Loot as you go, or no?

[Hereticus]

So the fear of cursed items is essentially nil?

Why do you assume nil?

That was one of the many things to fear while adventuring.

 

[ggroy]

So the fear of cursed items is essentially nil?

For the most part.

Usually I try to avoid cursed items or items which have been trapped with something nasty which may cause death. Some players tend to get very angry over failed saving throws vs. poison, death magic, etc ... caused by such items.

 

[roguerouge]

Why do you assume nil?

That was one of the many things to fear while adventuring.

I had thought so, but nobody had mentioned it upthread.

 

[wingsandsword]

Related question for DMs: do you allow groups to have a "group list" of what was found and permit divvying up later, or do you force dividing loot as it is found?

We have always used group treasure and been pretty relaxed about divvying up the treasure.

As for the cursed item question, in my experience cursed items are extremely rare and definitely not worth the huge hassle of the Epic Accounting sessions that can happen with dividing up treasure to avoid the one cursed item you might find in an entire campaign.

 

[Bullgrit]

Depends on the situation, but we try to loot as we go.

The loot goes on the character sheet of the PC who is carrying it. Often that will be one PC, and the loot will be divided up later. But sometimes things get spread around immediately.

We maintain a rule (started by me when I DMed): you don't have it unless it's written on your sheet. We've had a few instances of loot being lost because no one had it written down.

Bullgrit

 

[Dyson Logos]

Considering in our latest game we discovered we were in competition with a number of other adventuring groups, the idea of killing the monsters and then letting THEM loot the treasure was unthinkable.

 

[ggroy]

I usually kept a close eye on the party's encumbrance from looting so much stuff. If the stuff they were looting was stuff I felt was essential for my game campaign, I sometimes may leave a "bag of holding" somewhere along the way for them to find and use.

If all they're doing is looting every possible piece of junk from encounters (ie. every piece of useless leather armor, shortswords, bows, clothing, etc ...), I'll usually warn them that their encumbrance is causing them to get slower and slower with the accumulation of more and more junk. Sometimes I may do something like letting them find a cursed "bag of holding" in plain sight, which turns out to be really a "bag of devouring". Both the useless junk and the valuable/useful stuff goes down the drain in the "bag of devouring". This is generally an incentive for them to prioritize what loot they should take, while leaving behind the junk.

 

[vagabundo]

My group, generally, loots as they go. They also have a Treasurer - ironically the party rogue - who tracks all the loot and they divvy it up back at port or wherever they end up.

The party cleric used to make little stone cairns full of loot with stone shape and they would put a special mark on it. The the party mage would memorise the place - so he could teleport back to it - they would make a note of what was there and move on.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Almost always "loot as you go". You never know when you're not going to make it back to a particular place. I mean, you might have to flee, or get teleported, or a passage might get sealed, etc....


The only time my PCs tend to leave loot is when it is big and heavy, and they have a reasonable expectation of returning; the wizard's lab full of glassware in the middle of the city.

This, mostly. We also leave behind heavy stuff that's not worth a lot (at the time) to be picked up later, if possible. (Armor and such.)

And we mostly divvy stuff later, unless there's something that can be used right away by someone. (Magic sword or armor, etc.) As for Cursed items, no one actually touches any item until its been Identified. (We usually don't bother much with whatever limitations the spell has in whatever edition we're playing.)

This all varies somewhat with whichever group is playing at the time.

 

[fba827]

(Generally)
We loot as we go. And, if there isn't an immediate need for some item found, it is just kept on some "group list to distribute later" usually at the next downtime moment, otherwise it slows the game as we divide things up every single time.