How can I make money interesting?

[huank]

Hello, I'm here again with another question for the En World Community.

Last session, the PC's found a treasure chamber full of nice stuff: A lot of magic items, and valuable goodies like gems, jewels and art objects. Everyone was excited, but just for the magic items, money seemed boring and pointless. I don't blame them, they own a lot of money, but they can't buy anything that requires such amount of GP's, because, as you know, magic armor or weapons can't be bought on mundane armories and inns or taverns just don't cost enough for them to be worried. So, my question is:

How do you do to keep money interesting and useful in your game?

Thank you very much for reading and sorry if my writing is not so good, but, english is not my main language.

 

[malraux]

Well, if they cannot spend the cash to buy anything magical, then all gold becomes a weighty item in the pack. So you could rule that they can buy stuff (certainly anything with a common rarity). In fact, the default assumption of the game, I believe, is that a fair amount of stuff is buyable. Otherwise, what is the point of including gold in the treasure hoards?

Of course, you can let them spend the money on stuff like castles or titles and the like. It's not my style of game, but others do run with it.

 

[macrochelys]

My experience is that it's best to feel out what your players would like to do with that money, and then make it happen.

For instance, one campaign I ran had a player become a minor noble of a poor, small, province of the kingdom. That player decided he wanted to improve his people's quality of life and so between big adventures he would head back to his area and build homes, hire soldiers, etc. He enlisted the other players to serve as advisors, train soldiers, teach literacy and other things. They liked it enough that it became a little mini game between sessions to decide where to spend the money. I didn't make it too complicated. I also didn't let them see the math that determined how much things cost, since I wanted them to concentrate on role-playing running the province instead of gaming the math to maximize each gold piece spent.

Sometimes players just aren't interested in that kind of thing though. In my current campaign the players don't do anything with the money they get, at least partly because they are enjoying going along with the story enough that buying a castle (or whatever) would be a distraction.

It might be hard to figure out what your players would like to do with the money. If you don't get any signals from them, you could feed them a plot hook such as a church that a player is a member of needing money to help a whole town of refugees move and start a new city.

 

[jbear]

Wellll ... "as you know" is supposing that the armories in your campaign world work the same in other people's fantasy worlds. Which is probably false.

If you want money to be interesting, you need your cities to be interesting. Different remarkable items of different natures can be aquired in different parts of the city where my PCs are currently based.

There is an area of town controlled by 'the River Rats', an area like the Brasilian Slums down on the river, and built out on the water. Risky to enter, but rewarded with lots of illicit goods on offer. Warlocks, thieves and other shadowy characters can find interesting gear here.

A second area of town is the Scarred District. The are immigrants all bearing marks cause by the Spellplague, who were forced to live on the edge of town. They have built there own district. The most able and creative artisans live in this area. However they are very wary of outsiders. Getting access to this area is no mean feat. But they do sell interesting though inferior products down on Market road near the ports. Getting access to the inner market would be benficial to all characters. Stuff at the market is okay, but more difficult to find exactly what you're looking for.

Religious Items can be aquired form the Church of the Blue flame. They have their chapel arrogantly placed slap bang in the centre of the 7 Bridges, an area where building is prohibited. The churces influence is such in town that they have ignored such restrictions. On the outside the are do gooders, but really they are mad fanatics with a very dangerous goal. Divine characters however can benefit from coming here.

The Old Town has a number of intersting shops ....
Across the river at the Mage's School ....
The Sacred Copse at the base of Gryphon Hill ...

etc. etc.

Do you get the idea?

Without getting so creative (though I recommend you do), gold can be exchanged for Residuum ... and Residuum used in Rituals ... No ritualist in the group? If so, put rituals in amongst the treasure.

In any case, there is no reason to say that an armory, or a blacksmith in the city can't make magical weapons, or armour or objects. That doesn't mean it has to be a magical Wallmart if you don't like that idea. Say the Amory has 5 magical items ... roll randomly and see what they got. Make a note. When the PCs go there they can choose if any of it is worth their while. A week or a month later the items will have changed.

 

[delericho]

Everyone was excited, but just for the magic items, money seemed boring and pointless. I don't blame them, they own a lot of money, but they can't buy anything that requires such amount of GP's,

There's your problem.

As far as I can see, money is only interesting if it is a limiting factor. If the PCs have so much money that they can buy anything they want (or at least everything else falls into the category of "money can't buy..."), then all it becomes is a number.

But if the PCs have a shopping list of 2,000gp of stuff they want, but they only have 1,800gp to hand, then it's a bit more interesting - they have some tough and interesting choices to make.

So my advice, for what little it's worth, is "keep them poor". (Where 'poor' is a relative term, of course - just make sure they can never quite afford everything they'd like.)

(Incidentally, I find the same is true of encumbrance, rations, ammo, and the like - these things are only interesting if there's a tight limit on what they have/can carry. That way, there's potentially interesting choices to make. (do I take extra rations, or a coil of rope?) But if characters can just load up on effectively limitless supplies, there's no point in tracking it, as it's just a waste of time and boring effort.)

 

[Dannager]

they can't buy anything that requires such amount of GP's, because, as you know, magic armor or weapons can't be bought on mundane armories

No, we don't know this, because most of us don't play like this. 4e assumes that the party will have the ability to purchase magic items with their hard-earned gold from an accessible bit of civilization. If you are not letting your party buy magic items because you're ruling that the only armory/weaponsmith/what-have-you doesn't create magical equipment, my advice is to stop that.

And if you really, really hate the idea of letting your PCs buy magic items (you shouldn't hate this idea), then at least give them the Enchant Magic Item ritual and let them purchase reagents.

 

[Dannager]

Without getting so creative (though I recommend you do), gold can be exchanged for Residuum ... and Residuum used in Rituals ... No ritualist in the group? If so, put rituals in amongst the treasure.

A quick note: gold cannot be freely exchanged for residuum. Residuum is typically only obtained through the disenchantment of magic items. Gold can be exchanged for specific types of reagents (each tailored to a specific skill), but residuum is supposed to be a sort of all-purpose reagent and is thus not normally sold (it would make buying individual reagents pointless).

 

[huank]

No, we don't know this, because most of us don't play like this. 4e assumes that the party will have the ability to purchase magic items with their hard-earned gold from an accessible bit of civilization. If you are not letting your party buy magic items because you're ruling that the only armory/weaponsmith/what-have-you doesn't create magical equipment, my advice is to stop that.

And if you really, really hate the idea of letting your PCs buy magic items (you shouldn't hate this idea), then at least give them the Enchant Magic Item ritual and let them purchase reagents.

I really haven't house ruled anything, I simply don't understand how that part of the system works. I use the Parcel system and all that, I always give the PC's what they want, as part of the parcels shown in the DMG, but I didn't know if I could let them buy Magic Items as well, with the other “only money” parcels. I once read another thread, where most people told that magic items shouldn't be available in common armories or weaponsmiths because parties could get overpowered... So I thought that made sense and that maybe the only magic items they should get, are the ones noted in the parcel part of the DMG... But then, I started looking at this “money sucks problem”, and that's why I want to improve it. So, are you sure that my PC's won't be overpowered if a start putting magic items as part of the purchasable stuff of a store?

 

[Chzbro]

...my advice is to stop that.

So your advice to him is that he should stop playing the way he does and start playing the way you do and your advice to jbear is to stop treating residuum like treasure because ... I'm not sure why ... it offends your sensibilities?

I actually think the "residuum as currency" idea has legs and encourages ritual use. I also think that some people (myself included) don't like characters being able to load up on magic items whenever they feel like it.

The OP is asking for ideas, not criticism.

 

[DracoSuave]

Only buy common magic? Money is interesting ONLY when theres interesting things to buy.

Some players want to buy a tavern. Thats easy.

What about a tiefling who needs a flaming sword to finish his build?

Realism dictates everything is for sale... so you make him adventure to find a seller. The item will be higher level than he can afford... so he has to save up for it. When he does so, he can negotiate a discount.

He will value it more than any treasure drop.