How to increase starting wealth?


Advice


Other than choosing a class with a high wealth die (e.g. cavalier, fighter, paladin, ranger), rolling high on the wealth check, or taking the Rich Parents trait, is there any other way to start a 1st level character out with a little more gold?

Or is 900 gp pretty much the ceiling for 1st level characters?

Thanks,
Chernobyl


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I hear adventuring is a good way to make money

Scarab Sages

Bribing the DM usually works in my experience: buy her a book, bring a cake, help the other players make their characters before the first session, whatever works.

Grand Lodge

To be honest the rich parents trait is a trap unless your playing only a session or 2. Usually by the end of Level 1 you have burned the gold for some nice item(s). Then the trait sits useless on your paper for the rest of his life.

But to answer your question there is not much more to increasing your wealth other then getting your DM to do it.

typically I find 150 gold a decent number for most classes to start with. Remember with 150 gold your doing better then most NPC peasant families.


900 is pretty much the ceiling, and even then it's a waste. You're not going to be able to spend the money on the items you can really use, but can spend it on a lot of junk.

Grand Lodge

Just talk to your GM (unless you are a GM, then talk to yourself privately so no one sends you to a nice white room).

A home game I am in gave us max starting cash depending on our characters (assume we roll all 6's, which was between 60-300g depending on class). That was nice.

My game I run I started them with a few complicated options. Since they would not have access to even masterwork gear for a few sessions, I decided to give them the option to take max cash (like above), or minimum cash (1's on check, which is between 10-50g depending on class) and get 2 masterwork items (2 weapons, weapon/armor, armor/shield). This rule expanded a bit as I started working with characters. One ended up with a weapon and 2 tools. Another just took a single wand.

It pretty much boiled down to being able to purchase some things that would normally cost the rich parents trait, but not take the trait. It also let me start the players a little higher so combat wasn't the usual Roll-Miss, Roll-Miss, Roll-Miss for the first level or two.


Ch3rnobyl wrote:

Other than choosing a class with a high wealth die (e.g. cavalier, fighter, paladin, ranger), rolling high on the wealth check, or taking the Rich Parents trait, is there any other way to start a 1st level character out with a little more gold?

Or is 900 gp pretty much the ceiling for 1st level characters?

Thanks,
Chernobyl

Rich Parents (900 starting gold), Chosen Child (+900 starting gold), Brigand [Kingmaker] (+100 starting gold).

I tend to let these stack, so you could have a total of
1,900 gp at level 1.

The best way to use this gold is via Cauldron, and make as many Cure Light Wounds potions as you can. If you do this, also take Spark of Creation, so every 20 potions you sell you essentially make one for free.
You could make 80 potions at level 1 since the cost to craft is 23.75 gp. After all of these sell for 25 gp, you'll have 2,000 gp. Rinse and repeat.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

I was going to bring up chosen child.

also, the point of these traits is to allow for masterwork quality stuff at game start.


Rich parents (Trap Trait Usually), Chosen Child, Brigand, and alchemy /mundane crafting (assuming GM lets you) for 1/2 price everything. Some GM's let you do this because it is assumed you have your whole life before this to actually work on it.


It is 1/2 price on everything, but it takes weeks to make items with crafting.
Crafting Magical items takes days.
Brewing potions can be done on the road so long as he has a portal alchemy set. I forget the time increase on this, as I Can't find it in the magic item creation rules, but if I recall it takes something like 50% longer if not dedicating the entire time to said action.


Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

It is 1/2 price on everything, but it takes weeks to make items with crafting.

Crafting Magical items takes days.
Brewing potions can be done on the road so long as he has a portal alchemy set. I forget the time increase on this, as I Can't find it in the magic item creation rules, but if I recall it takes something like 50% longer if not dedicating the entire time to said action.

For a 150 year old Elf Wizard with 1 craft rank in weaponsmith and 1 rank in alchemy, that is potentially a 100 years BEFORE the game starts to create mundane and magical items for use in the campaign.

A few weeks of crafting time is mechanically not that long, especially since is it BEFORE adventure day 1.

Mechanically this means 1/2 price items that can be crafted and readily available for day 1. Of course this also means that a rogue could have been sleight of handing coins, or the Bard could have been performing for coins this whole time...


Guardianlord wrote:
Taku Ooka Nin wrote:

It is 1/2 price on everything, but it takes weeks to make items with crafting.

Crafting Magical items takes days.
Brewing potions can be done on the road so long as he has a portal alchemy set. I forget the time increase on this, as I Can't find it in the magic item creation rules, but if I recall it takes something like 50% longer if not dedicating the entire time to said action.

For a 150 year old Elf Wizard with 1 craft rank in weaponsmith and 1 rank in alchemy, that is potentially a 100 years BEFORE the game starts to create mundane and magical items for use in the campaign.

A few weeks of crafting time is mechanically not that long, especially since is it BEFORE adventure day 1.

This is true, but in the scheme of adventurers the PCs starting gold (and modifying traits) represent the money the PC brought with himself.

The Elf Wizard blacksmith would have likely had a store, apprentices, and other colleagues. His money at the time of start would represent the money he took from saving his money between business costs, living costs, and so forth.
He is still crafting for the store he works at until he leaves.
He doesn't get things he crafted before mainly because of how long crafting takes. He is crafting items for sale, not items for him to take.

Look at adventuring as the abandonment of affluent society, or at the very least a steady job and life, and the embracing of a life on the road.

Let me put it this way, people who have an established life don't tend to just become adventurers. Things are somewhat abrupt most of the time.
Look at the back stories of the Iconic characters. The Wizard, Ezren, abandons his affluent life in Absalom to become an explorer. Even if he was a craftsman, this departure would have been relatively fast in the scheme of his life. The idea of becoming an adventurer would have never crossed his mind as he fought to prove his father's innocence.

Both Rich Parents and Chosen Child represent an organization giving a lavish down payment to an unproven person who is abandoning their society for the road. Brigand represent's the character robbing people.

However, that wizard is likely going to have a place to retire or return to between adventures.

Of course it is up to the DM. If the PCs, once united, are willing to sit around while the Elf makes gear for them then great.

To put this differently I tend to allow PCs to spend all their money making their own items if they please, just not gear for the other PCs before the game starts.

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