Intro
Maybe this is just a me problem but I’ve always struggled with the whole ‘you get to the final room of the dungeon, beat the boss, and find a bunch of coins and items just sitting there’ thing.
In short, I find loot weird. Obviously by default D&D has to have heavily ‘game-ified’ elements (like spells being sorted into discrete levels) but loot for whatever reason has always crossed past the threshold of my willing suspension of disbelief.
This, obviously, leaves me with a problem. How do my parties get paid?
A Pile of Coins In A Room
First of all let me be clear about one thing: sometimes the ‘pile of coins and items in the final room’ is perfectly realistic and reasonable. Indeed D&D’s early influences for ‘Dungeons’ were things like Egyptian tombs which were in fact filled with traps and riches (in some cases, that is, not all. It depends on era. But I digress…)
This means something like seeking the tomb of a dead hero to retrieve an artefact they were buried with gives us all the reasoning we need to have a final room full of riches (accessible only, of course, after defeating the Clockwork Soldier guarding the crypt). Mounted on the walls around the room are the hero’s famous sword and shield, within the sarcophagus is the amulet the party is there to retrieve, still encasing the hero’s bones is his immaculate suit of enchanted armour.
Indeed the mysterious benefactor that hired the party told them to bring him the amulet and anything else they found was theirs to keep.
There are certain conceits like this that lend themselves perfectly to this style of loot-finding. Dragon Hoards, Lich collections, Djinn treasures, and so on all make for very ‘organic’ loot hoards that the parties can sack to their leisure.
Just to sprinkle in an additional layer of realism I make sure that the items aren’t perfectly applicable to every single member of the party. The archer getting a bow, the paladin getting a sword, and the wizard getting a spellbook is a bit hackneyed. My loot rooms go something more like this:
‘Well that cloak of invisibility is good for Sneaky McGee, I will take that old spellbook and see what I can copy, and the shield is good as a backup for Two-Handed-Halberd Johnson, but none of us really uses a bow so I suppose we could sell that…’
But you can’t just do this every time the party needs to make money and get new items…
For Hire
Here’s the classic one. The party are essentially mercenaries for hire. In fact, a common way I get my campaigns underway is the conceit of ‘You were all hired as security for this trade caravan’ (and maybe one or two of the characters are part of the caravan itself). Alternatively, there’s ‘You defended this fledgling town so well after meeting by chance in that tavern that the mayor is putting you on retainer until things quiet down’.
Yes, these themselves rely on certain conveniences and contrivances but they’re the fundamental ones (like the party having some reason to be in the same place at the same time). Those are ones I’m willing to swallow as indeed we all are.
This particular model, of the party being ‘jobbing adventurers’, also opens up lots of interesting moral dynamics. Are they unscrupulous mercenaries willing to take any job for the right sum? Or are they willing to turn down high payouts if they don’t trust the benefactor? Better yet, is that a point of tension for these characters? Maybe after finding out the job they were hired for isn’t all it seemed a rift forms that some hearty roleplay must mend.
The nice part about this approach to keeping the stream of wealth flowing is that it can be used to also delineate narrative beats. The quest is ended when the reward is received, the story arc concludes when the town is safe enough to not need adventurers on retainer.
It does, however, have limitations. Primarily among these is we miss out on stories that don’t necessarily involve such low-stakes grounded ideas as getting paid. If the party’s goal is to kill an evil God there’s probably not someone that’s going to just pay them for that…
The converse of that is if a player’s goal is something larger (like ‘kill the evil God that ruined my people’s religion’) then they’re not going to be interested in taking basic jobs for little payouts forever.
But while they’re on that God-killing quest they still need to be getting more gear and becoming the high-powered superheroes that level of stakes calls for…
The Item Is The Goal
Ok so if we’re going to kill a God we’re going to need to a) get more powerful (via levels) and b) get decked to the tits (via items). The levels part will take care of itself as we continue moving through the world taking on increasingly dangerous challenges. The items part though? That part we’re going to have to go out of our way to sort out…
I’m a fighter. The sword the smith in my hometown made for me is fine but it’s not going to cut it (heh) in the long run. But I did hear a rumour about the tomb of an ancient hero who was buried with his legendary sword. Maybe I have to grapple with the moral dubiousness of graverobbing for the greater good of slaying a malevolent deity…
I’m a rogue. It’s pretty well known that the most prestigious thing a thief can own is a cloak of invisibility and those are only made by the Elves in the enclaves deep within the old forests. To make things trickier, because the Elves know of thieves’ penchant for such cloaks they’re very careful about which outsiders they gift them to. I’m going to have to really impress them and earn their trust. I sure hope I don’t accidentally become a good person along the way…
I’m a Paladin. Things for me are a little more complicated. I’m the last champion of a dying God so he doesn’t exactly have the spare power to bestow gifts of holy arms upon me. I’m going to need to find a highly skilled smith who can weave divine energy into their crafts. I wonder if said smith will need me to procure some famously rare metals for these items…
You get the point. Having the acquisition of items for a long term outcome be the meat that the quest-sausage is made from is a great structural device and also a great way for loot-gaining to feel more organic. This is especially useful if your players are the kind who really enjoy getting new cool items and more powerful gear as the increased effort in acquiring the item makes for greater satisfaction when it is acquired.
A Word On Power
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like powerful characters. I would rather my players get something maybe a little above the curve than be conservative and give them something half-useless. I can always adjust encounters upwards.
Another thing I really like doing, though, is giving my players loot that can expand their character’s skillset or otherwise push them in unique directions of play. A great example of this was when a party of mine found a gem that could be used to cast Acid Splash once per day. The Wizard already had the spell, the Warlock had better cantrips to be casting, the Fighter had javelins to toss if he needed a ranged option in a pinch.
So they gave it to the Barbarian. He got a jeweller to mount it in his gauntlet so that he could keep punching as normal while still ‘holding’ the gem. This led us down the path of him finding similarly ‘mountable’ items until eventually he had gauntlets with a whole repertoire of once-per-day spells and effects.
Items that give predominantly ranged characters interesting melee options, or give martials a limited bit of magic use, or one type of spellcaster an ability usually within the remit of another type of caster, are all really solid ways to give your characters *more* without necessarily making them way more powerful.
To that end, however, be sure not to give a character something that steps on another character’s toes. This approach works best in smaller parties with minimal skill crossover. In a party without a Cleric, giving a Wizard a staff that lets them cast a few healing spells is fine. In a party with a Cleric it’s stealing the Cleric’s thunder (unless, of course, the Cleric isn’t overly focused on healing spells and appreciates the backup).
Anyway, Why All This Fuss Over Loot?
In classic fashion I’ve waited until almost the end to justify the need for all this extra thought and effort. Well put plainly loot is fun! Getting cool new items is a ton of fun!
Hopefully you don’t need that part explained to you.
The more pertinent reason for all this effort is it’s applicable across systems beyond 5e, and other systems (or indeed older editions) have different expectations and requirements around loot. 5e is very ‘low magic, low power’ in that regard, which makes it very easy to run insofar as loot can be largely ignored if desired. Older editions, or other modern systems like Pathfinder 2e, are designed around the players receiving a certain amount of loot throughout the game. Monsters are balanced with this power budget in mind. That means if you skip out on loot you’re making things harder (and I would argue less fun) for your players.
Now, I can only speak for myself but I like a certain amount of immersion in my games. If the system calls for regular loot I want to introduce immersive ways for players to acquire it. That’s pretty much what I covered off right at the start.
5e’s lower-powered, lower-magic approach to loot is also reflected in its general expectations around worldbuilding. Items tend to be rare and the more powerful they are the rare they are. Other systems that tend to call for more powerful loot at more regular intervals tend to have these items be more readily available in a way that is very much baked into the worldbuilding.
It’s Not Loot, It’s Specialty Goods
You know you can just buy an Oathbow right? Yeah it’s gonna be expensive and the store in your podunk hometown probably won’t have one, but any large enough city will have places you can get these sorts of things off the shelf. Why? Because there are individuals out there powerful enough and wealthy enough to have the need and means to acquire such an item.
This is the other major approach to regular loot-giving. Items don’t have to be peppered around the world in soldier’s tombs and Lich lairs, store-bought is just fine. The average commoner is earning a couple of gold a week, they’re never going to buy something like that, that’s why you don’t have thousands of farmers running around with Holy Avengers. How do these magical stores stay in business if only a handful of people in the world are in the market for a Holy Avenger? Because it’s not the only thing they sell, and they only need to sell like one every 5 years to turn a profit.
Think about it like this, have you ever gone to the liquor store and seen a bottle of Whisky that costs like $600? If you’re anything like me you’ve probably thought ‘who’s even buying that?’ while you get your $25 bottle of Southern Comfort. The Oathbow is in the same store as the crossbow you buy for defending your homestead from bandits.
To that end, not everyone buying that $600 bottle is some whisky connoisseur, they might just be some guy with more money than taste who wants to show off how rich they are. Adventurers aren’t the only people buying Vorpal Blades, aristocrats are buying them for private collections, universities are buying them for their advanced students, kings are buying them to arm their most elite guards.
Or, hell, if the world is high-magic by design then it could be dotted with magical Travelling Tinkers who have these items readily at hand, always showing up mysteriously at even the most remote locations where adventurers go. How is it they never get robbed? Well some surely try, but the successful thief lives the rest of their often short life beset by the most foul misfortunes. It’s well known that it’s bad luck to rob a Tinker…
The limit here is your imagination. I’ll even concede that at this point, with the right kind of tone to your campaign, you could have it be an established convention that whenever a band of adventurers slays monsters in an underground location a pile of coins, gems, and items magically appears. This includes killing rats in a tavern’s basement. Perhaps there is some God of Adventurers doing that…
Conclusion
Well that just about wraps it up. I could probably sit here concocting more ways of having loot acquisition feel more organic all afternoon but I need to get dinner going and I think my point’s been well enough made.
Hopefully if none of these ideas works for you out-of-the-box you’ve at least got your juices flowing over ideas that do work for you. I’ll take credit for that.
Anyway if you’ve enjoyed this piece then do consider giving me a couple of bucks of support on Patreon, and as always thanks for reading!
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