Adventuring is an expedition.
Going somewhere for some purpose.
those adventurers are funded somehow, either through a benefactor or self funded.
They normally go for a purpose. "Save the Princess" "Bring back a rare spell component"
"Find a trade route through the orc infested mountains"
These ventures have risks, no one takes the risks without expected rewards. Sometimes you don't get the reward, but the reward is the reason for doing it.
In most cases each Character has just spent their life savings on financing their portion of an expedition into dangerous territories in search of something or else. This represents an investment. Coupled with the physical risk of injury or death, and the rightful heir of said treasure has not made that same investment in recovering something that was lost to them.
Did they buy the sword and shield and fight the troll on their own? No. they had resigned to that item as being gone. And until someone made the investment and took the risk, it was gone. The original claim to the item is lost. It now belongs to the adventurer.
If it were not so, the adventurer would invest his life savings or inheritance somewhere else and become a butcher or a thatcher or a candle stick maker.
Hoe exactly would these characters finance things like wands of cure light wounds, spell components or even food if they gave all the loot they found back?
They would find themselves hocking their used swords an armor just for food to eat.
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The PCs dont owe restitution for any crimes, they did not commit the crimes. There is reward due to the person(s) who righted the wrong. Hence where bounties came in.
IT is not a reasonable bounty to say here is $1 for the $5 you risked your life to recover. Just keep the money buddy.
Thank you for saving our town from those bandits, HOW WILL WE EVER REPAY YOU?
The Townsfolk don't likely have money for reward, or they would have just hired or financed their own militia/posse.
The bandits take it all, and come back next harvest to take more. The repayment to the towns people is the bandits won't be back next harvest, their daughters can now grow up unspoiled and have no fear of being whisked away in the night, or the dragon will no longer eat their sheep and burn their stable.
Typically, the bandits goods would go to compensating their victims. They would be the rightful owners of those belongings. So when you take the bandit's goods, you are stealing from the victims.
Paying restitution for ones crimes is probably the oldest law in existence.
Sure. Not the point, though. If your characters care about the morality involved, good for them. If you'll notice, I pointed out their options for returning the loot - but the original question was about looting them in the first place (i.e. recovering their stolen goods), not what you do with them afterwards. That was my point.
The repayment to the towns people is the bandits won't be back next harvest, their daughters can now grow up unspoiled and have no fear of being whisked away in the night, or the dragon will no longer eat their sheep and burn their stable.
Also a good point, for making off with stuff as a reasonably moral character.
Amoung your loot you find 3 suit of masterwork armor, 1 +1 long sword, a ring of spell storing, a wand of magic missile with 10 charges, 2,783 cp, 3100 sp and 989 gp.
so, how do you go about returning the loot? Excuse me sir, does this gold piece look familiar to you?
Morally speaking , depending on the alignment of your group, you might think, well we could disperse the loot necessary for our group to continue, sell what we don't need, pool the cash and cut the town in as a fair share, so the Town would get 1/5 (assuming a party of 4) of the coin.
Returning a suit of masterwork scale mail and a wand of magic missiles to the townsfolk is hardly going to cure their plight. The items also didn;t likely originate from that town.
Amoung your loot you find 3 suit of masterwork armor, 1 +1 long sword, a ring of spell storing, a wand of magic missile with 10 charges, 2,783 cp, 3100 sp and 989 gp.
so, how do you go about returning the loot? Excuse me sir, does this gold piece look familiar to you?
Morally speaking , depending on the alignment of your group, you might think, well we could disperse the loot necessary for our group to continue, sell what we don't need, pool the cash and cut the town in as a fair share, so the Town would get 1/5 (assuming a party of 4) of the coin.
Returning a suit of masterwork scale mail and a wand of magic missiles to the townsfolk is hardly going to cure their plight. The items also didn;t likely originate from that town.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, I want to say that if you were feeling particularly righteous that day, you could sell off all that gear and use the wealth to ease the town's woes. That's some seriously ridiculous Paladin nonsense, but it is an option.
Seriously, though, it's damn near impossible to determine where all the wealth would go. Typically, bandits (or monsters, or dragons, or whatever) are menacing an entire region, not one village or family or what-have-you. Determining where the heck all that wealth is supposed to go is gonna be a damn demanding exercise for an adventuring party. Someone brought up earlier that you could theoretically bring it to the town council and get them to divvy it up, but how can you trust them to be fair and balanced when you dump a giant pile of gold on their doorstep and say, "Hey, give this out fairly to your neighbors and the towns nearby that these bandits may hypothetically have stolen from as well"?
Either way, I maintain it's a moral question for your characters. How far are you willing to go to try and return wealth to its "rightful" owners?
About as far as my bank.
Zing!
About as far as my bank.
Zing!
Heh.
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I've always wondered why it's ok to loot friendly houses and towns in Final Fantasy games.
Loot off of monsters I get. Loot off of Bad Guys I get (spoils of war). Breaking into a persons house and accidentally killing them while trying to copy/steal a map/ledger/mail and looting them... that's questionable territory. Looting the NPC that the BBEG killed on the docks while surprize attacking you in a busy city, I don't do that usually (when the rogue goes and loots that body after the fight its sometimes jarring).
I can handle this one. They touch on it in the early FF's, but I think the concept just got ingrained into the style of game and left without returning to any explanation in later entries.
Basically, you are "the hero," and (at least in FF1-4) are recognized as such by every npc the moment you walk into town. You are the one that's going to fight the big evil and save the world, so the townsfolk lend you their supplies as their way to contributing to the fight. In FF1, the townsfolk are practically shoving items at you. In several areas, friendly loot zones are specified as being saved up just for you(treasury in Coneria, etc).
In later entries in the FF series, the "heroes" are less obvious, even mistaken for villains in some cases(several parts of FF6 has the PC's evading capture). In those cases, it's assumed you're scraping by looking for anything that may aid your cause. You're not exactly mugging townsfolk, but swiping a potion from an unattended barrel isn't going to hurt anyone...
Amoung your loot you find 3 suit of masterwork armor, 1 +1 long sword, a ring of spell storing, a wand of magic missile with 10 charges, 2,783 cp, 3100 sp and 989 gp.
so, how do you go about returning the loot? Excuse me sir, does this gold piece look familiar to you?
Morally speaking , depending on the alignment of your group, you might think, well we could disperse the loot necessary for our group to continue, sell what we don't need, pool the cash and cut the town in as a fair share, so the Town would get 1/5 (assuming a party of 4) of the coin.
Returning a suit of masterwork scale mail and a wand of magic missiles to the townsfolk is hardly going to cure their plight. The items also didn;t likely originate from that town.
I've had players do that, or even be more generous. In one situation, 10 members of the local militia went with the players. After defeating the enemy they recovered quite a bit of treasure. The PCs cut part of the loot out for the local farmers to replace lost livestock and then split the rest evenly with militia. I as the militia would have been happy with the 10 splitting 1 share. I asked afterwards, and the opinion was shared danger equaled shared booty.
How is "respect for the possessions of the dead" different now, if we'd do the same thing today?
We are doing better at least from a professional archaeologist point of view. Stealing grave goods is no longer widely tolerated.
If this bothers you, play shadowrun. :)
We had a runner once who salvaged cyberware from dead enemies (if he had time for it), this was... strange, but he makes good money from it.
derailment:
I always chuckle to myself when a guy comes in, throws some bread crumbs and disappears back to where he came from and the forums erupt in discussion.
Ruyan.
/derailment
You're not exactly mugging townsfolk, but swiping a potion from an unattended barrel isn't going to hurt anyone...
I imagine that ending with the owner of the barrel running tearfully to get his one and only potion so that he could use it to save his injured son's life just to find it stolen. And then his son dies.
Actually, it's more than that. IIRC, Glamdring was the sword of the Lord of Gondolin in the first age. Elrond was the son of Earendil, son of Tuor and Idril Celbrindel, daughter of Turgon, Lord of Gondolin.
If anyone was the rightful heir of Glamdring, it was Elrond.
You forget Galadriel, who was Turgon's sister. But then this was a sexist society, so she probably only counts if there were no male heirs.
Of course, that would also mean he had the right to dispose of it, and less certainly of Orcrist and Sting, as he wished and, being Wise, he may have known that Gandalf had more need of it. (How much of that Tolkien had in mind when he wrote that scene in the Hobbit is open to debate.)
Given that Tuor led the few survivors from Gondolin, and that the destruction of the city was fairly total, one can imagine that if there were any surviving heirs to claim Orcrist or Sting, he'd know about it.
However, it's called 'Treasure Trove' in the UK. If you find treasure (for example in an old barrow - and yes there are many in the UK that have been plundered even recently), it's between you and the landowner (if there is one) to work out a deal of ownership. If you own the land, or no-one does, well, it's basically yours bar taxes. Nobody has tried tracing the heirs of those buried within the barrow, even with modern forensic techniques.
Frodo does suggest at Council that the Ring belongs to Aragorn as Isuldir's Heir, but Aragorn refuses it. Obviously, no one was going to offer to return it to Sauron, from whom it was rightfully, if foolishly taken by Isuldir "as weregild for my father, and my brother".
Weregild is an Anglo-Saxon/Norse legal term that basically translates as "man-gold" - or the worth of a man. If you kill somebody, and you want to avoid them killing you in turn, you can offer recompense as the worth of the person killed. If they accept it, they won't kill you, or if they do it's murder. However they can claim it from you, and if you don't offer it up they can kill you AND claim weregild (taken by force from your survivors, who have no legal comeback).
In other words, it's back to right of conquest: Sauron invaded the lands of Isildur and killed his father and brother. Isildur had every right (under that legal code) to take Sauron's life and his goods in recompense, or indeed claim Sauron's goods if he defeated Sauron in combat.
It's a variation on the Robin Hood theme. Steal from the dead to give to the living.
You guys would hate my skyrim characters..their philosophy being..dead bandits don't need their armour/weapons/food/..or indeed anything else in their possession..so I loot everything even if it means multiple trips before the dungeon respawns.
Basically, the problem is money = power. And not just in the sense that appears in the actual world (power to field armies, influence politics etc) but actual literal power. In the world of dnd/pathfinder, you can literally buy power. Whether its at a magic mart or highering a powerful wizard to make stuff for you or crafting yourself, you can turn gold into literal personal power. Its not only possible, its an expected part of the game. So players take everything they can, because it means possibly getting that cool new magic item sooner rather then later.
In such a world, bill gates could be near to the best warrior in the world because he could have tricked out magic armor and weapons, and have a magically enhanced mount, though he's probably a level 5 expert. That +5 keen,speed weapon is gonna outweight alot of fighter levels.
When you make money that important, you are actively encouraging players to take everything that isnt nailed down (and thats only if they dont have the tools to take out the nails). Divorce wealth and power, and you would see alot less looting of corpses that has become so common in rpgs.
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Looting dead enemy combatants is pretty common.
-Skeld
Ummm, as a member of the US military, I can tell you that it is not. It is, in fact, punishable by the Uniformed Code of Military Conduct and in addition, your fellow soldiers would label you as an undesirable person to be around.
I have serve over 10 years with the brave men and women of the US Military and NO ONE I have served with would loot a dead enemy.
You guys don't police up enemy weapons off the battlefield or check fallen combatants for intelligence? Granted that's kinda institutional looting as opposed to individuals looting for personal gain.
-Skeld
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I am really glad I'm replacing looting-based WBL with a stipend system for Shattered Star now.
You have sparked my interest in what exactly this entails.
"I never thought I could shoot down a German plane, but last spring I proved myself wrong."
-Grampa Simpson
I imagine that ending with the owner of the barrel running tearfully to get his one and only potion so that he could use it to save his injured son's life just to find it stolen. And then his son dies.
You're not exactly mugging townsfolk, but swiping a potion from an unattended barrel isn't going to hurt anyone...
Ya know, a similar scenario sprang to my mind after I posted that. had it been a more "living" game like a TTRPG, that'd be a very possible case. Being a video game, it never bothered me.
"I never thought I could shoot down a German plane, but last spring I proved myself wrong."
-Grampa Simpson
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, as far as RPG's go, adventurers don't typically have "day jobs," so looting is pretty much their way of income. They take the risks, and come out with the big loot. Farmer Ted only makes a few coppers a day because his life is dull and safe, until the need for an adventurer arises.
Also, as far as RPG's go, adventurers don't typically have "day jobs," so looting is pretty much their way of income.
At least until Ultimate Campaign comes out.
People really shouldn't try to apply real life morality issues into a fricking role-playing game.
The monsters are evil, kill em and take their loot - have fun.
Also, as far as RPG's go, adventurers don't typically have "day jobs," so looting is pretty much their way of income.At least until Ultimate Campaign comes out.
That's why I said "typically." But there have been rules for normal labor for years and years. Profession skill says hi. I've had character who were blacksmiths, game-hunters, etc, who would go back to their work-a-day routines whenever there was a lot of downtime between adventures, like when a mage is crafting something.
People really shouldn't try to apply real life morality issues into a fricking role-playing game.
The monsters are evil, kill em and take their loot - have fun.
Paladins and good-aligned Clerics?
That's why I said "typically." But there have been rules for normal labor for years and years. Profession skill says hi. I've had character who were blacksmiths, game-hunters, etc, who would go back to their work-a-day routines whenever there was a lot of downtime between adventures, like when a mage is crafting something.Also, as far as RPG's go, adventurers don't typically have "day jobs," so looting is pretty much their way of income.At least until Ultimate Campaign comes out.
Oh I know. I was just thinking Ultimate Campaign supposedly will have optional rules for literally setting up a Day Job for your PC.
Grab a copy of the 1e DMG, look at appendix N, read the books listed as influences on D&D. You'll have your answer as to why 'stealing from the dead so ubiquitous' in D&D.
Sounds like a mix of "Enemy Mine" and "Dances with Wolves." Hmmm...
@Thalander & TriOmegaZero: Have you guys been reading my campaign notes? I am planning a PbP that literally has that exact scenario... The humans encroaching one that is.
I was thinking that would have been the next PbP I run... Now I know it will be and hopefully will have a Paladin in the Party. I really want to see a Lawful Stupid Paladin in one of my settings.