How're we supposed to divvy the loot?

[Shabe]

Thats all quite frankly mad, its a roleplaying game, you are meant to roleplay anything that is in character well er in character, else you are playing...
Yes of course you try and make sure everyone has got a fair portion of the loot, its an unspoken rule in the circle i play in, but as a player you play your character, if hes a greedy money grabbing goit then he'll snaffle the best item for himself or to be less obvious a couple of nice gems. If he happens to be stuffing everything in his bag of holding then the players are soon going to notice next time he pulls out brand spanking new item of doom(tm)and he should be ready to face the consequences in character.

Of course you may be talking about all of the above in character where all the characters in the party count every single coin and keep track of it individually and all know the exact price of items, all can divide big numbers in their heads and all carry around a handy set of dice with them for when the roll off occurs, then of course you are fine, else well done you've taken some of the r out or rpg.

 

[Wormwood]

Yes of course you try and make sure everyone has got a fair portion of the loot, its an unspoken rule in the circle i play in, but as a player you play your character, if hes a greedy money grabbing goit then he'll snaffle the best item for himself or to be less obvious a couple of nice gems.

If that works with your group, mazel tov!

In my experience, "But that's what my character would do!" is usually a lame excuse for jerky, antisocial behavior.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

On the rare occasions where I had a player or two that couldn't handle the, "players, roleplaying as their characters, decide amongst themselves, in whatever way makes sense"--I had a simple solution:

Me: "Hey, this game will be tough. You will have enough equipment to handle it, but you'd better be smart about how you use it. If we have a TPK because you sold the wand of fireballs, well that's just too bad."

Former Problem Player (next treasure distribution): "I really do think my elf should get the bow, but I'll pass along the bracers to the wizard, because those last couple of fights showed he needs some extra defense."

But then I come from the school that the players should be allowed to make things as difficult for themselves as they want, if they don't mind the consequences.

 

[Serensius]

Here's fair:

It's a roleplaying decision how loot gets divvied up. Leave it your players, and even better, leave it to their characters.

If that doesn't work (and, yes, I've seen it not work!) the characters will probably figure it out.

A game that did DKP for D&D loot would pretty much drive me nuts, even if it was in-character though...

I got to this post, then I decided to stop reading the thread. This man speaks reason. Granted, I have decided to not disclose to my players what the items actually do, meaning they'll have to figure out themselves (Identify-likes give only vague hints).

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I admit it, we use a "down to the exact copper, bid on items you want, spreadsheet to tally it all" method. At least in one campaign.

The success of that method requires there is a reasonably standard Sale Price, and reasonable access to other useful magic items at some reasonably standard Purchase Price.

In a small, cooperative group, a gentleman's agreement to keep things reasonably fair can work out just fine.

IME dicing for pick order in its various forms can work great if there is a steady flow of a reasonable mix of items seeded in by the DM. But then you get cases like...

"My turn? Gee, I can pick this +2 mithral chain shirt and sell it for cash, as I already have +2 plate armor. Or I can pick this Wand of Fireballs, and cash it out. Or I can pick up a Potion of Cure Light Wounds."

I have no idea what we will do in 4e...

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

IME it takes me about 1 day of gaming with a DM that does this sort of thing before every reasonably intelligent player at the table knows what's going on. AFAIK the point of narravist style gaming is not to trick the players into thinking that they're playing a simulationist style game. Since the players enjoyment of the game revolves around their acquisition of balanced loot, then as I said, why not dispense with the pretense? If my "job" as a DM is really to fool the players into thinking that I'm running one kind of game when I'm really running another then I want a different job. Players who don't care about the DM stocking the vaults could possibly appreciate the chance to spend their "loot-points" in ways compatible with their narrativist instincts. If they want to pretend that they got their loot from the monster they just killed, then I don't find that to be substantially different than pretending that you don't know the DM put that magical weapon of the kind you've specialized in just because of your character.

I think it is a fine thing to strip away the pretentious veneer of simulationism so many gamers cling to.

But OTOH what does it matter if the clever Narrativist players see through the charade? Why not throw a bone to those who want a little help with their willing suspension of disbelief? What exactly is the downside?

 

[Orcus]

So, over the course of a level, a group of 5 PCs should gain the following amounts of treasure:

-Magic Item of Party Level +4
-Magic Item of Party Level +3
-Magic Item of Party Level +2
-Magic Item of Party Level +1
-GP equal to (Magic Item of Party Level x2)

Some of that GP may be in the form of potions or art, but let's treat it as GP since for this, it will only make the problem worse.
Merchants will buy magic items from the PCs at 20% of their value, and sell them to the PCs for 110-140% of their value. PCs can alternately use rituals to make magic items at 100% of their value.
Since rituals are the only things that seem to use 100% of a magic item's value as a figure, I propose that what we used to call Market Price in 3E be called, for now, Ritual Value.

How do we achieve an even loot distribution?

Assuming prices on this chart are correct: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4219488&postcount=7
The old system doesn't work anymore.

By old system I mean this:
1) Sell magic items no one wants.
2) Divvy all the gold evenly.
3) Anyone who wants a magic item pays the group however much it could be sold for. If multiple people want it, it goes to the highest bidder.
4) Divvy the gold paid to the group in step 3 among all members of the party, including to the people who bought the item(s).

Under that system, we get something like this for a party that just finished the adventure taking them from 1st to 2nd level:
Member A has a 5th level magic item and 65.6 GP.
Member B has a 4th level magic item and 97.6 GP.
Member C has a 3rd level magic item and 129.6 GP.
Member D has a 2nd level magic item and 161.6 GP.
Member E has 265.6 GP.

A 1st level magic item costs 360 GP at Ritual Value, and Member E cries.

The easy solution would be for the members to 'cycle through' which level magic item they get. Member A just got the level+4 item, next time he gets the level+3, then level+2, level+1, and finally, no item, before going back to level+5. This works great, except that the level+5 item might be useless to him when his turn comes up.

We could have the 1st priority of all the GP found be to buy Member E a 1st level magic item at Ritual Value. The only issue there, I think, is that those getting the better magic items don't have enough GP from the split to pay the 20% of its value, but this amounts to tracking debts rather than tracking spare gold.

Any ideas?

The day I get a campaign group that does that, I am stopping playing D&D forever.

That is insane. I'm not trying to criticize, but you're kidding, right?

Holy cow.

Clark

 

[hong]

IME it takes me about 1 day of gaming with a DM that does this sort of thing before every reasonably intelligent player at the table knows what's going on. AFAIK the point of narravist style gaming is not to trick the players into thinking that they're playing a simulationist style game. Since the players enjoyment of the game revolves around their acquisition of balanced loot, then as I said, why not dispense with the pretense? If my "job" as a DM is really to fool the players into thinking that I'm running one kind of game when I'm really running another then I want a different job. Players who don't care about the DM stocking the vaults could possibly appreciate the chance to spend their "loot-points" in ways compatible with their narrativist instincts. If they want to pretend that they got their loot from the monster they just killed, then I don't find that to be substantially different than pretending that you don't know the DM put that magical weapon of the kind you've specialized in just because of your character.

See, this "everything makes sense, or nothing makes sense" thing, it is known in some parts as a false dicko disho dickho choice.

 

[Ten]

DKP System:

Every member of the party gets 1 DKP for every encounter they are present. Whenever an item drops, you can claim it. If no one objects to your claim, you get that item and your DKP is set to 0. If someone also claims it, both of you roll and the highest roller gets it, and their DKP is set to 0. Gold isn't immediately claimed, but rather counts as the parties general fund. If someone in the party wants to buy anything more valuable then a whore or a night of drinking, they claim however much gold they need and their DKP is set to 0.

Actually, it's more or less pointless. It was designed to work when there were groups of people where more than 1 person wanted the same thing. In a general party, this won't happen all that often I would imagine, so just have the players and the characters roll a dice when they both want something, and the next time they both want something the loser of the first roll gets it.

 

[theNater]

Assuming prices on this chart are correct: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4219488&postcount=7
The old system doesn't work anymore.

By old system I mean this:
1) Sell magic items no one wants.
2) Divvy all the gold evenly.
3) Anyone who wants a magic item pays the group however much it could be sold for. If multiple people want it, it goes to the highest bidder.
4) Divvy the gold paid to the group in step 3 among all members of the party, including to the people who bought the item(s).

Under that system, we get something like this for a party that just finished the adventure taking them from 1st to 2nd level:
Member A has a 5th level magic item and 65.6 GP.
Member B has a 4th level magic item and 97.6 GP.
Member C has a 3rd level magic item and 129.6 GP.
Member D has a 2nd level magic item and 161.6 GP.
Member E has 265.6 GP.

A 1st level magic item costs 360 GP at Ritual Value, and Member E cries.

I look at this and I notice that at the start of level 2, one member of the party has no magic item. This is early enough in the game that I don't think it's a major problem yet, sometimes nobody picks up a magic item that early. Let's look at the start of level 3. There are a large number of ways that this could go, but I'd like to look at the extreme examples, and figure that those give us some boundaries.

If the items are valued in the same order as the first level's items(A gets the level 6 item, B gets the level 5 item, etc.), then our final arrangement looks like this:

Member A has a 6th and 5th level magic item and 86.4 GP.
Member B has a 5th and 4th level magic item and 278.4 GP.
Member C has a 4th and 3rd level magic item and 342.4 GP.
Member D has a 3rd and 2nd level magic item and 416.4 GP.
Member E has 646.4 GP.

In which case member E can purchase one 2nd level or two 1st level magic items of his choice. Note that this choice is important, as it allows him to aquire items that are exactly what he wants, while his party members are going around with more powerful items that are only approximately what they want. He exchanges raw item power for better item and ability synergy.

The other extreme case is that item are valued in reverse order(E gets the level 6 item, D gets the level 5 item, etc.), and in that case we end up with something more like this:

Member A has a 5th level magic item and 446.4 GP.
Member B has a 3rd and 4th level magic item and 352.4 GP.
Member C has a 4th and 3rd level magic item and 342.4 GP.
Member D has a 5th and 2nd level magic item and 342.4 GP.
Member E has a 6th level magic item and 286.4 GP.

At this point, everyone except members A and E have two magic items, and member A can purchase a 1st level item if he wishes. If he does so, the only party member with only one magic item is the member with the most powerful magic item, which seems like a pretty good arrangement to me. Also note that the cash on hand of members B, C, and D are very close. The only members with strange monetary values are the ones who have been on the extremes of the curves both times.

Conclusions: At the end of level 1, things will likely be a little unbalanced for a five-man party. However, later levels are going to have a smoothing effect on the magical gear selections. If the loot is useful to party members randomly, then things look like they'll work out more or less evenly over long periods of time. Even if the loot is heavily weighted to one character, the characters getting the lower level magic items aquire more purchasing power faster, meaning that(if the GM permits them to purchase the items they want) they will still be competitive in terms of gear(by virtue of getting exactly the gear they want rather than something that's pretty close to the gear they want).