Would you give your 2nd level party 30 thousand gold?

[MacMathan]

I wouldn't do it regularly but it sounds like you have some plot associated with it.

I guess the main thing for me as a (RB)DM is that big gems attract attention as they are easily stolen and taking 30k from 2nd level PC would be worth the risk for some hardened criminal types .

It could get very interesting for the PC's if they were not the picture of discretion.

The fun part about gems is there is also appraisal involved so values can fluctuate, heck if it was on or two really big gems they might run into a "black pearl" situation where none of jewelers would have much use for it depending on the size of the town.

Overall it sounds like it will make for "interesting" times for the PCs and will not buff them up too much.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Maybe I'm being dense, but all the "sure, but then I'd have someone steal it from them" responses have me confused. What's the point in giving the party something, if you're just going to yoink it from them at the first possible opportunity?

If I had a DM who did this to me, I'd take a good long look at that DM and try to decide if the game he's runnng is fun enough to put up with getting screwed over by him (because that's basically what I see him doing). I mean, don't give me something you don't want me to have, otherwise you're just yanking my chain to make me dance to some evil tune in your head.

But on to the question at hand:

Sure, I'd give 'em 30k. I've done a lot worse on both ends of the "giving" spectrum (Kept 'em reeeeally poor and made 'em reeeeeally rich). If the players want to break the game, they'll do it no matter what you hand out to them. If they're in it for the fun, it wouldn't make a difference if you gave them 10 times that amount: they're gonna have fun regardless.

 

[WayneLigon]

The players are in a town they can spoend lots of it, they have time to special order some things and make some magical items themsevles. That's a lot of money to give to second level characters, so is that somethign you would have done?

If it was plot-related: sure. The stuff they buy with it isn't going to be all that more powerful than they'd just find. If I felt the need, I'd just pull back on some later treasure.

 

[Sejs]

Sure, why not?

I as the DM control how that gold can in turn be spent, so I see no problem with the PCs having it. Besides, it's not like they can just throw some gold pieces up in the air and have it come back down as a magic item or anything. If I don't want them to pop down to Magic-Lo-Mart, then by golly there is no Magic-Lo-Mart.

Besides, it might be a good way to get the characters more involved in the game world. Buy a house. Start a business. Purchase a ship. Donate it to a patron and try to purchase your way into the ranks of nobility. There are all sorts of things that don't directly translate to plusses on a die roll that money can be used for.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, I don't get the give the PCs stuff just to take away later. The only things I do that with are things like Artifacts that really aren't the PCs, they just travel with the PCs on the artifacts great journey of its existance.

I also don't see the pouint in doing this if you are just going to keep treasure from the PCs later. That sounds like an advancement and not just givign the PCs the money.

I have not nor will I be taking away tyhis money. Also, I have no reduced the treasure that they have found in future adventures either. I like to do things I haven't done as a DM before. I like to do things that are a little unusual oir very unusual in a D&D game to see how the players react and what they do.

 

[genshou]

According to the "1gp=$20" rule, you're giving a 2nd-level party $600,000. I started one d20 Modern adventure with the PCs finding some Powerball tickets on a group of bruisers. One of them ended up being a winner, and the PCs ended up with $195,000,000. Now three of the five PCs had spent most of their starting Wealth on higher-DC items without knowing about this. Their Wealth scores at the time were +0, +1, +1, +4, and +7. By reversing the formula presented in the second installment of Bullet Points, I discovered that each PC winning $39,000,000 was enough to raise their Wealth score to 45.

So what did the PCs do with all that money? They saved most of it. They paid their way through a lot of licenses to get a small number of specific expensive items (mostly weaponry). They cooperatively bought a 15-bedroom mansion and hired a personal doctor for recovering between adventures.

Did it unbalance my game? Hardly. Removing the "ceiling" for the PCs didn't make them have enough connections to get illegal items without attracting undue attention, the game had no FX so they couldn't go out and buy magic items, and at first they kept most of the wealth instead of spending it anyway. For the rest of their careers, however, they could always count on some sort of financial backing instead of being the "starving detectives" who barely broke even because they were constantly bribing and such to get the information they needed. Not to mention repairing broken cars.

 

[KRT]

... But they have leveld a bit faster then normal so by now if I were to care about level and gold ratio, they would probably be a bit low.

So the gold didn't matter. It never does. You could have given them 100K each and what would have happened is that they would have spent what they could on magic items and run the market dry. Then they would have started buying big things like property and maybe ships. Then they would have to defend these things and after a short period of time they would be higher level and with a lot less gold.

The only thing that giving them a lot of gold does is make it more difficult for the DM to come up with challenges. A second level party would normally fight gnolls and maybe an ogre, but with all the magic items they would need to fight ogres and maybe a hill giant. The problem is that they are still ony 2nd level in regards to hit points but with 5th level magic items. So they kill lots of big things but the chance of PC death goes up too.

 

[Crothian]

Giving them lots of gold never made it more difficult for me to DM. In fact even if they were decked out in great magical items I'd let them have the normal battles, let them easily win some fights. Nothing wrong with that.

Of course this didn't matter. There was nothing the PCs could do with it that would have screwed up the game. Even if they spent it all on a magical item, biught an inn, what have you. That was the point of this thread, letting the PCs have things that are seen out of the box is okay.

 

[Altalazar]

Sure, why not?

I as the DM control how that gold can in turn be spent, so I see no problem with the PCs having it. Besides, it's not like they can just throw some gold pieces up in the air and have it come back down as a magic item or anything. If I don't want them to pop down to Magic-Lo-Mart, then by golly there is no Magic-Lo-Mart.

Besides, it might be a good way to get the characters more involved in the game world. Buy a house. Start a business. Purchase a ship. Donate it to a patron and try to purchase your way into the ranks of nobility. There are all sorts of things that don't directly translate to plusses on a die roll that money can be used for.

Exactly. There are many more things you can do with gold than just buy "power-up" magic items. Heck, why not buy yourself a Senator?

 

[KRT]

Exactly. There are many more things you can do with gold than just buy "power-up" magic items. Heck, why not buy yourself a Senator?

Because they choke in the playoffs?