So I've been preparing to run a D&D Next game (Been DMing for a while, just not with this system obviously). However, I can't find anything about how much treasure a party is expected to have as they progress. (A fighter still needs that fullplate eventually, and the casters have costly components)
I checked out the Basic Rules but that didn't seem to have anything either (or I couldn't find it) and I didn't see any thread mentioning this (or, once again, I couldn't find it)
So how much treasure per Challenge/Xp should there be? What's the ratio for an adventure, I mean. Or an encounter?
Im sure all this will be answered in the DMG, but I cannot believe that there's no mention of this anywhere prior to that. (What we aren't expected to level up until November? Lol)
And if this is already answered then all I need is a general page number or such.
Thanks!
There is no need for an expected treasure table or rule. Such is only required if magic and magical items are part of the balance of the system. With bounded accuracy and the system being designed so that magical items aren't necessary, you as the DM are free to choose how much treasure the PC's gain. In addition, the default assumption is that you can't buy magical items. Money, therefore, is only needed for things like maintaining a lifestyle, better armour, horses, a castle, whores and ale.
Given all these factors, any magical items you include as treasure will have a significant impact on the power of the PC's who have them and on the success of the group in encounters. So decide how much of an impact you want magical items to have, and gift accordingly.
As best as I can tell, your fears are confirmed. I don't think anything has been released regarding treasure. Before the DMG comes out, you are only supposed to be levelling in Lost Mine of Phandelver or Tyranny of Dragons. 
For starters if you want to try and figure it out, In Lost Mines an encounter with 6 goblins results in 15 sp and 3 gp. An encounter with a bugbear, a wolf and two goblins results in 600 cp, 110sp, 50 gp and two potions of healing. That treasure is heavy though because it's the end of the dungeon.
I didn't mean to imply that I was talking about magic items. I meant mundane treasure: gold, art objects, material components (costly), etc.
I assume there's some sort of expectation like : "around 6th level the fighter will finally be able to afford his full plate, and at the same time the wizard will be halfway to finishing his leomund's secret chest component" or something similar.
I'm not at all talking about magic items here. I know they don't fit into the economy.
Though Ansbach brings up a good point as well. Potions. Since they are craftable, I assume they don't fit into the "magic item" category as a +1 sword would. So assumably they should be given out as treasure, or there should be enough gold that the PCs can make a few during downtime.
The designers have actually deliberately moved away from the notion of "expected treasure". In terms both of the published adventures and of my experience playing at Gen Con this year, gold piece values tend to be low, much lower than you might expect. A reward of 50 gp per player for successfully completing an NPCs mission, e.g. is not considered too low.
Tiarn wrote:
Thank_Dog wrote:
Thank_Dog wrote:
Tiarn wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Hi Tiarn,
My first bit advice is that you read Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew Finch. It will be useful in understanding the paradigm shift in between the last 2 edition and this one.
When you have a go at Thank_Dog, your getting angry about being given the most fundimental and helpful peice of advice for this edition; do what is right for your group.
The designers may have a base line, I am not sure they do, but they may. However that doesn't matter, because the right amount of gold for your game, isthe right amount of gold for your game. Do you envision your characters throwing around powerful magic? Well cool give them more gold, if you want to maintain a slow leveling curve, split their experience one extra way.
Wan't your players to struggle for everything they have, track their resources(perhaps use cards and tokens to represent arrows, potion and rations).
Make the game you want, from the tool you have.
There is no expectation that we are aware of and without the Monster Manual, we don't have the wisdom of experience to have figured it out for ourselves, either. We'll learn what's right over time through trial and error and that knowledge will be more correct for each of us, individually, than anything a designer could decide on our behalf.
We, as dungeon masters, have the rules themselves as our dungeon. As we explore them and level up, fighting the hobgoblins of unexpected consequences and evading the traps of design oversight, we will eventually defeat the dragon of other people's expectations and find the treasure of owning the rules as their lord and master.
Eris.Shrugged wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Eris.Shrugged wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Shiroiken wrote:
Hey, folks.
I'll admit my initial reaction to the lack of wealth advice in 5e was to be a little frowny, blinky and lip-bitey. Used to the expectations of 3.5e - very structured and easy to follow wealth-by-level guides - this free-form "what feels right" paradigm was a bit unnerving.
Now what will the PCs do with all the gold they find? They used to buy tailored magical item kits: that kept them poor and wanting more - bigger, better, more powerful. No more of these Ye Olde Magic Shoppe shenanigans, so...what is it all for? Why bother collecting gold and stuff if you are already rich as an emperor?
I think, imo, several good things come out of the 5e philosophy:
- class features might get more mileage;
- magic items are as rare as you want them to be, they aren't an expectation (there are guidelines for rarity in the magic item description blocks);
- I can't see any magic items being too game-breaking thus far, just nice. I haven't really looked into it that much.
- mundane equipment maintains its relevance for longer (I love alchemical items, so this is great!); you may want to purchase a spyglass or water clock because you can and you are not wasting magic item savings by doing so.
- adventuring becomes about having an adventure, not amassing cash for magic items;
- loftier goals than amassing personal magic items could arise - like financing a new monastery, academy or church.
You might see a theme in all that: not having magic item shops means more discretionary funds that can be used for more flavoursome choices. I won't say I've got a handle on it yet, but I have a feeling that it will lead to a different adventuring and down time mentality.
Lord_Avalanche wrote:
Hi, Centauri.
Just trying to understand your concerns, so sorry if it sounds overly interrogatory. 
Do you think that game designers are not balancing up the magic items because they are not part of the system, as such? So we might see terribly ill-considered items popping up "because they are cool" with no regard to the ramifications to game balance?
[and/or] No guidelines = parties may become way too powerful for their supposed monster CR? Or way too weak ? (this latter shouldn't happen because MI are not expected). Party power level becomes too hard to predict or too swingy to set appropriate challenges for.
[and/or] Some classes begin to outshine others due to more class-synergistic items appearing for one class and not for others?
I don't know. If there is an overall consistency in a campaign, be it low- medium- or high-magic: I'm not sure how it can go so bad. I'd love to hear your thoughts, though, as I am in the middle of converting a bunch of 3.5e stuff and I'm slashing and burning treasure like crazy, almost too scared to add in a magic item like a +1 weapon!
Centauri wrote:
So I've run 2 games so far. The party fought goblins, a carrion crawler and some giant centipedes, more goblins, a couple of thugs, some giant spiders and an Orc shaman with his pet worg. At the end of each encounter, based on how the fight went I decide if the bad guys had loot. When I did this, I rolled a handful of dice and then assigned a coin type to each of the dice... Getting something like 12 copper, 6 silver and 8 gold. If the fight was tough for the group I throw in a pot of healing. I've given out two magic items so far... A +1 dagger and a +1 ring... And only because the fights they earned the in were rough and two people were on their third death save.
That's what my group is comfortable with so far and I felt it was a decent payout. Two of the group also earned "master crafted" cloaks from the city seamstress for saving her child from the river. The cloaks give advantage when rolling vs. natural cold.
I've been GMing for 32 years, a structured loot payout system will confine you to what the system dictates, at least that's what I've experienced. If you feel comfortable with a system, you can easily devise one that fits your style and your group's comfort level. Doing so will allow you to decide how much is the right amount.
for example: if you want the 6th level fighter to have plate mail at 6th level, you will need to give out treasure (coin) so that the 6th level fighter can afford to pay for plate mail at 6th level. In doing so, you will need yo hand out 1500gp x number of party members over 6 levels (so there is fair distribution). Keeping that in mind, you can dole out the treasure over the 6 levels through various encounters, rewards for missions, etc. You just need to decide how much and when. Upkeep and random expenditures should factor in also so it may be 2000-2500 gp over 6 levels. How many sessions do you run? How many sessions from game 1, level 1 to level 6? 10-20? This would be your formula if you want a specific treasure total at 6th level ((expected treasure x number of players) / sessions expected for 6th level). Using the example I gave of 2000gp for 6th level for a 4 player group and 15 sessions to 6th level: ((2000x4)/15) = 533.33 gp per session....that's an average, so less at low levels more at higher levels? That seems like a lot to me, but that's just my style... You can adjust as needed or ignore all that. It's a starting point.
thinking about an encounter, would a group of goblins have 150gp in a sack? They might if they just robbed a merchant on the kings highway, but not typically (unless that's typical of your game world)... Typically goblins have a handful of coins and other loots (realistically, what use do goblins have for coin? Where are they going to spend it? It's not like they are carousing the city taverns). But each game world and GM have different expectations.
spread it out based on encounter, how hard the encounter is/was and what reward level do you think it's worth... How do your players perceive the encounter? If they fought to every last spell and potion and everyone was hanging by the barest thread of life, would they feel cheated by a 100 copper pile of loot? Or are they happy to have lived another day?
in the end, you need to have fun and the players need to have fun. Part of that is the reward of completing a task, part the reward for completing the task. Talk with you players understand their expectation for what they think is fun and play to that but temper it with what you like also... Find a happy middle ground.
I hope oped that helps a bit
Lord_Avalanche wrote:
MadFramer wrote:
Eris.Shrugged wrote:
I believe DMG has random treasure tables, including I expect gold etc along with magic items. That's all the guidance I want/need.
Personally I'm extremely glad there is no "expected treasure for level xxxx" tables and expected magic items etc. Its just more fun ime.
I am with Psikorlord on this one as I loathed expected treasure both as DM and player. It took out the mystery for me as a player and created expectation based issues for me as DM.
If 5e, goes the way of AD&D on this, one can still figure out "when" are the appropriate levels to allow such items. How? Simple, AD&D's monters all had treasure types and since the monsters were rated by the level you were expected to fight them, the treasure types corressponded to the level of the monster and as a result the level of the party. Ditto for the random treasure charts as they were loosely linked to the wandering monster charts which were also coded by level.
This method was far from perfect, but it served well for years. That said, I do hope 5e has some solid guidlines for this that will help new DMs out in this regard.
In all the years I have been playing, I will say this: I have seen more campaigns fail not by the Monte Hall syndrome, but by the players' characters being under geared. To be sure, too much power can wreck a campaign, but all in all I saw more TPKs, lost player interest, and plain old fizzle outs happen from too little power in the players' hands. The point I am making is that in a free-form system with no guidelines it is easier for a DM to hand out items deemed 'too powerful" than not, and that's Ok, for it is when DMs got stingy the games tended to fizzle.*
I do wonder one thing though: AD&D had a built in check vs a DM handing out too much/powerful gear too early-- the Item saving throw. Fail a save vs Spell (Fireball in this example) and all your worn items had to save too. Unless it was an artifact, even some of your magical gear could be lost, and sometimes ALL your magical goodies went bye-bye. It didn't bother us much back then for the prevailing attitude was "easy come, easy go." But this isn't "back then" and attitudes towards this often volatile subject are very different now. It will be interesting to see how such things would play out today.
*Note: Based on Kishri's annecdotal experience only. Your game and experience will vary.
For Legacy Ruling in the sake of former Edition's Convenience, we've been using 50 gp per level. It works just fine.
- When starting campaigns at level over 1st. Anything from 2nd to 20th, 50 gp per level; plus whatever starting equipment your class and background grants. If DM allows it, 3 consumable magic items, a single +1 weapon if on the 4rth Tier of character advancement, a unique "uncommon" woundrous item and 1d3 trinkets. Very enterteining and fun, without breaking the game.
Alpizarai wrote:
Ansbach wrote:
Alpizarai wrote: