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Thievery in 5e - still relevant?
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9122661" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>What the DM is allowed to do is make changes to the encounters to adjust for the power level of the party, but the rewards for the adventure are set in stone. Also, when I ran AL, when I did make these sorts of changes, I got a lot of pushback from the players, who felt that my adjustments were somehow "unfair" (the argument basically came down to the idea that I was negating their optimization and player skill, and it couldn't possibly have anything to do with running for a level 1-4 adventure that can be played by three to seven players that clearly states it was optimized for five level 2 players, lol).</p><p></p><p>And I can tell you, by level 12, my AL character was sitting on 14 thousand gold pieces, as the only things I could do with it were buy items from the PHB (all the arrows and healing potions I could want), limited spellcasting services, a few mostly useless magic items available from my faction (of which, the only one I acquired was a shortbow +1, and even then, shortly after buying it, a "weapon +1" came up as an award), and to help pay for costly material components, which only came up once, when I was in a session with a Cleric who could cast Heroes' Feast (which I happily paid for completely out of pocket). Now that having been said, since I left, I heard AL has overhauled the treasure rules, so it might be different now.</p><p></p><p>The point being, however, is that there's a lot of people who play in the program, so "just change it" isn't always on the table. Further, there's a lot of DM's who don't have pre-5e experience who could seriously use more guidance on what the heck all this money is <em>for</em>, since expensive items are optional with no real guidance for how/when/why they should be employed in the game in the DMG (despite Xanathar's saying, "oh hey, if you don't have magic weapons in your game, that changes the balance of various abilities"), especially with several older DM's saying "yeah! no magic items! they'll ruin your game!" out there.</p><p></p><p>Thinking back to my AD&D days, the usual answer to prevent players from having money sitting around was, in general, to be stingy as heck, forcing players to fight 300 kobolds in order to fight over a few dented copper coins (hyperbole, but not as much as you might think) in order to keep players poor and desperate.</p><p></p><p>I remember being told often that "magic items are rare, and treasure is scarce" until I started to DM myself, and I started reading published adventures that were positively dripping with loot, +1 long swords, rings of protection +1, and potions of healing, let alone started to use the random treasure generation to see what came out; it was enlightening, to say the least. And often blatantly ridiculous, lol, like the time I foolishly let a 2nd level Wizard have a Staff of Power! : )</p><p></p><p>The purpose of adventuring can't be simply to acquire treasure, because once it's acquired, then what? Build a house you'll never visit and fill it with trophies?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9122661, member: 6877472"] What the DM is allowed to do is make changes to the encounters to adjust for the power level of the party, but the rewards for the adventure are set in stone. Also, when I ran AL, when I did make these sorts of changes, I got a lot of pushback from the players, who felt that my adjustments were somehow "unfair" (the argument basically came down to the idea that I was negating their optimization and player skill, and it couldn't possibly have anything to do with running for a level 1-4 adventure that can be played by three to seven players that clearly states it was optimized for five level 2 players, lol). And I can tell you, by level 12, my AL character was sitting on 14 thousand gold pieces, as the only things I could do with it were buy items from the PHB (all the arrows and healing potions I could want), limited spellcasting services, a few mostly useless magic items available from my faction (of which, the only one I acquired was a shortbow +1, and even then, shortly after buying it, a "weapon +1" came up as an award), and to help pay for costly material components, which only came up once, when I was in a session with a Cleric who could cast Heroes' Feast (which I happily paid for completely out of pocket). Now that having been said, since I left, I heard AL has overhauled the treasure rules, so it might be different now. The point being, however, is that there's a lot of people who play in the program, so "just change it" isn't always on the table. Further, there's a lot of DM's who don't have pre-5e experience who could seriously use more guidance on what the heck all this money is [I]for[/I], since expensive items are optional with no real guidance for how/when/why they should be employed in the game in the DMG (despite Xanathar's saying, "oh hey, if you don't have magic weapons in your game, that changes the balance of various abilities"), especially with several older DM's saying "yeah! no magic items! they'll ruin your game!" out there. Thinking back to my AD&D days, the usual answer to prevent players from having money sitting around was, in general, to be stingy as heck, forcing players to fight 300 kobolds in order to fight over a few dented copper coins (hyperbole, but not as much as you might think) in order to keep players poor and desperate. I remember being told often that "magic items are rare, and treasure is scarce" until I started to DM myself, and I started reading published adventures that were positively dripping with loot, +1 long swords, rings of protection +1, and potions of healing, let alone started to use the random treasure generation to see what came out; it was enlightening, to say the least. And often blatantly ridiculous, lol, like the time I foolishly let a 2nd level Wizard have a Staff of Power! : ) The purpose of adventuring can't be simply to acquire treasure, because once it's acquired, then what? Build a house you'll never visit and fill it with trophies? [/QUOTE]
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