5e GMs - Why or Why Not Wandering Treasure?

The Crimson Binome · Oct 5, 2018

Lanefan said:
So in the case of the shock-staff the electricity would have been an intrinsic power of the Hobgoblin? Interesting, then, that the shocking ability doesn't appear in any of its other attacks - just the staff...

In game terms, the shocking power is an intrinsic ability of the hobgoblin+staff combination entity. You're not supposed to think about what the staff can do when it's held by someone other than the hobgoblin, because that's outside of the purview of the game mechanics, in much the same way that you aren't supposed to wonder how your 1hp minion allies managed to survive all the way to adulthood with only 1hp. The game rules simply aren't meant to address such wildly deviant situations.

Lanefan · Oct 5, 2018

Saelorn said:
In game terms, the shocking power is an intrinsic ability of the hobgoblin+staff combination entity. You're not supposed to think about what the staff can do when it's held by someone other than the hobgoblin, because that's outside of the purview of the game mechanics

So what do you do or say when the players ask about it, because if they're worth playing with, they'll ask.

in much the same way that you aren't supposed to wonder how your 1hp minion allies managed to survive all the way to adulthood with only 1hp. The game rules simply aren't meant to address such wildly deviant situations.

Yeah, minions always struck me as one of those designs that was made strictly for gamist purposes, realism be damned; and while I can see what they were trying to accomplish and why, there's better ways of doing it.

5ekyu · Oct 5, 2018

Lanefan said:
So what do you do or say when the players ask about it, because if they're worth playing with, they'll ask.

Yeah, minions always struck me as one of those designs that was made strictly for gamist purposes, realism be damned; and while I can see what they were trying to accomplish and why, there's better ways of doing it.

Agreed. 1 hp minions is a way to dodge around the basic concept of leveling with durability and offense tied to levels - if you dont want that use different mechanics that play out a bit more consistently. Damage saves can handle it easily and you could even build a system using a tier like 5e system which amplifies/adjusts damage between different tiers.

i tend t believe in playing a system that does what you want without too many fiats and bypasses.

The Crimson Binome · Oct 5, 2018

Lanefan said:
So what do you do or say when the players ask about it, because if they're worth playing with, they'll ask.

Honestly, the best thing that you can tell them is to just bear with it for now, because you're trying to give the system a fair shake and you can go back to a more traditional system if this sort of thing really bothers everyone that much.

Fourth edition works well within the venue it was designed for, which is a much smaller venue than other editions.

the Jester · Oct 5, 2018

Lanefan said:
So in the case of the shock-staff the electricity would have been an intrinsic power of the Hobgoblin? Interesting, then, that the shocking ability doesn't appear in any of its other attacks - just the staff...

Yeah, this was a constant thing going on with 4e monsters- their abilities were really often created with tactical play in mind more than with the monster's own identity.

Lanefan said:
Can you explain? You didn't like magic items on monsters? Or you want or don't want all the items pre-placed? I'm not parsing something here.

I disliked the approach of giving a list of item levels that the dm was supposed to populate and place, rather than having a bunch of actual items placed in the adventure. I like having a dragon's hoard defined with, for example, a flaming sword +2 rather than a "level 9 item" in it.

the Jester · Oct 5, 2018

5ekyu said:
"Does a gp called wandering not buy as much ale as a gp called undefined?" i think that was in a post by Shakespear.

The "implied" was why i defined what i meant by the term upfront very early in the first post. i would have thought the reason for using it in a DnD forum even though it is not strickly and rigidly as accurate as it could have been was obvious enough that if i defined it quickly only a certain type would get their dander up.

Sorry if I came across as having my dander up, that wasn't my intention. It's just that I don't like the term you chose and don't think it fits what you're talking about very well. That doesn't mean that you should change it or anything, just that I'll change the terms in discussing how I run things for the sake of (what I feel is) improved clarity.

Arilyn · Oct 7, 2018

I like the term "wandering treasure," even though I'm imagining Rincewind's many legged chest.
I have done this to a degree. Like your idea of placing the loot based on search rolls, even if it is just a trinket.

MNblockhead · Oct 7, 2018

Arilyn said:
I like the term "wandering treasure," even though I'm imagining Rincewind's many legged chest.
I have done this to a degree. Like your idea of placing the loot based on search rolls, even if it is just a trinket.

Yeah, "The Luggage" from Discworld is what first popped in my mind as well.

pming · Oct 7, 2018

Hiya!

For a few years now I've been using my own "special DM helper tables" that I created when we first started learning how to play the "Dominion Rules RPG" (www.dominionrules.org ; free PDF rules, uses only d12, and is pretty much a Target Number type system). Anyway, I wanted to just keep using only d12. But I wanted a reason to use two or three (flashbacks to Mazes & Monsters, where the Maze Controller, Daniel, gives a little intro-adventure spiel then ends with "Your fate...[opens hands to show 2d12]...is in my hands...let us begin").

Anyway, I created a system I call my "HMC" or "Hot/Medium/Cold" method. Three d12's, one is "Hot" (say, a red or orange colour die), one "Medium" (white, grey, brown), and the last "Cold" (blue, purple, dark green). The tables are laid out so that I roll my HMC dice and simply cross ref. One of the biggest tables is for my "encounter area stuff" (a location the PC's decide to 'look into' or otherwise stay a while). The Hot die indicates the potential level of Treasure. The Medium die gives me the Contents of the area (not treasure!). The Cold die gives me more specifics on the thing that was the Contents focus. So in this way, if I get 3/2/9 (H/M/C), I get: "Low Treasure, Special Contents, Physical Transform is the 'effect' of the Special". Or if I roll 7/11/3, that's "Average Treasure, Beast Contents, Challenging Special". All of these results are nice and loose, letting me fill-in-the-blanks so to speak. Here's the table if anyone is interested in what I'm talking about: https://dominions-of-alstigar.obsidianportal.com/ <-- go to "Media Library" and scroll down to "Trifec_d12_EncAreas.png").

I have used this with 5e (and may other games, actually), and this one table can be easily used with some of my other, more specific, HMC tables (I have them for things like Landscape, Beast Specific Encounters, and others that I haven't put up on the Obsidian Portal site above...just checked; I do have 3 of them up there, actually

).

I did NOT use any sort of 5e rules methods to do this, however. So there are no DC checks on the part of the player to "find treasure". If that is all you were meaning with the OP, then I guess "No" is the answer. I'm not against the idea, just that I would rather have control over the results more so than the Players or Players dice rolls.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

pemerton · Oct 7, 2018

Blue said:
4e did something that was eye opening - divorced treasure from looting.

I absolutely agree that this was a feature of D&D - but it wasn't the first version of D&D to do it. Way back in the mid-80s Oriental Adventures PCs could begin with inherited items of value, which generated an implication at least that further such items might be awarded by ancestors, mentors etc - and the 3E Oriental Adventures books somewhat formalised this by reference to the 3E wealth-by-level expectations.

5ekyu said:
My home is smaller than a dungeon. I live her. I would never claim a reasonable expectation that i can sit down and inventory every item of value in anything like the time i prep a dungeon in toto, much less the time i spend on the "items of value".

Ot would have to be a very sterile and spartan scene/site/scenery for me to expect that of a GM.

I agree that the implication of a the GM writes it all down in advance approach is incredibly spartan settings. It is perhaps workable for a certain conception of a Gygaxian dungeon. It breaks down as soon as gameplay shifts to any other sort of situation (like a manor or a town, as I think you noted in a subsequent post).

And to actually answer your question - in 4e I use the treasure parcel system, so all a successful check by a PC can do is expedite the award of a treasure parcel, but it can't actually change the overall amount of treasure for a campaign. In Burning Wheel there are particular skills used to find stuff (eg Scavenging) as well as getting stuff as the fiction-appropriate outcome of some successful action. In Cortex+ Heroic, gear is generally an asset or a resource but can occur in other ways - one PC started with a horse (a resource created out of his Riding skill) and the same PC turned a dragon skin into armour (mechanically an upgrade of Durability from d8 to d10). In my Traveller game most of the PCs wealth has come in the form of payments from patrons.

The RPG trope that characters acquire wealth and gear exclusively or overwhelmingly by robbing NPCs is one that I'm pretty happy to get away from.

Lanefan said:
minions always struck me as one of those designs that was made strictly for gamist purposes, realism be damned; and while I can see what they were trying to accomplish and why, there's better ways of doing it.

This is a bit tangential to the thread topic, but I thought I would say that I don't see what's unreaslistic about killing an enemy in a single blow. Conan does it in the REH stories quite a bit; and I believe it sometimes happens in real life.