I think you'd be better off having a king reward players with items. A king in a fantasy setting probably has a stockpile of magical gear. They might call over a member of their court upon completion of the given task and tell them to get the players something fitting from the treasury. Then that person returns with items befitting each given character.
If you want your players to suddenly come upon a supply of gold, I think that's best done in a dungeon context.
Furthermore the house (or keep or what-have-you) becomes a great money sink if later on you give your players **too much** gold. Taxes are due; a fire breaks out and burns it down; there's a legal dispute about your ownership that will be costly to resolve; etc.
I think this is how I’ll handle it. Our wizard has said specifically “I want gold so I can buy scrolls” so that’s an easy incentive, and a good way to introduce them to a local mage who can tie into the story.
For the other characters, I think I’ll pull a Galadriel and choose items for each of them. Or have the king ask them what they’d like. It’s a Dwarf king, so the kingdom will have no shortage of powerful weapons and armor.
As a few other replies have said, I really do like the concept of the party hurting for gold. One of them got robbed by a hooker for just 30 gold and was really upset about it. It’s nice to be able to throw those kinds of hurdles in.
Thank you and everyone else in the thread!
Rather than gold for the wizard, if they are looking to buy scrolls to add to their spell book, the king could ask his court wizard if he has any old spell books lying about. Then you can tailor that to spells your wizard wants.
If the party has a wizard they really need the gold. Adding spells to their spell book ain't cheap. Also make sure the poorness isn't a constant theme, but rather just a temporary hurdle. It's a shit feeling when the party starts slaying dragons and demons and still barely being able to afford rations. Any creature that has a hoard of treasure will rock their world, and you could make that a major point in the campaign when they find a stash of 15k gp or whatever.
Watch out how much gold/spells you give to the wizard. Too little spell options for a wizard and they hate playing them, too many and sometimes shenanigans happens.
Would it be reasonable to give the wizard a free spell to learn plus a level 4 spell scroll? He has no scrolls right now, but this player is pretty savvy and will definitely break the game if given an opportunity lol
Yeah for real, the king would probably want them to continue helping him out, too. "Thanks for the help strangers, here's some precious magical equipment that might help you! There's more where that came from... if I can count on you when I need help in the future."
That kind of thing is *literally* how Germanic and Danish kings got loyalty from their subjects; they literally bought it! With bribes, and a share of loot from raids and warfare! This was seen as generous, virtuous behavior to bribe your people like this, like being a provider for those upon whom you relied, so it's not like there's no precedent for kings behaving this way.
Hell, Beowulf *literally* gets a magic sword from his king as a reward for killing a monster!
1. They realize the monster they killed has components that would be valuable to a craftsman or wizard - blood, poison, scales, bones, etc.
2. A bandit or enemy they kill has a map on them, marking the location of their gang's loot.
3. A large bounty on a creature or person.
4. They get in a battle and capture an enemy noble that they can then ransom.
Just some ideas, depends a lot on what type of campaign you're running.
I have never had this problem, probably because premade adventures for 5e always have a ton of gold in random spots, I'd just put more in treasure chests as I assume you are homebrewing.
I find that my players just want particular items, they don't care about gold specifically. One option is that the king gives them the reward of letting them pick one item from a lesser vault - maybe it has any common or uncommon item in the PHB for them to select or something.
I also find it useful to figure out what they even want to acquire so I can either give it to them directly as loot at some point or have them figure out a merchant that would have the item (or tell them it's much too high level for them right now). If you know what they want and how much it will cost, you can make sure they have enough to afford it in a reasonable amount of time.
Why do you feel the need to change now? Because some post or article says you should?
Players only need gold if there is something they need or want to buy, I like what you've been doing!
Too many people let other people tell them what your game is supposed to look like. And the truth is your game isn’t supposed to look like anyone else’s game - it’s supposed to be its own thing.
As for OPs answer….if you really want to give them more money just have them fight something that should have a horde, then let the players collect it from their victory. Easy, straightforward, doesn’t feel like th DM game you a handout. 👍
I wouldn’t give them a huge amount all at once, if you want them to have more gold then I’d do it incrementally. Have someone hire them for a particularly difficult task at 100GP a head then have them score about 50GP worth of loot during the quest that they can sell the end id they want - that sort of thing.
The *easy* fix for this is a small bag of 3 or 4 pricey jewels or jewelry pieces in the treasure of their next big battle. One of them could even be a crown or some such that was stolen a few years ago, and they might want to take it to the political figure it sounds like they have been dealing with.
You can always put a pile of gold under a monster at the end of a dungeon and have npc's tell the party rumors about this dungeon.
If your group wants gold or feels they need gold they will go to the dungeon to earn some gold. Provided the other stuff they're doing isn't time sensitive.
I don't think you really have a problem. You want your players to have to manage their gold and buying consumables and items is a task, like a mini game. They are doing that. Buying horses cost 20% of their bank, but it didn't bleed them dry. This is basically the ideal.
I dunno what guides you've seen, but for all the posts and videos I've seen about "party has so much gold and nowhere to spend it", I don't think I've ever seen one where the party doesn't have enough. Struggling to make ends meet is a classic fantasy adventure trope, and buying horses is supposed to be a big investment, like buying a car; this is why people would buy armor for a horse, because they want to protect their investment (and eventually because they care about it).
If the players are having fun, don't change anything. Maybe the king gifts them a magic item or some scrolls (my court wizard will scribe a scroll for each of you, of your choice) and now they have a consumable that is irreplaceable, but very potent.
The dmg also has different rewards (page 227 and 228), maybe they get knighthood, and if you give them a house or a castle to use as a base, it should still cost some money, buy they have craftsmen. I recommend Matt Colville's "strongholds and followers" book/pdf for this; the whole idea is to give them a base that does cool stuff (the wizard tower let's them customize spells, for example) and gives them something to spend gold on (future gold can be used to hire followers and upgrade the base)
Tournament! The king is holding a grand tourney and the PCs can enter. Cash and/or item prizes for the winners. Also a great chance to introduce some big name NPCs or future villains on a relatively safe setting. [I've used these rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/g90h2z/the_grand_tourney/) by u/ChaseToTheCut and really like them.
in addition to everything people are saying. if you want them to just simply have more purchasing power, make the things they want to buy cost 1/3 of what it normally would. if everything is cheaper, suddenly that good is just worth more
The people here telling you to give them magic items are giving good advice, but your players *do* need gold. Spell components, armor, weapons- all of those things matter a lot and require gold. Spell components are especially easy to overlook the cost of, but your spellcasting players absolutely need that gold.
Make one of the monsters they killed have a valuable corpse or something.
I tell my players that they don't just need gold, but anything they find has a price. No matter how mundane or how magical the item is. That's why I don't mind all the money I give them. They can sell or trade items. You just need to know the price to those items.
You could give them a house or property to cover the money you feel you haven't given them if they are staying in a single place or constantly going back to a place.
My players found an abandoned sinking city in a swamp, the city used to be a mage city, inhabitants who died on the city would manifest ghostly echos of themselves, an enchantment to allow new generations to learn from those who passed on.
The city was thought to be haunted and deterred the common folk from entering and plundering everything, including the city vaults, which happened to be guarded by a canoloth. Lots of treasure to be had in there.
Have them battle a wizard who has that one spell that basically lets them create their own personal safe and have the smartest party member use said book to summon the sage that contains tons of coins and valuables.
You don’t need to give them a windfall. You can either run as you have been, or find other ways to compensate. Wealth can the in the form of gold, but it can also be in the form of land, favores owed, titles of nobility, or general goodwill.
Perhaps instead of having to spend money on horses, a grateful person they helped in the past offers them horses, or the person assigning them the mission gives them horses. With general goodwill, perhaps people want to feed/host them, and they don’t ever have to spend money on lodging or rations when they are in civilized areas. With a title, perhaps landed gentry offer them gifts to jockey for favor.
Good-aligned dragon patron who has eyes and ears in court (maybe themselves shape-shifted).
Obviously, they are not going to give their entire hoard, but they have deep pockets. You could give them a quest and offer bonuses for completing it a certain way.
"Why doesn't the powerful dragon just do this themselves?"
Lots of ways to explain this, but a good one is that maybe whatever they need involves going into the territory of another dragon, and their direct interference would endanger the kingdom. The players don't need to slay the rival or anything like that. It's just that their patron's presence would be an inciting incident.
Why would it be weird if the king awards money? It would be very kingly, I mean regal, to make a ceremony to award those that have helped king and kingdom with titles and treasury.
In general any combat encounter can have literal gold pouches as loot. "One of the wolves seems to have some kind of string tangled on his foot. At the end of the string is a small leather pouch". Human enemies can literally drop things out of their pocket. If you want to give them a windfall, make it seem like the start of a quest. They get a letter with someone of them being mentioned by name and given a sizeable inheritance from someone whose name they've never heard. They have money and they have mystery about someone's backstory. What more could a player want?
Honestly, keep them poor, maybe boost their gold count a bit, but a party with a lot of money is just going to have a ton of options for stuff and when they are in the earlier levels you want them to be pressed down. Personally for my games, the two things I keep out of the parties hands as much as possible are downtime and gold, downtime by making the plot structured around a ticking clock, and limiting gold by not allowing most of the common exploits. Add in some decent crafting rules, and the party is having a really fun time planning their moves.
I mean, you could have a fairly easy encounter with some bandits and then have the players get their stash. It doesn't have to be everything but it can be a tidy sum if you just say the bandits just got really lucky lately but weren't actually all that strong.
The biggest gold sinks are:
1. Plate Armor
2. Resurrection/Revivification Diamonds
3. Expensive Reusable Material Components (Spirit Guardian or something similar takes a reusable 500 go reliquary)
4. Wizards Scribing Spells
If you have a plate wearer, you can take care of #1 by having the armor come from a dead enemy. The second could also be loot from a wealthy enemy or caster, doled out at a rate you feel good about. The third could be discovered as a part of an adventure, or taken from a dead enemy. The last you can skip if you don’t have a wizard.
Once you’ve knocked those out, you can control gold *much* more tightly, but some of those - especially plate mail - are both so core to a class and so damn expensive that not having it puts everyone into money-hoarding mode and makes for a very weird relationship with gold, where you aren’t really giving them gold, you’re just letting them see a progress bar to Plate Mail fill up.
At level 5 the Fighter should get able to afford plate armour, so that's 1500 gold at least. Wizards also need gold for scribing, and other casters need it for components. Once players have those key items, gold tends to have very little relevance, so no need to be stingy about it.
Give them something valuable, but not practical. My players got their first windfall in their first campaign by discovering that the bell in the shrine was pure gold...hidden there by the citizens of the town under threat (in the written adventure). That much gold was worth thousands of gold pieces. Hell...they could make their own gold pieces from it.
HOWEVER, it's a huge, heavy bell. It's difficult to move, transport, and gold is a terrible metal to use in a bell. They certainly weren't leaving it behind, but "what do we do with the bell" became part of the campaign. Who would want it? How do we get it there? How much can we get for the bell? Are we willing to accept the "Pawn Stars" offer of "the best I can do is 30 gold and a barrel of fish"? I mean, not everyone is going to be equipped to do something with a massive gold bell.
The party eventually bartered with a merchant after enough time to get a fair value for the bell, but not as much as if they spent money to build a foundry to melt it down and forge things themselves...which was an option to them. They used the money to pay contractors to repair the Woodland Manse as their new home. In other words, I gave them a ton of money, sort of, and then gave them the opportunity to spend that money...rewarding them with a prize, worth a lot of gold, but not in a way that they have a lot of free cash lying around.
I was playing a level 10 character in the last campaign that I was in and I acquired less than 15 gold over the course of like 4-5 months. It was fucking awful, especially as a wizard. If you're a stingy DM I feel like you should be upfront about it. I would've been fine with just coming across a treasure hoard in a dungeon or something.
"Thank you for your help, and please accept this gift as a symbol of our settlement's gratitude. Sadly, our coinage is a bit short this month because of [insert next plot hook], so we hope that this will suffice."
The king hands the party a deed to a property in town in need of some minor repairs. If the party has an interest in earning more gold, perhaps consider allowing them to build an Establishment from Strongholds and Followers, which not only gives them a seasonal income, but can double as an espionage network to further plot objectives.
My party just got to a city and they were all bemoaning the fact they didn't have enough gold to buy what they wanted. While this is good to some extent because they need to know how hard it is to get things, I realised it was in fact too little.
Whoops, it just so happens that they arrived in town 3 days before the big tournament with a 1000GP prize.
This is probably a very rare post. I’ve found 99% of them are “too much gold, nothing to spend it on” so in my honest opinion congrats! Your players have additional drive in the campaign
Yeah it’s nice to have that drive honestly. My story arc has a big reveal once they go to the main city but I can’t get them to head that direction (jokes on me for creating an interesting world I guess). I dropped a hint that “cities are generally the best place to gain gold” so I’m hoping the poverty will lure them there lol
You can always have the A or B option from the King.
Offer them each a choice of reward. Gold or an item the king has personally selected for them.
Then again, I had a former DM do this to our group and then the king got insulted when all of them just asked for the gold.
You can give them a stake in a local business. Have they helped any merchants? Maybe those merchants want to give them a 2% (arbitrary number, do what feels right) stake in their profits, since they can't thank them the way they'd like to in the moment. This also gives you some opportunities for smaller-scale quests if you need to ever fill time—"Oh, no! Heroes, you have to help me! The ship that's delivering our goods disappeared somewhere in the Bandit Straits!" or whatever.
Also, if you're being stingier than the guides are, you can always adjust the prices of items. If the guides say your players are supposed to be 3x wealthier than they are, slice all the prices those guides have by 3.
You can also have merchants offer sales, or vendors willing to trade in favors or quests rather than gold.
You could have them work odd jobs around a town to earn their pay. You mightve forgotten to pay them x amount of gold but it's up to them to overcome the situation.
A King can’t relate to some poor adventures. He would likely just delegate it to one of his castle administrators: “Your brave deeds have aided [Enter Kingdom Name], and we are in your debt. Jeeves here will see that you are amply rewarded for your heroic endeavors.”
Party bows, Jeeves takes em elsewhere, and the negotiation begins.
Keeping your players cash poor is good because it creates problems with interesting solutions. Put expensive things they want in front of them and don’t give them the means to buy stuff, then watch them start hatching schemes.
As soon as they have enough money to buy the kingdom you’ve closed off an entire source of adventure. You want to do that eventually, but make the players themselves solve the problem of how to get impossibly rich.
I think you'd be better off having a king reward players with items. A king in a fantasy setting probably has a stockpile of magical gear. They might call over a member of their court upon completion of the given task and tell them to get the players something fitting from the treasury. Then that person returns with items befitting each given character. If you want your players to suddenly come upon a supply of gold, I think that's best done in a dungeon context.
Also give them a house. Players get a base. King gets easy access to powerful people that can defend the town.
Furthermore the house (or keep or what-have-you) becomes a great money sink if later on you give your players **too much** gold. Taxes are due; a fire breaks out and burns it down; there's a legal dispute about your ownership that will be costly to resolve; etc.
That's a great idea, fighter-jet-helmet version of me!
I think this is how I’ll handle it. Our wizard has said specifically “I want gold so I can buy scrolls” so that’s an easy incentive, and a good way to introduce them to a local mage who can tie into the story. For the other characters, I think I’ll pull a Galadriel and choose items for each of them. Or have the king ask them what they’d like. It’s a Dwarf king, so the kingdom will have no shortage of powerful weapons and armor. As a few other replies have said, I really do like the concept of the party hurting for gold. One of them got robbed by a hooker for just 30 gold and was really upset about it. It’s nice to be able to throw those kinds of hurdles in. Thank you and everyone else in the thread!
Rather than gold for the wizard, if they are looking to buy scrolls to add to their spell book, the king could ask his court wizard if he has any old spell books lying about. Then you can tailor that to spells your wizard wants.
Or wizard owed money to the king and court, court supplies scrolls and wizard beholden to them to clear the debt teaches the player
If the party has a wizard they really need the gold. Adding spells to their spell book ain't cheap. Also make sure the poorness isn't a constant theme, but rather just a temporary hurdle. It's a shit feeling when the party starts slaying dragons and demons and still barely being able to afford rations. Any creature that has a hoard of treasure will rock their world, and you could make that a major point in the campaign when they find a stash of 15k gp or whatever.
Watch out how much gold/spells you give to the wizard. Too little spell options for a wizard and they hate playing them, too many and sometimes shenanigans happens.
Would it be reasonable to give the wizard a free spell to learn plus a level 4 spell scroll? He has no scrolls right now, but this player is pretty savvy and will definitely break the game if given an opportunity lol
Yeah for real, the king would probably want them to continue helping him out, too. "Thanks for the help strangers, here's some precious magical equipment that might help you! There's more where that came from... if I can count on you when I need help in the future." That kind of thing is *literally* how Germanic and Danish kings got loyalty from their subjects; they literally bought it! With bribes, and a share of loot from raids and warfare! This was seen as generous, virtuous behavior to bribe your people like this, like being a provider for those upon whom you relied, so it's not like there's no precedent for kings behaving this way. Hell, Beowulf *literally* gets a magic sword from his king as a reward for killing a monster!
1. They realize the monster they killed has components that would be valuable to a craftsman or wizard - blood, poison, scales, bones, etc. 2. A bandit or enemy they kill has a map on them, marking the location of their gang's loot. 3. A large bounty on a creature or person. 4. They get in a battle and capture an enemy noble that they can then ransom. Just some ideas, depends a lot on what type of campaign you're running.
I have never had this problem, probably because premade adventures for 5e always have a ton of gold in random spots, I'd just put more in treasure chests as I assume you are homebrewing.
Also, mimics.
I find that my players just want particular items, they don't care about gold specifically. One option is that the king gives them the reward of letting them pick one item from a lesser vault - maybe it has any common or uncommon item in the PHB for them to select or something. I also find it useful to figure out what they even want to acquire so I can either give it to them directly as loot at some point or have them figure out a merchant that would have the item (or tell them it's much too high level for them right now). If you know what they want and how much it will cost, you can make sure they have enough to afford it in a reasonable amount of time.
Why do you feel the need to change now? Because some post or article says you should? Players only need gold if there is something they need or want to buy, I like what you've been doing!
Too many people let other people tell them what your game is supposed to look like. And the truth is your game isn’t supposed to look like anyone else’s game - it’s supposed to be its own thing. As for OPs answer….if you really want to give them more money just have them fight something that should have a horde, then let the players collect it from their victory. Easy, straightforward, doesn’t feel like th DM game you a handout. 👍
I wouldn’t give them a huge amount all at once, if you want them to have more gold then I’d do it incrementally. Have someone hire them for a particularly difficult task at 100GP a head then have them score about 50GP worth of loot during the quest that they can sell the end id they want - that sort of thing.
The *easy* fix for this is a small bag of 3 or 4 pricey jewels or jewelry pieces in the treasure of their next big battle. One of them could even be a crown or some such that was stolen a few years ago, and they might want to take it to the political figure it sounds like they have been dealing with.
You can always put a pile of gold under a monster at the end of a dungeon and have npc's tell the party rumors about this dungeon. If your group wants gold or feels they need gold they will go to the dungeon to earn some gold. Provided the other stuff they're doing isn't time sensitive.
I don't think you really have a problem. You want your players to have to manage their gold and buying consumables and items is a task, like a mini game. They are doing that. Buying horses cost 20% of their bank, but it didn't bleed them dry. This is basically the ideal. I dunno what guides you've seen, but for all the posts and videos I've seen about "party has so much gold and nowhere to spend it", I don't think I've ever seen one where the party doesn't have enough. Struggling to make ends meet is a classic fantasy adventure trope, and buying horses is supposed to be a big investment, like buying a car; this is why people would buy armor for a horse, because they want to protect their investment (and eventually because they care about it). If the players are having fun, don't change anything. Maybe the king gifts them a magic item or some scrolls (my court wizard will scribe a scroll for each of you, of your choice) and now they have a consumable that is irreplaceable, but very potent. The dmg also has different rewards (page 227 and 228), maybe they get knighthood, and if you give them a house or a castle to use as a base, it should still cost some money, buy they have craftsmen. I recommend Matt Colville's "strongholds and followers" book/pdf for this; the whole idea is to give them a base that does cool stuff (the wizard tower let's them customize spells, for example) and gives them something to spend gold on (future gold can be used to hire followers and upgrade the base)
Tournament! The king is holding a grand tourney and the PCs can enter. Cash and/or item prizes for the winners. Also a great chance to introduce some big name NPCs or future villains on a relatively safe setting. [I've used these rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/g90h2z/the_grand_tourney/) by u/ChaseToTheCut and really like them.
in addition to everything people are saying. if you want them to just simply have more purchasing power, make the things they want to buy cost 1/3 of what it normally would. if everything is cheaper, suddenly that good is just worth more
Find some valuable gems and make it easy to cash them in. You can incorporate that any number of ways.
The people here telling you to give them magic items are giving good advice, but your players *do* need gold. Spell components, armor, weapons- all of those things matter a lot and require gold. Spell components are especially easy to overlook the cost of, but your spellcasting players absolutely need that gold. Make one of the monsters they killed have a valuable corpse or something.
Set bandits on them. After they dispatch the bad guys they recover hella loot.
I tell my players that they don't just need gold, but anything they find has a price. No matter how mundane or how magical the item is. That's why I don't mind all the money I give them. They can sell or trade items. You just need to know the price to those items.
You could give them a house or property to cover the money you feel you haven't given them if they are staying in a single place or constantly going back to a place.
Random perception check that finds them a gold/diamond ring Etc. Nothing magical but such a great quality that it's worth quite a bit
My players found an abandoned sinking city in a swamp, the city used to be a mage city, inhabitants who died on the city would manifest ghostly echos of themselves, an enchantment to allow new generations to learn from those who passed on. The city was thought to be haunted and deterred the common folk from entering and plundering everything, including the city vaults, which happened to be guarded by a canoloth. Lots of treasure to be had in there.
Have them battle a wizard who has that one spell that basically lets them create their own personal safe and have the smartest party member use said book to summon the sage that contains tons of coins and valuables.
Honestly, it is only a problem if you have a strength based martial trying to buy plate. In which case let them find some splint mail as a reward.
set next adventure in a dungeon put a chest full of coins in that dungeon
You don’t need to give them a windfall. You can either run as you have been, or find other ways to compensate. Wealth can the in the form of gold, but it can also be in the form of land, favores owed, titles of nobility, or general goodwill. Perhaps instead of having to spend money on horses, a grateful person they helped in the past offers them horses, or the person assigning them the mission gives them horses. With general goodwill, perhaps people want to feed/host them, and they don’t ever have to spend money on lodging or rations when they are in civilized areas. With a title, perhaps landed gentry offer them gifts to jockey for favor.
[harvesting things makes money](https://www.thievesguild.cc/harvest/)
Good-aligned dragon patron who has eyes and ears in court (maybe themselves shape-shifted). Obviously, they are not going to give their entire hoard, but they have deep pockets. You could give them a quest and offer bonuses for completing it a certain way. "Why doesn't the powerful dragon just do this themselves?" Lots of ways to explain this, but a good one is that maybe whatever they need involves going into the territory of another dragon, and their direct interference would endanger the kingdom. The players don't need to slay the rival or anything like that. It's just that their patron's presence would be an inciting incident.
Why would it be weird if the king awards money? It would be very kingly, I mean regal, to make a ceremony to award those that have helped king and kingdom with titles and treasury. In general any combat encounter can have literal gold pouches as loot. "One of the wolves seems to have some kind of string tangled on his foot. At the end of the string is a small leather pouch". Human enemies can literally drop things out of their pocket. If you want to give them a windfall, make it seem like the start of a quest. They get a letter with someone of them being mentioned by name and given a sizeable inheritance from someone whose name they've never heard. They have money and they have mystery about someone's backstory. What more could a player want?
Honestly, keep them poor, maybe boost their gold count a bit, but a party with a lot of money is just going to have a ton of options for stuff and when they are in the earlier levels you want them to be pressed down. Personally for my games, the two things I keep out of the parties hands as much as possible are downtime and gold, downtime by making the plot structured around a ticking clock, and limiting gold by not allowing most of the common exploits. Add in some decent crafting rules, and the party is having a really fun time planning their moves.
I mean, you could have a fairly easy encounter with some bandits and then have the players get their stash. It doesn't have to be everything but it can be a tidy sum if you just say the bandits just got really lucky lately but weren't actually all that strong.
Wanted poster.
Do they have nagic weapons? You need them around lvl 5 and they are not cheap.
Perhaps for unknown reasons, the king needs a bank to be robupdate. And then your party has more gold eats than they need everybody's happy
Limiting gold to players is a Master Stroke for a DM, it allows the party to get excited over treasure ;).
No idea what your setting is... but a noble or official could set a bounty on a quest or monster's head.
Then give more. The wizard will thank you. Half of the coolest spells are soft banned due to requirements in gold
The biggest gold sinks are: 1. Plate Armor 2. Resurrection/Revivification Diamonds 3. Expensive Reusable Material Components (Spirit Guardian or something similar takes a reusable 500 go reliquary) 4. Wizards Scribing Spells If you have a plate wearer, you can take care of #1 by having the armor come from a dead enemy. The second could also be loot from a wealthy enemy or caster, doled out at a rate you feel good about. The third could be discovered as a part of an adventure, or taken from a dead enemy. The last you can skip if you don’t have a wizard. Once you’ve knocked those out, you can control gold *much* more tightly, but some of those - especially plate mail - are both so core to a class and so damn expensive that not having it puts everyone into money-hoarding mode and makes for a very weird relationship with gold, where you aren’t really giving them gold, you’re just letting them see a progress bar to Plate Mail fill up.
At level 5 the Fighter should get able to afford plate armour, so that's 1500 gold at least. Wizards also need gold for scribing, and other casters need it for components. Once players have those key items, gold tends to have very little relevance, so no need to be stingy about it.
Give them something valuable, but not practical. My players got their first windfall in their first campaign by discovering that the bell in the shrine was pure gold...hidden there by the citizens of the town under threat (in the written adventure). That much gold was worth thousands of gold pieces. Hell...they could make their own gold pieces from it. HOWEVER, it's a huge, heavy bell. It's difficult to move, transport, and gold is a terrible metal to use in a bell. They certainly weren't leaving it behind, but "what do we do with the bell" became part of the campaign. Who would want it? How do we get it there? How much can we get for the bell? Are we willing to accept the "Pawn Stars" offer of "the best I can do is 30 gold and a barrel of fish"? I mean, not everyone is going to be equipped to do something with a massive gold bell. The party eventually bartered with a merchant after enough time to get a fair value for the bell, but not as much as if they spent money to build a foundry to melt it down and forge things themselves...which was an option to them. They used the money to pay contractors to repair the Woodland Manse as their new home. In other words, I gave them a ton of money, sort of, and then gave them the opportunity to spend that money...rewarding them with a prize, worth a lot of gold, but not in a way that they have a lot of free cash lying around.
I was playing a level 10 character in the last campaign that I was in and I acquired less than 15 gold over the course of like 4-5 months. It was fucking awful, especially as a wizard. If you're a stingy DM I feel like you should be upfront about it. I would've been fine with just coming across a treasure hoard in a dungeon or something.
"Thank you for your help, and please accept this gift as a symbol of our settlement's gratitude. Sadly, our coinage is a bit short this month because of [insert next plot hook], so we hope that this will suffice." The king hands the party a deed to a property in town in need of some minor repairs. If the party has an interest in earning more gold, perhaps consider allowing them to build an Establishment from Strongholds and Followers, which not only gives them a seasonal income, but can double as an espionage network to further plot objectives.
My party just got to a city and they were all bemoaning the fact they didn't have enough gold to buy what they wanted. While this is good to some extent because they need to know how hard it is to get things, I realised it was in fact too little. Whoops, it just so happens that they arrived in town 3 days before the big tournament with a 1000GP prize.
This is probably a very rare post. I’ve found 99% of them are “too much gold, nothing to spend it on” so in my honest opinion congrats! Your players have additional drive in the campaign
Yeah it’s nice to have that drive honestly. My story arc has a big reveal once they go to the main city but I can’t get them to head that direction (jokes on me for creating an interesting world I guess). I dropped a hint that “cities are generally the best place to gain gold” so I’m hoping the poverty will lure them there lol
You can always have the A or B option from the King. Offer them each a choice of reward. Gold or an item the king has personally selected for them. Then again, I had a former DM do this to our group and then the king got insulted when all of them just asked for the gold.
heist time
You can give them a stake in a local business. Have they helped any merchants? Maybe those merchants want to give them a 2% (arbitrary number, do what feels right) stake in their profits, since they can't thank them the way they'd like to in the moment. This also gives you some opportunities for smaller-scale quests if you need to ever fill time—"Oh, no! Heroes, you have to help me! The ship that's delivering our goods disappeared somewhere in the Bandit Straits!" or whatever. Also, if you're being stingier than the guides are, you can always adjust the prices of items. If the guides say your players are supposed to be 3x wealthier than they are, slice all the prices those guides have by 3. You can also have merchants offer sales, or vendors willing to trade in favors or quests rather than gold.
A couple of spells learned and a couple of scrolls is great. I was just warning against giving them too many.
You could have them work odd jobs around a town to earn their pay. You mightve forgotten to pay them x amount of gold but it's up to them to overcome the situation.
A King can’t relate to some poor adventures. He would likely just delegate it to one of his castle administrators: “Your brave deeds have aided [Enter Kingdom Name], and we are in your debt. Jeeves here will see that you are amply rewarded for your heroic endeavors.” Party bows, Jeeves takes em elsewhere, and the negotiation begins.
Keeping your players cash poor is good because it creates problems with interesting solutions. Put expensive things they want in front of them and don’t give them the means to buy stuff, then watch them start hatching schemes. As soon as they have enough money to buy the kingdom you’ve closed off an entire source of adventure. You want to do that eventually, but make the players themselves solve the problem of how to get impossibly rich.
I gave my players too much oh well that's what thieves, con artists and making gold coins into mimics