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I'm prepping a campaign right now that is kind of just a Varisia game but will be built on a backbone of Rise of the Runelords and Shattered Star with plenty of other bits thrown in there as well. I will be having the characters use the slow XP track and plan on scaling the AP installments up or down as needed. Ultimately the scaling shouldn't require moving the CRs up or down more than one or two at any given time.
Anyway, my concern comes in the distribution of wealth. I was originally planning on just leaving it alone so I didn't have to do a bunch of extra bookkeeping by reconfiguring all the distributed wealth. But then I got concerned that it may blow the curve a tad too much. If it means that they will have the effective wealth of a party a level higher or so that's not a big deal but if it is considerably more extreme I may need to dial it back. If the excess wealth is just kind of there to be spent on a big estate and servants than that's not an issue.
Has anyone else tried this and discovered significant issues?
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I would also like to avoid putting 'over gold' as a cause of death on my obituaries sheets.
'I wonder how he went to the bathroom with all this stuff on.'
You can always try replacing the loot with other forms of treasure - priceless paintings, antiques, and carvings for instance, or exotic perfumes and silks. Then you control the prices merchants will pay for that stuff, possibly requiring the PCs to roll Appraise to get the full value out of them.
The players will still feel like they're finding tons of stuff, but the actual gp they take home from their haul can be more tightly controlled.
In addition, they'll have to worry about logistics - a painting is much harder to transport than a gem for instance. This will further limit what they can haul back to town on each trip.
I thought about this but never had the chance to run it.
I would first outline or chart your planed encoutenter so you know what up for order, EXP, magic and gold. The complair player weatlh vs WBL table.
Cut cash and gems jewlery first.
Use cost of living then nick and dime them at ever chance you get.
Make sure you charge a spell casting service.
Make sure all religous type tith.
Watch pawn star and then never give more than 40% sale value on any thing player want to sell to store. Make the Normal resale vaule 25%.
How many party members this my take care of it all on it own?
My answer for this. Get rid of the XP system first of all.
Everyone now levels at the speed of plot. Hurrah for less book keeping!
Now, see that wealth by level table? It's a good guideline, so how do you preserve it? Just don't give out treasure where it would violate wealth by level unless there are very specific items that appear that would be hard to not allow the PCs to loot. If that is the case allow them to temporarily violate WBL, and just don't give them any more loot than that. When they level they will start to find more loot to balance everything out again.
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I considered having them level by fiat and I may still do that, I'm not sure yet. I prefer that method because it lets players just enjoy the story without having to hunt for XP, but at the same time with a slow progression handing out XP might give them a gauge of how close they are to gaining new levels at any given time. Alternatively, slow XP may not allow them to advance fast enough in the latter stages of the campaign. Also, the less bookkeeping the better in my opinion.
I don't mind a slightly wealthy game since it usually just means that characters waste it on useless crap. I once had a party that hired an entourage including a standard bearer because they had the extra money. It was kind of ridiculous but that sort of thing makes a game more fun. However, if they have the funds and decide to spend it on +5 magic items all around at level 10, that could be an issue.
Sound advice all around. I'm never terribly forgiving when it comes to selling loot anyway and the party quite often sells items, especially treasure items, for less than the sell value since they never bother to figure out what its worth. Forcing haggling, tithing, wages, etc will also help build up the roleplaying, which is never a bad thing. More art related objects should also help since I can see players using it to decorate their homes rather than sell it.
If they did keep full treasure from both APs plus the odd additional adventure how much would it skew the WBL?
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If they did keep full treasure from both APs plus the odd additional adventure how much would it skew the WBL?
Rise of the Runelords assumes a fast XP progression while Shattered Star assumes medium. Given a slow XP progression it seems like the party would generate almost twice what is assumed. Including side adventures such as Feast of Ravenmoor may even further skew the party's wealth.
I have been using a houserule that the wealth by level table is a physical in game mechanic kind of like encumbrance and it has been working good. I named it magical encumbrance for simplicity. The wealth by level table becomes how much magical equipment a character can equip at once. It takes a minute to bond an item and an item can be unbonded after resting 8 hours. Items that are totally consumed on use do not count against encumbrance such as potions, scrolls, and certain miscellaneous items. Items that you have duplicates of, such as wands, only need to be bound based on the number you want to use at any one time as opposed to binding each one (you could have 5 wands of cure light wounds but would only need to bind 1 but could use any one of them). Artifacts also do not count and neither do cursed items once they reveal their cursed nature.
So far this system has worked well. Excess gold can be spent on more magic items but it has diminishing returns as you cant bring those extra items to bear very easily. This encourages characters to spend excess gold on other things as the direct gold piece to magical item power incentive is reduced. This way you don't have to worry as much about excess treasure from the adventure path mash up.
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I have been using a houserule that the wealth by level table is a physical in game mechanic kind of like encumbrance and it has been working good. I named it magical encumbrance for simplicity. The wealth by level table becomes how much magical equipment a character can equip at once. It takes a minute to bond an item and an item can be unbonded after resting 8 hours. Items that are totally consumed on use do not count against encumbrance such as potions, scrolls, and certain miscellaneous items. Items that you have duplicates of, such as wands, only need to be bound based on the number you want to use at any one time as opposed to binding each one (you could have 5 wands of cure light wounds but would only need to bind 1 but could use any one of them). Artifacts also do not count and neither do cursed items once they reveal their cursed nature.
So far this system has worked well. Excess gold can be spent on more magic items but it has diminishing returns as you cant bring those extra items to bear very easily. This encourages characters to spend excess gold on other things as the direct gold piece to magical item power incentive is reduced. This way you don't have to worry as much about excess treasure from the adventure path mash up.
#SurprisinglyGood
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I have been using a houserule that the wealth by level table is a physical in game mechanic kind of like encumbrance and it has been working good. I named it magical encumbrance for simplicity. The wealth by level table becomes how much magical equipment a character can equip at once. It takes a minute to bond an item and an item can be unbonded after resting 8 hours. Items that are totally consumed on use do not count against encumbrance such as potions, scrolls, and certain miscellaneous items. Items that you have duplicates of, such as wands, only need to be bound based on the number you want to use at any one time as opposed to binding each one (you could have 5 wands of cure light wounds but would only need to bind 1 but could use any one of them). Artifacts also do not count and neither do cursed items once they reveal their cursed nature.
So far this system has worked well. Excess gold can be spent on more magic items but it has diminishing returns as you cant bring those extra items to bear very easily. This encourages characters to spend excess gold on other things as the direct gold piece to magical item power incentive is reduced. This way you don't have to worry as much about excess treasure from the adventure path mash up.
That is a really neat idea and may well implement it. You should throw this up in the houserule forum for the folks who truly adore little tweaks like this.
I really like it because it makes crafting useful in that you can get whatever item you want even if the market doesn't have it, but if you say that this "Magic Item Encumbrance" effect counts the full market price against your limit as determined by the Wealth By Level chart it takes away pretty much any shenanigans except for custom crafted items for which the magic item creation rules really don't provide a fair guideline for the power they introduce. I would personally exlude wands, potions, and scrolls from this limit since they have a limited number of uses, but you would still have to actually spend gold pieces to obtain them. Overall this limits characters power though, and you don't have to worry about even vastly exceeding wealth by level because you end up with non-combat oriented wealth spent on things like castles, or standard bears, or hiring people for administrative purposes, etc.
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Link to house rule thread I created about the magical encumbrance rules I have been using.
Tag 1/2 of every item they sell (rather than use) as non-combat wealth that must be used towards that end. Not a perfect solution, but likely to keep the problems to a minimum.