How can I avoid a Monty-Haul campaign in DnD?

[warfangiscuter]

My players are lvl 1 and they have +1 equipment! I can't tell them to give it back, and I'm not good at telling them they've been robbed. They also have a horse and carrage with 200 gold! This is my first campaign! PLZ HELP!

 

[Crothian]

Stop giving treasure. In my current campaign it took the group three sessions before they found any of it. And session four had them lose equipment and have to bribe their way out of a situation so they lost money on that one.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Don't worry about it. Not every monster has treasure.

We have a house rule that mundane items of creatures that aren't worth much go into a general fund called "beer money." After the adventure, the party has 14 goblin spears, 24 kobold shields, and 2 dragonborn 2-handed swords? Congrats. That will pay for food and lodging until next adventure begins. Deals with a lot of pesky petty details.
How often is that carriage going to affect the adventures? Not very. Same with the horse. Sure, let them have a traveler's feast table and a throne of command. How often are they going to carry those massive heavy objects with them? Yeah, they might stuff one or the other in a bag of holding, but then where are they going to store the dragon hoard they just found?
Actually, the horse and carriage are great for when they have to travel between vastly separated encounters. And, if the carriage is that valuable, it could well attract bandits! After all, only someone wealthy would have something so expensive.
DMG has a pretty good set of examples of treasure packets.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well armed and wealthy adventurers are called......TARGETS! Don't just "have them get robbed", have them be attacked. Give them a chance to defend their spoils. Bandits, minor nobles, mercenaries, these are all great choices for people who would want to rob your players of your wealth. Bandits might stage a trap of some kind or attempt to befriend your players and then trick them out of their stuff. Mercenaries will beat the crap out of you unless you pay them to go away. Nobles will tax you for every cent you've got for every minor rule violation or just plain "It's pay the Mayor 5 gold day Day!"

Just taking your players treasure and then letting them get it back slowly is more likely to piss off your players than solve your problem.

Your adventurers are well armed...that means they're cocky! Give them more powerful foes and more dangerous dungons and of course, reward less awesome loot. I mostly give people minor gems and a small handful of gold in any given fight.

 

[FireLance]

Based on the tag in your post, I assume you're playing 4e?

4E has a treasure parcel system which you can use to avoid giving either too much or too little treasure. However, not everyone likes that system.

My own personal system is slightly different. I simply tell tell my players that every time they gain a level, they get one magic item of up to their new level +1, and gold equal to one fifth the value of a magic item of their old level. 1st-level characters start out with 100 gp as normal.

So, a 1st-level character who makes it to 2nd level gets one magic item of up to 3rd level, and 72 gp (one-fifth the value of a 1st-level magic item).

This is pretty close to what the average character in a 5-man party that finds all 10 treasure parcels every level will get.

Mind you, this system works for me because I have a pretty good relationship with my players and they themselves are willing to abstract the process of finding treasure instead of looking for it themselves.

If your players do want to play through the treasure-finding process, what you can do is to design your adventures so that the PCs should earn enough XP to gain a level by the end of the adventure. Then, place one current level +2 magic item per PC and gold and other valuable items worth one-fifth the value of a current level magic item per PC for the PCs to find. Again, this should approximate what the PCs would gain through the treasure parcel system.

 

[keterys]

They've got an extra +1 to a couple things. Don't sweat it for now, and just pay attention to what treasure you give out in the future. It'll solve itself within a couple levels, if that.

 

[FireLance]

I should add that a +1 magic item at 1st level isn't too unbalancing in a 4e campaign. In one of my campaigns, I had each PC start with a level 1 magic item, gain a level 2 magic item in the course of the first adventure, and level 3 magic item when they reached 2nd level, as per my system above. Despite this, the encounters were still challenging and the players enjoyed them and did not feel that they were walkovers.

Yes, despite what some people may think and say, the 4e system is that robust.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My players are lvl 1 and they have +1 equipment! I can't tell them to give it back, and I'm not good at telling them they've been robbed. They also have a horse and carrage with 200 gold! This is my first campaign! PLZ HELP!

A plain +1 longsword is a 1st-level item. The PCs aren't over the top.

Where are the PCs? If they're not near a shopping mecca, they can't actually spend that cash. With 200 gp they can each buy a potion of healing (assuming you have four players), less if you have more players.

I gave my 3rd-level PCs literally thousands of gold pieces worth of precious metal (iron, because its Athas) and it was two levels before they could start investing it, since they had to get it away from everyone trying to rob them, eat them, or enslave them (it's Athas). They made friends with dwarves who could, slowly, turn that metal into weapons.

I use inherent bonuses because I just don't find tracking wealth fun.

 

[Obryn]

Use inherent bonuses and hand out less treasure.

That's really the key. 4e characters, if their math is handled properly, really don't need a boatload of items. At higher levels, they are just one more thing to track.

-O

 

[S'mon]

My players are lvl 1 and they have +1 equipment! I can't tell them to give it back, and I'm not good at telling them they've been robbed. They also have a horse and carrage with 200 gold! This is my first campaign! PLZ HELP!

Not a problem, don't worry about it. It's actually really hard to Monty Haul in 4e D&D because of the way the magic item system scales. You would have to be handing out at least Paragon tier stuff at 1st level to have a noticeable impact on play - and even then the game would stay playable.

Edit: My current 4e campaign, I started out every PC with a +1 item. My first 4e campaign the PCs acquired an old pay chest holding 6,000gp at ca 2nd level (and hid it!).