My group generally sticks to adventure paths, and somehow it seems even when we find decent items, we're always way behind the recommended wealth by level chart.
I'm wondering how to actually approach the wealth the game is designed for me to have, without taking mega time outs from the adventure path to do a years worth of crafting and selling for instance, or other time intensive money making schemes.
As an example, the party is just hitting level 8 in Carrion Crown. Going through my inventory, I have about 6k gold worth of items (including spell scrolls bought and learned), and I haven't really gone through consumables to drain my coffers. If I count unusable loot that was sold at half price, then the most my character has seen is still under 8K.
For an adventure path that is supposed to take characters to much higher levels and supply their general needs, am I missing something critical? Or are the adventure paths really written loot poor that you have to scrounge like a miser just to have even 1 level appropriate item?
We're also on the medium xp path, and likely to switch to the slow xp path soon. The last adventure path (RotRL) was similar for wealth.
Which APs are below WBL?
At least one AP I know (CoT) gives out so much treasure (well over double WBL) that I have had to tone it down. My suggestion is to do the reverse of what I do, increase the treasure handed out.
It might be the unusable loot that is sold at half price that caused the problem. One solution is to implement a house rule where buying and selling is done at full price (or crafted price for crafted items). This gets away from the economics and instead deals with the game value of the item.
- Gauss
Carrion Crown had a little experiment in it. Paizo decide to give our more loot in the from of consumables than permanent magic items. I did not care for it myself, so I added things in when I ran it.
A few questions...
How many players? Are there more then 4. The APs are written with 4 players in mind... and give loot for that many.
Are your players skipping areas, NPCs, or are enemies getting away?
And finally I usually find most Modules are light on magic items. I usually dont mind because I like to throw in magic times I want my party to have... stuff that is helpful based on the classes they play.
As a DM you can do quite a bit...
If you see the 4th +2 cloak of CHA in the loot hoard... nothing keeps you from making it a +2 gloves of Dex instead... because you know the rogue will want those. This gives him a needed item and it doubles the worth of that time... because he doesn't have to sell the cloak for half value and save for his gloves.
You can also insert interesting items you like but have seen little use. I love stuff like the feather tokens. They can be fun to use or to sell if the party doesnt need them.
And third the SRD has a random loot generator that is really nice. Give it a try if you want to inject some wealth into your game.
Even the consumables are in small supply, I'm including consumables and wealth that I sold when I say I have seen under 8K in gear after just hitting level 8. That's 1/3 of the level 7 wealth and 1/4 of the level 8 wealth, and even less if the chart means usable wealth by level.
While items often get distributed as to need and ability to use, I don't think the other party members really have much more loot. I have the character sheet of another party member (he died so I 'looted' him), and he doesn't have any more than I do.
4 players total, and I don't think we've skipped anything, and when money rewards have been available we've been at 80%+ for getting max reward. While we don't have a perfect track record the list of escaped enemies or missed opportunities, it shouldn't account for the large difference if modules are designed to reward close to wealth by level
I have yet to run a pre-written adventure from any publisher where I do not significantly modify the treasure handout. Simply put, the authors cannot tailor the equipment to my players.
- Gauss
Lythe:
If a module is designed to award WBL then it is giving too little treasure. WBL is a good metric for how much a player should have. It is not intended as a metric to determine how much to give the player. That is part of Table 12-5. Table 12-5 is about 30-40% higher than WBL (depending on level). This is probably assuming consumables being used and sold equipment.
- Gauss
my skull and shackle's party is very loot poor as well. even though we are splitting the plunder among the party after we pay the crew.