The Treasury

I'm gonna steal this from about ten games, but it's something we don't normally see in D&D and I'd like to make folks aware that it exists in case they didn't know. And also, just put this here so I will remember that I wrote about it in case I want to look at it later.

Also in the Port setting, there's a good chance the players will pick an "easy" option where their pawns are, at least to start, working for someone who hand-feeds them missions. Going from a railroad game to a player-driven game takes some getting used to in the age of story paths.

The Treasury

When mercenaries get paid, they get paid to the treasury. Of course they can pocket whatever they can carry from adventures as normal, but whoever sends them on their mission also gives them a reward. Theoretically. This money goes into a shared pot of money called the Treasury.

This is an abstract concept that allows the PCs to buy stuff without doing all the math. 50' rope would require a roll of 2 (you always have enough for one cheapo item before an adventure) while a king's ransom would require a roll of 9. So you can't even try to buy something awesome until you've increased your bankroll some.

The way the Treasury works is, you can roll to see whether there's enough money in it to buy what you need to. The die starts as 1d2 (one installment of a simple retainer fee) and goes up incrementally with each contract. 

1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d5, 1d6, two to 1d8, two to 1d10, two to 1d12. 1d12 is the max and so is doesn't really get any bigger.

Whenever the characters want to invest in something directly connected to adventuring, they can opt to use the Treasury. Like I said, cheap items cost 1. A galleon or longship would cost 6. A castle in a cloud? 11 or more??

The players may make one purchase per session that costs half their treasury die or less without rolling. After that they have to roll the die. Rolling equal to or greater than the cost of the item - just eyeball the difficulty number based on the guidelines here - means they can buy it no sweat.

If the roll is lower than the cost of the item (just eyeball it, this is very abstracted), then the die decreases by one level. See, if you use up a significant portion of your stash, you're not as rich. You can still buy the thing as long as it's something your die could roll, but you lose some buying power.

Personal items and carousing costs come from the character's own money which as I said comes from salvaging or working side jobs or whatever.

Items purchased from the Treasury technically belong to their group as a whole (but possession is 9/10th of the law among some of these murderous bastards, amiright.)

Look, if you need more specific benchmarks, do something like this

Cost 1 is up to 100 GP.

Cost 2 is up to 400 GP.

Cost 3 is up to 1500 GP.

Cost 4 is up to 4,000 GP.

Cost 5 is up to 15,000 GP.

Cost 6 is up to 40,000 GP.

Something like that. I think those numbers are a little high, but make of it what you will.