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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 7349491" data-attributes="member: 6932123">This actually gets a bit more complicated.OK, looking at only at the early levels to start with.  The DMG suggests 7 hoards in tier 1, and 18 hoards in tier 2.If hoard distribution is flat, that means for tier 1, you get 1 hoard at level 1, and 2 hoards at each of levels 2-4.  If hoard gathering rates increase, it would mean 1, 1, 2, 3 hoards for levels 1-4.You then need to look at what that means in terms of encounters.  Assuming a large number of easy and medium encounters, with rare hard or deadly encounters, it's clear that the hoards come from the hard to deadly encounters based on how much XP is received compared to the total amount of XP needed to progress to the next level. Aside: You need to use the difference between levels, not the XP needed to reach a given level; an easy mistake to make when trying to judge these progressions.  There's also a spike in XP needed for 10 to 11, compared to the next few levels until you pass level 14.So, looking at just the number of hard or deadly encounters to advance a level or tier:Levels 1 and 2 require 4 hard encounters, or 3 deadly encounters, to gain a level.Levels 3 through 10 require 10 hard encounters, or 7 deadly encounters, to gain a level.Levels 11 through 19 require 7 hard encounters, or 4 deadly encounters, to gain a level.Tier 1 requires 25 hard encounters, or 18 deadly encounters, to gain a tier.Tier 2 requires 60 hard encounters, or 42 deadly encounters, to gain a tier.Tier 3 requires 33 hard encounters, or 25 deadly encounters, to gain a tier.Tier 4 requires 28 hard encounters, or 16 deadly encounters, to gain a tier.Given 'expected' hoard rates of 7 in tier 1, 18 in tier 2, 12 in tier 3, and 8 in tier 4, and assuming only hard or deadly encounters provide hoards, the percentage of hard/deadly experience per tier would be: 30%-40% for tier 1; 30%-40% for tier 2;  35%-45% for tier 3; and 30%-50% for tier 4.So 30% to 40% of all experience coming from hard to deadly encounters seems to be a reliable measure for hoard treasure.Now look at finding a reasonable encounter distribution that allows that percentage of experience to come from the harder end of the spectrum.Level 1: 5 easy, 2 medium, 1 hardLevel 2: 5 easy, 2 medium, 1 hardLevel 3: (5 easy, 2 medium, 1 hard) x2 = 10 easy, 4 medium, 2 hardLevel 4: (5 easy, 2 medium, 1 hard) x2.5 = 12 easy, 5 medium, 3 hard, or = 10 easy, 5 medium, 2 hard, 1 deadlyAnd we have the 1, 1, 2, 3 scaling that gives us 7 hoards of loot in tier 1.Does it hold for tier 2?  All of levels 5-10 can use 3 hard encounters per level to hit 30%, and the total number of hoards is supposed to be 18 — 3 hard per level * 6 levels.  So yes, that works out fine, too. (Bumping up to an occasional deadly encounter just reduces the number of easy/medium encounters for that level slightly.)Level 5-10: (3 easy, 2 medium, 1 hard/deadly) x3For tier 3, it's closer to 2 encounters to hit 30%, which again matches the expected 12 hoards over 6 levels.I won't bother with the rest of the ratios.Next, how many of these will be fights which result in rolling a higher-tier loot table?For tier 1: CR5 mobs are 1800 XP.  That means they pull 450 XP for each of 4 players.  450 XP is higher than deadly for a level 3 character, but is in the hard to deadly range for a level 4 character.  Thus it's not unreasonable to expect that one encounter out of the seven that provide hoard loot to come from the tier 2 table.For tier 2: CR11 is 7200 XP, which is 1800 XP per player.  That's potentially possible in a deadly encounter from level 8, or a hard encounter at level 10.  I would probably expect 1 tier 3 hoard at level 8, 2 at level 9, and 3 at level 10.For tier 3: CR17 is 18,000 XP, which is 4500 XP per player.  That's deadly encounters from level 12 up, or hard encounters from level 16.  I would probably expect 1 at 14, 1 at 15, and 2 at 16.So now we have a means of assigning expectations of hoard values per level.Here's the overall graph:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/Zsrtk0n.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Note: if you could get half of a +1 encounter at level 13, it would smooth out the graph to make it a nice rounded curve.  Since you can't have half an encounter, 13 ends up being a little janky.  But everything else looks fine.And here's the graph for just levels 1-10:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/FtiHyCc.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />This drastically alters the wealth expectations. You'd come into level 5 at 1700 gp, and finish with about 5000 gp.  12000 gp by the end of level 7, and 70000 by the end of level 10.Edit: Here's the actual numbers that I used to get the above graphs:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/MLQPT8I.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

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