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So, I was thinking about this, about how loot works:
1. You determine how much wealth is appropriate to go up from their current level to the next one.
2. You look through the SRD/book to turn this wealth into items that your PCs might or might not actually use.
3. You divide this loot among an appropriate number of encounters.
4. Your PCs kill the monster/find the treasure, you call them one after the other while the player write down a few items for themselves and write the rest in the party loot to sell.
5. They get to town and sell their wares. You or the PCs now have to search for these items once more in the SRD/book to determine how much they sell for and to determine if it's worth selling or if they'd rather just keep it.
That is without even taking differences in between playgroup in how the loot is actually split between party members and if the actual selling has to be role-payed or if it can take place behind the scenes.
I will admit that the core system DOES make treasures horde more realistic, but I find it really adds a lot of tracking and I think the time spent on looting the bodies and buying/selling items could be spent better on role playing, combat and other non-combat encounters.
What I had in mind was Schrodinger's loot. i.e. simply handing out gold when PCs level up and follow the Characer Wealth by level table for this. For instance when a level 8 pc, (estimated wealth 33,000 gp) goes up to level 9 (estimated wealth 46,000 gp), he would gain the difference (13,000 gp). That money could be instantaneously used to buy gear and it would simply be as if the nondescript loot they found battling monsters and searching the catacombs was actually this gear they are now "buying" and it simply wasn't defined yet, hence the term Schrodinger's loot.
If a player would want to use an item that was used by a defeated enemy, I would allow it, but that item's value would be taken off of it's future(s) level-up loot.
I would also allow players to lend money to others, but that would be a personal choice and nobody could, let's say, force the monk into giving up her share of loot because "She doesn't need gear anyways, right?"
PROS:
- It makes it so the loot is automatically equal for everyone.
- Even if someone joins mid-campaign, they should still have close to the same amount of wealth as anybody else.
- It saves a lot of time for both the players and the DM compared to the old-fashioned way.
CONS:
- It is less realistic.
- Consumables item might loose in value as it means you fall behind the rest of the party for a one-time boost.
CAN GO EITHER WAY:
- It changes the time the loot is gained. If the PCs would normally have access to shops, it delays the loot gain; on the other hand, if they aren't near civilization for a few levels, it will instead accelerate the loot gain.
- Players can do both their level-up and shopping at the same time. Makes it so level-up break takes longer when taken mid-session; but for level-up taken in between sessions, it helps things flow more easily.
Do you people think my alternate method of handling loot would work well? What adjustments, if any, would you make before running it?
I want to know before actually using it in my games as my playgroup is often concerned about alternate rules and doesn't want to even look at them if they don't feel the change would be worth the effort.
One thing worth mentioning is that shopping can be an opportunity for roleplay, could easily have a cheap PC. Haggling is fun.
Works best if they return to a particular shop so they can attach to a particular NPC.
Finding stuff when you go adventuring is fun. Just getting gold isn't fun. I used to take the approach where the party would just find tons of gold so they could go shopping and get whatever they wanted. They did not like this approach.
Finding stuff when you go adventuring is fun. Just getting gold isn't fun. I used to take the approach where the party would just find tons of gold so they could go shopping and get whatever they wanted. They did not like this approach.
Yeah and all the cool little items that you would never think to buy go to waste.
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I end having a lot of stupid stuff that I love that I'd never buy but when it comes as a loot I keep and never get rid of.
If you just let your players choose what they want they'd end buying more or less the same stuff.
It helps to make the looting system quicker and cleaner, though.
P.S. I have Rasputin's pen and it's all mine, mine, mine! XD
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Maybe it's because we changed with time, because I remember loot time being fun 10-15 years ago, but nowadays, the way we play it, it basically is me reading the items of the loot one by one, that the loot keeping player (a job none wants to play) will then write on the party loot sheet. After the session, or whenever they get downtime, they will then open d20pfsrd to note the price and maybe 1/20 of the time will instead decide to actually keep the item. When they get to a town, if the town wealth allows it, they then total up the worth of the stuff, sells it then they split the gold (counting items kept by PCs as part of their share at selling value) and simply buy stuff they need if the town can supply them.
Maybe it's because we play shorter sessions then we used to do. Back in my school days, we played once per month, sometimes we started playing on Friday evening and stopped playing only Sunday late afternoon. Back then, of course we role-played with merchants and whatnot, we had time for it. Nowadays, we play 3-4 hours sessions every other weeks and it feel like we never make actual progress (Pathfinder increase in the number of encounters required to level up from 13 to 20 might have something to do with that). Whenever I suggest actually playing a shopping encounter, my players (or partners when I'm playing) treat me like I just proposed to dump their character sheets in a fire. Can't really blame them, they already did that a whole lot of times.
Maybe it's also because they value too much the default proven and tried go-to magic items (Stat boosting belts and headbands, ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, cloak of resistance, magical weapons and magical armors and shields).
Maybe it's also because we play Adventure Path now. The loot might tend to be so frequently inappropriate for them, that they don't even bother reading what is it they find anymore and would rather sell it to get that thing they know is good for them.
I considered rules from Pathfinder Unchained to remove the big 6 and I am building another homebrewed game using scaling magic item versions of the big 6 as artifact that the PCs seek through the land. It is not quite as if using Automatic Bonus Progression as each player has had to prioritize what bonus they wanted and they will get 2 wonders, 2 prizes and 2 baubles each, based on these priorities.
We just keep looting and noting everything until we have enough to buy a small city, then ruin a settlement by selling everything at the same time.
But yes, it gets boring at time. We often sell everything between sessions so it doesn't take time from gaming.
We are lucky to be 3 people in our group who are kinda tidy to do this stuff, so it's not a big deal.
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P.S. I have Rasputin's pen and it's all mine, mine, mine! XD
Is that the one that runs out of ink three times before it REALLY runs out of ink?
P.S. I have Rasputin's pen and it's all mine, mine, mine! XDIs that the one that runs out of ink three times before it REALLY runs out of ink?
Haven't tried but I suspect it is!
Now it looks thrice as cool!| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I can confirm that.
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I do something like what you are describing with loot, but I also replace at level up any wealth lost to consumables and also everything can be sold for full value at level up.
A better way to see what I do is to say that every character right after level up should have gear and cash to equal WBL. Any items that could have been crafted by a party member only count as half cost to calculate this.
Sometimes a party member in an AP will want a goody that is far beyond purchasable and was found/described in the adventure, and then that character just doesn't get any other goodies on that level up.
So, I was thinking about this, about how loot works:
1. You determine how much wealth is appropriate to go up from their current level to the next one.
2. You look through the SRD/book to turn this wealth into items that your PCs might or might not actually use.
3. You divide this loot among an appropriate number of encounters.
4. Your PCs kill the monster/find the treasure, you call them one after the other while the player write down a few items for themselves and write the rest in the party loot to sell.
5. They get to town and sell their wares. You or the PCs now have to search for these items once more in the SRD/book to determine how much they sell for and to determine if it's worth selling or if they'd rather just keep it.That is without even taking differences in between playgroup in how the loot is actually split between party members and if the actual selling has to be role-payed or if it can take place behind the scenes.
I will admit that the core system DOES make treasures horde more realistic, but I find it really adds a lot of tracking and I think the time spent on looting the bodies and buying/selling items could be spent better on role playing, combat and other non-combat encounters.
What I had in mind was Schrodinger's loot. i.e. simply handing out gold when PCs level up and follow the Characer Wealth by level table for this. For instance when a level 8 pc, (estimated wealth 33,000 gp) goes up to level 9 (estimated wealth 46,000 gp), he would gain the difference (13,000 gp). That money could be instantaneously used to buy gear and it would simply be as if the nondescript loot they found battling monsters and searching the catacombs was actually this gear they are now "buying" and it simply wasn't defined yet, hence the term Schrodinger's loot.
If a player would want to use an item that was used by a defeated enemy, I would allow it, but that item's value would be taken off of it's future(s) level-up loot.
I would also allow players to lend money to others, but that would be...
This is basically exactly how my group does things and works incredibly well and makes the game run more smoothly in my opinion.
All the work to track things is annoying, and when considering that each character should have WBL in gear (regardless of whether or not the party sells everything they find and buys gear in town or only uses loot found in a dungeon) you realize that it really doesn't make much of a difference. And players always have the option to hand onto something they find, which can be like a temporary bonus to WBL until they level up, at which point the item counts against their total WBL.
We also combined it with Automatic Bonus progression (which removes the main items characters intend to buy anyways) and leaves more room for buying and keeping interesting items (do remember to halve efective WBL though). ABP does decrease power level a bit since its harder to optimize, but this has actually been great for my groups since we tend to be pretty heavily optimized and adventure paths and such are rarely challenging.
Finding stuff when you go adventuring is fun. Just getting gold isn't fun. I used to take the approach where the party would just find tons of gold so they could go shopping and get whatever they wanted. They did not like this approach.
My group has exactly the opposite experience.
"Oh look, more crap none of us will ever use! Add it to the pile of things to sell!"
ABP does more to help with the problem of getting players to purchase interesting items than anything else for my group. Unless the GM goes through and hand places all the items the party wants into the treasure piles (which isn't very realistic). Every group has their own dynamic though, and different groups will prefer different things.
My group doesn't like purchasing to be a RP activity, because it's usually one person at time and takes away from actually doing the (more) fun parts of the game which is the social/combat aspects of the adventure.
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That is almost exactly what PFS (the Pathfinder organized play campaign) does with gold. Except they generally split it up into every 1/3rd of a level instead of every level.
This has a few great upsides:
1) Less time tracking loot and more time killing dragons. This is extremely important to me, I want as much to happen in my play time as possible; killing dragons or role-playing with kings. Dealing with routine merchants is wasting my player time.
2) Less micromanaging loot, for the players and GM.
3) Smooths out wealth progression. A whole level fighting wildlife is not a level without loot (also see #2).
But it has downsides:
1) breaks immersion... Players will like the fixed income after a bear hunting loot drought, but they will hate the system after looting a dragon's hoard. Some management and adjustment is required.
2) Consumables become lost wealth. A semi-fix is not to apply a wealth deduction for consuming looted consumables. It is more work, but PFS also has a reputation system that you can use to purchase consumables.
All in all I like the system, there are complaints that it moves your RPG one step closer to a video game, but it is worth the trade off to play Dungeons and Dragons not Merchants and Tradegoods.
I definitely prefer just using Automatic Bonus Progression. Best of both worlds- eliminates the dependency on Big 6 items, while still having unique loot hordes. Now that there isn't a need to convert your items into gold then into stat items in order to keep up with the stat scaling, the fun loot that IS present can actually be used without feeling that you're shooting yourself in the foot.
That is almost exactly what PFS (the Pathfinder organized play campaign) does with gold. Except they generally split it up into every 1/3rd of a level instead of every level.
This has a few great upsides:
1) Less time tracking loot and more time killing dragons. This is extremely important to me, I want as much to happen in my play time as possible; killing dragons or role-playing with kings. Dealing with routine merchants is wasting my player time.
2) Less micromanaging loot, for the players and GM.
3) Smooths out wealth progression. A whole level fighting wildlife is not a level without loot (also see #2).But it has downsides:
1) breaks immersion... Players will like the fixed income after a bear hunting loot drought, but they will hate the system after looting a dragon's hoard. Some management and adjustment is required.
2) Consumables become lost wealth. A semi-fix is not to apply a wealth deduction for consuming looted consumables. It is more work, but PFS also has a reputation system that you can use to purchase consumables.All in all I like the system, there are complaints that it moves your RPG one step closer to a video game, but it is worth the trade off to play Dungeons and Dragons not Merchants and Tradegoods.
Just as a point, the way my groups plays the value of consumables is only lost until you level up. Only gear you have with you counts against your WBL. So if you buy 20 pointions of CLW and a wand of CLW, it does come out of your WBL. But if you use all those up before you level up you are still raised to WBL, and you don't have those objects anymore so you get the value of them.
This actually encourages the use of consumables (something my group used rarely because "Hey that's cutting into my wealth!") which helps even the playing field between casters and non-casters because now-non casters can have access to magic without hurting their long-term wealth.
As for the dragons hoard, again any items that are found can be used until leveling up, at which point they count against your WBL. So sometimes you find a useful item that can give you a temporary useful boost, so that is rewarding in and of itself.
how do you handle Crafting items? How does that effect the WBL?
We handle them as "crafted items count against WBL at crafting cost, not sales price."
I admit to being in two minds about automatically resetting to WBL. It's certainly simpler, and it also encourages use of consumables (which we don't do enough of, as a group).
It also prevents me from putting something silly like a +1 ooze bane carving knife, knowing that there's a King Gelatinous Cube later in the dungeon against which this will be a marvelously evocative weapon. However, since that kind of tight writing rarely works in any group I've seen, that's more of a loss in theory than in practice. Mostly, I think that Chekov's gun misfires in an RPG setting.
how do you handle Crafting items? How does that effect the WBL?
Well in my games there is no magical item crafting.
Although anyone can "craft" in the sense that you can say you character made the item themselves (for no mechanical benefit whatsoever).
Alternatively, per recommendations of the devs, I have allowed crafting, it increases you effective WBL by 25% for one feat or 50% for 2 feats, but no more after that. Any items you might give out come out of your WBL, as the feat does not give a wealth to your friends.
Adjusting Character Wealth by Level
You can take advantage of the item creation rules to hand-craft most or all of your magic items. Because you've spent gp equal to only half the price of these items, you could end up with more gear than what the Character Wealth by Level table suggests for you. This is especially the case if you're a new character starting above 1st level or one with the versatile Craft Wondrous Item feat. With these advantages, you can carefully craft optimized gear rather than acquiring GM-selected gear over the course of a campaign. For example, a newly created 4th-level character should have about 6,000 gp worth of gear, but you can craft up to 12,000 gp worth of gear with that much gold, all of it taking place before the character enters the campaign, making the time-cost of crafting irrelevant.
Some GMs might be tempted to reduce the amount or value of the treasure you acquire to offset this and keep your overall wealth in line with the Character Wealth by Level table. Unfortunately, that has the net result of negating the main benefit of crafting magic items—in effect negating your choice of a feat. However, game balance for the default campaign experience expects you and all other PCs to be close to the listed wealth values, so the GM shouldn't just let you craft double the normal amount of gear. As a guideline, allowing a crafting PC to exceed the Character Wealth by Level guidelines by about 25% is fair, or even up to 50% if the PC has multiple crafting feats.
If you are creating items for other characters in the party, the increased wealth for the other characters should come out of your increased allotment. Not only does this prevent you from skewing the wealth by level for everyone in the party, but it encourages other characters to learn item creation feats.
Example: The Character Wealth By Level table states that an 8th-level character should have about 33,000 gp worth of items. Using the above 25% rule, Patrick's 8th-level wizard with Craft Wondrous Item is allowed an additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted wondrous items. If he uses his feat to craft items for the rest of the party, any excess value the other PCs have because of those items should count toward Patrick's additional 8,250 gp worth of crafted items.
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Those are all nice suggestions and while resetting the wealth by level at every level-up seems a bit lengthy, I guess it does a good job of accounting for consumables and it allows you to trade in you older items for better. Plus it really makes new characters on the exact same baseline as old ones. I kinda like it :-) Plus I guess the time you spend on having a bigger gp amount to work with, will be compensated by not having to calculate the difference in price for item that they want to upgrade.
We are also usually banning the use of item creation feat in our games, but I could see the effect of Item creation feat on starting wealth for high level character a nice thing to include in this system too. 1 or 2 feat for +25%, +50% on your wealth, limited to some category, is not "broken" I think.
Thank you guys, feel free to bring more ideas on this subject
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My wife recently wrapped up running a series of six short adventures that were designed for approximately every other level (Dungeon Crawl Classics #14: Dungeon Interludes, which she converted from v.3.5 to PF). She was more concerned with completing the series than in playing out every other adventure our characters had, so after each adventure, she simply had us advance two levels and upgrade our gear to the new Wealth By Level amount. It sometimes meant that we discarded cool items placed in the adventure in favor of more "efficient" loot, but overall, it worked well to keep the momentum going from one adventure to the next.
In almost every other d20/PF game she or I have run, though, the group still wanted to get their loot fix, even if they ended up selling half or more of it. In my new campaign, I highlight certain things during play (like magic items, or other gear they can immediately use), then fill them in on more exact details over email (like just how many coins were in that chest, or the value of an art object they had to spend some time appraising). We try to do most of the selling of loot, dividing shares, and shopping for new stuff over email between sessions so that it doesn't take away from our valuable face-to-face spotlight time.
Loot does seem like a chore at our table.
How about monsters don't carry around money. Just appropriate gear. NPCs hire adventurers with gold pieces, and gear.
Conventions did this somewhat. Level appropriate cash, some of which can be traded for items that might be available. If they meet a silversmith, they can at some point buy a bundle of silvered arrows.