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Switch to Forum Live View overlooting players?
1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 12:31AM #1
beelzeboss
Date Joined: Aug 3, 2011
Posts: 149
Got a question.

Are my players overlooting?
Whenever they finish an encounter they immediatly start to loot every and I mean every monster in the room.
And the always take every scrap of equipment and items the monsters have.
Hell, during kobold hall the cleric took the wyrmpriest his skullmask and wore it himself(had to allow it: DM GUIDE SAYS TO NEVER SAY NO).
I'm afraid that by doing this my players are getting to much money for their lvl's.
But I'm afraid to say no caus the DM guide says to never say no and my players might rebel saying that it's standard RPG logic to loot.      

So are my players overlooting(looting to much) or is this normal behaviour?
And what should I do? Say no and go against the DM guide? Allow it?
Help!     
"Into the heart of battle, I shall walk
In the eye of the storm, I will stand
Onto the end of the earth, I shall hunt
In defence of others, I shall fight
For honour and glory, I will live
And for justice, I would die"
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 12:36AM #2
Qmark
  • vitriol and virtue
Date Joined: May 18, 2002
Posts: 16,521
Ask them, "How do you intend to carry all this stuff?"
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 12:57AM #3
beelzeboss
Date Joined: Aug 3, 2011
Posts: 149

Apr 2, 2012 -- 12:36AM, Qmark wrote:

Ask them, "How do you intend to carry all this stuff?"




"facepalms"
Didn't think of that yet.

Although knowing my players they'll start to qoute PH page 222 saying:

"The amount you carry should rarely be an issue, and you don’t need to calculate the weight your character is hauling around unless it’s likely to matter."

But what if they manage to get a bag of holding? Sure I could deny them it forever but thats not fun and fun is the most important thing according to DM guide. What should i doe then? 

"Into the heart of battle, I shall walk
In the eye of the storm, I will stand
Onto the end of the earth, I shall hunt
In defence of others, I shall fight
For honour and glory, I will live
And for justice, I would die"
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 1:03AM #4
Qmark
  • vitriol and virtue
Date Joined: May 18, 2002
Posts: 16,521
To be fair, that's kinda the whole damn point of a bag of holding.

The merchant they unload loot on merely has to say something like "Another three-dozen shortswords?  I can't even sell the last hundred or so you guys dumped on me!"
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 1:20AM #5
Salla
Date Joined: Apr 3, 2003
Posts: 23,524

Apr 2, 2012 -- 12:31AM, beelzeboss wrote:

(had to allow it: DM GUIDE SAYS TO NEVER SAY NO).




The DM guide does not say 'never say no'.  It says 'say yes whenever possible'.

So, let them loot to their heart's content.  They aren't going to be able to sell any of it, because it's cheap, used and damaged.  All they're really doing is wasting their storage space.

Make sure you tell them that they're just wasting their time and storage space.  They should stop.

Another day, another three or four entries to my Ignore List.
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 1:54AM #6
randomvirus
Date Joined: May 19, 2011
Posts: 139
Most monsters carry just junk with them, or common weapons and armor.  And "Common" items sell at 20% of their retail value.

It's normal for players to want to loot, but them taking EVERYTHING could be a sign that they feel a little starved for treasure.  Or it could be a sign that they're greedy bastards.

Are you using the Treasure Parcel packages from the DM Guide?

If they want to take everything, that's fine, but remind them about the weight of carrying everything.  Or encourage them to hire a pack mule or something similar.  There's really nothing wrong with your players being "hoarders".  But give them fun ways to do it, henchman, donkeys, a merchant that follows them, or some such.
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 2:01AM #7
beelzeboss
Date Joined: Aug 3, 2011
Posts: 149

Apr 2, 2012 -- 1:54AM, randomvirus wrote:

Most monsters carry just junk with them, or common weapons and armor.  And "Common" items sell at 20% of their retail value.

It's normal for players to want to loot, but them taking EVERYTHING could be a sign that they feel a little starved for treasure.  Or it could be a sign that they're greedy bastards.

Are you using the Treasure Parcel packages from the DM Guide?

If they want to take everything, that's fine, but remind them about the weight of carrying everything.  Or encourage them to hire a pack mule or something similar.  There's really nothing wrong with your players being "hoarders".  But give them fun ways to do it, henchman, donkeys, a merchant that follows them, or some such.




Just used kobold hall and followed whatever treasure it said.
but as one of my players just said: basic rule of rpg's: loot everything 

"Into the heart of battle, I shall walk
In the eye of the storm, I will stand
Onto the end of the earth, I shall hunt
In defence of others, I shall fight
For honour and glory, I will live
And for justice, I would die"
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 3:39AM #8
Wystenv2
Date Joined: Apr 19, 2009
Posts: 286
Sure, they can take whatever they want since there is no moral consquences to it, but at the same time make it clear that it's more effort then it's worth.

Swords could fetch a few silver *mainly to melt down*, gold and potions are always worth something, if you have someone with knowledge nature or whatever the equilient is have them be able to extract some peieces of the deceased. But impliment carrying rules (carrying 20 swords? Alright, you are now treated as fighting in heavy armour, and as your not trained in that you get all the penatlies for none of the benfits) and make certain items (such as rusty hemits, clothing e.c.t) practically useless.

Nothing wrong with looting, as many items have some kind of worth, but make it clear that not every item will be useful and hence they should priortise their plunder. Also impliment some quests with relative time limits that pausing to loot for any period of time will create further difficulty or chance of failure. Like if they take too long the guy who orignally setup the quest, assumed you died and setup another group of adventurers and refuses to pay them their full reward when they do get back several days later then expected as he will likely have to pay the other guys for wasting their time.
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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 4:14AM #9
randomvirus
Date Joined: May 19, 2011
Posts: 139

Apr 2, 2012 -- 3:39AM, Wystenv2 wrote:

Sure, they can take whatever they want since there is no moral consquences to it, but at the same time make it clear that it's more effort then it's worth.

Swords could fetch a few silver *mainly to melt down*, gold and potions are always worth something, if you have someone with knowledge nature or whatever the equilient is have them be able to extract some peieces of the deceased. But impliment carrying rules (carrying 20 swords? Alright, you are now treated as fighting in heavy armour, and as your not trained in that you get all the penatlies for none of the benfits) and make certain items (such as rusty hemits, clothing e.c.t) practically useless.

Nothing wrong with looting, as many items have some kind of worth, but make it clear that not every item will be useful and hence they should priortise their plunder. Also impliment some quests with relative time limits that pausing to loot for any period of time will create further difficulty or chance of failure. Like if they take too long the guy who orignally setup the quest, assumed you died and setup another group of adventurers and refuses to pay them their full reward when they do get back several days later then expected as he will likely have to pay the other guys for wasting their time.




This seems like punishing players for being players...

There's rules already for weapon weight.  If somebody is carrying 20 longswords that's only 80 pounds of swords.  Which would be a lot for a wizard to carry, but not a fighter whose prime state is strength, and could easily be 18-20 at level 1, meaning they can carry 180 to 200 lbs at their normal carrying weight.

The rules are already in place for carrying heavy loads and max loads.  No reason to punish players just because they like to hoard swords.  Besides, if you're running a Dark Sun game or anything with the reckless breakage rule, you might have a reason to carry around a bunch of spare weapons.

I'm sure after a while your players will decide that when they're only getting 3gp a pop for each of those 20 longswords that it's just more trouble than it's worth. 

Now back to the Op, beelzeboss , I've found the loot in the Wizards campaigns is quite skewed.  They hand out magical items like candy.  It really got to me when I was running some of the Dark Sun stuff from Dungeon Magazine issues.  In Dark Sun, as a general rule magic items are supposed to be scarce, but most of the WotC Dungeon / Dark Sun campaigns were flushed with magic items at the rate of 1 / every other encounter.  So, I abandoned using their tables, I still use loot, but I find that the DM guide has a better rate of giving out items per level of play.

I'm guessing their new at the game, because generally (in my experience) veteran players don't bother with looting junk.  Unless they're penny pinching to buy something.  Your players will probably grow out of it, give them distractions from the "everything's dead, loot time" mood.  You could always throw the next encounter at them right away.

In keeping with the spirit of Wystenv2's post, if they are slowing the game down with looting, then show them that the "game" doesn't slow down for them.  "As you begin sifting through the bodies, the kobolds from the next chamber suddenly show up to investigate what all that commotion was about."

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1 year ago  ::  Apr 02, 2012 - 5:09AM #10
Mousewithchainsaw
Date Joined: Jun 29, 2011
Posts: 137
Thats why I liked second ed wgt/bulk system, yeah you can carry 100 long swords by wgt alone if str is high enough, but HTF do you carry 100 long swords. A fighter can carry 2-3 suits of field plate armor but how on earth could he carry all that and still beable to function at all? Cause as it says in book and was quoted here "The amount you carry should rarely be an issue, and you don’t need to calculate the weight your character is hauling around unless it’s likely to matter." In their minds they did this cause like everything else in 4th, it was meant to be simpler and faster to dive right into combat so assumed (wrongly) people wouldnt be retarded about it, Which means YOU as the dm decides when to draw the line, is it 100 longswords?, 20 suits of armors?, a whole dead dragons corpse?, a warship?, a whole castle they somehow manage to fit on their back?

Seems like they have standard video game mentality over role playing one. Such as wearing field plate in desert, video gamers simpley ignore it cause simple endure element spells or cause their fort save is so high they can resist the effects while role players take it off cause it would still be miserably hot and sand would get everywhere.

Giving them bags of holding only encourages it even more so and if they have a wgt limit (Not sure in 4th) you fully know they will ignore it.
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