I've got a problem with handling wealth levels. In my playgroup "Craft [something]" feats are virtually always present as the investment of one feat to get cheap items (and not being limited to availability) is a great deal for the character and the party as a whole. The problem happens in the disparity this causes between actual character wealth and suggested character wealth.
What are the community's thoughts on this?
having a lot of player wealth is only a problem if its effecting the challenges you send the party against. In my experience, crafting feats allow you to get some low level expendable items pretty easily, like low level wands, some minor magic items, etc. Having a lot of these can pump up your wealth-by-level, but they aren't really as unbalancing as having 1 big ticket item.
One thing we do in our campaign is to require a special component for crafting magic weapons, armor, rings, and wondrous items. This special component, or spell anchor, is usually something like a mature red dragon scale or the proverbial eye of newt (but maybe in this case a fire newt). Some spell anchors are available at various towns, some require an adventure of their own to find. As GM you get to say what people can and can't buy at any given moment, which helps you limit crafting when it seems to be getting out of control or is derailing the game.
Other than that remember that wealth by level is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule. Some players in your group, most likely fighter types, will end up with more loot/wealth than other players simply because they have more weapon and armor proficiencies. wizards and sorcerers will have most of their loot in expendable magic items.
All in all, just keep an eye on it. You can always engineer an encounter that takes some of their stuff away, but unless it is causing a mechanical problem in your game, I would advise against that.
Also remember that if the PCs are busy making magic items, the bad guys are busy taking over the kingdom. Time's an important factor in item creation too.
Also, that feat put into Craft X is a feat not put into Toughness, Lightning Reflexes, Spell Focus or something else.
Yes, being able to get better equipment than the suggested wealth by level is a big benefit, but it isn't broken.
I would not stretch it as far as broken, but the advantage is tangible. For example; for the feat every party member can prematurely buy +2 to Con; which in most senses is better than picking the feat Toughness and applies to every party member.
Yes, crafting is a time-intensive process; but some adventure paths (for example Kingmaker) have oodles of spare time that can be used for crafting purposes.
For example, given the standard given by the craft feats, this would not be considered overpowered:
Arcane Trader [feat]
Requires: 5 ranks in appraise and 5 ranks in diplomacy
Benefit: you may buy magical items at 75% of the market price. You can locate magical items for trade that are normally rare to find; you can find any magical item worth up to twice the gp-limit of the location you are at by spending 1 day searching for the item for every 1000gp that the item is worth - after the time you must make a diplomacy check DC 10 to locate and secure a deal for the item; the DC is increased by 1 for every 1000gp that the item is worth
I've got a problem with handling wealth levels. In my playgroup "Craft [something]" feats are virtually always present as the investment of one feat to get cheap items (and not being limited to availability) is a great deal for the character and the party as a whole. The problem happens in the disparity this causes between actual character wealth and suggested character wealth.
What are the community's thoughts on this?
The "extra" wealth/items is merely part of the character's feat selection, the same way a fighter with weapon focus has an additional +1 to his attack rolls.
Its not as bad as you think. Prices are exponential, so even if you double a characters wealth you're only giving a linear increase in their power. Its good, but not nearly the cheese you can do with say, leadership.
I've never found crafting to unbalance party wealth. Firstly, wealth is so easy to control. Party to poor? Drop more loot. Party too rich? Drop less loot. This is even easy to tweak in APs. Only half the loot in APs actually get used by enemies, the rest of the time, the loot's just lying around.
Secondly, I find that crafting cancels the loss of having to sell most of a treasure hoard back at half value. Even if your characters take the time to craft *every* *single* *item* they use, they won't come close to having double their expected wealth. If they craft a more reasonable amount, it about evens out. Once again. it's so very easy to adjust loot drops, so it's really not a problem.
As for being "too good" a feat, it gives you control of what items you can get, but any feat that indirectly causes you DM to give out less treasure can't be that good.
A couple of thoughts:
First: Wealth that is of no benefit to a character while adventuring isn't wealth that should be counted against his WBL.
SO what?
Well, encourage investment in the fluff stuff. If I'm the GM and a player tells me he wants to build a stronghold and has a list of stuff he wants to include in the stronghold -- but I know he's never going to be there during the meat of the adventures -- I'll let him "have" it basically -- what's more as far as I'm concerned it's going to have little effect on his WBL since it's not going to factor into the adventures. The player wants to spend 3,520 gp on a mithral summoning circle that he plans to harden and permenantly shrink item on? As far as I'm concerned it's great fluff for having a focus instead of component for his planar binding/ally spells. If the party has a +5 Unholy Speeding scorpion whip -- which no one in the party will use and they have no means to get rid of it I don't consider it for WBL. After all WBL is the resources the party has available to adventure with -- even if it's a resource if the party in question has no means to use it then it might as well be a brick on their backs -- worse if you actually count it against them.
Now once they start to find ways to make use of stuff then yeah count it -- but until then don't get tore up about how many +1 swords/bows/breastplates they have -- there is a good chance you can get rid of some of those without much problem.
Secondly: Crafting takes time and tools. As a GM you have control over time. I don't mean like "I cast time stop all day." I mean you actually control how much time the party has to craft, rest, travel, and fight. This control can be used by having "random" encounters during rest/craft time, a need to rush to the next goal, the availability of tools/space to craft in
Finally: If they are going to craft fine -- don't be afraid to use the things you *normally* might not use -- sunder, mage's disjunction, and the other various nasty things that are generally considered bad taste. Consider this: IF the players are going to be increasing their wealth and you need them to stay around a certain point in order to continue to challenge them, but you don't want to not give them goodies then the only "choice" you have left is to break their toys on occasion. It doesn't have to be often -- and it doesn't have to be mean spirited but broken stuff will slow them down. Also remember that disposible magical items are inherently "breakable" since they are destroyed with use -- so if you want to give magical stuff give away the magical items that are disposible -- potions, wands, scrolls, elemental gems, lightning javelins, etc. Then include enough stuff that the party wants to use these items -- stuff that is troubling and would eat up resources without nessecarily being a huge challenge -- then the party has a choice -- use up some disposibles to get rid of the threat or use up their personal reserves (spells memorised/stunning fist usages/ etc) to get rid of the trouble -- either way you spend some of their resources and keep them moving so they have to use more.
A couple of thoughts:
First: Wealth that is of no benefit to a character while adventuring isn't wealth that should be counted against his WBL.
SO what?
Well, encourage investment in the fluff stuff. If I'm the GM and a player tells me he wants to build a stronghold and has a list of stuff he wants to include in the stronghold -- but I know he's never going to be there during the meat of the adventures -- I'll let him "have" it basically -- what's more as far as I'm concerned it's going to have little effect on his WBL since it's not going to factor into the adventures. The player wants to spend 3,520 gp on a mithral summoning circle that he plans to harden and permenantly shrink item on? As far as I'm concerned it's great fluff for having a focus instead of component for his planar binding/ally spells. If the party has a +5 Unholy Speeding scorpion whip -- which no one in the party will use and they have no means to get rid of it I don't consider it for WBL. After all WBL is the resources the party has available to adventure with -- even if it's a resource if the party in question has no means to use it then it might as well be a brick on their backs -- worse if you actually count it against them.
Now once they start to find ways to make use of stuff then yeah count it -- but until then don't get tore up about how many +1 swords/bows/breastplates they have -- there is a good chance you can get rid of some of those without much problem.
Secondly: Crafting takes time and tools. As a GM you have control over time. I don't mean like "I cast time stop all day." I mean you actually control how much time the party has to craft, rest, travel, and fight. This control can be used by having "random" encounters during rest/craft time, a need to rush to the next goal, the availability of tools/space to craft in
Finally: If they are going to craft fine -- don't be afraid to use the things you *normally* might not use -- sunder, mage's disjunction, and the other various...
A GM friend of mine once gave his PCs such flavorful stuff...
...which his PCs then turned around and sold for a bunch of magical items.
Flavor is fine, provided it can't be sold for real gold, and real gold traded for adventuring wealth.
A GM friend of mine once gave his PCs such flavorful stuff...
...which his PCs then turned around and sold for a bunch of magical items.
Flavor is fine, provided it can't be sold for real gold.
Of course once it's sold for real gold (and depending on the stuff the value they get for it might not be what they hoped it would be) then of course it goes right against wealth by level since they are now using it for adventuring (and as such it is equipment used for adventuring).
as long as all the treasure they find isn't in straight gold pieces you'll be fine. Magic items the party doesn't want will sell at 1/2 value, and crafting costs 1/2 market value. It's a straight 1-to-1 ratio of selling magic items then converting that cash into new magic items.
Honestly, I have the hardest time reaching wealth-by-level in every campaign I play. The party doesn't always find all the treasure or all the encounters, and then when the party sells items it doesn't want, everything sells at 1/2 value, and then the proceeds get divided 5 ways. In the meantime, our DM is like "well you're all level 5 and you've found 25k of treasure so far, that's alot!!" But really, the party kept 4 items worth 3k each, and each item went to a different character. So the other 13k worth of treasure got sold for 6.5k gold, which then got divided 5 ways so we each got 1.3k gold. So the party now consists of:
4 PCs who kept an item worth 3k gold. Those PCs also have 1.3k cash. PC wealth = 4.3k total.
1 PC who couldn't use any items. That PC got 1.3k cash. PC wealth = 1.3k total.
Level 5 wealth by level is supposed to be 10.5k gold. Our self-proclaimed "generous" DM is actually keeping most of the party under-itemized by 59%, and one of the players (ME!!) under-itemized by 88%.