Treasure that consumed in the course of an adventure (disposable items) will be taken into account when calculate wealth by level?
Yes:
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.
So it doesn't get replaced. Which is actually fair, because consumable items are very powerful in comparison to their cost. As long as the players can spare the actions to consume them, of course. A wand of mage armor with 50 charges (just 750g) does about the same as bracers of armor +4 (16,000g), for example.
I houseruled otherwise in my current campaign: Wealth always got filled up, meaning losses from consuming or selling got compensated by more loot later. This way I didn't have to track what I handed out, just check what they possess right now. But it turned out the better equipment was an edge that made encounters a tad too easy for them.
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That table is intended as a rough guide, mainly for use if you are adding a character to an ongoing campaign that is above first level (such as if a player drops out) or if you are starting all the characters above first level.
Those percentages are not "hard and fast" numbers. As in, it's not an unbreakable rule that limits players. You'll notice that the numbers add up to exactly 100%. Which is pretty much impossible to get perfectly. And as it goes on to say some characters will have spent more or less in each category, depending on their class and needs. You don't need to try to make the numbers match. The biggest takeaway is at the end of the Placing Treasure section: "As a general rule, PCs should not own any magic item worth more than half their total character wealth."
As a GM, you shouldn't worry too much about the numbers. If you're using a published adventure the treasure should work out pretty well. If you're making your own, use the treasure values by encounter in Table 12-5 and it should work out as well.
If one PC is using 35% of his earnings to buy and use a lot of consumable items then his total wealth is going to be significantly lower than a PC only using 5%. That's OK, and it doesn't mean that the one using consumables should get make-up treasure.
Keep in mind that new wealth earned by adventuring has no percentage limits that can be spent where, so any income can go fully or not at all to restocking consumables. Likewise, you will assuredly encounter new consumables in any pre-campaign as you go to help keep you stocked up.
As Belafon said, WBL is a snapshot of what you have right as you enter a game. You may drink a potion, but you might also acquire a better one later, and the wealth written in accounts for this by giving you upwards of twice the wealth for a party of 5 because you will miss some of it, sell some of it (thus only getting half it's value), and most importantly, consume some of it.
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Thanks to all who answer.
But!
I'm still have misunderstanding and burn my chair for next moment...
- Why if my PC find potion of cure light wounds after combat and drink it in that moment must calculate his wealth by level lesser by 25 gp???
He find disposable item and heal his wounds. WHY he must be more poor in that case???
He's poorer because he used the item.
Wealth by level is not something you calculate multiple times. It is really only a guideline for how your money should be allocated when starting a character above level 1.
As soon as you start adventuring your wealth will depart (higher or lower) from that number.
I track my player's WBL with an excel spreadsheet. Each time I give out loot, I put the name(s) in one column and the cost of the item(s) in another, and organize it by encounter, then use Auto-Sum to generate how much the total loot is.
I also allow players to make additional income through cleverness and craftiness and don't count this towards WBL, like tips from Bardic performances from tavern patrons, successfully breaking into ye olde magic shop and stealing items, or using bluff/appraisal to get more coin when you sell items, etc. I track the loot/coin gained in this way for my own records, but I keep it separate from WBL tracking.
Excel spreadsheets. Voila, WBL made simple.
Yeah....personally I don't like the way anyone above does things.
Penalizing a player long terms for using consumables means that consumables don't get used and instead are sold. I don't think that's particularly interesting.
Personally, my gaming group uses Automatic Bonus Progression rules and the essentially resets the remaining wealth based on character level at level up (though this does suppose people aren't abusing this - doing things like buying only consumables to enhance their combat abilities beyond what should be possible).
Having to pull out a spreadsheet for a game is silly in my opinion. That's simply too much work.
I prefer to just use wealth by level with reset at level up. People can use items found during the course of a level without any penalty, but if they want to keep it when they level it comes out of their allotted WBL.
No one has to track anything then, unless they specifically want to keep an item. You don't have to worry about if you sold something or how much it is.
Claxon, I have my entire campaign file on my Excel spreadsheet. WBL is just one of the 15ish tabs at the bottom of my excel doc. It's super easy and hardly any effort.
That sounds dreadful to be honest.
That sounds dreadful to be honest.
The way I see it, you're either tracking as you go or you're re-counting everything at each level. So you're either performing lots of small tasks or the occasional huge one. Both seem tedious in their own way. But treasure is an important part of the game, right up there with xp. They are the two most important tangible rewards for player choice. So putting a little work into them seems well worth it to me.
Granted, I don't really use any of the systems in the core book for tracking them. But I always make sure I provide hard and fast numbers so the players can see the correlation between risk and reward, or good gameplay and less so.
I more meant having 15 excel spreadsheets to run a game.
But more specifically the minutiae of tracking WBL.
Using "WBL reset" as some people refer to it basically just means add up the cost of everything you plan to buy/keep and make sure it doesn't go over WBL (or half that if using ABP). If a player wants to track that on their own on a spreadsheet I'm not going to stop them.
But it's honestly easier in my opinion to just do re-do the math at level up.
Besides, ignoring cheap non-magical gear, you're typically only going to have maybe 10 items on your character, especially if using ABP.