I have read the through rulebook and some of the sections of the GM book but I have seemed to have missed the section on looting the corpses. I understood the player does not get experience for the kills but the GM assigns an overall experience for the session but do the players not get a chance to remove weapons, armour or coin for the corpse?

I could have missed the section in the GM book but I have read the bestiary parts and nothing mentioned there. Is this a way to speed up the game play? It would make sense and the players can’t really carry much anyway. However, how is a player expected to make any money adventuring? They might think it's better getting a bar job instead

I don't even have the books yet and I can still let you down. There wasn't loot tables in WFRP1 or WFRP2 and I'm pretty certain that aren't any in WFRP3. It's a thing for D&D. You can always google for random treasure generators or such but most of the time Warhammer works in a way that any loot found was there because GM wanted it to be (and planed it ahead or at the time).

Fighting in Warhammer has always been really deadly compared to D&D and therefore it has not ever been the main point but a thing to avoid.

i agree that combat is to be avoided when possible but as monsters lack listed equipment of any kind (please correct me if im wrong) unlike in previous editions loot will be totally in the gm's hands, as at the end of the day i cant count the no. of times when my pc's knew they were heading for a fight and brought extra bags etc along to carry off dropped swords etc for sale purpose, life as an adventurer is not as glamorous as it first may seem and so liberating that dead goblins dirk can mean the difference of sleeping in the stable or a inn by a warm fire, they would and should take it.

There was someone who made an automatic loot table on the interwebs. One click of a button, and you could see what the bad guys had with them, ranging from crappy stuff to less crappy stuff (with some interesting things that could lead to new adventures). But unfortunately, it seems to be gone so I'm hoping someone will find the time to make something similar again.

Just to nitpick - actually, yes, there were random treasure tables in 1 ed. I prefer to think of them as a relic of the 80's and not really suited to WFRP (as opposed to D&D), though.

The way I see it, loot in most games is there for the sake of loot alone. It often has little to do with who has it or where it was found. This is especially true in D&D and even more so in living campaigns. This game, being more story driven, the loot is more situational.

A beastman is going to have a few teeth and some bones on him. That's his loot. Maybe a gold tooth here and there, but they have no economy. Same with Orcs. To my knowledge they have no interest in gold beyond decoration - which means some big Orcs may wear gold, just because they can, but the runty guys are going to be stripped bare (or maybe hiding a gold fang cap in their dirty loin cloth, if you go in there for it, you deserve it).

If you kill a brigand, and you find his hideout, you might find the coin that he's been taking off of travelers. If you kill a dock worker, it's going to depend on how close it is to payday. It's more up to your GM and the kind of game he writes. That's how I've always done it. I never use random tables. Loot in my games is either logically placed or it is the goal of the scenario.

Ferozstein said:

Holy batmobile, you're right. I was naturally think loot from the monsters but there was ye good olde random treasure generator in WFRP1. But it was for locations. Still - I stand corrected.

I really thought I missed it but I could not work out how. You guessed correctly that I have not played WFRP1 or 2 and I come from a D&D background but I am more of a board gamer and I can understand that the looting procedure really slowed down play and added gaps in the storytelling.
However, how does the player make money? Do I as a GM leave chests of money lying around? Do I have to reward them at the end of the session for rescuing the princess with a Kings ransom? Or do they have to be on the mercenary pay roll for every encounter?

PeeKay777 said:

They earn the money the same way, they can earn it in the real life (more or less).

Getting a job, making someone a favor, looting a corpse, stealing, selling their bodies, finding a treasure, any way you or your players like.

Yeah. There's not really much of a reason for many of the monsters the PCs might fight to carry around lots of cash. Of course, if the PCs end up fighting humans, etc, then they should be carrying some money on them; though not a lot, usually. If the PCs want to fight monsters and get money they should try to get someone to pay them for the fighting (for whatever reason the GM can come up with). Or they could turn to crime, say, mugging wealthy merchants, pillaging shrines and breaking and entering are all good, but fraught with danger.

As others have already mentioned, treasure tends to be more of a prominent important thing, rather than a book keeping chore as in other game systems. Your players may go several sessions of being completely miserable with their eyes on some grand payout looming like a beacon in the distance. Then when they return to the Duchess for their payment they get clapped in irons and tossed off a barge into the Reik at night. Thus setting the stage for a classy revenge themed campaign (for those that survive) fraught with dark pacts, missery and probably a few damp nights out in the cold being hassled by those ever present mutants/beast men.

One thing to stress as a GM in this world is that you don't need a lot of cash on hand if you know the right people, or have some incriminating evidence on them.

If cash and prizes are the goal of any character they need to find a way to either legitimately or illegitimately get their fingers into the commerce of the Reik. This can come in the form of mercenary work, theivery, joining a merchant guild, freelance trading, swindling, bribing, smuggling, threatening, begging, pleading, getting a day job, etc etc.

PeeKay777 said:

How do characters in adventure novels make their money? Their primary source of income usually isn't from looting monsters. Monsters are usually something you have to get through to accomplish your goal - which may involve money. For example, the local lord puts a bounty on Orc heads. Or a group of brigands has captured a merchant's daughter and is holding her for ransom - if the PCs kill the brigands and rescue the girl they'll get a reward. The PCs find an ancient tomb and decide to loot it... only to find that it is guarded by skeletons.

Note: once the Orcs are dead, the lord may decide not to pay them the bounty. Once the merchant has his daughter back, he may accuse the PCs of being the brigands in order to avoid having to pay. The tomb may not have any gold in it. There are no guarantees in Warhammer.

We always had a house rule that says:

a) poor equipment re-sells for zero value, but may be donated

b) all opponents have 'poor' equipment except where otherwise stated

Solved 99.7856398% of my problems.

jh

One thing to consider is that an upstanding human merchant isn't going to want any shoddy Orc weapons, and he probably won't even look at something that's been used by Chaos. Dwarven merchants and smiths in my games will usually only pay the price for the raw metal, since they wouldn't even resell human made items - they have a reputation to uphold for fine Dwarven quality. So, it often isn't worth stripping basic equipment and such from many enemies.

Corpse scavenging in games is always creepy to me. Not to say my characters haven't done their fair share, but it seems like murder for hire to me. Now, grabbing that bow/sword/whatever you need in the pinch is one thing. Checking for their wallet after you ambush them in a dank tomb/crypt...bleh.

One thing I have liked loot tables for is to give some quick on the fly descriptors to NPCs that sometimes come in handy.

There are a number of games where looting is the dominant form of earning money etc., but the more narrative a game becomes the less looting becomes a part of gameplay. Think about the game as a narrative experience, the PCs have been hired to x or there is a reward for y, rather than as a board game kick down the door, kill monsters, take their stuff game. Both games can be fun to play, I love a little kick and kill every now and then, but my gaming now tends to be more of the narrative variety regardless of system.

A great setting, outside of WFRP, for helping to create these kinds of stories is Eberron. Look at the kinds of adventures it recommends, think along those lines. A lot of WFRP will be PCs rooting out cultists who wield "tainted" weapons. No one wants to buy warpstone tainted weapons, and the PCs don't want to keep them. Rather, local Witch Hunters might reward the PCs.

Things like that.

I played in another game where enemies killed are noted down by the GM, then when the characters get to a town/city/whatever, they'll automatically sell the loot and junk and get a certain amount of petty money, at GM's discretion. This assumes that, after a combat where the characters have the time to walk around and loot the corpses, they'll collect the more valuable stuff and sell it at the next stop. It cuts down on the "you found some broken chainmail and a poor quality dagger on the orc" to just "the minor items you found from your previous engagements sell for 30 brass to be shared among you." Ofcourse, if the PCs needs a sword because they lost it in a previous engagement/whatever, they might find a poor quality one to use for the time being. Important items are also described.

sudden real said:

There's a random table here if folks want loot, WFRP-style : http://www.windsofchaos.com/wp-content/uploads/encroachment/html/generator-random-treasure-01.html

I sometimes use patrons, or wealthy people that pay my player characters for quests they perform. For instance if one of the PCs is a priest he might get paid monthly by the church of sigmar for performing a quest, like finding a lost relic from a ruined temple. A Soldier PC could be in the employment of a wealthy noble paying him a monthly wage, by performing bodyguard duties.

And the different patrons can have similar or overlapping goals, if the sigmar priest is sent to investigate the lost relic at at the ruined temple, the noble might be interested in merchant papers that where reccorded and stored in that old temple, and thus send his trusted soldier or bailiff to find them. It takes som crafting doing this, but the rewards are usually worht it.

In my last campaign "the Thousand thrones, each player had his own patron, in fact one of the patron`s where disguised and acted as two different patrons. They all had different goals, but all where genuinly interested in the events of that campaign. I played preludes that connected patron with each player, and a final prelude to bringe the players togheter and start the campaign.

Loot is always a problem, imagine the players defeating a bunch of Highway man wielding pistols and such. in the old setting the loot alone would set them for live. Loot : 8 Highway men equals 16 pistols = 3,200 GCs.

So what to do? I would resolve that problem by reversing the availability rate in the next town they would try to sell their loot. What is the demand for 16 pistol in the town of xxxdorf? maybe one?

by using that system and bartering rules, it will take the players potentially months to sell all of their pistols. gives them a steady income though.

Making loot into crappy or shoddy quality is only a viable solution if it fit with the opponents profile. Like beastmen or orcs. not that many wants a orcish Choppa-choppa anyway (maybe an odd collector?) But when it doesn`t fit the profile, like looting dead kithband warriors, it reads like a bad excuse for robbing the players of their hard earned cash.

Jaysin1414 said:

Thanks, that's the one I was talking about. I was afraid it was gone forever, but I'm glad to see it just moved.

I'll join in on the thanks for DagobahDave's treasure generator... Had the source code backed up in a text file, but I'm happy that now I can use the randomisation thing. Have it perma-opened as one of the tabs in the browser, actually.

Mal Reynolds said:

This is very simular to how i play it, people work for some or get higher, through i normally use one patron for the whole group with some sub plots thrown in for indvidual members from cults or groups they are part of.

As with the highwayman thing, i would have had a percentage (random) of the pistols have broken in the fight, they were on horses after all, and if the party wishes to sell more than one not only do they get second hand price about ten percent, but also the trader will haggle for a bulk discount starting very low about the cost of two, so the party is given to choice sell more at once for less or wait until they come across another major settlement (no village or town is going to be able to afford even ten percent of the cost of one! except the noble who would not be seen dead wielding a second hand weapon!)

Don't forget that, apart from the demand for pistols, the players have to find a buyer who could afford them. Even at a second-hand price, I don't really see a village smith shelling out a few hundred Karls just like that. Also, even if you have the gold, a band of shady individuals showing up suddenly and trying to sell you guns by the bulk is just fishy and would probably need a background check. Just think about it - where the highwaymen could've got their expensive guns in the first place? Odds are they took them from guardsmen or soldiers, and any gunsmith worth their salt can recognize the markings.

"Humm, sure thing, a fine selection you have there. Tell you what, I'll just send my boy to fetch a... a scribe, he'll get you a letter of credit from my bank. Just wait here a tad."

Ten minutes later the shop is surrounded by armed guards, and the gunsmith pulls out a nasty looking blunderbuss, leveling it at the PCs...

Thanks all, such a great response.
I have been toying with the idea to have, during an encounter; the party comes up against a noble in Full Plate armour, Tower shield and a mace. I want the players to be creative and realise that they will have problems getting through the armour and they will need to rely on agility and team work to get round it.
This is the reason I asked the question about looting. When they are successful, I know my players, and they will want the expensive armour for either themselves or to sell on. I do not want this as it will give them an early advantage in their young adventuring career.
Of course, excuses can be made for reasons why they cannot have the armour but I feel like I am cheating them and I was hoping for a rule to stop them. That’s when I realised that I had not read any rules for looting.
However, I have come up with a novel solution…when the noble dies the mansions auto-destruct start the count down. The players have the option of trying to get out with their lives or getting caught in the explosion. A track mechnism will be used for the escape. It is not subtle but it works in James Bond movies.

Few questions about your noble:
-Is there a reason why he wears heavy armour at home? Even knights rarely wear plate armour, because it's heavy and uncomfortable: it's mostly used when going to battle...
-Is he alone? Because nobles usually have servants, including guards - who will surely wear some medium armour when working.
-Auto-destructing mansion? How will that work? Is there reason for the noble to blow up the house?
-Why can't the players simply get the plate armour? If they are so fool... It would be a proof, that they kiled a noble. There are only a few, who can buy a plate armour, so they will need to search hard to find a buyer. It's heavy, and problematic to carry it everywhere. Also, it needs some smithing to fit the size of the new owner - somehow, everybody seems to forget, that a plate armour is not a T-Shirt, it's made personally for the buyer.