[Malfi]

Originally Posted by Mister Negative

Two things. You can* and "Are you sure you want to?"**

*DFRPG doesn't have the calculated Challenge Ratings that D&D does, and one big reason for that is DFRPG doesn't have calculated levels for PCs either. There's a difference in a 250 point character, and a 260 point character, but it's not as clearly demarcated as level advancement. Add on top of that the fact that some monsters are trivially defeated by some tactics (mindless undead vs. a Cleric with Turning, etc.) and Challenge Ratings are way less 'objective' than hard numbers might make them seem. Do you give a monster a high Challenge Rating even though the right tactics will defeat it quickly and easily? Do you peg the CR at the difficulty YOUR party has with it, which means that they may get rewarded for winning despite poor tactics and dumb strategy?

CR's will never be objective and neither will point costs. It still worth it to have some metric.

Originally Posted by Mister Negative

**Giving out treasure in correspondence with Challenge Ratings can lead to weird, even immersion-breaking, events. Tough, but unintelligent monsters who don't have a lair might have great loot (why does the Purple Worm have two magic swords?), and easily defeated but smart and greedy enemies may have no worthwhile loot (we caught the smugglers and they were smuggling oats? Who has a black market for oats?).

Hence I said loosely connected. In all editions of dnd, power isn't the only measure of the treasure a creature has. In 3e dnd dragons had triple the treasure and puple worms 50% in precious stones (IN MA BELLY) and no items. The issue was treated simirarly in earlier editions.
Again having a metric doesn't mean it has to be followed absolutely .

Originally Posted by Kromm

This is just HUGE, and why I said, "I don't assess treasure on the basis of what I want the PCs to have, but on the basis of what makes sense."

I don't care at all – not one bit – how hard the fight was, how dangerous the traps were, or how annoying the journey was. None of that bears on loot.

Greedy people with the brains to smuggle, cheat, and sort the wheat from the chaff might well know nothing about traps, fighting, etc. and may be tactical morons who don't even think to hire security. Huge, tough, scary monsters might not even be able to see shiny or know a magic sword from a tree branch. The individual orcs of a horde might be pushovers, but they're still part of a horde that sacks empires, so they need piles of loot. Some ancient undead thing might have totally transcended the mortal sphere and have no need for material goods.

So I just aim to have the loot make sense for the sake of the story. Players who wants to moan about how everybody nearly died and all they got was a lousy T-shirt can find another GM. Those that know me, though, will realize that there might be a huge haul waiting on the next adventure, guarded by a couple of lame-duck foes who won big at cards.

I don't disagree with this, this is how you keep games alive instead of rigid and dead, though I still believe that stronger and more dangerous creatures owning or guarding treasure of higher value, is part of all the things you mention and "what makes sense". Maybe not the absolute arbitrator but still an important factor.
That said I have no idea how to actually make the connection between them and do it well. I remember an attempt to connect CER with treasure in a blog post, but it was based on the relative power the pc's had to the enemies and that makes little sense to me, then again attempting to connect CER to absolute treasure awards didn't work out for me either.