Last night was Halloween, and I spent it giving out treats to greedy little children. What better inspiration to describe my method for giving treasure to my players?
As described previously, I want the campaign to have a low-magic feel as much as possible, so I'm using the Inherent Bonus rules from Dark Sun. These still require me to give out treasure and magic items, though; they suggest removing the highest- and lowest-level magic item parcels from each level's treasure allotments in the Dungeon Master's Guide. Well, this didn't fit at all with how I want to handle treasure.
For starters, the whole DMG treasure parcel system is again predicated on a consistent group of players in a campaign with logical start and end points. DMs are encouraged to ask their players for item wishlists, which the DM will then use to populate his encounters with treasure. A five-person party should receive four magic items per party level of play, so that each player gets four items per five levels of play. Finally, DMs are told to give out treasure parcels based on the party's level, not the level of the encounter, so that a tenth-level party will get tenth-level treasure whether they kill three orcs or an elder red dragon.
All in the name of balance, right? Bah! Part of the sandbox ethos is that players should be rewarded for playing smart or being lucky; that is, tougher encounters should have better treasure. Furthermore, with what I expect will be a rotating table of players of various levels, the idea of party level becomes less meaningful. Wishlists become difficult to manage, and the concept of a set number of treasure parcels per level becomes impossible when PC levels range wildly and increase at different rates.
Fortunately, the Essentials line has the answer. Essentials does away with set treasure parcels, replacing them with random treasure tables. On average, these tables are meant to roll up something basically identical to the set treasure parcels, and are meant to be used in the same way-- roll on the third-level table if your party is third level. This better fits my target aesthetic of an old-school play experience with new-school rules. I'm returning to random encounter tables, so why not random treasure tables?
From here, the changes I had to make were obvious. First, I'll roll on the treasure table for the level of the encounter, not the party. So if a third-level party boldly takes on a sixth-level encounter, they'll get better loot. Makes sense to me, and it eliminates any guesswork about what level the party is. This also lets me have as many encounters of any level I want, which is a boon when using random encounter tables.
Second, I'll use the base numbers for these treasure tables rather than altering them for parties of four or six PCs (getting less or more treasure respectively) although I expect to have tables of six almost all the time. I'm doing all my encounter difficulty calculations based on 4e's baseline of a five-PC party. Mainly this is because I need some consistent baseline to compare encounters and dungeons, but I also like the idea that if the players hit a dungeon with four PCs and get whipped, they can come back later with six and know it'll be much easier. The flipside of that, of course, is that if they beat that dungeon with four PCs, each PC would get more treasure and XP; if they beat it with six, each PC gets less. Seems fair to me.
MATH PARTY
The third and last change has to do with the magic-item rolls. Since I'm using the Inherent Bonus rules, I don't want to have the same number of magic items floating around as in a regular campaign. Luckily, the magic item roll is a set number: a treasure parcel includes a magic item on a roll of 13 or higher, or 40% of the time, regardless of level. It's clear where Wizards got this number: if it takes ten encounters to gain a level, the party should find an average of four magic items across those encounters. Exactly the same as in the DMG treasure parcels, and indeed, the magic items are calculated as level = 1d4 + party level, yielding an average range identical to the recommended range in the DMG (e.g. average roll of 3.5 at level 1 as compared to four items of levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 [average = 3.5] for a level 1 party). So to remove two of those items (as per the suggestion of the Inherent Bonus rules) all I had to do was increase the magic item roll from 13+ (40%) to 17+ (20%). I also wanted to emulate the removal of the highest-level item, so I made the item level roll 1d4 + level - 1, giving an average item one level lower than recommended in the standard treasure parcels (e.g. average roll of 2.5 at level 1 as compared to two items of levels 3 and 4 [average = 3.5] for a level 1 party). Yeah, this brought the average item level down by 1, and I'll have to see if my players feel underpowered over time. But I think it's better to eliminate the chance of a first-level party getting a level 5 item, or even worse, a second-level party getting a level 6 item, which is where weapons, armor, etc. start giving enhancement bonuses of +2.
I rolled up some treasure parcels ahead of time so I wouldn't have to do it during the game, and to see how my system worked. Just looking at the magic items, I randomly ended up with:
Encounter Level 1: Level 1 Common, Level 2 Uncommon, Level 2 Uncommon, Level 4 Uncommon
Encounter Level 2: Level 3 Uncommon, Level 5 Uncommon
Encounter Level 3: Level 4 Common, Level 5 Common, Level 6 Common, Level 5 Rare
Encounter Level 4: No Magic Items
I got some pretty high rolls, so this gives us an average of 2.5 items per level, when we were going for an average of 2. Not too bad. It also included two rare items (gotten with a natural 20 on the magic item roll) but one was level 2, so I replaced with a level 2 uncommon, since the lowest-level rare item is level 3 (and is Forgotten Realms-specific anyway). It gives us an average level of 2.25 at level 1, 4 at level 2, and 5 at level 3. Pretty much just right all around, since we were looking for average item levels of 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5.
This still feels like a lot of magic items to me, though I did tend to roll well (except at level 4, yikes). It's not exactly what I wanted for my campaign, but I can't get any more item-light without really rebuilding some rules, which I don't want to do. I also rolled plenty of 13-16 when making these sample treasures, so I know I have fewer items this way than I would have otherwise. I'll have to see how it plays out in the actual game.
One last note: I've decided to try choosing item identities on the fly, at least for treasures from random encounters. I want to keep some flexibility to give out treasures that fit the encounter: if the party finds a level 5 uncommon on some ixitxachitls, it's not gonna be plate armor, ya know? I did choose that rare item, though: a Shade Weapon. I'll pick the weapon type on the fly, but I think a semi-evil, maybe semi-intelligent shadow sword would fit a pirate campaign quite nicely...
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