How do you distribute treasure?

[Thasmodious]

I like 4e's guidelines as well. It's easy to track and keep balanced. Having the treasure listed in parcels makes it very easy to stick them in where ever it makes sense or is needed. I tend to like to give out large hordes, so the players get treasure less often, but they get big, fun hauls when they do. I don't use player wish lists, but its only because my players don't really do rulebooks and wouldn't have a clue of what they would want or need for their characters, outside of general stuff (magic weapon, magic amulet, magic armor) and that's easy enough to do on my own, especially with Asmor's utilities. Asmor rocks.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means...Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

I know how you feel. We're dinosaurs. Younger players balk at the whole idea that you'd need to search for treasure. The idea that they can't have the particular item most suited to their build the moment that they can afford it infuriates them. The idea that getting treasure might be a struggle is seen as interfering with their fun.

Threads like these make me nostalgic for 'treasure as XP'. The sort of game you and I were reared on doesn't seem to have much of an audience anymore.

I feel more and more like 'Wierd Pete' every year.

I feel compelled to say things like, "Back in my day, you didn't just find treaure. You had to work for it. You'd go down into the dungeon with 50' of rope, a 10' pole, a bundle of torches, some iron spikes, chalk, paper, ink, quills, and a bunch of big sacks. You planned a foray like you'd plan a commando raid, an arctic expedition, and an archaelogical exacavation at the same time. And when you found some treasure, it was usually too heavy to just carry out. We hauled treasure out on mules. You had to have a whole caravan of porters and pack animals to haul the treasure out just to get XP because if you didn't get it back to town, you didn't gain levels, and you were lucky to get 50% of hits value when you sold it, and when you did that you thought yourself lucky if you had enough money to raise your dead and buy a potion with what was left over. And we'd walk uphill from the dungeon both ways, in the snow, with a wandering monster six times a day. You youngsters just don't know what your missing... Now, where did I put my teeth?"

 

[Jack99]

I'm been playing for 30+ years and after reading the posts in this thread I feel my age for the first time. I have almost no idea what most of this means.

Adventure ATM?

Dumping magic items and integrating a cost-based system that allows players to purchase improved equipment by quality?

Doesn't anyone play using a more natural, organic method? You know, you fight evil dudes protecting an ancient evil burial mound and then there's treasure in the mound. Its not arbitrary or random, its based on what people would carry or where they would hide their secret stuff.

Granted I don't do it the ol' 'treasure type'/1e way but neither is it so complex. I wing it like I do 75% of everything else in my games. It just needs to make sense. My players don't tend to loot the bodies but they do look for useful clues and check rooms for traps and secret passages. You never know where the villain might be hiding or where they escaped to.

AD

It's short for At The Moment. I hate any form of magic shops, so my players get their items the following way mostly:
1) Loot
2) Gifts/payment

 

[Jeff Wilder]

(I DM 3.5.)

I more or less wing treasure distribution, but every two or three levels I evaluate wealth-by-level, and if needed I adjust over the next level or two.

 

[Lanefan]

Celebrim, a few posts back, pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Note: the following is based on my 1e games:

I give out treasure pretty randomly, based entirely on what would (or could) logically be found in the current adventure situation; I've never used the DMG "treasure type" tables. The surviving characters also do well enough by looting their staying-dead companions along with the dead enemies. And they do loot *everything*, sometimes even down to the last arrow; despite the fact I've never used the ExP-for-g.p. rule in my life.

Rarely if ever do I tailor treasure to specific characters; mostly because things just don't work that way in a living breathing world. That said, occasional divine gifts or rewards *will* be tailored to the receiving character, often to become long-term iconic possessions.

And, they blow through treasure almost as fast as they earn it. I have training rules in my game for level advancement, and training ain't cheap. Magic is fragile, and item disenchantment or destruction happens far more often than the characters would like. Never mind the raises and resurrections....

That said, for my current game I went through the DMG price list and re-did the whole thing, making minor items (e.g. +1 whatevers) less expensive and major ones (e.g. +4 whatevers) more costly. Jury's still out on what the long-term effect of this will be.

Lanefan

 

[nightwyrm]

The expectation for magical loot or wealth by levels came about due to the attempt to provide a scale for measurement of monster power vs PC power so that the DM will know what monsters can challenge PCs of a certain level. In older editions, there was little to no such system. DMs guessed or just picked monsters due to his preference and PCs either run away a lot or died often. Any comparisons that were done was mainly by eyeballing monster HD, but this system was very vague and incomplete. In 3.x, the more detailed CR system was developed and tried to take into account monster abilities, attacks and defenses etc. The encounter and monster building system in 4e is basically an extension of that system.

Now, when the monster vs PC scaling system was developed, the game designers need to make certain assumptions and the availability of magical gear was one of them. You either take into account that PCs of level X had Y amounts of gear, or you don't.

If you balanced it such that that monster of level Z is an appropriate challenge to PCs of level X with gear Y, then PCs of level X will require Y gear to face monster Z. This leads to expectations that as PCs go up in level, they will accumlate enough gear so that by level X, they will have Y amount of gear. If the level X PCs have less then Y gear, then the power scale is thrown off and they will be less powerful then what the system expects when facing a monster Z.

If you leave gear out of your assumptions when comparing monster vs PC power and balanced mundane PCs of level X to monster Z, then any better gear that the DM give the PC have will make them more powerful than what the system expects when they're facing monster Z.

In both 3.x and 4e, the designers went with the PCs will have magical gear assumption and developed the balancing system based on that assumption. This of course led to the wealth by level expectation in 3.x and the treasure parcel system in 4e. If the DM wanted to go with a low gear game, he'll have to recalibrate the monster vs PC power scale to fit the new assumption. In 3.x, this was a mess to do because there was a lot of power bound within the gear and the math was not transparent. In 4e, gear has much less power and the math behind the gear assumptions is a lot more transparent so it's much more obvious on how the DM should modify the rules in order to run a low gear game.

 

[Fenes]

Gut feeling, guesstimate, etc. I don't follow guidelines, I just aim to balance the PCs out taking all aspects (stats, class features, special abilities, etc.) into account, not just GP value.

 

[Wormwood]

Younger players balk at the whole idea that you'd need to search for treasure. The idea that they can't have the particular item most suited to their build the moment that they can afford it infuriates them. The idea that getting treasure might be a struggle is seen as interfering with their fun.

While you raise some interesting points, I'd like to point out that the average age of the people I game with is 36, with many of us playing RPGs for 25+ years.

I'd say evolving tastes (not simply age) account for the disparities in expectation of play seen in this thread.

And I believe that the desire to *earn* our rewards---through hard work, creativity and defeating powerful foes---is just as present in 4e players as it is inside the hoariest grognard.

 

[Grymar]

Generally, my party doesn't find many giant piles of gold. I build NPCs, give them equipment, and this is the treasure the party finds. I try to keep a rough eye on where they stand versus the "gold per level" recommendations, but I'll often fall behind and try to do a quick "catch up." Unfortunately, this doesn't always work out.

For instance, having gotten little to no treasure in about 1.5 levels, the party was faced with pirates. They fought their way to the pirate captain and defeated her. In a fit of rage and excitement, one of the party members picked up her body, showed it to her still fighting crew, and then tossed her overboard. Unfortunately, 1.5 levels worth of treasure went down with her.

In my current campaign, similarly I was trying to catch them up when they were a bit behind in gold. They found well-guarded wagon hauling tons of gold (for reasons they haven't yet discovered). They had to fight through some very tough guards, but then got the whole wagon...and then took a few bags of gold and left the rest on the road. It wasn't a bad tactical decision (the wagon would have slowed them down in the heavy snow), but it totally shocked me.

Players have a talent for screwing up every plan a DM makes...even when he's for once trying to be nice to them.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

In a fit of rage and excitement, one of the party members picked up her body, showed it to her still fighting crew, and then tossed her overboard. Unfortunately, 1.5 levels worth of treasure went down with her.

Dude, that freakin' rocks.

I would have said something like this, to the most perceptive PC:

"As Morgan the Red's lifeless body flips end over end toward the green-grey sea below, you can see the glitter of jewels and doubloons spilling from the pockets where she must have had them hidden. Lots and lots of jewels and gold."

And then one of my players would have roleplayed a dopplered, "Nnnnnnooooooooooo ... !" as he leapt in agonizing super slo-mo for the railing. Just in time to get splashed in the face.