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Just adjust the APL. If you have a party of 4 level 4 characters with a higher WBL then your APL should probably be around 6.
The problem is they are still level 4 players and their HP will show that.
Its hard to balance that type of stuff because you can raise AC and Damage, but largely the skills and HP will not quite be there.
even better idea.
if you really want to go way over the wealth by level but still accomodate your traditional baddies.
come up with a level based inherent bonus system meant to replace the Big 6, and give lots of utilitarian items.
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even better idea.
if you really want to go way over the wealth by level but still accomodate your traditional baddies.
come up with a level based inherent bonus system meant to replace the Big 6, and give lots of utilitarian items.
This is how I normally run my games actually.
I'm trying to figure out how to run a Final Fantasy style game, which characters can exchange lots of magic item properties back and forth.
I still have the 800 page Final Fantasy RPG they released like 14 years go...
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IF you want to increase the WBL just give your huaniod NPC's better gear and magic items. that alone ajusts te WBL and your PC's earn the loot they find. I generaly give out magic items at 1/2 the PC's level of bonus. EL 6 characters will find items of +3 equivlant value. Some times wounders items don't follow that I just place a wounderous Item that I feel a certain party member might need. I favora high magic high power game opposed to the standard Pathfinder moderate to low magic treasure rate.
The main problem I see wih the WBL table you can't get magic items
of a power so that you don't have to relie on your class abilities. Also you don't have enough wealth to live normaly and normal living expenses are hand waved. You don't get to have ttless that really mean any thing. Pathfinders seem to live outside the noraml social fabric of the lands they travel through.
If you want to run high powered game, run 25 point buys for your PC's. With high wealth as well, you'll probably be more conserned with finding a challenge for them rather than wiping the party. Your players may vary, but that's what the current campaign I'm on fell into.
You do know that the standard for High Fantasy games is double the listed Wealth Bonus Per Level values right? The values on the Treasure Values Per Encounter table are doubled as well. Just do that and you can still call it RAW. It's a little known rule. Throw in 25-point buy characters and a fast XP track and you will have an Epic High Fantasy game in no time.
If your campaign has an abundance of magic (as High Fantasy is want to do) than the base value and random magic items available on the Available Magic Items table in the Magic Item Chapter doubles as well!
Don't adjust the encounters though. Otherwise, the players lose the feeling of being epic.
I find just adding a lot of mooks helps too. Not only do help make the encounters more challenging, it gives fodder for your PC's to wade through and feel epic.
Slaughtering 20 orcs along with your 3 CR apropriate mobs can make for a story in the Pub later!
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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In my next game, I plan on cranking the Wealth By Level way over the limit, almost totally with wondrous or spell and feat granting items, but also stat and damage boosting items.
The thing I'm worried about is the PCs attack becoming so strong that enemies who can stand up to it will wipe the party due to its low defenses.
I was thinking of attaching HP / AC / Save boosts to the items so that the party scales up completely, almost as if they are gaining levels.
Ideas?
AC items, cloaks of resistance, and Con belts improve PC survivability inherently.
OTOH, if you are worried about monster survivability vs. their ability to wipe the PCs, simplest solution is to multiply all monster hp by some factor and grant a static bonus to all monster saves. Say, 1.5x or 2x hp and a +4 bonus on all saves. I wouldn't adjust AC or else your awesome PCs won't be able to reliably hit, and that's no fun.
I'm currently running a rise of the runelords game and instead of just following the loot of the adventure I'm rolling it randomly and dropping in a few specific items for the characters, that combined with rolled stats that came out pretty good for everybody I had to amp up the monsters a decent bit. I'm currently giving them all max hp's, esspecially on the fights with fewer mobs than players. even with mid power level characters that are optimized even a little when the party is able to focus it's attacks on one target it pretty much vaporizes.
Just try to keep in mind what your parties capabilities are and give them at least some challenge. upping thier stats to about the levle of the party and maybe an additional bonus to saves to stop casters from taking over too much seems to help alot
Asta
PSY
I think how much wealth by level impacts your games depends on how much of it goes into the big six. In a game recently my char got an item that prevents aging, its worth 10k gp but really contributes nothing to the characters power level unless it has an effect on the story.
even better idea.
if you really want to go way over the wealth by level but still accomodate your traditional baddies.
come up with a level based inherent bonus system meant to replace the Big 6, and give lots of utilitarian items.
This is how I normally run my games actually.
I'm trying to figure out how to run a Final Fantasy style game, which characters can exchange lots of magic item properties back and forth.
I'm trying to devise something similar for our games, I was talking about it with a friend two days ago... How does your systems work?
I was thinking of giving stat increase at even level and double stat increase every four level (you can choose where to put your increases every time but for the levels in which you get 2 increases you can't allocate them on a single stat). I think this is pretty strong at low level, about even at mid level and quite weak at high level. The idea would be to get rid of all stat increase items (tomes and manuals included) but the maintain the same WBL.
The other idea was that weapon should get a property for every +1 enhancement bonus (in order, +1; +1 and 1 property; +2 and 1 prop; +2 and 2 prop and so on: you could get ahead with property, so +1 holy is fine).
I think that, other than being more fun, this could reduce a bit the distance between optimizers and suckers.
In my next game, I plan on cranking the Wealth By Level way over the limit, almost totally with wondrous or spell and feat granting items, but also stat and damage boosting items.
The thing I'm worried about is the PCs attack becoming so strong that enemies who can stand up to it will wipe the party due to its low defenses.
Easy solution: start with 10 point buy. Don't make encounters too strong at first. Once the PCs start accumulating stronger items, start working to where a challenging encounter is APL + 2 (instead of APL + 1). Beware of pushing encounters above APL + 3 -- maybe the BBEG encounters excluded.