties in general are solid. Property owners in this environment reflect power and influence. I have my party buy properties all over the realm. It's fun for a few reasons, first they have safe havens and places to stay all over, plus they need to hire a staff and guards to take care of them when they're away (more money to spend) which can create new and interesting NPCs.

A long and in depth setting is more than a map where your party does stuff, it's a complete world, and allowing them to establish a real footprint in the world adds to immersion. If you hear a castle in the province next door is being attacked, that sounds like a fun little quest. If your castle in the next province over is being attacked, it's an act of war, and a price will be paid!

[Fishyninja]

It seems the common theme to the suggestions is give the money meaning.

I agree.

A lot of the reasons are debts or requirements, but what about a juicy property that may take a very long time to afford.

Would your group not get gold hungry if they could buy a dragon hunting airship for 100,000 gp? A castle, or a thieves guild to be under your control.

Properties in general are solid. Property owners in this environment reflect power and influence. I have my party buy properties all over the realm. It's fun for a few reasons, first they have safe havens and places to stay all over, plus they need to hire a staff and guards to take care of them when they're away (more money to spend) which can create new and interesting NPCs.

A long and in depth setting is more than a map where your party does stuff, it's a complete world, and allowing them to establish a real footprint in the world adds to immersion. If you hear a castle in the province next door is being attacked, that sounds like a fun little quest. If your castle in the next province over is being attacked, it's an act of war, and a price will be paid!

So D&D becomes more liek Civilisation....I like it.

[Lawful Good]

One DM was extremely loot heavy everything from cold to scales from monsters, (also helped that our gnome was a bit of a pikey and would take anything that was nailed down).
What he would do would give us the monetary value of all the loot and actively encouragre us to sell the junk stuff like candlesticks, gems etc.


I actually played like this in an AL CoS game. Took everything from Death House. I think I got the klepto tendency from TES games.
DM made everything disappear when I left :smallfrown:

no regrets :P

[Fishyninja]

AL CoS game.

AL CoS? Also we have to sell everything as he imposes weight limits, not strictly but enough to encourage either hoarding (which we can't do as not tangible address) or sell it.

[Lawful Good]

AL CoS? Also we have to sell everything as he imposes weight limits, not strictly but enough to encourage either hoarding (which we can't do as not tangible address) or sell it.

Adventurers League Curse of Strahd. Encumbrance limits are actually quite high, even as a gnome wizard. Tensers Floating Disk for the win!

[ShikomeKidoMi]

Like others have said, give your players stuff to buy. Poorer countries will sometimes sell noble titles. And castles. And once you have your castle you need staff. And they're going to need to be paid every month. And probably fed, too.

As someone else said, make an airship available for an exorbitant cost. And again, make it require a skilled crew to operate, a crew that needs to be paid. Make it get damaged in fights with flying monsters and need expensive repairs (not too often or it gets old, but sometimes).

Or let your players research custom spells, requiring months of expensive experimentation.

Or maybe your players want a law changed, instead of giving them a quest to impress the necessary nobles, have heavy bribes required.

There are lots of things that can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of gold initially and continue to cost thousands of gold on a regular basis.

[MBControl]

I actually played like this in an AL CoS game. Took everything from Death House. I think I got the klepto tendency from TES games.
DM made everything disappear when I left :smallfrown:

no regrets :P

Don't blame your DM on this one.
I believe that was specified my the mod itself.

[Fishyninja]

Could you weaponise your gold?

Stay with me on this, I am not saying make gold swords as pure gold, and a lot of gold alloys are extremely soft, but you could for example tart up your armour with filigree which could give you say a +1 or 2 bonus to persuasion checks or intimidate checks.

Also for the spell slingers, super heating the gold and throwing slugs of molten gold at people to injure/kill, set fire too?
Also for seige battles, melt it and pour it on invaders?

Use it as bait for a dragon?

[Rhedyn]

Gold buys power. A troop of 1000 soldiers is far more useful in 5e than a +2 longsword.

Treasure only sucks when you want peers of the realm to adventure like poor people. There is little reason for high level characters to ever set foot in a dungeon.

[RazorChain]

I'm sorry but you are kinda playing the wrong system. D&D is all about loot, money and magic items.......and killing things of course, you have to kill things else it isn't proper loot but stolen goods.


You might want to focus more on story and fun plots rather than raiding dungeons.

[Estrillian]

My feeling is that most games with the OP's sort of "treasure is worthless" problem have players that are not sufficiently invested in treating their characters as actual real people. Real people have no problem finding things to spend money on: cars, houses, dinners out, entertainment, clothing, gadgets, expensive status symbols. If you experience your character as a real living person then you'll want those same things - and those things are expensive!

I played a priest who spent every penny he gained on building a temple to his God. I started at the beginning of the campaign and never stopped. There was always more ways to spend on it: bronze statues, gilded beams, acolytes to light candles. Another player in the same campaign was trying to re-establish their family fortune, buying back properties and goods they'd had to sell. A third player used their money to found a trading company. Later in the campaign we frequently used their carts, or travelled on their ships, or stayed in their overseas branches to use as bases for our adventures.

In another campaign that I ran everything was about money. The characters were dirt poor and I charged for everything: rent, taxes, food, repair of their gear, washing of their clothing, candles, torches, you name it. All of the characters also had reasons to need money. One was a gambling addict. One constantly bought dresses and jewellery. One was saving to buy a house. One was sending their money home to support their family. We had games where they did desperate jobs for a handful of coppers, or tried smoking their own fish to sell in the market, or went busking (or indeed prostituting themselves). No one ever complained that treasure wasn't worth it :) (Another thing we did in that campaign was give out actual coins for money, 5p = 1 silver, 1p = 1 copper and so on. Having an actual purse with actual coins made it a lot more real, and made me as a GM charge for things more often).

I also remember another campaign where the players got involved in a full-scale orc invasion of a trading town. They beat off the attack but half the town was in ruins by the end, so they set about rebuilding it. There were taxes on merchants, and tithes on the residents to help, but a lot of the party's efforts were to raid places for treasure so that they could rebuild the town. Over a couple of years we build a new fort, repaired the walls, raised a militia, began construction of a Cathedral (we expected it to take a century, so we wouldn't be around to see if completed), and arranged trading deals to make the town richer.

The take away message from all of this is that you need the characters to have solid goals, and played out lives. If staying in a town for a week is glossed over with a "it takes a week" and the players spending 7gp, then they are going to have too much money. If you tempt them with fine wines, rich food, new clothing, expensive inns, horse races, theatre companies, parties to attend (or hold), they will spend.

[Yora]

I'm sorry but you are kinda playing the wrong system. D&D is all about loot, money and magic items.......and killing things of course, you have to kill things else it isn't proper loot but stolen goods.

You might want to focus more on story and fun plots rather than raiding dungeons.

When D&D used to be all about raiding dungeons it was the standard that characters gain XP from hauling treasure back to the town. Gold was still mostly useless unless you sunk it all into a castle, but it was still extremely valuable to the players. If you want to play the oldschool dungeon crawling way, I think you have to give XP that way too. Grabbing as much stuff as you can and getting it home (to waste on whatever) is what players want if it's what gives them XP. It also has the funny side effect that it becomes smarter to trick a monster and steal its treasure instead of risking your life fighting it. Because of that the GM does not have to make every encounter easily beatable for the players (they can just leave) and that makes the whole game of dungeon exploration a lot more fun.
Usually characters also got a little bit of XP from defeating enemies, but that would have been only 10% or so compared to what it is in the more recent editions.

Having random encounters also makes a lot of sense in such a game. Because wandering monsters usually don't carry small or large chests of treasure around with them wherever they go and that means the players get barely any XP from fighting them. So again it's much more efficient to level up by trying to be both quick and stealthy to keep the number of random encounters to a minimum.

[Hrugner]

Present some problems/quests with a price tag to make them go away. Something like "bandits are swarming the northern roads, almost a month's travel away. Your old friend Volcar the Nomad is in that area and could probably handle the problem if given the means to hire a mercenary army. It should cot about 2k for the mercenaries and the message". Then your party could just head up there, or wait to hear back form Volcar who would likely send them whatever plot hook comes down the line from the initial bandit thingy. This method requires you to present simultaneous quests that can't really be undertaken, and it requires meticulous note keeping on NPCs, their position in the world, and their reputation with the party, but it solves the gold problem.

Offer other problems that just aren't adventurer things yet. Hiring someone to track down a magic item that's rumored to exist but has been lost, hiring an excavation team to dig down to a lost city, or hiring workers to drain a swamp to gain access to a sunken temple are all reasonable ways to generate costs. If you do this sort of thing, I recommend encouraging your players to hire a servant to manage their projects and accounts. Asking them to deal with this sort of tedious book keeping themselves would just get boring. This may also involve introducing a trustworthy NPC early on.

None of this stuff should really come up until the players have their choice of mundane gear, and they are no longer working exclusively for NPCs. If your players struggle with motivation, then all this is pretty useless.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm sorry but you are kinda playing the wrong system. D&D is all about loot, money and magic items.......and killing things of course, you have to kill things else it isn't proper loot but stolen goods.


You might want to focus more on story and fun plots rather than raiding dungeons.
Um. The OP literally said that they want to play a game that's all about loot and money and magic items.

I think the main ideas have been brought up nicely: offer in-world investment opportunities, use a "loot=experience" rule, or let players buy magic items and slowly ratchet up the difficulty to match.

[Hrugner]

When D&D used to be all about raiding dungeons it was the standard that characters gain XP from hauling treasure back to the town. Gold was still mostly useless unless you sunk it all into a castle, but it was still extremely valuable to the players. If you want to play the oldschool dungeon crawling way, I think you have to give XP that way too. Grabbing as much stuff as you can and getting it home (to waste on whatever) is what players want if it's what gives them XP. It also has the funny side effect that it becomes smarter to trick a monster and steal its treasure instead of risking your life fighting it. Because of that the GM does not have to make every encounter easily beatable for the players (they can just leave) and that makes the whole game of dungeon exploration a lot more fun.
Usually characters also got a little bit of XP from defeating enemies, but that would have been only 10% or so compared to what it is in the more recent editions.

Having random encounters also makes a lot of sense in such a game. Because wandering monsters usually don't carry small or large chests of treasure around with them wherever they go and that means the players get barely any XP from fighting them. So again it's much more efficient to level up by trying to be both quick and stealthy to keep the number of random encounters to a minimum.

I loved that. I think it was 2nd ed? Playing a rogue you gained bonus XP on top of the base XP for treasure hauling, my rogue ended up being levels ahead of the other party members before his unceremonious assassination. We briefly hired a wagoneer to scour dungeons we'd conquer and bring loot back for us, but the DM gave him the treasure XP, so we had to go back to the old way of bringing our own damn wagon train, but not before he and his 2 daughters were fairly high level.

[DragonSorcererX]

It's been hard trying to find fun in dungeon crawling when you have no purpose for the cash you make.

Build a castle/big building, start your own organization of anything (literally anything, from spies to abjurers that defend the world against planar threats), invite experienced guys from the classes that you want to have in your organization to join you and work as instructors, invest in medieval fantasy publicity to make people enlist to your order, grow big enough, have the kingdom/country/free city that you live in to hire you (if you are evil, you can fake an external enemy, like making a teleportation circle somewhere hidden in the main city of the region where you live and them give a demon a staff with planeshift, in fact, this sounds really familiar :smallamused:)...

[imaginary]

This may sound backwards, but what if the characters were part of an organization that could provide them with everything they needed. Outside of magic items(which can't be bought), give them whatever they want or need. If you remove the need for money, it becomes less of a thing.

[The Ship's dog]

So I have spent about a year and a half playing D&D, much of that was 4e. In 4e, if you wanted to get better gear you needed lots of cash. Magic items were a massive part of 4e, he'll, there was even a ritual specifically called "enchant magic item" and boy did those enchantments cost a butt-tonne of gold.

For example, the average level 6 PC (levels go up to 30) was expected to at least have a +1 to their weapon/Implement (4e spell casting focus, all enchantments had levels that gave them bonuses to rolls). That magic weapon, if it had a decent enchantment, could be costing the PC upwards of 700 GP.

I highly suggest you look into the concept of magic items in 4e if you want to try and make gold more valuable. Home brewing a few choice enchantments would be nice, also using the level+gold to enchantment level tier system would be very easy to change into a 5e friendly version.

[scrap02479]

I use the old encyclopedia magicas for loot. It's easy enough to conver to 5th

[tkuremento]

Give them a goal;

- They have a debt that must be paid. Perhaps a mortage on their base of operations (extra funds can be spent on "upgrades").
- They are under a curse that can only be broken by an Efreet who is demanding vast sums of money to do so.
- The King is trying to raise an army to fend off the ravening Orc hordes, but needs funds. He's promised titles and land to anyone that provides significant funds.
- The conquering Warlord demands a tithe; raise the funds or the town will burn.

These don't have to be short term. Make the sums unreachable. Have the characters constantly searching for more loot, not for personal gain or power, but for the sake of the loot itself. Create problems with storage, raise the bar when they meet demands easily, have rumoured "windfalls" turn out to be copper and silver instead of gold and platinum...as you say, adventuring for loot without a goal is lacklustre, so give them a long-term mission that revolves around finding treasure, but don't make finding treasure easy.

I've always loved the idea of working for a Kingdom. My personal version is the court wizard sends you off to find ingredients so he can start enchanting the gear for the army, war is brewing. You can then if you so choose disclose any money you get or keep it or maybe even the town is suffering because of reallocation of the kingdom's coffers so you help them live, etc. Maybe you eventually find some information that the king is evil and you need to expose him, or other stuff. And of course eventually there will be a war (unless RP reasons lead to peace before it can strike).

EDIT: Of course with the UA Alchemist, that would probably be a better concept for the court magic user to be.

[Newtonsolo313]

Well you are gonna need that money to ressurect dead characters since the material component is super expensive
edit: oh wait they have a weirdly exponential material cost

[MeeposFire]

Also you can spend money and time to learn languages and tool proficiencies.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

For the longest time, I've wanted to break free of a standard quest arc and missions and have a team of adventurers who are just in it for the money.

but going to lie, I hate treasure.

It's been hard trying to find fun in dungeon crawling when you have no purpose for the cash you make.

Food and drink are so astoundingly cheap that I finding measly amounts of GP from level 4 bandits would set you up for at least a month.

And with no adventuring purposes for the loot (Magic items, etc.,) I have no way to keep the party invested!

From this, I've decided that my group needs a couple of house rules to balance out the system.

A couple I've thought about:

1. What if spell casters started off with a limited knowledge of spells and could 'unlock' spells as rewards? This would provide interesting backstories for arcane casters.
2. Religious items could be recovered and used to give small bonuses to arcane casters.
3. Ways to buy magic items out of money from adventuring
4. Alternatives to money as rewards, other than the ones from the DMG, for use in hack-and-slash adventuring.

Other ideas would be well appreciated! If you can point out if this sort of thing has been done before, please let me know!

I believe the trick is to give the characters enough investment in their back stories they will care about accomplishments.

My current character comes from a well off enough background and her motivation is split between vengeance and fixing what has gone wrong for her family. She is not adverse to picking up some gold pieces but it is more an after thought to accomplishing her goals.

Now the poor Rouge and capitalistic Wizard in the party are always searching for coin lol.

[Temperjoke]

I think the problem lies in the premise. No one is really just "in it for the money" the money is just the method to get what they really want. What that is will vary between characters. Some of them are doing it for seed money to establish or purchase a business for themselves. Others are just straight saving it for their retirement from adventuring. Another common thing is sending it back home for their family to live off of (assuming the DM hasn't killed their entire family for a lazy plot); or maybe donating it to their church or some other charitable donation.

Investment opportunities are always good options. But not in return for more wealth, but for more intangible benefits. Example: a town hosts a yearly midsummer festival that everyone for miles around comes to, in fact, this festival is the one thing that sets this town apart from other towns in the kingdom and is vital to the town's well being. But this year, due to some unfortunate event like the destruction wrought by a major storm, the town doesn't have the funds to be able to fully support the festival. Suddenly the adventuring party arrives, having recently slain a dragon and pillaged it's hoard, and can certainly afford to donate large amounts of money to the town! The festival is saved! The town, in it's gratitude, bends over backwards, giving them free lodgings, carousing and celebrating every night, get out of jail free cards! The most important thing though, is the adventurers' reputations soar in the region, important people take notice and give them greater access to more exclusive areas that lesser people would be able to visit, leading to bigger things and greater adventures.

[Coidzor]

Minor (magical or otherwise) items that, while not useless, aren't going to just be I Win buttons for exploration or combat or social events or what have you, or even shake up the paradigm of anything on their own.

The problem is that people mostly just want to come up with gag items to troll players with, so there's a lot of sifting through dross or thinking them up yourself.

[furby076]

One thing you could do in order to make them want to use/save their loot is (as mentioned before) have a variable tax setting for everything they buy, have fines for breaking minor laws in town, have their weapons and armour degrade forcing them to fix/buy new kit regularly.

This would be interesting. I would be OK paying tax in the town I live in, but if everytime my character walked into a town they expected him to pay the standard tax rate, like the residents, my character would soon have issues with said town. Given PCs are beheamoths, it would end up being a brawl :) (yes i know there are consequences).

The point is, be careful of the taxing. People get annoyed with it, and it turns the game into a math session. Plus, how does the town you just walked into know how much to tax you? Better for the DM to hand out less loot. Or better yet, provide fun ways to spend it (castles, mansions, barding for mounts, etc). Or, worse goes to worst, let them haul around hundreds of thousands of gold (in various formats). THere is mroe to adventuring than gold.

[RazorChain]

Um. The OP literally said that they want to play a game that's all about loot and money and magic items.

I think the main ideas have been brought up nicely: offer in-world investment opportunities, use a "loot=experience" rule, or let players buy magic items and slowly ratchet up the difficulty to match.

You are absolutely right....the OP isn't the best at formulating sentences so I kinda misread him.


But his problem is easily correctable just by drawing on real world experience. Money equals power, with power you get sex and sex is good!

So let the heroes sink into their Beverly Hills lavish lifestyle with trophy spouses....the next dungeon raid is to pay for the 159 course feast just to outdo Duke Rockefeller who had 158 courses in his last feast. Your spouse absolutely needs a new set of clothing, He/She/It absolute can't wear the same clothes again...and they have to be made from troglodyte skin to match her/his/its eyes and new shoes made from the footsteps of a cat. Countess Rothschild cant outshine your spouse again.

[MBControl]

We've also allow players to by XP, to a degree.

It was designed to help a PC that came up 8 XP short of levelling at the end of a session, get over the hump. We capped it at 25 XP, and I believe the price was 100 gp / point of XP.

We explained it as paying for expert training, and would be completed during your downtime activities. Made it so a player could level up between sessions, and not take game play time away from the group.

[Tough Butter]

You are absolutely right....the OP isn't the best at formulating sentences so I kinda misread him.


But his problem is easily correctable just by drawing on real world experience. Money equals power, with power you get sex and sex is good!

So let the heroes sink into their Beverly Hills lavish lifestyle with trophy spouses....the next dungeon raid is to pay for the 159 course feast just to outdo Duke Rockefeller who had 158 courses in his last feast. Your spouse absolutely needs a new set of clothing, He/She/It absolute can't wear the same clothes again...and they have to be made from troglodyte skin to match her/his/its eyes and new shoes made from the footsteps of a cat. Countess Rothschild cant outshine your spouse again.

..Op is not the good at formu-whatzits of the sentencings?

Hey, I resent that!

[Tough Butter]

There are some really cool ideas here!

One thing though, are there any kind of house rules for Buying magic items or Gold to EXP conversions? I'm really bad at ruling by myself and I don't want to mess anything up

[Vogonjeltz]

There are some really cool ideas here!

One thing though, are there any kind of house rules for Buying magic items or Gold to EXP conversions? I'm really bad at ruling by myself and I don't want to mess anything up

If you want to straight up have a Ye olde magick shoppe selling things for their gold value, then do that

[Pex]

I advise against forcing the party to want treasure to pay off taxes, fines, remove a curse, etc. It could lead to resentment, and it doesn't really solve the problem. The players aren't wanting to spend the money. They have to spend the money just to get some NPC off their back. Money remains having no value to them because they don't get to buy things they want.

[Hudsonian]

One of my favorite things is allowing the purchase of magical items but they come with charges and may only be recharged by a wizard of the guild, for a fee of course.

Permanent enchantments are either found as loot, or very costly.

examples include:
Sword of forsight: As a bonus action, spend one charge to see the next attack roll of your target, you see only the dice.

Wand of lifting: As an action, spend one charge to make the fighter say, "Get SWOLE BRO cast levitate

Gloves of Lockpicking: spend 1 charge to become proficient with lockpicking for 1 minute. If you are already proficient double your prof. bonus.

Potion of Steel Nerves: You become immune to fear for one hour.

The hammer that knocks: Spend one charge to automatically successfully knock a door down, this alerts any enemies within 100 feet of your presence.

[Squiddish]

A) Wizards need money to scribe new spells
B) Fighters may need money for armor.
C) You need loads of money to craft magic items
D) You can use money to build/buy castles, town halls, guild halls, etc.

[Hudsonian]

also, information is expensive.

[Draco4472]

To be fair, a group of wanders living town to town has no need for a fortune. When they settle down, start a family, have to buy land and pay taxes, food, water clothing, their kid's education, that's when money matters.

I agree with 95% of every suggestion posted so far on this thread, having situations where they can exchange gold for spells and magic items would be a great incentive.