D&D General Getting The Gold Out of the Dungeon

[Meech17]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately too.

In the game I'm running, I explicitly have avoided bags of holding. I'm not being a stickler about inventory, but we're just playing it by ear, while trying to be reasonable. I want inventory to matter, while hopefully not being too tedious. Like potions, small magic items and the like, I don't worry about.. But if a player said they wanted to pick up a chest, or a barrel or something we'd have to talk about it. You want a sword, a shield, javelins... Sure. No biggie. You have a golf bag full of halberds? Maybe we'll need to hash this out.

I'm planning on pulling some shenanigans like this later on in my campaign. I'd like to set the players up with some need for money first.. Maybe a run down keep that they want to renovate or something. I think it could be a fun challenge, but something that would get really old if it was happening every session.

 

[James Gasik]

I came up with an interesting way around the Bag of Holding problem. The players found an enchanted barrel that can contain quite a lot of stuff, but it's still a heavy, bulky barrel they have to carry around.

 

[Stormonu]

The hard part is keeping the tax man (or bandit king) from finding out about this wealth.

I've had this come up a couple times in games, and I generally throw it back at the PCs. How do you intend to get this out of here and liquidate it? My work was putting it there, your work is getting it out.

But, I've seen the following done:

- Multiple uses of Tenser's Floating Disk, unseen servant or summon spells to carry it back
- Invisibility on chests or sacks and carried back to town piecemeal

• A mule train bought back in town
• Hiring pack carriers from town, after a round of interviews (using a variety of detect lie, Insight skill checks, covert background checks and references)
• Hiring a spellcaster and using multiple uses of teleportation circle
• Using the druid and the ranger's animal companion as beasts of burden (along with a wagon bought from town)
• Mold earth or fireball to melt down large objects into more portable loads
• A sale at the entrance to the dungeon (both by invite only and open to the public)
• Getting word to local bandits to steal it, then raiding the bandit's lair (via locate object on one of the treasures) where it's closer to town.

 

[James Gasik]

If you can fit it inside 12 cubic feet, there's always Secret Chest. Wizards! Getting loot out of dungeons since 1972 (or whenever Tenser created his floating disc spell)!

 

[Lanefan]

This came up off topic in another thread and thought it might be fin to talk about it on its own.

Note that I don't think it is particularly productive to talk about the use of gold in 5E or any other edition. That's a fine topic but I think would be distracting from the purpose of this conversation.

So: The PCs manage to find a massive but completely inconvenient source of gold piece value in the dungeon. It isn't just a pile of coins that they can shove into bags of holding or whatever. Maybe it a diamond the size of a house. Maybe it is a 20 ton gold statue. Maybe the dragon's hoard turned out to be thousands of delicate faberge eggs. Whatever the case, the treasure will definitely level up the PCs, let them build their HQs, maybe purchase that noble title, etc... They need to get it out of the dungeon intact and actually convert it to liquid cash before any of that can happen.

How?

How would you, as GM, make that fun? As a player, would that sort of challenge be interesting to you? Have you ever done this before in a game, as player or GM?

It's happened both as player and DM.

As DM I just leave it to them to sort out, knowing full well they'll move heaven and earth to get that treasure home. Once they get it home, liquidation is rarely if ever a problem. That said, the biggest (and heaviest!) treasure headache I've run in this campaign was nothing but gold-piece coins: about 120,000 of them in a room in a very remote place. I think they got most of them out, but not all.

As player, there's been any number of creative solutions including Shrink spells on the stuff, Enlarge spells on the characters, Strength spells to increase people's carry capacity, having the Druid shapeshift into a draft horse or (if able) elephant to carry more and-or pull a makeshift cart or sled or travois, and so forth. But that loot gets home, even if doing so takes longer than the adventure required to get it!

 

[el-remmen]

Like Lanefan, I leave it to the players to figure out if they care enough to figure it out. If they don't care, then they probably don't find it fun and move on. If they insist on figuring out a way, I let them figure it out as best they can by answering question and/or calling for skill checks as needed.

In my last campaign, the party found a pile of mostly copper and some silver in a dungeon occupied by a cult that had been disinterring bodies for years and taking coins off the buried's eyes. As such, they had more copper than they could carry out of the swamp easily - and the chose to leave it. If it had been gold, they might have spent more time figuring a way or making more than one trip. Instead, they later traded the info about the pile's location to someone who could arrange a specific expedition to go get the copper for some info they wanted for a different party goal.

 

[Reynard]

This whole discussion rests on the idea that the PCs need or want money. That can be tough in 5E. Things like guild dues, gambling debts or paying off that airship mortgage can help. But really the PCs need to want to find that money and that means players should come up with positive money motivations, IMO.

That said, it could be a bulky magical treasure too: a huge fountain that flows with healing water, for example, or a literal Gatehouse of Many Worlds.

 

[bloodtide]

As a high detail, high resource management DM, I do love such logistics. I'm more hen happy to make "getting the treasure home" it's own adventure. Though I go by what the players want.

In a lot of my games, the player do the transportation during Downtime. Most of the rest will 'play out' the transportation in a live game as part of the adventure epilogue.

A couple just leave such treasures......and a group or two has "sold the ownership rights" to a local NPC in exchange for something.

 

[MarkB]

My campaign recently dove through some old Giant ruins, where everything was at a larger scale - stairs where each riser is 5 feet high, massive doors that require checks just to push open.

Imagine having a huge haul of treasure from there, only it's all giant scaled - a powerful magic staff that's the size of a telegraph pole, gold pieces the size of saucers.

 

[Reynard]

As a high detail, high resource management DM, I do love such logistics. I'm more hen happy to make "getting the treasure home" it's own adventure. Though I go by what the players want.

In a lot of my games, the player do the transportation during Downtime. Most of the rest will 'play out' the transportation in a live game as part of the adventure epilogue.

A couple just leave such treasures......and a group or two has "sold the ownership rights" to a local NPC in exchange for something.

I've never actually had the opportunity to do it, but I always wanted to create a setting in which dungeons were the equivalent of gold rush mines. If you could clear it, you could claim it -- with all the expected gold rush tomfoolery.