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With regards to your idea that mass combat / large battle gaming / RP doesn't "feel" like D&D to you.... Back in 4th edition I had a group that ended up doing quite a bit of mass combat RP as a buildup, breakout, and resolution of a long war was a central backdrop to the story and the PCs found themselves participating in several battles through all three tiers of play when not delving or exploring. The combat system for 4th (which I still love) made for a really easy homebrew conversion to mass combat. Each character represents on the map and in the stats the character plus his or her troops instead of just the character. Each enemy consists of a certain number of that enemy instead of just the single one. Combat is virtually identical to just running a normal encounter as far as dice rolling and all of that. In our system, for "small", "medium", and "large" battles, the forces would have these numbers: Minion becomes: 4 troops // 12 troops // 24 troops Standard / PC becomes: 16 troops // 48 troops // 96 troops Elite becomes: 32 troops // 96 troops // 192 troops Solo becomes: 80 troops // 240 troops // 480 troops These numbers and the fighting between them can represent the full size of each army but it will usually represent the fighting on just one wing of a larger battle involving larger forces than the encounter combat shows. In those cases where the action on the battle map only represents part of the overall battle, the players will participate in a skill challenge between each round. Each skill challenge determines the influence the PC's leadership, tactics, and intangibles has on the rest of the battle as it progresses. With just a little effort I had the system set up for complex post-battle results including control of local territory / resources as well as casualty rates for each side and how long (if at all) either army has to wait before it is again capable of going on the offensive. For instance, one of the mid tier battles had the PC's side lose control of a fortified town despite an excellent encounter combat showing and fairly good skill challenge showing from the PC's, yet their casualty rate results were significantly lower, morale was still high, and their resupply & reinforcement situation was better so in a very short time (and a couple of sessions of the PC's leading infiltration and sabotage efforts and recruiting civilian allies to help undermine the enemy's defenses and intel) the PC's army went back on the attack and decisively routed the now fairly raggedy enemy who in the first battle was clearly the superior force.
We did the business thing 3-4 times over the last 20 years. *Definitely not a thing I'd recommend for every campaign,* and most of them were in Star Wars and not D&D, *and it's better when it's kept simple, like more event-based than actuarial stuff, but it is fun.* Heck, one time, one of my friend who was the De Facto leader of our group created a company and designed a droid for us to use. All within' the normal rules, but the droid ended up a super-efficient healer at a banger of a price (tiny droid with hover movement restricted and quadruped movement restricted jam-packed with medpacks it'd use with a mad bonus and droid medic talents). The design was so cool and well-thought it went viral. We fought groups of NPCs (soldiers, criminals...) that had one. We had a rival team of players, and THEY got one. And, of course, now every one of my campaigns in that universe that take place after that (and it was in the K.O.T.O.R. era). The droid was dubbed Med-Kito, as it buzzed around but had to stop all locomotion to sting you with a medpack, and the company producing it was dubbed Kito-Corp. It went on producing more models, specialized in other skills like Mechanical repairs, slicing (SW's word for Hacking)... and even a protocol version... but none of them caught on. And it was never stated publicly, but I lowkey had that company fail due to the expenses and logistics of bringing out those other products that did not appeal to the market. But during any era after the Dark Wars, you can find one of those beloved by their masters and kept in top shape.
Then again... that time it wasn't a reward... but as a reward, rebuilding the Thieve's Guild all the PCs were once part of, as part of their theme and taking control of that city's slum and other underworld was also friggin' awesome.
I personally like the idea of making characters into a medieval equivalent of a warrant officer. For those who don't have a military background, (at a very basic level) a warrant officer is someone who is commissioned by virtue of expertise. They typically do not have a command under them, but are extremely well respected; when a warrant officer (especially a CW-5) speaks, even generals shut up and listen. And if a warrant officer is ever laughing and then follows that up with "watch this," be very, very afraid.
I find it hilarious how Luke felt about Players managing a business because one of the wackiest campaigns I had was basically that. The players invented a an ale they called Shiver Me Timbers which was laced with a drug called Shiver (pathfinder drug) that made the drink very addicting. Basically kinda how Coca Cola used cocaine at one point. Anyways with this craft they were allowed to build up connections with various taverns as well as a crime syndicate that had a great interest in partnership. They became the hand of the syndicate proving their loyalty while factories were built to mass produce Shiver Me Timbers. One of the players ended up dating the boss's daughter and the campaign literally became business decisions to take out other crime groups as well as expand their reach and grow their empire.
There are businesses and then there are businesses. In the Malazan books there are these minor characters who run a transportation business. They have this well armoured coach, very tough outriders and some kind of gate magic; for enough money they will take you ANYWHERE. That one could be fun.
So... just like real life! "Congratulations, you crushed that assignment [at work]. We've promoted you. You now get to do your job *and* manage these 7 people's careers, do weekly 1-on-1s, submit performance reviews, handle timesheets.... What? Oh, no, there's no additional pay. You get the prestige of a better title though!"
@@frederickcoen7862 Ah! I wish! *Congratulations, you crushed that assignment [at work]. Now middle management feel threatened by you and will lowkey make your life hell and plot to put you into a bad light so that they can keep their comfy jobs they don't actually deserve.* There's a reason the Dilbert comic strip is over 20 y.o. and still kicking.
Actually my players become overly attached to little stuff with meaning that i give them as treasures, a simple hand axe +1 flavored as family heirloom, made of ancient animals bones, that the lumberjack's son gave you after killing the beast that took his father's life, can be carried by a player up to lvl 20 just for the sentimental value that it has
ngl I use armies in my games. My setting is a low magic setting where the players are super important because they have access to magic or are skilled enough to be on par with magic users! So combats become the players vs the enemy leaders while the army takes on their army. It’s fun background and adds to flavoring the combat with more than just the immediate chopping of heads and slashing or torsos. I find it fun and exciting :)
My players after rescuing the Queen of a kingdom, after she was Usurped were made Queens knights. Now they are resposible for keeping a large area of the realm (wilds) protected, ensure the taxes reach the kingdom once a year. I see many adventures springing from this.
@@MonkeyJedi99 We have very different experiences playing the game. I've never really cared that much about the 'story', nor have I known anyone that really did. Earning responsibility as a quest reward would be something 8/10 of my PCs would reject on the spot. "You want to make me part of your Queen's knights? cool, what does that mean? Oh... I have to run errands for you? Huh... you want to give me quests and tasks that I'd have done anyway for rewards, the difference is now I just get a steady paycheck instead of the lump sum like normal? But now I'm tied to your service and can't just go off an do what I want like I used to? Yeah, why the hell would I agree to this again?"
@@MJ-jd7rs Folks tend to congregate in circles with similar-minded folk. My gaming circle includes around a dozen other people (not all at the same table, holy crap that would be insane) and all but one of them is 100% all in for story. One game I have right now goes multiple sessions in a row without combat because the story is the more important bit from there. That said, yes, the idea of being tied to a location or individual instead of having freedom to roam the world doesn't appeal to many folks.
I was at an Larp event once. It was primarily for elves. I participated with a human character. I felt like an union in a fruit salad. The elves took themselves very seriously. Then the first GM of the event annonced in character that there is a festival ongoing were all dishes are served with bacon. Seriously. All the dishes. Oh you should have seen the faces of all the elves :,D .. I had my dessert with bacon that nigth ..
Why would elves have a problem with bacon? I don't get the version of elves that imagines them as vegetarian. In The Hobbit, the first evidence of what elves eat was Bilbo & Co. in Mirkwood seeing a bunch of elves sitting in a clearing feasting on venison.
That's kind of par for the course. Luke suddenly became a pro X-wing pilot overnight; surviving long term veteran pilots who flew next to him. All he did in his life as showcased by the movie was whine about moisture farming and get shot by a tennis ball shaped droid, lol. The sequels by contrast imply that Rey was scavenging and junk diving since she was abandoned as a kid. That at least implies a level of self-sufficiency that Luke never got. Sequels were hardly perfect, but let's not pretend like Rey was the only one guilty of suddenly becoming something overnight, lol.
@@kylegreene1356 the problem with Rey is that most of her abilities aren't explained and unlike Luke suffers no serious setbacks at all. Luke lost his foster parents, witnessed his mentor killed sacrificing himself for them, learned the truth about his dad losing a hand in the process. Had to via comics and books learn to wield the force by himself and only succeeded because his father stepped in to save him. Rey on the other hand through unbelievably bad writing is both the Emperor's granddaughter but takes the name of legacy hero as her own?! This is why Disney Star Wars is failing Favreau should have given Rodriguez the same leeway he got with the Mandalorian!
I've done most of these things and the players seem to enjoy them. I have given out real estate, knighthoods, ships, business contracts, information, rare spell components, fast travel (teleportation circle network access), divine boons etc. I have stopped giving out magic items almost all together. if the group gets a magic item it usually has some significance to a story line, otherwise I encourage the group to make their own magic items in their downtime assuming they acquire the proper ingredients. I still give out money though, because I want them to invest it in real estate like building castles, forts, temples, (brothels?), etc.
One of our best treasures was a bearer document granting us ownership of an ancient castle and the surrounding lands. We traded it for the deed to a closer small peninsula with the agreement that we would restore a lighthouse on the land. And we still have to figure out how to pay annual taxes on the land...
I love your reward systems! Problem is as a DM there is no way I have the time to flesh out the systems which employ those things. I'm 100% in favor of providing players keys to more tools instead of the tools themselves that way they're not juggling 50 magic weapons and instead the ability to orchestrate the resources around them into aiding them in their next quest.
I'm experimenting with rewarding my players with objects that are high enough quality to be used in the construction of a magic item. For instance, they recently killed a troll that was using a massive ankheg mandible. They collected it as a trophy but were interested in seeing its value. A local artisan offered each player a small amount of money and a well-made trinket. The trinket could be sold for extra gold or can be used as part of the recipe for a magic item (kind of a call back to masterwork quality items in 3.5). It helps reduce the amount of disposable income at hand (unless they straight up sell it) and gives the player something to work toward. Also slightly reduces the time investment in the magic item creation.
The opening argument is that monsters having a horde of gold for the players to find is boring. While there is an air of truth to that, player characters have to pay for food and lodging in towns, they need to upkeep and/or buy new equipment, leveling up requires training time and gold cost, and learning new spells requires a gold cost. Players will always be slave to the grind when it comes to acquiring funds. Now, you wanna make that even harder. This has been my MIKEtalk, because my name isn't TED. Shank you.
But the point isn't to stop giving them gold but to also give them boons when the time is right. If you save the family of the innkeeper, they can let you stay for free. If you save the archpriest's nephew, maybe they'll cast a high level spell for free. Why would you want 500GP if the local church monopolizes the diamonds for Revivify or something?
Let alone half of the stuff listed is the things you do with your gold It's like people dont' realize that building your own fortress is A and option and B expensive as all hell.
Our party is currently hunting a dragon that does not, to our knowledge, have a hoard. We are hunting it to save farmers' lives, because that's where our food comes from. And the parts of the dragon (scales, teeth, claws, blood, etc.) ARE going to be our treasure, which we will have to PAY to have made into items like armor, potions, weapons, and other things. And because of encounters we have already been through on the way to that dragon, we are looking at buying four horses that were loaned to us but are now dead. - This is going to be an expensive victory if/when we win.
@@MonkeyJedi99 This is a case where public recognition should probably happen. While it wouldn't help the financial burden, becoming folk heroes where the farmers around are like "Those are the guys who killed the dragon that ate our sheep, our cows and our kids." makes a lot of sense and can alleviate some of the trouble (and bring quite some joy).
@@willmena96 - The concept wasn't completely lost on me. I am old enough to actually remember a time in history when a person could travel and be a hired hand for little more than room and board. The Bill Bixby version of the Incredible Hulk was a wonder example of that. I am gonna hope that the person whom you saved was also related to the town jeweler, so you can procure some pearls for Identify!?!
1. Make sure your players would actually want this stuff. I know at least 5 people who would roll their eyes at the thought of their PC getting a medal. And there's truly nothing worse than a disappointing reward. 2. Make sure there's some actual tangible benefit to the reward. "Oh yeah, I have a castle that I have to dump money into for upkeep that we immediately left to go to the other side of the world following the quest chain and haven't been to in 45 sessions... great. Thanks DM... love that." In short, other than boons/blessings and trainings for languages/skills/feats, all of these have the exact same issue as gold. Without something to obtain with it that your players actually want it has no value and is not a motivating factor. You are, quite literally, simply putting an extra step between the player's feat (defeating the dragon) and the reward (9/10 a magical item to help kill things better).
My rogue is accumulating wealth to rebuild a lighthouse on a peninsula he secured the deed for. Once the lighthouse is rebuilt (the country's condition for me getting the land), he will 'hire' 3-5 faming families onto the land to pay taxes so that my character does not have to pay the taxes himself.
Makes me wonder why it is all problem needs fixing. D&D crunch loops go: explore, kill, loot, level, repeat (or some equivalent quest line of seek, handle, profit, grow, repeat). Everything else is fluff and it's okay for players and characters to want it. The game isn't only the loop and the loop is a fundamental part of the game, I sometimes ask myself what people should expect or if they should play something else
@@hugofontes5708 The loop doesn't need fixing. Kill sht to gain resources so you can kill sht better. That is the fundamental game loop of DND. A character that sleeps outside in the woods and a character that sleeps in a king's bed both have the same benefit: a long rest. There's no tangible reward for the nicer night's sleep. You can RP as much as you want about how "comfortable" your character wants their life, but it's all just narrative flavor. An adventurer is a highly skilled/trained/chosen by destiny mortal with powers/abilities/training far in excess of what the average person could ever hope to get that goes out and risks their lives for coin and power. Their primary, number one, focus will and should always be to gain/purchase items and equipment that helps keep them alive. To me the issues come from either: Magical item dumps during a quest. Your players should never find an armful of magical items at once (unless it's like a dragon's horde or something). Having a single magical item at the end of the quest chain is perfectly acceptable. OR even something along the lines of, "Adventurers, please rescue my daughter. If you can bring her back alive I'll give you this (+1) longbow that's been in my family for generations." Now the quest reward is known before the adventure even begins. Allowing every single item to be purchased with gold. You've given your players 25,000 gp in the dragon's horde and tell them they can buy anything they can afford, OF COURSE 4 of them are going to purchase cloaks of displacement. DMs do your homework, they're magical stores not magical warehouses. Look through and figure out what items YOU want available for purchases and at what quantity. I also highly suggest you follow guides such as the "sane magical item prices." Failure to understand/follow the adventuring day. What's that, your BBEG is 4 CR higher than the party and yet they curb stomped him into the ground? And he was the only thing they faced that day? Du'h. DND is a RESOURCE MANAGEMENT GAME. 6-8 encounters over a single day, not 1-2. It is not designed or balanced for the party to face a single powerful monster, ESPECIALLY not at high levels. If your party can dump all their resources into a single fight they're going to own it and punch well above their weight class. Honestly, I blame module design and milestone leveling for these issues. The most popular way of playing is modules, and the 'easiest' design of a module is milestone leveling (saves money). But in designing them that way, they've all but ignored the adventuring day and they 100% did not design the encounters correctly. They're designed for the story, the story is the focus over anything else. Hence why players can gain a level for doing something as stupid as breaking a mirror. But therein lies the issue, since the modules are designed for the story, they're in no way 'balanced' for the players. They're not designed to test the PCs over the course of an adventuring day, they're not designed to drain your player's resources, and they're NOT designed to actually challenge the players in life-death fights. They're there for the story.
@@MJ-jd7rs all you said rings true, and I know about it, my question is all about why people keep trying to fix it instead of embracing the loop or trying other games. D&D surely can have narrative and stuff but right now the game engine only cares about numbers
@@hugofontes5708 Partly due to the success of shows like critical role. It made it popular and brought in a ton of people who want the game played 'that way'. But 'that way' is designed to tell a story, to tell "how do the heroes win?" But that's not the fundamental question of an adventuring group, it's not "How do the heroes win?" it's "Do the heroes win?" In addition "that way" puts combat as the lowest of the three pillars of DnD. It HEAVILY EMPHASIZES the social tier, the 'talky-talky' bits over all others. There are people who would literally rage quit at even the thought of 6-8 encounters between every long rest. "Combat is boring, why are we doing so many fights?!?" So DMs are trying to adapt, to squeeze 6-8 encounters into 1-2 encounters under the illusion that "If I make them more challenging it's the same thing." It's like cooking a turkey, 400 degrees for 8 hours. Changing it to 800 degrees for 4 hours is not the same thing. The game isn't balanced for things like that. It's not designed for things like that, and it breaks when you try. People play dnd because it's the most popular system, but they want to change it to be something it's not because they don't enjoy the 'dungeon crawl' nature of the game. And then, of course, they inevitably cry when things aren't balanced or it's too hard or too easy. Stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If you want a challenging adventure and the system to work as designed, then you have to treat is as a resource management game with multiple encounters spread out across a single day. If you want to adjust it to be something 'more fun' than accept that it's either going to be too hard or too easy REGARDLESS how many magical items you gave out.
One thing that I love about the nights of evening star campaign on TH-cam is that the dm made it easy to make players excited about stuff that won’t help them in combat. Sure they didn’t get a magic item, but they got something so much better: a new forge, stone walls for there town, and even an elixir that makes tressym big enough to ride!!! Who needs a +1 plate armor when you can make tressym big?
My party was once granted an IOU for “anything within reason” from a Dwarven king and it was one of my favorite rewards I ever received, but we argued so much over what to use it on that I don’t think we ever used it.
4:30 I remember back in like 7th or 8th grade (late 80s, I'm old), without knowing ANY of the history of D&D, I had this BRILLIANT concept of taking all the playable classes and making so rather than just running one character at a time, you could use PC abilities in actual wargames. Like wizards could dig trenches, druids could animate trees, rogues could make assassination attempts on enemy commanders, etc. It was of course something NO ONE had ever done before right? Right? /facepalm
I love this, helps me a lot. I rewarded my players with the "haunted" mansion that they visited on our first session and they loved it. It was their reward for saving a contact and for being the heroes of the region. Ps. It wasn't haunted, just had a lunatic magician held up there.
As a Wizard main, there's nothing I hate more than a DM that's stingy with the gold drops. I don't get access to my full spell list like other casters, so it becomes crucial at higher levels to be able to buy and transcribe spells in addition to any magic items I may want. If I know its going to be a low gold or item campaign, I'd rather bring a druid, since they get full spell list access and aren't especially gear dependent.
I feel like two current dms I play with did a good job of giving out some gold, but more importantly unlocking features as we branch out and expand the town more and explore
But....if I don't give the players gold, they can't travel for quests, ingredients, favors from powers and magic items. If they don't have these fantastic thing's, how is it an epic fantasy?
Love the idea of using things other than money and loot to reward and incentivize players. My question - don't adding "businesses" just end up feeding into the gold problem? I suppose you can re-invest the gold you earn from your business into building the business....so it can...make...more....gold? 🤣
In my experience, it's often the opposite. It makes finding gold less important, save for a few extremely expensive things. Spellcasters don't have to find gold to get their components and other trivial expenses are handled through the business disbursing gold to the players. So, they find non-gold rewards to be even more desirable.
@@goliathcleric So you invest money into the business to save yourself from having to invest money into the components and other expenses? It all just comes back to money. In fact for this to be 'worth it', it has to save more money than it costs in the long run, it has to serve as a cheaper way to do all these things. So the gold problem becomes worse because instead of paying full price for their scrolls/components/transportation they're not getting those things for free or at a discount.
Yes.....if you don't enjoy the flavour and roleplay portions of it, or the plot hooks that come from it, which is what businesses are really for. They aren't really *for* money, theyre for everything else.
Instead of treating the business as a way of earning money, you can treat it as a way of exerting influence. Sure, you get a bit of gold out of it, but the real reward is that it makes you an honorary Master of the Clothier's Guild (with a voice in their meetings and a vote on guild policy), or is one of the biggest employers in town (with appropriate power over its employees), or has bartenders who hear absolutely everything (including lots of adventure hooks, and no small amount of blackmail), or snags you a royal monopoly on certain medicines (go ahead, figure out how you can exploit that).
I need gold to, train, buy armor, weapons and potions. I need, advance my training and bribe the npc's. I have had DM's that refuse to give much gold. I find that like working all day at a job and not getting paid for a hard days work. Its great if you want to embellish the storyline with trinkets as long as it doesn't stop me from getting the gold. For instance, instead of donating on patron I will give you the virtual bronze cross of freedom, while its a prestigious metal that is rare and special I am sure you would rather have had some nice hard cash.
I really enjoy adding to the rumors around the adventuring party/ party members. It can be a boon or a detriment to all the different factions in the world and adds to the moral dilemma that observers brings
As Pathfinder player (dnd 3.5 if you want) hearing that gold and magical items are boring is strange. I mean how it can be. Magical items is the most awesome think, and getting it feels like you getting lvl up. How they can break game? And gold. You can do literally everything what you want.
My last game had my players make an entire national capital, it took 3 years but by the end they had a castle with a courtyard, 3 major forts a township with people lake farmers and smiths, and a network of alliances. The town basically just gave out quests. Local bandits are easy enough to hold off but we can not depend on knights to kill the bandit lord guy. Players... go do that. Also instead of killing the Gnolls they gave them food and made them an entire new race.
Should note that giving money is still a thing that needs to happen, I'm in a group that hasn't given a single coin of gold as loot/reward. And I just feel like a beggar.
My Shadowrun players did a series of runs with zero monetary reward whatsoever. They basically hired themselves out pro bono to a gangland strip club owner in return for a controlling stake in the club. they're in the process of turning it into their home base and a new runner bar in its own right.
Limited uses for gold? I think people are just limited by their creativity, and or the campaign. My players bought a ship with full crew. They don't sail on it very often, but they send a message through the sending stone to tell t he crew where they can go to meet them. As for magic items. If you look at the random tables in the DMG you'll quickly notice the "standard things" people often give out are actually pretty rare. Scrolls and portions make up most of it, and other "utility" items. Which honestly is more fun to give out, and get. Players will forget they have them, but it's more intreaguing than "Leather Armor +1"
I find those rewards kind of meh. Some even add more book keeping for no practical benefit in adventuring. If you have a problem with too many magic items skewing balance, why not just hand out limited use magic items that have limited charges or potions with magical effects. With the amount of magic items in the game there is plenty of variety to be had by giving them limited uses but a wide variety of rewards. The player would have to find the best time to use a particular item and be creative with the items they do get instead of using the same favorite magic item over and over again. As for gold, the solution is to have these limited use magic items and potions for sale but always have a random assortment so there is always something different to consider every time. With a store you can then give more value to nobility and reputation because now you have access to goods that are not available to the common folk.
One of our favorite shops in our current game is an herbalist who we sell odd monster bodies to in exchange for an account from which to buy her changing and random assortment of potions and weapon oils.
@@Tristan_Shuler That reminds me of a couple sessions ago when we figured out that due to a drop in record keeping we had lost a minor magic item. We scoured all of our notes and character sheets, but nobody had it recorded. So we just agreed that it had been pickpocketed off of one of us during a walk through the city some unknown time ago, and adjusted our planning to not rely on that item.
@@MonkeyJedi99 yea. I had players with scrolls upon scrolls. I handed them out because they are single use and require a check to even cast. I’ll summarize an example, Me: you come upon a fairly large lake at the bottom of a cascading waterfall. There appears to be something shining from the depths. Players: can we dive down? Me: Always, but you don’t know how deep it is or what’s in there do you? Players: Skips the lake. Me: *looks at their DDB sheets and realizes they still have a scroll or water breathing.* Me: *sighs*
Thanks for this! My players get pretty salty about me not giving them gold and magic items, since I focus more on story development and quest completion, so this gives me ways to reward them or even additional side quests, that don't involve gold and magic items.
1-2. Item cost reduction, just give them money. 3-7. Has a money cost, just give them money. 8. Is provided by their BACKGROUND. Are you not implementing their background traits and features? 9. If you do a big thing people hear about it. If the DM makes it not a big thing that people heard about it.. is the party self promoting at all? Did they just go do something epic without telling anyone? 10. Finally to something that *can* (but usually doesn't) exceed money's power. 11. Is essentially giving them money in a round about way. "Here, have a stipend." 12-14. Has a money cost, just give them money. 15. Giving 12-14 without the money cost, which is just giving them money. 16. 12-15 + additional responsibilities. Unless they are in it for the court intrigue most players would reject this unless they are retiring the character... Which, they just became nobility, not a bad time. "Guess the adventuring days are over since I *have to stay in one place for the most part*."
Come on, that's horrible, what kind of player doesn't know what to do with gold? Castles, outposts, mercenaries, positions, espionage, bribe, mounts, boats, ships, FLYING SHIPS. Seems like DMs are not "empowering" their players to do stuff with their rewards. A rank instead of a magic weapon? Seriously?
My DMs don't give gold and magic items. One of them for 16 years gave us only two lousy magic items, +1 longswors and +1 bracelets. Sword broke and bracelets were taken by a dragon, with an arm... But they require the players to face threats that REQUIRE magic items, they even claim that magic is NOT magical, so if a monster is resistant to everything below +1 it will be resistant to magic because magic has no "+". I think thetre are way too much "don't be good and fair and don't let players have fun" DM advice out there... :)
Party, on 12% health, still cursed, poisoned, and exhausted from the fight, bleeding out on the Commander's freshly-washed carpets after having just finally killed the lich that threatened the fort: "We have slain the creature and brought you its heart to prove it. And one of its eyeballs, for some reason - no, wait, the sorceress wants that for alchemy. Well you have its heart, anyway. Gruthek died during the encounter, but Cel'ayra managed to revive him. Now, about our reward, and maybe a 500g replacement diamond for our near-death revivification, and also rooms and baths..." Commander: "Yes! :) Here - your reward is this! Medals to wear to showcase your devotion to our kingdom! :) If you show this to our blacksmith, he might offer you 100g off your next +1 magic weapon purchase!" Party: "... Medals." Commander: "Yes! They are very shiny. :) And free stay in our soldiering barracks for the night! And now all the peasants will know to ask for you to handle their missing persons cases! They'll probably pay you many silvers!!! :) Heroes!!!!" This is a great idea... if you want the party to decide to kill the people who hired them and raid their coffers for a reward that is actually appropriate. To be clear, I am a fan of nonconventional rewards, but most of this list would just piss off most PCs I've encountered, let alone their players. If you're doing stuff like this to completely avoid handing out magic items and/or coin, you're going to have some very annoyed players yelling at you that your boss encounters are too hard because they aren't outfitted with magic items, potions, spell scrolls, armor, weapons, etc that most adventurers would have when facing off against that CR/class of monster. Especially if you don't give people magic weapons. Your melee combatants are going to be SO frustrated when they start fighting creatures resistant to nonmagical damage, and when your casters can't afford critical spellcasting components, especially ones used up by the spell's cast. As usual, it comes down to knowing your players and their characters. Some things that might work are things like training, titles/deeds that come with actual rewards instead of just responsibility and gold sinks (keeps are very expensive to maintain but can offer safe places to rest, train, research, set up arcane workshops/alchemy labs/etc, store important NPCs they want to keep safe, etc). Training things that a PC might otherwise never have access to could be great, especially if you offer nonconventional things that make the PCs more capable or powerful. Not just new weapon profs, languages, feats, etc, but perhaps things like a non-level-dip-required ability that touches on another class ability (maybe a fighter wants to train with a master rogue to pick up a sneak attack dice for a tiny bit of extra damage without going rogue dip, or your level 19 wizard who has been devout to a deity all their life and since level 0 would like a limited-use or restricted Divine Intervention, whatever). Some other ideas could be Opportunities that aren't strictly responsibilities or aren't quests. Deeds to mines to rake in some smaller-sum but continual revenue. Investment opportunities in their favorite merchants to ensure their shops are always well-stocked with potions and spell scrolls and magic components, especially with items that are higher in rarity and cost that the merchant might not otherwise be able to purchase, potentially held onto just for the party to potentially buy - or perhaps to even expand their shops into franchises in the major cities the PCs frequent. Political influence can be great, but your PCs need to want to have a game with politics in it to really benefit from such a boon.
My main contention with the system is it forgets a lot of spell casters need gold to buy materials, or copy spells. Or let's not forget all those freebies your just throwing around can mostly be bought by gold, then there is living costs and so many roleplay stuff. And yes you should be able to use your military whether that's for errands, and or for taking out other armies and or dungeon mooks you can just have the party focus on the heavy hitters, hero units or act as force multipliers. Heck pathfinder has good systems baked in already for army combat.
Heh, "guard rank"... My drow wild mage is an Investigator in the Waterdeep City Watch - Civilar rank - and can *technically* order a lot of the regular watch around. There's no way in the Nine Hells he can order any guards with him to, say, travel to Chult to help repel a Thayvian invasion fleet, but he can easily order the nearest groups of watchmen to evacuate the nearby market square because some magical mayhem is about to be attempted inflicted on the city... So yeah, office hath its privileges, but only up to a point.
Ummm...adventurers make a living by looting gold. In a campaign about resource management, not rewarding gold is basically letting you characters starve to death. Yeah, we should stop awarding so much xp for killing monsters. Abstract experience rewards are still abstract. Maybe we should take advantage of downtime activities between sessions, and draining the characters limited gold resources.
For that matter, why is there so much gold floating around in D&D economies? Shouldn't prices in the equipment and lodging list be changed to silver pieces instead of gold?
these are great Luke. In many ways these ideas give a reason to give gold. Gotta have gold to pay the staff. Gotta have gold to pay the wages of that merchant ship. thanks Luke.
I made gold more uncommon. Odds are underlyings and most enemies will not have gold. Players will find copper and silver much more. I made there be a need to spend money as well. But the rewards in this video are definitely a must to add in any campaign.
A business management RPG sounds like a great training tool/team building exercise for people working together at an actual business but it's definitely not something I'd do in my free time.
Short version: 1-12 Renown 13. 1st level of Waterdeep Dragon Heist 14. Optional reward in Ghost of Saltmarsh 15-16 More renown But in seriousness, while I honestly believe all of these are good, I recommend considering what kind of players you have. There were games where I rewarded the players with all sort of intangible stuff, like recognition and renown-like perks, and while sometimes it worked really well, other times the players were visibly disappointed. Conversely, I ran more than 1 Waterdeep Dragon Heist and seen it few time in others games, where the players were seriously ready to give up on the main plot of the game in order just to manage the Tavern they got. Overall, I feel you just need to get a feel on your players and maybe instead of anything like +1 weapons or broken stuff, I recommend you look up common items that allow some creativity.
Another minimalist dm?.....oh what a shocker. Hey great job saving the kingdom! For you risking your lives most nobly we have prepared a suitable reward for you....merchants within the city will now provide you a discount on items. *(rapidly mumbled disclaimer)* - (non magic items only, discounts only apply after a successful persuasion check, discounts provided as a +2 bonus on persuasion checks, +2 bonus only applied when interacting with merchants within the limits of *insert kingdom*.) I mean really, the story of heroes from nobodies to world renowned heroes within a swords & sorcery style fantasy world without the acquisition of massive wealth or magic items (having been replaced with situational, cosmetic and mundane rewards) is just lack luster. All for what? Because the dm (only one of the players at the table) thinks that their desires for the advancement of the characters (other players characters I might add) is somehow more relevant or weighty than the actual players that created said characters? The game is about everyone having fun, not just the dm, the dm is supposed to act as an arbitrator, narrator and facilitator of the campaign....not stifle the epicness of the characters/campaign at every turn just to fulfill their own desires/vision. *(whiny dm voice)* ooh but magic items imbalance the game...So adjust the game accordingly, without making the acquisition of such magical items moot/ineffective, they are supposed to represent a character growing in power and facilitate that mechanically,(i.e. taking the benefit of a +1 weapon away by arbitrarily increasing all enemy AC by 1 is no different than not giving the item in the first place.) *(whiny dm voice)* my players just buy everything they need because they have so much gold from the quests they've done....So what, they earned that gold so let them spend it as they please. I don't mind if the rewards mentioned in the video are given in addition to the standard gold and magic items but, in my opinion, never should a dm subvert the advancement of the player's characters (real people who spend their unrecoverable time at your table) by replacing tangible, mechanical rewards with situational, aesthetic, non mechanical rewards. Example: you spent real life time leveling your fighter 1-10 then you braved a dragons Lair and were rewarded with the title captain of the guard in lieu of a dragon Horde and magic items. The previous guard captain was also a level 10 fighter but had never fought a dragon...indignant, he challenges you to a duel....now here is the player completely equal in mechanical terms to the previous guard captain, an npc that cannot even spend real life time on the game because he's a fictional character...roll for initiative...yeah pretty F'n lame for the player who created and invested in their character and the campaign. Minimalist dms are just lazy, uninspired and unadaptable and worst of all time wasters. This is, again, just my opinion, but it all comes from a long time dm (over 2 decades of dming experience) and veteran of oh so many many many minimalist campaigns (only other dm in our group is a minimalist) so think of it what you will, but I have seen many a player leave the group due to feeling unfulfilled with the development of thier characters in such minimalist campaigns.
I recently gave a reward to my players as a "favor" from from what amounts to a local thieves' guild. The most interesting part is going to be seeing how and what they use it for.
I think part of the trick is that material rewards have a more immediately identifiable value to them, which helps them more feel like a reward in a game. It can be hard to shake off the game element of a system like D&D. Rewards that may not have immediate uses may be a harder sell to the players who may not consider the implications, fear its usefulness may never come up again and therefore not have any usable value (like membership in a local organization that circumstances keep them from actually returning to), or just personally fear that they'll never cash in on the perks because by the time an opportunity arises they'll have forgotten they have them because they've gone 10-20 sessions without it ever being mentioned because it wasn't pertinent to the actions of the adventure they were on. They make perfect sense in terms of narrative and RP, being long-term benefits to the players, new avenues of solutions to problems that can't be solved by DPS, and open doors for new plot hooks and types of adventures, but if your mindset leans a touch more towards the game side of things with the RP adding flavor, it can be really hard to appreciate the actual value of most non-material rewards, especially if they weren't things the party was already working towards directly. Unlike gold and magic items which are numbers on a sheet to be referenced, a lot of other rewards are things both the player and the DM needs to remember or have taken notes on (and I've been in more than one group where we had to ask each other "does anyone remember X detail" and look around sheepishly because no one took notes and only vaguely remember something important from several sessions prior).
I think you're fighting a losing battle if your answer is for people to play the role playing game without regard to the 'game' aspect. Everyone enjoys playing their own way, as a Dm is really on you to recognize what player A considers a reward may be very different than what player B considers a reward and reward them appropriately. Honestly this is something I see a lot in 'professional DMs'. They Dm for so many different people and in different locations that they developed their system and expect all their players to adapt to it. But the reality for the vast majority of us is anything but. Never expect people to enjoy the 'game' the way you do, everyone has their own unique tastes and desires. In many ways it's a lot like being a supervisor. If you supervise 4 people at work, chances are they all have different wants and drives. you might have 2 that want extra money, 1 that wants extra time off, and 1 that wants recognition for promotion. If you give them all time off for a job well done you've really only 'rewarded' 1. Sure the other 3 may thank you, but that's not what they wanted or what motivates them.
Just fyi…as a DM…you normally just do these because the players deserve them. If you want to buy his lists, go for it. Didn’t know this was a sales pitch!
Gave my players a 'letter of commendation' for arresting a criminal. They were really pleased :) They will be even more pleased when they realise the letter has value in quests later on :) Stay Bacon Chested!
A letter of commendation would be good if it lets me get an audience with someone I ordinarily wouldn't be able to or if it helps me gain their trust/cooperation. It's basically giving out 'reputation' as a quest reward which can be really helpful when it comes to social interactions.
@@studentofsmith Exactly what the letter of commendation does - it allows the party to prove their worth and gain information later, and also gets them further reputation, usable similarly as the game moves forward. Eventually allowing a trusted audience with the regional Lord. :)
So I think the words you were looking for when talking about titles is "granting a peerage" which in something like a monarchy means the sovereign recognizes a feat granting a title. Sometimes they're hereditary peerage's which are hereditary titles passed on to your children, or they're non-hereditary (like life peerage's) which do not pass down to your children. Some are peerage that might be passed on to your children but if the family fails to do anything of note or of achievement within a few generations they get stripped of their rank or even of their peerage all together. Also, these are some great ideas! They really help the creative juices flow for rewards
I just implemented a custom fief system I made into my new group. At 6th level I gave one of my players Lordship over a destroyed Fort. Not only will this be a good gold dump, it also opens the way to get help rebuilding or expanding it as quest rewards. On top of that, they got a cleric of Bahamian as a follower who has the knowledge to craft magic items for them. (In my setting the players have to actually get materials for their magic items and craft them or have them crafted, which adds extra rewards as an option for quests.)
Thank you for making these tutorial videos. I've been playing D&D sing the early 2000s, but I've been out of the loop for awhile. It's really nice to use these as refreshers on things to do and things not to do.
Amazing video - people need to see this! Giving out a wide variety of different rewards adds a lot of fun and believability. Honestly - what is more likely in real life? A) You help out a friend or a relative with packing and moving, and they give you 200 dollars and some 9mm ammo. B) You help them out, they give you some food, beer, and a favor ("I owe you one!")
Impact on the world. You cleared the broken tower of monsters ? That tower becomes a military fort, and eventually a town , city , metropolis. Of course this also has a flipside . Maybe that military stronghold turns against the king .... new quest accepted! In a recent adventure , my players accepted a side quest to steal a book from a prestigious library. The consequences were that they ( including an influential allied NPC ) were permanently banned from the library. However the common knowledge about the library was that no one had ever successfully stolen from the library. Did they become famous ? No the library denied the theft occurred and said they banned the players for rowdy behaviour. The story is still that the library has never been stolen from. So what's the point? The players now have a suspicion that the library isn't as secure as they've been told. That maybe others have successfully robbed the library too. I plan on using this " secret knowledge" as an important reward.
Luke - "Don't give players gold there is nothing they can do with it, instead give them these 14 things that are just gold with extra steps that make doing the actual adventuring and monster fighting slower." No Thanks I'll just take my +1 Sword 'kay thanks.
kill monsters get gold.... I honestly wish that's how my DM's games worked... I'm level 4 and I only just awhile ago reached 125 gold from doing coliseum.
Thanks this came just in time I am working on an Adventure for 2 of my best friends this will help make it a lot more interesting then just gold for rewards
Incidentallly, a lot of the kind of social rewards Mr. DM Lair mentions are solidly built into the rules if you're playing GURPS. In the GURPS point system, wealth, status, reputation, organizational membership, military rank, legal enforcement powers, patrons, contacts and other perks are all things that can be acquired with earned character points, or started with if you pay for them during character creation. So often if the characters do something that is going to be well known, I'll say to the players "OK, you have the opportunity to buy a positive Reputation" . . . in extreme cases I might give it to them for free. A lot of people end up with wealth and status and reputations and things. One big example is, one of my players has a giant minotaur, total combat monster, but also minotaurs are often seen as, well, dangerous monsters. But, he has a reputation, so when the townsfolk see him they don't say "Run! Get the guards! It's gonna eat us!" they say "Oh look, it's Clarence Orcslayer! He was a hero in the orc wars! Guess he's OK even if he's 9' tall and has horns." Makes the character a lot more playable.
A couple of other examples. For wizards, there is membership in wizards' guilds, which goes with access to the guild's LIBRARIES. Or, the reward could just be access to a library . . . anything from just the library of some little local group of wizards and scholars, to some huge ancient deeply magical library with a worldwide reputation and mystique. There are rewards tuned to rogues, too--you could get a safe house, in which to hide when the heat gets bad. Or, as a result of some city shenanigan with organized crime, you could get a piece of turf, perhaps along with leadership of the gang or other criminal group that controls it, and get a cut of the proceeds from gambling, illicit goods sales, protection, illegal magical services, fencing stolen goods or whatever in that district. Along with possible turf wars . . .
Leaving a comment for the algorythm down below. I've been finding this video very helpful (I've actually been struggling with this for some time) THERE IS NO FOOD THAT BACON DOESN'T MAKE BETTER
My favorite game,baldur's gate (PS4} had none of this and it is beloved by millions. Elder scrolls started introducing these extra "side quests" for players that were interested in that kind of game. But to play a tabletop d&d game that's focused on all.of this tedious drivel?? I don't think so. I don't want to sit around and listen to other players talking about their make-believe real estate deals . I'm thinking, When do we get to the Monster killing and magic items!!?? Um, that's kind of what I'm here for. Thumbs down . Title should change to "How to make D&D even more tedious and Boring"
Bacon makes the world better, agreed. (Take *that*, you Algorithm!) But also - Thanks for these ideas, Luke. I've had many of these ideas already, but it's always useful to have them all together and noted as their own topic, instead of "oh yeah, I used that idea once... awhile ago... I think..." Recently in my campaign, for example, the party slew a "mutant wolf" for a little *peaceful* goblin village they came across in the wilderness. In exchange they received a couple potions and some herbal remedies; more importantly, they received a safe place to hole up for awhile to recover from lingering damage and exhaustion from past battles *and* two characters were able to gain some specialized training in support of their new level-up powers: one PC multiclassing into druid got training from the village shaman, while the other got a chance to learn some rituals for his new warlock Book of Ancient Secrets invocation before the NPC hobgoblin wizard departed (his Story arc was complete). "#6 - Training", check! EDIT: I should have given kudos to *my* DM, too. In his campaign, after LMoP, we did a favor "up north" for the Lords' Alliance. Instead of getting "paid", we were made the Lords of Phandelver. We were already rebuilding the manor and investing in the businesses (and the mine!)... now we were also responsible for its safety, and that of the surrounding lands. But it also accomplished one my my character's Goals (become a noble, at any cost!). [In fact, my character also accomplished another "goal", ending up marrying one of the locals, and Retired at level 9 to run the town and provide support - Sending and Teleport - for the party while managing the lands.]
I love books. My girlfriend's Druid is more of a gish than an explorer, so I allowed her to find a book titled "Dungeons & Dragons: An Adventurer's Guide to the Wilderness" that gives the reader proficiency/expertise in Survival and Nature. You must spend a total of one month (30 short rests, limit 1/day) studying the book to gain this benefit. You can do this for certain skills, languages, tools, etc. It's an easy way to allow low-level characters to spice up their skill set without gaining major benefits during combat.
You just effectively described OSR domain play. Every point is handled admirably in many OSR systems. When hirelings go on adventures, the player only gets a fraction of the loot. But the player is managing a dozen or more functioning characters. Introduce yer 5e viewers to domain play. It solves all the problems with 5e high level play.
Isn't Number 1 kind of stepping on the toes of existing Backgrounds and their unique Background Features? I know that being able to find shelter with your organization or like-minded organizations is a Background Feature of at least two Backgrounds (I wanna say it's for Knight of the Order and Harborfolk).
As for them having the Gaurd fight all the monsters in the dungeons for them? Well I wouldn't tell the players "No" on that one it would be more "Yes, but if they do that there will be nobody guarding the town unless the players take over for them while they're gone." The adventure then goes from dungeon crawling(The former Guards are now working as adventurers and gaining all that XP the players would if they were doing the dungeon crawling) to the party filling in for the guards they sent off to clear out the dungeon and dealing with the daily BS the guards normally deal with.... (Tracking down robbers, settling petty disputes between townsfolk, breaking up bar fights, and generally making sure nobody important gets murdered by assassins.) Of course if they decide to go off and leave the town totally unguarded? Well those guards they sent away are going to be either dying or getting stronger, and if those now stronger guards come back to find that their home town got burnt down because the people filling in for them left it unprotected.... Well now we have a group of angry NPCs with some adventurer levels under their belt.... In fact if the players make a habit of destroying any town that is foolish enough to entrust them with that kind of responsibility well they might just end up with a bounty on their heads for "Dereliction of duty" TLDR; With great power comes great responsibility. Command of the guard is a responsibility.
Some of my players own the trading firm of Kellogue, Brun et Racine, who deal in arms and luxury goods, running caravans and ships across the continent. The older, semiretired characters have in fact hired the new generation characters to go find out what's been disappearing caravans in the Great Desert and do something about it.
I dont belive Im gonna say it, but that video doesn't helped. Luke you're the best, but literally every single item on this video can be buy it, except the ones that my players will simply forget or prefer GP and Magic Itens. I already use the tables in DMG for purchasing things like castles and business, but man my fellas just drop it so hard and never looked back that I give up about it. They don't care, me too. The show goes on
Yeah a DM made that first mistake. Most of the NPCs were lvl 15 to lvl 20 - most of them the DM's special NPCs created as character sheets as just as complex. They brought people back to life when the cleric of the group could not - for reasons that still escape me - despite being alchemist, they had them build an android - in a world where this is rare) - and kill stealed from the players with homebrewed knock-out rules on the spot, with a character that went around constantly stating how they're better. So... My character just wants to get enough gold to get them to do what he needs to do while he sits back - which is, to be honest, on point with the character. Because after nearly dying, having three of his friends die within less than two weeks, and discovering these people are more powerful than he is, he's just done.
I have learned that if you do give out magic items its better to give out ones that you created with weird targets. Like a stick that you beat someone to health with. In combat its not that useful it only does 1 HP per round. But it can do it forever. Extra useful when you just finished one battle until you get to the other room. But takes time and sometimes you don't have time. Also adds your own flavor. And honestly one of my joke magic items is kind of canon now. Chicken missle. When you can make the missile look like anything, what was the 5th edition form, chicken. Ergo what I made 20 years ago as a joke became somewhat canon. I had a good laugh.
I've come to realize business and land management in a DnD game is very much a matter of taste...and one I have long since acquired. Had a pretty fun campaign of a dwarf merchant family that ran a prosperous business and had all kinds of hijinks come through the door. It's lower-stakes than a lot of DnD games, but for my group? It was just what we wanted to relax with.
I'm watching this as a now first-time DM and I'm trying to avoid giving out more magic items to my players like candy on Halloween 😂 Hopefully I can remember these for use later! Thank you.
I decided to put a business in for the characters, realized halfway through I was doing my version of acquisitions Incorporated. Started a smith business for them, the adventures were going on networking mission, where they slay dragons and gain access to new materials. I will see how this will go.
but monks tho. Ring of the Ram, Winged Boots, Necklace of Fireballs, Belt of Giant Strength, Bracers of Armor. pretty standard kit and that's 5 already
I remember how our fighter was once adopted into noble Barefoot family. If only his name wasnt something like "Harlotchaser"... Every npc was like -iv heard he is this Barefoot Harlotchaser
Someone may have already pointed this out to you, but just in case noone noticed so far: The name plates you show on screen at 7:45 are not simple commemoration plates. Those plates arecalled "stumbling blocks" and they are installed all over Germany (and other countries in Europe) at places where people lived who have been murdered during the Nazi regime, showing their name, birth and death date and the place (e.g. the name of the concentration camp) they have been murdered. Not so sure if you want to call that a "reward", actually.
i like giving out ancient currency that is no longer legal tender but seen as collector's items like Confederacy Money, the players then have to find a place to sell them. Also one time i ran a modified version of Against te Cult of the Reptile God, after defeating the BBEG the town rewarded the players with an old temple in town that they could use as a home base and were named "Protectors of the town" and as they leveled up and gained fame more people moved to the town to work for the players. they had a Blacksmith, Alchemist, Cook, Guards, Tailor, Servants, ect. the town also grew from a small village of a few hundred to a town of a couple thousand due the amount of money the players flooded into the economy
I typically shortened the amount of gold being starting out/received at higher levels, as well as handle the usage of Electrum and Platinum (often for magic swag). At my games, I go by the principle “You get what you negotiate for” and the few times where PCs get a LARGE amount of coin thrown in their lap, it can be kind of a big deal. I also do stuff like put coinage into trade items (gold/silver bars, etc.). So for example, if Players want things like Plate mail, they have to ask for it to be made and often, since I decreased the coin rewards but NOT the prices as per RAW (and that’s before any personalized penalties like inflation or seller biases), it may often involve favors prior or after getting the Plate. As for the magic items, that Electrum and platinum for magic swag? That also allows for customization of magic items when visiting people like wizards or artificers (or for PCs to get a hold of such materials if they are said classes), in addition to other fun stuff like Mystical Items/Weapons, which is it’s own story in and of itself.
In our campaign world, players need to learn and practice spells before they can use them in combat. Also, the mages guild has strict control over which spells can and cannot be learned. After doing a favour for the thieves' guild, they gained access to a black market dealer. Also, the country they were in at the time, necromancy is banned. So, this gave a reward of spells they wouldn't have been able to get.
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Luke, which tier on Patreon would get us the Rewards and Recognition system?
Please start bookmarking your videos. You already structure your videos with #1/2/3 etc. Just *let us find the parts we want*
With regards to your idea that mass combat / large battle gaming / RP doesn't "feel" like D&D to you....
Back in 4th edition I had a group that ended up doing quite a bit of mass combat RP as a buildup, breakout, and resolution of a long war was a central backdrop to the story and the PCs found themselves participating in several battles through all three tiers of play when not delving or exploring. The combat system for 4th (which I still love) made for a really easy homebrew conversion to mass combat. Each character represents on the map and in the stats the character plus his or her troops instead of just the character. Each enemy consists of a certain number of that enemy instead of just the single one. Combat is virtually identical to just running a normal encounter as far as dice rolling and all of that. In our system, for "small", "medium", and "large" battles, the forces would have these numbers:
Minion becomes: 4 troops // 12 troops // 24 troops
Standard / PC becomes: 16 troops // 48 troops // 96 troops
Elite becomes: 32 troops // 96 troops // 192 troops
Solo becomes: 80 troops // 240 troops // 480 troops
These numbers and the fighting between them can represent the full size of each army but it will usually represent the fighting on just one wing of a larger battle involving larger forces than the encounter combat shows. In those cases where the action on the battle map only represents part of the overall battle, the players will participate in a skill challenge between each round. Each skill challenge determines the influence the PC's leadership, tactics, and intangibles has on the rest of the battle as it progresses. With just a little effort I had the system set up for complex post-battle results including control of local territory / resources as well as casualty rates for each side and how long (if at all) either army has to wait before it is again capable of going on the offensive. For instance, one of the mid tier battles had the PC's side lose control of a fortified town despite an excellent encounter combat showing and fairly good skill challenge showing from the PC's, yet their casualty rate results were significantly lower, morale was still high, and their resupply & reinforcement situation was better so in a very short time (and a couple of sessions of the PC's leading infiltration and sabotage efforts and recruiting civilian allies to help undermine the enemy's defenses and intel) the PC's army went back on the attack and decisively routed the now fairly raggedy enemy who in the first battle was clearly the superior force.
We did the business thing 3-4 times over the last 20 years. *Definitely not a thing I'd recommend for every campaign,* and most of them were in Star Wars and not D&D, *and it's better when it's kept simple, like more event-based than actuarial stuff, but it is fun.* Heck, one time, one of my friend who was the De Facto leader of our group created a company and designed a droid for us to use. All within' the normal rules, but the droid ended up a super-efficient healer at a banger of a price (tiny droid with hover movement restricted and quadruped movement restricted jam-packed with medpacks it'd use with a mad bonus and droid medic talents).
The design was so cool and well-thought it went viral. We fought groups of NPCs (soldiers, criminals...) that had one. We had a rival team of players, and THEY got one. And, of course, now every one of my campaigns in that universe that take place after that (and it was in the K.O.T.O.R. era). The droid was dubbed Med-Kito, as it buzzed around but had to stop all locomotion to sting you with a medpack, and the company producing it was dubbed Kito-Corp.
It went on producing more models, specialized in other skills like Mechanical repairs, slicing (SW's word for Hacking)... and even a protocol version... but none of them caught on. And it was never stated publicly, but I lowkey had that company fail due to the expenses and logistics of bringing out those other products that did not appeal to the market. But during any era after the Dark Wars, you can find one of those beloved by their masters and kept in top shape.
Then again... that time it wasn't a reward... but as a reward, rebuilding the Thieve's Guild all the PCs were once part of, as part of their theme and taking control of that city's slum and other underworld was also friggin' awesome.
Stop giving your players gold and magical items but give them discounts at shops so they can spend that Gold that they didn't receive got it.
I personally like the idea of making characters into a medieval equivalent of a warrant officer. For those who don't have a military background, (at a very basic level) a warrant officer is someone who is commissioned by virtue of expertise. They typically do not have a command under them, but are extremely well respected; when a warrant officer (especially a CW-5) speaks, even generals shut up and listen. And if a warrant officer is ever laughing and then follows that up with "watch this," be very, very afraid.
What if your players don't want to play military roles?
Pah! CWO5 is a mythical creature!
@@odgreen9113 I saw one once! Nobody knew what he did and nobody was willing to ask the questions to find out.
@@theophrastusbombastus1359
“I _personally like_ …”
@@Jessie_Helms He asked a question regarding what to do if the players don't want that. He didn't demean the OP.
I find it hilarious how Luke felt about Players managing a business because one of the wackiest campaigns I had was basically that. The players invented a an ale they called Shiver Me Timbers which was laced with a drug called Shiver (pathfinder drug) that made the drink very addicting. Basically kinda how Coca Cola used cocaine at one point. Anyways with this craft they were allowed to build up connections with various taverns as well as a crime syndicate that had a great interest in partnership. They became the hand of the syndicate proving their loyalty while factories were built to mass produce Shiver Me Timbers. One of the players ended up dating the boss's daughter and the campaign literally became business decisions to take out other crime groups as well as expand their reach and grow their empire.
There are businesses and then there are businesses. In the Malazan books there are these minor characters who run a transportation business. They have this well armoured coach, very tough outriders and some kind of gate magic; for enough money they will take you ANYWHERE. That one could be fun.
12:00 "Congratulations, you conquered the monster and saved the land. Your reward is responsibility."
So... just like real life! "Congratulations, you crushed that assignment [at work]. We've promoted you. You now get to do your job *and* manage these 7 people's careers, do weekly 1-on-1s, submit performance reviews, handle timesheets.... What? Oh, no, there's no additional pay. You get the prestige of a better title though!"
@@frederickcoen7862 Ah! I wish! *Congratulations, you crushed that assignment [at work]. Now middle management feel threatened by you and will lowkey make your life hell and plot to put you into a bad light so that they can keep their comfy jobs they don't actually deserve.*
There's a reason the Dilbert comic strip is over 20 y.o. and still kicking.
Actually my players become overly attached to little stuff with meaning that i give them as treasures, a simple hand axe +1 flavored as family heirloom, made of ancient animals bones, that the lumberjack's son gave you after killing the beast that took his father's life, can be carried by a player up to lvl 20 just for the sentimental value that it has
Like Bodger Blodger’s grandfather’s hammer?
@@IvanBarsch YES *sheds a tear*
“This is my grandfather’s hammer, and it’s rightfully mine!”
ngl I use armies in my games. My setting is a low magic setting where the players are super important because they have access to magic or are skilled enough to be on par with magic users! So combats become the players vs the enemy leaders while the army takes on their army. It’s fun background and adds to flavoring the combat with more than just the immediate chopping of heads and slashing or torsos. I find it fun and exciting :)
My players after rescuing the Queen of a kingdom, after she was Usurped were made Queens knights. Now they are resposible for keeping a large area of the realm (wilds) protected, ensure the taxes reach the kingdom once a year. I see many adventures springing from this.
So their reward is fetch quests and monster hunts? Things they’d have done anyway for gold/rewards?
@@MJ-jd7rs If put into story form they probably love it!
@@MonkeyJedi99 We have very different experiences playing the game. I've never really cared that much about the 'story', nor have I known anyone that really did.
Earning responsibility as a quest reward would be something 8/10 of my PCs would reject on the spot. "You want to make me part of your Queen's knights? cool, what does that mean? Oh... I have to run errands for you? Huh... you want to give me quests and tasks that I'd have done anyway for rewards, the difference is now I just get a steady paycheck instead of the lump sum like normal? But now I'm tied to your service and can't just go off an do what I want like I used to? Yeah, why the hell would I agree to this again?"
@@MJ-jd7rs Different strokes for different folks, true.
@@MJ-jd7rs Folks tend to congregate in circles with similar-minded folk. My gaming circle includes around a dozen other people (not all at the same table, holy crap that would be insane) and all but one of them is 100% all in for story. One game I have right now goes multiple sessions in a row without combat because the story is the more important bit from there.
That said, yes, the idea of being tied to a location or individual instead of having freedom to roam the world doesn't appeal to many folks.
I was at an Larp event once. It was primarily for elves. I participated with a human character. I felt like an union in a fruit salad. The elves took themselves very seriously. Then the first GM of the event annonced in character that there is a festival ongoing were all dishes are served with bacon. Seriously. All the dishes. Oh you should have seen the faces of all the elves :,D
.. I had my dessert with bacon that nigth ..
Ah fat larp lards scarfing pork. Diabeetus.
Why would elves have a problem with bacon? I don't get the version of elves that imagines them as vegetarian. In The Hobbit, the first evidence of what elves eat was Bilbo & Co. in Mirkwood seeing a bunch of elves sitting in a clearing feasting on venison.
"Nobody learns to do something proficiently overnight."
(Rey 'Skywalker' has entered the chat 🤪)
That's kind of par for the course. Luke suddenly became a pro X-wing pilot overnight; surviving long term veteran pilots who flew next to him. All he did in his life as showcased by the movie was whine about moisture farming and get shot by a tennis ball shaped droid, lol.
The sequels by contrast imply that Rey was scavenging and junk diving since she was abandoned as a kid. That at least implies a level of self-sufficiency that Luke never got.
Sequels were hardly perfect, but let's not pretend like Rey was the only one guilty of suddenly becoming something overnight, lol.
"Does only for ten minutes count?" Asks the Knowledge domain Cleric of the Moon Goddess.
Lamest, most boring, pandering character ever, enters the asshole of a movie removing any potential for a properly thought out plot.
@@kylegreene1356 the problem with Rey is that most of her abilities aren't explained and unlike Luke suffers no serious setbacks at all.
Luke lost his foster parents, witnessed his mentor killed sacrificing himself for them, learned the truth about his dad losing a hand in the process.
Had to via comics and books learn to wield the force by himself and only succeeded because his father stepped in to save him.
Rey on the other hand through unbelievably bad writing is both the Emperor's granddaughter but takes the name of legacy hero as her own?!
This is why Disney Star Wars is failing Favreau should have given Rodriguez the same leeway he got with the Mandalorian!
I've done most of these things and the players seem to enjoy them. I have given out real estate, knighthoods, ships, business contracts, information, rare spell components, fast travel (teleportation circle network access), divine boons etc. I have stopped giving out magic items almost all together. if the group gets a magic item it usually has some significance to a story line, otherwise I encourage the group to make their own magic items in their downtime assuming they acquire the proper ingredients. I still give out money though, because I want them to invest it in real estate like building castles, forts, temples, (brothels?), etc.
One of our best treasures was a bearer document granting us ownership of an ancient castle and the surrounding lands.
We traded it for the deed to a closer small peninsula with the agreement that we would restore a lighthouse on the land.
And we still have to figure out how to pay annual taxes on the land...
check out OSR domain play systems.
Boring
@@rbrooks1305 oh, your DM lets you drill holes and mine for precious stones and oil? that sounds cool too.
Magic Items mostly only unbalance the game for an unprepared or lack of experience DM.
I love your reward systems!
Problem is as a DM there is no way I have the time to flesh out the systems which employ those things. I'm 100% in favor of providing players keys to more tools instead of the tools themselves that way they're not juggling 50 magic weapons and instead the ability to orchestrate the resources around them into aiding them in their next quest.
I'm experimenting with rewarding my players with objects that are high enough quality to be used in the construction of a magic item. For instance, they recently killed a troll that was using a massive ankheg mandible. They collected it as a trophy but were interested in seeing its value. A local artisan offered each player a small amount of money and a well-made trinket. The trinket could be sold for extra gold or can be used as part of the recipe for a magic item (kind of a call back to masterwork quality items in 3.5). It helps reduce the amount of disposable income at hand (unless they straight up sell it) and gives the player something to work toward. Also slightly reduces the time investment in the magic item creation.
The opening argument is that monsters having a horde of gold for the players to find is boring. While there is an air of truth to that, player characters have to pay for food and lodging in towns, they need to upkeep and/or buy new equipment, leveling up requires training time and gold cost, and learning new spells requires a gold cost.
Players will always be slave to the grind when it comes to acquiring funds. Now, you wanna make that even harder. This has been my MIKEtalk, because my name isn't TED. Shank you.
But the point isn't to stop giving them gold but to also give them boons when the time is right. If you save the family of the innkeeper, they can let you stay for free. If you save the archpriest's nephew, maybe they'll cast a high level spell for free. Why would you want 500GP if the local church monopolizes the diamonds for Revivify or something?
Let alone half of the stuff listed is the things you do with your gold It's like people dont' realize that building your own fortress is A and option and B expensive as all hell.
Our party is currently hunting a dragon that does not, to our knowledge, have a hoard.
We are hunting it to save farmers' lives, because that's where our food comes from.
And the parts of the dragon (scales, teeth, claws, blood, etc.) ARE going to be our treasure, which we will have to PAY to have made into items like armor, potions, weapons, and other things.
And because of encounters we have already been through on the way to that dragon, we are looking at buying four horses that were loaned to us but are now dead.
-
This is going to be an expensive victory if/when we win.
@@MonkeyJedi99 This is a case where public recognition should probably happen. While it wouldn't help the financial burden, becoming folk heroes where the farmers around are like "Those are the guys who killed the dragon that ate our sheep, our cows and our kids." makes a lot of sense and can alleviate some of the trouble (and bring quite some joy).
@@willmena96 - The concept wasn't completely lost on me. I am old enough to actually remember a time in history when a person could travel and be a hired hand for little more than room and board. The Bill Bixby version of the Incredible Hulk was a wonder example of that. I am gonna hope that the person whom you saved was also related to the town jeweler, so you can procure some pearls for Identify!?!
1. Make sure your players would actually want this stuff. I know at least 5 people who would roll their eyes at the thought of their PC getting a medal. And there's truly nothing worse than a disappointing reward.
2. Make sure there's some actual tangible benefit to the reward. "Oh yeah, I have a castle that I have to dump money into for upkeep that we immediately left to go to the other side of the world following the quest chain and haven't been to in 45 sessions... great. Thanks DM... love that."
In short, other than boons/blessings and trainings for languages/skills/feats, all of these have the exact same issue as gold. Without something to obtain with it that your players actually want it has no value and is not a motivating factor. You are, quite literally, simply putting an extra step between the player's feat (defeating the dragon) and the reward (9/10 a magical item to help kill things better).
My rogue is accumulating wealth to rebuild a lighthouse on a peninsula he secured the deed for.
Once the lighthouse is rebuilt (the country's condition for me getting the land), he will 'hire' 3-5 faming families onto the land to pay taxes so that my character does not have to pay the taxes himself.
Makes me wonder why it is all problem needs fixing.
D&D crunch loops go: explore, kill, loot, level, repeat (or some equivalent quest line of seek, handle, profit, grow, repeat). Everything else is fluff and it's okay for players and characters to want it.
The game isn't only the loop and the loop is a fundamental part of the game, I sometimes ask myself what people should expect or if they should play something else
@@hugofontes5708 The loop doesn't need fixing.
Kill sht to gain resources so you can kill sht better.
That is the fundamental game loop of DND.
A character that sleeps outside in the woods and a character that sleeps in a king's bed both have the same benefit: a long rest. There's no tangible reward for the nicer night's sleep. You can RP as much as you want about how "comfortable" your character wants their life, but it's all just narrative flavor.
An adventurer is a highly skilled/trained/chosen by destiny mortal with powers/abilities/training far in excess of what the average person could ever hope to get that goes out and risks their lives for coin and power. Their primary, number one, focus will and should always be to gain/purchase items and equipment that helps keep them alive.
To me the issues come from either:
Magical item dumps during a quest. Your players should never find an armful of magical items at once (unless it's like a dragon's horde or something). Having a single magical item at the end of the quest chain is perfectly acceptable. OR even something along the lines of, "Adventurers, please rescue my daughter. If you can bring her back alive I'll give you this (+1) longbow that's been in my family for generations." Now the quest reward is known before the adventure even begins.
Allowing every single item to be purchased with gold. You've given your players 25,000 gp in the dragon's horde and tell them they can buy anything they can afford, OF COURSE 4 of them are going to purchase cloaks of displacement. DMs do your homework, they're magical stores not magical warehouses. Look through and figure out what items YOU want available for purchases and at what quantity. I also highly suggest you follow guides such as the "sane magical item prices."
Failure to understand/follow the adventuring day. What's that, your BBEG is 4 CR higher than the party and yet they curb stomped him into the ground? And he was the only thing they faced that day? Du'h. DND is a RESOURCE MANAGEMENT GAME. 6-8 encounters over a single day, not 1-2. It is not designed or balanced for the party to face a single powerful monster, ESPECIALLY not at high levels. If your party can dump all their resources into a single fight they're going to own it and punch well above their weight class.
Honestly, I blame module design and milestone leveling for these issues. The most popular way of playing is modules, and the 'easiest' design of a module is milestone leveling (saves money). But in designing them that way, they've all but ignored the adventuring day and they 100% did not design the encounters correctly. They're designed for the story, the story is the focus over anything else. Hence why players can gain a level for doing something as stupid as breaking a mirror.
But therein lies the issue, since the modules are designed for the story, they're in no way 'balanced' for the players. They're not designed to test the PCs over the course of an adventuring day, they're not designed to drain your player's resources, and they're NOT designed to actually challenge the players in life-death fights. They're there for the story.
@@MJ-jd7rs all you said rings true, and I know about it, my question is all about why people keep trying to fix it instead of embracing the loop or trying other games. D&D surely can have narrative and stuff but right now the game engine only cares about numbers
@@hugofontes5708 Partly due to the success of shows like critical role. It made it popular and brought in a ton of people who want the game played 'that way'. But 'that way' is designed to tell a story, to tell "how do the heroes win?" But that's not the fundamental question of an adventuring group, it's not "How do the heroes win?" it's "Do the heroes win?"
In addition "that way" puts combat as the lowest of the three pillars of DnD. It HEAVILY EMPHASIZES the social tier, the 'talky-talky' bits over all others. There are people who would literally rage quit at even the thought of 6-8 encounters between every long rest. "Combat is boring, why are we doing so many fights?!?"
So DMs are trying to adapt, to squeeze 6-8 encounters into 1-2 encounters under the illusion that "If I make them more challenging it's the same thing."
It's like cooking a turkey, 400 degrees for 8 hours. Changing it to 800 degrees for 4 hours is not the same thing. The game isn't balanced for things like that. It's not designed for things like that, and it breaks when you try.
People play dnd because it's the most popular system, but they want to change it to be something it's not because they don't enjoy the 'dungeon crawl' nature of the game. And then, of course, they inevitably cry when things aren't balanced or it's too hard or too easy.
Stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
If you want a challenging adventure and the system to work as designed, then you have to treat is as a resource management game with multiple encounters spread out across a single day. If you want to adjust it to be something 'more fun' than accept that it's either going to be too hard or too easy REGARDLESS how many magical items you gave out.
You’ve honestly made me become a better DM and I rewatch your videos and it seems like I’m always learning something new
One thing that I love about the nights of evening star campaign on TH-cam is that the dm made it easy to make players excited about stuff that won’t help them in combat. Sure they didn’t get a magic item, but they got something so much better: a new forge, stone walls for there town, and even an elixir that makes tressym big enough to ride!!! Who needs a +1 plate armor when you can make tressym big?
their
You’re right, I’m seeing dnd in a whole new light.
From now on, my players will only receive participation medals and I.O.U cards for their efforts
Wtf lol engagement troll
My party was once granted an IOU for “anything within reason” from a Dwarven king and it was one of my favorite rewards I ever received, but we argued so much over what to use it on that I don’t think we ever used it.
4:30 I remember back in like 7th or 8th grade (late 80s, I'm old), without knowing ANY of the history of D&D, I had this BRILLIANT concept of taking all the playable classes and making so rather than just running one character at a time, you could use PC abilities in actual wargames. Like wizards could dig trenches, druids could animate trees, rogues could make assassination attempts on enemy commanders, etc. It was of course something NO ONE had ever done before right? Right? /facepalm
I love this, helps me a lot. I rewarded my players with the "haunted" mansion that they visited on our first session and they loved it. It was their reward for saving a contact and for being the heroes of the region.
Ps. It wasn't haunted, just had a lunatic magician held up there.
Thumbnail: Stop giving out gold and magic items!
Me: I'm actually genuinely peeved by this.
As a Wizard main, there's nothing I hate more than a DM that's stingy with the gold drops. I don't get access to my full spell list like other casters, so it becomes crucial at higher levels to be able to buy and transcribe spells in addition to any magic items I may want. If I know its going to be a low gold or item campaign, I'd rather bring a druid, since they get full spell list access and aren't especially gear dependent.
I feel like two current dms I play with did a good job of giving out some gold, but more importantly unlocking features as we branch out and expand the town more and explore
I gave my players an invitation to a dinner with the town mayor as a reward for a competition. It's really just a plot hook to a side quest.
But....if I don't give the players gold, they can't travel for quests, ingredients, favors from powers and magic items.
If they don't have these fantastic thing's, how is it an epic fantasy?
Love the idea of using things other than money and loot to reward and incentivize players.
My question - don't adding "businesses" just end up feeding into the gold problem? I suppose you can re-invest the gold you earn from your business into building the business....so it can...make...more....gold? 🤣
In my experience, it's often the opposite. It makes finding gold less important, save for a few extremely expensive things. Spellcasters don't have to find gold to get their components and other trivial expenses are handled through the business disbursing gold to the players. So, they find non-gold rewards to be even more desirable.
@@goliathcleric So you invest money into the business to save yourself from having to invest money into the components and other expenses? It all just comes back to money.
In fact for this to be 'worth it', it has to save more money than it costs in the long run, it has to serve as a cheaper way to do all these things. So the gold problem becomes worse because instead of paying full price for their scrolls/components/transportation they're not getting those things for free or at a discount.
Yes.....if you don't enjoy the flavour and roleplay portions of it, or the plot hooks that come from it, which is what businesses are really for. They aren't really *for* money, theyre for everything else.
Instead of treating the business as a way of earning money, you can treat it as a way of exerting influence. Sure, you get a bit of gold out of it, but the real reward is that it makes you an honorary Master of the Clothier's Guild (with a voice in their meetings and a vote on guild policy), or is one of the biggest employers in town (with appropriate power over its employees), or has bartenders who hear absolutely everything (including lots of adventure hooks, and no small amount of blackmail), or snags you a royal monopoly on certain medicines (go ahead, figure out how you can exploit that).
I need gold to, train, buy armor, weapons and potions. I need, advance my training and bribe the npc's. I have had DM's that refuse to give much gold. I find that like working all day at a job and not getting paid for a hard days work. Its great if you want to embellish the storyline with trinkets as long as it doesn't stop me from getting the gold. For instance, instead of donating on patron I will give you the virtual bronze cross of freedom, while its a prestigious metal that is rare and special I am sure you would rather have had some nice hard cash.
I've played with DMs who didn't give much gold or magic items. It was frustrating and got boring
Maybe the loot was the friends we made along the way?
You know, because now I get discounts at stores and advantage on Persuasion rolls.
I really enjoy adding to the rumors around the adventuring party/ party members. It can be a boon or a detriment to all the different factions in the world and adds to the moral dilemma that observers brings
As Pathfinder player (dnd 3.5 if you want) hearing that gold and magical items are boring is strange. I mean how it can be. Magical items is the most awesome think, and getting it feels like you getting lvl up. How they can break game? And gold. You can do literally everything what you want.
vegan burgers are better with bacon
😂😂😂
cake, bacon does not make cake better!
My last game had my players make an entire national capital, it took 3 years but by the end they had a castle with a courtyard, 3 major forts a township with people lake farmers and smiths, and a network of alliances. The town basically just gave out quests. Local bandits are easy enough to hold off but we can not depend on knights to kill the bandit lord guy. Players... go do that. Also instead of killing the Gnolls they gave them food and made them an entire new race.
Should note that giving money is still a thing that needs to happen, I'm in a group that hasn't given a single coin of gold as loot/reward. And I just feel like a beggar.
My Shadowrun players did a series of runs with zero monetary reward whatsoever. They basically hired themselves out pro bono to a gangland strip club owner in return for a controlling stake in the club. they're in the process of turning it into their home base and a new runner bar in its own right.
My players loved being made honorary members of the dark lanterns (eberron) and get discounts on potions within Sharn.
Limited uses for gold?
I think people are just limited by their creativity, and or the campaign.
My players bought a ship with full crew. They don't sail on it very often, but they send a message through the sending stone to tell t he crew where they can go to meet them.
As for magic items. If you look at the random tables in the DMG you'll quickly notice the "standard things" people often give out are actually pretty rare. Scrolls and portions make up most of it, and other "utility" items.
Which honestly is more fun to give out, and get. Players will forget they have them, but it's more intreaguing than "Leather Armor +1"
I find those rewards kind of meh. Some even add more book keeping for no practical benefit in adventuring.
If you have a problem with too many magic items skewing balance, why not just hand out limited use magic items that have limited charges or potions with magical effects. With the amount of magic items in the game there is plenty of variety to be had by giving them limited uses but a wide variety of rewards. The player would have to find the best time to use a particular item and be creative with the items they do get instead of using the same favorite magic item over and over again.
As for gold, the solution is to have these limited use magic items and potions for sale but always have a random assortment so there is always something different to consider every time. With a store you can then give more value to nobility and reputation because now you have access to goods that are not available to the common folk.
One of our favorite shops in our current game is an herbalist who we sell odd monster bodies to in exchange for an account from which to buy her changing and random assortment of potions and weapon oils.
The players have to remember to use them in the first place!
@@Tristan_Shuler That reminds me of a couple sessions ago when we figured out that due to a drop in record keeping we had lost a minor magic item.
We scoured all of our notes and character sheets, but nobody had it recorded. So we just agreed that it had been pickpocketed off of one of us during a walk through the city some unknown time ago, and adjusted our planning to not rely on that item.
@@MonkeyJedi99 yea. I had players with scrolls upon scrolls. I handed them out because they are single use and require a check to even cast. I’ll summarize an example,
Me: you come upon a fairly large lake at the bottom of a cascading waterfall. There appears to be something shining from the depths.
Players: can we dive down?
Me: Always, but you don’t know how deep it is or what’s in there do you?
Players: Skips the lake.
Me: *looks at their DDB sheets and realizes they still have a scroll or water breathing.*
Me: *sighs*
Thanks for this! My players get pretty salty about me not giving them gold and magic items, since I focus more on story development and quest completion, so this gives me ways to reward them or even additional side quests, that don't involve gold and magic items.
1-2. Item cost reduction, just give them money.
3-7. Has a money cost, just give them money.
8. Is provided by their BACKGROUND. Are you not implementing their background traits and features?
9. If you do a big thing people hear about it. If the DM makes it not a big thing that people heard about it.. is the party self promoting at all? Did they just go do something epic without telling anyone?
10. Finally to something that *can* (but usually doesn't) exceed money's power.
11. Is essentially giving them money in a round about way. "Here, have a stipend."
12-14. Has a money cost, just give them money.
15. Giving 12-14 without the money cost, which is just giving them money.
16. 12-15 + additional responsibilities. Unless they are in it for the court intrigue most players would reject this unless they are retiring the character... Which, they just became nobility, not a bad time. "Guess the adventuring days are over since I *have to stay in one place for the most part*."
Come on, that's horrible, what kind of player doesn't know what to do with gold? Castles, outposts, mercenaries, positions, espionage, bribe, mounts, boats, ships, FLYING SHIPS.
Seems like DMs are not "empowering" their players to do stuff with their rewards.
A rank instead of a magic weapon? Seriously?
My DMs don't give gold and magic items. One of them for 16 years gave us only two lousy magic items, +1 longswors and +1 bracelets. Sword broke and bracelets were taken by a dragon, with an arm... But they require the players to face threats that REQUIRE magic items, they even claim that magic is NOT magical, so if a monster is resistant to everything below +1 it will be resistant to magic because magic has no "+". I think thetre are way too much "don't be good and fair and don't let players have fun" DM advice out there... :)
Party, on 12% health, still cursed, poisoned, and exhausted from the fight, bleeding out on the Commander's freshly-washed carpets after having just finally killed the lich that threatened the fort: "We have slain the creature and brought you its heart to prove it. And one of its eyeballs, for some reason - no, wait, the sorceress wants that for alchemy. Well you have its heart, anyway. Gruthek died during the encounter, but Cel'ayra managed to revive him. Now, about our reward, and maybe a 500g replacement diamond for our near-death revivification, and also rooms and baths..."
Commander: "Yes! :) Here - your reward is this! Medals to wear to showcase your devotion to our kingdom! :) If you show this to our blacksmith, he might offer you 100g off your next +1 magic weapon purchase!"
Party: "... Medals."
Commander: "Yes! They are very shiny. :) And free stay in our soldiering barracks for the night! And now all the peasants will know to ask for you to handle their missing persons cases! They'll probably pay you many silvers!!! :) Heroes!!!!"
This is a great idea... if you want the party to decide to kill the people who hired them and raid their coffers for a reward that is actually appropriate.
To be clear, I am a fan of nonconventional rewards, but most of this list would just piss off most PCs I've encountered, let alone their players. If you're doing stuff like this to completely avoid handing out magic items and/or coin, you're going to have some very annoyed players yelling at you that your boss encounters are too hard because they aren't outfitted with magic items, potions, spell scrolls, armor, weapons, etc that most adventurers would have when facing off against that CR/class of monster. Especially if you don't give people magic weapons. Your melee combatants are going to be SO frustrated when they start fighting creatures resistant to nonmagical damage, and when your casters can't afford critical spellcasting components, especially ones used up by the spell's cast.
As usual, it comes down to knowing your players and their characters.
Some things that might work are things like training, titles/deeds that come with actual rewards instead of just responsibility and gold sinks (keeps are very expensive to maintain but can offer safe places to rest, train, research, set up arcane workshops/alchemy labs/etc, store important NPCs they want to keep safe, etc). Training things that a PC might otherwise never have access to could be great, especially if you offer nonconventional things that make the PCs more capable or powerful. Not just new weapon profs, languages, feats, etc, but perhaps things like a non-level-dip-required ability that touches on another class ability (maybe a fighter wants to train with a master rogue to pick up a sneak attack dice for a tiny bit of extra damage without going rogue dip, or your level 19 wizard who has been devout to a deity all their life and since level 0 would like a limited-use or restricted Divine Intervention, whatever).
Some other ideas could be Opportunities that aren't strictly responsibilities or aren't quests. Deeds to mines to rake in some smaller-sum but continual revenue. Investment opportunities in their favorite merchants to ensure their shops are always well-stocked with potions and spell scrolls and magic components, especially with items that are higher in rarity and cost that the merchant might not otherwise be able to purchase, potentially held onto just for the party to potentially buy - or perhaps to even expand their shops into franchises in the major cities the PCs frequent. Political influence can be great, but your PCs need to want to have a game with politics in it to really benefit from such a boon.
My main contention with the system is it forgets a lot of spell casters need gold to buy materials, or copy spells. Or let's not forget all those freebies your just throwing around can mostly be bought by gold, then there is living costs and so many roleplay stuff. And yes you should be able to use your military whether that's for errands, and or for taking out other armies and or dungeon mooks you can just have the party focus on the heavy hitters, hero units or act as force multipliers. Heck pathfinder has good systems baked in already for army combat.
Heh, "guard rank"... My drow wild mage is an Investigator in the Waterdeep City Watch - Civilar rank - and can *technically* order a lot of the regular watch around. There's no way in the Nine Hells he can order any guards with him to, say, travel to Chult to help repel a Thayvian invasion fleet, but he can easily order the nearest groups of watchmen to evacuate the nearby market square because some magical mayhem is about to be attempted inflicted on the city...
So yeah, office hath its privileges, but only up to a point.
Ummm...adventurers make a living by looting gold. In a campaign about resource management, not rewarding gold is basically letting you characters starve to death.
Yeah, we should stop awarding so much xp for killing monsters. Abstract experience rewards are still abstract. Maybe we should take advantage of downtime activities between sessions, and draining the characters limited gold resources.
For that matter, why is there so much gold floating around in D&D economies? Shouldn't prices in the equipment and lodging list be changed to silver pieces instead of gold?
these are great Luke. In many ways these ideas give a reason to give gold. Gotta have gold to pay the staff. Gotta have gold to pay the wages of that merchant ship. thanks Luke.
It's clear this is for 5e.
In older versions Gold is XP AND becoming a Baron is one of the Class Features of a Fighter.
I made gold more uncommon. Odds are underlyings and most enemies will not have gold. Players will find copper and silver much more. I made there be a need to spend money as well.
But the rewards in this video are definitely a must to add in any campaign.
DM: Guards don’t do that-
Player: *rolls a 20*
DM:…
…
Gosh Darnit-
A business management RPG sounds like a great training tool/team building exercise for people working together at an actual business but it's definitely not something I'd do in my free time.
Reputation is key in a campaign.
Short version:
1-12 Renown
13. 1st level of Waterdeep Dragon Heist
14. Optional reward in Ghost of Saltmarsh
15-16 More renown
But in seriousness, while I honestly believe all of these are good, I recommend considering what kind of players you have. There were games where I rewarded the players with all sort of intangible stuff, like recognition and renown-like perks, and while sometimes it worked really well, other times the players were visibly disappointed.
Conversely, I ran more than 1 Waterdeep Dragon Heist and seen it few time in others games, where the players were seriously ready to give up on the main plot of the game in order just to manage the Tavern they got.
Overall, I feel you just need to get a feel on your players and maybe instead of anything like +1 weapons or broken stuff, I recommend you look up common items that allow some creativity.
Another minimalist dm?.....oh what a shocker. Hey great job saving the kingdom! For you risking your lives most nobly we have prepared a suitable reward for you....merchants within the city will now provide you a discount on items. *(rapidly mumbled disclaimer)* - (non magic items only, discounts only apply after a successful persuasion check, discounts provided as a +2 bonus on persuasion checks, +2 bonus only applied when interacting with merchants within the limits of *insert kingdom*.)
I mean really, the story of heroes from nobodies to world renowned heroes within a swords & sorcery style fantasy world without the acquisition of massive wealth or magic items (having been replaced with situational, cosmetic and mundane rewards) is just lack luster. All for what? Because the dm (only one of the players at the table) thinks that their desires for the advancement of the characters (other players characters I might add) is somehow more relevant or weighty than the actual players that created said characters? The game is about everyone having fun, not just the dm, the dm is supposed to act as an arbitrator, narrator and facilitator of the campaign....not stifle the epicness of the characters/campaign at every turn just to fulfill their own desires/vision.
*(whiny dm voice)* ooh but magic items imbalance the game...So adjust the game accordingly, without making the acquisition of such magical items moot/ineffective, they are supposed to represent a character growing in power and facilitate that mechanically,(i.e. taking the benefit of a +1 weapon away by arbitrarily increasing all enemy AC by 1 is no different than not giving the item in the first place.)
*(whiny dm voice)* my players just buy everything they need because they have so much gold from the quests they've done....So what, they earned that gold so let them spend it as they please.
I don't mind if the rewards mentioned in the video are given in addition to the standard gold and magic items but, in my opinion, never should a dm subvert the advancement of the player's characters (real people who spend their unrecoverable time at your table) by replacing tangible, mechanical rewards with situational, aesthetic, non mechanical rewards.
Example: you spent real life time leveling your fighter 1-10 then you braved a dragons Lair and were rewarded with the title captain of the guard in lieu of a dragon Horde and magic items. The previous guard captain was also a level 10 fighter but had never fought a dragon...indignant, he challenges you to a duel....now here is the player completely equal in mechanical terms to the previous guard captain, an npc that cannot even spend real life time on the game because he's a fictional character...roll for initiative...yeah pretty F'n lame for the player who created and invested in their character and the campaign.
Minimalist dms are just lazy, uninspired and unadaptable and worst of all time wasters. This is, again, just my opinion, but it all comes from a long time dm (over 2 decades of dming experience) and veteran of oh so many many many minimalist campaigns (only other dm in our group is a minimalist) so think of it what you will, but I have seen many a player leave the group due to feeling unfulfilled with the development of thier characters in such minimalist campaigns.
TL:DR
Give us the money.
Then let us buy the stuff we want
I recently gave a reward to my players as a "favor" from from what amounts to a local thieves' guild. The most interesting part is going to be seeing how and what they use it for.
I think part of the trick is that material rewards have a more immediately identifiable value to them, which helps them more feel like a reward in a game. It can be hard to shake off the game element of a system like D&D. Rewards that may not have immediate uses may be a harder sell to the players who may not consider the implications, fear its usefulness may never come up again and therefore not have any usable value (like membership in a local organization that circumstances keep them from actually returning to), or just personally fear that they'll never cash in on the perks because by the time an opportunity arises they'll have forgotten they have them because they've gone 10-20 sessions without it ever being mentioned because it wasn't pertinent to the actions of the adventure they were on. They make perfect sense in terms of narrative and RP, being long-term benefits to the players, new avenues of solutions to problems that can't be solved by DPS, and open doors for new plot hooks and types of adventures, but if your mindset leans a touch more towards the game side of things with the RP adding flavor, it can be really hard to appreciate the actual value of most non-material rewards, especially if they weren't things the party was already working towards directly. Unlike gold and magic items which are numbers on a sheet to be referenced, a lot of other rewards are things both the player and the DM needs to remember or have taken notes on (and I've been in more than one group where we had to ask each other "does anyone remember X detail" and look around sheepishly because no one took notes and only vaguely remember something important from several sessions prior).
I think you're fighting a losing battle if your answer is for people to play the role playing game without regard to the 'game' aspect.
Everyone enjoys playing their own way, as a Dm is really on you to recognize what player A considers a reward may be very different than what player B considers a reward and reward them appropriately.
Honestly this is something I see a lot in 'professional DMs'. They Dm for so many different people and in different locations that they developed their system and expect all their players to adapt to it. But the reality for the vast majority of us is anything but. Never expect people to enjoy the 'game' the way you do, everyone has their own unique tastes and desires.
In many ways it's a lot like being a supervisor. If you supervise 4 people at work, chances are they all have different wants and drives. you might have 2 that want extra money, 1 that wants extra time off, and 1 that wants recognition for promotion. If you give them all time off for a job well done you've really only 'rewarded' 1. Sure the other 3 may thank you, but that's not what they wanted or what motivates them.
Just fyi…as a DM…you normally just do these because the players deserve them. If you want to buy his lists, go for it. Didn’t know this was a sales pitch!
All his videos are a sales pitch.
DM Lair, brought to you by the pork farmers' association. 😄
Thank you for the advice this is something I have been struggling as a DM personally.
DM: you can't use people to fight for you.
PLAYER: Ok.
Player: proceeds to set up peasant Canon.
Canon, as in "in game history"?
or Cannon, as in "Boom! Yeeeeaaaughhh!!!"?
I grant property too
Plus gold and magic
Hmmm... Why was bacon not one of the rewards itself??
Yeah, why….??
+5 Plot Armor in 5e is the most legendary magic item.
Gave my players a 'letter of commendation' for arresting a criminal. They were really pleased :) They will be even more pleased when they realise the letter has value in quests later on :) Stay Bacon Chested!
A letter of commendation would be good if it lets me get an audience with someone I ordinarily wouldn't be able to or if it helps me gain their trust/cooperation. It's basically giving out 'reputation' as a quest reward which can be really helpful when it comes to social interactions.
@@studentofsmith Exactly what the letter of commendation does - it allows the party to prove their worth and gain information later, and also gets them further reputation, usable similarly as the game moves forward. Eventually allowing a trusted audience with the regional Lord. :)
So I think the words you were looking for when talking about titles is "granting a peerage" which in
something like a monarchy means the sovereign recognizes a feat granting a title. Sometimes they're hereditary peerage's which are hereditary titles passed on to your children, or they're non-hereditary (like life peerage's) which do not pass down to your children. Some are peerage that might be passed on to your children but if the family fails to do anything of note or of achievement within a few generations they get stripped of their rank or even of their peerage all together. Also, these are some great ideas! They really help the creative juices flow for rewards
I just implemented a custom fief system I made into my new group. At 6th level I gave one of my players Lordship over a destroyed Fort. Not only will this be a good gold dump, it also opens the way to get help rebuilding or expanding it as quest rewards. On top of that, they got a cleric of Bahamian as a follower who has the knowledge to craft magic items for them. (In my setting the players have to actually get materials for their magic items and craft them or have them crafted, which adds extra rewards as an option for quests.)
Thank you for making these tutorial videos. I've been playing D&D sing the early 2000s, but I've been out of the loop for awhile. It's really nice to use these as refreshers on things to do and things not to do.
Amazing video - people need to see this! Giving out a wide variety of different rewards adds a lot of fun and believability. Honestly - what is more likely in real life? A) You help out a friend or a relative with packing and moving, and they give you 200 dollars and some 9mm ammo. B) You help them out, they give you some food, beer, and a favor ("I owe you one!")
Impact on the world. You cleared the broken tower of monsters ? That tower becomes a military fort, and eventually a town , city , metropolis.
Of course this also has a flipside . Maybe that military stronghold turns against the king .... new quest accepted!
In a recent adventure , my players accepted a side quest to steal a book from a prestigious library. The consequences were that they ( including an influential allied NPC ) were permanently banned from the library. However the common knowledge about the library was that no one had ever successfully stolen from the library. Did they become famous ? No the library denied the theft occurred and said they banned the players for rowdy behaviour. The story is still that the library has never been stolen from. So what's the point? The players now have a suspicion that the library isn't as secure as they've been told. That maybe others have successfully robbed the library too. I plan on using this " secret knowledge" as an important reward.
Luke - "Don't give players gold there is nothing they can do with it, instead give them these 14 things that are just gold with extra steps that make doing the actual adventuring and monster fighting slower."
No Thanks I'll just take my +1 Sword 'kay thanks.
kill monsters get gold.... I honestly wish that's how my DM's games worked... I'm level 4 and I only just awhile ago reached 125 gold from doing coliseum.
Thanks this came just in time I am working on an Adventure for 2 of my best friends this will help make it a lot more interesting then just gold for rewards
Incidentallly, a lot of the kind of social rewards Mr. DM Lair mentions are solidly built into the rules if you're playing GURPS. In the GURPS point system, wealth, status, reputation, organizational membership, military rank, legal enforcement powers, patrons, contacts and other perks are all things that can be acquired with earned character points, or started with if you pay for them during character creation. So often if the characters do something that is going to be well known, I'll say to the players "OK, you have the opportunity to buy a positive Reputation" . . . in extreme cases I might give it to them for free. A lot of people end up with wealth and status and reputations and things. One big example is, one of my players has a giant minotaur, total combat monster, but also minotaurs are often seen as, well, dangerous monsters. But, he has a reputation, so when the townsfolk see him they don't say "Run! Get the guards! It's gonna eat us!" they say "Oh look, it's Clarence Orcslayer! He was a hero in the orc wars! Guess he's OK even if he's 9' tall and has horns." Makes the character a lot more playable.
A couple of other examples. For wizards, there is membership in wizards' guilds, which goes with access to the guild's LIBRARIES. Or, the reward could just be access to a library . . . anything from just the library of some little local group of wizards and scholars, to some huge ancient deeply magical library with a worldwide reputation and mystique. There are rewards tuned to rogues, too--you could get a safe house, in which to hide when the heat gets bad. Or, as a result of some city shenanigan with organized crime, you could get a piece of turf, perhaps along with leadership of the gang or other criminal group that controls it, and get a cut of the proceeds from gambling, illicit goods sales, protection, illegal magical services, fencing stolen goods or whatever in that district. Along with possible turf wars . . .
Leaving a comment for the algorythm down below.
I've been finding this video very helpful (I've actually been struggling with this for some time)
THERE IS NO FOOD THAT BACON DOESN'T MAKE BETTER
My favorite game,baldur's gate (PS4} had none of this and it is beloved by millions. Elder scrolls started introducing these extra "side quests" for players that were interested in that kind of game.
But to play a tabletop d&d game that's focused on all.of this tedious drivel?? I don't think so.
I don't want to sit around and listen to other players talking about their make-believe real estate deals . I'm thinking, When do we get to the Monster killing and magic items!!??
Um, that's kind of what I'm here for.
Thumbs down .
Title should change to "How to make D&D even more tedious and Boring"
Bacon makes the world better, agreed. (Take *that*, you Algorithm!)
But also - Thanks for these ideas, Luke. I've had many of these ideas already, but it's always useful to have them all together and noted as their own topic, instead of "oh yeah, I used that idea once... awhile ago... I think..." Recently in my campaign, for example, the party slew a "mutant wolf" for a little *peaceful* goblin village they came across in the wilderness. In exchange they received a couple potions and some herbal remedies; more importantly, they received a safe place to hole up for awhile to recover from lingering damage and exhaustion from past battles *and* two characters were able to gain some specialized training in support of their new level-up powers: one PC multiclassing into druid got training from the village shaman, while the other got a chance to learn some rituals for his new warlock Book of Ancient Secrets invocation before the NPC hobgoblin wizard departed (his Story arc was complete). "#6 - Training", check!
EDIT: I should have given kudos to *my* DM, too. In his campaign, after LMoP, we did a favor "up north" for the Lords' Alliance. Instead of getting "paid", we were made the Lords of Phandelver. We were already rebuilding the manor and investing in the businesses (and the mine!)... now we were also responsible for its safety, and that of the surrounding lands. But it also accomplished one my my character's Goals (become a noble, at any cost!). [In fact, my character also accomplished another "goal", ending up marrying one of the locals, and Retired at level 9 to run the town and provide support - Sending and Teleport - for the party while managing the lands.]
I love books.
My girlfriend's Druid is more of a gish than an explorer, so I allowed her to find a book titled "Dungeons & Dragons: An Adventurer's Guide to the Wilderness" that gives the reader proficiency/expertise in Survival and Nature. You must spend a total of one month (30 short rests, limit 1/day) studying the book to gain this benefit.
You can do this for certain skills, languages, tools, etc. It's an easy way to allow low-level characters to spice up their skill set without gaining major benefits during combat.
You just effectively described OSR domain play.
Every point is handled admirably in many OSR systems.
When hirelings go on adventures, the player only gets a fraction of the loot.
But the player is managing a dozen or more functioning characters.
Introduce yer 5e viewers to domain play.
It solves all the problems with 5e high level play.
Isn't Number 1 kind of stepping on the toes of existing Backgrounds and their unique Background Features? I know that being able to find shelter with your organization or like-minded organizations is a Background Feature of at least two Backgrounds (I wanna say it's for Knight of the Order and Harborfolk).
As for them having the Gaurd fight all the monsters in the dungeons for them? Well I wouldn't tell the players "No" on that one it would be more "Yes, but if they do that there will be nobody guarding the town unless the players take over for them while they're gone." The adventure then goes from dungeon crawling(The former Guards are now working as adventurers and gaining all that XP the players would if they were doing the dungeon crawling) to the party filling in for the guards they sent off to clear out the dungeon and dealing with the daily BS the guards normally deal with.... (Tracking down robbers, settling petty disputes between townsfolk, breaking up bar fights, and generally making sure nobody important gets murdered by assassins.)
Of course if they decide to go off and leave the town totally unguarded? Well those guards they sent away are going to be either dying or getting stronger, and if those now stronger guards come back to find that their home town got burnt down because the people filling in for them left it unprotected.... Well now we have a group of angry NPCs with some adventurer levels under their belt....
In fact if the players make a habit of destroying any town that is foolish enough to entrust them with that kind of responsibility well they might just end up with a bounty on their heads for "Dereliction of duty"
TLDR; With great power comes great responsibility. Command of the guard is a responsibility.
Some of my players own the trading firm of Kellogue, Brun et Racine, who deal in arms and luxury goods, running caravans and ships across the continent. The older, semiretired characters have in fact hired the new generation characters to go find out what's been disappearing caravans in the Great Desert and do something about it.
I dont belive Im gonna say it, but that video doesn't helped. Luke you're the best, but literally every single item on this video can be buy it, except the ones that my players will simply forget or prefer GP and Magic Itens. I already use the tables in DMG for purchasing things like castles and business, but man my fellas just drop it so hard and never looked back that I give up about it. They don't care, me too. The show goes on
Yeah a DM made that first mistake. Most of the NPCs were lvl 15 to lvl 20 - most of them the DM's special NPCs created as character sheets as just as complex. They brought people back to life when the cleric of the group could not - for reasons that still escape me - despite being alchemist, they had them build an android - in a world where this is rare) - and kill stealed from the players with homebrewed knock-out rules on the spot, with a character that went around constantly stating how they're better.
So... My character just wants to get enough gold to get them to do what he needs to do while he sits back - which is, to be honest, on point with the character. Because after nearly dying, having three of his friends die within less than two weeks, and discovering these people are more powerful than he is, he's just done.
I have learned that if you do give out magic items its better to give out ones that you created with weird targets. Like a stick that you beat someone to health with. In combat its not that useful it only does 1 HP per round. But it can do it forever. Extra useful when you just finished one battle until you get to the other room. But takes time and sometimes you don't have time.
Also adds your own flavor. And honestly one of my joke magic items is kind of canon now. Chicken missle. When you can make the missile look like anything, what was the 5th edition form, chicken. Ergo what I made 20 years ago as a joke became somewhat canon. I had a good laugh.
I've come to realize business and land management in a DnD game is very much a matter of taste...and one I have long since acquired. Had a pretty fun campaign of a dwarf merchant family that ran a prosperous business and had all kinds of hijinks come through the door. It's lower-stakes than a lot of DnD games, but for my group? It was just what we wanted to relax with.
I'm watching this as a now first-time DM and I'm trying to avoid giving out more magic items to my players like candy on Halloween 😂
Hopefully I can remember these for use later! Thank you.
Bacon is life...
I decided to put a business in for the characters, realized halfway through I was doing my version of acquisitions Incorporated. Started a smith business for them, the adventures were going on networking mission, where they slay dragons and gain access to new materials. I will see how this will go.
but monks tho. Ring of the Ram, Winged Boots, Necklace of Fireballs, Belt of Giant Strength, Bracers of Armor. pretty standard kit and that's 5 already
I remember how our fighter was once adopted into noble Barefoot family. If only his name wasnt something like "Harlotchaser"... Every npc was like
-iv heard he is this Barefoot Harlotchaser
Someone may have already pointed this out to you, but just in case noone noticed so far: The name plates you show on screen at 7:45 are not simple commemoration plates. Those plates arecalled "stumbling blocks" and they are installed all over Germany (and other countries in Europe) at places where people lived who have been murdered during the Nazi regime, showing their name, birth and death date and the place (e.g. the name of the concentration camp) they have been murdered. Not so sure if you want to call that a "reward", actually.
i like giving out ancient currency that is no longer legal tender but seen as collector's items like Confederacy Money, the players then have to find a place to sell them. Also one time i ran a modified version of Against te Cult of the Reptile God, after defeating the BBEG the town rewarded the players with an old temple in town that they could use as a home base and were named "Protectors of the town" and as they leveled up and gained fame more people moved to the town to work for the players. they had a Blacksmith, Alchemist, Cook, Guards, Tailor, Servants, ect. the town also grew from a small village of a few hundred to a town of a couple thousand due the amount of money the players flooded into the economy
I found this video helpful. Also my groups characters favorite snack is, pocket bacon. Yes. It's just bacon stuffed in your pocket. Pocket bacon.
I typically shortened the amount of gold being starting out/received at higher levels, as well as handle the usage of Electrum and Platinum (often for magic swag). At my games, I go by the principle “You get what you negotiate for” and the few times where PCs get a LARGE amount of coin thrown in their lap, it can be kind of a big deal. I also do stuff like put coinage into trade items (gold/silver bars, etc.). So for example, if Players want things like Plate mail, they have to ask for it to be made and often, since I decreased the coin rewards but NOT the prices as per RAW (and that’s before any personalized penalties like inflation or seller biases), it may often involve favors prior or after getting the Plate.
As for the magic items, that Electrum and platinum for magic swag? That also allows for customization of magic items when visiting people like wizards or artificers (or for PCs to get a hold of such materials if they are said classes), in addition to other fun stuff like Mystical Items/Weapons, which is it’s own story in and of itself.
In our campaign world, players need to learn and practice spells before they can use them in combat. Also, the mages guild has strict control over which spells can and cannot be learned.
After doing a favour for the thieves' guild, they gained access to a black market dealer. Also, the country they were in at the time, necromancy is banned. So, this gave a reward of spells they wouldn't have been able to get.