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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Azul" data-source="post: 2657443" data-attributes="member: 11779">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.</blockquote>

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