Treasure rewards, what is fair?

[cthulhudarren]

Coming from the DnD world where gold is the main coinage, I am struggling to find a method to know how much loot to give away during encounters in MRQ2 where the prices are based on silver.

Do you go by purchasing power (look at the price of armor in both systems, for example)? Right now I was simply changing the coin types, like if I would give out 1000gp for an encounter, I'd change it to 1000 silvers.

Advice appreciated!

 

[Da Boss]

To be honest in most games I would simply use the follwoing guides

What do I think the creature/person whatever would have
and what do you want the group to have

if you want a direct comparison - have a look and compare price of items (say weapons) in both systems.

 

[soltakss]

The people they meet have their own equipment and that's about it. Peopel don't carry their life savings around with them. If you raid someone's home then they might have a bit more, but it would depend on who you were raiding and what wealth levels they had. A lot of wealth is tied up in equipment/livestock/etc, so there won't normally be chests of treasure unless you are raiding bandits, pirates or tax collectors.

 

[mwsasser]

Wow... good question but it brings up another question, what types of magic weapons do characters find in loot when it comes up. Is it as simple as a sword with bladesharp or something more complex? What is too much?

 

[IanW]

It depends. Do you want to be nice to them, or to be mean to them ?

If you want to be nice, give them something negotiable - silver coins, gold bars, stolen cows.

If you want to be mean, give them a carved lead sigil valuable to some not-local Troll clans, or a badly made sword with a shining crystal and a Bladesharp-2 matrix that took a walk out of the Clanking City so many years ago.

 

[Hopeless]

Say for example they run into a band of skeletons garbed in tattered chain mail and armed with pitted swords protecting a sorceror who elects to run rather than risk getting hit by the bowmen/women in the party as their frontline fighters engage his bodyguards.

Managing to survive the fight as two of the skeletons follow their master out of sight but leave behind a pair of captives and their belongings.

The captives one of whom is a minor trader carrying goods to a nearby hamlet is willing to pay for a night's lodgings, food & drink at the hamlet inn as repayment for being rescued the other is a knight's squire whose master is being held prisoner in the hands of the sorceror's own master a bandit lord whose presence spells dire warning for the hamlet and other settlements nearby.

He offers his help once his gear is recovered if they help him to rescue his master but can also arrange for a monetary reward from his master's order if they assist him in travelling there so he can recruit help to rescue his master.

If they figure out the trader's identity they'll soon realise that not all of the gear he's claiming is actually his and can retrieve a silver plated dagger bearing an odd sigil, a pouch or two of what looks like herbs and a scroll depicting the local area and highlights a fort which the squire will identify as the bandit lord's lair.

Sorry once I get going I tend to go a little overboard however my question relates to the gear the skeletons are carrying in essence two or three suits of tattered chain mail and pitted swords now i know there is magic to repair weapons although i don't know if one exists for armour but how much could they sell either of these for once they reach the hamlet?

How much would be offered for a tattered suit of chain mail?
Could it be used as a discount on something else and how much would be acceptable, 5% or 10% of what it would have been worth if it had been intact?

How much of the above described potential rewards would you consider suitable?

And those who have the Legends core rules, how would that handle this if it was anyway different?

 

[Dan True]

How much would be offered for a tattered suit of chain mail?
Could it be used as a discount on something else and how much would be acceptable, 5% or 10% of what it would have been worth if it had been intact?

Well, for starters I would slash 50% of the purchasing price simply because it's used, and the merchant also needs to earn a living from the resale of it again.
If they try to sale it as tattered as it is, the merchant would probably frown upon it and tell them to sell it as scrap metal to the blacksmith. The blacksmith would then pay perhaps 10% of the purchasing price, since it's tattered, damaged and needs to be smelted/reworked all from scratch. A lot of the metal will probably have rusted away.

If they repair it using magic, I would say that it looses 10%-20% of the price, not counting the 50% from being used. This is because the item will still bear proof of having being damaged. In my view the common magic spell will not create new metal, so the rings will have to be stretch and thinned to repair other rings.

Sooh, you have a wide range of possibilities depending on how much you want your players to have. Also remember the encumbrance - a lot of extra chain mails is gonna weigh them down.

- Dan