Is it wrong to want a fair share?

[fanboy2000]

As a DM I do two things regarding party tresure:

1) I give a varity of treasure which various PCs may wish to keep or sell (Gasp! Sell a magic item! Oh the humanity! ) depending on well the characters and the items match up.

2) I stay out of the loot dividing process. I find that staying out of it fosters role playing because god isn't telling how to divide the loot. I honestly don't care how they do it, so long as it doesn't take more than a minute or two. If it takes more than that, it interrupts the flow of the game and I get cranky.

All magic items have gp values as a guideline for DMs on the relative power for the treasure. It's just a guideline. You can, of course use it as an absolute value, but DMs should play around with them. Really, gp values aren't there to turn the game into an accounting frenzy. (Unless, of course, you find accounting frenzies fun )

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I've always found the "you can never buy or sell magic items...ever" attitude to be particularly lame. I remember the days of 1e and 2e where my DMs hated magic shops. We would end up with multiple magic weapons and other items that we couldn't use and they just sat around in a corner of our backpacks gathering dust.

I remember the reverse in the early gold box computer games. We'd fight Zhentarim or some other group and end up with their magic swords and armor after we killed them. So, we'd go down to the weapon shop and sell them. When we did so, they didn't show up in the stores' inventories because "you can't buy magic items." I remember having two thoughts about this. The first was: This is stupid. Back when all my characters were first or second level, we'd gather tons of gold and silver from the orcs' lairs but when we wanted a magic sword, where were the people like my high level party? Nowhere to be found. We sell the magic items we don't have any use for but it doesn't do us any good. The second thought was, if this was a real pen and paper game rather than a computer game, what would I do with all these +1 swords? I could buy a castle with the gold from some of them and outfit an army with the rest of the +1 and +2 swords that I've taken from my dead foes. Now, since the "can't sell magic items" crowd probably does not think that PCs should be forced to leave their unused loot in the corner to gather dust, I imagine giving it to followers would be seen as fairly reasonable. But if magic items can be given away for loyalty, it seems pretty reasonable to suppose they could also be given away for money--after all, everything else, from loyalty on down is regularly bought and sold. If I can give my followers +1 swords to help them defend my castle, they can have gambling problems and put up the sword as collateral for a loan shark. If I can give my flunkies old wands of magic missiles, then surely some young noble wannabe can shower them with gold until they give it up. While everyone may not have a price, most people do. And so should most items.

So, what do I do with treasure division? It depends. As a player, I found something like the default method to be the most enjoyable way. Calculate what we would get for selling everything, divide it evenly, and then let PCs buy any items they want for "sale price." What would we do with 25 masterwork longswords anyway? And it's not as if the +1 kobold sized shortbow would be any use to the all-human, elf, and half-orc party. If there is something that PCs would find useful but can't afford to buy out, we generally let the PC claim that item as his entire share and just left it at that. If there's something that would be useful for the whole party to have around--like that half-charged wand of cure light wounds or the potion of invisibility--we just called it party treasure. If any magic items get sold this way, it's generally because they were items that nobody in the party wanted. And if nobody wanted them, then it's for the best that they were sold. After all, the archer with a +1 mighty [+4] composite longbow, probably wouldn't be carrying around the +2 composite longbow the party found because "it's magic and you never sell magic even if there's not much of a conceivable reason you'd keep it." Another thing I like about that method is that you don't end up with greedy characters (or players) simply gunning for items because they're magic, whether or not they're useful. In one game I remember the wizard carting around a variety of weapons including several magic weapons because she planned to trade them [to other PCs, of course] for something later.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Here's how we've done it in our current game. The party is sixth level. Griselda (played by me), a wizard-necromancer 6. Blue AKA The Raven, a half-demon rogue 3/barbarian 1. Zel-Vickers, a warforged cleric 6.

Treasure so far, all rolled randomly I believe:
Ghost touch longsword +3 (32 000gp)
Dusty rose ioun stone, +1 AC (5 000gp)
Gloves that increase unarmed damage a dice category (?)
Wand of burning hands, 1st level (750 gp)
Arcane scroll of dimensional anchor (700 gp)
Potion of barkskin +2 (300gp)
Potion of cure light wounds (50 gp)

The cleric recently made himself a maul +1, using 1500gp from party funds to do so, which me and the Raven both agreed to.

I got the wand of burning hands, which I subsequently sold on realising it was a pile of waz, the money returning to party funds. I refused to be considered for the ioun stone, cause I don't need AC - the two melee guys job is partly to keep it that way after all. They played a hand of poker for it and the Raven won. He also received the ghost touch longsword, cause he's the only one with martial weapons proficiency, and the gloves cause he'll get claw attacks later. The scroll was sold cause I can't cast abjuration spells. Zel-Vickers has the potions.

We're actually quite communistic though. Most of our money is in a party fund and although it hasn't been spelled out, I feel the magic items are also party owned, only temporarily carried by an individual.

I'm pretty happy with the situation so far, though it'd be nice if I got some decent wizard items.

 

[Saeviomagy]

If a character feels cheated(a character not a player), he can bring up his grievance in any number of ways. Deals on distribution and accounting can be handled in character and some characters may resent it or try to push the envelope. "You all saw it! It was my blow which slew the dragon. Surely I deserve a larger share of the riches!" To metagame these circumstances seems like a needless complication and a lost opportunity to examine party dynamics.

As long as you agree that the phrase "examine party dynamics" is often replaced with "have one character kill or otherwise injure another". And it often includes "encourage all players in the game to be evil, or if evil is not allowed, some variety of abusable neutral".

I want to game to have fun. If someone's grabbing all the treasure for themselves just because my character didn't see it, that's eating into my fun. If someone's character is threatening my character because his character wants something my character has, that's eating into my fun. If monsters that can't kill me instantly slaughter my friends (or if monsters that my friends cannot touch are instantly slaughtered by me), that eats into my fun.

If we spend all frigging day discussing who gets what treasure, that eats into my fun.

I want to run down the treasure list, ask who wants what, tally up what everyone gets, turn what's left into gold and distribute that to even everyone out. The whole thing is over in 5 minutes with little to no grief. Noone gets screwed.

 

[Bleys]

As has been said by several people, our group (and now that I think about it, pretty much every group I've played in over the last 24 years) uses the "work it out amongst ourselves in character" method. We don't assign values to the items and split them evenly. We don't even really judge a relative worth based on the item... we just all talk about what we might like, what we already have, and who we think needs a bit more of whatever. In the end it all ends up working out.

Actual currency is a little different, with things kept as more of a "party fund" and we all draw from it to get whatever we might want to pick up. Each character will also tend to keep at least a small stash for him or herself, and more frivolous things (like the 50 gp glass of wine in one adventure) will come out of that instead of the party fund.

My personal take on it is that I always approach it from my character's point of view and based on the character's personality. I have, in the past, played characters who are completely and totally self-centered, and who had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, when no other party members were around. In those situations he would take some of the better finds and keep them for himself, but leave enough that it looked like he was all for "party unity and teamwork". I didn't cause any out of character problems (maybe I've just been lucky and had the pleasure to game with a lot of very mature people who were great at keeping in character and out of character separate... I'm not going to complain ) but every once in a while it would get a raised eyebrow or a "we need to talk later" out of a character or two when he'd suddenly come up with something that no one had seen before

If you stay true to the character's personality and everyone else in the game does so as well, and keeps things strictly in character, just about any system of "spreading the wealth and divding the booty" (or should that be the other way around ) works out.

But then again I have been known to just ramble on and on and end up not saying much of value when all's said and done

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I have, in the past, played characters who are completely and totally self-centered, and who had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, when no other party members were around. In those situations he would take some of the better finds and keep them for himself, but leave enough that it looked like he was all for "party unity and teamwork". I didn't cause any out of character problems (maybe I've just been lucky and had the pleasure to game with a lot of very mature people

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't mean to say that anyone who likes to evenly divide the treasure is immature.

 

[Bleys]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't mean to say that anyone who likes to evenly divide the treasure is immature.

I'm not a big one for mincing words, so if I didn't say it, then I didn't mean it

What I did mean is that the gaming groups I've had the pleasure of being a part of have had people (regardless of age, since there were some huge disparities in some of them, like the one group where the youngest player was 15 and the oldest was in his late 40s) who were excellent at keeping what happened in character separate from their out of character opinions and were more than willing to work things out using the personality of the character involved.

Any of the various methods that have already been discussed make perfect sense, as well, especially if that's how the characters are played. Everyone tends to put bits and pieces of themselves into the characters they play, and one part of me that tends to spill over the most is my laid back, easy-going attitude. Because of that I'm perfectly content to go with things however the party wants to do them (unless I happen to be playing a character who is much more rigid, but I don't tend to do that too often ), and everyone I currently game with approaches things from the same point of view. We're all quite happy to just distribute things as people need them and not really worry the details.

Of course, the next game we start we might all decide to play characters who would rather not see things done that way, and we'll take a comletely different approach to dividing things up... but based on the last few years, the odds of that happening from a total party point of view are probably slim. I'm guessing there might be at least one of us who will play a character who is a bit more selfish, though

 

[Abraxas]

A bit rambling but here goes . . .

When I first began playing D&D (1E) we divided treasure according to who needed it the most (defensive items) or who could use it most effectively (offensive items). Non magic valuables and cash were divided equally. Even back in the dim times the groups I played in (and every group since the first) has had some way to trade/sell items that were redundant. This method continued through the transition from 1E to 2E.

Then along came my current group and 2E. They divided everything by random die roll. The cash and nonmagic valuables were divided equally, then everyone got out their d20 and rolled. High roll got first pick. If there were more items than characters it went high to low then back up low to high. Repeat as necessary. This was without a doubt the stupidest method of treasure division I had ever been a part of. We lost a couple players and gained a few others and I was able to convince them to use the method of treasure division I had started with. It worked great and we've been using it ever since.

So now we're playing 3.5E, and we don't worry at all about the value of the items (except when as a group we decide the item is useless to us and we want to get cash/other items/services for it). Item value alone is almost worthless in determining how well a party will do against an "appropriate" level challenge. Why, because regardless of the value of the items, the exact makeup of the items possesed will determine how useful they will be in dealing with any given challenge for the group.

As a group we work very hard at making the whole as effective as possible. To this end we try to spread the treasure around in such a way as to get the greatest use out of everything and make sure everyone has a reasonably fair share over the course of the campaign. At any given point one character or another may have a greater share but it evens out in the long run. I'm not sure I would play the game with a group that uses a different method anymore.

posted by Firelance
I'll bet that for every PC that died because he insisted in splitting treasure up equally, there are dozens who died because they were under-equipped for their level.

I'd take that bet. While at higher levels it may be true (depending on the campaign) at low to mid levels, a +1 weapon, some silversheen and a couple spellcasters with decent spell selections can do wonders.

 

[Arnwyn]

My reason for starting this thread in the first place was the feeling I got from the other thread, that merely wanting to have an equal share was somehow audacious. That regardless of what the party finds or how magic-starved/bloated a certain PC is, no player should even think of wanting his PC to have as many toys as the others. This is the attitude that I find so annoying.

Wow. I didn't get that at all from the other thread. Weird.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

First off, I always took the DMGs table of wealth as a guideline for the DM; that's why it is in the DMG. It is not a party tool to "keep score" with, it is a way to offer guidance to DMs as to how much or how little treasure to place within an adventure and maintain the authors' sense of game balance. If players in my campaigns started calculating their "net worth" and complaining about it being unfair, they might find the Mighty DM Lightning Bolt of Retribution (TM) zapping their whiny a es. Fortunately we have not had the problem.

The players treat money and magic as separate categories of treasure. Money is usually divided equally, and magic treasure is doled out based upon need, usefullness to a particular character, and desire. When more than one person wants the same thing, the party looks over what each person has, what they have received recently and makes a decision about who gets it. Sometimes it leads to some trading for other magic items, sometimes for cash (we had a rogue who really wanted to buy an expensive black market item - she gave up a chance at several magic items in exchange for some gems), and sometimes for future favors. The nice thing about the horsetrading that happens is that as a DM it gives me a nice subtle way to see if any one person has really been shortchanged in magic items. If I see that, I make a few adjustments to be sure that something that would be great for the shorted PC turns up soon.