Regarding Treasure

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! I run a campaign where the books are fairly limited, using some of the complete books, both PHB, all 5 Monster Manuals, Spell Compendium, and the DMG. My question comes to treasure.

1. How often must one give it out? I ran about 4 sessions and noticed that the party had a few trinkets from earlier sessions, but nothing new. How often do you give out treasure?

2. As a "special treat", I have included some items from the MIC in some plot-central loot. The group doesn't know what it is yet (they'll realize what it is next session). How often should one use a book not allowed initially for situations like this. Can it get out of hand if players expect every chest to hold items from said book?

Thank you in advance.

[ThiagoMartell]

Treasure is by default awarded per encounter. The MIC has handy tables for handing out treasure. If you have the book, why isn't it available? :smallconfused:

[Malak'ai]

As Thiago said, treasure is a defult for killing enemies (not just defeating them) and overcoming challanges.
If you're not giving it out regulary (sp... brain not working properly) then the PC's are gunna fall way behind in WBL unless they come across mounds of gold they can bathe in at the end of the dungeon.

[ThiagoMartell]

As Thiago said, treasure is a defult for killing enemies (not just defeating them) and overcoming challanges.
I think you meant the other way around - defeating, not only killing.

[Malak'ai]

I think you meant the other way around - defeating, not only killing.

Depends on the situation really.
You could 'defeat' a single enemy (eg: he runs away just before you can kill him) in the middle of the street/tavern/room in a dungeon with nothing else in there. Unless he dropped something there isn't going to be any treasure from him.
Probally worded it wrong in my initial post but oh well, you get the gist.

[kitcik]

1) It is a fantasy role-playing game. You should provide loot when it is appropriate in the storyline you are creating. As others have noted, if this causes characters to diverge from WBL, then CR's have to be adjusted accordngly.

2) You should provide loot from whatever book or homebrew you desire whenever you want to. This is not a video game - the players, through their characters, are exploring a fantasy world and SHOULD encounter both beings and items they are not familiar with.

3) Caveat - the players should be enjoying the storyline you are creating.

[Gamer Girl]

1.All the time. If the players are doing anything, they will somehow get and find treasure.

2.Just let them expect...

[Answerer]

While it is certainly possible to modify the amount of wealth the players receive at a given level, this must be done exceedingly carefully.


Too little wealth, and you are badly damaging players' ability to keep up with expected challenges for their level. Worse still, this is in no way an even effect: the most powerful classes in the game can operate with little to no magical equipment, while the weakest classes in the game utterly rely on it to try to keep up. Fighters, Monks, and Paladins need a lot of wealth to overcome their shortcomings relative to Clerics, Druids, and Wizards, for instance. If you decrease the amount of wealth players' receive, you'll be shafting characters who were worse off to begin with.

In effect, within 3.5, magic is power, and power means magic. Magic is just too powerful, too fundamentally free of restraints, for it to be any other way. From a game-design perspective, magic is a sanctioned way of breaking the game: spells deviate or ignore all kinds of usual rules and restrictions on your actions.

Classes that have native magic therefore tend to be better than those who don't. And those who don't are more desperate for external sources of magic, which means magical items.

Worse still, a lot of challenges within the game assume magic is available for solving them. Magic doesn't just make you better, magic is what lets you proceed at all.

On a fundamental level, 3.5 does not support any kind of low-magic very well, since it was designed around extremely powerful and ubiquitous magical effects. If you take the mechanics of 3.5, and attempt to imagine a world where those rules were physical law, you end up with one of the highest-magic settings in all of fiction (see the Tippyverse for one possible such imagining). If you remove the magic from 3.5, the system literally doesn't know what to do. Most challenges are supposed to be solved through magic; what do you do without it? There are systems designed for low-magic. 3.5 is not one; it is designed for very high-magic, in fact.


On the other hand, though, because magic is power, too much wealth can be gamebreaking the other way. A Fighter with infinite resources can become nearly indistinguishable from a Wizard, using magical items to replicate all of a Wizard's spells and then some, and the sheer glut of power can make it extremely difficult to challenge even the weakest of classes.


In general, 3.5 expects a lot of wealth; the "Christmas Tree" effect is a common criticism. In reality, while the amount of wealth available does have some room for flexibility, it is much safer to scale wealth up than it is down. There's still quite a lot of room before you reach the levels where magical items can completely replicate what a Wizard can do. But the weakest classes in the game are already struggling to afford all of the things they need to continue to progress. Lowering the wealth that the players' receive should only be done very carefully, and with a lot of experience and foresight.

[willpell]

As others have noted, if this causes characters to diverge from WBL, then CR's have to be adjusted accordngly.

This begs an important question that I've often wondered about: Exactly how much treasure is a level worth? Can a character with way higher WBL than normal compete in a party where other characters have more class levels, higher-tier classes, or both? The obvious example is the Aristocrat, which the designers suggested was one of the most likely NPC classes to be usable as a PC class, but the only actual advantage it has is higher starting wealth, so I've often thought of adding a "class feature" that increases the amount of wealth they can acquire in-game (perhaps vastly improved Profession checks, or the ability to roll a straight level check for "return on investments", maybe just connections that let them buy items more cheaply...I haven't tried to figure out the details yet since I've no idea where to set the price point in the first place).


If you have the book, why isn't it available? :smallconfused:

Perhaps in the OP's case it's just that he didn't own the book when founding the campaign, has since bought it, and wanted to make its inclusion a nice surprise. But if it were me, my logic would be that saying "you may use book X" at character creation means the players assume they're permitted to take anything in the book, and there might be some things you want to keep off-limits (more than can easily be formed into a banlist; you can say "don't take this, that or the other thing" but if you want to include 55% of the book and exclude 45% without reference to chapters, it's not really worth bothering), things in the book that are so powerful you restrict them to "plot adjuster" NPCs or so off-theme you don't want them to even exist in your world, then having a campaign-wide rule of "don't use book X", which you then break yourself at your own discretion, is a reasonable way of handling things. Perhaps not the best way, but it avoids giving the players a ton of required reading up-front, lets you keep things under control to an extent that you're comfortable with, and potentially offers the ability to surprise even such jaded creatures as veteran roleplayers. As long as you're running a cool game it's likely that the players won't complain too hard.

[AlanBruce]

Thank you for all the aazing responses. Thankfully, my players are enjoying the campaign. They began at 8th level and used their WBL to buy everything they could from the following books (the ones I allow for this game):

Complete Arcane, Adventurer, Divine, Warrior, DMG, PHB and PHB 2.

They bought their beastskin armor, circlets of intellect, cloaks of resistance, sonic composite bows, and +3 adamantium falchions.

The party likes magic items.

I handed a few in the first sessions. Then, got so caught up in the game and story, that I forgot to give out items. They had a few encounters, and got a hold of magic armor and scrolls, but were quick to sell them for coin. I had recently acquired the MIC and one of my players mentioned they hadn't received "loot" in awhile. So, after seeing how they struggle with certain aspects of the game (the part where they are, and bearing the fact they're 10th level), This is what I thought of dropping in:

Artificer's Monocle

Boots of Big Stepping (the one that let's you teleport 60ft. away)

A weapon with the divine wrath property

The bone ring (I know they'll like that one)

Bracers of repulsion (for the archer who ends up swarmed)

Is this too little? Maybe add some more?

[rweird]

Greetings! I run a campaign where the books are fairly limited, using some of the complete books, both PHB, all 5 Monster Manuals, Spell Compendium, and the DMG. My question comes to treasure.

1. How often must one give it out? I ran about 4 sessions and noticed that the party had a few trinkets from earlier sessions, but nothing new. How often do you give out treasure?

2. As a "special treat", I have included some items from the MIC in some plot-central loot. The group doesn't know what it is yet (they'll realize what it is next session). How often should one use a book not allowed initially for situations like this. Can it get out of hand if players expect every chest to hold items from said book?

Thank you in advance.

I am presuming this is for your elemental artifacts campaign (though this isn't all relevant to it directly) and your talking about defeating the negative energy piece, tell me if I'm wrong.

Personally, I give treasure at various times, for example, if you fight a bunch of zombies, you won't really get much from it, though when you kill the necromancer that animated them, you will. I believe you are having the same problem because Palindurias's minions are just skeletons and zombies. for the most part, and all they give you when they die is 1d6/2HD negative energy damage (FYI, Dread Necromancer isn't a prepared caster, Palindurias has all dread necromancer spells known and casts spontaneously, he would have a few extra spells from advanced learning though which would be added to his list and also be spontaneously cast).

Looking at Palindurias's equipment, he has over 250,000 GP in items, (230,000ish assuming his Ioun stone of spell absorbing is depleted by the end of the battle), his axe is worth around 100,000 GP of it, and seeing as it is unholy, I doubt any party member would use it (unless they have a way to get a permanent death ward, or one of them is evil), so they'd probably sell it for half its value (assuming they find someone rich enough to buy it), someone probably would want the Cloak of Resistance +5 unless everyone already has better, and almost certainly someone would want the +5 Ghostward Mithril Breastplate (I'm thinking of the Gish), the +1 CL ioun stone, and the +2 Cha ones would be useful and probably kept, the Necklace of Fireballs VII, +1 amulet of natural armor, and Anklet of Translocation would likely be kept as well, meaning they'd have around 100,000 GP to split, and a bunch of items.

Now comes dividing the loot. Not everyone will get an equal amount, if there are four party members, then each would get 25,000ish GP to split and they'd have to split the magic items, some of the items are worth over 25,000 GP so people may just get the cloak or resistance, or the breastplate, while others would get more money and the cheaper items. Depending on how long you plan on it being till they find a city that can provide the magic items they want to buy, some people may get no benefit for it for some time.

Personally, I'd cut the axe and replace it with something cheaper, maybe a +1 unholy battle axe instead, he's a caster so he won't go into melee really making it useless for him, considering his other attack options, the PCs also most likely would find it useless to them excepts to sell, though anyone that would want to buy a unholy axe is someone I'd be suspicious of, meaning they might not be able to sell it. I'd probably add some valuable gems instead of the axe, maybe a few items the PCs would want that supposedly the giants had and Palindurias discarded after killing them, and just left lying around, or a few of the skeletons still have the items and will use them (enchanted armor, magic weapons, maybe a skeleton from the army that attacked the valley was a wizard and still has a few scrolls in his robe, etc.).

As for using items from MIC, if you make it clear to the PCs that they can't buy them and are unique, I don't think they'd have a problem, though they might ask you to put something from MIC/say it would be cool to have something from MIC/See if they can buy one specific thing from MIC.

TL;DR (minus suggestions about changing Palindurias's equipment): Pretty much, if they'll get gold, not getting it until the end is fine because they won't be able to spend it till the end anyways, as for magic items, giving them in the adventure can be useful, it's fine to wait until the end. If they'll have another adventure before they can spend the gold they find, try to make it so everyone gets at least some magic trinket during the course of the adventure.

WARNING: Some PCs may be given more magic items by the party, that is fine, so long as everyone agrees, though if the party gangs up against one person in denying them a magic item they could use, then you might have an OoC problem. If it's something more like the wizard wants the amulet of natural armor and the fighter does want the same, and everyone else thinks the fighter should have it, don't sweat it (presuming the wizard is competent), he'll not loose much. if the situation is reversed, it might be a bigger problem. The more powerful the item, the more cause for concern it would be though, so if it's some +1 item, that's not worth the trouble, though if it is a +5 item, it might be. [/wall of text (and possibly incoherent thoughts)]

Response to post directly above mine [that I noticed when I previewed this post]:
How many players are there, if everyone gets something that's fine, though keep on adding in more things later. If some people will get those things, and others will get Palindurias's equipment, it'll be fine so long as one doesn't completely overpower the other, though some items like the artificers monocle maybe should be discounted because that is more of a shared thing. My experiences with awarding treasure to large groups are rather limited though, seeing as most of my campaigns have under four players.

Lastly, think about how they'll get those items, and if adding them will make the challenge that has them to powerful. If the answer is yes, consider adding them to another encounter.

[WarKitty]

WARNING: Some PCs may be given more magic items by the party, that is fine, so long as everyone agrees, though if the party gangs up against one person in denying them a magic item they could use, then you might have an OoC problem. If it's something more like the wizard wants the amulet of natural armor and the fighter does want the same, and everyone else thinks the fighter should have it, don't sweat it (presuming the wizard is competent), he'll not loose much. if the situation is reversed, it might be a bigger problem. The more powerful the item, the more cause for concern it would be though, so if it's some +1 item, that's not worth the trouble, though if it is a +5 item, it might be.

Some of us even encourage this sort of thing - I tend to give out magic items in order of usability for:
- mundane ranged attackers
- mundane melee attackers
- non-magical skillmonkeys
- gishes and half-casters
- full casters

I've never had any issues with it so far.

[AlanBruce]

I am presuming this is for your elemental artifacts campaign (though this isn't all relevant to it directly) and your talking about defeating the negative energy piece, tell me if I'm wrong.

Personally, I give treasure at various times, for example, if you fight a bunch of zombies, you won't really get much from it, though when you kill the necromancer that animated them, you will. I believe you are having the same problem because Palindurias's minions are just skeletons and zombies. for the most part, and all they give you when they die is 1d6/2HD negative energy damage (FYI, Dread Necromancer isn't a prepared caster, Palindurias has all dread necromancer spells known and casts spontaneously, he would have a few extra spells from advanced learning though which would be added to his list and also be spontaneously cast).

Looking at Palindurias's equipment, he has over 250,000 GP in items, (230,000ish assuming his Ioun stone of spell absorbing is depleted by the end of the battle), his axe is worth around 100,000 GP of it, and seeing as it is unholy, I doubt any party member would use it (unless they have a way to get a permanent death ward, or one of them is evil), so they'd probably sell it for half its value (assuming they find someone rich enough to buy it), someone probably would want the Cloak of Resistance +5 unless everyone already has better, and almost certainly someone would want the +5 Ghostward Mithril Breastplate (I'm thinking of the Gish), the +1 CL ioun stone, and the +2 Cha ones would be useful and probably kept, the Necklace of Fireballs VII, +1 amulet of natural armor, and Anklet of Translocation would likely be kept as well, meaning they'd have around 100,000 GP to split, and a bunch of items.

Now comes dividing the loot. Not everyone will get an equal amount, if there are four party members, then each would get 25,000ish GP to split and they'd have to split the magic items, some of the items are worth over 25,000 GP so people may just get the cloak or resistance, or the breastplate, while others would get more money and the cheaper items. Depending on how long you plan on it being till they find a city that can provide the magic items they want to buy, some people may get no benefit for it for some time.

Personally, I'd cut the axe and replace it with something cheaper, maybe a +1 unholy battle axe instead, he's a caster so he won't go into melee really making it useless for him, considering his other attack options, the PCs also most likely would find it useless to them excepts to sell, though anyone that would want to buy a unholy axe is someone I'd be suspicious of, meaning they might not be able to sell it. I'd probably add some valuable gems instead of the axe, maybe a few items the PCs would want that supposedly the giants had and Palindurias discarded after killing them, and just left lying around, or a few of the skeletons still have the items and will use them (enchanted armor, magic weapons, maybe a skeleton from the army that attacked the valley was a wizard and still has a few scrolls in his robe, etc.).

As for using items from MIC, if you make it clear to the PCs that they can't buy them and are unique, I don't think they'd have a problem, though they might ask you to put something from MIC/say it would be cool to have something from MIC/See if they can buy one specific thing from MIC.

TL;DR (minus suggestions about changing Palindurias's equipment): Pretty much, if they'll get gold, not getting it until the end is fine because they won't be able to spend it till the end anyways, as for magic items, giving them in the adventure can be useful, it's fine to wait until the end. If they'll have another adventure before they can spend the gold they find, try to make it so everyone gets at least some magic trinket during the course of the adventure.

WARNING: Some PCs may be given more magic items by the party, that is fine, so long as everyone agrees, though if the party gangs up against one person in denying them a magic item they could use, then you might have an OoC problem. If it's something more like the wizard wants the amulet of natural armor and the fighter does want the same, and everyone else thinks the fighter should have it, don't sweat it (presuming the wizard is competent), he'll not loose much. if the situation is reversed, it might be a bigger problem. The more powerful the item, the more cause for concern it would be though, so if it's some +1 item, that's not worth the trouble, though if it is a +5 item, it might be. [/wall of text (and possibly incoherent thoughts)]

Response to post directly above mine [that I noticed when I previewed this post]:
How many players are there, if everyone gets something that's fine, though keep on adding in more things later. If some people will get those things, and others will get Palindurias's equipment, it'll be fine so long as one doesn't completely overpower the other, though some items like the artificers monocle maybe should be discounted because that is more of a shared thing. My experiences with awarding treasure to large groups are rather limited though, seeing as most of my campaigns have under four players.

Lastly, think about how they'll get those items, and if adding them will make the challenge that has them to powerful. If the answer is yes, consider adding them to another encounter.

Sir, you are completely right! The party right now is in Palindurias' domain, the Giant's valley. The loot they found belongs to a cleric of Heironeous who entered the valley years ago, but was caught by the dread necromancer. He had his items moved elsewhere in the valley and guarded, but the party managed to retrieve them before having to run away. (They didn't fare too well in the valley). I doubt the party, being 10th level may want to fight Palindurias now, especially after I changed his build from sorcerer to dread necromancer. But they do want to rescue someone in the valley, hence the items. There are a few other NPCs with good loot in there, if they can defeat them (which I hope they can.) If you're interested, PM me for details. I'll be more than happy to show you their builds and equipment!

[Kelb_Panthera]

@willpell: unfortunately, the wealth of a given level isn't something determined easily (except by the table). The formula, as yet, eludes me.

Has anyone else ciphered it yet?

[Keld Denar]

From a DM's point of view, the MIC is generally MORE balanced than the DMG. The stuff in the DMG is either really good (Candle of Invocation) or either too expensive or underwhelming for the price (Cloak of the Montebank). With the exception of weapons and armor and +stat items (and +resistance), the stuff in there is stuff your players probably won't even miss if you cut it out.

The MIC, on the other hand, is very nice. Lots of swift action items that bring the swift action to the forefront in action economy. Lots of charges/day items that your players will actually use, rather than hoarding like charges/lifetime items. Cheapish items that provide small, yet tangible benefits to low level characters so that they can have fun cool magical experiences that are normally reserved for the higher level guys.

Just an all around good book. The more you use it, the more I think you'll like it.

[rweird]

Sir, you are completely right! The party right now is in Palindurias' domain, the Giant's valley. The loot they found belongs to a cleric of Heironeous who entered the valley years ago, but was caught by the dread necromancer. He had his items moved elsewhere in the valley and guarded, but the party managed to retrieve them before having to run away. (They didn't fare too well in the valley). I doubt the party, being 10th level may want to fight Palindurias now, especially after I changed his build from sorcerer to dread necromancer. But they do want to rescue someone in the valley, hence the items. There are a few other NPCs with good loot in there, if they can defeat them (which I hope they can.) If you're interested, PM me for details. I'll be more than happy to show you their builds and equipment!

I presumed as much from reading your campaign journal, if you have more questions like this, I'd encourage linking the journal, if not the other threads to that thread for additional information. Your switching Palindurias to DN may actually weaken him though it gives him a more deathlike feel (he doesn't have 7th level spells like this, though his previous 7th level spell wasn't so good, he still seems a lot like a nova). I'll shoot you a PM, sorry for not following up with the playtest, the characters I was using changed and became to powerful, though I might have a few new ones soon.

[AlanBruce]

Here is The Campaign Log. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249659) The relevant information is here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245386) Although some of the builds have changed dramatically. If you're interested in any in particular, please let me know.