My party and I had just finished part of a Pathfinder campaign and are converting over to D&D 5e. Previously we mostly just distributed all the loot between ourselves with the paladin carrying the majority of the heavy items (as he was the strongest). We mostly ignore armour and currency for encumbrance, and are very lenient with inventory. If any individual item would be extremely awkward to carry in real life we may consider ourselves encumbered.
We often forget about magical items we've picked up in the Pathfinder campaign, like rings of protection or cloaks of resistance. Sometimes we've forgotten they exist when a character dies and we bury them (despite our characters likely seeing it on the fallen character). We try to split useful items around, and sell everything else, but we've also lost track of notable items for the story-line when people are either missing from the session or are skimmed over from another person's character sheet. We'd try to have a few of each consumable we'd carry on each person in case we get caught in a pinch, but then we don't know exactly how many we have due to the lack of communication. But communication could be a whole nother issue.
This led to some issues with regards to knowing
- How much money we actually had, and
- Knowing what loot we had and how it could've been useful
The result was that at the end of this campaign we hadn't sold much, and our DM did a bunch of extra work to figure out everything we should've had, and currently do have, and we had a little scene with a merchant we had a… poor history with. We went from having about 10k gold pieces between the four of us to about 115k gold.
We decided to create the meta-role of treasurer (which I'll be primarily filling), but I'm looking for a good system to keep track of all the items. Here's what I've thought of so far, but I was wondering what other people do or what I'm missing.
I've created a Google Sheets page that has the following columns:
ID; Date Recieved; Item Name; Quantity; Brief description; Cost
Then one field for “Current Wealth (GP)” and one for “Current Wealth (Total)” which will be the estimated value if we sold all our loot at 50% value at a merchant.
What I'd like to ask is…
- What items should I be logging? Everything? Only loot/sellable items? Consumables?
- Would I log everything, including what other people have?
- If I was to keep the majority of the money for the group, should we try to keep a consistent nK gold on each character? Say 2000 for random purchases if we get split up?
As it's been discussed in the comments, I'm not looking for why to log items, but rather how people have done it previously. I'm relatively new to D&D, but I enjoy looking after data and making sure we're all ready to go before our next part of the journey. I just don't know how to make my spreadsheet effective, prior from testing it out. As you add things to a sheet, you loose data you would've otherwise had if it was built properly in the first place.
I don't believe this question should be put on hold because I believe that this sort of meta-role should have some best practices/methods and have objective pros/cons in every campaign.
Best Answer
Here's how I handled this role
In an older D&D 3.5 edition game I played, we had some similar growing pains. The problem became obvious when we discovered that the random decorations we had taken when we'd nicked everything not bolted down from a mansion were worth a lot of coin. Now this was before the glory of Google Sheets and readily accessible laptops so we opted for a nice graphing paper table. I was not decided for treasurer but I was decided for quarter master. So my advice is as such.
Split the Job
A treasurer is nice and all till you find out they've had the healing potions all along and the Fire resistance potions right after your red dragon fight. So split the load. Either physically have two people or have two separate lists. Equipment and Consumables vs. Loot. I can't accurately recall the exact terms of the table but it was something like...
Split between two lists, we were able to keep a fairly accurate record of our findings. But it's not useful unless everyone buys in. Which leads me to a second point.
Log Everything and Who Has it
It is inevitable that someone will want something from the loot list or the gear list. They might be decorating their newly bought cottage that totally won't be destroyed next week (probably by them) or they might actually need to have a Potion of Giant Strength to match that inordinately strong arm wrestler. So the job of the treasurer is about logging as much as it is about tracking. It's important to keep track of who owns what item because it could be very important for burial purposes (whether you loot them or not is a matter of contention) or for situations where the party is split. This leads right into the last point.
Log the Total Amount of Money but Each Player Keeps the Coin
No one likes handing their gold over. Even when they understand the reason it is an unfun thing to do. So don't do it. Sure there should be a party fund, a tax on all proceeds for party-centric purchases like a permanent teleportation circle, a castle, etc. It puts a target on the treasurer's back both from bad guys and bad acting players to have the whole coin purse. To me, it's just not worth it. So log incomes and expenses as if all the gold were concentrated but leave each player to their own devices with their money.
Caveats
As with all things, caveats exist. Things that are unlikely to ever be useful again like that dungeon key from 5 months ago can just go under a misc. tab where it is never to be seen again. Same goes for non-value items like letters, body parts, or other accouterments. This is clutter and makes for more work than is necessary.
One thing that really can get you all messed up if you use tables like this: Do Not Erase Anything. Once something's used, either strike through the list, or put an x next to the item. For consumables, just mark an x for every one used.