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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5800086" data-attributes="member: 1210">I think this is the most core, most basic thing about D&D, at least for me, and one of the things that appears in 3e and 4e that I strongly dislike is a distancing from this concept. The way 4e handles treasure is a perfect example of this; 3e wasn't quite as bad, but it still annoyed me that the treasure value of a monster was based on the monster's CR (or rather, the encounter's EL) rather on the nature of the monster itself. (Remember when certain monsters collected gems- treasure type Q- and others had only a few thousand each of the cheaper coins, copper and silver (type O)? I loved the treasure types in 1e (and 2e, but the 2e types didn't have the awesome pics that were on the facing pages in the MM and FF).I am a huge proponent of the idea that pcs should be able to seek stronger monsters in order to gain bigger treasures. If you're a 1st level party and you attack a group of kobolds, you should get a pittance, mostly in copper (and perhaps a few kobold gadgets or alchemical items); if you're bold enough (and successful enough!) to take out the local thieves' guild, you should rake in thousands of gps, lots of stolen goods and a ton of miscellaneous gear. You should not get the same "1 first level treasure parcel" from each of these encounters.Now, I recognize that two parcels of the same level might have very different values, even if they're just money/goods parcels; but if the party takes out an encounter 8 levels higher than they are, they ought to get better loot than that, on average.Likewise, if the 1st-level pcs know about 1. the local haunted house, where the town's kids dare each other to spend the night but end up scared away, swearing they saw ghosts; and 2. the abandoned mine up on the hill where a trio of chimerae live, where the local baron sent in fifty of his best men and they all died; and they decide (again, at first level) to go to the place that kills small armies instead of the place that scares off children, they should probably end up dead, unless they are very clever or resourceful. PC choices in a campaign should be meaningful, with consequences. If they spare surrendering foes, maybe those guys end up working for the pcs. If they never spare an enemy, maybe their rep gets out and nobody surrenders to them any more. If the pcs keep offending the baron between forays into the Keep on the Shadowfell, they are exiled, adventure interruptus, and now they are traveling the world while Kalarel's plans come to fruition back home. If the party's fighter is always whoring it up between adventures, maybe when he's 8th level a woman shows up with a baby, claiming it's his. Exploration work best, IMHO, when the pcs have a clue of the general danger level of an area or can pick up such information before they're in over their head; but it also works best when the pcs can choose to go ahead and jump in the deep end in full armor. I guess to me, exploration-based games work best when the dm isn't afraid of a tpk.God I love exploration-based games. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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