Hey urrybody. So as the subject says, I'm about to start RotR after having been out of the game for the better part of a decade. I was going over the beginning of the AP, and I saw the first combat is with a group of goblins with dogslicers. The statblock says to look to the statblock in the Bestiary for all the relevant information. Am I also supposed to give them all the gear the B1 statblock mentions? That is, the stats say:
"NPC gear (leather armor, light wooden shield, shortsword*, short bow with 20 arrows, other treasure)"
*this is to be changed to a dogslicer
Is the "other treasure" part supposed to be accounted for? According to the rules, a warrior 1 NPC should have 260 gp worth of gear, but this gets increased to the next level up (390 gp) due to the fact that the AP runs on the fast experience track. Am I supposed to subtract the named gear from this total and fill in the rest for each of these goblin warriors (346 gp each remaining)?
Don't worry about giving the encounters anything more than is described, there is plenty of treasure in the campaign (although right at the start is a bit slow but it catches up).
The basic weapons and armour is fine, goblins use poor gear if you upgrade them to better equipment than most starting pc's that is just going to cause problems in the first fights. The goblin warriors at thistletop probably need the bows they should not matter in Sandpoint
Hey urrybody. So as the subject says, I'm about to start RotR after having been out of the game for the better part of a decade. I was going over the beginning of the AP, and I saw the first combat is with a group of goblins with dogslicers. The statblock says to look to the statblock in the Bestiary for all the relevant information. Am I also supposed to give them all the gear the B1 statblock mentions? That is, the stats say:
"NPC gear (leather armor, light wooden shield, shortsword*, short bow with 20 arrows, other treasure)"
*this is to be changed to a dogslicer
Is the "other treasure" part supposed to be accounted for? According to the rules, a warrior 1 NPC should have 260 gp worth of gear, but this gets increased to the next level up (390 gp) due to the fact that the AP runs on the fast experience track. Am I supposed to subtract the named gear from this total and fill in the rest for each of these goblin warriors (346 gp each remaining)?
I think the secret answer here is in the Treasure entry in the Bestiary page 6: “NPC gear” indicates the monster has treasure as normal for an NPC of a level equal to the monster’s CR (see page 454 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook)." Sounds good, except the gold piece values you are quoting are for a CR 1 warrior and the goblins are CR1/3.
I'd suggest giving the goblins the armor, weapons and not much else. These goblins are poor. They live in squalor and the refuse of Sandpoint, they aren't carrying 200gp in extraneous gear/treasure.
[Cue Orthodox WBL Mathemetician] - "If you don't give the PC's every single copper piece called for in the tables you're going to leave them completely screwed!"
To show what a heretic I am - not only did I not add any treasure to the goblins (beyond what is listed in the AP) but I further ruled that in addition to being small (a touch more limited market than medium) none of the merchants in town has much interest in goblin weapons or armor so I only let them sell it for a mere fraction of its value.
The other thing to consider is that the loot for the individual goblins has probably been added together to make up the treasury at Thistletop rather than being spread among every goblin evenly.
I did not allow much selling of goblin gear either, initially I allowed some but after a fairly short period only masterwork goblin gear was of any interest. And even without the value of the goblin gear the pc's get WBL by level 3 or 4 and are often above it later in the campaign
Here's another thing to consider. The opening scenario has
Spoiler:
about two dozen goblins attacking the town as a distraction.
Why would these goblins be going into this carrying any treasure? They won't have any coin, or anything else beyond the gear they need for their job.
Other than the few that have healing potions, don't worry about giving them any treasure. If any of them are carrying something valuable, it will be because they just stole it during the attack, and it should be obvious to the PCs that this stuff belongs to someone in town.
If I only give the goblins their listed gear from their B1 entries (and leave out the "other treasure" part) and add up everything else, the treasure total is 4,357 gp by the time they defeat Tsuto, claiming their second level. That's almost 1,100 gp per PC in a 4-person party, roughly matching the WBL.
The only reason you should worry about treasure is when the game balance changes. If the party is really hurting at each fight then they'll need a boost, give them too much money however and they'll steamroll your encounters.
It is very hard to slow down a party once they get too much wealth.
I really, really dislike the idea of every encounter just handing random treasure pieces over to the party. Like, "This goblin is...wearing a +1 Chainmail. Enjoy your new armor.", because I think that it makes no sense and it would be a really big deal when the party actually saw the character.
What I try to do is encourage players to ignore "treasure" that isn't actually, you know, treasure. Like, goblin leathers and swords, Sinspawn ranseurs and other things. Because what purpose does it serve? What scenario other than the whole "It's fantasy, who cares" part of RPGs would see a random person strolling into a general store and dumping a dozen swords on the table and asking how much they can sell them for? Why would the merchant want a pile of used leather or swords? Don't they have their own in stock already, probably better quality and waiting for someone to buy? If they bought your pile of a dozen swords, now they just need to find a dozen new customers to unload this new stock on, so they're probably not going out of their way to pay full buying price for a pile of junk they probably can't even sell.
So I treat loot more realistically. Players take the things that really have value, and know that I'll be treating merchants a bit more realistically. Even with a lot of the treasure the game hands out just being junk, they never seem to fall behind in the gear department, because the game gives out plenty anyway.
Also, remember that APs try to keep players within Wealth By Level by assigning a total value of loot to be collected by the time players hit level 2, 3, 4, etc. The problem is, you'll soon notice that a lot of the party's TOTAL WBL is going to be tied up in one or two items. For example, Erylium's dagger, which the players should acquire after level two, but before level 3. This dagger is a +1 Returning Cold Iron dagger, which according to Pathfinder rules has a value of 10,302gp. That's pretty much the entire sum of the party's wealth by level 3, all tied up into one item. It's certainly worth more than everything else they'll acquire in the chapter put together, not to mention that it's Tiny sized, so likely no one will want to use it, and there's no logical way to sell it, because who the hell in Sandpoint is going to buy a 10,300gp tiny dagger? Who would even have that much money to spend, much less to blow on what's pretty much the most useless item on the planet?
You may need to think on these things and entertain ways to handle them as a GM. You can handwave it and just let players do whatever, or you can be more strict with your style, but it's good to at least be prepared for when issues you hadn't thought about will inevitably crop up, because they always do eventually.
If I only give the goblins their listed gear from their B1 entries (and leave out the "other treasure" part) and add up everything else, the treasure total is 4,357 gp by the time they defeat Tsuto, claiming their second level. That's almost 1,100 gp per PC in a 4-person party, roughly matching the WBL.
** spoiler omitted **
Whoops, one correction to this. In the Against the Goblins encounter at the end, it's really 7 dogslicers, and 1 broken dog slicer (one of the goblins broke their weapon in area A9 and discarded it). A broken dogslicer is only worth 6 gp instead of 8.
I hear ya, but I don't want my players to fall behind in the treasure section, and I don't mind allowing them to sell that stuff and still maintain verisimilitude. Plus anything can be explained away if you try hard enough. For instance the town was TOTALLY all about the PCs selling them that scrap in order to use it to rebuild whatever was damaged in the goblin attack (swords can be melted down, leather can be used for various structural repairs and bindings, etc.). Not to mention shortbows are always handy, nevermind if they're sized for a Small creature. Arrows are that weird item that doesn't have rules really for weapon size, so there you go.
Plus, even if a shop probably won't sell something to a customer, they do engage in trade with other shops in other towns. It's perfectly reasonable for a shop in Sandpoint to to sell a huge deposit of crap from a PC party's recent forays with trespassing and murder to a larger, more frequented shop in Magnimar.
What I did was to give the party a "bounty" for every goblin that was killed that was equal to the value of any gear that would have been sold. For those goblins that had gear better than normal, the party either kept it or actually sold it. In the end, the party received their gold they deserved even if they didn't want to bother with the crappy gear.
I promise you, your players won't fall behind in loot if they're not picking up and selling every scrap of cloth and metal they pull off a corpse. That's not how D&D/Pathfinder work, they're not video games where you NEED to be upgrading constantly.
A +1 longsword will most likely last the average player a whole book, and that's perfectly fine. If you really feel like they're falling behind in the cash department and need help in the form of potions or scrolls, it's a better idea to have a shopkeeper offer those specific things at a discount, or have a friendly NPC offer theirs (Shalelu has a healing wand in her gear, she can loan it out) rather than convince the players that they need to be selling scraps of goblin leather and crude clubs because they need their pockets filled so they can keep stocked on items.
It's better to find a way to supplement the party's income rather than make them feel like they need to seek out cash. More than that, it's better to supplement their income in a way that removes cash from the equation. Have your NPCs like Hemlock loan them armor or potions if needed, that way the players aren't thinking "Ok, how much money am I saving here". It makes the act of saving the day seem like a quest rather than a financial obligation.
