When using Table: Treasure Values per Encounter as your rough guideline for how much treasure to give out, do you all treat treasure drops as their sell value or their buy value?
For example, at 6th level in a Medium experience campaign, an encounter should give about 2,000 gp worth of loot.
Would you say that's...
A) One ring of protection +1, valued at 2,000 gp?
B) Two rings of protection +1, valued at 1,000 gp each?
How do the rest of you do this? I've been doing this as B for a long time, but I recently decided to run a module instead of making my own adventure and statted out the treasure the PCs would be getting to make sure they wouldn't be getting gimped, and they're getting EXTREMELY gimped. Two levels from the adventure, but only 80% of a level's worth of treasure, as far as I can tell. So this makes me wonder if maybe I've been doing it wrong the whole time.
If the party sells it, then it's only worth the sell price. If the party keeps it, then it's worth the full price.
So...either make sure you drop loot the party wants, or estimate everything at full price, and then drop additional loot later to make up for what they sell....or and hear me out on this...
Use "wealth by level reset".
At every level up, the characters have essentially no gear and must use their gold/credits (as determined by the wealth by level table) to purchase all their gear. Now obviously, the gear doesn't disappear, but they do have to subtract the value of it from their wealth by level or let it go.
This does have the benefit of letting players try out items they find along the way and ditch it depending on how much they value it.
Personally this is my favorite method of handling wealth in Pathfinder or Starfinder.
The only other thing I'll add, is you should use Automatic Bonus Progression (which also cuts WBL in half) in exchange for granting the bonuses you would normally buy for the big six as part of your leveling up process.
If the party sells it, then it's only worth the sell price. If the party keeps it, then it's worth the full price.
So...either make sure you drop loot the party wants, or estimate everything at full price, and then drop additional loot later to make up for what they sell....or and hear me out on this...
I feel like this isn't actionable advice. I have no idea in advance what the party is going to want to keep or not. They don't even know what they want. They can't even decide. xD I'm not sure how I'm supposed to read minds that can't even make themselves up. xD
My problem with the "wealth by level reset" method is that it's horribly artificial, even more so than the game already is. It also has the negative side effect of punishing players that don't use many consumables and rewarding players that do. And potentially encouraging players that base their entire wealth strategy around consumables.
Assuming I'm understanding what you mean by "wealth by level reset," as saying that at every level I should zero them out to the "appropriate" amount of wealth for their level. I.e., look at every player's gear values and say, "Oh there was a bank draft in your favor, you gain 14,500 gp today." Or, "You're mugged for 32,000gp because you didn't use that diamond you were saving last adventure." This just seems....horrible.
Can you explain Automatic Bonus Progression? I'm not familiar with this term and it's not immediately clear to me. And what do you mean by "the big six?"
EDIT: Ahhh, is it an optional rule that cuts your wealth in half to grant static bonuses in the form of the most commonly purchased items?
EDIT2: OK, I found the Automatic Bonus Progression thing. An...interesting topic, but not really what I'm looking for here. What I really want to know about is the "right" way to handle treasure per the Core RAW. The sort of quantum "It's valued at what the party values it at" idea can't possibly be how the core rulebook expects DMs to consider the treasure when placing it.
If the party sells it, then it's only worth the sell price. If the party keeps it, then it's worth the full price.
So...either make sure you drop loot the party wants, or estimate everything at full price, and then drop additional loot later to make up for what they sell....or and hear me out on this...
I feel like this isn't actionable advice. I have no idea in advance what the party is going to want to keep or not. They don't even know what they want. They can't even decide. xD I'm not sure how I'm supposed to read minds that can't even make themselves up. xD
My problem with the "wealth by level reset" method is that it's horribly artificial, even more so than the game already is. It also has the negative side effect of punishing players that don't use many consumables and rewarding players that do. And potentially encouraging players that base their entire wealth strategy around consumables.
Assuming I'm understanding what you mean by "wealth by level reset," as saying that at every level I should zero them out to the "appropriate" amount of wealth for their level. I.e., look at every player's gear values and say, "Oh there was a bank draft in your favor, you gain 14,500 gp today." Or, "You're mugged for 32,000gp because you didn't use that diamond you were saving last adventure." This just seems....horrible.Can you explain Automatic Bonus Progression? I'm not familiar with this term and it's not immediately clear to me. And what do you mean by "the big six?"
EDIT: Ahhh, is it an optional rule that cuts your wealth in half to grant static bonuses in the form of the most commonly purchased items?
EDIT2: OK, I found the Automatic Bonus Progression thing. An...interesting topic, but not really what I'm looking for here. What I really want to know about is the "right" way to handle treasure per the Core RAW. The sort of quantum "It's valued at what the party values it at" idea can't possibly be how the core rulebook expects DMs to consider the treasure when...
You may not feel it's actionable advice, but it's the truth.
If you don't know what loot your party wants, you can either ask or assume they want everything then drop more loot later to make up for what they sell.
As for consumables...yes it could be abused. You're a GM, tell players directly you're aware and will be monitoring the use of consumables such that if you feel it's being abused you will take corrective actions. Or you can set a limit, 10% to 20% of wealth by level as a maximum for consumables seems reasonable.
I understand your ultimate question, but there isn't a definitive answer because the answer depends on what your players do.
Unfortunately being the GM means dealing with stuff that doesn't have a single universal answer. It will usually depend on circumstances.
Its A. If the party doesn't want an item and they sell it the half value that means they get to apply that gold to an item that is perfectly tailored to their needs, which increases its relative value.
Or something to that effect.
This isn't universally true though. As an extreme and unrealistic example, let's assume that the only loot dropped was in the form of +1 lasso (or some other exotic weapon that is basically worthless unless you build around it), as many as necessary to get the party up to wealth by level assuming full value for the lasso.
This is an obvious case where, even if the party did decide they wanted one they would at most need one per party member. The rest of them would be sold at half value and the party would buy useful stuff. But that would essentially leave them at half wealth by level for stuff that was actually useful.
To be honest, using Automatic Bonus Progression is the easiest way to decouple power from wealth as the most common items that players require to meet the game's expectations of attack bonus, AC, saves, etc are granted by leveling.
The value of the item is dependent on if the party actually wants to use it.
If the party sells it, then it's only worth the sell price. If the party keeps it, then it's worth the full price.
So...either make sure you drop loot the party wants, or estimate everything at full price, and then drop additional loot later to make up for what they sell....
^---- I do it the same way. I use Donjon's random loot generator, and I give out specific items that I want the party to have as well. Donjon keeps it simple for me because it includes the price with the piece of loot. I have an excel spreadsheet that tracks it all whether they sell or keep the piece of loot (which automatically populates it in Excel with either full price or half price, which then autopopulates a total value) to make the WBL simple, otherwise this would be ridiculously cumbersome.
I can do the entire loot count of a major treasure haul in 10 minutes or less, typically about ~5 mins.
Personally I thing the fairest and most accurate way to determine treasure value is to use the average between sell and buy value... AKA 75% of buy value
the really nice thing about Automatic Bonus Progression is that Wealth By Level doesn't really matter anymore for the most part. Just don't give out dozens of wands/potions or Basalt Dragons willy nilly and everything is fine.
Instead of just upgrading their sword for another bonus to hit (oh, fun...) they can instead buy that nifty wondrous item that can do something other than provide a +5% chance to hit.
the really nice thing about Automatic Bonus Progression is that Wealth By Level doesn't really matter anymore for the most part. Just don't give out dozens of wands/potions or Basalt Dragons willy nilly and everything is fine.
Instead of just upgrading their sword for another bonus to hit (oh, fun...) they can instead buy that nifty wondrous item that can do something other than provide a +5% chance to hit.
Unless the players don't want weird wondrous items that sit on their character sheet never getting used and would instead prefer 5% chance to hit.
Just know your audience, is all I'm saying.
But players will have the 5% chance to hit, it's built into the character's progression. But now it's scheduled (so the GM can better handle it).
And there are plenty of great items that don't provide any of the bonuses that ABP does, so that there are a great many things worth picking up.
Its A. If the party doesn't want an item and they sell it the half value that means they get to apply that gold to an item that is perfectly tailored to their needs, which increases its relative value.
Or something to that effect.
Can you point me to where in the rules it shows me that it's (A)?
You're not wrong when you say that a pure gold treasure situation would be more powerful. This is, in fact, one of the bases of my automatic reasoning behind using the sell value (Option B) this. I mean, that's just economics. That's just how value works. If you create a situation where you're essentially requiring that all loot should be gold coins, any time loot is not pure gold coins, all found magic items are inherently disappointing unless they're custom chosen for the players or lucky finds. Now that does make the rare good item a pretty enjoyable find for players, but in my experience PC loot is such a cut above NPC loot that this almost never happens.
Ultimately this is just going to result in constantly screwing players out of treasure, as far as I can tell. So I would ask again, where does it actually SAY that it's (A), or has everyone just been operating under this assumption for as long as I've been operating under the assumption that it's (B)?
I believe that scenario A is correct; you award treasure based on their value, not sell price. Remember however that on Medium progression, a PC needs 12,000 XP to make it from level 6 to level 7. If a single CR 6 encounter yields 600 XP to each PC in a party of 4, that means it takes 20 encounters to level up.
...snip...
I mean, this is all well and good, but a lot of the rules you're talking about are A) optional and B) character driven. I'm not going to force a player to take up a crafting skill because "you need to take up a crafting skill in order to make more money because the core rulebook's wealth guidelines don't work well." That's silly. Characters should develop based upon who they are as people, not because they players decide they're naturally money hungry.
As for optional rulesets, again, optional. I'm talking about the dictates of the core rule requirement here.
You may not feel it's actionable advice, but it's the truth.
Well, no. Not really. You may feel it’s the truth, and perhaps it even is for your group, but it’s not a universal truth, and it does not apply to my situation.
To do what you’re describing takes away the game’s spirit of freedom and crosses the line into “horribly artificial.” There’s a reason we’re all still playing Pathfinder and not 4th edition.Edit: I apologize for my previous, unedited comments. They were ruder than was necessary due to my annoyance at the rudeness and presumptiveness in your own statement.
^---- I do it the same way. I use Donjon's random loot generator, and I give out specific items that I want the party to have as well. Donjon keeps it simple for me because it includes the price with the piece of loot. I have an excel spreadsheet that tracks it all whether they sell or keep the piece of loot (which automatically populates it in Excel with either full price or half price, which then autopopulates a total value) to make the WBL simple, otherwise this would be ridiculously cumbersome.I can do the entire loot count of a major treasure haul in 10 minutes or less, typically about ~5 mins.
OK, so this is interesting. Do you ever audit players afterward? Do you ever find your players to be over/under the WBL guidelines after doing a "treasure haul"?
However, I really question how you handle the quantum effects of treasure value. If you're designing a treasure haul, how do you account for the fact that all of the items will be in a quantum state? Do you tell all of your players what all of the items will be before they've encountered them? Serious question. How do you handle this without just adding/denying players treasure later? Which honestly just seems super rude to the players.
Personally I thing the fairest and most accurate way to determine treasure value is to use the average between sell and buy value... AKA 75% of buy value
Alright, I'll admit I hadn't thought to just take an average approach, but it has merits. In your experience, does it strike a fair balance between the two methods? Do your players adhere to the WBL guidelines fairly well as they progress through levels?
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As for Automatic Bonus Progression, I respect that you two like it, but can we try to stay on topic? I'm not really interested in the optional system, and it doesn't have any value in the discussion of whether to use full price of sell price of items when calculating how much treasure to give out.
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Try calculating what is the value of the stuff the PCs have. I have noticed that often the players feel underequipped but what they have is a bit above WBL. Herolab does that calculation automatically.
Don't forget the spell components. A 5,000 gp gem or raise dead is 5,000 gp of treasure.
The cost of some spell will mess with that, especially if the cost of restoration and raise dead isn't shared by the party, but the overall party WBL generally is right.
Some AP can mess with that, in one AP we found a very good heavy armor and an artifact warhammer. We were level 2 at the time. The only one that could use either item was the fighter.
The armor was worth 11,350 gp, the hammer, even counting only the powers we did know at the time, was a +2 impact weapon, worth at least 32,000 gp.
Selling them was out of question, as they were too good.
We ended with a character with more than 43,000 gp of equipment at 3rd level, i.e. the WBL of an 8th level character well on his way to that of a 9th level character.
Most of the other characters ended with the magic weapons and armors my cleric made, while the sorcerer hadn't anything useful for a few levels.
As you see, treasure placement in the printed adventures can be very uneven, and that can be problematic if the players assign the items to those that can use them better, without finding a way to compensate those that need less common equipment.
Try calculating what is the value of the stuff the PCs have. I have noticed that often the players feel underequipped but what they have is a bit above WBL. Herolab does that calculation automatically.
I have, and do regularly. My method keeps players at the appropriate WBL guideline, which is part of the the cause of my confusion. This coming month I decided to run a module, and put the numbers from the module into my spreadsheet and was shocked to find out that the module gives the players less than half the wealth it gives in relation to experience, indicating they're using the other method (and are still dragging behind a bit). This being a published, well rated module, I was surprised and questioned my own methods. Though this still wouldn't explain why my own methods consistently work and have worked with no issues for so long.
Don't forget the spell components. A 5,000 gp gem or raise dead is 5,000 gp of treasure.
The cost of some spell will mess with that, especially if the cost of restoration and raise dead isn't shared by the party, but the overall party WBL generally is right.
Of course.
Some AP can mess with that, in one AP we found a very good heavy armor and an artifact warhammer. We were level 2 at the time. The only one that could use either item was the fighter.
The armor was worth 11,350 gp, the hammer, even counting only the powers we did know at the time, was a +2 impact weapon, worth at least 32,000 gp.
Of course.
Selling them was out of question, as they were too good.
We ended with a character with more than 43,000 gp of equipment at 3rd level, i.e. the WBL of an 8th level character well on his way to that of a 9th level character.
Most of the other characters ended with the magic weapons and armors my cleric made, while the sorcerer hadn't anything useful for a few levels.As you see, treasure placement in the printed adventures can be very uneven, and that can be problematic if the players assign the items to those that can use them better, without finding a way to compensate those that need less common equipment.
I suppose the logical followup question here is, should I be assuming that published adventures are not "up to code"?
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I suppose the logical followup question here is, should I be assuming that published adventures are not "up to code"?
I think the reply is "very variable".
Considering the Pathfinder RPG AP we played:
- Kingmaker: the loot seems up to par or even abundant. You have plenty of time to craft and you can get some income from downtime activities. Staying at WBL is difficult, you generally are way richer. As a GM I tried to funnel the extra money into non-adventuring assets like a nice house, a wizard tower, a castle for the ruler, and so on. Something that is nice to have, help in non-adventuring activities (like spell research, crafting, etc.) but wouldn't impact combat efficiency or problem-solving during the adventures.
- Carrion Crown: the first two modules get you relatively little useful equipment, but if you get everything you are slightly above WBL after selling the loo, so you have the money to buy or craft what you want. The loot is ok in the later adventures.
- Reign of Winter: I would say that you get well above WBL, but for most of it the time pressure and the locations limit your ability to get what you want.
- Rise of the Runelords (the Pathfinder edition): the players were at WBL after selling the loot and buying what they want.
Stand-alone stuff:
- the Emerald Spire superdungeon had enough loot to get the players at WBL after selling and buying.
- the stand-alone and mini-campaign modules we played generally gave well above WBL.
So, some single module can be under WBL, but on average you get above it. You should remember that the WBL in modules is theoretically for a 4 PCs group. In theory, it considers that some loot will be missed and some encounter will be avoided.
OK, so this is interesting. Do you ever audit players afterward? Do you ever find your players to be over/under the WBL guidelines after doing a "treasure haul"?However, I really question how you handle the quantum effects of treasure value. If you're designing a treasure haul, how do you account for the fact that all of the items will be in a quantum state? Do you tell all of your players what all of the items will be before they've encountered them? Serious question. How do you handle this without just adding/denying players treasure later? Which honestly just seems super rude to the players.
Target a cell (let's call it Cell H3) and type =sum(G:G) and that will give you the total of every number in the G entire column.
Put all the loot values in there, using 1.0 for 1 gold, 0.1 for 1 silver, and 0.01 for 1 copper. For example, if you hand the party 2,139gp 7sp and 4cp, you would enter it as 2,139.74
Lets say you put 10 values in your G column for various pieces of loot, so your H3 Autosum cell should auto-populate the total of the 10 values in G. Now in a separate cell, let's say H5, type =h3/4 if you have 4 group members, or =h3/6 if you have 6 group members. Now your H5 cell gives you an average total amount of gold that you've given to each player, and THIS is your party's avg WBL. <--- this determines whether I hand out more or less loot
Now as for "keeping" or "selling" the loot, I do this on a shared google doc, and they have little dropdown menus to Keep/Sell/Discard, etc. And they do all this out-of-sesh before we play the following friday. Once they've made all their decisions to keep/sell/discard, and this autopopulates the price as full for keep or 1/2 price for sell. I copy/paste all 10 pieces of loot, who got what, and how much the total loot haul was into my own private Excel Doc for running the Campaign as soon as Sesh starts Friday night, and voila, all my loot is done in 3-5 minutes per week, 10 mins max.
I have 5 similar Columns like the above example G:G, but each of these are to track how much each of them spend on taverns, wenches, wine, and belts of the mightypants +14, whatever expenditures they make during sesh, like I put -50.0 in Ragnar's column and then I right-click that cell and add note: "bought potion of cure light wounds".
I keep extremely detailed notes, and although this process might sound convoluted or cumbersome, it's really not, because if they ever ask me anything, I have a record of it, and it SAVES time-- and after years of practice, I'm pretty fast at it. This record also tells me whether their WBL is appropriate, or if I need to hand out more loot, or if I'm giving too much. No I don't audit my players. If they're cheating, they're only hurting themselves because eventually you become reliant upon this strategy, and you don't get good at playing the game. And I have the full record of anything that's ever been handed out, what date you did it on, and how much you've spent/earned, so if you're level 13 and your WBL is 140,000gp and you somehow have a +3 Brilliant Energy Greatsword and a Belt of Physical Perfection +6, that's 98,000gp and 144,000gp, I'm going to start asking questions.
As far as telling the players what the items are, when they're low level, I don't. But once they have a +27 to Identify, yeah I hand waive it except for cursed items.
As far as adding new players, I just make a new column and change the =H3/6 to =H3/7, and hand him the exact number of gold in my WBL cell.
Over the course of a 6-month, 9-month, 1-yr, or 2-yr campaign, I use this G:G column and keep scrolling down with each new sesh, keeping detailed entries for each individual session as to what happens, what does the party do, where do they go, who spends gold on what, and how much gold I give them and how/where they got it. And then once the campaign is finished, I can read it any time I want, and it's like reading a book :)
I suppose the logical followup question here is, should I be assuming that published adventures are not "up to code"?I think the reply is "very variable".
Considering the Pathfinder RPG AP we played:
So, some single module can be under WBL, but on average you get above it. You should remember that the WBL in modules is theoretically for a 4 PCs group. In theory, it considers that some loot will be missed and some encounter will be avoided.
I'm not sure I would consider crafting. Crafting's never been balanced in this game in terms of loot acquisition.
As for number of PCs, that shouldn't imbalance loot acquisition, since it has the same, albeit inversely deleterious effect, on experience accrual.
I have rarely found that to be the case. I find APs to be overly generous over a period of the entire adventure. An individual section or book might be sparse but it is made up by the end.
Alright, I guess that’s my mistake. I just assumed if people were taking the time to be published, then they were taking the time to do things correctly.
Its not like a GM doesn't know when they're dropping a +1 sword that the party will use either. Its still scheduled. No GM is ever surprised by a loot drop. They put it there or let the PC buy or make the item.
See, I don’t necessarily agree with this. I feel like it’s impossible to know exactly what things a given player will suddenly decide to hoard. “Oh yeah, that’s a great item for me to use to have as a backup weapon for killing X type of creature” in the given example. And the weirder and more niche the item, the more likely a player is to hoard it. Or not. I’ve seen valuable things get passed up and unimportant things get kept. The brawler and monk passed up a monk’s robe I was sure one of them would take, recently, because neither liked the aesthetic.
Target a cell (let's call it Cell H3) and type =sum(G:G) and that will give you the total of every number in the G entire column.
Yes, I’m quite familiar with basic excel formulas, thank you. As mentioned previously, I put the information into my spreadsheet to output results.
I keep extremely detailed notes, and although this process might sound convoluted or cumbersome, it's really not, because if they ever ask me anything, I have a record of it, and it SAVES time-- and after years of practice, I'm pretty fast at it. This record also tells me whether their WBL is appropriate, or if I need to hand out more loot, or if I'm giving too much.
It sounds like neither. I do almost precisely the same thing.
No I don't audit my players. If they're cheating, they're only hurting themselves because eventually you become reliant upon this strategy, and you don't get good at playing the game.
This is essentially an audit. A constant and ongoing one, but still an audit of the WBL of the players.
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And I have the full record of anything that's ever been handed out, what date you did it on, and how much you've spent/earned, so if you're level 13 and your WBL is 140,000gp and you somehow have a +3 Brilliant Energy Greatsword and a Belt of Physical Perfection +6, that's 98,000gp and 144,000gp, I'm going to start asking questions.
So, basic excel formula lectures aside, what I asked previously was how you handled the quantum aspects of this. How do you handle this without adding or denying treasure later? And it sounds like your solution is simply “not to,” is that correct? All treasure always has to be corrected later because treasure is never accurate with each big haul? Is that correct? If so, this seems like a poor solution to the problem. I think I’d rather just do it right on the first go.
Looks to me like the random treasure generator is following A: Ring of Protection +1 (2000 GP) is 2000 GP worth of the treasure hoard.
This is NOT pulled from the Core rules however so I apologize if this falls outside the scope of your OP. It does anecdotally reinforce the opinion of those however who presume that A is RAI. The final decision it appears will have to reside with you BtR.
A fair observation, but probably it does that because it needs to relate the actual value of those items, not necessarily the sell value. After all, sell values can vary between campaigns, where as actual value is much less variable.
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But what I’m hearing from people is that there’s a lot of “I’ve always thought it was A,” but there’s no actual definitive proof of that?
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But what I’m hearing from people is that there’s a lot of “I’ve always thought it was A,” but there’s no actual definitive proof of that?
Table 12–4 lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased
But what I’m hearing from people is that there’s a lot of “I’ve always thought it was A,” but there’s no actual definitive proof of that?Table 12–4 lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased
Alright, so that does sort of implicitly indicate that I'm correct, but again, that's implicit and not explicit, and that's just common economics. And again, no hard ruling and no explicit determination so far.
You are never required to give a group all the expected treasure per encounter. As long as it gets in the range(they are only expected values after all), you're probably fine. I don't know what adventure you're running where you're having this problem, and I'm not saying all of them are exactly correct but overall I find it more true than not when I take the time to calculate out everything listed as treasure or NPC gear.
Of course. I thought it was fairly clear that I was approaching this on a “per adventure” basis at the very least, though it’s also reasonable to balance this within small pockets within the adventure, though that requires a lot more management.
So no, I don’t think it’s disingenuous at all. If a module is meant to be stand-alone, then there’s an expectation that it will have X experience and the commensurate Y treasure to go along with it, I think.
So, yes, if you have an NPC encounter with three times its normal treasure, you’ll have two monster based encounters afterwards. Obviously.
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Alright, so that does sort of implicitly indicate that I'm correct, but again, that's implicit and not explicit, and that's just common economics. And again, no hard ruling and no explicit determination so far.But what I’m hearing from people is that there’s a lot of “I’ve always thought it was A,” but there’s no actual definitive proof of that?Table 12–4 lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased
LOL. Reader bias (on both sides). To me, it implicitly says that you are wrong.
That piece of the rules speaks of placing treasure, so it is speaking of selling it at half of the value that was considered when placing it.
If we read it your way, it means that the part we think will be consumed during the adventure shouldn't be considered at all in the value of the treasure we place.
Interesting. I definitely read it as "Table 12–4 lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level." So the focus of the paragraph is not for placing treasure, but the expected wealth each player should have at level. Which means we're talking wealth by level, not treasure placed per encounter. So to me that says that the value of obtained items is treated as sale value, which is in line with common economic practices.
I can see where you're coming from where it says, "Low-fantasy games might award only half this value..." but I think that's more in reference to how the wealth by level is generated, since the first sentence still determines the the focus of the paragraph, but I think you make a fair point. Either way, I'm definitely not disputing that items should be sold at half value (per the paragraph's decision and for the purposes of this argument). The question then becomes whether this line indicates that the "half value" is considered as such or considered as full when the treasure is placed.
I posit that if a player is selling it, they're only getting the half value. That's what this paragraph says.
By the same token, the paragraph also indicates that some treasure is NOT sold, which would obviously indicate full value. But again, this is all implicit. There's no actual explicit indication of what to do. I suspect that a systematic approach to this probably wasn't considered, probably because treasure hauls always had a looser approach in older editions and a more regimented is relatively newer (not positive on this; I never played second edition).
Anyway, thank you for the insight, everyone. Session starts up soon, so I appreciate the prompt assistance and replies.
It has never even occured to me to base treasure off of the sell value... Ever.
5 gold is 5 gold.
A 500 gold gem is a 500 gold gem.
A basic full plate is 1500 gold.
A ring of protection +1 is 2000 gold.Just because a PC chooses to sell something doesn't mean the value is halved.
If the ring of protection +1 is of no use to them (because they all already have better rings), then its value is clearly halved (1000gp), from the perspective of the PCs. They would be much better off finding 2000gp than a ring they're going to sell for 1000gp.
From the perspective of the NPC they're looting it from, the ring was worth something, and the gold was worthless, since they got killed before they had a chance to spend it.
Think of it this way:
The PCs fight another adventuring party identical to their own.
Would you give those NPCs double the WBL to equip them so that your PCs can then sell it off for their own WBL???
No? The point of the exercise is to give the PCs enough wealth per encounter to keep them at WBL, and that would give the PCs far too much money.
However, it is true that the GM is not supposed to be overly concerned with such things. The 'average loot per encounter' values are (I believe) intentionally generous, to allow for the fact that a proportion of the treasure will be sold at half price. Paizo optimistically assumes that this will average out.
Well, no. Not really. You may feel it’s the truth, and perhaps it even is for your group, but it’s not a universal truth, and it does not apply to my situation.
To do what you’re describing takes away the game’s spirit of freedom and crosses the line into “horribly artificial.” There’s a reason we’re all still playing Pathfinder and not 4th edition.
Edit: I apologize for my previous, unedited comments. They were ruder than was necessary due to my annoyance at the rudeness and presumptiveness in your own statement.
I don't just feel that way, I know it to be universally true. The value of the item depends on whether or not your party uses it.
I understand you don't want to accept that, because it means there's is no single easy straightforward solution, but that is case.
And my intention is not to be rude, but to be honest and to help. It can be difficult to ascertain tone when reading someone else's words, so I can understand how you might arrive there. I also understand being upset or frustrated because you're not getting the "clean" answer you're searching for.
But I also still have to argue, no it doesn't take away freedom or crossing the line into horrible artificial if you as a GM present it the right way to the players. It is a lot of work to make it happen, but it can be done where all the artificial gaminess is on your side, because you are the one seeing all mechanics at play. But for your players, it can just mean that on top of all the loot they sell for 1/2 that whomever is giving them quests is also giving them (additional) coins to get them up to WBL.
Rereading your comments, I think you and I may be talking about slightly different things.
I'm saying that the value of the item depends on whether or not it's used, and that is a universal truth.
Using wealth by level reset and Automatic Bonus Progression are "sprinkle to taste". Personally I think they're best practice, and make life much easier for the GM, but I can also understand if people don't like it because they're very gamist mechanics.
WBL is a guideline, but stray too far in either direction and it's a warning sign...
WBL is a guideline, but stray too far in either direction and it's a warning sign...
Absolutely true. Being +/- 10% WBL probably isn't a big deal. By the time you reach +/- 20% the players will probably start to feel it.
If you use ABP, players are unlikely to have a problem even if they get no other gear, although they might be sad when they don't have magic items to synergize with. But IMO only the items that ABP provides are "strictly required" to keep up with the math of the game.