Do your party give "running cost" to spellcasters?

[Shin Okada]

As a default, all the party members receive equal amount of treasure. But throughout the campaign, spellcasters tend to "use up" and "burn" much of their share. I mean, they tend to spend much of their money on making or buying one-use scrolls and charged items. So my playgroup have found that when they reach to higher level, spellcasters tend to have smaller amount of wealth comparing to other PCs. So now we are wondering if we should give extra "running cost" to those casters when we divide treasure. Do anybody doing this?

 

[ElvishBard]

...

I would say that they are choosing to buy the items they do, and the only reason they should get extra treasure is because the group all agrees that they have a real need for it. If your asking if the DM needs to give then more treasure than everyone else I would advise heavily against it. The group must decide how to divide the treasure and who needs more money than anyone else, if anyone.

 

[Kaleon Moonshae]

I would say that they are choosing to buy the items they do, and the only reason they should get extra treasure is because the group all agrees that they have a real need for it. If your asking if the DM needs to give then more treasure than everyone else I would advise heavily against it. The group must decide how to divide the treasure and who needs more money than anyone else, if anyone.

Most of my groups have never done the *equal* share treasure thing. We have always either drawn lots (round robin choice) or talked amongst ourselves and figured out who needed what (the normal tactice for us, the lots is onyl when there is a lot of stuff or a lot of stuff multiple characters could use). Our treasure alotment at higher levels is not really *eve* so much as *task oriented*. ymmv.

 

[Hoog]

We as a group split money up evenly with an extra share going for party fund which is used to buy wands and other items for the parties use. All of the other items go to whoever asks for them and has a need for it. We do keep track of the items to make sure they are being used and not sold for extra cash. Anything left is sold and divided as above.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Oh man, as the guy playing the wizard in our last game, I would have loved it if I could've wheedled myself an extra share of treasure.

The best I could usually do was to get the party to kick a few hundred gp into pearls for Identify spells before the loot was divided up so I wouldn't end up paying for it all myself, and to be excused from having to pitch in for the price of party resources like wands of cure light or cure moderate wounds. But between paying 100gp/page just to put spells in my book, paying for the spells I was putting into the book, buying other expensive material components, and then trying to pay for "must-have" scrolls and items, I was still the poorest guy in the whole party. Wizards are a terribly expensive class, if you actually want to exploit their versatility to its fullest.

Though I'll admit that I ended up having as much (or more) items as the rest of the group, in addition to the fantastically expensive spellbooks. Partly this was the usual discount for crafting things yourself, and partly it was because the campaign setting made it clear that any wizard or cleric who accepted a commission to craft items for a PC generally charged two or three times the market price for the service; so while everyone else was hoarding their treasure to buy stuff at an insane markup, I was able to make items for less than they were worth and even insanely overcharge a couple of NPCs to get some additional cashflow.

...mind you, the tradeoff was that I ended up over two thousand xp behind everyone else, and still flat broke because I could spend the money much faster than it came in. But even though I was always strapped for cash and lagged behind them in levels, at least I had the same overall value of possessions (or higher) as everyone else, plus a good selection of utility spells to draw on.

--
it's still sad when the monk has enough money to buy a tower and you can't even make rent
ryan

 

[d4]

i've never seen a party above 5th or 6th level that wasn't swimming in cash and able to afford whatever they needed.

in any event, IMO high-level spellcasters are more powerful than high-level non-spellcasters, so i think giving them an extra share of treasure would unbalance things even further.

 

[Vymair]

In our group, most of our wizards take at least one craft feat and charge their fellow party members full price for magic items they create at half cost. This gives them the extra funds they need for scrolls, spell trading and scribig and magic items of their own.

 

[Liquidsabre]

I've played and run many wizards over the last few years and come to consider wizards and cash like this: For wizards you can consider their spellbook equivalent to a magic item that simply allows the wizard to select multiple spells to memorize for the day, giving the wizard greater power (i.e. more spells to choose from and access to). Sinking more money into the spellbook increases it's worth to the wizard and in general. Just the same as a fighter sinks cash into their sword/armor or as the rogue sinks cash into their boots of striding and cloak of hiding.

Now a wizard can either choose to spend the gold on increasing the power of their spellbook or on other magic items that provide different benefits. Just as the fighter can choose between boots of striding & springing for mobility or a magical longbow in addition to their magical sword (for greater felxibility, the same as the wizard). Wizards are balanced with the number of spells available to them at no cost each level with gold spent as they wish, equal to all the other classes. A good wizard at higher levels should spend ~15-30% of total wealth on spells for their spellbook just as a fighter spends on their weapon of choice.

Providing extra money for the wizard is really nice but unnecessary, all things being equal.

Though when the party wants a specific benefit from the wizard (a specific spell) the gold can come from party funds is very reasonable, just as the party wanting the cleric to have a wand of heal or the ground-bound fighter to have boots of flying just-in-case so he can whack things when the party encounters dangerous flying things, and so on.

 

[dvvega]

In the games I have DMmed and run the treasure division has always ended up fair. Normally people suggest certain schemes in the hopes that they will be the ones benefitting, however there is always a point where they end up regretting it.

The default method nowadays is to total the montary value of the treasure (inlcuding sale values of magic items) and then dividing equally between the party +1. The +1 is the party fund which pays for common items such as lodgings, resurrections, curings, even for the spellcasters to make party items such as the wand of cure light wounds, or the inevitable cloaks of resistance for everyone.

That way everyone has money to spend on themselves, and the spellcasters don't pay out of their own pockets to help the party.

 

[Gez]

Actually, we always have "party funds" in addition to everyone's pocket money. Usually, half or more of what we loot (or of what money we get from selling stuff) gets into this community funds, and the rest is divided equally.

When buying scrolls, potions, wands, and other things that benefit everybody, we tap into these funds. When a spellcaster wants to create an item, at least half the funds come from the community chest, the rest coming from the intended owner of the item.

Also, the only thing we share equally is money. Items are given to the finder, or to the one who would need it most, without too much regards on monetary value.