Level-Up & Shopping: Between sessions or during sessions?

[Lanefan]

We generally handle training (required to gain most benefits of a level bump), treasury division, and downtime as a regular part of session play. Unless the party is very low level, this usually takes one or two sessions of its own; particularly if their undivided treasury has piled up e.g. they didn't divide it after the last adventure. (I've got one player in particular who likes to squeeze every last copper piece out of any given treasury)

If an individual player has a major and potentially time-consuming side project on the boil e.g. designing and building a stronghold, that just gives us a good excuse to hit the pub during the week and sort it out.

 

[The Green Hermit]

We generally handle training (required to gain most benefits of a level bump), treasury division, and downtime as a regular part of session play. Unless the party is very low level, this usually takes one or two sessions of its own; particularly if their undivided treasury has piled up e.g. they didn't divide it after the last adventure. (I've got one player in particular who likes to squeeze every last copper piece out of any given treasury)

If an individual player has a major and potentially time-consuming side project on the boil e.g. designing and building a stronghold, that just gives us a good excuse to hit the pub during the week and sort it out.

How does having a treasury work? We've always just divvied up the loot then and there, sometimes with the agreement that any proceeds from a sale will be divvied up between the person who wanted it and the person who had the carrying capacity.

 

[Lanefan]

How does having a treasury work? We've always just divvied up the loot then and there, sometimes with the agreement that any proceeds from a sale will be divvied up between the person who wanted it and the person who had the carrying capacity.

One player (almost always ends up being me in any game I play in) records everything that's found on an adventure. If something's useful while still in the field (like, say, a magic weapon in a party that doesn't otherwise have any) then someone will use it, on the understanding that it still belongs to the party.

Once back in town everything - including magic items - is evaluated into a monetary value, which is then divided down into individual PC shares. (e.g. if a 5-character party come back with 50K worth of treasure then each character's* share value is 10,000) With this, any magic items in the treasury are open to claim, with whatever you end up with counting as part of your share. (so, if my share's 10000 and I claim a +2 sword worth 3500 then I'll get that and 6500 coin)

* - amended if one or more characters weren't in for the whole adventure, which happens very frequently IME.

If two or more characters claim the same item it's usually settled by roll-off. Unclaimed items are sold. If a single item is worth more than a share then either some loaning and borrowing takes place so someone can claim it, or a consortium of two or more characters go in jointly on it. Rarely, an item might be considered so useful to the party (or is so costly that nobody can afford it!) that it's kept back as a party possession and in effect carried forward to the next treasury; thugh people don't often like doing this as it reduces the current treasury's value.

We have a spreadsheet that does the mathmology for us, the sometimes-tedious bit is the data entry.

Why do we do it this way? Mostly so everyone gets - and can rely on getting - an even share. We've occasionally tried other methods over the years, which have quickly resulted in a rather large wealth disparity between characters.

Dividing it on the fly such as you do would risk such, particularly if the items found happen to favour one class over another (e.g. in raiding a wizard's lair you find gobs of useful stuff for the wizard types but the warriors come away with nothing).

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[doctorbadwolf]

I also let my players know about downtime, or remind them if I know they might be leveling up soon. And if they aren't prepared for downtime, I tell them what they end up doing. (Since we go around the table once for each day of downtime, that gives them a chance to frantically figure out their plan since we usually have multiple days stacked up.)

Yeah that makes sense. We definitely do leveling between sessions, though.

 

[Maestrino]

NOTE: I'm running an Acq Inc campaign.

If a players says "hey, I need to buy some more arrows" I don't really need to RP that interaction, it just happens. But if they go looking for something more exotic, then...

In one of our early sessions a druid character wanted to go looking for an insignia of claws. While they're out, (in Waterdeep, so pretty much everything is available if you look hard enough) a shopkeep offers them a new common magic item item they just developed.

In three or four hilarious hours, the PC buys the item, starts an MLM scheme to sell them all over town (including the aaracokra player flying advertising banners around the local gladiatorial ring), then the crew used those profits to hire an artificer to make their own knockoff version of the items to get control of their own supply chain...

... or I could have just said "sure, you find an insignia of claws after an hour or so."

 

[Fauchard1520]

... or I could have just said "sure, you find an insignia of claws after an hour or so."

If you've got a story hook and the players are down to clown, then running with that mess is a great idea.

My own version of this came in an Exalted game. The players were lunars -- shapeshifters that have to eat their prey to take its form.

Because we were due up for a little urban recon, one of my players decided she wanted a cat form. She went hunting for this fat orange cat only to find that he was El Gato Grande, the small god of all house cats. After the big bear lunar spat him out the party learned that other cats became temporarily sentient and gained the power of speech in El Gato Grande’s presence. He didn’t really understand his own powers though, and so he thought that humans were cruel slave owners.

He was a blatant Puss in Boots ripoff. My Antonio Banderas impression got a workout.

Anyway, El Gato Grande needed the party to help him win the love of a certain Persian. Fur as white as the driven snow, etc. You see, while the small fluffy god was usually a great lover, he grew tongue-tied in the presence of his lady love.

And that’s the story of how my players had to do the balcony scene from Cyrano to a friggin' cat.

It turned out to be more fun than, "You find a cat in an alley and eat it."

 

[Maestrino]

If you've got a story hook and the players are down to clown, then running with that mess is a great idea.

Down to clown may be an understatement. This stuff all happened before I managed to get them on the road to Phandalin...

 

[Li Shenron]

Level-up is typically between sessions because I do not bother counting XP until after we wrap the day.

Shopping depends on the campaign, but it's been something like 15 years since last time I've run a game where the PCs would just shop for magic equipment a'la carte... I've been instead following the principle that magic items are mostly found in treasure or crafted by the PC (though I haven't used the latter in 5e). The PCs can buy magic items only from the occasional specific place/NPC that they encounter during adventures, not the generic village hardware store, so they don't choose what's on sale, meaning that it's not that different from finding treasure after all. And this of course happens during the session.

Does the answer change if you're on Roll20 vs. a PBP forum vs. an IRL table?

Well in PBP there is not really a session and a time between