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First, I do realize that the WBL table is a guideline, but I do think it is important to keep it in mind. That being said, I've got an idea for a "West Marches" style campaign. This idea is in the most infantile stage at this point: just a bit more than "hey this would be cool", so I may be getting ahead of myself. Regardless of what I do, I intend to run it at the slow xp advancement rate. Considering the players will be able to go wherever and do whatever, how do I best set encounter rewards to maintain WBL balance? I guess ultimately, how should I keep things organic and natural, but still keeping the WBL in mind?
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Err on the side of stingy and audit the PCs every level. If it turns out you've been a bit cautious, it's easy enough to provide them with extra later. They're likely to notice if suddenly they stop receiving the payoffs they used to - less so if they begin earning at a greater rate.
There's always a risk in an unstructured campaign that the PCs will turn their talents towards wealth generation. If you're giving out 'standard' treasure whilst they spend their time trying to maximise their returns, any restrictions you impose later to keep things in check are probably going to seem a little contrived.
Anything that would give them to much wealth can probably eat them. But, just limit the amount of treasure you give out with each encounter, and if they kill something higher cr than their level, they should be rewarded.
I am dealing with the exact same situation.
So far I've been giving NPC's appropriate gear for their level, and giving monsters treasure based on half the value they would have assuming the PC's face them when they are APL = CR.
Apparently West Marches was very light on magic items but I'm shooting for 1/2 WBL.
Anything that would give them to much wealth can probably eat them. But, just limit the amount of treasure you give out with each encounter, and if they kill something higher cr than their level, they should be rewarded.
But what if they "grind"?
The consumables idea is very good.
I'm building a lot of treasure hordes in advance so I don't know what APL the party will be when they face the encounter. I kind of like the idea that this lair has what it has, whether the party gets there when it's still hard for them, or later when it's a cakewalk.
Interested if OP is doing this as well
One thing I notice in our group is, slow advancement is rather annoying at times. Even with loads of RPing being done, too much time between advancement makes the game stale. Doing slow advancement means stretching out the WBL even more so, and in turn means less reward for similar risk for anyone used to 3.5 (our DM went through and compared charts, PFRPG normal, and even fast is more xp than the normal 3.5 progression). You may find the players pushing for "bigger badder" fights because of it.
As for the actual wealth of characters, I would suggest first be up front about if you are sticking to the core rulebook and magic items being available to be purchased when desired (following community size, etc). Nothing sucks more than saving up your coppers just to find out "you can't get it." Second detail which books are up for grabs, sometimes a character levels, new ideas come up and an item seems to fit the bill when they wouldn't have considered it prior. Flipping through books between adventures might cause a light bulb to go off for a player. I also suggest you take each player aside during creation and ask them to make a loot list to get an idea of what they want and will be trying to get ahold of. If there is anything particularly powerful, work it into a plot hook, you will probably have at least one for each character and will help drive the campaign. Give each character so rumors about where such items can be found and flesh out those areas first. Basically, get some goals established to help plan out how things flow. If only one character wants something super expensive, and another wants something 3/4ths of that, and the last two characters both wanted something half the price. Plot out encounters that way, giving little goodies along the way to the people who are further down the campaign plot.
One thing I notice in our group is, slow advancement is rather annoying at times. Even with loads of RPing being done, too much time between advancement makes the game stale. Doing slow advancement means stretching out the WBL even more so, and in turn means less reward for similar risk for anyone used to 3.5 (our DM went through and compared charts, PFRPG normal, and even fast is more xp than the normal 3.5 progression). You may find the players pushing for "bigger badder" fights because of it.
As for the actual wealth of characters, I would suggest first be up front about if you are sticking to the core rulebook and magic items being available to be purchased when desired (following community size, etc). Nothing sucks more than saving up your coppers just to find out "you can't get it." Second detail which books are up for grabs, sometimes a character levels, new ideas come up and an item seems to fit the bill when they wouldn't have considered it prior. Flipping through books between adventures might cause a light bulb to go off for a player. I also suggest you take each player aside during creation and ask them to make a loot list to get an idea of what they want and will be trying to get ahold of. If there is anything particularly powerful, work it into a plot hook, you will probably have at least one for each character and will help drive the campaign. Give each character so rumors about where such items can be found and flesh out those areas first. Basically, get some goals established to help plan out how things flow. If only one character wants something super expensive, and another wants something 3/4ths of that, and the last two characters both wanted something half the price. Plot out encounters that way, giving little goodies along the way to the people who are further down the campaign plot.
The thing is, I have so many things the players could do that would be appropriate at any given level. So I want to slow them down somewhat so they can experience more then one of these challenges before they out-level it completely. I hope they don't end up resenting the pace.
Anything that would give them to much wealth can probably eat them. But, just limit the amount of treasure you give out with each encounter, and if they kill something higher cr than their level, they should be rewarded.But what if they "grind"?
If you give treasure appropriate to the CR, then it won't matter. If they grind, they'll level up, and they'll still have level appropriate treasure.
If you give treasure appropriate to the CR, then it won't matter. If they grind, they'll level up, and they'll still have level appropriate treasure.Anything that would give them to much wealth can probably eat them. But, just limit the amount of treasure you give out with each encounter, and if they kill something higher cr than their level, they should be rewarded.But what if they "grind"?
Right but you know how the standard treasure assumptions in the game adjust the amount of treasure an encounter yields based on whether it was easy or hard for the party? I'm not sure that method lends itself to the West Marches style of sandbox, as it has been coined.
There's a certain kind of verisimilitude in this kind of game, so for example a certain monster lair has a pre generated treasure horde, and that is what will be found there, whether the party shows up when it is way above their APL, or comes back later when it is way below.
See what I mean?
Always good advice. Is that what you meant by "grind back"? (I've lurked on here long enough to know that TOZ = you ;)
@EWHM I like that simulationis feel, I'm going for that. Thanks for the idea.
Uhm, I'm not sure I understand you. A CR 5 encounter should have a certain amount of treasure. That shouldn't change regardless of the party's level. If they're level 3, it'll be a huge haul. If they're 7, it's the same value, but that just isn't worth as much to a higher level party.
Edit: Of course, that's on average. Some CR5's have double wealth. Some have no wealth. The number of each should balance out in the long run.
Well the way I understand it, in a normal game, a CR 5 encounter doesn't have a fixed amount of treasure. It's all relative to APL. So you defeat a CR 5 monster with standard treasure right?. You go to Table: Treasure Values Per Encounter. There's no entry for "CR 5 Monster", instead there are entries for different APL's. So let's say your party is APL 5, the table tells you to award 1550 GP. In addition there is text that explains how to modify the results of this table depending on the relative difficulty of the encounter for a party of that level.
I don't want to use this method in my campaign because it slightly breaks the verisimilitude of the kind of sandbox I'm creating, which has a rotating pool of players almost competing to complete quests and acquire loot. I want pre generated treasure hordes in each lair, and the value of that treasure will be the same whether an APL 3 party raids the lair, or an APL 7 party gets there first.
I need fixed treasure values but I also don't want to completely deviate from WBL.
I'm not sure what happened to the OP but I imagine he had similar concerns when he started this thread. We are both running what you might call "West Marches" style sandbox games (coined after a campaign blogged about by Ben Robbins).
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Thanks for all the input guys! Like I said previously, this concept is in the early stages of planning, this WBL things was one of the things I was wondering about. Though, on the one hand, I wonder if things will just work out naturally as long as the treasure given is valued at the CR of the encounter.
Consumables are definitely a good idea.
EDIT: I haven't abandoned the thread, this stupid thing called work got in the way. ;-) for those not familiar with this campaign style, I posted a link to the original concept in my original post.
Since an easy challenge is APL-1, challenging is APL+1, etc. this works out to the same as using the CR of the encounter. Why it's written this way, I don't know.
I don't have time to check now, but I suspect it'll come out the same if you use individual creature CRs instead of encounter CRs.
Good point it does work out the same as long as you're scaling up for challenging, hard or epic. But what if your going down more then APL -1?
From the example we had going, the level 3 party that defeats the CR 5 encounter gets 1550 GP, but what does the APL 7 Party get? There is no "Very Easy" category for APL -2. If you just call it easy they get 2000 GP for the same encounter that yielded 1550 to a APL 3 party. That's what had me worried abut grinding for loot by seeking out easy encounters.
I guess I'm over thinking it. Looks like the wording had me confused. Using CR instead of APL to calculate treasure looks fine.
I'll probably half the values to stay on the safe/stingy side in light of what Steve Geddes said. My setting is kind of low-magic anyway.
I ran a sandbox game. To keep wbl i would not include Any gold in an encounter that didnt need it. So if the players fought a svarm of rat they would get xp and nothing more. Then When they meet something that could have loot i would have given the monsters - hobgobilns or whatever more loot so that they would get enough to keep Their wbl appropriate. Or in other words they Got most of Their wealth in a single or to encounter.
I was lucky i had players that didnt mind keeping mé informered about hos Much they was behind WBL - (which would tell me how much loot i shoul include in the encounters with loot ) and When they didnt complain i would figure they were at wbl or a head and then i would either scale up the encounters to give Them more xp or scale Down the loot.
This did methode did require quite a bit of changing. Encounters but thats the Price of allowing. Players to sandboks. If they Don.t go Right after the BBEG hé Might not be a challenge When they get to him if You dont scale him up a long the Way
Considering the players will be able to go wherever and do whatever, how do I best set encounter rewards to maintain WBL balance? I guess ultimately, how should I keep things organic and natural, but still keeping the WBL in mind?
On a side note: I think it's interesting that just about everyone here interpreted this as "How do I avoid giving too much treasure?" while I interpreted it as "How do I avoid giving too little treasure?"!
Clearly I've had a different experience with sandbox campaigns than everybody else has...
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Always good advice. Is that what you meant by "grind back"? (I've lurked on here long enough to know that TOZ = you ;)
Pretty much. I've never had a group that thought like that, but I'd probably tell them outright if they tried to 'gold farm' that they will encounter a lot of enemies designed to wear down their resources ('grind back') without giving them a lot of gold as well. Thus they would become a higher level where having more gold would not imbalance them.
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On a side note: I think it's interesting that just about everyone here interpreted this as "How do I avoid giving too much treasure?" while I interpreted it as "How do I avoid giving too little treasure?"!Clearly I've had a different experience with sandbox campaigns than everybody else has...
Interesting. So, in your experience, you were on the low side of the WBL tables?
Interesting. So, in your experience, you were on the low side of the WBL tables?
On a side note: I think it's interesting that just about everyone here interpreted this as "How do I avoid giving too much treasure?" while I interpreted it as "How do I avoid giving too little treasure?"!Clearly I've had a different experience with sandbox campaigns than everybody else has...
I find that any game with wandering monsters tends to be skimpy on treasure because many wandering monsters don't have any.
Also, I'm playing in a Serpent's Skull game and a Kingmaker game and I've found them to be a bit low on treasure so far (although they're Medium xp, not Slow xp).
One thing I have noticed, at least with the groups I've played in, is that no one seems to even have Appraise, let alone use it. So I started capitalizing on that by giving out gems in place of coins. When they go to sell the gems, depending on what other things they have kept and sold, they get the right amount of money to balance them out. I don't keep it exact, but it definitely helps keep my party in the ballpark. And they're none the wiser.
And really, it makes sense for things to carry gems instead of coins, because they are much smaller and easier to hide/carry.
I'm glad magimaster pointed out that you could just use CR instead of APL for treasure value. The wording had me thinking it was a lot more difficult then it has to be.
Now that I have a bit more time:
To get from level 2 to level 3 on the medium track, you need 3000 xp and according to the WBL table you should gain about 2000 gp in that time. Now if you did CR instead of APL on the encounter table, and assuming a party of 4:
- Fighting only CR 1, you'd need 30 enemies and you'd get an average of 65 gp each, for a total of 1950 gp.
- Fighting only CR 2, you'd need 20 enemies and you'd get an average of 137.5 gp each, for a total of 2750 gp.
- Fighting only CR 3, you'd need 15 enemies and you'd get an average of 200 gp each, for a total of 3000 gp.
- Fighting only CR 4, you'd need 10 enemies and you'd get an average of 287.5 gp each, for a total of 2875 gp.
- Fighting a mix of CRs will give you a total somewhere in the middle.
To get from level 5 to level 6, you need 8000 xp and should get 5500 gp:
- Fighting only CR 1, you'd need 80 enemies and you'd get an average of 65 gp each, for a total of 5200 gp.
- Fighting only CR 2, you'd need 53 1/3 enemies and you'd get an average of 137.5 gp each, for a total of 7333 gp.
- Fighting only CR 3, you'd need 40 enemies and you'd get an average of 200 gp each, for a total of 8000 gp.
- Fighting only CR 4, you'd need 26 2/3 enemies and you'd get an average of 287.5 gp each, for a total of 7667 gp.
- Fighting a mix of CRs will give you a total somewhere in the middle.
So the per-encounter-wealth table is a little generous (except for CR 1), but I think that it assumes you'll lose some of that in consumables or by selling non-trade goods.
If you need a more exact method, you can just give a fixed gp per xp. If you need 2000 gp over the next 3000 xp, then make sure they get 2 gp for every 3 xp. Of course, you'll need to recalculate this each level and account for losses and overflow from the previous level. It'll be a lot more work.
If you follow WBL to hand out treasure you will wind up shorting your players. I did a post (Click here) awhile back on treasure per encounter which showed that it hands out about 30% more treasure when compared to WBL. I believe that that extra is assumed to be lost due to consumables and equipment losses.
I find that the treasure per encounter table works pretty well if players spend resources on consumables and not so well if they do not. This is why every now and then I check the WBL table to see how much treasure they currently have and if they have somewhere between the current level and the next level's WBL then I am good with it.
How I hand out treasure: I just keep track of the encounter CRs and the treasure per encounter/CR (even when I throw random encounters in). Eventually I balance it out by throwing in an encounter that either has no treasure (not all critters give treasure) or more treasure (some critters give extra).
- Gauss
@Magi: Great numbers. I love having stuff like that.
@Gauss: I'm going to listen to TOZ and put consumables in the treasure to compensate for the generosity inherent in the system. That way I don't have to worry about whether or not they buy consumables.
Two face, my players definitely have and use appraise. Especially the dwarfs and rogues.
Two face, my players definitely have and use appraise. Especially the dwarfs and rogues.
Well, thankfully, there is wiggle room for Appraise (up to 20% change in either direction), which still gives you the option of adjusting the prices as needed (assuming you gave a reasonable estimate from the start).
Also, as far as the wealth-by-encounter table goes, I imagine it's also trying to account for a certain number of monsters that just don't carry treasure, of which there are quite a few. Or maybe, as MagiMaster and Gauss have pointed out, it accounts for use of consumables and other potentially gear-unrelated expenditures.
The paragraph below the one I quoted (IIRC) mentioned that NPCs typically have about triple the expected treasure due to their gear and you should throw in a couple of no-treasure encounters to balanced that, so I suspect it doesn't really account for the abundance of low-treasure creatures in the bestiary.
Yeah I think it's more for consumables.
I agree with Toz method being one solution. Provided that you keep the non-consumables near WBL (assuming you are following WBL). My group's solution is to divide the treasure by # in party +1 where the +1 is a party fund for consumables. This way no player has to supply his own consumables.
- Gauss
Something else to consider is non-monetary rewards. Occasionally a title, some land or even special training for a bonus feat can handle things just as well as a +1 sword.
Also on campaign pacing -- you can switch between exp modes as you need to as your game continues.
For example I like running fast exp for levels 1~3 or 1~5ish then switching to 'normal' for a level or two before slowing down to slow.
As long as your players are aware that this is going to happen they should be alright with it. It gets them out of the cradle stage but gives them time to really enjoy each level and you to get a good feel for what's happening before something else is thrown on top of it.
Yeah I didn't want to hijack the thread and turn it to pacing but it really goes hand in hand with this and is on my mind.
The whole problem with all the low-magic threads (for example) is that wealth and xp are tied too tightly together to just change one or the other, so you can't really avoid it in a thread like this.
I need fixed treasure values but I also don't want to completely deviate from WBL.
You mean like Treasure Type A, B, N, Q, and X?
Those were the good ol' dayz. . .
That's just whac0
That's just whac0
It was! But it had a strange kind of logic to it.
IIRC, Treasure Type X was gems. I seem to remember Drow having it a lot.
I could be wrong. It's been too long.
I still have the Monstrous Compendium or whatever it was called that came in the binder. Ill go check.
Treasure Type X: Any two potions!
Treasure Type X: Any two potions!
QQ I remembered wrong (or the AD&D version was different, but I don't think it was). Drow coulda still had X though - they also had tons of pots, IIRC.
Probably another of their Treasure Types was the gem one, but now I can't remember what it was. QQ - getting rusty.
I went right from Basic to 2e so I can't speak on 1st. Can't find the drow page in the binder either right now, they are all out of order because I was always sticking things for a game in the tabbed dividers in the back. Found type x in the dmg. Lots of types have gems though, A-I, Q, R, U, W, and Z!
Ah Q was the Gem Treasure Type I was thinking of. I think.
I did tons of 0E, too. Actually back then we mixed and matched somewhat 0E & 1E. Mystara (aka the "Known World") remains one of my favorite settings. Thyatis (my more Byzantinized/not-quite-as-shady version of it, anyhow) FTW!
P.S. Tarastia = Valentia the Justicar!
Can't find the drow page in the binder either right now, they are all out of order because I was always sticking things for a game in the tabbed dividers in the back.
I voted in favor of that Binder idea when they were asking us what we thought was a good idea (it was the only one of the books I voted "binder" for, and the only one they tried binder with - I'm not sayin my vote carried the day, but it contributed to it). In retrospect I chose. . .poorly.
Seemed like a neat idea in theory, but in practice it was terrible. I hate my monster binder(s) (eventually I had to use more than one anyhow).
Interesting. So, in your experience, you were on the low side of the WBL tables?
By the way, note that with regards to the original West Marches game, he says that treasure was pretty scarce and almost nobody had any magic items.
IT SEEMED LIKE SUCH A COOL IDEA!!!
Mustard is very cool and it's one of the big influences on the setting I'm designing right now, even though I never played in Mystara. I even call my map the known world, and it's kind of small like Mystara. A kitchen sink that you can actually see most of in a long enough campaign. But deep enough to play in again and again.
Edit: Mustard equals Mystara! LoL!
Interesting. So, in your experience, you were on the low side of the WBL tables?By the way, note that with regards to the original West Marches game, he says that treasure was pretty scarce and almost nobody had any magic items.
Yup, very scarce, and 6th level was considered epic.