How do you reduce treasure accounting

[Sadrik]

Hi,

My group plays 4-5 hours weekly and we are very tired of the accounting that eats into our game time. How do you eliminate this or greatly reduce it. Once, after a big haul, we spent 2 of our 4-5 hours calculating our haul and distributing and picking items. I really want to shave deeply into this time sink. What should we do?

 

[Oryan77]

Just stop giving out treasure...it'll cut down your time 100%

You guys could try doing it via email between sessions.

 

[Eloi]

Someone takes Leadership.

Obtain an Artificer cohort/ally ("best buddy", if that's what he prefers) with Appraise and other appropriate skills. Get a funnel.

Pour money, goods, and magic items no one cares much for into one end of the funnel: Useful magic items come out the other end. Excellent disposal method for extra +1 daggers.

This can all be done on sheets of paper between adventures during downtime, if the DM is willing. Triple check your math, and keep a duplicate copy in case something gets smudged.

People who have a specific "wish list" item can then track as they get closer to "their share" of the treasure generating the item they long for. No at-table adventure time wasted.

 

[Lanefan]

If treasury division is to end up being done at all fairly, there really is no good answer to the time-consumption problem other than hoping your group has at least one person capable of crunching numbers.

Making up a blank form ahead of time helps...I did this for our crew. It needs to have a place to list and add cash, a place to list and value non-magic items (whether kept or sold) and a place to list, value, and claim magic items. A step-by-step division-process instructions list helps as well, provided there's a process in place.

Having the group decide ahead of time how they want to allocate shares helps also, e.g. what does a character get who was only in the party for half the adventure; what if anything do dead characters or their estates receive, how are henches and hirelings paid, and so on.

Lanefan

 

[Zaruthustran]

Play Iron Heroes. It vastly reduces D&D 3.5's reliance on magic doodads. Instead, the focus is on your character. Not his tools. So, in that game, "treasure" is mostly coins and other forms of very easily-tracked wealth.

Assuming you want to stick with D&D, I offer two suggestions:

1. Don't track treasure at all. Describe finding coins and items and whatnot, but just "hand-wave" the disposal of unwanted items. Assume players can keep themselves in reasonably good inns, eating reasonably good meals, and so on. Don't track 2cp pints of ale, 1gp ferries across the river, or 75gp of assorted mundane equipment--to an experienced adventurer, that stuff is just loose change. Guiding principle is that money simply isn't an issue, unless it is THE issue/unless money becomes important for story reasons.

For magic gear, just have players choose equipment in accordance with the Wealth by Level guidelines. Let them re-choose fresh gear each level, or even between levels, just so long as they're always within a few hundred (or few thousand, at higher levels) gp of the suggested wealth*.

2. Pre-compute the treasure. Have the DM tally up valuables *before* each encounter. Then, just divide up the money. Know the GP value of any magical gear too. When it's time to divvy up the loot, just divide it equally.

A fun mechanic for this is to use poker chips and 3x5 cards. Chips are for cash and cash-equivalents (like gems & jewelry). The 3x5 cards have written descriptions of each magic item with their GP value written in big fat black Sharpie. Put a stack of chips on each card so it equals the value on the card, then dump the "cash value" chips in the middle of the table. Everyone takes what they want, and arranges things so everyone has a roughly equal number of chips.

Alternate mechanice: convert the TOTAL value of the loot, including sale value of magic items, into chips. Divide the chips evenly between players. Toss the cards denoting magic items into the middle of the table. Everyone must spend chips (give to DM) until all the cards are "bought". When all the cards are off the table, you're done--each player's character has whatever items they bought, plus the number of any chips they retained.

---

Personally, I go with option 1 in my homebrew campaign (I'm a player), and option 2 in my Savage Tide campaign (I'm the DM).

-z

* Abusive players will spend an unreasonable percentage (or all) of their money on "consumnable" items. Don't play with these players.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Don't have separate coins and art objects. Combine all the non-magical treasure for an adventure into a single amount, either paid by a patron or in the boss monster's lair. So instead of ten separate treasures that are stuff like 3000sp, two art objects worth 500gp, etc, you just have a single treasure of 10,000gp.

You could also reduce the number of small magical treasures, that will likely just get sold, and combine those into a single item too. So instead of ring of protection +1, plate +1, cloak of resistance +2 and some potions you have a single sword +2.

 

[Vurt]

In my games, all treasure accounting happens between sessions, via email. If folks need to spend 2-5 hours figuring it out, that's better spread out during the week than at the table.

Cheers,
Vurt

 

[The Lost Muse]

Or you can switch to a d20 Modern style wealth system, instead of gold pieces, characters have a "wealth bonus" and must make a check to purchase stuff. I've wanted to use it in play a few times, but never got around to trying it out.

 

[Stormborn]

Establish a rule for dividing valuable magic items. In my group all magic items go to "the PC that can best use it" because in the end thats what good for the group as a whole. If its good for any PC, like Cure X potions, it gets divided so that everyone has the same amount (which means if one person hordes theirs and never uses them they don't get any of the new ones). Everything else is recorded by a single player in a long list and then I, with e-mails to the DM, figure out the value and what it can be sold for if there is a doubt (standard is 50% for items, 100% for art objects and gems). I figure out what the total is and then e-mail the total and the way it divides up to everyone. I round down cp and sometimes sp and we dont track the little stuff like food and normal mundane expenses, assuming that the extra coins go to those things. When possible we then also spend what we want to before the next session and submit it for DM approval before the next session. There is usually some bit of adjustment that has to be done (typically because of items that were on a card that didnt get onto the master list) but we try not to spend more than 20-30mins a session in book keeping.

Now, the next time I DM I am thinking that I may determine how much treasure the PCs should get from an adventure and set the amount as X. Then subtract any unique magic items (or the value of other special awards) I want to include (X-M) and then, if a site based or other type of adventure where the PCs might achieve their goal but not go through every enocounter, multiply the total by the percentage that the PCs actually explored/encountered (E%). That would leave me with: (X-M)E%= T where T=Total Treasure. Then T/P = I, where P is the number of players and I is the Individual Treasure. Or [(X-M)/E%]/P = I. Players would then divide the unique magic or special items between them as we have always done. If I were playing with a different group I would probablly set up a mass e-mail and randomly distribute the treasure to players via rolls and then let them swap as they saw fit so long as it was all settled and submitted to me the day before the next session.

If I use that method I would handwave food and lodging and other small expenses just as we do now.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Treasure hunting, treasure finding...haven't done that since 2001.