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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Monte At Home" data-source="post: 2163625" data-attributes="member: 1335">In my opinion, not so well. Or at least, not with any kind of equality.But it's up to them, and for the most part they don't seem to mind. They've all gamed for so long, and been a part of enough who-gets-what arguments that they'd rather get treated unfairly than argue and get what they want.This is bad, though, because if a PC comes along who decides to care enough to argue, they just always get what they want. Fortunately, that hasn't been an issue for a long time. However, recently everyone totaled up their "net worth." Lots of people had far less treasure than the DMG table suggests they should have. A couple had more. At least one had far, far more. This wasn't due to greediness. It was due to the "give items to those people who can use them best" idea. But over the course of a campaign, certain types of characters are going to be able to use "best" more than others (some characters only had any decent items at all because I specifically put items into adventures for them). And the definition of "who can use them best" changes over time. Basically, the cleric ended up with the lion's share of the loot, because she could use weapons, armor, spellcasting items all well. Plus, since she was the kind of cleric that didn't mind playing a support role, she'd get anything that benefited the group as a whole or was meant to be used outside of combat. Plus, since everyone relied on her healing, they were all more than willing to pile protective items on her as well. Now, is that really that bad? Nah. Like I said, it was their choice. It wasn't until some of them looked back over the course of the campaign that they said "hey, you know, I don't have that much stuff." I think some of them felt it was because I was a stingy DM--which might be true in part. On the other hand, one of the players that accused me of stinginess walked around with a minor artifact for most of the campaign, so I guess it's all relative.I will point out that I really favor characters who are equipped with found items rather than bought items. You can spot a D&D character who bought all his items a mile away. They're all stat boosting items, AC or skill boosting items, magic weapons and armor, and so forth. Basically, all items that add bonuses to what that character already does best. Few such characters have an immovable rod, a bag of tricks, or a cloak of the manta ray.  Which is a shame, because it's just such quirky, oddball items that give characters a lot of flavor and force players to come up with interesting tactics and solutions to problems. Thus, I often subtly make it a lot easier for PCs to just keep what they get rather than sell it and buy more straightforward items*. Maybe that makes me a mean DM. Oh well.*Actually, in my current campaign, I've been bending over backward to avoid allowing "straightforward" bonus items in the game at all. A few have snuck in, but for the most part it adds a lot of flavor.</blockquote>

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