How Do You Divide Up The Plunder?

[Elder-Basilisk]

I'm a fan of the calculate the gold value of everything, divide it up into even shares and let PCs buy any items they want out of their share (at half price as if we'd sold the items) method. If there's one item that's too valuable to be purchased via that method, (as was often the case in the RttToEE campaign I played), the character who got the big ticket item wasn't considered for a share of the rest.

Every so often, we devoted a few thousand gp of loot to a "party fund" for things like wands of cure light wounds and scrolls we wanted to be sure to have as a party. (Cure Disease, etc, material components for Restoration, etc).

That method seemed to work pretty well.

 

[Marimmar@Home]

My party(s) had dire trouble sharing stuff, the people are very egocentric and we had to go through several systems to find a solution that everyone is okay with.

We tried the following:

1) High roll gets first pick. Since we had some lucky rollers the shares got pretty unbalanced. *kicks this system*

2) The new approach was to discuss who gets what and vote for it. Well no problem for standard stuff, but when it came to mighty items that more than one PC could use, the voting system favored the charismatic players and couples, that was unfair. *kicks this system*

3) Then we decided to award 100 bidding points per adventure and whoever wanted something could bid for it. This system was total crap because you always had to bid more than everyone else who might want to have an item and accumulating points was near pointless. Another problem with this system was that very class specific items or items only a single character could use were extremely cheap. *kicks this system*

4) Now we have settled on a complex system where every magic item someone acquires is assigned a point value according to it's power in comparison to a +1 to +5 weapon. When new treasure is split a ranking list is made where the the most powerful items are given away first down to the lowly +1 items and potions. The player with the lowest total points in magic items always is asked first if he wants the item currently up for give-away, then the next player in line is asked. If they all refuse, the item is sold. Items with charges are removed from the point list once they are used up. Pretty complicated you say? Well it's actually a quite speedy process, prevents party infighting and with an economics MA doing all the paperwork it's quite easy on the rest of us.

BTW we are not allowed to buy/create magic items and gold is split evenly.

Oh, I voted 'Formalized system of shares' in case you didn't get it

~Marimmar

 

[S'mon]

I generally think the smartest thing is for magic items to go to whoever can make best use of it, but don't count those items as more than half value when divvying up the rest of the loot. Smart players avoid a situation where powerful useful items are sold just because the group can't agree who should get it. It's also important to avoid having the loudest voices get everything - the fighter who already does huge damage might not be the best person to get the +2 STR boost, maybe he should get the protective item while the monk gets the STR booster. That way the fighter stays alive longer and the monk is more useful.

 

[Scarbonac]

In our games, we divide the money equally (although "noob" PCs, whether run by a true newbie or a longtime group-member, usually get a half-share for the first few adventures, til we see if they will work out; the current party votes on that). Then we roll d20s for the magic items, highest roll goes first, second highest next, and so on down to the lowest. If there are PCs with identical die rolls, they "roll-off" between them to see which will precede the other.

If there's enough treasure for more than one run through, we re-roll the dice, giving everyone a fresh shot at the #1 spot.

Neat-o things that a PC wants for himself, like exotic artwork, scrolls of erotic poetry, mithral weapons, nifty-looking jewelry or powdered rhino horn can be "bought" from the group at about 75% of its "book price", cos that's what we usually get when we hawk it to NPC merchants.


In one group of PCs we have a Resurrection Fund, which gets a share of the money in case someone gets snuffed...though the chance that the Fund will be tapped tends to be directly related to the level of goodwill that the PC has with the rest of the party; there's one PC that everyone would practically give their left...arm to raise, and others whom we'd find ourselves thinking "Jesus; do we gotta?"

We do use Standard Adventuring Contracts, so that everyone gets relatively fair treatment on that score in the end. IIRC, you have to be a Full Member, i.e., have been voted up from noob status by a majority of the current band, which usually is pretty fast for most PCs, to be rezzed.

[Edit: Typo; stupid fingers.)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The GM always gets first cut.





What?

 

[Majere]

"In my campaign, the players tend to split the wealth as such...

First, usually the rogue finds it, and takes whatever share she wants from it, because none of the other players are really capable of stopping her; most of them can see she's taking things, but they're not sure what she's taking or how much.

Then, everything goes into a communal holding, for sale and division later once the group reaches town.

Magical items are usually given to the person who benefits from them most."

In our group this party member would have been killed about 6 times by the party, stealing from your friends is just wrong, other penalties include not healing then or buffing them and making 0 magic item for them until the stop being pricks. Dm motives to play nice would be a few curse items to stop thei thief picking up everything she finds. Seriously you live and die together this is just selfishness and people should whack her, you would let peopel steal form you in the real world dont let them steal form you in a game.

Preferd method is to give items to people who need them, put rest of gold in a party kitty from which scrolls wands and items are crafted, on a need to have basis. The idea is simple, its cheeper to keep stuff than sell it, so we keep what we need, we sell the rest to buy what we need but didnt find. When we have a tonne of cash people writ lists of what they need and then we discuss and decide what to get. generally people get roughly equal shares and a stack of money is left unspent for emergeancies.
Most people respect the need for curing wands, scroll libraris and fighter junk. Remeber your a party not a bunch of individuals, what is good for your friends is good for you .

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

In our group this party member would have been killed about 6 times by the party, stealing from your friends is just wrong, other penalties include not healing then or buffing them and making 0 magic item for them until the stop being pricks. Dm motives to play nice would be a few curse items to stop thei thief picking up everything she finds. Seriously you live and die together this is just selfishness and people should whack her, you would let peopel steal form you in the real world dont let them steal form you in a game.

(...)

Remeber your a party not a bunch of individuals, what is good for your friends is good for you .

Different strokes for different people.

Sure, some kind of equal splitting is probably the norm in most campaigns, as well as the safest option. But if the players can deal with it, it is not the only option.

Remember, the primary goal of D&D - and other role-playing games - is to have fun. And that isn't necessarily the same as watching the PCs hoard lots of gp and magical items.

If all the players get along, there is no reason why one or two PCs shouldn't be greedy bastards who cheat and steal from their mates (or a master schemer with all kinds of plots he conceals from his friends, for that matter). The other PCs might curse them when they suspect he steals from them, but they can't find any proof - but as long as the other players can grin and appreciate watching the role-playing as the thief weasels himself out of yet another tight spot... well, no harm done.

Of course, if the player does this merely so that his character can get every advantage over the characters of the other players, then the fun ends there.

There's nothing wrong with adventuring as a party and splitting all the gains equally. But there are other possibilities. Take a break from D&D and take a look at the various incarnations of Call of Cthulhu, for instance. The PCs there don't usually go on "adventures" to gain fame or fortune, but out of sheer desperation. Often, they either die a horrible, horrible death or slowly side into insanity. And yet people enjoy playing these characters!


What I want to say is this: Having greedy characters in the party who try to take more than their share of the loot might not be appropriate for your party. But don't automatically assume that there is something wrong with players who play greedy characters.

We had greedy PCs (lots of them, actually...), PCs who didn't care about money and treasure at all (slightly fewer...), saintly PCs, villanous PCs, and PCs who just tried to stay alive - often in the same party!

And we all had fun. And that's the main thing.

 

[Larcen]

Money and anything we sell we split evenly. For magic items we make a list and roll dice and then pick in the order of the rolls. After the first pass, if there is anything left, we all roll again. If a pass of the list is not enough to give everyone something, we give out a bonus portion of the money. People are usually logical about what they grab and generally only take what they can use. If it turns out someone gets something another person wants, an offer is usually made to buy/trade the item from personal funds and they work it out among themselves.

There is no treasurer or "party pool" to be used for expenses. Instead, as expenses come up we split the cost evenly right then and there among the party members and everyone uses their own individual money to chip in. We like this better because it involves no record keeping and party members can come and go as they please without having to worry about leavign behind their share of the party pool.

With this method we have not had any major arguments in over 20 years of playing. But then, we are all mature gamers, play non-evil PCs, and are good friends outside the game. That helps.

After reading this thread however, I am going to suggest what hong posted and instead of rerolling every pass, we reverse the order for the next pass..

 

[hong]

After reading this thread however, I am going to suggest what hong posted and instead of rerolling every pass, we reverse the order for the next pass..

We got the idea from a board game -- Settlers of Catan, I think.

 

[Larcen]

We got the idea from a board game -- Settlers of Catan, I think.

Say, I hate to hijack this thread, but I have been meaning to buy that game based on reviews alone. Is the game relatively easy to pick up and play? I don't think my group will want to read another thick rule book.