For the most part, I think the DM Awards given out for running AL modules is reasonable, but over the past year or so, having seen different characters both locally and at conventions being played 'organically' and being built via DM Awards, I began to suspect that DM Awards were being far too generous with their gold awards. Characters built with DM awards always seemed to have better equipment, tons of healing potions, and those characters were more than happy to step up and pay for party expenses incurred within a module, as if they had far more gold than they knew what to do with.
So I decided to do the math. I went through the Season Two modules, assuming a party of three PCs played every module except DDEX 2-1, earned the minimum XP award for each module, but earned every bit of treasure allowable in each module. (Note: in some modules, it's not possible to earn all the treasure in the final treasure list -- example, one module lists the treasure that can be looted from guards and also an award given to the PCs if they don't fight the guards. I left the smaller of the two amounts out of my calculations.)
First, a reminder -- every time a DM runs a Season Two (or later) module, she receives gold equal to half of the XP she earns from the module.
There are two adventures where a party of three PCs that earn all the available gold will end up earning slightly more than 50% of the minimum XP award -- the two modules that comprise the two-part Oubliette/Fort Dalton adventures. In each of those, each character in the party will earn just over 50% of the minimum XP award. However, in most of the adventures, such a party can be expected to earn roughly one-third of the minimum XP award in gold pieces, and in a few, the treasure seems very light in comparison to the minimum XP award (both DDEX 2-3 The Drowned Tower and DDEX 2-6 Breath of the Yellow Rose offer just over 22% of the minimum XP award in gold to each participating character), so that, for the season, a character who plays in every season 2 adventure and earns minimum XP will gain 19,500 XP, but who earns his max gold share will earn 6155 gold pieces, for a ratio of 31.5% GP to XP.
This is the greatest possible ratio of XP to gold available to a player character from a season 2 adventure: if you adjust the presumptions, you also adjust the final award outcome. For example, increasing the party size from three to five PCs doesn't change the XP award, but does change the per-character gold award, as there is no additional treasure added to the adventures, but there are two more PCs to claim shares, to the point where the GP to XP ratio falls from 31.5% to 19%. A PC who earns the 19,500 minimum XP award for Season 2 in a five-character party will have earned 3693 gold from the maximum possible gold award. Yet a DM who runs enough adventures in Season 2 to have earned 19,500 XP worth of DM awards will have nearly 10,000 gp from the same modules.
I suspect doing this same analysis for Season 3 modules will result in the same general conclusion -- PCs gain a much smaller share of gold as a percentage than DMs do. Keep in mind as well that this calculation gives the maximum possible ratio for PCs -- most AL tables likely do not earn minimum XP repeatedly, and likely also don't find every scrap of treasure available in a given module, so a more realistic estimate of gold earned by a PC as a percentage of XP would be significantly lower.
My feeling is that the maximum possible DM gold award that is justifiable given the possible awards for PCs would be to earn 30% of the XP award for running a module, and a more realistic award would be for the DM to earn 20% of the XP award. These awards would still likely be higher than almost all PCs get from playing the same modules by ratio, and thus characters fueled by DM awards would still have more gold than a PC built organically, yet the reduced award ratio would help to ensure that the DM character does not have so much more gold than an organic PC that it seems embarrassing.
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Pauper
So I decided to do the math. I went through the Season Two modules, assuming a party of three PCs played every module except DDEX 2-1, earned the minimum XP award for each module, but earned every bit of treasure allowable in each module. (Note: in some modules, it's not possible to earn all the treasure in the final treasure list -- example, one module lists the treasure that can be looted from guards and also an award given to the PCs if they don't fight the guards. I left the smaller of the two amounts out of my calculations.)
First, a reminder -- every time a DM runs a Season Two (or later) module, she receives gold equal to half of the XP she earns from the module.
There are two adventures where a party of three PCs that earn all the available gold will end up earning slightly more than 50% of the minimum XP award -- the two modules that comprise the two-part Oubliette/Fort Dalton adventures. In each of those, each character in the party will earn just over 50% of the minimum XP award. However, in most of the adventures, such a party can be expected to earn roughly one-third of the minimum XP award in gold pieces, and in a few, the treasure seems very light in comparison to the minimum XP award (both DDEX 2-3 The Drowned Tower and DDEX 2-6 Breath of the Yellow Rose offer just over 22% of the minimum XP award in gold to each participating character), so that, for the season, a character who plays in every season 2 adventure and earns minimum XP will gain 19,500 XP, but who earns his max gold share will earn 6155 gold pieces, for a ratio of 31.5% GP to XP.
This is the greatest possible ratio of XP to gold available to a player character from a season 2 adventure: if you adjust the presumptions, you also adjust the final award outcome. For example, increasing the party size from three to five PCs doesn't change the XP award, but does change the per-character gold award, as there is no additional treasure added to the adventures, but there are two more PCs to claim shares, to the point where the GP to XP ratio falls from 31.5% to 19%. A PC who earns the 19,500 minimum XP award for Season 2 in a five-character party will have earned 3693 gold from the maximum possible gold award. Yet a DM who runs enough adventures in Season 2 to have earned 19,500 XP worth of DM awards will have nearly 10,000 gp from the same modules.
I suspect doing this same analysis for Season 3 modules will result in the same general conclusion -- PCs gain a much smaller share of gold as a percentage than DMs do. Keep in mind as well that this calculation gives the maximum possible ratio for PCs -- most AL tables likely do not earn minimum XP repeatedly, and likely also don't find every scrap of treasure available in a given module, so a more realistic estimate of gold earned by a PC as a percentage of XP would be significantly lower.
My feeling is that the maximum possible DM gold award that is justifiable given the possible awards for PCs would be to earn 30% of the XP award for running a module, and a more realistic award would be for the DM to earn 20% of the XP award. These awards would still likely be higher than almost all PCs get from playing the same modules by ratio, and thus characters fueled by DM awards would still have more gold than a PC built organically, yet the reduced award ratio would help to ensure that the DM character does not have so much more gold than an organic PC that it seems embarrassing.
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Pauper