Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Or the dagger of venom gets used on the wizard...?I mean, that could be a fun roleplaying scene. Ideally, the party discusses it and the wizard gets outvoted.

Or the dagger of venom gets used on the wizard...?I mean, that could be a fun roleplaying scene. Ideally, the party discusses it and the wizard gets outvoted.
Glad it's working out for you, but even if my group was in the same situation, the cost of items wouldn't factor into it, it's just not something we think about. All that matters to us is who can make best use of it currently. If a character leaves with a staff of the magi, then that's an item that is gone.I can see how sharing items around and ignoring item values can work in a campaign where a party stays together for the whole campaign and every character is there for every adventure. (Possibly this might be a relatively short-ish campaign?) But our campaign will be 42 yrs old this April (not continuously though - there was a break from 1998 to 2007), with 458 PCs and NPCs played over the course of the whole thing. Characters join parties and depart from them at the end of an adventure (usually), often to join other parties but sometimes to attend to other events in their lives (politics, family obligations, building keeps, etc.). Just the nature of how it has worked.
We use the same method as most other people on this thread - divide the gold equally, magic items go to whoever wants them (with the "most useful" being the tiebreaker if more than one person wants it; the wizard is only getting an amulet of natural armour once everybody else already has one) and unwanted items are sold.Call it selfishness if you will, but if the wizard gets the 40,000 g.p. staff (and can then turn around and sell it later!) and the fighter gets the 2,000 g.p. longsword then someone's getting the short end of the stick here.
We once had a campaign where one player had a ferret (or similar) as an animal companion that was trained to steal shiny items; basically it would start to loot fallen foes during combat, so it's owner would be effectively skimming a few gold pieces out of the party treasure each time.I'm talking about beginner groups of teenagers, some who have never played an RPG, many of whom are not already friends, and some of whom have weak social skills. So it inevitably spills over into hard feelings. We talk about it in advance at Session 0 when we agree on the ground rules, but quite often someone gets overly excited or just decides they really want that thing or whatever, and then I intervene right away and remind them of the "no stealing from the party rule" and why we have it.
There could, of course, be situations where this rule would be violated because of story reasons, but in those situations I just make sure that it is obvious why the rule is being violated and no one gets upset.
TLDR: working with brand new teenaged players, some of whom have autism and other neural differences, means that sometimes you have to make things a bit more explicit.
We use the same method as most other people on this thread - divide the gold equally, magic items go to whoever wants them (with the "most useful" being the tiebreaker if more than one person wants it; the wizard is only getting an amulet of natural armour once everybody else already has one) and unwanted items are sold.
However, any magic items which are sold go back into party treasure, regardless of how they were acquired. So in this case the wizard would be splitting the proceeds with the rest of the party - even if he'd bought the staff with his own share of the treasure.
Party "expenses" also come out of party treasure, including expensive items such as raise dead - although there might be a delay, since the "expenses fund" is normally only a few hundred gold pieces.
This assumes the wizard is even still with the party at that point, which IME isn't necessarily a given. It also assumes the rest of the party hasn't turned over, also not a given.We use the same method as most other people on this thread - divide the gold equally, magic items go to whoever wants them (with the "most useful" being the tiebreaker if more than one person wants it; the wizard is only getting an amulet of natural armour once everybody else already has one) and unwanted items are sold.
However, any magic items which are sold go back into party treasure, regardless of how they were acquired. So in this case the wizard would be splitting the proceeds with the rest of the party - even if he'd bought the staff with his own share of the treasure.
Here, people usually pay for their own revival-from-death costs* but sometimes a party will choose to foot the bill if the death was particularly heroic and-or the deceased simply can't afford the costs.Party "expenses" also come out of party treasure, including expensive items such as raise dead - although there might be a delay, since the "expenses fund" is normally only a few hundred gold pieces.
That's how we do it when the party is still in the field. Once back in town, however, it gets divided fairly by value.Glad it's working out for you, but even if my group was in the same situation, the cost of items wouldn't factor into it, it's just not something we think about. All that matters to us is who can make best use of it currently.
Only until the rest of the party track that character down...If a character leaves with a staff of the magi, then that's an item that is gone.