Advice needed! What should I do with 84k gold in 3.5 Eberron?

[mindy]

I hope this thread doesn't turn into an argument about how my DM should not have let my character rob a bank-- 'cause that's what I did.

My character just turned level 12. She has 6 levels of Shadowdancer and 6 levels of Rogue. She already has a lot of awesome gear... her hide check is like +24 or something like that. I will post a link to her character sheet if anyone asks.

I'm kind of new to D&D so I have never played this high a level before.

Anyway, some dragonmarked dwarf asked me to steal some box out of a dwarf bank vault so I did. The artificer I hang out with gave me a bunch of buffs so I could phase through walls so with a little difficulty trying to open lock, I got the box and returned it to the dwarf. Then I went and cleaned out the bank so after paying the artificer back a lot of debt I owed, I have 84,000 GP left.

Mind you, we stopped off right after I got back to the artificer's house and locked all my gold in her safe, so I have to try to survive and not get caught first.

Two of the things I'm considering are to get an airship or to open a cabaret (since my character is a Shadowdancer, naturally, it would feature more dancers) and use it as a front to my super secret item retrieval/ private eye business that I would build a special office for attached to the cabaret. All of this is in Sharn, BTW.

Hopefully I can get some even better ideas if anyone would kindly share them in this thread.

 

[tomBitonti]

Heh, I'd expect there to be consequences of the bank heist. Eberron has a whole dragonmarked house of trackers ...

But, both ideas sound great. 84K is not quite enough for an airship (100K is a typical cost), but is close enough to be feasible.

For an airship, there are complications: Finding a seller; finding a trained crew; ongoing maintenance. Perhaps harder for a Shadowdancer to manager, since the skills are probably outside of their focus areas. Running a cabaret seems closer.

For Eberron, an airship is very very useful as a platform for running a game, and is very very useful given the absurdly HUGE distances in Eberron. You might want to review airship speeds with your DM, since the speeds are comically slow.

Thx!

TomB

 

[MarkB]

Airship OR cabaret? Why not airship PLUS cabaret!

Get an airship whose interior decks are kitted out like a swanky nightclub, with a dance stage, bar area, and maybe some gaming tables, all designed to fold away during travel and then be unpacked again on arrival. The whole thing travels between the major cities of Khorvaire, stopping off at each to host lavish party events over several weeks.

Now, as mentioned, 84k might not stretch that far, so find yourself some nice, shady backers - House Phiarlan or Thuranni, or maybe the Aurum - who are willing to capitalise your legitimate operations in return for you and your performers doing some espionage work on the side.

 

[mindy]

Blast! My DM had to cancel this week's game and I haven't been able to have a chat with him about what I'm going to do with my money. I'll update when I have something else to follow up with.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Mind you, we stopped off right after I got back to the artificer's house and locked all my gold in her safe, so I have to try to survive and not get caught first.

I was going to say "hide the money," but it appears you already have.

Do you trust the artificer? A Rat Bastard DM™ might simply find some way to take the cash away from you before you have a chance to spend it.



Would opening a cabaret require too much of your character's time? Would it prevent her from adventuring?

A link you the character sheet would help; you might be missing something extremely useful.

I'm curious to see how this works out. Good luck!

 

[was]

umm...maybe hire some protection from the clan of dwarves hunting you?
Aside from that, a smaller airship to get out of town would be a capital idea.

 

[wlmartin]

I hope this thread doesn't turn into an argument about how my DM should not have let my character rob a bank-- 'cause that's what I did.

Not an argument but I do feel that your DM robbed you of a fair D&D experience. It's equivlant in my head to a parent feeding its kid sweets for breakfast because it asks for it.. gonna give that kid diabetes and thats not good for anyone

I remember back to when one of our group in high school (20 years ago) took to guest DMing our 2e game.
My new character cast "find familiar" and I got a baby white dragon (overpowered breath weapon anyone?)

It was fun for awhile but our regular DM aged the dragon up a bit and started a bit of a mini-quest with people hunting the dragon down, poof goodbye dragon.


If i were your DM and made the mistake of giving you such a large amount of wealth, I would have found an immediate way to nerf it but sometimes when you break a game, it can't be unbroken.

You are either the type of player who hates this situation
(you are the guy who if there is an exploit in a game, would rather avoid it than ruin his experience as its pretty much the same as loading a cheat code)

or

You are the type of player that doesn't care about this being unbalanced or actually sees it as something deserved

For the later, I can't help - your approach to playing is something i can't connect with and any advice I give wouldn't be very constructive

If however you are someone who would rather not have been given a big plate of sweets for breakfast, there are some viable means to getting rid :

• Donate the money to charity
• Use the money to fund a [enter storyline plot here] where the money is a sink but it sets up for a really good questline
• Give the money back
• Bury it..

Sorry, this did turn out to be a bit of a rant and i know you were not welcoming that..

 

[MarkB]

[*]Use the money to fund a [enter storyline plot here] where the money is a sink but it sets up for a really good questline

Either of the OP's suggested courses of action easily qualify as this, not that 84,000 gp is a freakishly huge amount of wealth for a 12th-level character in any case.

 

[mindy]

Sorry, this did turn out to be a bit of a rant and i know you were not welcoming that..

Yeah, pretty much. I'm not sure why you posted. As MarkB said, both of my ideas were money sinks to add to the plot.

I discussed with the DM two days ago and so I'm going to build a tavern under the artificer's house so I don't have to pay for the land. Just remodeling of the dungeon under there. We found out that the bodies that kept appearing behind her house were a vampire's victims so the other players went to kill it while I robbed the bank...

I will use the numbers from the Stronghold guide to calculate the costs. I have to negotiate more with the DM, so I will update again when something happens.

Here is the menu I wrote for the tavern. My character is a belly dancer turned Shadowdancer, so it's very Middle Eastern themed. I need to think of a name...

Caviar plate with crackers​

Cheese plate with fresh grapes​

Roasted watermelon seeds
​

Baharat seasoned chicken or lamb skewers​

Fresh tabouleh salad with marinated cucumber slices​

Tahini​

Hummus​

(you have a choice between six kinds of pita bread or naan to eat with these)
​

Fresh fruit plate​

Dried fruit plate (dates, apricots, figs, prunes, raisins, almonds)​

Baklava
​

Turkish coffee (you can put a shot in it for extra)​

A large selection of iced and hot teas

Hookah for every table and a large assortment of shisha
Betel leaves
​

And then the staff is something like this, I need to calculate the cost of food and drink, too...

2 trained bartenders​

4 untrained waitresses​

1 trained cook and 1 untrained helper​

1 untrained dishwasher​

4 trained dancers that can dance with a DC of 20​

2 trained dancers that can dance with a DC of 25​

2 hostesses​

1 trained manager (a very shrewd, good manager, so I can go on quests and not worry about it burning down)​

2 or 3 bouncers​

4 musicians - 1 singer, 1 percussionist, 1 wind, 1 strings - DC 20​

1 illusionist (for special effects and lighting)
​

I figure I will never be able to rob a bank again so I need to open a business and grow the money. Depending on the cost, I will either negotiate the price of the dungeon remodelling into a tavern using the luxury tavern pricing. One is supposed to seat 20 patrons, I think, and it costs 20k gold.

Edit: Oh yeah! I have to go into permanent hiding and avoid Dragonmarked Dwarves probably (we'll see what happens on Sunda) so I'm building a super secret office into the back of the tavern to run a private eye/ item reacquistion service. If you have any recommendations for what to put in the office, please share! The DM said I can take new clients by referral only so I need to come up with a way that you can only find the office if my character wants you to.

Also I will post the character sheet when I get home.