Treasure Division in 4e

Hi Everyone.

I'm playing in my second 4e game (I GMed the first), and how to divide treasure amongst the players is causing a bit of confusion.

Our GM is giving our group treasure as per RAW (parcels, wishlists, etc).

What we are having dificulty figuring out is how to distribute the monetary portion of the treasure in a way that allows the characters who didn't get the higher level items to keep up. We ended up doing it 3.5 style, can anyone think of a better way?

1. 3.5 style. Count the sale value of the magic items as monetary treasure, thus they become part of the lucky PC's share, and so increasing the amount of money available to the rest of the party.

Pro: Insures that players who don't get items have more money to spend on buying/making them

Con: the sale value in 4e is .2*MP instead of the 3.5 value of .5*MP. This means that the extra gold the unlucky players get is much less, and probably won't fund good enough items.

Example: a 5 man, 10th level party finds a 14th level item, a 13th level item, a 12th level item, an 11th level item, and 10,000GP over the course of the level. Valuing the Magic Items at their Sale Value, that's 22,000GP of treasure, or 4,400GP each. One player gets the lvl 14 item and 200GP, another gets a lvl 13 item and 1,000GP, etc. The last player, who didn't get any magic items, gets 4,400GP in cash. This is enough to make a lvl9 item and have 200GP to spare, which is obviously far less powerful than the first PC, who got a lvl 14 item, and the same remainder of gold.

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Ryan

Is the method working for you? You have a method you are using, but are asking for a better way, so I'm not sure if you are just curious about a different way or if you don't like the way you are currently going.

In my campaign, the players split the money down the middle regardless of item outcome. When a player needs money for something that they can not afford, usually others will pitch in some to cover it. With that said, I am stingy with handing out money (my players have about 2k total between them but per the rules it should be about 15k) BUT, I don't allow buying/selling of magic items except in rare circumstances, and even then, their selection would be limited - so gold is of much less value to them.

I'm thinking that only when buying/selling magic items is allowed does money really mean much in which case people would be looking to make it a more fair distribution -- but I have to say, even if I did allow it, my players work well enough together that they would look at who was lacking gear or needed something most, and they would make sure the person got it via handing over cash needed to make it happen... so I guess it depends on the group as well.

I can not, at the moment, think of a better way than the way you are already handling it, although I would make the players do the math - "Here are the items, here is the money" - it would feel too controlling for me to divide it out based on fairness/level of items (unless I had a group who were only out for themselves and I needed to manage it so certain players did not get stepped on) - but that is something that should be taken care of before the campaign starts as far as laying out what I would be expecting as far as teamwork from the players etc.

I'm actually a player right now, not the GM. We are coming up on our third session, and I'm looking for something that works well (fair and keeps the players balanced with each other). The GM has already done his part, in announcing that treasure is by the book with wishlists. The current systems flaws are a lot of bookkeeping, and doesn't do it's stated job terribly well. It is however, more fair than all the gold stays in one pot and buys items for players based on consensus.

We've found that as long as the players know the GP value of the magic items they have, they can keep track of who has how much loot. Whoever has the least gets first pick of anything new, and it tends to even out over time. Someone who is hording twice as much gear as everyone else stands out like a sore thumb

Echohawk, you are brilliant!

That's exactly what I was looking for, but I was overthinking trying to find it.

The answer is just keep a running tally of each PC's net worth (using the purchase price, not sale price of items) , and use the monetary treasure to bring everyone up to avg. Perfect.

I am always amazed about how much work some people put in the whole treasure thing. My players just give the items which they get to whom-ever makes best use/wants it the most. In case of several people wanting the same item, they talk about, and if they can't agree on who gets it, they roll about it (happens rarely). If someone has not acquired anything for a while, the others back down almost automatically, realizing that everyone should get stuff. As for the money/gems/etc, they all get an equal share, after rituals used for the group has been paid for.

I take it neither Weem nor Echohawk have any heavy ritual purchasers/users in their campaign...

My experience is that if you have one or more of those, the 4E economics goes to a hot place in the proverbial handbasket.

Basically, for this reason and others we went back to the full 3.5 economics.

I wouldn't say our wizard is a heavy ritual user, but he is rather fond of Tenser's floating loot transporter. My PCs seem to have decided that his rituals generally benefit the whole group, so they pay for those out of any gold that hasn't yet been divided up, and that wealth doesn't count against the wizard's share.

Tuft, I'm curious -- do your players view the money spent on rituals as "belonging" to the PC using the ritual?

Echohawk said:

I wouldn't say our wizard is a heavy ritual user, but he is rather fond of Tenser's floating loot transporter. My PCs seem to have decided that his rituals generally benefit the whole group, so they pay for those out of any gold that hasn't yet been divided up, and that wealth doesn't count against the wizard's share.

Tuft, I'm curious -- do your players view the money spent on rituals as "belonging" to the PC using the ritual?

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Last time in our Rise of the Runelords campaign, we spent 40 minutes or so arguing whether or not to cast a ritual. We were going into a haunted house where we knew there were undead. My bard wanted to put a homebrewed ritual on the main defender, which would give him resistance to necrotic. We were at level 6, and the ritual cost 100 gp to cast. With our economics rules, healing potions cost 50 to make when we make them ourselfs, so I was going to waste two entire healing potions on this ritual, which I could not guarantee an effect for.

After much arguing, which kind of spoiled my mood for the majority of the evening, we finally cast the ritual, which after some good Arcana rolls provided the fighter with resistance 15 vs necrotic...

...and then we apparently managed to avoid almost all necrotic damage in the scenario just by choosing the right path through the house - the only necrotic damage trap that did not simply miss us hit the rogue. This is not going to make things easier the next time I want to use a ritual, since I did "waste" the money this time.

Ritual abuse

Tuft said:

Last time in our Rise of the Runelords campaign, we spent 40 minutes or so arguing whether or not to cast a ritual. We were going into a haunted house where we knew there were undead. My bard wanted to put a homebrewed ritual on the main defender, which would give him resistance to necrotic. We were at level 6, and the ritual cost 100 gp to cast. With our economics rules, healing potions cost 50 to make when we make them ourselfs, so I was going to waste two entire healing potions on this ritual, which I could not guarantee an effect for.
After much arguing, which kind of spoiled my mood for the majority of the evening, we finally cast the ritual, which after some good Arcana rolls provided the fighter with resistance 15 vs necrotic...
...and then we apparently managed to avoid almost all necrotic damage in the scenario just by choosing the right path through the house - the only necrotic damage trap that did not simply miss us hit the rogue. This is not going to make things easier the next time I want to use a ritual, since I did "waste" the money this time.

Click to expand...

First off those healing potions need a healing surge to work, second you couldn't have known that is what would happen, you can only plan for possible eventualities and that rogue when they next visit anyplace similar to this will probably be the one asking for that ritual to be cast upon them.
I really don't understand this so-called "wishlist" thats been associated with 4e, the odds of the party finding the right item outside of making it themselves or hiring someone to make it should increase in unlikeliness per level of the item, back in earlier editions a ring of protection +1 would be more likely to be found than a +1 sword at least if you're searching a ruin with no idea where the armoury was.
My reaction was to make use of Eberron Bloodstones so that they can enchant a mundane item and it can be enhanced further and there's still a chance of finding a powerful item but there shouldn't be any kind of wishlist involved as that is pointless.
The odds of finding another +1 weapon should be higher than finding a +3 weapon, however selling that weapon to have your own weapon enchanted to a +2 or whatever level item would make more sense and avoids the perils or explaining why all these powerful magical items exist when the majority of them should already be owned, destroyed or be unavailable since they would undoubtedly have been sought by others who undoubtedly be hunting them if they did find it first.
That last part by the way is something I haven't seen any sign of, please let me know if your dm or if you are the dm if you've found your own way to explain this problem.

I'm hoping someone here has come up with a better idea than that.