I need a little tactical advice, as a DM

Oh, and do you think you could encourage the others to sell some of the wands to maybe buy different gear, I mean there is a lot of useful stuff in D&D, and as great as wands are, if you have as many as you say you do, making an NPC willing to pay full (or near full) original price for the wands is something they may jump at. Or even a trade store after wands in return for some select but valuable pieces.
 

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I kind of see that as a direction that they're going in.

First, we have PCs who can't use the wands, and won't take any. Because we divide treasure equally (we total the resale cost and divide by character count), the party won't be able to "buy" all those wands and still pay the gold value to the people who won't buy them.

So some will have to be sold just to raise the cash.

But if a party of 7, at 11th/12th/13th level suddenly get over a half a million gp worth of gear (375 k worth of it in wands), I don't care what form it takes, it completely remakes the party in a single stroke.
 

I kind of see that as a direction that they're going in.

First, we have PCs who can't use the wands, and won't take any. Because we divide treasure equally (we total the resale cost and divide by character count), the party won't be able to "buy" all those wands and still pay the gold value to the people who won't buy them.

So some will have to be sold just to raise the cash.

But if a party of 7, at 11th/12th/13th level suddenly get over a half a million gp worth of gear (375 k worth of it in wands), I don't care what form it takes, it completely remakes the party in a single stroke.

wow. is the dream solution still available? :confused:
 

As some of you may know, our D&D 3.5 game runs on a round-robin style of play, which means that we take turns being DM.

...The problem is that the current DM just buried us in loot.
Then talk with the current GM and ask him if he considered the implications of such a GP haul. Maybe he meant it to bring the party up to the wealth by level guidelines. The amount of gold in magic items PC are expected to have does climb exponentially in that level bracket, IIRC 11 = 66000, 12 = 88000, 13 = 110000 & 14 = 150000.

Also custom item crafting is NOT instantaneous either. Hand waving lower level item availability is fine, but for higher level gear, those just won't be laying around. Items normally take 1 day per 1000 GP market value, so plenty of campaign can happen BEFORE the new gear even gets made.
 

If you really believe that the party were handed out too much treasure, there is a very old solution to this. Make the treasure hoards in your adventure extremely low, lower than the rules would normally give, or give them items in it that make sense that the monsters might have but that the party cannot actually (or will not) use. For example, a bardic horn if the party have no bard, or a gold statue that is twenty feet tall and not practical to shift out of the dungeon. This allows the party's loot to drop over time and come back in line with what they should really have. It also makes the magical items they have more special because they are not about to replaced or upgraded any time soon.

These kinds of issues have always been in D&D. I've been guilty of giving out too much magic myself on occasion and a slowing down of the pace was a natural fix for it.

Other ideas for you are areas of antimagic, monsters with magic resistance and monsters that take magical damage as healing (some oozes, some magical based creatures, check the monster manuals).
 


Advice appreciated.

I plan to run an adventure where they face a problem with several possible solutions.

Along the way they'll be visiting a major city and have a chance to sell or trade some of the items. And, like I said, I trust them to to handle that opportunity properly.

After that they'll have options, some of which include a pure combat scenario, while others will sway more towards the RP/diplomatic side, and a good range in between.

I won't force them down any particular route.

Oh, and the current DM wasn't quite finished, and helped clarify things: Our loot total is now over 600k, since he added a Shield Guardian to the haul.

Oh, did I say "helped"? I don't think that's quite the word I should have used. :)
 

a party of 7, at 11th/12th/13th level suddenly get over a half a million gp worth of gear (375 k worth of it in wands), I don't care what form it takes, it completely remakes the party in a single stroke.

Two things, 1) that many wands will weigh something, I'd check encumbrance. If they have bags of holding and all that then who cares, changing out wants is a move action, to pull a wand and use it is a standard action. They do nothing else.


2) Spellgaunt, MM2 188.

They literally eat magic items. It wont kill the group but it well help get them back on track. I would have them fight one after the sell whatever ones they are going to sell. I'd have it go after the item and/or caster with the highest enchantment bonus.

But here is the problem, your last session DM gave himself the gear cause he wanted it and is planning on optimizing it. If you take it away (which is what I would do) they will most likely be upset and say that you're just penalizing the characters. I would say "yes I am, I have a quest and it requires that you don't have enough wands to blast your way through it, you almost screwed me up on it". Then it'll make them realize that putting a burden like that messes with whoever has the next turn.

If you don't want to do the Spellgaunt idea, another good one is to have them teleported into a treasure room with no exit besides planeshift (no exit, no air, meaning they got like 6 hours before they suffocate). This would make it so they have to chose between pure gold and other items that are purely better than the wands. Then have a high level wizard chase them (cause they just looted his place), or make an item cursed and control one of the PCs and attack them, or when they plane shift they end up in the middle of a battle and since they are under a full load they will have to drop gear in order to survive.


Along the way they'll be visiting a major city and have a chance to sell or trade some of the items. And, like I said, I trust them to to handle that opportunity properly.

You can also do the dicky DM move and have them sell them and then have the shop people that bought them hire thieves to steal the gold back (it is something that a PC of mine did to people). Basically he would create a Private Septum and then teach a Parrot to say Orcus over and over again at a certain crossroad, as well as follow people. So whenever someone sold a bunch of stuff I'd have the Parrot follow them reach a crossroad and then summon the demon lord who would slay the person. I'd go get my stuff plus back.
 
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Like I said, I'm not going to arbitrarily steal or destroy the treasure. Major league uncool.

But with the addition of the Shield Guardian, the party treasure total is close to 700k. That's about 100k in new goodies per PC.

And we're not done yet.

The current DM may have a punch line for all this. Or maybe he's just decided to make the next DM's life miserable. (As noted, I'm the next DM.)
 

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