Luxuries

Let's begin with an example to give you a sense of what this is all about:


 * Example: Raistlin's luxury is "researching immortality" and he is now heavy in debt with a shadowy cabal of necromancers: 500 gold. Since 500 gp roughly corresponds to what a 8th level item costs, we'll say a 500 gp luxury like this could trigger an 8th level assassin sent by the cabal, or introduce the team to an 8th level adventure, or any other development appropriate for one or more 8th level characters.

The core motivation for the changes is to make temptation a key theme of the campaign. It simply is interesting if one character skims off the top while another is trying to stay on the straight road. It is also a common trope of stories involving detectives and criminals.

For this to work, we can't use the default assumption of Pathfinder 2, namely that in order to survive you must be greedy and loot all gold you see, and also to be willing to spend most of it on upgrading your magic weapons. What we want is instead the choice between accepting bribes, stealing seized assets etc or not to be an actual real choice. You must be able to choose to do it just as easily as to not do it, otherwise it isn't a choice, just the illusion of choice.

So gold can't purchase magic items. Don't worry, the campaign gives you the gear you need through three other mechanisms: Contraband, Crafting and Requisitioning! But gold needs to do something worthwhile, so it doesn't feel worthless. My answer is Luxuries. That is, you "invest" your gold in Luxuries and get rewarded with story progress and adventures personalized to your character.