Monetary Treasure - Does it scale with the size of the party?

[Snarls-at-Fleas]

I've just noticed it. DMG says that you should add some magic items if you have more characters in the party, but should I up monetary treasure accordingly?
For example 1sl level monetary is 720 gp for 5 chars party, shouldn't it be 720/5*7=1008 gp for 7PCs?

Thanks everyone.

 

[bobthehappyzombie]

Er... yeah it would seem the thing to do.

 

[CapnZapp]

By the book no. The DMG's guidelines gives all parties gold equal to two items of their level, regardless of the number of characters in the party.

The only exception is for a one-man party, who in addition to only getting a single magic item (obviously) isn't getting Parcel 5 either, a parcel containing roughly half the worth of a single item of his level.

In practice, however, if you have a large party and you find your PCs have to sell off useful items just to be able to purchase enough consumables (potions, ritual components, etc...) then it's probably a good idea to hand out more gold than the DMG says. It is, after all, only a guideline.

 

[HarbingerX]

I've just noticed it. DMG says that you should add some magic items if you have more characters in the party, but should I up monetary treasure accordingly?
For example 1sl level monetary is 720 gp for 5 chars party, shouldn't it be 720/5*7=1008 gp for 7PCs?

Thanks everyone.

It's already scaled in terms of overall character award per level. Image you were handing out just gold and the players had to buy all of the magic items themselves. The magic items you add for extra players make the 'gold-per-player' approximately the same regardless of the number of players.

Where you might run into a problem is if your players frequently want to sell their magic items to buy other ones. If that's how your magic item economy goes, hand out the GP value instead so that they don't lose 80% of their loot value all the time.

I've found in my games that gold has become very unimportant as it's only really used to buy Ritual Components, Potions and ammo - for which they receive more than enough; everything else they get from me as treasure.

 

[arscott]

The short version is that a smaller sized party does get more gold per person than a larger party, but it also gets fewer magic items per person.

For example, a party of five will find four magic items a level (or .8 magic items/character), but a party of two will only find one magic item per level (.5/character).

It doesn't even out perfectly, but it comes pretty close.

 

[PeelSeel2]

I took the monetary treasure per level, plus the value of the magic items for the level and summed them into 1 monetary figure. I then divided this amount by the experience your typical party would earn that level x 5. What this gave me was an average gp per xp handed out. With the math, now treasure is not based on party size, it is based on experience earned. I then averaged them into 1 figure for levels in blocks of 5. Here are the results:

1 to 5 1.044129524 gp per xp
6 to 10 2.125509957 gp per xp
11 to 15 4.557047619 gp per xp
16 to 20 9.288690476 gp per xp
21 to 25 17.81547342 gp per xp
26 to 30 21.40047619 gp per xp

I was going to make a program that would figure it for each character in the party and their respective level, but I ended up just averaging in the end.

I keep track of the amount of GP I should award and award it when I think it is appropriate. I had my characters come up with a wish list of ten item each they want for 1-12th level. I can seed them in by taking the retail value of the item out of the treasure. I also do not mind them buying whatever item they can afford. It is all balanced.

To me it is easier to keep track of treasure when based off experience awarded rather than level parcels. My group varies each week from 5 to 12 members of varying levels. I wing it a lot when DM'ing, so I do not have a lot of 'set' encounters.

Hope that helps!