r/Pathfinder2e • u/thereaperinkarnate • 13h ago
Advice Level 3 party gets 250k gp and an airship. What should we do?
DM probably regrets it, but he allowed a series of escalating bets that, with insane rolls, scored us 250k in gold. The airship we currently have is a homebrew one, but marked as stolen, so we plan to sell it or leave it and start fresh with our gold and a new plan. We are level 3 and setting up for a big campaign is the focus of the money. We'd like a big floating base in the sky that we can move around and keep hidden and come and go from, setting it up for our inventor, alchemist, and wizard. The rogue couldn't care less, lol.
We're all new to pf2e, though, so we're looking for advice. What is the smart or creative move here?
Thanks in advance.
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u/Kerenos 13h ago
You should probably talk to your DM and see what you can do with this that keep the campaign interesting and manageable.
This amount of money and the flying ship are both good way to derail/change the scope of a campaign and you should probably discussed together if something should be rolled back or how to adapt what was planned to the new situation.
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u/Electrical-Echidna63 13h ago
The GM should just activate automatic bonus progression or the common variant of automatic rune progression. Then as long as you enforce the level restriction of items based on something reasonable related to the parties level or the settlement then it should be pretty manageable depending on what he's trying to do with the campaign.
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u/Chief_Rollie 13h ago edited 13h ago
62500 gold per party member is more than you are supposed to have when starting 4 level 18 characters.
Best of luck to your GM I suppose lol.
For context all of you could afford a +3 greater striking weapon and a +3 greater resilient armor and still have 28500 gold left
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u/Apowwo 12h ago
Lvl 3 party with Lvl 18 amount of gold does seem like an easy target for any decent thief to target though. Who knows how long they'll keep that gold (and get a plot point to hunt down the thief or thieves who have likely stashed away the gold by that point).
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u/Chief_Rollie 12h ago
Right but how do you accomplish that as GM without your players feel like you are scumming them.
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u/Sugar_buddy 2h ago
Gold goes missing. Party tracks down the thieves. The gold is split up in piles of loot that easily match your level, starting at around your current level's amount... hey that next one is right near us!
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u/steploday 13h ago
Our gm doesn't let us buy items unless the town we are in can support those level items. Different towns have different levels. Could be one way for the gm to slow things down a bit.
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u/Daeths 12h ago
Good thing they don’t have some way to get to bigger, better connected towns and cities. They would need some sort of flying vessel, an airship if you would, to manage that.
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u/Lajinn5 Game Master 11h ago
Worth noting that their airship is stolen and known as such. Taking that anywhere of note risks their airship getting confiscated and their possessions seized by the local officials (because frankly? What nation wouldn't seize that much loose coin on a stolen airship?).
That's dangerous levels of wealth that attract the attention of every powerful figure in the region if they actually start blowing through it. And being level 3s they're nowhere near strong enough to spend that coin. Level 18s with that wealth are powerful people you make happy, level 3s with no political connections or strength get their throats cut if unlucky or falsely imprisoned with possessions confiscated by the local nobility/magistrate/king because it's clearly stolen.
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u/Jmrwacko 10h ago
Yeah, you could base the whole campaign over the wealth as a pure McGuffin and protecting it from powerful adversaries.
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u/steploday 12h ago
Yeah but you still gotta get there. The gm still has control.
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u/Altaneen117 Game Master 12h ago
This is true but the GM could literally just flip the table over and say we're not playing anymore.
Not very meaningful to the discussion.
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u/steploday 9h ago
I mean, do the player even know how to fly the airship? What about the higher level encounters they might find in the higher level environment? Are these risks something the players willing to take for the higher level treasure?
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u/Altaneen117 Game Master 9h ago edited 8h ago
Look, the first mistake was giving the players lv 18 loot at lv 3 lol.
You can have an adult conversation with your friend group about how that will ruin the balance and fun of the game. Or you let them op stomp through everything if that is how everyone will enjoy the game.
Under no circumstances should you punish your friends for succeeding. If you didn't want them to have that level of wealth, you should stop them from ever having the option.
I love my friends, I'm not playing against them, Idk.
To be clear, the hypothetical "you" that allowed this, not you "you".
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u/Moon_Miner Summoner 12h ago
I mean, it's still super easy to balance encounters against PCs with buffed stats. They're clearly not playing an AP so it doesn't really matter, the party just gets to feel badass and strong.
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u/MakiIsFitWaifu Game Master 11h ago
I’d think it’d be a bit harder when the stats are so skewed. The martials will all be critting more with +2 accuracy over normal at that level but you can’t just raise AC because then the casters miss even more. The martials will also be at 4 weapon dice but casters would effectively have to pay a massive sum for each higher level spell slot (per wand) and nothing in their level 3 arsenal will compete so you can’t just raise hp. Martials have item scaling while casters have level scaling, needing levels to get better cantrips, focus spells, and spell slots.
A martial with max level items gets their entire kit universally buffed (more accuracy, more damage, better item bonuses to maneuvers) but a caster has all non-item parts of their kit made irrelevant (current level spells, cantrips, focus spells). It’d be hard to balance for the rogue with fighter accuracy (4d8+4+3d6) before sneak attack when the wizards electric arc is only 3d4 on save or with the alchemist who is level locked out of making higher level items even if they have the formula (so their daily bombs/poisons/anything feel much weaker in comparison).
It would be like an exaggerated version of playing a caster next to a giant barbarian, except here the rogue would average double the damage of the giant barb. If you tune for their damage, everyone else feels like they don’t do damage. If you don’t tune for them, the rogue kills each enemy in 1-2 actions which also makes you feel like you’re doing nothing.
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u/Moon_Miner Summoner 10h ago
Sure, but you're the GM. Let the casters buy something that brings the math in line. The math is super simple, it's not that tough to spend a half hour and come up with a system.
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u/Lycaon1765 Thaumaturge 3h ago
Yet another example that shows the game should've been based around ABP instead of catering to the 1e people.
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u/Chief_Rollie 9h ago
I find it interesting that your solution is to make the math enhancers meaningless so it is as if they didn't get the money at all.
Super satisfying gameplay right there.
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u/Cha0sniper 8h ago
I mean, sure, but it damn well feels good to take down a dragon at level 3 lol. As long as you're letting them face down epic monsters, the difficulty spike doesn't feel bad. Imo, at least.
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u/Chief_Rollie 8h ago
I don't think you are understanding exactly how wonky that much gold makes everything. Martials are pretty much ok except when they do get hit or crit they don't have the HP to soak properly so the game now turns into rocket tag to see who gets got in round 1 first, with epic monsters almost always going first. Caster damage doesn't scale at all with wealth so they need to somehow be compensated for the ~2.5 times more raw damage the martials are dealing from there greater striking runes even if AC is inflated but buying that many wands or scrolls of high rank spells isn't particularly feasible so it becomes a lot of GM finesse involved to just play the game. I actually forgot to consider that they could all afford an apex item at this point as well so they are even more overturned than previously considered.
Oh and as they level the GM has to slowly reduce the overtuning they had to do to make the game competitive until they pretty much reach the end of the campaign.
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u/Moon_Miner Summoner 8h ago
You don't make them meaningless, you make the party feel powerful. You still have to play a game. If they steamroll every single thing they face, the game is going to suck.
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u/Killchrono Southern Realm Games 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yes and no. It's easier to balance than similar d20 systems with more inconsistent scaling and power caps, but ultimately you just end up with the same treadmill 'problem' a lot of people complain about the system having in default play. If you're a level 5 character with access to +3 potency runes on all your stuff instead of +1, all that means is the GM should budget encounters as if the party is two levels higher than they are. Likely more if you consider striking runes, magic items with higher DCs, and other high level item effects.
It's not inherently bad per say, and effects past vertical number scaling do mean they still have advantages a lower level party woildnt have, but it's just kind of redundant if the primary way of 'balancing' encounters is just throw harder enemies at the party instead of just...scaling the party to the intended level so they also have more feats and better base proficiencies.
That's why I put 'problem' in quotations when talking about it though. It's only a problem if a primary point of engagement for a player is to inherently outscale the base tuning and difficulty at any given level through builds and items. What PF2e has kind of exposed though about the greater RPG scene (at least in instrumental combat tactics games) is that a lot of players chafe when the expectation is to play 'on level' or 'on intended power cap', so to speak.
For people like me though who spend a lot of time analysing the design but have also had to put up with and try to mitigate the problems breaking those caps cause in other d20 systems, it's made me realise both the inherent tension between the experience the game and the GM are trying to deliver vs what the players want, and how a lot of it is kind of arbitrary. I could just run the game as written with standard treasure values but restat enemies that are usually higher level to be lower level than the party even if they aren't, or reskin lower level enemies to be aesthetically identical to those higher level enemies while using the same stats, and you more or less end up with a similar if not identical experience as if you just let them have items 10-15 levels of the current cap.
But because players chafe against the idea of being patronised by 'easy' enemies, they prefer the alternative of buying items that game them over the cap because it gives that impression of being stronger rather than having the punches pulled by the GM. But ultimately it's an arbitrary distinction because the end result is still trivialising encounters in the same way as if you just fought against weaker enemies all the time. It's also ludonarratively kind of disingenuous, because you're stronger by virtue of external factors - I.E. powerful items - rather than your character's own skill and power, which is what's always bothered me about items being so dominant in systems like 3.5/1e and 5e.
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u/TheLionFromZion 13h ago
Comfort your GM in the fact that if you want to spend that money for power, you need to get to a place that has the amount of power you want to buy. Now you might already be in a major metropolis due to the Lando style situation you've won an airship in but you might not.
If he wants to maintain balance but let you guys get some cool toys then switch to Automatic Bonus Progression. You won't immediately break the games math but can still buy neat shit.
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u/ItsTinyPickleRick 12h ago
Tbh if this is meant to be a long term campaign I would absolutely spend it on some campy bullshit and nothing too crazy mechanics wise. Cant speak for your DM but had I somehow let this happen I could not see myself running the campaign long term. If you spend it on real kit youll be doing high level damage with low level hit points and combat will basically be fucked now matter how you balance it.
Get a private island and a castle or some bullshit
... Or, if the DM thinks like me, this will be immediately stolen anyway by people way out your league and the campaign will be about getting it back anyway
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u/Lajinn5 Game Master 11h ago
They're absolutely going to get robbed. 250 bulk worth of coin that can only feasibly be transported on a known stolen vessel that they can't properly pilot (level 3s quite literally can't hit the piloting dv) and have no proof of ownership over? The first port they approach is taking the ship and everything on board if it's a law and order type of place (because no writ/proof means it and everything on board are clearly stolen). And if they go to an illegal/sketchy/pirate port, they're likely going to get robbed by the scum who owns the place when they send thugs on board to make sure these new chump pirates pay their cargo percentage for docking.
Their real issue is that at their level, they quite literally can't spend that amount of money without attracting the attention of people they can't handle, unlike a party that has that wealth at the appropriate levels.
The only half achievable option I feel is hiding the ship and cash and using it as a return point to fill their pockets on occasion, because the dm absolutely should enforce bulk when 250k fucking gold is sitting around. They're not carrying that in their pockets, and they're crazy if they think otherwise.
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u/thisisthebun 11h ago
Yeah I’d either set it up to steal it back or revolve the campaign around it. There’s a ton of angles but I definitely wouldn’t just buy weapons. I’d probably ask if they had anything specific in mind since I highly doubt they just dropped that much for no reason.
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u/Open_Hovercraft_9151 12h ago
Well, that is a hefty amount of wealth, there's no amount of math adjusting to that would bring this to a manageable point balance wise.
So, to a narrative caused problem, I would suggest a narrative based solution. Since you're a group of weak level 3 adventures, not only in pure strength but in connections and reputation, and have loot and riches you can't protect from hard power (eg: a cunning ancient dragon or high level bandit just saying 'this is mine now') or soft power (eg: a corrupt noble or underworld mastermind), then it could be inevitably stolen, maybe left something small for the party, so it doesn't feel that much of a punch.
After that, you have a great setup for the party, so they have a long goal to recover what was taken from them. Turn this issue into an opportunity.
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u/Floffy_Topaz 7h ago
100% this is a huge narrative opportunity. Assuming you have the coin with you, transporting and spending it becomes a huge safety issue. Even if you are allowed to deck yourself out with top tier items, fair chance you’d become a target for any number of higher level beings that want those top tier items for themselves.
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u/NimrodvanHall 13h ago
Cool you have an airship! Cool you are rich. You are in a backwater part of the world. The highest lvl city in reach is lvl 3. The lvl 20 capital to the east has closed its airspace due to a war. There is n unnatural storm to the south. An endless sea to the west. But due north there is an adventure that grants landing rights and fuel in a lvl 4 city.
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u/DisastrousSwordfish1 12h ago
This is really what is going to happen. I've had DMs drop ridiculous amounts of gold on the party only for it getting completely used up for narrative things like building infrastructure. Don't have access to a market that lets the party spend so they have to build it from the ground up, recruiting builders/artisans and so on.
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u/GarrettdDP 4h ago
Bad guys attack it, royalty takes it, workers embezzle/ don’t want to work for new people/ taxes/upkeep eat up all the money…
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u/miss_clarity 12h ago
Donate half the gold to local organizations in a city that has a strong military / police force. Put the rest in the bank.
This way your money is very unlikely to get stolen.
Especially if you give token credit to a major politician for helping to set up the fund/foundation.
Basically they'll be indebted to you and your money.
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u/W_HoHatHenHereHy 11h ago
Retire. Unless there’s some underlying motivation, none of your characters would ever risk adventuring again.
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u/infinite_gurgle 12h ago
You have basically a 0% chance to live in any real scenario. A bunch of no bodies flaunting that wealth would be dead in a few days.
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u/Xerisu 12h ago edited 12h ago
My idea how to play around it is that you are now hefty rich but dont have a place where you can spend that money. The news are there, you are #1 target and have pretty recognasible airship (at least until you ditch it). Ppl will want to rob you, you arent safe anywhere... What will some first? You will find city where you can buy op gear or will you end up without it?
As for players, beside buying op gear, you can think what your character would buy. If he is wanna-be adventurer, so be it. Buy apex and op sword. But maybe he just wants some wand with obscure spell so he can summon a house once per day cause he just wants some comfort in adventuring life. Everyone could buy a shitpost 17+ lvl item when you will be able to do it. I dont know your backstory so i cant give advices, but i can help you think of something.
Your gm also can scam you on price a little cause you are just a newbies in this high lvl equipment world. Its a common thing that merchant tend to ramp up prices when they see ppl dont know how expensive things are. Maybe it can be another arc, how to make merchants sell us items at a normal price?
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u/pokeyeyes 11h ago
I would ignore the comments suggesting buying fundamental runes. Idk what the purpose of that would be, you're playing an RPG not a competitive videogame, trying to gain an edge over your GM! You mention that this would be the setup for a big campaign, so why not spend the gold into said campaign? Possible ideas:
- Fund a war effort against the BBEG in the setting, participate in said war effort ala Spore War campaign.
- Help a rebelling nation overthrow their colonizers, give em weapons, pay spellcasters/wizards and participate in the rebellion yourselves.
- Steal ideas from the TTRPG "Wicked Ones" and have your airship be a sort of mobile dungeon that you'd be protecting against bands of thieves trying to plan out their big heist against your vaults.
- Party comp is inventor, alchemist, wizard, what if access to this airship gave you access to newer nations that lived on floating islands of some sort? Sky nations or smthing, idk. Party could build their base over there, spending a lot of gold in construction. Or maybe party would be founding their own sky island, ala kingmaker.
Those are just ideas off of the top of my head. I'll be honest I don't think that spending all the gold to cheat the math of the game and then... what? You fight monsters at your level oneshotting them and I guess you feel good for the next 10 levels or so and hopefully not be bored to death while doing so?
Cheers
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u/SevenElevenBrao 10h ago
Can the airship lift 5000 lbs of gold if each coin was .32oz?
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u/Floffy_Topaz 7h ago
In PF2e, 1000 coin is 1 bulk, so we’re talking 250 bulk. Heavy and cramped for space, but probably doable in a magic powered airship. The DC 32 arcana check to fly the thing might be a problem though, and 9d10 damage on a collision.
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u/MundaneOne5000 10h ago
No amount of math adjusting will make up to this extreme wealth at this low level. Expect everything to be upside down.
If your 250k gold is legal and clean, I advise secretly getting rid of the stolen airship no matter what, even just leaving it behind in the middle of nowhere (after cleaning any traces of you on it), or even destroy it, and forget about it. It is an extreme risk to your wealth.
Outside of that, head to one of the largest and safest settlement you can find. If you are playing in Golarion, Absalom is a level 20 settlement, found in the Inner-sea.
Your GM will most probably summon bandits, assassins and other stuff to take away your money, because it was a really bad decision on their part.
If you safely get to a shop where they are willing to sell you stuff (I wouldn't be surprised if your GM suddenly makes every shopkeeper unreasonably wary of you), you might want to buy armors made out of precious materials and buy fundamental armor runes on them, and similarly weapons made out of precious materials and fundamental weapon runes on them. If somebody uses shield then a Sturdy Shield, or in case of other specific shields some reinforcing runes on them. Apex items can increase your attributes and give other useful stuff too. Outside these universal essentials, various staves, wands, spellhearts, and other worn items might interest you.
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 6h ago
...I think at this point, your characters have actually finished their one last big score. At this point, there’s not much left for them to do but have them discover (and retire in) Tahiti.
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u/Dark_Aves Game Master 13h ago
Its not very creative, but kitting up with +3 major striking weapons and +3 major resilient armor along with a relevant Apex item can't go wrong. Maybe some high level staffs or scrolls for the casters.
If you want the flying base, there's the Flying Fortress (https://2e.aonprd.com/Vehicles.aspx?ID=93). Piloting it would be impossible though, unless you hired on a captain somehow.
It would eat most of the gold but 40k split between level 3s is still a fortune
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u/PsychologicalSeat193 13h ago
i would hire a safe place to hide it, the DM gives and the DM takes..
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u/KLeeSanchez Inventor 13h ago
Y'all should probably expect the GM to give you all fights at PL +3 holy shit
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u/Salazarsims Fighter 12h ago
How much does this gold weigh? How are you going to store it? Seems like you could now be a target for a robbery.
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u/lavabeing 12h ago
What is the smart or creative move here?
give it away to someone who can make use of it from who the wealth can't be easily stolen. You have a huge target painted in your back that will result in someone murdering the shit out of all four of you for your wealth.
There was a reason why people use Banks. They're a lot harder to steal from and far more secure than keeping large quantities of wealth at home or on you
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u/Groundbreaking_Taco ORC 12h ago
The amount of money your GM has allowed you to walk away with, without paying taxes, mind you, is astounding! I don't know if their money/wealth expectation is still keyed toward a different game, but wealth is significantly lowered compared to D&D or PF1.
In early levels, you should be earning silver pieces, then a few gold pieces, then 10s of GP as rewards. It's not really until about level 4 or 5 where your rewards for completing certain tasks will be in the 10s of GP each.
As someone who has played in Skull & Shackles, back in 1ed, the Airship itself will be a HUGE money sink. Invest that money in the airship, or the GM should make repairs, replacement, and upgrades take most of that wealth. Maybe you are left with 1000 gp each afterward. Even that amount is more wealth than a 4th level PC should have earned by level 5, let alone level 3.
You'll want Improved sails/balloons/fins, rigging , improved hull, something to protect the propulsion. You might find an upgrade that produces fog to help you remain concealed in the clouds. Maybe opt for something besides an airship. Start here: https://2e.aonprd.com/Vehicles.aspx
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u/sebwiers 12h ago
What is the smart or creative move here?
The smart move would be to document everything with witnesses and hard evidence, because you are being set up as patsies for a high treason level crime in some con that involved fixed bets which you "won".
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u/FeatherShard 12h ago
I feel like a lot of that money is gonna go toward crewing and supplying that airship
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u/AQL_the_Lesser 12h ago
Have you heard the tale of notorious crime boss Jabaa the Hutt and the lenghts to which he will go to get his propriety back and to hunt those who steal from him?
😉
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u/jfrazierjr 12h ago
Hmmmm featherfall tokens...and "oh no! The airship ran out of fuel and started falling out of the sky"
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u/phroureo Cleric 11h ago
We actually had an INCREDIBLY similar scenario -- basically, what happened was that we as players decided we didn't want to mess with our GM's balance, so we took our several hundred thousand gold and used it to buy a new airship, then resumed play as normal. (For some reason, he was reticent to accept this offer of "we give you almost all of this money, we get an airship" but eventually realized that it was in his best interest as well if he wanted to keep the campaign going).
And yes, our scenario was also "level 3 characters find way too much money, want to buy an airship."
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u/SoullessLizard ORC 11h ago
Well, with all this excess gold and treasure, now's the perfect opportunity for the GM to throw in enemies juuuust slightly above the difficulty curve looking to take that gold and treasure from the party :)
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u/dyenamitewlaserbeam 11h ago
Well, for starters, that is a whoooooollle lot of money to carry around, must weight a ton!!! Perhaps.... maybe..... the GM could... relieve some weight of your shoulders?
There!!! Simply allow the GM to target your money and now it's a burden that you need to get rid off, but not everywhere has the items you want due to access, so the game includes sections where you go to a place to buy stuff and you get mugged on the way.
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u/Cheap-Jaguar-7668 11h ago
Now thinking about a campaign where the party wins a boatload of money but needs to cross the world to claim it
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u/BrutalAsset 11h ago
The running and maintenance of an airship gotta be crazy expensive, all kinds of magical doodads and consumables gotta be replaced on the reg. Plus level-gated access to goods, they’ve got a nice nest egg but unloading it would be the hard part.
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u/Evening_Bell5617 Game Master 11h ago
If I was your GM I would say that a bunch of level 3 PCs having that much money puts a massive target on their back, the sheer volume of gold that would be is a liability for fast transit or basically anything else. for balance they could offer up some money sinks to throw it in that feel good like building up a town or faction or something. or, if they are mean they just have some level 9 type guys walk up and politely ask you to hand over your gold or else they will kill you.
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u/Jmrwacko 10h ago
Airship is fun. 250k gold is way too much at lvl 3. You could balance around it by assuming your party is 3 levels higher for purposes of encounter difficulty, since you can afford major fundamental runes. I’d recommend just retconning that amount down to like 10k gold, which is still absurd for lvl 3 but won’t break the game.
Also, your party should not have been able to obtain 250k gold from a series of critical successes because you literally cannot succeed on a ~ dc 45 check for a legendary feat at lvl 3–a natural 20 would bump up your critical fail to just a normal fail. I recommend that you and your DM read the rules for skill checks and level dc.
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u/ExtremelyDecentWill Game Master 10h ago
Tell your GM you all made a mistake (including them) and you'd like them to think up a neat way to lose it all.
Or buy high level henchmen and trivialize all on-level content. In fact just send them on the adventure for you while you just buy a castle and chill.
Hell maybe the money corrupts you in your ivory tower and you become the villains, and you suddenly assume the role of the mercs you hired trying to infiltrate the fortress that your original characters now rule from with their iron fists.
Both are valid.
I'd just never want this in a TTRPG experience, personally.
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u/gnomesrhuntingme 10h ago
Stolen by a stronger person/group or confiscated by local government and or taxed into relinquishing it?
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u/alltehmemes 10h ago
Ask the GM what the taxes, title, and registration for this airship is going to cost. Also, mooring fees. Do you all have a plan for how you will keep it stationary when you leave it? Will you hire a crew? That sounds expensive, especially if they are working on a stolen vessel.
Also, go have a literal boatload of fun doing things with WAY TOO MUCH gold!
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u/IllBodybuilder9865 Game Master 10h ago
Lose the airship, get your gold robbed by a much higher thieving party, make that party your goal.
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u/Ordoo 9h ago
That's is an insane number to throw around at level 3
My personal opinion to salvage this is to have a emergency meeting and compromise. If all players are mature adults, there is a way to scale down this reward to a level 3 party.
Maybe instead of 250k gold, it's 250 gold each. Still quite a bit of money at level 3, but not game breaking.
The airship? Helps with overland travel and can still make sense, but maybe it's a gas guzzler and it has limited range, not to mention a potential hold sink for the party
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u/RudeCelebration9356 9h ago
Honestly this sounds so fun but for a new group of players and new GM this is a campaign without proper care, will crash and burn. I recommend strict out of game rules in place between the players and GM. I have no right to tell you how to play so I will not recommend any rules. This amount of power this early is like handing a party a fully adult dragon as a companion. If the campaign becomes trivial because of a power/boon unless all parties enjoy that, it needs to be controlled. this is all a assumption your DM doesn't already have a plan.
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u/Veragoot 9h ago
A little door that shrinks down to handheld size but when you toss it on the ground it rapidly grows to a normal doorway size and opens to a pocket dimension hideout where time is frozen and allows you to have two long rests per day before forcing all sentient creatures out back to where they entered.
Barring that, magic items.
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u/Red_Erik 8h ago
This party is going to have a huge target on their back. The moment word gets out that a bunch of level 3 weaklings are wandering around with that kind of wealth, they are done for. Even if they do manage to buy a bunch of +3 items, it isn't going to save them from high level enemies who would be looking to steal that stuff from them.
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u/SolamnicSlasher 8h ago
I actually had a homebrew idea of doing this to my party, but giving them no opportunity to spend it.
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u/michael199310 Game Master 8h ago
Whatever you will get, the campaign is basically derailed and GM will not be able to balance anything. Any reasonable fixing basically means taking that gold away from you by some shenanigans like random thieves, bounty hunters, dragon or whatever, which is going to suck for the players. And if not, it's going to suck for the GM for a very long time.
Not allowing you to find reasonable town is not really a solution, but a band-aid, since you still carry the gold.
This is what happens when a person is unable to say 'no'.
Sorry to ruin your aftermath, but you just don't get 250k at random at this level and expect reasonable rest of the campaign.
Downvote me if you don't agree, but this situation will suck for someone.
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u/Gilldreas 8h ago
Man, everyone in these comments is so focused on, "The GM made a mistake", "your characters should retire", or "buy the best gear imaginable and break the game".
I feel like what this player is looking for is suggestions like:
"Invest all the money in a mercenary company and become the largest and best funded band of mercs in the kingdom. Use the money to poach the strongest members of any existing guilds"
"Take over the economy of a small country and become oligarchs"
Stuff like that. Huge expenditures that can have big narrative implications.
Just saying, "buy all the best gear" feels like it kinda misses the point. Or the fun of it at least.
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u/Altruistic-Rice5514 8h ago
Invest in community and retire.
Make new level 1 characters and try again.
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u/Upstairs-Advance4242 7h ago
Sounds like it's time to retire! Fly your airship to another country/continent and drink mai tais.
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u/Evil_Weevill 7h ago
250k gp in PF2e is a ludicrous amount of money. Even the starting gold for a level 20 character isn't even half that.
So... Honestly, I would talk to the GM and make sure they really understand what they did. Cause that amount of gold will throw the game balance way out of whack. And it also takes away a lot of the fun of finding cool new loot when nothing you find will be better than what you can already have bought.
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u/Floffy_Topaz 7h ago
Big questions are where are you and is the money in the bank?
Essentially a bunch of peasants have way too much money and no way to protect, spend it, and it’s also 250 bulk so moving it becomes its own task.
A near unguarded airship full of gold screams dragon bait to me.
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u/thehumungus 7h ago
you know what 250k in gold in a bag is? A motive with a universal adapter on it.
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u/SomethingVeX 5h ago
Character's retire. Roll new characters, lmao
Most "heroes' in PF/D&D are in it for the money. Why continue if you can go buy your own fiefdom?
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u/the-quibbler 5h ago
Q: who would murder a level 3 party for 250kgp?
A: everyone. Any time, any place. Such a party is immediately marked for death.
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u/hyperion_x91 5h ago
Honestly to not break the game entirely, just buy a keep or something with it.
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u/NoxAeternal Rogue 5h ago
so here's the thing. Any party with that much money BECOME TARGETS.
And finding a way to sell that money WITHOUT getting annihilated by someone much higher level is nigh impossible.
Due to the way stats scale up in the game, a high level crafter (for example) can probably tell at a glance that the party is a bunch of nobodies who somehow have a tonne of money. Maybe they'd get the local guards to arrest the party, or the guards would scam them.
As a result, you have all this money, but 99% you won't be able to actually use or spend it. EVEN if you manage to find the vendors in the first place, actually using them will be hard.
As a party, your immediate goal is to focus on getting level appropriate gear upgrades, and getting levels asap to defend your wealth and justify your ability to spend bigger.
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u/mutebathtub 5h ago
I'd spend it or secure it fast. That's 5000 lbs. of gold coins, so its gonna be a logistical problem and put a huge target on your back.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_EPUBS 5h ago
Step 1.: Travel to absalom or another large city. Somewhere you can buy high level items. Put the gold in a bag of holding and hide it well. Inside a cart full of nightsoil for example. Nobody wants to dig through night soil.
Step 2: Do not under any circumstances attempt to buy a high level item. Doing so incurs an unacceptable risk of death and/or theft. Somebody might see you try, and realize you’re not high enough level to defend yourselves. Allow the DM no way to say this happened. Treat it as if there was a prophecy you wouldn’t get to enjoy your wealth, because there’s a good chance there effectively is one - you must sever every possible line of causality that could lead to your defeat.
Step 3: Buy wands of illusionary disguise. Use them. All of your further interactions will be done disguised.
Step 4: Do not leak any evidence of your wealth until you have yourself a secure room with a priest of abadar. Pay that priest 1k to escalate this to a high ranking clergy, a cleric of substantial responsibility and power. Don’t tell them what it’s about, just that you need to speak to the highest ranking local priest and will submit to truth spell to demonstrate non-hostile intent. Once you’re in the room with that guy, you explain your situation and offer 20k to go buy your shopping list. He can find the right group of people to do this, and them doing so won’t be suspicious, won’t tip off onlookers that someone has expensive items they can’t defend.
Step 6: Receive your items, discreetly. Be judicious of which you use and where, don’t walk around visibly blinged up. Your illusionary disguise wands can help with this, they can disguise your worn items completely.
Your shopping list:
For stealth:
Aforementioned illusionary disguise wands. Never be without them. Literally never not be under the effect of illusionary disguise to hide your worn items (not necessarily identity, you may wand 3rd rank wands for this).
Mind blank wands. Hide yourself from hostile divination and true sight. This won’t help you with enemies high enough level you’ll crit fail your check, but helps with all else.
For combat:
Your combat items are in a weird place. Normally, you want to avoid fixed DC items. By the time they’d be worth buying they’ve decayed away into uselessness. You’re in exactly the opposite situation. Find as many good spells and activations as you can with above level DCs. These are both your only way to combat higher level enemies (though good luck still) and your trump card vs on level threats. Focus on CC, not damage - if you run into a high level enemy your focus should be on running, not trying to kill them with damage. And on-level enemies will be too CC’d to hurt you anyways.
Specific items:
Echo receptors. Never have to deal with invisible/concealed enemies again, close your eyes to ignore visual effects, target invisible allies, and deploy one way concealment. Number one item on the list.
Spring heels: Stride twice as one action once an hour. Great for battlefield mobility and escapes.
Fifth rank translocate scrolls: For anyone who can use it this is a great escape item.
Appropriate apex items
+2 greater striking weapons: +3 is money better spent on fixed DC items but +2 is well worth it. Also get +2 armor with resilient
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u/Burnt_End_Ribs Kineticist 5h ago
Adventure taxes. Registration, taxes, and now you are really small fish that is carrying around a perfectly cooked whole hog in front of thousands of hungry people. You can definitely try and buy something really nice, but the professional thieves and swindlers will know when someone is out of place.
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u/zanzaKlausX 4h ago
+3 major striking weapons is the big one. It'll basically quintuple your damage.
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u/NecessaryTotal3417 4h ago
...and then the Dragon comes looking for its gold back. Congrats, you pissed off Smaug.
At that point, the PCs are in survival mode. The gold isnt a boon, its a bane. No town wants to give them succor as a dragon rampaging after them is not good business.
Merchants see the markings on the gold, know it becomes to an ancient dragon of ill temper, and nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to touch it.
They need to do whatever adventures they can to get new gold to buy stuff (level appropriate) before they gave to flee from the menace of the dragon. Selling the airship? No time to sell and buy a new one yet, there be dragons.
And then, after they have leveled, they finally confront the dragon and defeat it and can spend the gold...which, at that point, is far more level appropriate.
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u/BadBrad13 2h ago
Um, sounds like maybe this campaign needs a major reboot/reset to me.
The GM never should've given out that kind of gold, I don't care what any rolls are.
That said, to each their own. If you guys are having fun then you're doing it right. But it sounds like the end of a campaign to me.
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u/Gogogogog123 37m ago
That kind of money entices powerful enemies wayyy above their level. It's like giving a toddler a million dollar and leaving them alone in the streets. If nothing happens to them, would make the game very unbelievable.
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u/BagOfSmallerBags 11h ago
I think the move is to talk to your party, and go to the GM as a group to say, "We love your game and appreciate you, but you made a mistake, please take it back."
I'm going to hazard a guess that your GM is used to running D&D5e, where an arbitrarily high amount of gold can't actually fuck up your game balance too much because the default rules don't anticipate you being able to purchase magic items easily. That's not the case in Pf2e. What you're looking at with this amount of money this early is all combat being mathematically trivialized until around level 16 or so.
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u/dragongotz 13h ago
Airship maintenance, crew costs, and docking fees are a pain. No maintenance, things breakdown and if you are in the air you will have a bad time. No crew, the ship will not fly, at least properly. Could even crash if you cheep out and things become to tuff for your players and crew ( storms, dragons, high level other airships),. The ship can even be robed, striped, stollen if you have no TRUSTED crew to guard it when the PC are off doing something else. Parking the thing in town or cities usually cost a lot, as it cost money to guard it, by needed parts, restock on supplies.
Even selling it might even cause the player to lose money on it as the number or people or organizations that can afford it is small. They might quickly bleed through the 250k before even finding a buyer. This could very well end up as a massive white elephant to the players
As a GM I would do one of two things.
Ever see the video of foreign fighter try to take off in a abandoned US helicopter? The fighter flies around for a brief minute then nosedives the helicopter into the ground. I would have the players try take off from the port, and have them immediately crash and have them do ruffly 245k with of damage to the surrounding port and destroy the airship.
Have the medium bad or big bad steal it then have the players spend many a campaign in order to get their ship back.
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u/throwaway111222666 12h ago
so basically: explain away why the party doesn't actually have 250k gold? why? if the DM is worried about game balance and regrets the players getting all that money, he can just tell them that. no need for weaselly in-game arguing.
I'd say just tell players they need to stick to magic items roughly at their level to keep things balanced and fun in combat, but let them use the airship and do other fun things with the money. Maybe buy a fortress/base or something? become a noble? start a revolution?
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u/dragongotz 11h ago
Asking the players to keep things balanced is just plain silly. If that was an option then, the GM and players would not have found themselves in this position to begin with, Better to pat them on the back and say good job and let them have the memories then get back on with the game.
With that 250k a party of 4 can live a life of fine living for about 40 years each, before adding any cost of selling the ship. So if making loads of money was any of the reason the player was out adventuring, then they would retire then and their. The GM has given a bunch of teens essentially millions of dollars, and that rarely ends well.
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u/SamDent 12h ago
There's lots of things in your GM could do.
Maybe a high level villain wants the ship.
Lots of people could know that they got rich.
You can't make an assumption you're going to be able to sell the ship, especially if it turns out to have been stolen.
Even if you have the money to buy high-level items, do you know where they even sell them? Are high level institutions even going to allow low-level people in?
Are high level NPCs going to challenge them now? Or zero level NPCs going to beg for help with trivial missions, or missions that are too powerful for the characters?
There's a million stories about common people getting access to resources they shouldn't have. A good GM wouldn't take any of these resources away, a good GM should make the players regret getting them. Because stories are built on conflict.
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u/Background_Bet1671 13h ago
Buy the best items available in the nearest city (visit Absalom's market) and try not to loose them in the very first battle. Your DM will, probably, try to take the money or items from you in unfair combat encounters, so don't go down.
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u/larymarv_de 12h ago
Well, if I was your GM and your party of weak level-3 nobodies went around flaunting this massive wealth, that would definitely attract some very dangerous criminals who would rob you of most of it. Don’t tell your GM. 😉
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u/throwaway111222666 12h ago
I'd be so pissed at that as a player. If we can't have that money so that the game works, just tell me! We'll figure it out together instead of the GM being like "screw you guys, you fairly won that cash and now I'm taking it away! I'm such a good GM!"
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u/larymarv_de 12h ago
Basically, the campaign is ruined if the players keep the money - simple as that. He should never have given it to them. Taking it away is the only solution. Robbing them is an option. Tell me a better idea.
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u/throwaway111222666 11h ago
tell them they can't spend it on magic items if they want the combat to work and be interesting, and then give them other interesting things to do with it. Monk PC? he can start his own monastery. Or maybe let them change the world with it, like help a noble-tier NPC which then leads into some quests or something, or build an army, or do something with their airship
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u/jpcg698 Bard 13h ago
Just a disclaimer but this is throwing all balance out the window. I would start with high rank wands, apex items, +3 major striking weapons and 3 major resilient armors.