Adventures How do you distribute treasure?

[Thasmodious]

I like 4e's guidelines as well. It's easy to track and keep balanced. Having the treasure listed in parcels makes it very easy to stick them in where ever it makes sense or is needed. I tend to like to give out large hordes, so the players get treasure less often, but they get big, fun hauls when they do. I don't use player wish lists, but its only because my players don't really do rulebooks and wouldn't have a clue of what they would want or need for their characters, outside of general stuff (magic weapon, magic amulet, magic armor) and that's easy enough to do on my own, especially with Asmor's utilities. Asmor rocks.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by The Green Adam

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means...Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

I know how you feel. We're dinosaurs. Younger players balk at the whole idea that you'd need to search for treasure. The idea that they can't have the particular item most suited to their build the moment that they can afford it infuriates them. The idea that getting treasure might be a struggle is seen as interfering with their fun.

Threads like these make me nostalgic for 'treasure as XP'. The sort of game you and I were reared on doesn't seem to have much of an audience anymore.

I feel more and more like 'Wierd Pete' every year.

I feel compelled to say things like, "Back in my day, you didn't just find treaure. You had to work for it. You'd go down into the dungeon with 50' of rope, a 10' pole, a bundle of torches, some iron spikes, chalk, paper, ink, quills, and a bunch of big sacks. You planned a foray like you'd plan a commando raid, an arctic expedition, and an archaelogical exacavation at the same time. And when you found some treasure, it was usually too heavy to just carry out. We hauled treasure out on mules. You had to have a whole caravan of porters and pack animals to haul the treasure out just to get XP because if you didn't get it back to town, you didn't gain levels, and you were lucky to get 50% of hits value when you sold it, and when you did that you thought yourself lucky if you had enough money to raise your dead and buy a potion with what was left over. And we'd walk uphill from the dungeon both ways, in the snow, with a wandering monster six times a day. You youngsters just don't know what your missing... Now, where did I put my teeth?"

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by The Green Adam

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means.

Adventure ATM?

Dumping magic items and integrating a cost-based system that allows players to purchase improved equipment by quality?

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

Granted I don't do it the ol' 'treasure type'/1e way but neither is it so complex. I wing it like I do 75% of everything else in my games. It just needs to make sense. My players don't tend to loot the bodies but they do look for useful clues and check rooms for traps and secret passages. You never know where the villain might be hiding or where they escaped to.

AD

It's short for At The Moment. I hate any form of magic shops, so my players get their items the following way mostly:
1) Loot
2) Gifts/payment

[Jeff Wilder]

(I DM 3.5.)

I more or less wing treasure distribution, but every two or three levels I evaluate wealth-by-level, and if needed I adjust over the next level or two.

[Lanefan]

Celebrim, a few posts back, pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Note: the following is based on my 1e games:

I give out treasure pretty randomly, based entirely on what would (or could) logically be found in the current adventure situation; I've never used the DMG "treasure type" tables. The surviving characters also do well enough by looting their staying-dead companions along with the dead enemies. And they do loot *everything*, sometimes even down to the last arrow; despite the fact I've never used the ExP-for-g.p. rule in my life.

Rarely if ever do I tailor treasure to specific characters; mostly because things just don't work that way in a living breathing world. That said, occasional divine gifts or rewards *will* be tailored to the receiving character, often to become long-term iconic possessions.

And, they blow through treasure almost as fast as they earn it. I have training rules in my game for level advancement, and training ain't cheap. Magic is fragile, and item disenchantment or destruction happens far more often than the characters would like. Never mind the raises and resurrections....

That said, for my current game I went through the DMG price list and re-did the whole thing, making minor items (e.g. +1 whatevers) less expensive and major ones (e.g. +4 whatevers) more costly. Jury's still out on what the long-term effect of this will be.

Lanefan

[nightwyrm]

The expectation for magical loot or wealth by levels came about due to the attempt to provide a scale for measurement of monster power vs PC power so that the DM will know what monsters can challenge PCs of a certain level. In older editions, there was little to no such system. DMs guessed or just picked monsters due to his preference and PCs either run away a lot or died often. Any comparisons that were done was mainly by eyeballing monster HD, but this system was very vague and incomplete. In 3.x, the more detailed CR system was developed and tried to take into account monster abilities, attacks and defenses etc. The encounter and monster building system in 4e is basically an extension of that system.

Now, when the monster vs PC scaling system was developed, the game designers need to make certain assumptions and the availability of magical gear was one of them. You either take into account that PCs of level X had Y amounts of gear, or you don't.

If you balanced it such that that monster of level Z is an appropriate challenge to PCs of level X with gear Y, then PCs of level X will require Y gear to face monster Z. This leads to expectations that as PCs go up in level, they will accumlate enough gear so that by level X, they will have Y amount of gear. If the level X PCs have less then Y gear, then the power scale is thrown off and they will be less powerful then what the system expects when facing a monster Z.

If you leave gear out of your assumptions when comparing monster vs PC power and balanced mundane PCs of level X to monster Z, then any better gear that the DM give the PC have will make them more powerful than what the system expects when they're facing monster Z.

In both 3.x and 4e, the designers went with the PCs will have magical gear assumption and developed the balancing system based on that assumption. This of course led to the wealth by level expectation in 3.x and the treasure parcel system in 4e. If the DM wanted to go with a low gear game, he'll have to recalibrate the monster vs PC power scale to fit the new assumption. In 3.x, this was a mess to do because there was a lot of power bound within the gear and the math was not transparent. In 4e, gear has much less power and the math behind the gear assumptions is a lot more transparent so it's much more obvious on how the DM should modify the rules in order to run a low gear game.

[Fenes]

Gut feeling, guesstimate, etc. I don't follow guidelines, I just aim to balance the PCs out taking all aspects (stats, class features, special abilities, etc.) into account, not just GP value.

[Wormwood]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

Younger players balk at the whole idea that you'd need to search for treasure. The idea that they can't have the particular item most suited to their build the moment that they can afford it infuriates them. The idea that getting treasure might be a struggle is seen as interfering with their fun.

While you raise some interesting points, I'd like to point out that the average age of the people I game with is 36, with many of us playing RPGs for 25+ years.

I'd say evolving tastes (not simply age) account for the disparities in expectation of play seen in this thread.

And I believe that the desire to *earn* our rewards---through hard work, creativity and defeating powerful foes---is just as present in 4e players as it is inside the hoariest grognard.

[Grymar]

Generally, my party doesn't find many giant piles of gold. I build NPCs, give them equipment, and this is the treasure the party finds. I try to keep a rough eye on where they stand versus the "gold per level" recommendations, but I'll often fall behind and try to do a quick "catch up." Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out.

For instance, having gotten little to no treasure in about 1.5 levels, the party was faced with pirates. They fought their way to the pirate captain and defeated her. In a fit of rage and excitement, one of the party members picked up her body, showed it to her still fighting crew, and then tossed her overboard. Unfortunately, 1.5 levels worth of treasure went down with her.

In my current campaign, similarly I was trying to catch them up when they were a bit behind in gold. They found well-guarded wagon hauling tons of gold (for reasons they haven't yet discovered). They had to fight through some very tough guards, but then got the whole wagon...and then took a few bags of gold and left the rest on the road. It wasn't a bad tactical decision (the wagon would have slowed them down in the heavy snow), but it totally shocked me.

Players have a talent for screwing up every plan a DM makes...even when he's for once trying to be nice to them.

[Jeff Wilder]

Originally Posted by Grymar

In a fit of rage and excitement, one of the party members picked up her body, showed it to her still fighting crew, and then tossed her overboard. Unfortunately, 1.5 levels worth of treasure went down with her.

Dude, that freakin' rocks.

I would have said something like this, to the most perceptive PC:

"As Morgan the Red's lifeless body flips end over end toward the green-grey sea below, you can see the glitter of jewels and doubloons spilling from the pockets where she must have had them hidden. Lots and lots of jewels and gold."

And then one of my players would have roleplayed a dopplered, "Nnnnnnooooooooooo ... !" as he leapt in agonizing super slo-mo for the railing. Just in time to get splashed in the face.

[Nebulous]

I loosely follow the guidelines just to remind me when they should be getting stuff. I recently dumped a whole level of parcels on them at once, plus some, and i've given them some homebrew magic items that i don't even know how to figure in because there is no 4e equivalent.

[vagabundo]

I -loosely - follow the 4e guidelines, but I just pick stuff, mostly, at random. I've noticed I'm starting to pick stuff that I would personally want to use. As in, me, the Real Me. So the fighter is getting some kick ass equipment. Bashing shields* and Vicious swords and the like.

Anyway I'm going to have to be more careful with my picks. Maybe a Random method; anyone have one for 4e treasure??



*He just bashed Karlarel from KotS into the Shadow Rift portal and it shredded big K's body. Whatever, I was tired of him, so I fudged his Saving Throw.

[The Green Adam]

Very interesting. I'm serious. I never thought of this particular element of D&D gaming to be something that required anything other then rewarding the players for their hard work. You, the GM, challenge them with a tough but fair riddle, trap, monster, group of monsters or combination there of and they get to find items the opponent was using, protecting or had otherwise squirreled away. Sometimes they find little to nothing, sometimes they find cool stuff based on the difficulty and what makes sense in the adventure.

Someone mentioned wish lists and a PC being 'due' an item. I hope that's not what it sounds like. If one of my players wants the Ring of Gaxx I should put the Ring of Gaxx somewhere in my Dungeon? I don't get that. How does the player know what magical items or artifacts exist in your campaign world?

IMD&DU (figured I would jump on the abreviation bandwagon too - for future reference it means In My D&D Universe) magic items are unusual, slightly more rare then standard D&D, though generally more versitile and more powerful. I could never really fathom a Wizard wasting his time and money to create a +2 dagger. Wee! It's +2! It also shows no sense of skill or artistry on the part of the creator. Not only are many of the magical weapons and items IMD&DU well known (some more then others) but so to are those that made them. Great magic artificers will compete with each other to make the most impressive and creative item. Mages are odd like that.

My players and their PCs, due to a few house rules and our general play style, often develop motiffs, whether its a set of colors, a theme or a power type like wind or ice. If items are found in a treasure trove, they divide it easily among themselves based on what 'fits with the character'.

Also, some items are traded between characters for the overall effectiveness of the party. Magic Arrows are a great example. Our primary archer was a Human Ranger and he always got first pick when we found magic arrows or bows. However, he (the Ranger) always made sure that our other two bow enthusiests got a few of each type in case he missed or ran out.

It just seems that somethings of late are a bit 'oversystemed' as it were. Someone else, I believe it was Asmor, suggested that treasure distribution was a part of the gaming economy and the system/rules by which you give it out should not be system-agnostic. I not exactly sure I understand the meaning there but if you're saying I shouldn't have the same general rules for treasure distribution no matter what game I play I'd have to disagree. I follow the same basic theory in every game I run from D&D to Ars Magica to Traveller*.

I try to control the actual money part of treasure very carefully but huge dragon hoards aren't going to be found until you fight a dragon and that's not going to happen for a long time. My idea for magic item allocation however is pretty much always the same (ok, there are much fewer of them in Ars Magica and Traveller*).

With my players I've found that not always expecting to find treasure, having to really look for it and not always being certain of what it is or does makes them both more eager to search but less reliant on one or two items. If the magic is creative enough, they (the players) have to be creative in its use.

AD
*Traveller - When I say 'magic items' I am referring to high technology weapons or equipment above their the players standard tech level. I don't have wands of fireball in my Traveller games.

[The Green Adam]

Does anyone remember the old Dragon Quest cartoon (an imported anime by the creator of Dragonball). When the monsters were killed they would explode in a puff of smoke and gold, jewels and items would fall to the ground. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

AD

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by The Green Adam

Very interesting. I'm serious. I never thought of this particular element of D&D gaming to be something that required anything other then rewarding the players for their hard work.

That's largely considered an obselete notion these days. I've found that younger gamers expect to be able to plan out there characters entire careers from 1st to 20th level, anticipating having these particular items at X level, and then acquiring this item at X+1 level just as if it was a feat or skill intrinsic to their character. If you as the DM put some obstacle in the way of this, you will be accused of getting in the way of the player's fun, of not being fair, and even of breaking the games rules.

To be fair, this has been more the impression I've gotten from players at Enworld, but I've encountered bits of this when DMing younger players in RL as well.

The current gaming climate is largely that a player is owed success, and that for a given level of character he is entitled to a certain amount of treasure and entitled a certain quantity and quality of magic items (usually of his choosing). The idea that you'd have to work to obtain treasure and that treasure is present as a fair reward to overcoming some challenge is considered to be primitive and unfun or whatever. "I killed the monster, where is my money?" is the culture that seems to prevail.

Someone mentioned wish lists and a PC being 'due' an item. I hope that's not what it sounds like. If one of my players wants the Ring of Gaxx I should put the Ring of Gaxx somewhere in my Dungeon? I don't get that. How does the player know what magical items or artifacts exist in your campaign world?

It's not just that the player expects a Ring of Gaxx to be found in the dungeon if he wants one, it's that he expects that if he didn't find a Ring of Gaxx but wanted one, that DM will provide a friendly travelling merchant in the local village who will provide a Ring of Gaxx for fair market price in coins on demand, and that if the DM doesn't do this he is again being unfair and breaking the rules since the rules clearly state that such merchants do exist and do provide Rings of Gaxx.

In other words, the modern player believes that the rules force a DM to provide and abide by certain tropes in his campaign as part of the social contract, and that specifically the right to obtain whatever equipment the player desires is very high among these tropes.

What you describe is very similar to the style of play I grew up with (from the DM's that taught me) and very similar to the style of play I tried to provide. It is however considered to be something confined to 'cranky old grognards', and generally whenever I've brought up this style of play in the past, there have been a large number of people quick to point out how little fun you can possibly have playing in the way I've always played, to call me a cheat, and accuse me of various social failings. It is a problem particularly acute at enworld, but based on my experience, EnWorld is probably fairly representative in this because I DMed a group of players in 3rd edition who had like 10 years of experience and they'd never seen or heard of anything like me and I came to them as something of a shock (and hopefully, eventually, a revelation). Granted, they enjoyed it, because I more or less ended up taking the game over from the original DM, but ideas like what you've just described where outside of their experience whereas I thought based on my experience that they were the default way to play.

I do think we are over systemed if the game imposes limitations on the sort of campaign you can have. I never got that impression from earlier editions of D&D. I wonder sometimes whether in an attempt to make things easy for novice DMs we've actually encouraged less than skillful design by DMs. The players and DMs were just following the guidelines that they've been given, but they treated those guidelines as hard and fast rules when I didn't think they were rules at all.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by The Green Adam

Does anyone remember the old Dragon Quest cartoon (an imported anime by the creator of Dragonball). When the monsters were killed they would explode in a puff of smoke and gold, jewels and items would fall to the ground. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

AD

I very much get the impression that for many groups, this is basically what happens. The players don't even specifically search for the treasure. As soon as the foe is defeated, the DM provides them with an exact list of the treasure they find. I've even got into arguments at Enworld with DMs or players that insist that treasure should never be hidden, because if it is hidden, then it raises the risk that the players might not find it.

[Grymar]

Celebrim, I'm having some of my first experience with some of that attitude with one of my younger players. I had mentioned that I was working on treasure for the upcoming adventure and he proceeded to give me a list of what everyone needed. When I said, jokingly, "thanks but you just guaranteed that none of that will be found," he got quite upset saying that I just trying to give them "interesting but useless crap."

Um...yeah. I DM Eberron where, by design, you can get your sword enchanted or upgraded fairly easily if you are in the right location. It's far more interesting to me to throw out things like Troll Gut Rope, Anklets of Translocation, or Belts of One Mighty Blow than the perfect +1 weapon that fits someone's feat build.

[The Green Adam]

Originally Posted by Grymar

Um...yeah. I DM Eberron where, by design, you can get your sword enchanted or upgraded fairly easily if you are in the right location. It's far more interesting to me to throw out things like Troll Gut Rope, Anklets of Translocation, or Belts of One Mighty Blow than the perfect +1 weapon that fits someone's feat build.

Exactly. Magic items in IMD&DU are very similar. The Blue Dragon's Tongue, The Sword Unseen, Cloak of the Lurker, Persona of the Fiery Angel...these and many more items are unique and the players are not going to know exactly what they do or how powerful they are until they try to use them or get someone to identify them.

Because of the way I do my items, item identification is big buisness with the mages of cities frequented by adventurers. Often you'll learn the name, the maker (if known and they often are) and several legends about the item that may tell you some of its powers. Finding the rest is up to you.

Few of these items are "interesting but useless crap". Rather, they're all interesting, but most are more powerful then the standard +1 sword or wand of fireballs. The difference is that some of the powers might require creative thinking to us.

I'm kind of glad I don't run D&D anymore. From what I'm reading I think I would get very depressed.

AD

[LostSoul]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

It's not just that the player expects a Ring of Gaxx to be found in the dungeon if he wants one, it's that he expects that if he didn't find a Ring of Gaxx but wanted one, that DM will provide a friendly travelling merchant in the local village who will provide a Ring of Gaxx for fair market price in coins on demand, and that if the DM doesn't do this he is again being unfair and breaking the rules since the rules clearly state that such merchants do exist and do provide Rings of Gaxx.

The player also cheats himself out of an awesome adventure - finding a Ring of Gaxx.

[Moniker]

Originally Posted by The Green Adam

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means.

Adventure ATM?

Dumping magic items and integrating a cost-based system that allows players to purchase improved equipment by quality?

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

Granted I don't do it the ol' 'treasure type'/1e way but neither is it so complex. I wing it like I do 75% of everything else in my games. It just needs to make sense. My players don't tend to loot the bodies but they do look for useful clues and check rooms for traps and secret passages. You never know where the villain might be hiding or where they escaped to.

AD

We don't run games that integrate massive treasures, magic items guarded by ancient monsters or hundreds of thousands of coins serving as a nest for a dragon. I run a very, very different game that diverges significantly from the common, assumed tropes of D&D. I run a pseudo-real low fantasy world where politics, religion, racial strife and war drive the story, as opposed to gods, demons, devils and dragons with huge armies of orcs thundering across the countryside/PCs as the driving force in the world. We dropped "Diablo at the table" about 12 years ago, when we became tired of the same-ol' same ol'.