D&D’s Five Most Expensive Items Will Let Everyone Know You’re Rich
What are the most expensive items in D&D? There are fewer Spelljammers on this list than you might think. Come trade in all that gold!
When it comes to D&D, it is hard to spend all your money. For one, if you’re playing by the rules, you quickly earn so much that you might even have a hard time carrying it around, depending on how high your Strength score is.
But even if you can convert it into gems or the like, once you have more than like, 25,000 gold pieces, unless your DM is using some kind of homebrewed magic item pricing system, you can already afford basically everything your adventurer needs.
Unless that is, you have luxury tastes. These are the most expensive items in D&D that you can, per the rules, just go out and buy once you have enough money.
Palace or Large Castle – 500,000 GP
This is the single most expensive item in all of D&D. At least for now. For a grand total of 500,000 gold pieces, which means you’d need to take on at least two CR 17+ encounters that would yield a Hoard. We’re talking about slaying some serious dragons here. Or, you know, several smaller quests that are lower risk but still fairly expansive when it comes to reward.
But get yourself a half million gp, and you can build/buy your own large castle or palace. I’d personally go for the palace, myself. It will a little more than three years (3.29, if you want to be more precise) to have one custom-built. But I mean, you don’t want to buy off the rack. And that’s a lot of downtime to have going on in the meantime.
Start a palace. make some friends. Hire some NPCs. Before you know it, you’ve got your own bustling little kingdom.
Skyship – 100,000 GP
Featured in both the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount and Tal’dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, the Exandrian model of Skyship is not only more expensive than the Faerunian one, it’s also better in basically every way.
With a top speed of 10 miles per hour, a Skyship will outrun any Spelljammer (right up until they go at ridiculous speeds in Wildspace). And it can carry up to 10 tons of cargo, as well as accommodations for up to 30 passengers in relative comfort.
Bombard, Loaded – 64,000 GP
The Bombard is a ship designed by Giff, for Giff. This means it has the biggest guns in all of D&D. And on top of that, it’s also extremely heavily armored and has a high damage threshold. It can shrug off small arms fire (the D&D kind, at any rate) aplenty, all while carrying up to 150 tons of cargo and a crew of 12 souls, most of whom will be manning the guns.
Its spine-mounted giant cannon is so powerful it can tear through some spelljammers in as little as two shots. But it can only carry fourteen of its 10 ton cannon balls, so make each shot count. Especially since each shot costs 1,000 gold pieces in its own right, so that’s 14,000 gp on top of the Bombard itself, which is 50,000 gp, but you’re not going to buy the ship without the ammo for its signature gun, are you?
Temple – 50,000 GP
Do you want to get the most brownie points possible with your deity of choice? Why not build them a temple? It’s not even that expensive. In fact, it’s 1/10th the price of a Large Castle or Palace. For a similar price you could also buy an Abbey or a Keep or Small Castle, but neither sound half as grand and magnificent as a temple.
Get some statues, and have some pillars carved with reliefs. Put some frescoes in, you name it. And while, yes, it’ll take 400 days, that’s barely more than a year. By the end of it, you’ll have a new landmark to talk about. How often can you basically change the world map like that, and for so little money too?
Nautiloid – 50,000 GP
Finally, we have the iconic ship of Baldur’s Gate 3, a Nautiloid. These are Mind Flayer Spelljammers, and they are biomechanical in nature. Powered by psionics, writhing tentacles, and worse, these ships can kidnap enemies to become future residents of a Mind Flayer’s colony.
But, costing as much as a Temple does, you’ll want to keep these safe, and out of the range of any rampaging Red Dragons and Githyanki pirates.
Which of these will YOU be saving up for?
