Do your PCs spend money on non adventureing things?

[Ealli]

My current character, not spending much on non-adventuring needs. I suspect a large part of that is we're in a small town in a module; plot hooks beside the main plot are sparse and opportunities for investment are just as sparse.

I have run and been in other campaigns where non-adventuring investments could have been possible. It does require that everyone, DM and players, to be interested in doing so. Spending the money frivolously takes time and spotlight; it's a delicate balance to make it interesting to do while not making the other players bored and antsy.

We have a house rule: blowing your money gives you x.p. (but you have to describe how you got it). It's VERY popular, especially in our lower magic item world.

X.P. for Loot Characters in a community can go on R&R. Typical actions include senseless wenching, endless feasting, roughhousing, gambling, smoking black lotus, drinking away the demons, dabbling in the dark arts, wronging-rights, crafting useless trinkets, using your profession inappropriately, making bribes, making sacrifices to the temple, etc.
There are three effects of R&R:
1) Earn 1 x.p. for every 4 g.p.’s wasted (minimum 20 gp)
2) Heal thrice your level
3) 1-in-d12 chance of ending up no x.p gained an in an unpleasant situation (DM’s choice)


jh

That does look like it could be a fun set of rules. A little leery of number 3, but otherwise it's something I'm likely to steal for the next time I run a campaign.

Yes.

You can't just buy all the toys, you're playing a person, so he or she needs to eat, sleep, wash, and so on. I don't know why you wouldn't. And yes, for those who save their money just for gaming reasons: a new sword, magic obejects and the like, are, well, not playing realisticly.

There are many things the characters need to do that just aren't interesting to pay attention to. After the first couple times of playing through everything that goes on in a day, it becomes repetitive and just hand-waved away after that point. You take X gold and Y hours to handle the eating, sleeping, etc, now let's get onto the meaningful decisions.

 

[Enkhidu]

Our party spent 20K throwing a party.

 

[rgard]

My group just commissioned a new festival/holiday from a major temple, in order to stop the persecution of an ethnic minority. This is after decimating the criminal organization run by their kinsmen who had been sheltering them. Just about all the money that could have 'recovered' from this rather successful smuggling and slaving operation is going to cover the cost of the public festival (and fatten the temples coffers), which is to commemorate the handover of a dozen or so of the minority group's wives and daughters, so they can be made into temple courtesans, and thus heal the rift between their communities, at least for the time being.

The working name for the holiday is "Bastard Day", in honor of the adventuring party...

Cost of a major new festival: 2000 gp
Creating a holiday celebrating the redemptive power of bribery and prostitution: priceless.

(my answer to the original question is "yes")

Festivus!!!

 

[Peni Griffin]

My goodness, yes! Many of the games I've been in have featured entire sessions, in between adventures, that were basically shopping trips and parties, and there's always somebody bluebooking personal stuff that wouldn't interest the rest of the party. E-mail is your friend! PCs with bases of operation can have lots of fun designing and furnishing their homes, and adventures often involve undertaking responsibilities beyond slaying the monster. You can't just abandon all the orphans you rescue from the slavers, for instance. I've also had characters whose motivation for adventuring involved drains on the income, like aged mothers or massive inherited debts. You don't always have to play it out. Setting a budget that makes sense for your PC is easy enough. So much for clothes, so much for food, so much for entertainment, so much for books. Just like in real life.

I'm presently running a halfling monk whose adventuring career started because a year of wandering around helping people is required by her order. During downtime while the spellcasters are making magic items, she volunteers in a soup kitchen. She donated money toward other people's items when they ran out, and most of the rest is assumed to have been sucked up bettering the lives of the kitchen's clients. Oh, your fishing boat sank? Let's buy you a new one. You need new shoes? Let's go get some. Marjoram doesn't have much grasp of the concept of cash, and therefore I presume she doesn't have much grasp of the cash. Anybody with a hard-luck story can get it off of her, so it evaporates. Eventually I figure she'll found a dojo when her year of wandering is up, and that will be her last big in-game expense. Her friends spend most of the money making magic items, but the priest also tithes to the temple and gets regular massages, and the two wizards live in sybaritic luxury in the best hotels.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

A sorcerer that I played in a previous campaign payed a butt-load of gold to get his little brother into a prestigious wizard's college. Later the little brother became the recurring bad guy... So... Does that count as non-adventuring things? I'm not sure.

Later
silver

 

[BlackMoria]

Our group has invested in businesses, inns, real estate and trading coasters and other things already mentioned.

What hasn't been mentioned is what my character frequently spends money on - influence peddling. I liberally make use of wealth to help 'grease the skids' while dealing with allies and potential allies.

In return, I get information, favors, protective muscle, safe houses, guides, diversions and the like. Many the time, my 'network' of contacts and acquaintances has fed me timely information, a tip off about this or that, a warning about an assassination plot and preferential treatment or top dollar for good we have sold or wanted disposed of.

In campaign, I am always 'pumping the flesh' and 'greasing palms' to develop a network of contacts and toadies....

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

When I started playing I generally didn't, then again I largely fault me older brother as a DM who never really presented the chance for us to do so. He specialized in the "All Dungeoncrawls All The Time" style so we mostly went from one series of inexplicable violent incidents to another. It influenced my DMing for a while till I could work my way out from under it.

The players in my campaigns are mixed, some will spend more than others, usually it isn't on truly outrageous frippery. Differs with the campaign but now they always seem to end up with a series of communal boltholes before too long. In the Epic campaign that's now winding to a close(the first one I started for this group) it kind of worried me because they were blowing money left and right on the stereotypical ale and whores and seemed to be taking Conan a bit too much as a character model.

Got them in the end anyway and it surprised me how well they RPed through it. Went like this: A petty king had raided the PCs' home town and burned it, killing most of the inhabitants of the thorp including just about everyone's parents and other relatives and taking young females as slaves(this included sisters of 4 of the 6 PCs).

When news got to them they marched and attacked the petty king in his fortified village(think iron-age british berm and ditch hill forts). After breaking down the gates and cutting down almost two dozen guards they stood in the open central area and demanded that the king show himself and be cut down like a man or they'd set fire to the whole village. After NPCs pointed them to his house(it was the biggest) they entered the house and proceeded to kill him then chop of his head and stick it on a long pointed stake from the gate of the village.

After finding the relatives who'd been taken as slaves they basically just sat down in the petty king's house and had a good meal from his food and pawed through his stuff. Next morning villagers and people from the outlying thorps came to the now dead king's house and asked if the PCs would be holding court at the usual time. Just like that, "meet the new boss same as the old boss." Amazingly enough they rose to the challenge of their now assumed position as leaders of the "kingdom"(even if it was a large village and 7 thorps with a total of about 1300 people). A non-trivial amount of loot flowed into that "kingdom" and by the time they hit epic levels you wouldn't have recognized the place from what it had been like before.

 

[Himoura]

not really sure if this is what you had in mind but in our last session my character went and bought a +1 great axe for her friend the dwarf in the party who is a soul blade, because he keeps asking people if they had stolen his axe. Playing on the whole all dwarfs have axes. His reply when i offered the new present was that since it wasn't his axe he didn't really want it.

So i kept the axe and even though I'm not proficient in it I spent the rest of the session waving that axe around threateningly at everything including bar stools, (character was drunk at the time) whilst riding a horse and even when i charged a pair of giants, (it didn't go well, since i couldn't pass my ride check)

 

[Sephera]

A sorceress bought a dress that sparkles as if made of rubies (she was a farm girl)

Being the only sorceress in said game, I have to assume you are referring to me. As a simple farm girl, I would not have purchased such a luxury. The dress was given to me by the Lord Protector, now our King. Shall I update my item description to include the detail that it sparkles like rubies? I believe at the time it was given to me, I was only told it was red.

Your humble sorceress,

Sephera

 

[Wombat]

Yep.

Non-adventuring food and drink, rent, paintings, commissioned jewelry, fancied-up weapons (not bonuses, just bling), poems in their honour, underwriting theatre productions, parties, fine clothing -- the whole boatload!