Hey there!
I'm currently DMing the 4th level of Maure Castle, found in a past issue of Dungeon (in number escapes me at the moment). I'm stating up one of the central bad guys: Eli Tormorst.
My question: why is his equipment wealth so high? I'd rather not give anything away, as my players could read this, but....gees, does this guy have some serious wealth! I thought he'd resently been killed and raised....so the wealth has only come from the last year or two.
Moreover: what guidleines did the writers/editors use for wealth?
-Nail
Creative Director
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For the most part, we used the guidelines in the DMG for determining NPC wealth (page 127). Assuming there's time, once I've finished developing an adventrue I run it throguh a spreadsheet that figures out all the XP the PCs could gain, and balances that with the amount of gold given out. Adventures rarely hit the target number exactly, but I try to keep them as close as possible.
As for Maure Castle... Eli's actually not the only thing in Maure Castle with more treasure than the DMG recomends, to tell the truth. For Maure Castle, the treasure was a little higher across the board. In theory, this is to offset the fact that the dungeon itself tends to be a real grinder, and it assumes that the PCs are using more resources to raise allies from the dead or replace magic items that are lost.
Eli's a 17th level character, and according to the DMG he should have X gp in gear. In fact, he's got around X.5 gp in gear. This is partially due to the fact that he's tougher than a 17th level wizard, and partially due to the fact that he's one of the mian bad guys in the adventure. So I geared him up as about halfway between an 18th level and 19th level NPC.
If handing out this much treasure makes you uncomfortable as a DM, you should by all means reduce the amount of treasure in the adventure to mesh easier with your campaign. Keep in mind, though, that with the higher-than normal mortality rate Maure Castle can inflict, you may find your PCs ending up with less treasure than you expect once they cash in Eli's gear to pay for a resurrection or two.
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Creative Director
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I didn't include his hands or the Tome in his total, for the same reason I don't include the cost of a 25,000 gp warship as among a pirate captian's gear, or the cost of a 1,000,000 gp huge castle as among a brutal warlord's gear. Those are extreme examples, sure, but as a general rule I only count the gear an NPC carries as his NPC wealth (as far as the table in the DMG knows). Items that help drive the plot or can't really be looted by PCs don't normally figure into the cost of an NPCs gear.
In any event, the Tome of the Black Heart is an artifact, and thus doesn't have a gp value and can't be counted against his wealth. His hands are likely minor artifacts (they do a lot of neat stuff) so they don't play well with gear costs either.