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My GM lets us flip flop and introduce new characters every so often, and for those secondary PCs, he never allows us full character wealth. He makes us one level poorer, as he feels our main characters should be more powerful. I know these are replacement, and not secondary characters, but if you think the full WBL is too much, just scale it back. If it ends up being too little, throw some extra loot their way to make up for it. I know it's an AP, but ultimately you're running the show, so you can make adjustments as you see fit.
My characters may all die at the end of the third book of Kingmaeker. I am having them make back up characters and we are comming to a problem with gear. If they use the avg character wealth by level as arcording to the Core they will have 62k gp in gear. This seems like a lot as their current 9th level characters seem to have much less loot. If I use the avg wealth for creation of their back up characters, I feel like they will be overpowered.
Has anyone else come across this problem? Is 62k gp too much or the right ammount? What should I do?
How does the 62k gp compare if you consider expended consumables and items that were traded out for an upgrade? I'm not sure if the writers were thinking of it that way or not, but it could account for the difference you're seeing.
For example, if a character uses an average of 2-3 cure light wounds potions per episode and levels every 3-4 episodes, that's about 8-9 potions per level x 9 levels x 50 gp for 3500-4000 gp.
Likewise, a character that trades in a masterwork breastplate in favor of full plate is out 350 gp worth of gear, depending on whether the character could sell the old one and for how much. If it was a +1 breastplate, the character is out 1350 gp.
That might make the wealth per level fall in line with what you're seeing in your party.
In my experience the standard WBL chart scales pretty well and i use it in most circumstances. 62k buys a fighter a +3armor, +2weapon, gloves of dueling, +4 belt and some misc other gear rings of prot/amulet of NA etc.. thats certainly not overpowering gear for a 10th level fighter imo..
if your characters are well behind WBL then it makes a lot of sense that they may all die. This is a self fulfilling prophecy :-)
WBL is a fine guide line for paizo senarios. And my players expectations :-)
But depends on the builds - superoptimized builds might need less loot to be effencient, but vanilia builds will suffer if they are behind WBL.