So How Does Your Group Distribute Treasure?

[Funeris]

My group is like Herobizkit's. They collect...decide if they want to keep anything...and sell the rest. Then, utilizing the party pool they can buy any items they may still need (or feel they need anyway).

Surprisingly, we recently had an addition of a character whose alignment differs from the remaining PCs (read as: BRAND SPANKING NEW EVIL PC). In the last session, he had no problems with the arrangement stated above.

Of course that may change in the near future.

~Fune

 

[Uder]

For some strange reason, my players dice off with d12s ("never get to use 'em for anything else") for each piece of loot, then haggle with each other for what they want.

I'm not fond of this method, and starting three sessions ago Honged it. They still haven't divvyed the loot

 

[genshou]

As a corollary to my agreement to what Jack of Shadows said, having magic items start out partially owned by everyone and then letting the PC who wants it pay off the shares that belong to everyone else means that PCs who leave the party with whatever items they happen to be using at the time won't usually be stealing all the party's wealth as they do so. Allies and perhaps even friends the PCs may be, but would you give your friends large sums of wealth and expect them to just be trustworthy with hundreds of thousands of your dollars? Better if they actually pay to own the items, and it prevents what happened to tonym (if everyone else was constantly getting all the items, then suddenly his/her character would have a lot of gold and be able to outbid them all next time, not to mention loan (with interest) in order to make a bit of extra cash off the circumstance, so that everyone's wealth remains balanced over time).

 

[Azul]

My players used to use the suggested PHB method of dividing treasure but they consistently ran into problems dividing the treasure 8 ways (large group) when a large amount of the loot value consisted of a few magic items. Even shares were almost never possible and selling off most of the magic items found was inefficient.

They settled on a two part system. Coins and other non-magical valuables are divided into even shares. Magic items are handled using a "dibs" list. After an adventure, the party starts at the top of the dibs list (which lists all the party members) and the first person gets a pick among the magic items or other noteworthy loot. If they pick something, they are moved to the bottom of the list. Next, the second person on the list gets a chance to choose and so on. If the number of items exceeds the number of PCs, they start back at the top of the list.

Disposable items such as potions and scrolls are often voted to be jointly owned party treasure (to be used for the benefit of the party as a whole). Extremely valuable items are also often kept as jointly owned treasure but they are held in trust by the character best suited to use them.

Once the picking process has settled down to the dregs (which no one is willing to spend their "dibs" pick on), the minor stuff is either dumped into "party" treasure, bought by a PC using their cash (with that cash added to party funds), or sold to increase party funds. The party funds are used to pay for future adventuring expenses and emergency expenses on their land holdings.

So, players have a choice to take a magic item or wait. If they wait, they naturally drift up the dibs list and will get an earlier pick from a future list of loot. Sometimes, a particular magic item is so obviously suited to a given PC that other players will simply pass on choosing that item to ensure that the best matchup is made. This is done by a tacit agreement among the players since they generally want to get good milage from their magic items.

In any given adventure, the loot distribution ends up being uneven using this method BUT in the long run it is pretty even and everyone has their turn having first pick among all the goodies.

In a recent adventure, the party collected a king's ransom in valuables and due to a prior agreement were honour-bound to share half their loot with their patron (their monarch). This resulted in the party adopting a variation on the suggested PHB loot distribution scheme (where magic items were counted at full value rather than resale value -- this is because these items were sure to find some use in either the party's or the monarch's service) for this adventure only.

A weird exception occured with regards to a sentient lesser artefact level weapon. That spear pretty much adopted one PC and refused to go with anyone else. Given its sentience, the party and their patron discounted it as "loot" and treated it more like a new cohort. However, to represent the net benefit to its new "owner" that PC was dropped to the bottom of the dibs list. The was acceptable to all the players.

 

[Rassilon]

We have two campaigns (same players) and consequently, two methods of treasure distribution.

The first I'm sure will horrify many of the posters, but it has evolved in a particular way over time, and works for us: The campaign is L19, we are above the wealth guidelines. We "get" the treasure as we happen across it, but only tally and divide it intermitently . . .

We have HUGE amounts of stuff every divvy. So: We get this big Excell sheet, and make sure every item is priced. Each character selects what they want, if there is any overlap we work out something at the time (dice, "nah, you can have it", whatever). Then we sell as much of the rest of the gear as we can (often taking weeks or months off in game to do so). We then know the "book average" that that haul went for - 65% of market price for example - and all the gear that each character selcted is priced at that percentage. Then we use coin to top everyone up to an equal divvy.

It takes hours, but everyone gets the same amount, to the copper, we all know how much we got, to the copper, and the DM knows exactly how much wealth the group wound up with (after haggling, trading etc) - you guessed it - to the copper. Not for everyone, but we like it.
Then of course, we go shopping with the spare coin

The second method. The campaign is L5, and under the wealth guidelines. I DM this campaign, and, um . . . I kinda embarrassed but I'm not really sure how the PCs divide the loot. They still track 'private property' per se, but they also seem to have this "we are so poor - please, let me share with you that we may all survive" thing happening. Which, for this campaign, also works for us.

Rassilon.

 

[Kuld]

He who pays the piper gets the choice of tune.