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GameMastery Guide / Rewards

What is a Reward

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 110
With a little added effort, treasure can be much more than just numbers temporarily penciled onto a character sheet. You can also extend the definition of treasure by making a variety of intangible benefits available to the characters.

Making Basic Treasure Interesting

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 110
Each time you place a major treasure hoard in your game that includes coins or goods, look for a way to make the experience of discovering, transporting, or trading it somehow interesting or memorable. One general point to bear in mind when fleshing out any aspect of your world is that engaging details compete with one another. Players tend to recall one or two salient moments from any given session. They form strong memories of items and incidents that carry an emotional charge or promise to affect future events. If you lovingly add texture and history to every single item of treasure, all of this detail will blend together. This technique is more powerful when used sparingly.

Be prepared to be flexible when introducing special treasure details. You may find yourself about to bring in a vividly detailed treasure when the players are preoccupied with other concerns, like chasing down an escaped enemy, saving a dying comrade, or charging onward to the next plot development. If something else has already captured their interest, turn the treasure into a nondescript pile of coins and save the vivid details for an otherwise uneventful moment.

The most memorable treasure details are those that relate in some way to other events in the campaign, including the characters’ backstories. This might be as simple a matter as specifying that a cache of coins was minted in Celwynvian, when one of the PCs is exploring her elven heritage. When customizing basic treasure, ask yourself the following questions.

Does the item reinforce a PC’s characterization?

If a player has described his character as obsessed with books, make sure that your campaign’s treasure troves turn up more than their share of rare and antique tomes.

Can the item reflect the adventure’s theme?

In an adventure where the heroes are questioning their identities, they could discover a precious mirror. During a quest for political power, they might find a crown or scepter.

Would the item foster an interesting debate or conflict within the party?

If one PC hates demons and wishes to destroy anything associated with them, and the other is interested in studying dark arts in order to defeat them, give them a golden demon statuette to argue over. Aim for conflicts that define the characters, rather than ones that set them at each other’s throats.

Is there a detail that will become important later?

Foreshadow a future adventure into the ruins of a forgotten civilization by letting the adventurers discover a tapestry depicting the rise and fall of that society. This allows you to spread out the history lesson over several game sessions.

Can an item of treasure be used to subtly introduce an NPC?

Often you want the party to meet a supporting player in a casual context before they discover his or her true importance in the story. The NPC might later be revealed to be an evil conspirator, a prince unaware of his birthright, or a predatory monster in disguise. If so, introduce an item of treasure that character will want to buy, examine, or attempt to steal. For example, make your conspirator a rug merchant, and the item of treasure a rare and valuable carpet.

Would an item lead the characters to interact nonviolently with an enemy who wouldn’t ordinarily talk to them?

A precious memento or object of art might attract the attention of a cruel and powerful entity who wants it enough to negotiate a fair transaction under neutral circumstances. This allows the PCs to converse with the dragon, bandit king, or demon lord they’ll wind up fighting later, when they have enough experience to tackle the foe.

When none of these questions help you to customize a treasure item, find a random interesting detail. Turn to a random page of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, or another setting sourcebook you happen to be drawing on, and look for a detail that inspires a unique item of non-magical treasure. If you’re not using a setting book, any edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable makes a fine source of random mythological and fantastic inspiration.

For example, let’s say that your random page takes you to the section of the Campaign Setting detailing the Red Mantis Assassins. Using this as inspiration, you decide that the treasure includes a fabulously expensive brooch given to top members of the organization after performing an exemplary kill. In order to trade this in for cash, the party will either have to find a merchant who doesn’t fear the wrath of the Red Mantis, or seek out a high-ranking member of the group. One of the PCs might do something rash, like use the brooch to pass herself off as a member of the Red Mantis.

Non-Adventuring Magic Items

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 111
The magical objects detailed by the game rules are, for obvious reasons, restricted to items useful to adventurers. It stands to reason, though, that in a world of readily available enchantment, many items would be broadly useful in everyday life and of little or no interest to explorers and freebooters. These items are memorable and unique but players will inevitably trade them for cash or use them to solve plot dilemmas. You don’t need detailed rules for them because they don’t affect the world of adventure in which the characters operate. Categories of non-adventuring enchantments include:
  • Agricultural: enhanced plows, fertility potions for livestock, or magic beans
  • Decorative: art objects, architectural features, furniture, or garments made more beautiful and wondrous by magical means
  • Tools: enhanced hammers, leather-curing vats, never-dull scissors, rope-making devices, or self-heating forges

Burdensome Treasure

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 111
The difficulty of moving treasure out of a dungeon and back to home base might in itself inspire scenes of challenging adventure. Large or unwieldy furnishings, antiquities, or art objects may require the hiring of carts, wagons, or entire trade caravans. Chunks of precious ore or extremely large coin hoards could also require huge transportation efforts. Delicate items, though easily carried, might also be tough to safely move through long stretches of treacherous terrain. Bandits and nomadic wilderness monsters often prey on slow-moving caravans. The party might end up battling as many enemies while taking a burdensome treasure back to civilization as they did to acquire it in the first place.

Although such problems are realistic and logical, they can be overused. Players think of treasure as theirs once they’ve found it and may resent it when it’s taken away from them.

Special Treasures

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 111
Art objects include paintings, sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, and so on. Heavily ornamented weapons and armor may be useless in the field but highly valuable as art objects. Everyday objects from ancient civilizations may also be regarded as desirable collectibles, especially when well made. Ostentatious garments were central to the luxury trade of the Middle Ages, but textiles are easily damaged. If found in good condition, a heavily ornamented cloak or tunic could fetch more than a chest full of coins. Books are always rare and valuable in a pre-print society, and may be of value to scholars, collectors, monasteries, or universities. All of these luxury items are salable to knowledgeable and specialized dealers located in large civilized centers.

Art objects may be delicate or burdensome. Use of the Appraise skill is necessary to separate valuable objects from dross. Condition affects value; a badly deteriorated work fetches a low price, no matter how renowned the artist. Works by known artists increase in value if accompanied by documentation establishing their histories, but this is rarely found when objects have been stolen or looted.

Services, Franchises and Property

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 111
Rather than hauling treasure hoards from the dungeon hideouts of defeated foes, adventurers may be granted boons or gifts by patrons assigning them to perform dangerous tasks. Example assignments can include rescuing hostages, gathering information, defeating military foes, or clearing a landholding of hostile occupants.

Artisans, merchants, and others of middling means may offer free future services in exchange for adventurous deeds. These can range from free lodgings or repair work to discount magical services. Churches might gift worthy adventurers with credits for free spells, up to and including resurrections. Local authorities or wealthy non-nobles may grant franchises or licenses to perform lucrative business operations, such as textile-weaving, bookmaking, glass-blowing, or leather-tanning.

Outright ownership of land by commoners may be rare in a pseudo-medieval society, but noble patrons often grant property rights. Adventurers typically gain management rights over a section of arable land, which belongs to a noble either as an ancestral claim or a similar feudal grant from a ruler. When it comes to managing and working such land, adventurers may prefer to take a hands-off approach, hiring a bailiff or sheriff to oversee production and taxation. These details may then be left in the background, except when land ownership generates the occasional story hook or perhaps the occasional small profits (nothing rivaling the rewards of adventuring, of course). The PCs may periodically be called on to deal with marauders, repel invading rivals, or quell peasant rebellions.

Coins

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 112
Most of the time, a coin should be a coin—a background object the PCs quest for, but that warrants little attention. Occasionally, though, you can add a sense of reality and nuance to your world by describing certain coin hoards as possessing special properties.

Antiquity: Coins may have been struck hundreds or thousands of years ago. They might date to a past era of a still-extant nation, or to an extinct civilization. They may contain images of long-dead rulers, or symbols of vanished religions. Figures on the coins can be inhuman or monstrous.

Distance: The coins might be contemporary but originate from a far distant land. Physical clues found nearby might explain the past presence of foreign adventurers or traders.

Unusual Forms: Old or foreign coins might have unexpected shapes. They could have holes in the center, so they can be stringed as necklaces. Triangular, spherical, square, or rectangular shapes might replace round coins, perhaps to suit the peculiar hands of non-human races.

Bullion: Large quantities of precious metals are sometimes found not in coin form, but as bricks or wafers. For symbolic reasons, other cultures might store them as cylinders, cones, or other less efficiently stacked shapes.

Superficial Magic: Coins of lost or fabulous civilizations might be imbued with decorative magic. They could glow, change color, or contain moving images. Enchanted coins might produce sounds, ranging from soothing hums to dramatically chiming music. They might emit separate aromas for each denomination, suggesting that the people who minted them relied on smell over sight.

Unusual coins might carry a value higher than their metal content suggests. Magical coins whose functions prove useful to adventurers should not count as cash, but as magical treasure far above their face value.

Intangible Benefits

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 112
Other rewards provide benefits with no cash trade-in value. Kings or other rulers might confer noble titles, granting the characters status and specific legal rights forbidden to commoners. These may include various story benefits, including the right to be present at royal court. There the PCs can wield political influence, gather useful information, and find ways to enhance their holdings and franchises. Letters of marque grant the legal right to attack designated enemies, and in exchange the PCs get to keep financial proceeds without fear of legal reprisal within the king’s borders.

Other authorities may confer honors and privileges valid within their own spheres of influence. A bandit king may grant rights of command and passage valid on his turf. A clerical order might recognize a PC as a defender of the faith. An honorary degree at a university allows access to libraries and knowledgeable NPCs.

Certain experiences, usually arising during successful encounters, may grant a character a bonus on checks related to a highly specific situation. The situation to which the bonus applies should reflect the original experience in some fashion. For example:
  • Noble titles grant characters a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks when dealing with NPCs of inferior rank.
  • Subduing the famed Golden Bull grants the character a +2 bonus on Handle Animal involving beasts of burden.
  • By slaying the Lich of Gwyndor, the character gains a +2 bonus on all Spellcraft checks concerning necromancy.
To avoid overload, these “situational bonuses” might be limited to three such awards per character. Characters who reach their limit can drop old bonuses to gain new ones.

Story Benefits

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 112
Some adventures can confer additional benefits to make it easier for the characters to overcome upcoming obstacles. Often you can describe these story benefits in advance, increasing the players’ investment in the proceedings.
  • “By driving the orcs out of the valley, you’ll make it safe for the peasants who live on your landholding.”
  • “By capturing the Golden Cornucopia, you can save the besieged residents of High Castle from starvation.”
  • “By disarming the astral cannon, you can stop the priests of Urgathoa from decimating the paladin army.”
    • Sometimes story benefits become obvious after the characters overcome a crucial obstacle. The PCs may discover only in retrospect that they’ve saved farmers, lifted the siege of High Castle, or shielded a paladin army.

    Story benefits can provide information, grant political influence, or allow NPC allies to overcome rivals and enemies. They allow adventurers to meet or solidify connections to important NPCs. As with any exciting ongoing story, a success often leads to a new challenge, and additional obstacles and encounters for the heroes to overcome.

    Treasures as Adventures

    Source GameMastery Guide pg. 113
    Treasures usually appear as the capper to a successful encounter or adventure. Though their appearance may mark the end of one story, they can also serve as springboards to further events.

    You can draw out the sense of emotional reward treasure brings by making its acquisition a multi-step affair. Anticipated rewards are sweeter than surprise treasures. By completing one encounter, the heroes may obtain a map, document, or verbal description pointing to a treasure’s actual location. This should be an impressive haul of cash or magic the entire group will look forward to claiming.

    Alternatively, the treasure itself might be assembled from several parts, each gained after a separate encounter. Magical relics might accumulate additional powers as the pieces are put together. A group of dispersed art objects— for example, a chess set or a collection of royal jewels— may have a greater value if sold together than piecemeal. Linked treasures can unify an otherwise unrelated series of combat and exploration sequences.

    Intelligent magic items give you wide latitude to launch adventures. Give the item an agenda of its own. It works to persuade its owner to perform missions furthering its goal. It might unlock new powers as its agenda is served, in effect making it a multi-step treasure. Like any influential NPC, an intelligent item may have past enemies who come gunning for it. Its owners might simply evade them, or counter by actively seeking and defeating their newly acquired foes.

    Story events may be triggered not only by the discovery of items but also by their use. When the heroes solve problems using mighty magic items, the unintended consequences of their actions may spawn further adventure plots. For example, magical wishes may alter the world in unexpected ways. After unwittingly skewing the cosmic balance, the adventurers may have to undertake further tasks to put matters right.

    Exit Rewards

    Source GameMastery Guide pg. 113
    As your campaign reaches a final climax, you may choose to lay the groundwork for story rewards that change the characters forever, bringing closure to their personal narratives. You may do this when you know a player is leaving your game for good, or when you want to wrap up the entire campaign. The latter is a natural choice as PCs reach the game’s highest levels.

    Given enough advance notice, you can create a series of adventures leading to an indispensable position for a departing hero. This impressive new role in the world precludes the PC from embarking on further adventures—though the character might make occasional cameo appearances as an NPC, played by you. The exiting hero might take on political power as a king, emperor, or elected ruler. She might be granted military authority as a general, or rise to heights of clerical power as a pontiff or high priestess.

    The ultimate exit reward is apotheosis, an ascension to godhood or similar immortal status. Perhaps in the wake of plane-shattering events that leave holes in the known pantheon, the heroes achieve victories so great that they depart the mortal world. Now vastly powerful but unable to intervene directly in mortal events, they accept worship, dole out divine spells to their followers, and hold court in their newly acquired celestial realms. Incorporate these new gods into your next campaign, allowing players’ new characters to worship their former ones as deities.

    Be careful to avoid favoritism when concluding a PC’s career with exit rewards. Give everyone a chance to shape his favored glorious end state. Collaborate with players to successfully bring the closure they envision to their exiting heroes. If they see their characters retiring to blissful obscurity, that can be just as satisfying a reward as godhood.