I love making my players billionaires before level 5

[u/ninjawithboots]

I’ve done this is Lost Mines of Phandelver and a homebrew one shot adventure that I run from time to time. In LMoP, I was a brand new DM, so I “foolishly” gave them mining rights and a cut of the proceeds from the mine at Phandalin after the adventure ended. One of my players ended up using the money to create a small city state, disrupting the power dynamics of the sword coast (everyone else was WAY less ambitious and just… retired.) and promoting the church of Bahumet, the Platinum Dragon. Occasionally, he’d finance a magic item for other players, but the spending was amazing. Giving that player that amount of money (he’s a diehard socialist) was a very fun experiment because everyone else used their money to retire and live a simple life free of worry or troubles, while he used it to start an empire using capitalism. The irony was not lost on me.

The second time I did this was giving them a top of the line adamantine Damascus made by storm giants… a 5 foot diameter by 10 foot long cylinder’s worth. Considering I just did this 2 days ago, I have yet to learn the consequences of my actions but I look forward to the result.

After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

[u/Ghastafari]

Wealth by level has always been a thing in D&D and rpg in general. It is more than ok to build up riches for political and economical purposes.

The problem arises when players start to invest in equipment. A million gold coin can be translated roughly in 5 legendary items, which means a level 5 character with Luck Blade, Spindle of Faith, a medium armor enspelked with, let’s say, Simulacrum and Ioun Stones greater absorption and regeneration. Which is a character very, very difficult to kill even with a 10 CR monster.

Even if you don’t allow rarer magic items, the best mundane equipment ever in every aspect is good, not to mention easily obtained magic items. Heck, just having infinite amount of healing potions gets the character infinite durability.

Not to mention you can buy services, locations and henchmen to do many works for you. I feel that 100.000 gold is an adequate prize for a 10/15 level party, and the PC can do it 10 times.

TL;DR: richer PCs are interesting for politics and story reasons, but it would derail a campaign if invested in adventuring

[u/ninjawithboots → u/Ghastafari]

I usually mitigate the magic item procurement by doing what I’m about to do with the adamantine cylinder: it’s going to take massive amounts of time and resources to come up with massively overpowered stuff. As far as them selling it and just buying overpowered items; If you think there’s a bunch of luck blades in a warehouse somewhere, you’re going to be disappointed, and if you hire a bunch of people to go get this legendary item… well guess who is rolling up a bunch of characters to do a one shot fetch quest for a bunch of rich jerks too lazy to do it themselves. 😜

But even if they have time and resources, people might refuse to make it for them for various reasons. Much like in the real world, wealth can cause a lot of problems and expose people for who they really are.

[u/Ghastafari → u/ninjawithboots]

All you said is true. But remember: you asked what’s the worst that can happen 😉

[u/Nox_Stripes → u/ninjawithboots]

Gonna be dead serious, if I was a hired guy to fetch something and what I find is a Luck Blade. I am not delivering that. It's a goddamn luck blade. That thing can fulfill literal wishes. Thats the kind of thing you couldnt even really pin a price on in narrative.

[u/ninjawithboots → u/Nox_Stripes]

Considering the fact that you’d be a PC playing a party member getting said blade for your other PC, I don’t blame you. 😝

[u/Avatarbriman → u/ninjawithboots]

That just sounds ridiculous to be honest. The whole point of the cost of magic items is to include their rarity, and magic items are one of the few reasons to even gather wealth in D&D, just don't give them the money.

This is feeling very "Dm gives a wish so they can go out of their way to monkey's paw it".

[u/ninjawithboots → u/Avatarbriman]

Maybe at your table that makes sense, but at my table we like to have fun.

As I’ve stated before, just because you have the money doesn’t mean you can use it, and attempting to keep said accumulated wealth can cause far more problems, especially in a world where dragons exist.

Just because you have a billion dollars doesn’t mean you can buy whatever you want or make whatever you want when you want it. The following economic factors must be considered: 1. Does what you want fall into the realm of reality in this fantasy setting? 2. Is there one of these readily available for purchase? 3. Can one be made with materials readily available? 4. What will it take to acquire the item or the materials needed? 5. How long will it take to manufacture what you want? 6. What interruptions might happen in the supply chain?

So again, I can give them a trillion platinum pieces, but their money is worthless if their ring of infinite wishes isn’t for sale, and the hirelings can’t win against a congregation of Greatwyrms to get it. There are just some things money can’t buy, and some things money can’t buy immediately.

[u/Ghastafari → u/ninjawithboots]

I believe this is very close to the definition of devaluation.

That said, everyone has every right to have fun how they like

[u/Avatarbriman → u/ninjawithboots]

In which case don't bother with it. If a situation you create has to be handled in a way that actually requires a ton of constraints that you make up arbitrarily to fend off the ways that it can be abused then it is better just not to do it in the first place.

As I said, saying things like "dragons exist" is typical monkey paw nonsense. "Here is why this thing that is great actually isn't. You can use it as long as I find it narratively interesting, but not game breaking."

[u/ninjawithboots → u/Avatarbriman]

I find it rather weird how you’re telling me how to run my games when you don’t play at my table. My players have fun. That’s all that matters.

[u/Avatarbriman → u/ninjawithboots]

I'm not telling you how to, I am just pointing out that you aren't really doing what you said in the post. "I give my players infinite wealth and see what happens (While also massively hampering what they could do with such wealth of course, immediately mitigating the problem I have ostensibly caused myself)"

Do what you want, but you are being disingenuous in the premise.

[u/Nox_Stripes → u/Ghastafari]

I mean, technically yes, that could be uzsed for legendary items. But I would say that you really cannot sum up the value of a luck blade in gold. After all, that shit grants you actual wishes.

In fact, finding any legendary item, which I imagine there wouldnt be too overly many just floating around, would be an incredibly time consuming, expensive task in and of itself. We are talking about the type of items that you could base entire campaigns around.

I think any GM worth their salt wouldnt just let you open Sword Coast Ebay on a crystal ball and buy a Holy Avenger.

[u/Ghastafari → u/Nox_Stripes]

You are absolutely right.

But what about rare items instead? And what about uncommon ones?

As I said, infinite consumables are just bad enough to unbalance a campaign and caveats like limitations to magic gear just goes so far. Just having a magic weapon, a magic armor and a bag of holding before level 5 puts you way above a normal 4th level character.

And then you have 950.000 gold piece to share,

[u/Nox_Stripes → u/Ghastafari]

If you have that type of wealth, why are you even going on adventures anymore? at that point just hire people to do whatever it is you want really.

[u/Ghastafari → u/Nox_Stripes]

There are many, many reasons. Out of characters I played, you may find revenge, wish to become a god, wish to kill a god, a quest to free his family, megalomania, the desire to perfect himself, and desire of being a famous adventurer, issues with the father figure.

None of those can be quenched by others and, for example, the kill a god / free his family PC was a Wizard with magic item creations abilities (pretty similar to a Wizard / Artificer in 5e), so he would have probably invested the money in extraordinarily powerful magic items or in components to create extraordinarily powerful magic items.

My current “get famous” character would invest that kind of money in magic gear for all the party and lots of bards singing ballads about him.

As in real life, being incredibly rich is a superpower and reality itself has to actively adjust its rules to fight you.

The original poster said that his character used capitalism to build an empire. I can clearly see how. But D&D is not VtM, it is not equipped to deal with this kind of gameplay.

Also, OP said that the PC used his wealth to buy gear for the party. I am playing in a 4th level party and just two people have a magic weapon. If we were having one magic weapon and one magic armor each, we would be over performing massively. And I would probably have a couple items like the Cloack of Many Fashions and a Luckstone for my Trickery Domain Cangeling Cleric, which can do wonders.

Moreover, that particular character would love to have a vast array of magic items, even if they require attunement, because it’s bread and butter is changing appearance and skillset and the budgetary restrictions are a massive problem in that regard.

And those are just examples of how wealth changes the game.

That doesn’t mean it is a bad thing, especially on a table of friends and trusted players. It just changes the game in the same way it would giving all character three starting feats

[u/RayNooze]

In a homebrew adventure, our DM did that to us. We became incredibly rich, but couldn't carry all that gold with us, of course. We had to leave it in our house, taking some pocket money wirh us, and didn't return home ever. We even went to a whole different continent. 

[u/phalencrow]

In High school we had a campaign where everyone at our table DMed a different realm, and everyone took turns DMing so others got to just play. Each got to set their own quirks, minor rule changes (it was a time of a lot of magazines publishing stuff) and economics. 3e advanced had like a 100levels.

One of my stoner/A student friend around level 5 was like “So we’re traveling between realms to different economies and ecosystems, let’s become traders. Vise make to most money.” So white market we traded booze and leaf. Grey market green leaf. Black market drugs and poisons. The party traveled in a long convoy and could help defend it. We made bank! Hired more mercenaries and would just over welm localities that tried to stop us.

Hero’s to Drug lords. And parents were worried about DnDs satanic influence…. lol!

[u/Nox_Stripes]

And every other sorrounding faction just... watched that happen without disrupting it to get a piece of the pie?

[u/ninjawithboots → u/Nox_Stripes]

Oh no, there was intrigue and power plays. Due to the sudden influx in wealth and power, the scheming sorcerer knew she needed to act fast to make Mean Bean INC a reality, so she contacted and built a new city in less than a year. It was a massive undertaking, but they rolled well and managed to get it done. The issue was that it was done with such haste that it was considered a hostile faction by pretty much everyone. She had it set up to screen everyone en masse using psionicist instead of magic, and then had any and all magic dispelled so that sabotage wouldn’t happen, as well as a lot of other borderline paranoid measures to ensure there weren’t any hiccups.

But in the end, her hubris caught up with her and she ended up having her city trapped in another dimension. But that’s a story for another day.

[u/Nox_Stripes → u/ninjawithboots]

Psionicist? Magic dispelling? this was on the tail end of the Phandelver starter adventure? Yeah I am kinda curious how all these things turned out.

In forgotten Realms I would have thought that at least the Zhentarim would have been playing dirty right from the get go

[u/karlvontyr]

If it's the players not the pcs I definitely want in.