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

[The Thayan Menace]

Run With It ....

The gods notice those things.

Perhaps, but low-level PCs with 30,000 gp would be more likely to draw notice from bandits, con-artists, cutpurses, sycophants, tax collectors, thugs, and unscrupulous merchants.

Still, that might make for some cool campaign possibilities.

For example:

 

[ShrooMofDooM]

Unless the party had to defeat an army of orcs (somehow) armed with rocket launchers and machine guns while in the buff (the players, not the orcs >>), I would never ever EVER give the party that much gold.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, the HELL NO! option seems to be missing...

The Auld Grump

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Hmmm, the HELL NO! option seems to be missing...

Yeah ... and it's kind of a shame too.

 

[Zweihänder]

If it was plot-related, or if I was running an extremely unfairly difficult campaign, then yes. Randomly, never.

 

[danzig138]

Maybe. It would depend on the game I was running at the time. In my current game, the character are finally starting to hit 4th and 5th level (there have been many, many deaths, and numerous reincarnations). Through bad luck and even worse decisions, I think they've probably lost 30,000 gp in equipment and magic a couple times over now. Even right now, I'm thinking of giving them a financial boost, since they (after the last couple of sessions) are painfully underequipped. So in the current campaign, yeah, probably.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Clarification

Maybe .... In my current game, the character are finally starting to hit 4th and 5th level .... So in the current campaign, yeah, probably.

I believe the poll question was:

"Would you give 2nd level characters 30,000gp?"​

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I am going to do something similar with my 3rd (going on 4th) level pcs; 30k in gold bullion.

As a general rule I say no but for my campaign I say yes. This is obviously campaign specific but my campaign is highly feudal & everything belongs to the king, so the pcs will have to decide on hiding the wealth or paying tribute; under doing the tribute is worse than overdoing it (chop chop). Furthermore wealth & powerful items gravitate towards powerful characters, & 2nd/3rd level characters are _not_ powerful; they will certainly face legitimate & illegitimate threats to their wealth.

So really I'd be fine to create an adventure about giving 30k but I'd prepare the adventure around this, not gift it to be spent between sessions.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I tend to run dirt poor games as I have seen extra gold turn games sour.
That being said, I was/am in a WEG Star Wars game where the group I joined snagged a Empirial Tax shipment..in pure Gold
It took us 15 years game time to properly dispose of the money.. even with high costs of laundering and donations to the Rebel causes. In the end I worked up some Power Armor for my character that cost 45 million creds.. ending the DM's headache over how to handle the sluch funds we developed, leaving him with only the headache of all the investment ventures we had developed

The Power Armor got used in play once.. in a grand rescue mission when Thrawn found our Jedi's "secret" training camp and came over for a visit.

I would echo the "not game breaking, but ensure you trim it away by theft or taxes".
Also, encourage your players to invest in odd items.

 

[BSF]

Yes, absolutely yes!
I have even been dangling out a quest that the party could take on that could net them 1 million gold. Something called the Soul Gem in a tower that is destroyed but is rumored to appear on certain nights. The PCs aren't biting the hook though. The money isn't important enough to them.

Of course my campaign is decidedly non-standard. The PCs have a great deal of wealth tied up in things that they can't easily sell. The land holdings that one of the PCs had went away when that PC died. They have received a scholarl position at one of the universities in the major campaign city, which finally allows them access to the inner city areas. Of course, that only has value if they decide to use it. But that is where all the intersting people and political machinations of the city take place. I suppose that is also where the closest things to 'magic shops' exist as well. We will see what they end up doing with it.

I also gave the 5th level Favored Soul a +3 returning trident. I laugh because I can already hear a certain segment of the posters in this thread crying "Monty Haul". Of course, the trident was a gift from his god. So it needs to be able to last him a very long time. With luck, when the PCs are powerful enough, he will look at trying to build in some upgrades. In the interim, I happy because I wanted at least one PC that had a weapon to bypass DR x/magic.

Of course, I use the Artificer's Handbook for magic creation rules. The spell slot system is the limiting factor, not money. Money is useful in my game to by mundane things, but magic gew gaws are harder to purchase outright.

I break the wealth guidelines all over the place. But I am very cognizant of how that affects CR . Then again not all challenges the party faces are meant to be fought. The players know that. Even the ones they are supposed to fight have handed them their butts on occasion. Oddly enough, even the overpowered trident doesn't do much to overwhelm the opposition. It works pretty much as I intended it to.

I don't advocate this playstyle for everyone. Not everyone likes to tweak things the same way I do. That's just fine. But to insinuate that somebody else runs a monty haul campaign when you don't understand the context of their campaign cracks me up.

It's fine to say that such a thing won't work in the games you want to run. It's OK to point out why it might be problematic with the stock assumptions of the game. But to continuously drop thinly veiled insults is kind of lame.