Giving the player (nigh) infinite money to spend on mundane items

[heavyfuel]

Imagine you are a high level character and you gain access to nearly unlimited wealth to spend, but there's a catch. You can't spend it on magical, psionic, etc items, nor on alchemical items. Services of any kind are also out, as are creatures. You must spend it on items, and completely mundane ones. Even alchemical items are out.

After thinking about this for very little, the only thing I could come up with was archers having a magnitude of different material arrows, which is... underwhelming.

So, what would the consequences be? Thanks

[Zaq]

What’s the player/character have as a goal?

The big-ticket nonmagical items I can think of are real estate, vehicles, and siege weaponry. Excluding services, while probably necessary, is a truly meaningful restriction.

[heavyfuel]

What’s the player/character have as a goal?

The big-ticket nonmagical items I can think of are real estate, vehicles, and siege weaponry. Excluding services, while probably necessary, is a truly meaningful restriction.

This is a hypothetical, so no goals yet.

Real estate is nice to have, vehicles not so much, especially non magically augmented ones. Siege weaponry does present its uses in certain situations, but aren't really relevant to your every-day adventurer

[Mars Ultor]

You can buy a $20 dress shirt at Macy's, a $40 shirt at Nordstrom, or a $99 shirt at Men's Warehouse. A bespoke shirt can cost in the hundreds of dollars. PCs are big shots, they should not be wearing filthy pants and armor all the time, they should be dressed like nobles when they're in town. A noble's outfit is 75 gp, but that's off the rack, the well-dressed noble is spending 300 gp without thinking about it.

Regular clothing should also be more expensive. I daresay adventures with an 18 Strength don't have the same physique as Joe NPC with his 10 Strength. They have to buy custom-made clothing, ordinary stuff won't fit. Their ordinary clothing should also be special, a tunic should have an embroidered hem and open-collar with silk laces.

Everything they buy should be mastercrafted, everything, only peasants buy ordinary mundane items. They buy their flint and steel at the Medieval Tiffany's, not Camping World. A backpack at Target can cost $30 to $60, a leather backpack from Tumi can cost $700. What kind of cheap adventurer is going to spend 2 gp on a backpack, when they can get the 90 gp one that's been waterproofed, rubbed down with a protection from fire oil, and has padded pockets for potions? Even the illiterate barbarian should have a monogrammed bedroll made of expensive Valyrian wool. Let's not even talk about how many pairs of boots they go through a year, nothing ruins your footwear faster than purple worm ichor.

People wore ornate buckles, gold brooches, bejeweled scabbards, even cloisonné pins with their family heraldry. Poor people had cheap ones, wealthy people had expensive ones, but they all had them.

Adventurers are the 1%, they're not spending 500 gp on a heavy warhorse and discount saddle, they're getting a thoroughbred warhorse that's been trained to attack, pull a rope, line dance, show jump, count to ten, and alert the cleric when the fighter falls down a well. That's an easy 5,000 gp, fully equipped.

[Vizzerdrix]

I now have a fleet of zepplins and gnome subs. Ive also bought all the hagstones on the black market, as well as all the food in every town, and every diamond nd expensive material component I can find.

I safely hide in any one of my ships, while going city by city summoning Dalmosh.
I destroy all the spell components for fun, and use the hagstones to stay alive while Dalmosh eats the world.

Or, I buy every boat I can, and seeing as I cant hire people, I sit back and watch a lack of trade and fishing grind nations to a halt.

[Berenger]

A noble's outfit is 75 gp, but that's off the rack [...] They have to buy custom-made clothing, ordinary stuff won't fit.

You are right in general with your points about clothes, but in a faux-medieval / faux-renaissance setting, there are no racks and clothes are custom made by default - you don't buy from a clothes retailer, you go to a tailor. The highest level of pre-fabrication is making pre-cut pieces of fabric that can be sewn together into e.g. a shirt after taking the measures of the customer. That is, unless the clothes are homemade to begin with, which was also common for various reasons, but most advanturers lifestyles don't really support this approach.

[MrSandman]

You buy a nobility title, a castle, as much land as you can, and then you retire from adventuring and live off the taxes that people living in your land pay.

[noob]

Buy all the chickens.
All of them.
Then become the master of the world.
Or just start as a chicken infested commoner like a normal person.

[Telonius]

You could probably Fahrenheit 451 yourself into a nearly Wizard-free world.

[heavyfuel]

I now have a fleet of zepplins and gnome subs. Ive also bought all the hagstones on the black market, as well as all the food in every town, and every diamond nd expensive material component I can find.

Those kinds of actions were exactly the kind of thing that I was worried about. I mean, Zaq had talked about the vehicles, but having unlimited expensive components for spells is definitely more valuable than they.

Also, what's a hagstone?

[heavyfuel]

You could probably Fahrenheit 451 yourself into a nearly Wizard-free world.

You, you gotta love the English language when it allows you to use the title of a book as a verb. That's seriously my favorite thing about it

[zlefin]

problems arise from the potential fungibility of money.

The simplest thing to do with money like that is to just buy massive amounts of stuff, especially trade goods.
Then sell those goods for regular coin that you CAN spend on magic items and/or services (including trade in-kind if necessary)

[Vizzerdrix]

Buy all the chickens.
All of them.
Then become the master of the world.
Or just start as a chicken infested commoner like a normal person.

This dude gets it!

A hagstone is the stone hags make. I don't remember the actual name for them, but I do remember they aren't magic items, and they can do some decent healing. I will edit the page number into this post in a moment. EDIT- ah! MM1: under Night hag. The Heartstone. Cures you of all disease, and grants +2 to saves. Not magical. I could have sworn it could be used to heal. Oh well.

Dalmosh is a walking mound of flesh and mouths that anyone can summon if they sacrifice 10,000gp worth of fine food and drink while performing a ritual. He will mindlessly consume everything until he is killed, at which point he will return to his plane of existence.

[Jack_Simth]

This dude gets it!

A hagstone is the stone hags make. I don't remember the actual name for them, but I do remember they aren't magic items, and they can do some decent healing. I will edit the page number into this post in a moment.It's called a Heartstone, and it's part of the Night Hag (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/nightHag.htm) entry:
All night hags carry a periapt known as a heartstone, which instantly cures any disease contracted by the holder. In addition, a heartstone provides a +2 resistance bonus on all saving throws (this bonus is included in the statistics block). A night hag that loses this charm can no longer use etherealness until it can manufacture another (which takes one month). Creatures other than the hag can benefit from the heartstone’s powers, but the periapt shatters after ten uses (any disease cured or saving throw affected counts as a use) and it does not bestow etherealness to a bearer that is not a night hag. If sold, an intact heartstone brings 1,800 gp.

[Ken Murikumo]

You can't buy services, but you could trade favors by offering assets or bankrolling. You can't buy an army to fight for you, but you could FUND an army for a king. Just think of that kind of favor. With nigh infinite wealth a crafty player could very much so become the most politically influential character in the setting.

In a game like bog standard DnD this would have some weird effects and be less effective than a game that is based around reputation and roleplaying.

[Telonius]

You, you gotta love the English language when it allows you to use the title of a book as a verb. That's seriously my favorite thing about it


Verbing words weirds language.
:smallbiggrin:

[jdizzlean]

You can't buy services, but you could trade favors by offering assets or bankrolling. You can't buy an army to fight for you, but you could FUND an army for a king. Just think of that kind of favor. With nigh infinite wealth a crafty player could very much so become the most politically influential character in the setting.

In a game like bog standard DnD this would have some weird effects and be less effective than a game that is based around reputation and roleplaying.

become littlefinger from GoT.

[Jay R]

Corner the market on some rare material component.

But mostly, I would buy liquid assets -- gems, jewelry, etc., which I would then use to buy magic items.

[Calthropstu]

I buy all the real estate.

I then buy the entire country's salt supply, and charge exhorbitant prices for salt.

I also now own 100,000 pairs of leather shoes and charge low prices.

I stop adventuring to manage the greatest business of all time, purchase the throne and rule the country.

[Red Fel]

You can't buy services, but you can buy goods and exchange those for services.

For example, diamonds are a mundane, if incredibly valuable, object. They're also a costly component of True Resurrection, a high-level spell. The diamonds are specifically what, if anything, makes the spell so rare and valuable (other than it being a ninth-level spell). This also works for Raise Dead, so yeah, still useful even for lower-level Clerics.

Imagine if you donated nigh infinite diamonds to a given church. You'd basically have an entire religious order in your back pocket.

Not a fan of the holy? Try the profane. Black onyx gems sufficient for Create Undead aren't cheap - they're 50 gp per HD. You can corner the market on them, and make a cult of necromancers unreasonably happy. Once again, you have a powerful organization in your back pocket.

Now, while the OP excludes alchemical items, it allows "different materials," so I'm going to guess various weapon substances are in. You can guess where I'm going with this, right?

Yup. Outsiders. Corner the market on ingots of Thinaun, a material which is extremely expensive, but only takes on any special properties when forged into a weapon. Trade it to Outsiders, who can then forge the ingots into soul-trapping weapons. Congratulations, you now basically get to decide who wins the conflicts of the Outer Planes, and earn their favor substantially.

[Darrin]

2,200 jugs of shapesand = F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Also, Antimatter Rifles (DMG p. 146) are completely non-magical.

If you go by "biggest bang per ounce", poisons tend to be the most expensive non-magical substances in print. Black Lotus Extract is 4500 GP per dose, but you can go up to 30K for Pit Fiend Venom (Dungeonscape).

Chaos Flasks (Planar Handbook) are only 100 GP each, although "a piece of raw Limbo" might be a little bit of a stretch for "mundane".

[Mordante]

Why would high level characters automatically have lots of cash?

I can imagine high level druid or monk and maybe some other classes that have no interest in gold/money/wealth/fame.

[Jack_Simth]

Why would high level characters automatically have lots of cash?

I can imagine high level druid or monk and maybe some other classes that have no interest in gold/money/wealth/fame.
They may not have unlimited cash, but when it comes to simple mundane items, it's generally pretty trivial for them to get as much of them as they want.