It's early in the morning and this isn't turning out to be as well-written as the jumbled head thoughts sounded in my brain. I also began writing this as more of a negative feedback about how dungeoning as a group is punished by the module, mostly in terms of profit. When I began listing out various reasons I realized that the only real negative is you're splitting your profit.
I'm curious is what are other peoples' feelings on this? Is this enough of an issue, is lost profits enough of a disincentive that encourages soloing? If so, what can be done, in a balanced way that isn't giving everyone 100,000 a run, to encourage grouping up without punishing the people who solo out of either preference or necessity?
There's give and take involved when grouping up or running solo. I'm not a rocket surgeon, so someone else can do the fancy math stuff and break down optimal runic runs solo or as a group and compare the per-player profit while also accounting for differences in time spent solo vs group. Whatever.
The general feeling I get, and the impression other players have that I see (NOTE, I don't rely on dungeoning for my main PC's income, so my experience is limited!), is that there's little incentive, except for saving time, by running dungeons with a group. I'm changing my mind some on this because I can list many more reasons to group up than to go solo. HOWEVER, I still think that the general issue of loot per person is unchanged, and can be a big issue for someone. But, at the same time, I recognize this is a game we're supposed to have fun in and at the end of the day, and taking seven days instead of three days to reach X gold isn't terrible in the grand scheme of things.
If you can solo a runic, carry all the loot yourself, and have decent search/lore, why bother finding two other PCs? I recognize that someone might want to do something with their faction, and X dungeon might have some neat point of interest you can show them. But if you're looking to make a profit or save up for that Masterwork Rune, you're much better off running alone. You don't have to split that valuable sample of blueleaf three ways.
Yes, not everyone can solo runics, especially with some of the recent mechanics changes. But this isn't an issue just for runics. No matter what level you are, running a dungeon or writ as a group is going to have a tradeoff, namely, the profit from the loot. There's no meaningful bonus to loot from going as a group. Yes - you can have a search or lore bot if you're lacking there. Or someone can open that chest. But anyone can open a lot of chests with 1 point into OL/DT and some gear investment. Not everyone can manage that (mostly due to inventory space/carry capacity/personal distaste) but it's there.
Benefits of Grouping Up:
RP fun time
Pack mule/lootbot
Someone can open the runic chest
More hands make quicker work so you can circuit your dungeons faster
Appraisebot (can also just find one back home)
Can manage dungeons you normally couldn't
Per-kill XP boon (not sure it really makes much of a difference in levelling, with how fast levelling can be)
Downsides of Grouping Up:
You are splitting profit 3 or 4 ways instead of 1 way.
Other than lore/search, there doesn't seem (I could be wrong) any bonus to loot based on party size.