How much of the treasure does your party find?

JacktheRabbit · Apr 23, 2003

As a DM I have always had this quandry. I like to hide treasure. Not all of it, and not in dumb places. Everything hidden has been done for a good reason.

My problem is the party only ever seems to find about 1/2 of the treasure that I put out there. Either they skip the room completely or they do not bother to search intelligently.

So, what is your experience? How much treasure in an advanture should you really expect the party to find?

KnowTheToe · Apr 23, 2003

I think half is about right. I mean, if a room floods and there is a chest under the surface of the murky water, i am not going to search for it, that is unless I have a reason to suspect something important is there. I don't like to crawl thru dirty water that may have who knows what living in it.

I usually don't play treasure hunters (Indiana jones), but adventurer's/hero's that have a purpose outside of treasure. If I find treasure great, if I don't, too bad.

As a DM, if there is a particular treasure the party would want, I may switch locations of it to ensure it is found.

Walter_J · Apr 23, 2003

DocMoriartty said:
As a DM I have always had this quandry. I like to hide treasure. Not all of it, and not in dumb places. Everything hidden has been done for a good reason.

My problem is the party only ever seems to find about 1/2 of the treasure that I put out there. Either they skip the room completely or they do not bother to search intelligently.

So, what is your experience? How much treasure in an advanture should you really expect the party to find?

Actually, from my DMing experience, 1/2 the treasure is pretty good. Back in the day when I was gaming a lot, my regular group consistently missed the treasure, even obvious treasure that was right in front of them, such as racks of weapons and armor in the bad guy's armory (duh!). From my experience I learned that, players will: 1) miss 90% of what you expect them to find, 2) miss the most obvious clues as to "what is really going on", 3) "reason out" motivations, plots and story lines that make me go "huh?" 4) act on this "reasoned out" info and set out on adventures that I never knew existed, and 5) forget to state the most obvious of character actions, such as loot the bodies, pick up the sack full of coins that they spent hours checking for traps on, etc...

Arnwyn · Apr 23, 2003

Yeah, I think half sounds about right for our group. They seem to miss obvious things a lot of the time, and my group is tremendously paranoid that if the treasure looks even *remotely* dangerous, or dangerously located, they say "forget it". Ah well, I'm sure it helps keeps them alive...

Hand of Evil · Apr 23, 2003

If my players would LEARN what treasure was they would find a lot but they look for 'that that glitters' which is not too much.

I try to use art and collectables in place of gold and magic weapons. If the players do find coins, they are silver for the most part, maybe a handful of gold. Some things the party has pasted on bottles of wine that would have gone for 2000 gp, a very old non-magical sword (a family heirloom/icon) that could have got them 5000 gp for its return but left in the cold dead hands of an orc because 'it was not magical'.

And WHY should I tell them what they are passing up!

It really is not that bad but sometimes...

jonesy · Apr 23, 2003

1) miss 90% of what you expect them to find, 2) miss the most obvious clues as to "what is really going on", 3) "reason out" motivations, plots and story lines that make me go "huh?" 4) act on this "reasoned out" info and set out on adventures that I never knew existed, and 5) forget to state the most obvious of character actions, such as loot the bodies, pick up the sack full of coins that they spent hours checking for traps on, etc...

Reminded me of this one campaign. The heroes enter a castle to rescue the daughter of a wealthy mayor from the clutches of an evil warlord. They search the castle and stumble into the warlord who escapes on his dragon. They chase after him finally capturing him and return to the mayor with the gagged and chained warlord in tow.
The bewildered mayor then proceeds to ask the party why they left his daughter in the dungeon below the castle.
Like the barbarian said: 'doh'.

MarauderX · Apr 23, 2003

As a DM the players found about 75% of the loot that was around. I think they did this mostly because in the beginning adventures they were scouring the enemy stronghold for every copper piece they could find to fund them with weapons and such forever (i tend to have things break a lot). They tend to miss things behind secret doors and don't bother to find out about the missing window (there were 8 on the outside, and only 7 on the inside) unless I lend them a hand.

I think it goes as bad communication of conveying spaces, maps and plans sometimes that confuses them a bit much. I have everything make sense and have traps and secret doors in not so obvious locations that they miss a lot.

As a player, who knows, but I think we are missing a lot of the stuff we are supposed to find in some mysterious areas that we were too afraid to explore thoroughly.

roytheodd · Apr 23, 2003

DocMoriartty said:
As a DM I have always had this quandry. I like to hide treasure. Not all of it, and not in dumb places. Everything hidden has been done for a good reason.

My problem is the party only ever seems to find about 1/2 of the treasure that I put out there. Either they skip the room completely or they do not bother to search intelligently.

So, what is your experience? How much treasure in an advanture should you really expect the party to find?

My experience is the exact same. I've had players when I was a kid that took everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, but as I aged I learned about the magic of encumbrance and economies.

Now, my players loot bodies and then move on. Because of this, they move past most of the treasures available to them (especially mundane stuff). They love to complain about why they never have money, but I let them know it's not from lack of thought on my end. I have no intention of changing how I do things. I pretty much expect them to miss the stuff that isn't obvious.

Heck, here's a great example of how they operate. They wander into a family crypt on a mission. The walls are adorned with retired weapons of ancient warriors (many of them masterwork). The group runs into an Adherer and start losing their weapons to it. They don't think to take the weapons from the walls - at all!! They kill the thing the hard way and then proceed nearly weaponless. Later, as they're leaving the crypt, one of them mentions taking a fancy weapon, but the party says that that's disrespecting the dead. They left the crypt tore to shreds and with no wealth other than what they had upon entering. I might look like an irresponsible DM leaving so many valuables laying around, but I know the group well enough to know that I can. They pretty much earn money from "jobs". Yeesh!

JacktheRabbit · Apr 23, 2003

Re: Re: How much of the treasure does your party find?

roytheodd said:
They love to complain about why they never have money, but I let them know it's not from lack of thought on my end.

I have had the same problem. Gripes about lack of cash yet they left things left and right or put no thought into searching.

I have figured out one thing. Lairs, several of my players still think very 1E or 2E and just think a monster is there to kill. They do not think it out and try to find its lair or where ever it came from so they can loot its home.

Ralts Bloodthorne · Apr 23, 2003

Re: Re: How much of the treasure does your party find?

roytheodd said:
Heck, here's a great example of how they operate. They wander into a family crypt on a mission. The walls are adorned with retired weapons of ancient warriors (many of them masterwork). The group runs into an Adherer and start losing their weapons to it. They don't think to take the weapons from the walls - at all!! They kill the thing the hard way and then proceed nearly weaponless. Later, as they're leaving the crypt, one of them mentions taking a fancy weapon, but the party says that that's disrespecting the dead. They left the crypt tore to shreds and with no wealth other than what they had upon entering. I might look like an irresponsible DM leaving so many valuables laying around, but I know the group well enough to know that I can. They pretty much earn money from "jobs". Yeesh!

In my campaign, that actually would have gotten them an award from the family that owned the crypt, grateful for the party not looting the dead.

I don't really have that problem. The party often get's rewards such as ancient bottles of wine, tapestries that are rare or created by famous people, etc.
The most cash they ever found was when they busted open a cashbox in the vaults of an assassin's guild they finally got in the position to destroy.
They were more interested in getting the house as thier own. Which they did by paying the back taxes.
Ancient sword? Who cares that it's not magic, they will look at the approximate date, look for a forging mark, look to see what it is made out of.
Mostly, they get thier loot off of bodies, and the pocket change, and the rest of the treasure is in such things as rare items, normal items made of rare material.
I guess it's the playing styles. I do have a player who looks dumbfounded and says: "That sucks!" when they beat a brace of wraiths in a tomb, fix the saracophugus, and then use "Speak with Dead" to let the dead know that their rest has been returned, then leave.
The he looks all surprised that the family that owned the tomb let it be known that the party was respectful to ancient families, and rewarded them with several family antiquities.

Wierd, eh?

How much of the treasure does your party find?

JacktheRabbit

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KnowTheToe

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Walter_J

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Arnwyn

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Hand of Evil

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jonesy

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MarauderX

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roytheodd

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JacktheRabbit

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Ralts Bloodthorne

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