🌟 Spending Gold Patreon Podcast! www.patreon.com/posts/38996127

Strangest thing my group has spent gold on maybe is 100 plastic champagne glasses (modern setting) so that we could pose as a catering company and spike the drinks with a true sight potion so a crowd would see the BBEG's true form (lich disguised as an elf politician)

Fund your own quests. Are you a wizard that needs special components but are a bit tied up cleansing demons? Help starting adventurers and give them the drudge job of retrieving a clutch of feathers from some cockatrice. This could even be a good source of hooks for different sessions. // Flip a dungeon and turn it into a base for your group or the local liege.

Players in a shop: We're trying to save you, give us this for free. I demand a discount. Too expensive. Let's just kill the shopkeeper and take everything. Players upgrading their house: 1000 gold? Okay, seems reasonable.

I once had a character spend most of his gold and an expensive gemstone into the pettiest fashion accessory ever. My boy Burton wore an eye patch because he thought it made him look more rugged and mysterious. During out adventures, we found a beautiful gemstone. Everyone wanted it, so we played dice to see who got it. Burton won. The whole way back to town, the Paladin kept insisting that he sell the gem and split the gold evenly among the party. Instead, Burton had the gem set into a brand new gold plated velvet eye patch. It made him a target for every thief in a hundred miles, but ya know. Sometimes you have to suffer to look good.

My players the second I brought up taxes: Let's commit tax evasion! That plan fell through when they decided to start an adventuring guild and the fantasy IRS caught up with them.

My Glamour Bard became Captain of a ship so I had her spend gold on training to become proficient at sailing! I think training is a really fun way to spend gold. Ships come with their own expenses ie paying crew, upgrading the ship, repairs, food and other resources. Weirdest purchase: My Paladin bought 30 pieces of dried fish for 2 gold from a little girl. She had set up her shop near by a hostile place the group was about to enter and she didn't want the possibility for her to get hurt so she bought out all the little girls stock. The girl also made her promise to come back the next day to buy more fish... So this could be an ongoing thing.... good thing My Paladins Find Steed is a Bear.

Two of my players were infected with lycanthropy, but they're too low level to have remove curse yet. They encountered a wizard NPC that offered to remove each curse for 100gp each. They tried persuading her to lower the price, which they did, to 90gp each. They then said "That's still way too much. Screw it, we'll find our own way!" and left. The next session they spent 250gp on minor healing potions 🙃. Last session there was a full moon, so those two PC's transformed then ran off from the rest of the group. Now we gotta deal with a split party yay 🤷

One of the more eccentric characters I had was during 3.5. He had a cart (for carrying things), a rowboat (stored on the cart; just in case), and two donkeys for pulling the cart, named Kicken and Haulen. Then, because it would be cruel to leave his donkeys in the cold, he had a portable hut. He also kept a collapsible bathtub. But probably the weirdest thing was that I maxed out his Profession (Calligrapher) and Forgery skills (my DM allowed them to synergize), so he had fine quills; colored inks and waxes; and various other tools of the trade.

A ring of featherfall and an umbrella is my favourite combination. For when the paladin in full plate decides to be Mary Poppins instead.

Most of my characters tend to be fairly generous with their money, giving it to poor or needy people or making donations to temples, schools, and hospitals. After all, adventurers are obscenely wealthy compared to the average person in D&D. If you have that much gold laying around, give some of it to people who need it more. Also, it's a great way to boost your party's reputation. :)

As a player, I once had a character (Gnome, Thief), who used most of his money to spread his fame all over the world, (Not as a thief but as a nice guy and philanthropist), I did this in secret with the DM. Every time our party would arrive in a new town, the people would come out and greet me with joy. The other players couldn't figure out how I was so well known. [ I told the DM I wanted to hire town criers and others to spread my wealth to each of these towns mentioning their benefactor in the process.] It did get me out of a few jams at times but mostly it was just fun.

Two cool things my kids have spent their gold on in our campaign: 1. My youngest bought an inn/tavern and is renovating it into the Eolian from kingkiller. Of course that meant Stancheon and Deoch became hirable NPCs to run it and develop talent since they’re on the road most of the time. 2. My oldest has been investing in shipping and stil equipment and is in the process of building a rum distillery/bottling business. She has contacts on a southern island for sugar, a ship for transporting it, friends with dwarves to build equipment, and rescued a friend from death who was a brewer. Plus the main NPC operates a series of taverns throughout the kingdom for her to start a contract with. Serious up front investment, but it will eventually set them up for retirement.

You're doing great on the extra editing these days Bob

Congrats on 5k!!! And good spending is a big problem, love that you gave so many options! Great stuff!

When I was running my game the other night one of the PC's where dedicated to finding a stray dog in town and keeping it as a pet. So I made a small dog and rolled for how healthy it was and let's say mangy and frail is nice. So after they fed the dog they went to pet it and failed a con save rolled 3 and needed a 7 so I gave them fleas and they proceeded to use their gold to clean the dog and provide it food. Not to mention the gold to get rid of the fleas and then also to nurse a dying dog back to good health.

From a player prospective I alway try to give my characters something that they like to spend money one, like poetry books, fine foods/ sweets, or gambling. It can lead to interesting rp and I fine it makes them seem more real

In my last campaign the players had to fight a BBE-Monster. And in doing so they needed to bring an equally powerfull and colossal creature to the material plain. One PC was a Cleric with the Travel domain who planed to build a spelljammer ship anyway. The the players redisgned the ship to stow that colossal creature and end up paying gold for the ability to plainshift.

My old half orc started out as a barbarian slave gladiator but wanted to better himself, and became a wizard. But Greyhawk Society types didn’t accept him. So he spent up big on commissioning a symphony from the local orchestra. Loved him.

Great ideas man! I really like the idea of getting my PCs to make stuff. I have a fighter who smiths, a wizard and a monk who has proficiency in alchemy

This is my go to channel when I need other ideas/perspectives. Thanks for this, and thanks for all of your help on the icespire keep campaign man. Keep up the good work and I hope you enjoy yourself

Great suggestions! I always have my PCs repair their weapons, clothing, and gear. Plus I tax them and they have to pay a weekly wage to their hirelings and any dues for the ones who are involved in guilds. My players LOVE keeping track of these little mundane details. Keep up the great videos Bob!

It's really interesting to see how much your videos have changed in a year. Even the way you present. Your voice is more confident. Early on it was very hushed and quiet, almost ASMR material really. Now, your expression helps tell your videos as much as the info. Its one of the best parts about your channel, and you are truly willing to teach anyone! I am here, because I realized, I don't think I ever watched this video (oops) and since Tumble is all about buying things ( even though she is trying to save up some money to get to the surface), i figured I would hop over here and check out this video.

I like to spend my gold on urchins in town and make them runners, couriers, informants. Maybe if one's really good, I take them on as a squire. It honestly doesn't take much if you're spending silver and gold on young people who ordinarily expect only copper.

This is not only a player video. As a dm we can incentivize our players to be more creative with their money. I like to prepare "shopping lists" where i list stuff other than items. This then inspires them to ask me for other ingame services or bits and bobs. One thing i like doing is offering club or guild memberships. Those can be a simple status symbol or they may offer services which are only provided to members.

I played in a Ravnica campaign where we got a house near a poor area, so we started a soup kitchen. :)

Super helpful! I always struggle trying to look at other things my players can use their gold with, since most of the time there's more gold than there is stuff to buy/use it on!

Great stuff, Bob!

My players love spending gold. They like to buy fancy clothes and things for their rooms. In my Eberron game, they have an airship with their own rooms, and I made computer images of the rooms where they will buy art and rugs and things to make the rooms look cool. And different outfits. They never run out of stuff to spend the gold on. Along with upgrading the ship and paying for the crew. In my Sword Coast game my players spend gold on keeping the pub up and running they own they use as a base of operations. Very much like the ship, but they have to travel from place to place which lets me have more time for random encounters, since with an airship they are pretty much teleporting around. Because there are only so many Pirates and flying monsters you can throw at them until it gets dull.

We bought a small ship and became pirates, and now have more gold than we started with. Please help.

Dream job! Thanks for the video!

Great stuff! Thanks for making these.

Nice tips! I will try to put them in to my Dungeons and Dragons as a first time DM! Also I like the puns! Keep up the great work!

I really do like applying the everyday expenses and the likes. Really gives the players something to work for.

Hello Bob. Lots of good ideas there. When I DM, I often encourage my Players to build various things... Fighter's 'castle', Wizard's 'tower', Ranger's 'retreat', etc. I have nudged Clerics to build orphanages, shelters for the homeless, and even soup kitchens! Especially if they do not want to build their own Temple, or Church to their God. In one case, my Players ended up buying a parcel of land that was thought to be 'cursed', after the town there was destroyed by a volcano a hundred miles away. While digging up the town, and un-burying the sewer system, they discovered a chunk of metal that was thrown from the ancient volcano, which was valuable enough to hire dwarves to 'mine' it. Valuable enough that the dwarves, upon seeing the extent of the uncovered metal mass, actually paid the group to mine the rich source for their projects. The dwarves even hired locals to cart off the ore to their mountain forges, which did good things for the local economy. After the metal mass was mined out, which left a HUGE hole in the ground, the party brought in masons and stone crafters, to build their own 'dungeon', which they eventually filled with low level monsters and used to train new adventurers. The whole thing was eventually 'capped' with packed earth, with a Guild Hall of Adventurers atop the 'dungeons'. Meanwhile, the sewers were fixed and reburied. The ruins of the town were demolished and replaced with structures that ALL had a 'basement' storage area. Eventually good stout walls were added for security, and the Player's characters became the Founding Council of the new town. Later on in the timeline, I was able to use their 'retired' characters to give out 'quests'. Things like 'go and eradicate that pesky gobliln village', or 'go collect these semi-rare componets for the Mage's tower', and others such 'mini adventures'. Eventually, those characters all died, excepting the High Elf, who moved out of the town and back to the Elvish Forest to find a mate and have a few children. Those Founders were honored by having specially crafted statues of themselves (made from various portraits done of them over the years) in the middle of the central park of the town, which had grown to a fair sized city. The 'strangest' thing about it all was the party's Cleric, who built a temple to her god, with an attached orphanage. The orphanage, soup kitchen for the poor, and the temple itself, were supported by a 'gate tax' to enter the town. Having the gate tax be 1 silver piece, pretty much kept the poorer folk out of the town itself, so a 'shanty town' grew up around the western gate and extended a few acres to the edge of the woods surrounding the town. This 'poor man's village' abutting the main town, became known as Barter Town, since money was scarce and most goods were bartered instead of sold outright.

Bob, you're a GREAT teacher.

My current character spends an extortionate amount on taxidermy preserving the party’s nastiest kills to be displayed in their tavern

Cool video, thanks Bob!

Had a Bugbear fighter for a curse of Stradh campaign who splurged on two ladders, a bunch of ball bearings, 9 tiles worth of caltrops, and complex pulley contraption. During long rests, they would surround themself with caltrops,and then surround the caltrops with ball bearings, if there was a need to be extra paranoid, they would lash the two ladders (like an A frame) together and sleep on top. With a maxed STR, using the pulley contraption allowed for lifting 800ish lbs solo, which was only used once to create a home alone styled booby trap in the witch’s windmill, involving some heavy furniture/milling equipment on the second/third floor, and successfully luring one of the witches to try and come up the stairs and end up like the Wicked witch of the East, only without the whole house flattening thing.

Bob: Spend gold for your family orphan PC: Cry in the corner.

We've used some of these things in the game I play in. My barbarian doesn't have much use for gold, except to buy drinks at the taverns we visit and spread joy. But when we got to visit my hometown, my family received a nice bit of gold, and some of the finest ale I had found.

Love the dice. Might have to buy a set.

You covered a lot of ways to spend gold. Good video

Loved this video. Loved the ending. Peace BoB.

I believe that there should be added/ would be nice if the added couple of extra rules/features to some of mentioned by you items. 1: Fancy shelter could give one exhaustion shield and if you have non for 3 days you get exhausted and need normal shelter to lose it. 2:if party spends half a day on travel by foot they get exhausted and they have to either take a short rest or use different methods of travel to not get it. 3:Eating only normal rations should also have 3 days rule like I proposed for shelter On the other hand fancy food could give temp hit points for this day that can stack with other methods but if you eat over 3 fancy meals before rest you get exhausted. 5:now regarding clothes if you fought in normal clothes and got damaged for more then half of your hp your clothes gets damaged and you get penalty of 1 to skills that use charisma. IF you do not clean your clothes for 3 days you get another -1. On the other hand if you have fancy clothes then based on their quality you can get either +1 or +2 to charisma based skill. They could even add crown which rises charisma based skills by +5 clothes could also have bloodied condition if you were male attacker and killed enemy and it could lower the persuasion by 2 but rise the intimidation by 2. 6: Cleanliness: if you spend 1 days without cleaning yourself you get -1 to charisma based skills, if you spend 3 days without cleaning you get -2 to charisma based skills and start rolling for disease, if you roll lower then 5 you get sick and your max hp gets lowered to 3/4 of your max. If you still do not clean your self after 5 then it roll for disease has dc 10 and after 30 days dc becomes 15 and you get -5 to charisma based skills Those rules would made it so prestidigitation would become more important because currently it is mostly for trying to break the game and not use it for it's normal use. Mending would also become much more useful because you would get things to actually mend. This would also make it so there would be different dynamics between one day travel adventures and long road travel because currently only thing that happens during travel are random encounters.

Thanks!

6:45 "they are indestructible" [Bob attempts to tear the coin in half with his bare hands]

Playing waterdeep and between needing to get ssomeone out of a courthouse and the fireball incident...the party could actually use a lawyer...

IRL I enjoy the outdoors quite a bit, but if I was going to live out in the wilderness and have to move about often, I would get a mule or two, and a cart. Then I have to feed them and take care of them when I'm in the town. I also buy a trunk with a good lock so I can store stuff I don't want to drag out into the wilderness. Then, with a trunk full of mundane stuff, I have to rent space in an attic or a storeroom to keep it until I get back. I, of course, want to get a horse, bit and bridle, saddle and saddle bags, and of course more food for the horse. I get loads of paper and ink to write messages, make maps, and other things. Along with this, I need a portable desk for writing, an oil lamp with oil, extra candles and pens. I carry loads of tools of all kinds; navigation, woodcarving, alchemy, ... I like to have the clothes available so I may appear to be a Druid, either to be under- or over-estimated. I often play a Bard so I can use a disguise kit and talk my way through many situations.

A player bought a dog sled team for traveling in winter. Dog food was a big expense after that.

I actually use Paladin D6 dice. The Green ones. They're very good.

If you have to much money, you could also use it as ammunition for your sling or melt it down to create stuff from it. A coin golem maybe :D

Fixing up a stronghold in mcdm s strongholds and followers book

My players came across a weeping whale whose baby had been killed by a whaling vessel, so they promised the whale that they would exact punishment. Bad idea. They went to the whalers’ island to find out that whaling was a heavy industry with hundreds, if not thousands of people dependent on the whalers. Whaling, while distasteful, was not intrinsically evil and, as the PCs were LG, there was no justification for just destroying the industry. This forced them to buy out the whalers, shut down the businesses, and come up with a new, less morally repugnant industry to take the place of the whaling industry. They came up with the S.L.U.S.H. fund (Standard Leasing and Underwater Seafood Harvesting). Their business model was to send out ships with magic-based NPCs to transport shrimp from the depths to the ships, magically transform them into huge shrimp, hit them with a freeze spell, then teleport them back to the factory from where they would be shipped all over the world, making the characters phenomenally wealthy. Since their wealth was in the supply chain all over the world, they effectively no longer had the use of it, but could always get their hands on enough cash for their immediate use. It got even more complicated when they came up with a banking system and paper money (they’d capitalized on the credibility and trust engendered by their successful businesses and the fact that most of the people in town worked for them). The biggest pain wasn’t getting rid of the money that they were making, but the development of the probability tables for their success rolls.

Once I was an administrator elfo who made all the accounting for a Dojo of my Samurai friend who teached orphans. That was nice.

One of my characters who was a dispossessed and transported (former) rich kid, kinda paid for civilization. We were dropped from a burning airship (long story) into a gorgeous mountain valley that happened to host a beholder with a bunch of slaves and minions, an underdark access and a few escaped Eilistraeean drow. After we allied with the drow, killed the beholder and freed its slaves, I spent my money sprucing up the beholder lair (big caves in the mountain at the head of the valley) into a sort of castle like fortification, buying up building material and farming supplies and courting people to move out there to work the farms that could be built. He sort of accidentally became king of fantasy America. Most of the beholder's slaves were dwarves, most of whom stayed. The drow stayed. Most of the farmers were human and halfling. It was a very diverse kingdom 😂

Useful and very well explained, I was supposed to sleep tonight. Damn you Bob 4 am isn't the time for me to discover you. XD

Weirdest thing my character has spent their gold on (according to their group)? Soap.

How about dominions and strongholds? There were some great rules for these in the D&D Companion Set/Rules Cyclopedia.

I had my rogues discover a black market filled with morally questionable items. They had an absolute blast and wound up with some pretty oddball things.

50. buy/train feats (not any feat mind you, more like DM mentioning that in this town you can learn the Mounted Combatant feat because there is a renown horse trainer that could for a decent sum train any member of the party provided there is also adequate downtime). It's up to DM to not let people train sentinel + polearm master or other broken combos, or at least to charge an absolute fortune for those, but then you risk them kidnaping the trainer or some other shenenigans

Hey Bob I love all these but I find the problem with so many of these is that an adventurers life if filled with so much things happening in a single day. The closest my party has gotten to a time-skip is a few days travel, DM's and players seems to want to keep things moving, and the plot developing. So a lot of the things you mentioned seem like things that could never realistically happened. Getting things enchanted, or crafted can take days or weeks and that's if someone else is doing it.

My party has done some serious gambling during our sessions! It’s a lot of fun, we’ve done everything from fighting tournaments to casinos. We’ve made a pretty penny doing so 😎

maybe a well placed unexpected Toll Bridge (black knight added for flavor!). side note: skip the soap and use the ash left over from the previous nights campfire

Income taxes are pretty new, medieval societies didn't have them (except arguably Tithing) but mostly it was a set amount you owed the local noble each year, depending on your station.

we barely have 200gp spare rn at level 12 lmao last thing we spent all our money on was repairing our ship cause we got into a ship combat with pirates, which destroyed our ship so we raided theirs instead. That and bringing stuff to get enchanted as basic +1 equipment (only 2 of our 4-player party has +X equipment at all).

So what's the BBEG for this campaign, GM? Money, my friend. Money is the BBEG. Love it!

I like selling characters clothing, especially custom tailored clothing so their clothes can add to their character description.

i say a Warship or Longboat is money well spent. especially when you haul siege weapons on them.... ;)

A lot of great ideas, but here’s the challenge: many of them create a ton of work for the DM to implement and maintain/track and be consistent about. This is always the challenge... lots of hand waving going on.

Our party rescued two dozen street kids from a rakshasa who was planning to sacrifice them. We sank around a third of our funds into setting up an orphanage. We'd noticed a beached hulk in the harbour, so we spruced it up. We then recruited a retired first mate and his wife to run it (they'd always wanted kids but didn't have any). He taught them shipboard skills and discipline, while she gave them a general education and made sure they were well fed. By the time we left three game months later, half the kids had already decided they wanted to be sailors!

I'm officially adding a bard wearing a gold chain with a comically large sundial as a pendant.

Love that intro

I had an illiterate barbarian who collected books and started a scholarship fund. Our party had really bad luck with nerdy spellcasters. By level five, we had buried a warlock, a wizard, and a bard. I came to the conclusion that scholars are to fragile and precious for this cruel world. So I’d spend my loot on rare books and then give them to libraries and universities to entertain spellcasters in their hometowns and keep them too busy reading to become adventurers. And I’d pay for the tuition/apprenticeships of sickly orphans to become cloistered scholars who could make me cool adventuring gear from the safety of their institutions.

Most of the time the biggest gold sink DMs love to place on the party so they're not rolling around with 122 carat diamonds of value in chests in the back of a wagon is scroll craft and magic item craft for casters and artificers. A magical library has been the best addition to our game play. You can check out master mages books, blue prints and schematics for magical items. Want to craft an immovable rod, and haven't figured out what your missing, head to the library to browse the schematics, and notebooks of previous artificers for that unique spell book to finally craft your immovable rod.

My PCs hired skilled Hirelings to farm bunnies, sell to the shop, which they own a portion of, and have the shop sell it for a profit!

One of the things that I'm using in my current game is restaurants and pubs. Yeah a tavern is nice but if McD was the only restaurant you could go to, you'd likely get sick of it. Especially themed restaurants

"Sweeten the deal by making mounted travel be like three times faster than walking." Per an article by Deep Hollow Ranch... "An average trail horse in decent shape can withstand a journey of 50 miles (80.5 km) in one day, while a fit endurance competitor will be able to travel even 100 miles (161 km) in a day. On the other hand, most of them can’t endure a few consecutive days of riding without a day or two of rest." I could easily justify tempting my party with horses, but then balance out the immense benefits with maintenance costs, and no doubt lots of other DMs could do so too.

One of my characters had a character arc where they were collecting gold pieces to pay off the bounty for their twin sister

Back when I was a very new player, a shop keeper convinced me to spend way more than I should have to buy an abacus... But as a bard I decided to learn to play it as a percussion instrument, so it worked out. But that's probably the strangest thing my character has spent money on.

I had a player purchase recipes from a restaurant they visited.

My players can pay for training into a feat or special ability, once. It costs 1000gp per character level, so they cannot abuse this option.

Time for shopping xD

"Consider changing that max number of people to equal their survival skill bonus" Rogue/Ranger with Expertise in Survival: >:-)

Is there a good list of things to do on downtime and to spend gold online?

Mounts just carry stuff and possibly ignore difficult terrain. Unless your riding an antelope, horses, wolfs and bears may beat humans in sprints, but after an hour they can go no faster than humans and need to be rested. So they travel the same distance in a day unless your able to get fresh horses from stables every hour.

Its not weird persay but the npc I bought it from said it was a wearable sword (it was a hat) and i just had to buy it

I Iove the idea of spending gold on luxury items like clothes, fine food & drink, townhouses, gambling, etc. Reminds me of the scene in Conan the Barbarian where he blows his earnings on wine & women after stealing the gem from Thulsa Doom's tower. In real life people with money indulge in luxuries simply because it feels good or attracts attention. But in D&D some players may need a more quantifiable, game oriented incentive to throw money around. One way to do this is convert gold to XPs, so players are closer to leveling up by spending treasure on carousing or luxuries. However this is a bit too abstract for my taste. A more tangible reward would be attribute bonuses. For example, a cool hat, jacket, or boots gives the PC a Charisma bonus. Good food and a nice home = a Constitution or hit point bonus. Donating $ to the local temple rewards the PCs with a dice reroll in the future, as a boon from the gods.

Weirdest thing I spent a ton of money on. I once took part in a campaign were I got a dark elf noble alchemist for leadership feat In pathfinder. Dm actually let me experiment with flesh warping. 10k per vat to soak a creature in. Used a bunch in defense of our personal fort. Having a tunnel entrance and having oronci fill the tunnel from floor to ceiling. Nothing tried to bother us a second time.

i like this vid

Every time I've tried managing players hygiene and pooping and the number of snickers left in their bag we end up wasting literally a third of session time on menial stuff like starting campfires or finding food instead of roleplaying or exploring... I'm glad your table appreciates that kind of minutia, personally I'd love it if my players embraced microsoft excel and we could make playing D&D more like playing Eve Online :D

One time one of my players misspoke and made a joke about cocaine to the guard stationed at the city gates they wanted to get into. Without skipping a beat I told them the guard said it was a gold piece per gram. They now have a satchel full to the brim with cocaine for literally no reason other then me going along with a joke someone else made.

I use a feature that they have to sleep in a safe location otherwise, they don't get everything from sleeping. If you need your weapons, you are not safe.

The weirdest thing one of my players spent their gold on was a broom. He passed out drunk on someones roof, they tried to knock him off with their broom and he asked to be left in peace and offered him 500 gold... he was left alone and still has that broom.

Honestly, all of those everyday expenses felt like they would add northing but tedium

Incentivize spending on food by food giving buffs based on what it is.

I put a leprechaun fey spirit in my game that just takes there bronze and gold coins and switches them

A good way to get the characters to spend their money is to tell them they get experience for spending treasure (maybe 1 XP : 10 GP). I mean, that’s literally what we do IRL: spend money on travel & items that give us pleasure, new experiences, & prestige. Then you don’t have to mandate how much they spend; they’ll want to do it. Certainly leveling up should be expensive. And you can always say that some certain expenditure doesn't gain them any experience/prestige (jewelry that could then be sold again, magic items) or mandate that only certain ones do.

I have 2B coins of gold, thank you for this.

The party I’m in established a town which unfortunately very quickly necessitated writing a constitution, because we couldn’t between the 3 of us and the dm decide who could do what