Lost Gold in Modules

[Illeist]

In a sanctioned module, what happens if the PCs fail to recover some of the treasure? In a season 0-4 scenario, you tally up the gold recovered, as noted at the encounters' ends, and that becomes the gold the PCs receive. In a season 5 scenario, you subtract the gold the PCs fail to recover from the total. But what about modules? Do you tally up the gold the party receives and divide by the number of players? What about custom items with no listed cost?

Thornkeep: Enigma Vaults Spoilers

Spoiler:

Unsurprisingly, my party failed to defeat the Visitant (which, as many others have noted, is an APL +4 creature with the equipment of a CR 11 creature), so he escaped with 6,900 gp in wands. If one simply divides the lost gold by the number of players and subtracts that from the sheet, that takes somewhere between 1,150 gp and 1,725 gp from the 4,800 gp reward. The total gold in the module falls somewhere between 26,079 gp and 35,679 gp (depending on whether the mithral pepperbox rifle has any value and whether the PCs get the gold from Baron Blackshield for taking out the rogues). With six players (which my table had), that means a total gold value, sans wands, of between 4796.5 gp and 3529.83 gp. For purposes of a table ruling, I divided the 6,900 gp the party lost by 4 (an arbitrary "good hustle" act of generosity/lynch-preventing) and then by 6 (the number of players) for a total of 362.5 gp removed from each chronicle sheet. One of the players is notably unhappy with that ruling, however, and has decided not to accept a chronicle sheet without further discussion on the matter. Unfortunately, there are just too many moving pieces out of my power for me to give a binding ruling, and I was hoping that someone with more expertise and/or authority than myself in the matter could chime in and help out a bit.

[BigNorseWolf]

Tallying up gold gotten or taking off the gold found are the exact same thing. (hopefully its less math to start with the total and subtract off what the party didn't get than to go up from 0 with what they did find...)

baring something spelled out in the moduel, i think if he escaped then he was defeated and the party gets its treasurebath. By PFS rules as I understand them defeat is just as good as killing something. If the party had FLED I'd take off the treasure, but the usual language is if the party fails to defeat X take off...

[Alecak]

If they chase him out he is Defeated. therefore they get the gold/gear he had via PFS rules. So you shouldn't have taken gold off.

At least that is how i read the rules.

[gnoams]

The PFS chronicles for modules give you an appropriate amount of gold for PFS play. That doesn't necessarily correlate with the amount of treasure that was actually in the module. From the numbers you posted, if they found everything they would be way over the cap of the chronicle. So just because they didn't get everything, doesn't mean they aren't still over cap. If you want to be accurate you'd have count up the value of everything they found.

Also, not sure about Thornkeep, but some of the modules are written for only 4 players, so it would only give 4 players worth of treasure. If that was the case, then you should divide by 4, even though you played with 6.

[Iammars]

Adding up treasure and taking off the top are two different things. (Modules don't always add up to the number on the chronicle sheet since they aren't designed for PFS play.)

Basically, take the treasure that the PCs didn't get, add up the 1/2 the cost of each item they didn't get, then divide that number by 4 and subtract it from each chronicle.

(Here's a link from a similar situation I had in Dawn of the Scarlet Sun. Warning - Dawn of the Scarlet Sun spoilers on the other side of that link.)

Which means your math should look like this:

Thornkeep: Enigma Vaults Spoilers:

Scroll of Summon Monster III - 3*5*25/2 = 187.5
Scroll of Summon Monster IV - 4*7*25/2 = 350
Wand of Charm Monster (10 charges) - 4*7*750*10/50/2 = 2100
Wand of Invisibility (15 charges) - 2*3*750*15/50/2 = 675
Wand of Sound Burst (15 charges) - 2*3*750*15/50/2 = 675
187.5+350+2100+675+675 = 3987.5
3987.5/4 = 996.875 (probably rounded to 997 to make things easier)

As for whether or not the players "defeated" the encounter - use your best judgment.

[Don Walker]

I believe there is a guideline for players who miss a part of a module when it runs over multiple sessions. The GM is supposed to reduce the gold by 1/3 for each session missed, down to a minimum of 1/3 total gold as listed on the Chronicle. I know it's not the same thing, but I believe the GM may adjust gold for missed items down to a minimum of 1/3 as they see fit.

[GreySector]

I was one of the players involved.

Enigma Vaults treasure:

I made a spreadsheet of the treasure available in the module with calculations for treasure splits of parties of various sizes as well as the gear for the escaped monster.

[GreySector]

James McTeague wrote:

Adding up treasure and taking off the top are two different things. (Modules don't always add up to the number on the chronicle sheet since they aren't designed for PFS play.)

Basically, take the treasure that the PCs didn't get, add up the 1/2 the cost of each item they didn't get, then divide that number by 4 and subtract it from each chronicle.

I can't quite follow the connection between your first and second paragraphs. If there is more total treasure available than can be acquired on the chronicle sheet, and the PCs fail to get some of it, then why should you simply take what they fail to get off of the total on the chronicle sheet?

For example, a chronicle sheet for a module says that each PC gets 5,000gp. There is a total of 50,000gp available in the module. The PCs fail to get 10,000gp of that treasure. Even divided 6 ways, there is still more than enough treasure available for each PC to receive the full reward on the chronicle sheet.

As a side note I'm not sure how the treasure numbers on the chronicle sheets for modules are derived (presumably the total treasure for the module is divided by some number of PCs and perhaps adjusted down to some WBL guideline).

[Avatar-1]

I don't know if this relates to this particular module, but it's worth noting because it's often missed:

The PFS guide specifies that if the players somehow get around an encounter using a creative solution instead of what was intended, but miss out on some treasure in doing so, the GM should give the treasure to the PCs anyway. (PFS guide, p33).

[Don Walker]

Gold rewards on chronicles for modules and adventure paths are based on wealth-by-level expected earnings and not from the items available in the adventure. This is because modules and adventure paths are not written specifically for PFS and rely on the home GM to control the PC wealth whereas in PFS, the chronicle sheets are used to keep PC wealth on track.