"Party Funds" -- yay or nay?

[Thels]

In the campaigns I've been playing, there's no stated agreements between the players, the characters handle it out. When the party finds magical items, they usually go to the character that can use it best. New characters that join the party might be given items if no existing partymember has use for it, but the party doesn't automatically trust new characters, this takes a little while to settle. Gold gained during the adventure is shared among the surviving characters that participated in that particular adventure. The characters who've been around longer are usually quite a bit richer.

Note that these are all lowerlevel campaigns and mostly with low on magic services, so buying magic items is nearly unheard of, and when someone's dead, he's dead (though we're about to hit the levels where other options open up). Gold and magic items don't ramp up fast with the levels.

 

[Arnwyn]

My players seem to prefer the "party fund" concept (and it's always intrigued me) - they take it so far as "party equipment" as well...

And to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no freaking clue how they actually divide their individual treasure up - it seems to be "about 10% per person, and the rest of the 40% is party funds", but that's giving them too much organizational credit.

But whatever wacky process they go by, I haven't seen an equipment argument in more than 8 years now...

 

[kibbitz]

For all the time I've played, individual, divvying money fairly, items usually go by need, otherwise, we just take note who got what last time. Otherwise, pooling resources when necessary. Helps that most of us didn't have any funny ideas about doing each other or something, though occasionally, when someone borrows a particularly large sum, there's the usual jokes about interest rates and all that.

 

[jasper]

Methods in my group have varied
Party fund which is carried between all the members.
# of pcs +1 for the kitty. Kitty was reused for training, buying spells and loans to characters.
equal split per character who played that day.
magic items split between who used but money was taken off.

 

[BVB]

The way a party determines is best to divide up the treasure can be a defining characteristic of a group of players, a function of the characters themselves, or a vital necessity prompted by the campaign or setting in which the game is being played. I've found that greedy characters make for poor adventuring fellows and some level of teamwork always wins in the end.

... They were the epitome of a well-oiled machine, on and off the battlefield, and after three years of gaming together the original characters all retired as a group, appropriately enough, to run magic item shop.

I think it's delightful that the entire group decided to quit together and settle down to run the same store. To be of one mind about a major life decision like that? -- Wow.

But while the "well-oiled machine" can be a lovely construct to behold, I also believe it is an over-simplification of a RPG sitiuation that can take years to develop. As the new players/characters in the group, there's really no reason why we would automatically assume a party fund is a good, fair thing. It's not as though the group is a married couple with a single joint checking account, after all -- "Honey, did you pay the electric bill this month? ... I'd like to buy a wand of lightning bolts; can we afford that?"

A well-oiled machine can refer to a team of real people who have learned to work together and trust one another through hard times, or it can be a cheaply defined computer game simulation wherein they are treated as a single animated character operated by six joysticks.

 

[ejja_1]

My players are bunch of greedy bass turds, they divy up everything equally but when thats done they lie steal and cheat one another. The party wizard usually "Identifies" the magic items in the group, and most of the time is fair. But he has been known to misidentify the ocassional +1 sword as merely masterwork, and then take it as part of his share of the treasure to sell later for a nice chunk of change.
The rogue has taken max ranks in pick pocket as most rogues do, and has actually created a few hooks by sneaking into the other players rooms at night when they are all of drinking. The Barbarian has a habit of sneaking of when the players are in the middle of a crawl, so he doesn't have to split any of the treasure or xp's.
And the cleric has been known to charge the other players a "Donation" for healing services.
Whatever works, at least they are having fun.

 

[Voadam]

In our Banewarrens game the DM decided to simplify selling and buying giving a set magic item gp range, ID cost, and time to custom order bigger things or extra little ones. Selling an item was half the cost of buying it at book value. We never haggled or used appraise (thank goodness).

We eventually settled on treating all recovered loot magic as sellable and dividing evenly based on total sellable worth. We could buy looted items from the pot effectively at half market cost and we generally had enough gp shares to do so. Plot items that we could not sell (needed them to save the world) didn't count even if they had nifty side abilities. Also healing items were never sold and considered group treasure for use after spells and paladin healing were used up or emergencies to get back into a fight. We also kept the cleric in diamond dust at party expense for restoration spells.

Nobody died so raising was not an issue, although we did pay individually for restorations before we got a cleric.

I even, in game, drew up articles of agreement on this as if we were a pirate band.

I occasionally lent magic items to other PCs but kept track of who had my magic daggers and ring of protection.

 

[hunter1828]

In my primary game the party splits coins & gems/jewelry evenly, with any odd remainder going into the "beer fund", as they call it. After several game years of adventuring they have rather a lot in the "beer fund" and are wondering whether or not they should split it up.

One poster (don't remember who now) posted about outfitting new members. My party seems to try and take care of this fairly well. Any recently recovered equipment (magic or mundane) not immediatly needed/wanted by older party members is given over to the newer/younger members to choose from. Also, whenever an older party member claims an item that would replace an existing item, he/she puts the item being replaced back into the mix for the younger party members to choose from.

hunter1828

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

In the RttToEE game I played in, we first
(1) divided up all of the treasure according to how much it would sell for.

(2) Then we decided what items we wanted to buy as a party (usually, this amounted to making sure we had a fully charged wand of cure light wounds and a few utility scrolls (lesser restoration, remove blindness, remove disease, spider climb (for the whole party) etc.)

(3) then we divided the remaining money into equal shares.

(4) people who wanted any of the loot we'd found were able to buy that out of their share.

In practice, we sometimes found items (+3 icy burst spiked chain, +2 keen greataxe, +2 Chaotic (intelligent I think--my cleric's will save was too good to ever find out) composite longbow, etc) that were too valuable to fit under any character's share; in that case, the character would usually take the item and get no share of the other loot.

 

[Shallown]

I played ina Return temple game when It first came out and it went something like this.

My character the Rogue'fighter who was, as he often admitted, a thief., member of the guild and all. Was the party funds director. He literally kept tarck of all the money, items etc and didn't let anyone else decide. He manged this through a mix of negotation, intimidation and flat out stubbornness. He always asked for a list of what everyone had and wanted when he dissappeared to do his shopping trips. he would return and hand out items never explaining why people got what.

Realize in his eyes he was the smartest most tactical person in the group and ran it like a mini-guild. he was in charge but he had to keep everyone alive as a resource, not that he actually cared about anyone. It was great to have defacto control over everything magical and monetary. I wanted everyone alive so I never screwed anyone and got what they needed just not what the always asked for. I liked having the power and I did exploit it since My character thought keeping himself alive to be much more improtant than anything else, well himself and the cleric or the sorcerer (the only one he could trsut to run when the crap hit the fan). between them they could in a pinch execute a rescue plan or raise who ever needed it.

He was very much the special forces type of character that knew everyone elese wasn't so disciplined , he planned accordingly and if people paid attention they would see who he favored by what they got. He was also the one who died the most holding the line so others could retreat. He was loyal just an egomaniac.

I loved that character, that is until the bad guys figured out he was ringleader and would always gun for him so he left and I brought in someone new who continued controlling the money but was much more logiucal and non-emotional about it.

later