Please post the actual things your characters have spent money on to get reserve XP. I’d like to see some examples.
My favorite one so far is the character who went to find a lawyer or accountant or fantasy-equivalent whatever, and gave him a huge amount of money and asked him to “invest” it, at his best discretion. And told the guy he was going out adventuring, and would be back ‘eventually.’
I don’t know if the player actually INTENDED that to be a source of reserve XP or if he meant it to work out, but I said NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG and rolled with it.
Right now, my plan is to gin up a chart when he goes to try and visit the guy.
On a low roll the agent will have skipped town or blown it on something stupid. The PC will get reserve XP. On a high roll, he might have actually managed to wisely invest in it.
Well, there was that time the bard took an NPC sorceress on a date, ended up charmed, and woke up in the morning to find all of his gold gone… We counted it towards reserve XP since he had been ‘carousing’. There was also the time they spent (lots of) gold to repair relations with one of the local temples, or when they were headed out of town and the fighter gave a dude in down a bunch of money to make a statue of her (nobody knows if the statue was ever completed; I’ll likely roll for it if they return there).
Well, last night a player in my group spent 1000gp (almost all the money he had earned to date) on a shrine to his fallen war dog. Hired a mason to build it up, an artist to carve a statue of the noble beast and even buried it with the pelt of the dire wolf the dog died fighting.
Another character spent her fortune on a party for the entire town (it was a very small town) to celebrate still being alive. The battle had turned pretty ugly and she was pretty sure that she was going to die since she was under the effects of a Hold Spell while her friends were falling around her.
My players haven’t really spent their money on anything dumb, but these might qualify as humorous or interesting:
Shampooing and pampering a war dog.
Getting their names added to a list of major donors at a temple.
Buying matching outfits for an entire army. Not cheap ones, either.
Paying through the nose for the fanciest armor.
Buying barrels of the finest wine and lugging them over a hundred miles into deepest wilderness … to hold a wine-tasting with giantesses.
Taking three wagons of copper pieces and copper-piece-equivalent treasures which they had been dragging around forever, and giving them away to the poor.
My group and I seem to be under the impression that you INTENTIONALLY spend frivolously instead of getting frivolous spending for losing money from poor choices. I think I like this thread’s technique better.