Knights & Knaves Alehouse

AxeMental wrote:Do the 1E rules mention if magic and other belongings taken off dead PCs or NPCs can be added to the total XPs of the PCs? For instance, tonight the party I ran cleared half of U2's lizard man dungeon, with about half the group toast. from the bodies of the dead, the group recovered +1 plate, and two +1 magical swords (which they want to sell the magic and use it to help advance in level). I'm inclined to say yes and give them normal XPs, as it was earned in "adventure". Ditto for EXPs for "taking ownership" of fallen comrads magic. Whats your BtB understanding of this?

I don't give XP for any kind of treasure that is gained from picking off an ally's corpse. Another good rule of thumb is that the group can only get treasure XP from any given loot ONCE in a campaign. If Bob's thief PC got the XP for that wand of magic missiles or 5,000 gp diamond, nobody else in that campaign can (from that specific wand or diamond).

So that would be NO, NO & NO

For a higher-level NPC who comes "on stage" already possessing magic items and then those items fall into the possession of a PC, it's more of a gray area. I'd tend to say that if the item is given to the PC, or recovered off the NPC's already-dead body that there's no XP award (the same way a PC wouldn't get an XP award for buying a potion from the local alchemist), but if the PC defeats the NPC and takes his item - essentially turning him from an ally to an enemy - then the PC does get XP for the items.

This reminds me of the AD&D computer game Pool of Radiance where you could hire NPC companions who would occasionally be higher level and come with magic items, and would also occasionally have evil alignment, so one of the "tricks" was to hire one of these guys and then ambush and murder him in the dungeon and loot his gear, which FWIW did garner XP for the NPC's magic items (usually a +1 sword & +1 armor). I always scoffed at this and considered it borderline cheating (and inconsistent with my reading of how "good" alignment characters should behave), but the game allowed it.

That was actually an OK game. Not that I made it very far.

ScottyG wrote:

darnizhaan wrote:I would say no. The party didn't conquer anyone or anything to get the items. I wouldn't give xp reward for it, but they could sell it. I wouldn't give xp for the sold gp value, either though. Just my opinion.

Ditto.

This for me too.