Value of a dungeon

[Dieuoffire]

so I am DMing a shackled City campaign for a couple of people and they just cleared out the lucky monkey. then they asked about taking it over and owning it. I might not mind that as a funny twist but it got me thinking. according to stronghold builders guide, that Inn is worth a lot of money.

I also recently did a age of worms adventure where there was a trap that spat out Iron balls of a certain dimension. I was a player and asked the GM what happened when I took a ball out. According to the book, nothing. I did some math and found out that the Iron in the room was worth about 10,000-11,000 gp. We were second level at the time.

I find this a running problem. Any PC who knows what a base costs, or a trap, or anything like that; can make huge amounts of money by simply claiming the item that is not supposed to be treasure. I know that the DM can just say no and in some cases that is reasonable (the Inn might have a legal owner or inheritor) but in cases like t he iron ball shooting trap. there is no real reason why the characters should not be able to cart away huge amounts of valuable metals, mechanical gears, etc. even the doors are worth something in D&D if you know what to do with them (locks, or just sell the whole door to someone building a castle). The sq foot value of a cleared out dungeon that nobody knew where it was is also extremely high.

Does anyone else have this problem? traps and bases that if properly handled are far more valuable than the treasure in them? what do you do when players get smart? I hate the "just no" idea because I always tell my players if you can be creative and come up with something I haven't thought of, go for it! they love the challenge and it sparks a lot of fun creative situations.

Sorry for the ramble but any Ideas/experiences on this one?

[Venger]

if your issue is your party exceeding wbl while you want to cleave pretty closely to it, just ask them nicely to stop under gentleman's agreement because you feel it's affecting game balance. if they know it bothers you they'll (ideally) stop doing it.

don't try to outsmart them in-character, because they'll assume it's part of the game and is something to be overcome or outwitted. that may be fun for them (sounds like it) but it's clear that isn't what you want.

if you're scraping for an in-universe justification for not letting them sell their stuff (after you've settled the issue out of character) then you can always just pretend economics actually exists in deeandee in this one specific context and say "stores don't want to buy your vendor trash because everyone brings in dungeon doors and arrow traps and stuff to an extent that they are worthless mechanically. surely you didn't think you were the first people to think of this"

[Malroth]

Simple fix. Make traps cheap. When a kobold wants something big and dumb dead it doesn't buy a +3 sword it builds a trap. When a farmer wants to stop a bear from eating it's cows, more traps. In our world A mundane trap costs a days worth of work for a commoner tops and even that's a bit high.

[weckar]

When it comes to dungeons themselves, most of the games I run tend to be urban or semi-urban. So, the locations are public property, or city property.

When it comes to the CONTENTS... most of the contents not meant to be treasure tend to have a low value to weight ratio, much like your iron balls. Carting them out to any revenue takes time. Someone is going to take notice. Conflict will happen naturally.

[Rizban]

I'm generally of the opinion that if players want to turn the game into an economy simulator and play that with a bit of adventuring on the side, let them. It's about having fun.

If they're just doing it for the sake of powergaming to "win." Find some creative ways to make it come back and bite them in the future. For example, having lots of wealth and very valuable items but very low character power is almost certain to start rumors that a greedy dragon looking to increase his hoard will hear. Perhaps their power destabilizes the local governments and their home nation is invaded by an alliance of their neighbors in a preemptive strike because of fear that the heroes will join against their home nation's enemies. There are lots of creative ways to handle things other than just outright saying no or taking it away that can progress the game and make memorable encounters.

In short, just go with the flow of the game and keep it fun. If you're the DM, you're always going to have more power than the players, no matter how OP they get, so don't fret about it. Just play and have fun however the players want to play it and make some cool stories along the way.

[Dieuoffire]

Good ideas,

I have good natured players who might just accept a gentleman's agreement. I also could see how attractive a level 2 pc with 10k extra gp on hand might look to a lvl 5 bad guy.

However my main problem is with my own rules. I looked at the adventure path and said "hey lets try this one" told my players I would not punish them for creativity etc. Then they do something that breaks WBL, which could break the campaign (remember: prefab) if it continues (WBL can when it gets way out of hand). This would not be a problem but i am faced with: go through the adventures are start increasing everything to give them a challenge, or let them coast through because they got one great idea. Plus, again, the "i wont punish you for a good idea" mentality makes me think that adding improved sunder or similar items, or increasing baddies just because they got smart seems like me punishing their good idea.

I am not trying to discredit your ideas I just think I trapped myself with my own "be creative, I will not DM smack down." I am actually happy they thought of it, it was a funny moment. Just foreseeing a problem with continued mentality.

The other thing is, does this happen to others a lot? as I looked at many traps etc. the value of taking apart the trap etc. and selling them is a lot higher than I expected. I almost think it would be fun to play a Rogue or artificer who (after consulting DM) made his living by deconstructing and re-selling dungeon features etc.

Finding my stance as immoral to punish for a good idea, how far can WBL be broken without it breaking the campaign?
I think i will encourage them to build a real base etc. that might take out all the extra gp.

[Venger]

Good ideas,

I have good natured players who might just accept a gentleman's agreement. I also could see how attractive a level 2 pc with 10k extra gp on hand might look to a lvl 5 bad guy.

However my main problem is with my own rules. I looked at the adventure path and said "hey lets try this one" told my players I would not punish them for creativity etc. Then they do something that breaks WBL, which could break the campaign (remember: prefab) if it continues (WBL can when it gets way out of hand). This would not be a problem but i am faced with: go through the adventures are start increasing everything to give them a challenge, or let them coast through because they got one great idea. Plus, again, the "i wont punish you for a good idea" mentality makes me think that adding improved sunder or similar items, or increasing baddies just because they got smart seems like me punishing their good idea.

I am not trying to discredit your ideas I just think I trapped myself with my own "be creative, I will not DM smack down." I am actually happy they thought of it, it was a funny moment. Just foreseeing a problem with continued mentality.

The other thing is, does this happen to others a lot? as I looked at many traps etc. the value of taking apart the trap etc. and selling them is a lot higher than I expected. I almost think it would be fun to play a Rogue or artificer who (after consulting DM) made his living by deconstructing and re-selling dungeon features etc.

Finding my stance as immoral to punish for a good idea, how far can WBL be broken without it breaking the campaign?
I think i will encourage them to build a real base etc. that might take out all the extra gp.

In situations like this, it's in your best interests to be honest. Tell them that while you think their ingenuity in harvesting the traps was cool and interesting and you don't want to discourage similar decisions in the future, having x amount of money will in your estimation negatively impact gameplay, so you'd like to take a mulligan on stripping the dungeons for copper wire and dole out wbl normally from this point forward.

[WarKitty]

One fun idea might be to let them invest the money. Instead of getting a bunch of money all at once, they get a deposit in the bank that pays out over time, or some sort of shop or something that pays them revenue. That way they get a nice goody from their creativity, but it pays out in a controllable way rather than giving them a huge amount of money all at once.

Remember, with stronghold builder's guide, the cost of building something isn't necessarily proportional to the income it generates per month.

[Rizban]

However my main problem is with my own rules. I looked at the adventure path and said "hey lets try this one" told my players I would not punish them for creativity etc. Then they do something that breaks WBL, which could break the campaign (remember: prefab) if it continues (WBL can when it gets way out of hand). This would not be a problem but i am faced with: go through the adventures are start increasing everything to give them a challenge, or let them coast through because they got one great idea. Plus, again, the "i wont punish you for a good idea" mentality makes me think that adding improved sunder or similar items, or increasing baddies just because they got smart seems like me punishing their good idea.If you're running a set adventure path and unwilling to modify it, there's not a whole lot you can do. I'm honestly not that familiar with the adventure path. Most that I'm aware of have some sort of side quests or random encounters or other options written into them to give you some suggestions on altering the AP to suit the players. If this one doesn't have that, and you're not willing to compromise, then... I dunno.

Only other thing I can think of is that the sheer amount of material they're hauling in will be a pain to process, so people aren't going to be as interested in buying it all, the massive amount of it will flood the market, depressing the prices and making it worth less than they thought, and/orNPCs may just not have enough or be willing to spend enough gold to cover the full value of the loot. This just feels like smacking them down a bit, but it makes sense in universe.


The other thing is, does this happen to others a lot? as I looked at many traps etc. the value of taking apart the trap etc. and selling them is a lot higher than I expected. I almost think it would be fun to play a Rogue or artificer who (after consulting DM) made his living by deconstructing and re-selling dungeon features etc. I wouldn't say it's overly frequent, but I definitely played a game as an artificer that did exactly this. It was a lot of fun.


Finding my stance as immoral to punish for a good idea, how far can WBL be broken without it breaking the campaign?
I think i will encourage them to build a real base etc. that might take out all the extra gp.WBL is really just a guideline. It's actually not even accurate to what the rules expect from "actual play." The rules assume something like 20% of loot will be used for consumable items, decreasing party wealth through attrition. That number might not be exactly right, but I believe it was somewhere around there.

I do know that the DMG suggests that being more than 20% away from WBL requires special consideration.

I'd generally just let them have it and suggest they spend it on non-power items and roleplay opportunities, e.g. land and titles, bribes, victory celebrations, etc. Since this is a set AP though, I'm not really sure what it would and would not allow...

[yellowrocket]

Ore or workable metal is one thing, a solid mass is going to require a fair amout of heat to reshape. Now that's nit to say it isn't still very valuable, but something like that is going to be a specialized item.

Bonus points for their creativity. Who's going to have that many coins or gems lying around.for that item though? Now a good smith wold be able to make payments of some kind to them regulary, or perhaps begin work on something custom, but isn't going to be able to buy the materials outright. His supplier may look at the pcs cross ways for their intrusion though.

[EvulOne]

Since they're low level, how long would it take to carry all those heavy cumbersome items? No doubt thieves would watch someone who walks into a mercantile to sell mass quantity items. They may want to follow the players and either rob them or steal from their stash of iron when the players are away. Also what mercantile will have that much gold to pay for that much iron or be willing to? They'd have to spread their sales around, carrying them with them when they do and be subject to more thieves. This could build up quite a reputation for the party that they do not want.


I haven't actually had players able to do things like that. I have seen players looking greedily at a set of large adamantine double doors but they realized that is MUCH more hassle than the doors are worth.

[satamfan]

My party (Lvl 8) suffered from this problem last week. We got caught in an abandoned underground Dwarven city, and by Random change, my thief discovered an old jewelry store. Having failed to beat the big safe's lock, she got the rest of the party to come help. After breaking the safe open by force, we find out the damn thing was made of Adamantine. So since 3/4 of the party are super greedy money-grubbing bastards, we spend the next hour discussing how we can break the safe apart, maybe melt it down and sell off the adamantine, since 20 lbs of the stuff would be more valuable than all the nonmagical treasure inside it. This is basically where the game ended that night. We are still stuck underground, with no idea how to escape from the magically isolated underground city with no connection to the outside world at the moment. But we got a bag of holding and a bunch of adamantine and thus lost all focus of escaping.
Post game the DM noted that bringing that much adamantine would destroy the economy, but our arguments were "This store-owner had it!", "We can sell it incrementally over time", "We can use it ourselves with our artificer", etc. I think in moments like this, I think a gentlemen's agreement would be the best solution, or if the GM retconed the super expensive material to common steel. I think our DM was thinking, by making the safe too hard to open, the party would give up, but then we had the Barbarbian with a adamantine greatsword spend an hour in-game hacking at it. So don't try to out-smart the players, since it can make the situation so much worse. As boring as it is, gentlemen's agreement is probably the way to go.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One fun idea might be to let them invest the money. Instead of getting a bunch of money all at once, they get a deposit in the bank that pays out over time, or some sort of shop or something that pays them revenue. That way they get a nice goody from their creativity, but it pays out in a controllable way rather than giving them a huge amount of money all at once.

Remember, with stronghold builder's guide, the cost of building something isn't necessarily proportional to the income it generates per month.
This is a good way to handle it. Gentleman's Agreement the whole situation: "I'm impressed you weasled that much wealth out of the dungeon, but in the interest of not breaking the game, I'm going to ask that you invest it back into the setting, not into magic items." I think I remember some Pathfinder adventure paths using abstract wealth to handle such distinctions.

Another decent way is to discard the idea of set prices for trade goods. Have whatever merchant they're selling to go "hmm, that's a lot of low-grade iron; I'll give you [some reasonable amount] for the lot of it." The PCs get their payday, but don't blow their WBL too far off-line.

[Gildedragon]

My party (Lvl 8) suffered from this problem last week. We got caught in an abandoned underground Dwarven city, and by Random change, my thief discovered an old jewelry store. Having failed to beat the big safe's lock, she got the rest of the party to come help. After breaking the safe open by force, we find out the damn thing was made of Adamantin...

That's what happens when a DM tries to go neener neener an underestimates how dedicated players can be.

An adamantine safe full of now worthless ledgers would have been excellent treasure.

Having the PCs invest it back in into the setting is a good idea too.
Like investing X into an NPC artificer sort's business gets them "free" item creation feats. Fluffwise: giving the artificer seed capital and material to craft things out of has the artificer see PCs favorably and crafts custom things for them at half or 2/3 market cost...
Actually I might steal this idea for a campaign.

Investing into their organization gets them access to other things (access to spellbooks for wizards) or cheap healing/rezzing or free resting at inns affiliated with that guild.

Or gives them popularity with the town guard (they all got armor upgrades) that can be cashed in for them to look the other way once or twice, or help with finding someone or something

[Deadline]

Others have already touched on these points, but here's a few things to consider when wanting to sell large, non-easy to move goods.


Real Estate is expensive, can't be moved, and requires people to have a specific interest in the property. Also, since you are dealing with a smaller group of potential buyers, if the property isn't a hot commodity, it's a buyers market, not a sellers market, so it isn't going to sell for as much as the players want. It also may not sell right away (i.e. a buyer comes along right around the time that the amount it sells for is WBL appropriate). And as far as owning a business, it's pretty easy to ad-hoc that most of the income from said business has to be rolled into operating costs, so it's not a huge money maker (sure, it can make some money, but owning a business doesn't even hold a candle to the kind of income an adventurer gets).
Stuff like an iron door frame or iron ball need to be smelted down into ingots to be easily transportable and usable. So unless the players are doing that work themselves (which takes time, and probably requires them to pay for time to use a forge), then again, their "raw" materials are not worth as much as they could be. At higher levels, Fabricate makes this a non-issue, but by then, the WBL gain from such things isn't necessarily unbalancing.


That being said, such things can actually be incredibly valuable for the players to keep, and there's a certain prestige to be had with owning property and such. Not to mention it would be an awesome "base of operations". And if the party has a wizard or someone with access to Fabricate, then those "raw" materials (iron balls, adamantine door frames, etc.) are much more useful for them than they would be if sold.

[Telonius]

For Shackled City, if I'm remembering right most of the action doesn't take place near the Lucky Monkey; it's kind of off to the side and in the jungle, am I right? I'd say let the players officially take it over, maybe with a commission from Lord Vhalantru (which might carry some interesting RP potential anyway). If they want to invest in it, fine; otherwise it's basically a non-moveable piece of real estate that isn't putting any gold pieces in their pocket. If they want to sell, the sale needs to be legal (it might not be) and they need to find a buyer. "Recently attacked and sacked by a vicious were-baboon" probably isn't going to help the resale value.

Also ...


This would not be a problem but i am faced with: go through the adventures are start increasing everything to give them a challenge,

... you might consider doing this anyway. I've been on both sides of the DM screen for this adventure. It was written back at the dawn of time in the early days of 3rd edition, and any party that has even a passing acquaintance with optimization is going to start walking all over the encounters sometime very soon.

If they're set on a base, maybe suggest Jzadirune? It's much closer to town, and also unoccupied.

EDIT: Also, looks like your group is not the first (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2lvkk?My-Players-Want-the-Lucky-Monkey) to want to keep the inn. :smallbiggrin:

[Dieuoffire]

After talking with one of the player briefly the solution that I think best rewards them without breaking the games is a base of ops.

Castles are hugely expensive. any super cool traps etc. will be relocated, using the other less cool stuff to fund the projects. WBL will not be thrown off too much as a super awesome base, though super awesome, is no advantage when you are in a dragons dungeon. The WBL gear that they carry is going to be within bounds.

The characters reward for being smart is "Base of Awesomeness." I am not sure about the rest of you but I rarely have a group that has a castle with more deadly traps and powers in their home than the NPC BEBG. Who knows maybe they will somehow manage to use this as an epic base. when they fill it with the most awesome stuff they find in 20 levels of dungeons.

As a side note this seems like it will add a depth to the characters. Appraise skill is going to be taken more seriously, so are profession skills. I think they may hire basically a real estate agent and a lawyer to fight for their claims to any dungeons. They actually have a retirement plan without realizing it. :D the characters may also develop some connections to the local economy.

BTW in Age of Worms AP the iron balls are about 10 LBs i believe (easily transported by cart) and they located by a mining town that is trying to push for more ore. Economically speaking the merchants who are there would buy the ore at a relatively competitive price (depending on quality) and the mine owners may take notice but it would not be a good return on investment to do something about a one time ore dump as it still would be relatively small compared to a mine. The PCs profits are huge because they have no operating costs but that is not considered a threat in long term production.

I mention this for anyone who tries this adventure path and has some players get smart.

Thanks all for your help and welcome further discussion etc. as i find others ideas interesting.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That sounds like a great idea. Well played, and enjoy!

[Coidzor]

Solution 1. Mundane buildings don't count against character WBL or only count in the same way consumables and expending them count.

Solution 2. Make traps significantly cheaper(moving the decimal place once is a decent start) and decide which ones are the sort if thing that can be moved and used by the PCs for their own place or sold on the open market or require time and brokers to find buyers, and which traps are built into the structure to the point that they don't

[Darrin]

This is an old problem. The original Tomb of Horrors was run as a tournament competition where the group that pulled out the most treasure at the convention "won". One year, a group of players realized that an adamantine door was worth more than anything else in the dungeon, so they "won" by prying off the door and immediately leaving before Gygax could kill them all.

In the 3.5 update for Tomb of Horrors, the adamantine door in room 24 has been replaced with a steel door because it's apparently too expensive for the demons to keep replacing the adamantine doors stolen by adventurers.

In KODT #24's "Ultimate Treasure", B.A. attempts to teach his players a lesson that "Knowledge is the ultimate treasure" with his Lyrian Academy adventure. The knights go through a great deal of fuss and bother (and homicidal llama gore attacks) to locate the legendary Lyrian Academy, hoping to score some epic loot, but are disappointed to discover all that's left of the academy is a library full of books. Brian turns it around when he realizes that due to the age of the books and an obscure footnote buried in a table that the ancient books are really worth thousands upon thousands of gold pieces. The Knights attempt to carry out all the books by using the local llamas as pack animals, but after a couple mishaps with falling off the narrow mountain trails, they lash every single llama together into a single-file line. However, they don't realize... when one llama loses its footing, every other llama gets dragged over the cliff, and their entire fortune of priceless books winds up irretrievably lost at the bottom of a mountain gorge.

By which I mean to say, don't immediately take away the PC's wealth because the DM screwed something up or they did something unexpectedly clever. As others have suggested, see if you can turn it into a story element by getting them to invest in something. Sudden extreme changes in economic fortunes attracts a lot of attention, not necessarily from outright thieves but from kings looking to finance something, scheming merchant lords, greedy dragons, well-meaning idealists, etc.

The other method would be to "lampshade" the problem but then not-so-gently emphasize the point by bringing in a vast array of high-stakes power brokers who know exactly how much dungeon furnishings cost: ancient dragon lawyers, high-level gawd-mode wizard accountants, and extra-planar interior design conglomerates that like the current dungeon-based economy the way it is, and not-so-politely explain to the PCs that maybe they should stick to their adventuring jobs and let the professional dungeon furnishers worry about all that complicated financial stuff.

[WeaselGuy]

My friends know me as the "power-gamer" and "min/maxer" of the group, even though I usually play something ridiculous like a Kobold Lancer riding a Dire Weasel, or a Half-Drow Warlock/Rogue/Arcane Trickster. The few time's I've ever actually played something powerful, it was to prove a point (the point being that a Cleric is a better fighter than a Fighter, and I made a DMM:P Cleric). When I decide I want to play a type of character, I map it all the way out, to make sure I'll qualify for what I want, when I want it. So, for a dragon-hunting campaign, I decided to play a Ranger/Dragonslayer (I don't remember everything else he was gonna be. Unimportant for this discussion). So, with my Knowledge, Survival, and Crafting skills, plus having the Draconomicon (or at least pertinent parts of it) mostly memorized, when my group killed a large Red Dragon, I knew about how much materiel we had to work with after harvesting said dragon. We used bones to make dragonbone bows, daggers, and swords, fangs and spines for jewelry and trinkets, and the hide to make armor and cloaks. We cured the meat for travel rations, and sold/donated what we didn't need to the local towns.

For the first little bit after that, we were a small bit ahead of WBL, but the DM compensated by focusing us on minimal-loot missions the next couple levels, mostly doing socio-political interactions.

[Deadline]

BTW in Age of Worms AP the iron balls are about 10 LBs i believe (easily transported by cart) and they located by a mining town that is trying to push for more ore. Economically speaking the merchants who are there would buy the ore at a relatively competitive price (depending on quality) and the mine owners may take notice but it would not be a good return on investment to do something about a one time ore dump as it still would be relatively small compared to a mine. The PCs profits are huge because they have no operating costs but that is not considered a threat in long term production.

Again, I'm not sure how you or your DM decided to run that, but the worked iron balls are not iron ore. At best, my understanding is that each of those would be worth (when selling to a merchant) roughly 5 silver (1 gp for 10 lbs of trade-good iron, sell for half because the iron balls aren't actually trade-good iron). That's not going to break WBL even if you haul 500 of them back and sell them. Heck, it's not even a big deal if can sell them for full trade-good price. How many of these iron balls did you manage to get? And a significant value of iron sold to the local market should certainly get the attention of any local suppliers, it's cutting into their profits, after all. They may just lower their prices to be more competitive, or if they are particularly unscrupulous, elect to try and have the PCs killed. Either way, it shouldn't break the WBL of the game. Sure, if for whatever reason you put way more treasure into an encounter than you intended, then you may need to have a quick chat with the players. But carting around everything stored in a dungeon is going to require space, and the ability to transport it. Heck, I've even had players leave large quantities of copper pieces where they were because they couldn't carry them and it wasn't worth the effort and hazards of multiple trips.

There are several methods to controlling this, and most of have been mentioned. The other ways that you might consider are pacing and altering treasure values from later encounters to balance out WBL (if you find the higher WBL is a problem).

Glad some of the info could be of some help though. :smallsmile:

[Coidzor]

If they want to clear out a previously ruined place and turn it over to the rightful owners, then it shouldn't be too hard to fit in a treasure cache from that showing up at an appropriate time after the right people are tracked down.

If they want to settle an area but aren't setting it up as a stronghold for themselves, then the reward should be less tangible material goods and more intangible things, like some new friends and contacts they've made and a potential place to get porters and the like from when exploring any other ruins or dungeons in the area and a place that's more close by to the dungeons so they don't have to travel as far to avoid risks of wandering monsters.


Again, I'm not sure how you or your DM decided to run that, but the worked iron balls are not iron ore.

Indeed, they're more valuable than that, because it requires less work to turn iron into something useful than it does to make iron ore into iron.


At best, my understanding is that each of those would be worth (when selling to a merchant) roughly 5 silver (1 gp for 10 lbs of trade-good iron, sell for half because the iron balls aren't actually trade-good iron).

What is your actual understanding, then? Or rather, what are you basing this on?


And a significant value of iron sold to the local market should certainly get the attention of any local suppliers, it's cutting into their profits, after all.

A temporary influx from adventurers turning over a very finite quantity of iron? Maybe for the smallest operators, but it's not an economically significant amount of iron that would be sent off to foundries.


They may just lower their prices to be more competitive, or if they are particularly unscrupulous, elect to try and have the PCs killed.

What, do you have the merchants in town try to kill the PCs every time they sell anything of value? :smalltongue:

[Calthropstu]

Problem with that: There's likely a deed registered with the city. Now the owner might be dead, but either it goes to the next of kin or reverts to the city... who would be happy to sell it to the party. With of course proper taxes and fees...

Think of it this way... the party is a group of bounty hunters who take down the local mafia. Do they get the mafia boss' italian restaurant hide out? NO. Same principle.

[Dieuoffire]

in the AoW AP the room iss 50x20 with 10 ft deep of iron spheres about the size of a softball. volume: .0166 ft^3 round up to .03 due to space between the spheres and for easy math meaning there are about 333,333 spheres with a volume of .0166 ft^3(the other space was empty remember).

So 333k * .0166* 491 lbs/ft^3 = 2716864 lbs of Iron. at 1sp per pound that is appox. 271686 gp in iron.

I looked up all estimates for weight of iron and va cubic volume filled with spheres. check my math if you want but even at half price it is worth buying several bags of holding, hire guards, bring carts, making multiple trips etc. basically you are set for about 15 levels.

this is the problem with that scenario. it is so worth it to go get this stuff it is not even funny. heck contact a mine manager and split the profits for the needed muscle.

oh yes and I forgot Iron ore is worth much less that refined iron shaped into Iron spheres. refining takes a lot. and that room was huge and filled with refined Iron spheres. Yes they are spheres, that makes them refined as they would need to fit into the trap and so on. even selling as unrefined (much less value) the amount of iron it takes to fill that room is mind-blowing. I know some people who work at a modern mine, that is a rich haul if it was half dirt and needed to be refined.

[rel]

If no one minds exceeding WBL then just roll with it. Everyone is having fun so what's the problem.

If a player (GM included) wants to stick to WBL but people still want to loot valuable things that pop up in adventures then I propose the following:

You get WBL in adventuring goodies and anything you loot beyond that you get to keep but you have to spend on non-adventuring gear; Fancy clothes, buidings, truly epic parties, what have you.

[Lazymancer]

what do you do when players get smart? I hate the "just no" idea because I always tell my players if you can be creative and come up with something I haven't thought of, go for it! they love the challenge and it sparks a lot of fun creative situations.

Sorry for the ramble but any Ideas/experiences on this one?
Personally, I'd let them get away with it. Unless we are talking hundreds of thousands of gold, in a few levels excess wealth gets irrelevant.

If you want to keep party controlled (within AP limits), consider letting them spend wealth on Christmas Tree items (i.e. manuals of +stats or cloaks of resistance +3, rather than scrolls of Wish or figurines).



Post game the DM noted that bringing that much adamantine would destroy the economy,
Wimp. While Lawyers&Ledgers is a fun game to play, it doesn't exist and it's not what players signed up to. Therefore, threatening them with it is not a solution. It is so much better to introduce De Beers syndicate that enforces their adamantine monopoly with assassins.


I think in moments like this, I think a gentlemen's agreement would be the best solution, or if the GM retconed the super expensive material to common steel. I think our DM was thinking, by making the safe too hard to open, the party would give up, but then we had the Barbarbian with a adamantine greatsword spend an hour in-game hacking at it. So don't try to out-smart the players, since it can make the situation so much worse. As boring as it is, gentlemen's agreement is probably the way to go.
Yes. Every corebook should have a warning for GMs about them being naturally predisposed to megalomania (not that it isn't justified in my some cases).



What, do you have the merchants in town try to kill the PCs every time they sell anything of value? :smalltongue:
On a slightly unrelated note, do you consider trading in magical equivalents of WMDs a safe occupation?

[Coidzor]

On a slightly unrelated note, do you consider trading in magical equivalents of WMDs a safe occupation?

Now you're reminding me of the time that a group I was playing with found an Eversoaking Sponge and were extremely paranoid about finding someone to give it to so we didn't have to worry about keeping some crazy SOB from trying to destroy the world's oceans while also adventuring.

[Lazymancer]

Now you're reminding me of the time that a group I was playing with found an Eversoaking Sponge and were extremely paranoid about finding someone to give it to so we didn't have to worry about keeping some crazy SOB from trying to destroy the world's oceans while also adventuring.
Meh. Even if it is multi-use and some sort of undead/golem in some unfindable location keeps squeezing it dry, any noticeable effect would require millennia of squeezing.

[Mendicant]

Are they trying to sell the inn? If not, there's really very little reason to keep it out of their hands. WBL is a concern because it's assumed they're spending that wealth on gear. It's a separate xp pool, essentially. Owning a ship or an inn doesn't really alter that calculus.

[Segev]

The best solution to most of these situations is to treat getting the unconventional wealth to yield fungible trade goods into an adventure in its own right. Taking over an inn involves securing it against thieves, protecting and serving the patrons and keeping them happy, making sure that patrons pay for goods and services, keeping the inn supplied with goods it sells, maintenance and repairs...

If the party finds that stuff fun, great! You can use their focus as your hook for adventures. If they don't, they will find ways to offload the chores. Let them...but make it cost (unless they're taking only a finders' fee and letting the NPCs doing the work take the full profits.

Just transporting multi-ton balls of iron is going to be challenging; their bags of holding have weight limits, and they can't have that many portable holes. And, yes, finding a buyer could be challenging, too.

If they go full industrial adventurer and hire hirelings for maintaining base camps and doing transport work and guarding things while the party is not at camp, those things cost money and are also not infallible. If the party isn't there, they can't do anything about the encounters you roll between sessions for their hirelings. Do be reasonable; their precautions should matter. But that doesn't guarantee anything.

For things where they plan to sell little by little, they now have inventory to warehouse. That also takes money and resources, and can, depending on how they do it, require guarding against bandits and thieves and even embezzlement.

If all they want out of the inn is a base of operations, though, just let them hire managers and staff that are low-maintenance RP-wise but take the bulk of the income. If they focus on it, make the NPCs interesting to the players; they become potential quest sources. Sources more personal than a random robes figure at the corner table.

Think about what they seem to want as their level of involvment, and consider all the logistics they either must cover or pay others to handle. The more they pay others to do, the more you can control costs to keep their wealth in line. Reward them with adventure involving nefarious NPCs, or with more hooks involving friendly NPCs who like the business they bring them. The rewards need not be entirely wealth-related to make the efforts feel worthwhile, even if they're paying so much that the wealth is about what it would be if they ignored the "unusual" sources.

[Deadline]

What is your actual understanding, then? Or rather, what are you basing this on?

The trade goods chart in the PHB. If the iron balls are equal in quality to trade good iron, then the sale price is 1sp per lbs (so 1gp for 10 lbs), rather than the traditional 50% reduction. I would expect trade good iron would be sold in ingots of standard weights, but the PHB isn't specific on that.


A temporary influx from adventurers turning over a very finite quantity of iron? Maybe for the smallest operators, but it's not an economically significant amount of iron that would be sent off to foundries.

Again, depending on the quantity. I mentioned that 500 of these wouldn't be a thing to raise an eyebrow over. The OP mentioned something like 10,000-11,000 gp from selling iron balls. That's a tremendous amount of money in a fantasy setting. There are lots of ways to handle that as well. Perhaps there isn't a single buyer that can pay that much, so the PCs have to move around the area and sell of bits of it here and there. BAM! Plenty of time to include enough encounters to level the PCs to where the WBL isn't a problem (for 11,000 divvied up between the traditional 4 member party, that's a little less than 3,000 each, so that's what, 3rd level wealth?). You don't have to have local market interests ruffle their feathers over it if you don't want to.


What, do you have the merchants in town try to kill the PCs every time they sell anything of value? :smalltongue:

Not at all. Or at least, not all the time. :smallwink:

I suppose it would depend on what they were selling (both the PCs and the merchants), whether there was an interesting plot hook that could come out of it, and whether I needed to be concerned about maintaining WBL. :smalltongue:

But generally for the usual sale of loot at 50% of the market price, no.

[unseenmage]

First thing I do to limit my own creative solutions to wealth management is to actually use the settlement available wealth guidelines. Small towns only have so much cashflow and even cities available cash will be taxed by adventurers selling EVERYTHING they come across. But thanks to Greater Plane Shift and Greater Teleport any gameworld with multiple metropolises invalidates this approach fairly quickly.

Second, bulk prices for bulk purchases are a thing even in our world. Ever been to a bulk outlet store? Massive quantities of a substance can devalue that substance just by hitting the market. We divide the worth of bulk sales in half. It's a houserule and only stems the tide of wealth but it helps.

Lastly, we keep downtime wealth and adventuring wealth separate. Sure, the MIC might suggest that finding someone willing to sell you a given item requires one Gather Info check and a few hours of your day and one could extrapolate to assume that the same holds true for buyers BUT that is on adventuring timescale, not merchanting/farming/governing timescale. Big deals take big time, merchants generally take the long slow approach to winning at money. Slow and steady wins the race and all that. Sure the players can dabble in the market, but those funds aren't available at a moment's notice in adventuring timeframe.
Dealing with bank tellers and moneylenders in our world is a time sink of annoying proportions. Imagine dealing with it in a world with paper filing systems and no indoor plumbing. *shudders*

So yeah, utilize the settlement wealth limits, half the sale price of bulk sold goods both of immense size and of immense number, and politely ask your players to keep their adventuring funds separate from their merchanting funds.

Without generous application of the gentleman's agreement none of the above will help much but with decent players all of the above helps to find the point of compromise.