With one more day to go till Dungeon and Dragons 4.0 is officially released, lets look at what ever adventurer cares about, Money, Loot, and the very dungeon themselves that stand in your way to greatness!

Economy/Rewards:

This is probably one of the few things I’ve read so far, that I hope I’m not reading correctly because so far, I don’t like the way it sounds.
From what I’ve gone through, it sounds like before you even really get started, and you’re on your way to the next level (for the sake of exampling, we’ll say we are level 5 working on 6) that all of our rewards are already predetermined before we ever get there. Sure we may not know it as players, but even from the Dungeon Masters stand point, one of the joys about reward is the randomness of it. Some might be under par, some may be your big score!

Lets take a look at their examples:

3rd Edition treasure works like this:

If I put 5th-level characters through 13-1/3 encounters of their level, theyll gain enough experience to become 6th level. On average, theyll also gain 21,333 gp, 33 sp, and 33 cp. Or thats the goal, anyway.

In practice, the ochre jelly wont have any treasure at all.

The young black dragon will have randomly-generated treasure worth 4,800 gp on average (triple standard), but depending on my dice it could come out to nothing at all, or the PCs could come away with a jackpot of over 50,000 gp in cash-equivalent treasure (coins, gems, and art) plus magic armor worth as much as 15,000 gp.

The 5th-level NPC bard will have 4,300 gp worth of gear (skewing heavily toward magic items that the characters will sell at half value).

and

4th Edition treasure works like this:

If I put 5th-level characters through 10 encounters of their level, theyll gain enough experience to become 6th level. Theyll also gain four magic items above their level (one 6th, one 7th, one 8th, and one 9th), and total gold-equivalent treasure equal to double the value of a 5th-level magic item, or 2,000 gp. Thats the goal, and heres how it works out in practice.

When Im planning those 10 encounters, I look at the 5th-level treasure parcels in the DMG. Thats the treasure Im going to give out, conveniently divided into ten chunks. The ochre jellys not guarding any of that treasure, but the dragon has (lets say) three parcels.

The 5th-level NPC has a 6th-level itemnot because he needs it, but because its one of the treasure parcels. The characters dont find magic items that are beneath their noticethey wont walk out of the drow enclave with a wheelbarrow full of +1 rapiers.

I might even tuck some of that treasure away in a locked vault without a monstrous guard, and save a parcel or two for a quest reward.

Again, maybe I just need to actually have the books and be able to play with it, I’m just afraid they are trying to make certain aspects of the game to simplistic.

The one great advantage I could see of getting the treasure predetermined is, lets say you fight some troll fighters, and one of them happens to be carrying a magical item. The question would always come up “Well why didn’t he use that item against us?”
In this scenario, I can see it being a good thing to know what he is carrying before hand. But alas, with a few days, I’ll be able to get a better understanding of this (and I’ll be sure to update you on my new found feelings)

Following is the first 10 levels of the Experience Rewards table.

Experience Rewards

Monster LevelStandard MonsterMinionEliteSolo

1	100	25	200	500
2	125	31	250	625
3	150	38	300	750
4	175	44	350	875
5	200	50	400	1,000
6	250	63	500	1,250
7	300	75	600	1,500
8	350	88	700	1,750
9	400	100	800	2,000
10	500	125	1,000	2,500