D&D 5E Treasure Rolls & "a typical campaign"

[I'm A Banana]

So I'm farting around with planning out the early stages of a campaign (heroic tier) and I came across the interesting paragraph at the bottom of page 133 when browsing through how treasure would shake out, and it has me scratching my head a bit.

For those without their books, it talks about how many treasure hoards a party finds over the course of a campaign - it says, for instance, that a typical campaign will find 7 hoards of Challenge 0-4.

What I'm curious about is where they pulled that magic number out of. Why 7? What makes that number special? What are they expecting from a typical campaign to produce that number? Same with the rest of the tiers. Where did those numbers come from?

My first thought was something like "this is how many adventuring days the tier contains, with a typical campaign getting one hoard after each adventuring day." Which would make some degree of sense. But running some quick XP numbers produces some odd effects (it takes 3800 XP to get from level 3 to level 4, and at 1700 XP/day, that's...a weird number...that produces something like a total of 5.73 (and some change) days total to get the 6500 XP to be 5th level....).

At any rate, I figured the clever minds over here might be able to parse it. What do you think? Where does that number come from?

 

[DaveDash]

I think whoever came up with those numbers did so on a good bottle of wine.
I've worked out on another thread around here what the average leveling rate is, and at 11-17 those hoards equate to 2 per level, which works out to be about 3-4 encounters.*
It's WAY to much, unless you want every few groups of mobs to have huge hoards of treasure.

I'm giving out around 0.5 per level and that feels about right for my game.

*Levelling speeds up quite a bit after you hit 12, generally only 6-7 encounters per level. This is by design, apparently. I don't think the guy (or girl) who put those hoard tables together factored that in. Or the designers are so stuck in the "Level when it feels right" mentality that they don't care.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

5e Designer: "Hey guys, I'm doing the treasure stuff...when you ran your campaigns, how many "big treasure hauls" did your PC's pull in of the course of, say level 1 to 10?"
*Various Mumblings from other Designers...*

Designer A: "I figure...8?"

Designer B: "Definitly 5."

Designer C: "I'm not sure...maybe 9 or so"

5e Designer: "Hmmm...that's an average of around 7 point something. I had 6 myself. Ok guys. Thanks!" ...heads off to computer and types in "7"

That's my guess. Actually, that's my HOPE. I'll take several DM's of actual multi-year campaigns "guesswork" over some english-major "RPG writer" (with a minor in Statistical Analysis) who happen to get into D&D a few years ago *any day of the week*, thankyouverymuch!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Fanaelialae]

My guess is that that's just their default assumption. There's an interesting analysis of it here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...al-quot-Magic-Item-Distribution#ixzz3LsaAPCqb

From that analysis is this:

Assuming a party of four PCs, each PC should obtain:
4 or 5 common consumables
5 uncommon consumables
5 rare consumables
4 or 5 very rare consumables
1 legendary consumable
2 or 3 uncommon permanent items
1 or 2 rare permanent items
1 very rare permanent item
1 legendary permanent item

That seems about right to me. So it's possible that they started with the above and worked backwards to figure out how many hordes would be needed. But I suspect [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION] is correct.

One way to give out the same amount of treasure with less "hordes" is to simply roll up a horde or two and scatter the contents around the adventure. This way the players are finding more from individual encounters.

 

[Jester David]

For those without their books, it talks about how many treasure hoards a party finds over the course of a campaign - it says, for instance, that a typical campaign will find 7 hoards of Challenge 0-4.

What I'm curious about is where they pulled that magic number out of. Why 7?

Most levels have 2 hoards per level. But I imagine they have 7 because it's going to be hard to fit two into first level.

The real weirdness is the spike in hoards between levels 5-10...

 

[Coredump]

To me the weirdness is comparing tier 2 and tier 3, same number of levels, but 18 vs 12 hoards.... I don't get it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

To me the weirdness is comparing tier 2 and tier 3, same number of levels, but 18 vs 12 hoards.... I don't get it.

That's why my theory was 1 hoard/adventuring day. There's more "adventuring days per level" at tier 2, based on 6 encounters/day and daily XP budgets. Which makes sense - they want to extend the "sweet spot" of levels 5-10 in play. But adventuring days (rather weirdly) don't fit snugly into level XP....which surprises me a bit, you'd think that the pacing would allow a character to level at the end of an adventuring day (however many days are in that level)...

 

[DaveDash]

That's why my theory was 1 hoard/adventuring day. There's more "adventuring days per level" at tier 2, based on 6 encounters/day and daily XP budgets. Which makes sense - they want to extend the "sweet spot" of levels 5-10 in play. But adventuring days (rather weirdly) don't fit snugly into level XP....which surprises me a bit, you'd think that the pacing would allow a character to level at the end of an adventuring day (however many days are in that level)...

Yeah at that tier it's about 13 encounters per level, vs about 7 encounters per level tier 11-17.

Which makes me baffled at the amount of coins handed out over 3-4 encounters, although magic items I can understand (almost), although it feels very 3rd edition.

At level 14 now, my group has so much money and so many consumables they'll never really use it all. And that's giving out stuff at 1/4 of the suggested rate.

 

[CapnZapp]

This thread gives me a glimmer of hope.

Just a month or two back, any suggestion that the economy of 5e was a fairy tale that simply doesn't work without heavy modding by the DM was met by a wall of denial.

Now, perhaps people are starting to see thru actual play the mountains of gold that the game gives nothing for the PCs to spend it on.

Cautiously wishing for a proper magic item economy for those groups who want a quick and simple outlet for their wealth that works in campaigns with little downtime...

 

[jgsugden]

I imagine that the hoard delivery rate is a factor of how long it takes to advance through levels. Lower levels go by quickly if you follow the guidelines, then levels 5 to 10 take longer, with 11+ accelerating a bit.

Regardless, it doesn't matter that much. The restriction of three attuned items per PC keeps PCs from getting too powerful due to items. They can only get so far ahead of the curve.

5E makes items iconic. You don't have the 4E 'must fill slot' mentality. You have a smaller number of items that make a difference and don't get washed out because you have too many items. If you follow the guidelines, you get about 20 A items, 17 B items, 20 C items, 15 D items, 7 E items, 10 F items, 5 G items, 5 H items, and 5 I Items. Most of slots A, B, C, D and E are one use items. If you look at the percentages of each of those categories that are one use items and the percentage that are not used up quickly and then apply those rates to the expected number of items, the group will get ~30 items that are not used up when activated over 20 levels. Over 5 PCs, that is 6 items per PC. If half of those are attuned - it means the PCs get an average of 3 attuned items over 20 levels... and if you use purely rolled up items, there is no guarantee the PCs can make great use of each of those items, either.

That is clearly intended. Items are meant to mean something. For example, how many +1 weapons do you think a party is expected to find over 20 levels? The answer? 1 or 2. They should average 9.46 table F items and 0.15 of them are +1 weapons. The old assumption that every PC is going to be walking around with a +1 weapon by level 5 is just WRONG in 5E based upon the DMG guidelines. And +2 weapons? They are supposed to find 0 or 1 of those... and 0 or 1 +3s, too! This doesn't factor in the named items with attack bonuses, but it does tell you there is a real chance that under the rules as written a warrior PC might wander his entire career and never use a magic weapon.

The DM has the freedom to create a magic item economy that allows for the acquisition of some more items, but under the base rules.... items are meant to be rare and iconic - mythical and special (from a +1 shortsword all the way up to the Staff of the Magi).