How many magic items are PCs supposed to have?

[keterys]

Er, don't forget the monetary rewards.

PC #5 should at least have the monetary equivalent to buy a Level 1 item and the rest of the money should be split up between the PCs with the larger portions inversely proportional to the level of the treasure the PC got.

I wasn't, but 2/5 of a level 1 item each isn't much money, especially if some of it is potions.

 

[Archmage]

I wasn't, but 2/5 of a level 1 item each isn't much money, especially if some of it is potions.

It's not 2/5 of a level 1 item - it's whatever the party determines to be his or her share of the full value of 2 items. DMG, p125 - "During the course of gaining that level, expect a group of five characters to acquire four magic items ranging in level from one to four levels above the party level. In addition, they should find gold and other monetary treasure equal to the market price of two magic items of their level." (boldface mine)

 

[Glak]

if you have five players and they level five times, you have 20 magical items, enough for each person to have four. If all of the items came at the end up the adventure then you would have a bunch of items that were higher level than the party. However you gained most of the items at about level -3 and so the average comes out to be pretty much what the DMG suggests.

 

[SSquirrel]

I made a L8 wizard and used a chunk of my L-1 cash to buy 3 rituals, like Raise Dead

 

[Jhaelen]

Jhaelen, that's a nice chart - did you get that by adding up all the parcels, or just eyeballing it?

Yep, I've been adding up the parcels and distributed them in a way that every character's share is about equal. If you're choosing the package with the L+3 item, you may want to reduce the gp for that character somewhat, especially if L+3 happens to be a level where the tier changes (e.g. if L=8).

Otherwise, it's pretty accurate for levels 5 and higher. Before level 5 there's not enough magic items to get three items for each character.

 

[keterys]

It's not 2/5 of a level 1 item - it's whatever the party determines to be his or her share of the full value of 2 items. DMG, p125 - "During the course of gaining that level, expect a group of five characters to acquire four magic items ranging in level from one to four levels above the party level. In addition, they should find gold and other monetary treasure equal to the market price of two magic items of their level." (boldface mine)

Right... and 2 level 1 magic items... divided by 5 players... is 2/5 of a level 1 item _each_. You may have missed that word

In the original post I also didn't talk about the gp equal to a level 1 item each that the DMG method gives you, either. It's clearly a lot more gp, but I was just talking about magic items.

However, since you're concerned about the gp, feel free to put 2/5 of a level 1 item's worth of gp next to each character, to compare against a level 1 item's worth of gp.