Your Saviors are taking your stuff - Varnhold treasure

[Richard D Bennett]

NOTE UP FRONT: I am a player in this campaign, so please avoid spoiler-y analysis.

Our party has just completed The Varnhold Vanishing and I am left with a moral conundrum: a good chunk of the treasure of this book is bound up in the items that belong to the Varnlings we just went to hell and back to rescue. On the one hand, I get moral complexity. On the other hand, future AP writers are using a CR system that builds in presumptions about our level of equipment. Kingmaker has had its share of treasure designed to make the PCs' lives onerous (I'm looking at you, statues in the Dancing Lady's Tower), but this may be the first time that I cannot envision a way for a good-aligned party to take recompense out of what they have found.

What sort of reactions have other parties drawn to the way in which treasure is handed out, or not handed out, over the course of the adventure?

[Orthos]

From what I remember most of the goodies in Varnhold itself were fairly minimal in value and I can't see much issue in giving them up; if the GM is trying to claim that all of Vordakai's loot belongs to the Varnholders, I'm not in agreement. The stuff in the city is theirs, but the vast majority of the treasure in the dungeon itself should be fair takings for the PCs.

[Gallo]

Plus if you go down the path of incorporating them into your kingdom you will spend far more in BP on the town than any loot that might belong to the town you may have got freeing them.

[pennywit]

Well, you remember that scene in Three Amigos!? The Amigos refuse the reward, but the people give it to them anyway. The Amigos shrug, then ride off into the sunset with their gold.

[Thrund]

IIRC all the Spriggans' treasure (apart from the centaur bow) has been taken from the town, and one chest of Vordakai's contains the valuable possessions of everyone he captured. Everything else should be fair game.

Also, as a more general thing, WBL is pretty irrelevant in Kingmaker. Some groups use crafting and the Kingdom's wealth to put themselves way over; other groups (like mine) donate everything they can't immediately use to the treasury in order to build the Kingdom quicker. It's really your DM's responsibility to tweak later books accordingly.

[Richard D Bennett]

Ironically, we have the opposite problem. The PCs who have survived the longest are furthest behind in character wealth, as new PCs have come into the game with wealth close to appropriate level. There just seems to have been a lot of treasure in the AP, with VV being one of the worst offenders, that the party had to have a really greedy streak in order to go through the trouble/morally-murky waters of acquiring.

[Orthos]

Can you give some other examples? I can't recall anything of that sort from the first two chapters out of some rare exceptions (Svetlana's ring in Chapter 1 for example).

[DM Under The Bridge]

Bookkeeper wrote:

NOTE UP FRONT: I am a player in this campaign, so please avoid spoiler-y analysis.

Our party has just completed The Varnhold Vanishing and I am left with a moral conundrum: a good chunk of the treasure of this book is bound up in the items that belong to the Varnlings we just went to hell and back to rescue. On the one hand, I get moral complexity. On the other hand, future AP writers are using a CR system that builds in presumptions about our level of equipment. Kingmaker has had its share of treasure designed to make the PCs' lives onerous (I'm looking at you, statues in the Dancing Lady's Tower), but this may be the first time that I cannot envision a way for a good-aligned party to take recompense out of what they have found.

What sort of reactions have other parties drawn to the way in which treasure is handed out, or not handed out, over the course of the adventure?

Lol adventurers.

A few gifts would not be untoward, doesn't mean they have to give the adventurers everything.

The truly good can demonstrate their selflessness by refusing, or only accepting some reward and politely leaving the Varnlings with most of the goodies.

[JohnB]

*Shrug* My party were always up with the curve - and are one of the least 'greedy' parties you will come across. Even at this stage they were missing things or giving them direct to NPCs who were working for them.

They took a few craft skills, employed a a few more crafters and made most of the stuff they wanted - and then just used what ever else was around, rather than trying to trade it all up for other things they wanted more.

[Richard D Bennett]

Thanks for the replies, folks!

I know that crafters have a tendency to blow the WBL out of the water in short order, but we are currently absent a full arcane caster.

It appears several of the PCs will be donating most, if not all, of their wealth to Varnhold or to an "Adventurer's Vault," which will be used to equip minions. Should be interesting, if deadly for the overly charitable.

[Reynard_the_fox]

I've found the adventure as written to be pretty light on treasure - I'm allowing my PCs to buy pretty much whatever they want at 65% of cost (thanks to the royal crafter), and I still need to feed them extra treasure to keep them at WBL. There's just not a lot of loot to go around. (Starting book 3 ATM.)

[Orthos]

After going one session into VV, I think I'm going to have the opposite problem.

Players Keep Out:

The group was utterly horrified by the goings-on at the Tannery, burned it down on the spot (much to the LG Viscountess's panic, as they just destroyed the evidence... not that the CN and CE party members care) and are out for blood on the Varnholders. They may rescue them, they may not, but I doubt they are going to care much about whether or not they get their stuff back because these people are committing war crimes, skinning their enemies for fur and hides. Heck, the Spymistress wanted to run three days back to Nivakta's Crossing (part of Varnhold in my game, not part of Restov) and slaughter the entire town for being complacent in this until the Ruler talked her out of it.