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Planning Help: Dealing with a Dragon's Horde
My players are currently adventuring through a dungeon complex, which is the lair of a blue dragon. They have met him, he kicked them out of his lair after stealing everything in their bag of holding and heward's handy haversacks, and now they have to get back in and kill him.
I've got that part figured out. However, I would love some input on the next step.
See, my PCs came to this ruin as part of a gnomish led expedition tasked with finding ancient sites and items of arcane note. The gnomes will likely want some, if not all of this dragon's horde, as it is located at the site they came to find. The gnomes also own the airship the party used to fly out to the Wastes where the ruins are located, so without it, the group is going to be hard-pressed to transport over 100,000g worth of coin, gems and other items the several hundred miles back to civilization and their base of operations.
There is also the challenge that, since the gnomes are on a research expedition, they will likely want to stick around and do research for a while... This doesn't work for the party, because they have to find a cure for the blight before the end of the summer... which is about 1/2 over.
The way I see it, there are a couple possible options:
First: Create an impetus to get the gnomes moving! This is fairly easy. They are based at a half-orc camp which is under constant threat from a nearby orcish horde, which is mystically tied to the PC's monk. (Solution: drawn by the bond, the orcs move against the camp setting up a "we gotta go!" scenario.
If I go with this solution, there are a couple directions things could go:
1. A bargaining encounter with the gnomes in which the PCs have to justify their share. (This would likely require me to establish a larger than intended pile of loot, expecting the PCs will not get all of it, but could leave them overpowered if they find some way to circumnavigate the bargaining.)
2. The party's wizard decides to start teleporting the loot back to their keep. He can only memorize a couple teleport spells each day, so this would take some time and would likely require that he bring in other wizardy help. Plus, he officially works for the gnomes... so it would set up a loyalty dilemma.
3. The party takes off with the gnomes aboard the airship saying they'll divvy things up in flight... the bargaining might ensue, or the group might try to take over the airship (unlikely, because they are all goody-two-shoes... but still, a risk.
One important thing to note is that my group is adamant about getting their just rewards. They seem to think that everything I describe as valuable in a dungeon is intended as part of the treasure, and they feel cheated if they can't carry it all out... hence a proliferation of heward's handy haversacks.
Any thoughts on how best to handle this? It feels like a great roleplaying seed, but also potentially dangerous for game-group morale.
I've got that part figured out. However, I would love some input on the next step.
See, my PCs came to this ruin as part of a gnomish led expedition tasked with finding ancient sites and items of arcane note. The gnomes will likely want some, if not all of this dragon's horde, as it is located at the site they came to find. The gnomes also own the airship the party used to fly out to the Wastes where the ruins are located, so without it, the group is going to be hard-pressed to transport over 100,000g worth of coin, gems and other items the several hundred miles back to civilization and their base of operations.
There is also the challenge that, since the gnomes are on a research expedition, they will likely want to stick around and do research for a while... This doesn't work for the party, because they have to find a cure for the blight before the end of the summer... which is about 1/2 over.
The way I see it, there are a couple possible options:
First: Create an impetus to get the gnomes moving! This is fairly easy. They are based at a half-orc camp which is under constant threat from a nearby orcish horde, which is mystically tied to the PC's monk. (Solution: drawn by the bond, the orcs move against the camp setting up a "we gotta go!" scenario.
If I go with this solution, there are a couple directions things could go:
1. A bargaining encounter with the gnomes in which the PCs have to justify their share. (This would likely require me to establish a larger than intended pile of loot, expecting the PCs will not get all of it, but could leave them overpowered if they find some way to circumnavigate the bargaining.)
2. The party's wizard decides to start teleporting the loot back to their keep. He can only memorize a couple teleport spells each day, so this would take some time and would likely require that he bring in other wizardy help. Plus, he officially works for the gnomes... so it would set up a loyalty dilemma.
3. The party takes off with the gnomes aboard the airship saying they'll divvy things up in flight... the bargaining might ensue, or the group might try to take over the airship (unlikely, because they are all goody-two-shoes... but still, a risk.
One important thing to note is that my group is adamant about getting their just rewards. They seem to think that everything I describe as valuable in a dungeon is intended as part of the treasure, and they feel cheated if they can't carry it all out... hence a proliferation of heward's handy haversacks.
Any thoughts on how best to handle this? It feels like a great roleplaying seed, but also potentially dangerous for game-group morale.
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If you're really concerned that too much will find its way to your players, then I really suggest letting the appropriate amount of loot hit the deck of the airship, and if the characters "do the right thing" and give the gnomes their share, then you reward them with another batch of "too easy" loot soon after. Maybe the gnomes left behind to investigate find a second treasure hoard and because of the good-will shown by the players in the first round of loot distribution, they decided to tell them about the "extra" loot and are searching them out to give them their share. If the characters take more than their share the first time, then the gnomes have some ill will towards them, and not only reneg on their airship privelleges, but the group finds out later about the other chamber and all its wonders, and the reasoning behind their lack of involvement in it's retrieval.
Now that I've written that down, I think I like it even if you're not worried about their characters doing the right thing, as it adds another adventure hook (or at least an optional vault you can pull from) that you can throw in on a whim. "Hey guys, remember that dragon hoarde? Yeah, they found a second chamber while you were back here trying to end the blight....."
One thing I will say about them is that they don't really quibble about divvying stuff up. All the coin and sellables have their value split evenly, and items go to the most appropriate character with no complaints about how much this sword or that ring is worth.
I mention this story as a means of querying the nature of your characters' greed. If you give them large amounts of "cash", do they sit on the cash, or do they go and buy items with it?
Pieta knows I'd be doing the latter at my first opportunity, so a GM wanting to manipulate me would make sure the dragon's hoard contained lots of items as well as gold and gems - the adventuring gear of folks who tried and failed to bring down this dragon in years past. And then said GM would figure out a reason why the gnomes would only want the cash and not the magical weapons or rings or wondrous items. And then I would be too busy doing a happydance over being allowed to keep the basket of Everlasting Rations to sit and do math over whether I was getting a fiscally equitable share.
Anyway, since then, I tend to provide more level appropriate items in most treasure hordes, along with numerous sellables & coins. However, it seems that my players always go burn their money on low-end magic items (or even 50 flasks of alchemist's fire!?) then they don't really use the stuff they bought. As a result, those who are still playing their original characters have a ton of lower level single-use items like scrolls and potions just sitting in their packs.
The other challenge I've run into is, because my players hand out items to the PCs deemed best able to use them, and then divide the cash evenly (without factoring in item value) some of my less assertive players have dipped to the low end of the party's wealth scale. I try to place items for a particular character but don't like to intervene in a metagame way if the item doesn't go where it was intended.
So, my strategy for the dragon's horde ended up using the following method:
1. calculate the total deficit required to get my PCs back to their appropriate wealth level.
2. gather a wish list of items from any players who submitted them.
3. plant a "big ticket item" for each player in the horde based on the wish list (since my least assertive players are my two magic users, I plan to place their items in chests that can only be opened by channeling arcane power into the locks as a way of saying, "This stuff is yours!")
4. put half of the remainder in cash
5. use a random treasure generator to create the rest.
6. tweak as necessary. (e.g. the random generator churned out an inordinate number of scrolls, so I took some of them and compiled them into a single wizard's spellbook for our wizard to build on his spell selection.)
As to the items, the gnomes are mostly interested in ancient magic. Most of the loot items are things the dragon picked up while raiding caravans, or like you mentioned, from previous adventurers. I think a portion of the treasure and full access to the site and its ancient magics (like a planar orrery) will be a fair split for the rest of the cash and non-ancient objects.
Also...what do we get for helping you with this problem in the first place? Can I have a cool weapon of some kind? Or maybe an extra-dimensional space of some kind? I can just give it to one of my characters and tell my GM you said it was okay, right?