I just have a quick question for other GMs. How do you handle a PCs treasure after they die? It seems that the party will loot all the dead characters equipment, which is fine by me, but then they make a new character with more magical equipment. Character death almost seems like a way to gain treasure. How should I handle this? Cut back their wealth when making a new character?
Thanks.
Ensure your characters reaaallly liked the dead one, encourage the presence of families in your characters' backstories, too.
Provided, the first can't really be controlled by you, but, there's also always the ruling that bits of it broke during their fall, that the gear set on fire, etc. Depends on the death.
Depends on the level of the characters... and the availability of magic items in the game. You don't necessarily have to limit wealth, but could limit what they buy/have with that wealth...
Plenty of MW Weapons/Armour and mundane equipment that will chew up the coin.
Preface: This is a problem where RP and Economics are in conflict with game balance. If you choose to go with game balance (which is what you seem to be wanting) then you might have to artifically provide RP or Economics reasons for maintaining balance.
If you pay attention to the WBL table (CRB p344) then players that loot the dead comrade wind up going over.
Situation 1: PC dies, PC's companions loot the corpse and keeps the equipment for themselves. New PC comes in with proper WBL amount and is thus 'under'.
Solution: Give the New PC extra treasure (to bring him up to the boosted amount of his fellow players) and then tone down treasure for everyone for awhile.
Situation 2: PC dies, PC's companions give the loot to the replacement PC.
Solution: Give the replacement PC less (or no) treasure to remain balanced with the group.
Ultimately the solution to all of this: PCs who die and choose not to come back should have wills to give personal equipment to family, charity, or something outside of fellow PC's hands. Burial with all equipment is a time honored method.
Certain peices of equipment (such as a bag of holding) could be bequeathed to fellow adventurer's but in general, PC death should not be a rewarded with extra equipment.
- Gauss
To me it honestly depends on what they are picking up, and what they died from. If a level 1 dies, and the rest of the party gets some loot, and go to strip his corpse there will not be much of use. However if a level 15 PC dies from a single arrow to the head (IE very little equipment if any is damaged) then some nerfing, bad luck, or thievery might be needed.
If you are really worried about it, have the PC die from something that destroys what he has. Magic items are indeed supposed to take damage you know! Try an Acid Pit (the spell, or a trap) to dispose of bodies AND gear without question.
The answer:
The long-winded, ranting non-answer:
If the characters in my campaigns are smart/resourceful/brave/daring/whatever enough to get wealth in excess of what the game propose they have, then good for them. If they rob a coinhouse, then there's a chance they get in trouble with the law, the locals, and the guilds, whether they succeed or fail, whether they get the gold or not. If they plunder a dragon's lair, they run the risk of an ancient, magical, winged beast, showing up to eat them, being there already- poised to eat them, or returning to an empty lair, whereupon it will attempt to find the responsible people, in order to eat them.
If my players do something there can be any myriad of consequences. They might piss of an organization much more mighty than they are, winding up fighting/dying to/fleeing from/negotiating with enemies far stronger than they are. If they step on some high-level toes, they'll not get a free pass because they're low level. I encourage impulsivity, I reward planning, I try to make the world a living part of the characters' story, not just pointless scenery with stats and mechanics.
So why would I limit their potential wealth, when I'm not limiting the tonnes and tonnes of s*##, just waiting to come down on the characters' heads?
I don't.
This even holds true if I'm running an AP. Based on the actions of my players, I may or may not make changes to the story, stat-blocks, whatever of the module, if it leads to making any sense. Is the almighty wizard-lord going to have better gear, and tougher minions, simply because the player characters decide to keep Godsplitter, the sword of infinite kickassity, rather than return it to the knights' order, as the AP expects? NO! He -will- however have better/more focussed gear and tougher, handpicked minions, if he has knows/fears what is coming. If he, in all his almighty wizard-lord-ness decides to invest a few minutes of his time with some divination, or he sends out spies, who are not there to be clichéd assassins or stealthy encounters, but are there, simply to provide intel on his enemies, then he may see the trouble mounting, as my smart PCss stack the coming s+~#storm as high as possible, and he just might decide to do something about it.
If the PCs kick in the door and fight the enemy army head-on, they get themselves some hollywood style action. If they pool their ressources and reseach/build/quest for/whatever some item that one-shots the BBEG because that is what it was made to do, then they get the satisfaction of him dying horribly, provided he had no way of seeing it coming.
Wealth usually equals power in these games, because if you can pay the prize, you can aquire alot of crazy stuff in a fantasy world. But trying to balance the wealth your players can and cannot have, just to keep some semblance of 'balance' is not the right way to do it, in my opinion.
/endofextremelylongpointlesslackofcoffeeinducedpreachyselfgratifyingrant
Cheers
-Nearyn
EDIT: Forgot spoiler-tags.
The will idea is awesome. I have encouraged back stories and family ties for all the characters, but unfortunately some of my players are more about power gaming and killing stuff than roleplaying. I am running an AP and figured since the treasure is already pregenerated I don't want to fuss with it too much, which is why I was afraid of the introduction of excessively more magic items.
In high mortality games my group has played, all of the character's gear essentially disappears. Unrealistic, yes, but it saves the DM dealing with the abundance of gold and magic items. We made some exceptions for items whose value was not measured in GP or bonuses, but in importance for the campaign like maps, letters, keys, etc., We also made exceptions for mundane items that have little or no impact on the game.
You could spend more time dealing with this for realism or role-playing, but there's no shame in hand-waiving certain things.
I've never known a player who actually is fine with the other players getting all of his dead character's loot.
The event of character death, therefore, has always been a matter of group discussion in my groups, where the former character may in some ways influence the new character to come in. For instance, a player may feel sentimental about an axe, and that may influence him to want to play a relative of the original character, and keep the axe so it stays in the family. The axe is, of course, deducted from the new character's starting funds.
In other cases, the loot goes into something of a party fund, so that the new character coming in will eventually have access to it.
Some of these things break verisimilitude, some add to it. The most important thing is that the player who has lost a character does not feel like he is sitting in a room with a bunch of mercenary vultures who can't wait for him to die so they can take his stuff.