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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 1703953" data-attributes="member: 22882">Excellent article!It does raise one point that's always bugged me about D&D (especially in 3e):PCs aren't just wealthy, they're fantastically wealthy, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, rich enough to become kings themselves.At 5th level.The DMG expects treasure from encounters to amount to 21,328 gp for a party of four 5th-level PCs.With that money, the PCs could pay 2000 commoners (200 gp/day) for 105 days.  Assuming that each commoner's labor generated at least 1 sp/day worth of goods and services after day 52, the PCs could continue paying them indefinitely without 'losing' any further money.  They could dump the remaining 10,500 gp into land and construction costs and hiring mercenary Warriors to suppliment the militia.Within a year, four 5th-level PCs could create a self-sustaining DMG 'small town' using only their personal wealth from adventuring.If they could in that year continue to adventure enough to reach 6th level, they would acquire another 5,000 gp.  To 7th level, another 8,000 gp on top of that.  Their level progression is slowed by administrative duties, to be sure, but they are minor warrior chieftain/barons and can be expected to do their share of treasure hunting.Let's say our landlord PCs reach 10th level five years after they founded their town.  They now possess about 55,000 gp worth of resources over and above what they had when they broke ground on it.  Enough to start two additional towns of the same type.Now our PCs have 6,000 subjects, equivalent to a 'small city' by DMG standards.  Some of their original subjects probably leveled as commoners, warriors or experts.  Many of them probably produce more than 1 sp/day, and the initial town is probably turning a profit.At this point, adventuring slows down even more.But the PCs do reach 15th level in another ten years.  The half-orcs among them may be looking at retirement, but if they started out at about age 20-25, the now-40-year-old humans are still in adventuring trim, and the longer-lived among them are still mere lads.  And they control an additional 220,000 gp.  By now, some of the children of their initial hirelings are adults capable of producing in their own right, the initial town has probably swelled to 'small city' size, they may have taken Leadership to acquire more 'free' adherents, and they control up to a metropolis' worth of people.  Their frontier barony, carved out by their own hands, is now a decently-sized kingdom backed by its council of four 15th-level rulers who can singlehandedly turn aside small armies.At the age of 40, with no hereditary income and no starting resources but the swords and staves on their backs, they control a small nation capable of butting heads with established kings.  Their wealth is so far beyond the limits of a commoner's understanding that he can no more wrap his head around it than a typical modern person can Bill Gates' financial resources.If, by the age of 60 (probably losing their half-orcish companion), they reach 20th level... they will possess hundreds of thousands of gp, vast personal power, and the ability to literally conquer any nation in the world not backed by similarly powerful characters.  And if they manage their nation efficiently, they might actually be able to trump those established 20th-level-NPC-backed kingdoms as well.This would lend itself to a political situation *far* more unstable than that postulated by core D&D, a much more Conan-esque world where high-level heroes trample the jeweled thrones of their retired predecessors beneath their feat almost on a generational basis.</blockquote>

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