This article establishes guidelines for how much loot to provide over the course of a single adventure. These guidelines have been put in place to keep some semblance of balance between each adventure and establish both a minimum and maximum amount of loot for participating players while still allowing for some flexibility as a DM. The tables below will cover gold, standard loot, and magic items.
DMs should reference the magic item loot tables at 5e tools which breaks down magic items into Minor and Major items in addition to the usual rarity distinctions as detailed in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Please make sure that the Xanathar's tab (XGE) is selected when you use the tables. This page also features a roller to randomly determine an item from a specific tier.
GUIDELINES FOR GOLD AND BASIC ITEMS
TABLE A established guidelines for distributing gold and other standard loot which includes adventuring gear, non-magical weapons/armor, and other non-magical items which the party may either find, steal, or be rewarded with. Table A features four columns: Level, Base Gold, Easy Gold, and Hard Gold.
- LEVEL is the level of the characters that the adventure is designed for. If your adventure features a range such as levels 3-5, use the average level (4) for the purposes of deciding loot. Once the level is established, use the gold totals in that level's row for your adventure.
- BASE GOLD is a share of gold that each adventurer is guaranteed for accepting and completing the adventure. This is paid by the guild upon returning to the airship and you, as the DM, do not need to factor it into your planning.
- EASY GOLD is loot that is easily obtainable during the course of the adventure. In this case, "easy" means that the party is almost guaranteed to find or earn this full total before the adventure is finished, unless they botch it horribly. Example sources: looted corpses, easily-accessible chests, rewards or payments from NPCs.
- HARD GOLD is loot that is harder to obtain by design. A party that isn't careful or aware of its surroundings may miss some of all of this allotted gold. Example sources: stealable items, hidden stashes, secret rooms, loot that is off the beaten path.
It is up to the DM to decide how much or how little loot they wish to put into their adventure. Keep in mind that while Base Gold is per person, the Easy Gold and Hard Gold columns are whole party totals and it's up to each party to determine how they wan't to divide what they find.
Please note that the gold totals below should include lootable equipment such as adventuring gear, weapons, and armor. You don't need to factor in items of two gold or less in these totals. Giving a player a hammer or a few pieces of chalk isn't important for balance and you don't need to worry about tracking that. The above rule is so that DMs can't just drop in, an an extreme example, a suit of plate armor (that would otherwise cost a player 1500 gp) on top of the adventure's standard gold rewards.
Beyond these guidelines, it is at the DM's discretion as far as how this loot is presented to the party, whether it's in the form of a sack of gold, a valuable painting, or a beautiful gemstone. Feel free to be creative.
In rare cases, you are welcome to combine the easy and hard gold totals into one treasure trove. A perfect example of this would be a dragon's hoard, which is ripe for the taking (easy) provided you can slay the dragon that guards it (hard).
TABLE A: GOLD AND BASIC ITEMS
| LEVEL | BASE GOLD | EASY GOLD | HARD GOLD |
| 2 | 25 | 25-75 | 25-100 |
| 3 | 30 | 25-100 | 25-100 |
| 4 | 40 | 25-125 | 50-200 |
| 5 | 55 | 50-150 | 50-200 |
| 6 | 75 | 50-200 | 100-400 |
| 7 | 100 | 50-250 | 100-400 |
| 8 | 130 | 100-300 | 200-800 |
| 9 | 165 | 100-400 | 300-1200 |
| 10 | 205 | 100-500 | 400-1600 |
| 11 | 250 | 200-600 | 500-2000 |
| 12 | 300 | 200-800 | 600-2400 |
| 13 | 355 | 200-1000 | 700-2800 |
| 14 | 415 | 400-1200 | 800-3200 |
| 15 | 480 | 400-1600 | 1000-5000 |
| 16 | 550 | 400-2000 | 2000-10000 |
| 17 | 625 | 800-2400 | 3000-15000 |
| 18 | 705 | 800-3200 | 4000-20000 |
| 19 | 790 | 800-4000 | 5000-25000 |
| 20 | 1000 | 2000-10000 | 10000-50000 |
GUIDELINES FOR MAGIC ITEMS
While TABLE A establishes guidelines for distributing standard loot and gold, TABLES B and C (below) will establish guidelines for distributing magic items. It is at the DM's discretion whether these items are easy or hard to obtain during the course of the adventures.
How it works: DMs are presented with three pieces of information on TABLE B. A quantity of common magic items that can be awarded, a balance of "Magic Item Points" that can be used to award loot, and a maximum rarity limit for that level. TABLE C further digs into "Magic Item Points," assigning values to each tier of magic item. DM's spend points up to the level's limit to decide loot for their adventure that is appropriate, or may roll randomly within a tier to decide what their players may find.
Please note that this means there are effectively two pools that a DM can use to seed their adventure with magic items: a common magic item pool which is governed by item count, and a higher-tier pool which operates like a point-buy system.
Table B features four columns: LEVEL, MAX COMMON MAGIC ITEMS, MAGIC ITEM POINTS, and MAGIC ITEM RARITIES ALLOWED.
- LEVEL is the level of the characters that the adventure is designed for. If your adventure features a range such as levels 3-5, use the average level (4) for the purposes of deciding loot. Once the level is established, use the info in that level's row for your adventure.
- MAX COMMON MAGIC ITEMS is the number of common magic items you can seed into your adventure. Common magic items include basic potions of healing, potions of climbing, cantrip spell scrolls, 1st level spell scrolls, and the items added in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
- MAGIC ITEM POINTS are an allotment that the DM can use to seed his or her adventure. Every tier of magic item is assigned a point value (see TABLE C) and the DM spends points up to the maximum for items to put into their adventure.
- MAGIC ITEM RARITIES ALLOWED is a hard limit on what magic items the DM is allowed to distribute based on the current level. As the level of the party increases, these restrictions will lessen.
Beyond these restrictions, the actual item or item(s) chosen as loot are up to the DM. Feel free to choose something appropriate for your adventure or setting or even use the 5etools loot generator to determine them randomly. The placement and difficulty of locating these items is also up to the DM.
TABLE B: MAGIC ITEMS
| LEVEL | MAX COMMON MAGIC ITEMS | MAGIC ITEM POINTS | MAGIC ITEM RARITIES ALLOWED |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | Minor Uncommon |
| 3 | 2 | 3 | Minor Uncommon |
| 4 | 3 | 5 | All Uncommon |
| 5 | 3 | 6 | All Uncommon |
| 6 | 4 | 8 | All Uncommon, Minor Rare |
| 7 | 4 | 9 | All Uncommon, Minor Rare |
| 8 | 4 | 11 | All Uncommon and Rare |
| 9 | 5 | 12 | All Uncommon and Rare |
| 10 | 5 | 14 | All Uncommon and Rare, Minor Very Rare |
| 11 | 5 | 15 | All Uncommon and Rare, Minor Very Rare |
| 12 | 5 | 16 | All Uncommon and Rare, Minor Very Rare |
| 13 | 6 | 18 | All Except Legendary |
| 14 | 6 | 19 | All Except Legendary |
| 15 | 6 | 20 | All Except Legendary |
| 16 | 6 | 22 | All Except Legendary |
| 17 | 7 | 24 | All Except Legendary |
| 18 | 9 | 26 | All Except Legendary |
| 19 | 11 | 28 | All Except Legendary |
| 20 | 15 | 40 | All Except Legendary |
TABLE C establishes a point cost for each tier of magic item. To help stock up adventurers who may not travel with a healer, the point cost of the various potions of healing have been lowered below the magic item tier they would otherwise belong to. Please note that the common "Potion of Healing" is not listed below and is part of the Max Common Magic Items column in TABLE B.
TABLE C: MAGIC ITEM POINTS
| Magic Item Type | Point Cost |
| Potion of Greater Healing, +1 Ammunition | 1 |
| Minor Uncommon | 2 |
| Potion of Superior Healing, +2 Ammunition | 3 |
| Major Uncommon | 4 |
| Minor Rare | 5 |
| Potion of Supreme Healing, +3 Ammunition | 7 |
| Major Rare | 7 |
| Minor Very Rare | 8 |
| Major Very Rare | 10 |
WHAT ABOUT LEGENDARY ITEMS?
At this point in the campaign, with all characters at low level, legendary magic items of any power should not be awarded under any circumstances. As the campaign progresses and the guild grows in level, legendary items may come into play, perhaps as rewards in special scheduled adventures that only happen once in a while and that may require some sort of selection method to determine which characters can participate (with ideas ranging from a lottery draw, a blind auction to reserve a spot, or a special player-vs-player battle royale.)
SHARING THIS INFO WITH THE PLAYERS
In most cases, you should keep your overall loot a secret from potential players so that they are unaware of what rewards await them. Two possible exceptions to this guideline would be a quest with little to no reward by design or something that awards a non-monetary award like a title; or a quest where a specific magic item is the stated goal and reward.
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO SEED AN ADVENTURE WITH LOOT
The following is how the adventure The Wolves of Summerhill was seeded using the charts above:
Each character was awarded a base gold sum of 30 gold. This is a sum awarded by the guild independent of any loot in the actual adventure. As far as non-magical loot within the 3rd-level adventure, Table A allows for 25-100 "Easy Gold" and 25-100 "Hard Gold." Some examples of how these two pools were used in the adventure:
- The town of Summerhill was prepared to award a total of 75 gold to the party for dealing with the wolf pack. As a direct quest reward, this was pulled from the Easy Gold pool.
- The party could have negotiated an extra 25 gold for that reward with a good persuasion check. I pulled this from the Hard Gold pool because it required the roleplay and skill check to get that extra money. The party did not attempt to do this.
- The town also offered a vague sum of gold for the return of any missing children. There were two such children and their return netted the party 25 gold each, drawn from the Hard Gold pool because I considered it above and beyond the initial offer (and because it was dependent on their safe return, which could have been jeopardized by poor decision-making).
- There was 20 gold and 7 silver that could be looted in the lair of Therrin Redwald, either from his corpse or among his things. As he was the primary antagonist of the adventure and the party was likely to kill him, this was Easy Gold.
- There was 6 gold and 7 silver in the Wolves Den. As the players would really only find this through stealth or by killing the entire wolf pack, this was considered Hard Gold (the party did not find this).
For magic items, I again had two pools to draw from - a pool of common magic items governed by item count and a pool of higher-tier magic items that operates like a point-buy system. As a level 3 adventure, I could award a total of two common magic items and had three magic item points that I could use to award higher-tier loot.
- The first common magic item was a Potion of Healing found in the study of Armand Redwald.
- The second and final common magic item was a Cloak of Many Fashions found among Therrin Redwald's things at his tower.
- I used all three magic item points for higher-tier loot and placed them all in the tower. I put in the Eyes of Minute Seeing (2 points) and a Potion of the Greater Healing (1 point).
If you have any further questions or assistance with how to award loot or magic items when planning out your adventure, reach out to Ratbrother in the discord.