Legacy of Fire Loot Level Low?

[RaizielDragon]

I'm a player in a Legacy of Fire campaign, so please no spoilers.

I was talking to our GM the other day and I mentioned that the amount of loot we've been getting seems kind of low, and he agreed. It may just be me, as I like high-wealth/magic campaigns, but wanted to get others POV.

We are still in the first city (can't remember the name) and are currently clearing it out. We've just entered the Battle Market (stealthily) and are making our way up to the 3rd floor. We haven't been noticed by the entire market yet, and the only encounter we've had so far was with a guard station on the second floor.

This means that we've explored pretty much all of the points of interest throughout the rest of the city (unless there is a larger portion I don't know about).

Anyway, basically all we've found in the way of loot is whatever mundane gear the creatures we've encountered had on them.

Is it assumed that the GM is supposed to be inserting extra loot to supplement whatever is listed in the AP? This is the first time GMing for our GM, so maybe he didn't realize he was supposed to be inserting loot.

Or is this just a low-wealth AP? Or maybe just a low-wealth portion of the AP?

[Landon Winkler]

I can't speak specifically to Legacy of Fire, but AP volumes usually have treasure distributed through the volume quite unevenly. There'll often be one big horde or a final boss with most of the magical items.

It's not assumed that the GM will insert any more loot, no. It's often considered "best practices" to make sure major rewards are actually items the PCs can use, but that's about it.

That said, Legacy of Fire is pretty old and predates the Pathfinder rules, so it may be worth waiting for respondents more experienced with this AP.

Cheers!
Landon

[Bondoid]

I've been GMing Legacy of Fire,

From my own experience, there was a plethora of loot in the first adventure, by the end the group was substantially past the wealth by level estimate. Though we did run the set piece adventure as well.

How many players are in your group? We had 4 characters, if you have more obviously loot distribution would be limited..

Also, there is a lot of adventuring you guys have left to do, things could turn around, complain at the end of the adventure!

[RaizielDragon]

I realize there is a lot of adventuring left to do.

We just reached level 4 before entering the Battle Market. My character had died in our last encounter before that, which was at the end of a session, so I made a new 4th level character. The WBL for a 4th level character is 6000gp, iirc, and I'm fairly confident that none of the other characters have that much loot.

We've consistently had 4-5 players showing up for sessions, but more monsters to make up for the extra party members (which the GM was taking into account) should equate to more loot.

Like I said, we've basically received nothing other than mundane gear here and there, off the bodies of gnolls mainly, which we've also had no chance to sell as we haven't been to a proper town where we could sell loot.

What this basically boils down to is no one has anything magical. We have our starting loot and a bunch of random crap we picked off dead gnolls, with maybe a handful of gp thrown in here or there. One of the players is the moldspeaker or whatever it's called, so he got a magical item, and one of the other players is a Blackblade Magus, so he essentially has a magic item, but one is a story plot item and the other is a class feature.

If the loot distribution is uneven, and I should be expecting a big pile of treasure once we clean out the Battle Market, that's fine. I mainly just want to make sure that our green GM is running things correctly, as he also seemed surprised at the lack of loot.

[Bondoid]

Treasure is usually buried in a wall of text, and is easily missed.

Also you guys may just be failing at perception checks! Either not looking into the right places, or rolling poorly when it matters.

That said, most of the loot (value wise) is concentrated in a couple locations/npcs. I'm sure you will be happier by the time you finish.

Also, every GM, needs to take treasure into their own hands to some extent. Limiting/enhancing treasure to keep the group in the level your comfortable with and desire. (Playing low magic games can be really fun! Though LoF, probably doesn't fit that mold).

But if you guys haven't done the Battle Market and stuff after that yet, don't worry about loot, you should get some soon.

[Reverse]

Remember that Kelmarane is essentially a ruined and abandoned village. There aren't just chests of gold or valuable magic loot sitting around willy-nilly in every house. It's far more likely to be in the hands of boss-types or locked up somewhere safe than sitting around or in a random gnoll's hands.

There are a few hidden pieces you may have missed owing to low Search / Perception checks, but the adventure actually provides more loot than your WBL, with the assumption that you'll miss several bits (by missing a Search check, an NPC running away with his loot, etc).

There's plenty of loot available in Howl of the Carrion King. I count at least 3 or 4 solid, hard-to-miss magical items (including the moldspeaker's weapon), as well as a bunch of other stuff you might or might now find.

However, I will point out a couple of things:

- More monsters for more party members won't necessarily make up more loot. An average gnoll's mundane weapons are fairly worthless in comparison. You might ask the GM to take a look at upping, say, a chest of gold coins by an extra 15% to account for an extra party member.

- Don't expect to be able to sell your gear all that easily throught the Legacy of Fire. Particularly in Kelmarane, as there are no merchants, but there are plenty of spots where there isn't an easy Magic-Mart available. Be prepared to save your gold and have bigger shopping sprees rather than many spread out ones.

- Finally, remember Almah is paying you in cash to retake the village, so expect some more 'treasure' in that form after successfully completing the adventure.

[jhpace1]

I've played Legacy of Fire, and I'm GM-ing it now, and yes, treasure is low, uneven, and there are loooonnng stretches of no treasure whatsoever.

It's going to be really rough on the players unless as a GM you give the Moldspeaker prophetic dreams or GM hints, or you have a sufficiently paranoid and/or Jack-of-All-Trades PC. The plot twists from the first and second book to the third and fourth books are really heavy, even worse than Rise of the Runelords.

I mean, you go from the boonies, the sticks, with equipment in the first book, to a major capital city in the third, to the boonies again, plus an unique dungeon crawl before coming back to your roots in the boonies, but this time as a 12th-to-14th-Level player.

So my advice: save every copper, be prepared to sell everything and re-Wealth by Level on a single day's notice, and go for the Big Six and weapons/armor and extradimensional storage at the drop of a pin. Being "lean and mean" as a PC will hurt, not help you, and may even kill you unless you have a very self-sufficient team (food, water, healing, materials).

And a lot of your loot is going to be barter or sell-at-half-price. Not that much actual gold pieces.

Crafting other than on-the-go will really not be possible after the second book. Book 2 to 6, you're a nomad. If your character can pull it off, more power to you. But in my opinion a high Diplomacy check and Appraise skill will be worth more than Craft or Profession.

[MRick]

I'm DMing LOF with pathfinder rules, and my players are now finishing The end of Eternity (part 4 of 6).

I find that there is too much treasure in this campaign.

Since the end of The howl of the Carrion King all characters have been ahead of the wealth by level.

Of course most of the treasure is hidden, and my players missed about 25% of the hidden treasure, but still they're ahead of the supposed wealth for their level.

However there's one thing to my campaign :
I gave them less levels than suggested. The reason is simple : Pathfinder characters are a bit more powerfull than 3.5 characters, and the LOF campaign was written fo 3.5.

The characters in my campaign are 1 level behind the proposed progression.

[Shroud]

One of the golden rules (hehe) in all of my games that I tell PC's is to build and design characters / concepts that are not reliant on equipment or magic items to function. I normally have 6-8 PC's in any given campaign and I do not add any additional loot outside of mundane gear they may salvage from increased numbers generic henchmen/troops.

Additionally, we do not let characters claim valuable magic items just because it fits their class, etc... All treasure is calculated to a GP value (50% for items since they need to be sold to redeem the value)and then each PC gets an equal share.....if they want a particular item, then it's value is deducted from their share. If they don't have enough, then the item is sold off. Let's face it, the Rogue isn't going to willingly give up all his 'treasure' share just so the Fighter can claim the magic sword, and the magic shield, and the magic armor and......oh look, everybody else gets 12gp and a potion.

I also use purchase limit's for towns so that overpowered items don't get purchased in excess. If a PC wishes to craft items, I require that they individually meet 100% of the requirements for item creation. No adding to the DC to ignore level or spell requirements and no co-operative crafting.

Despite these limitations, all the players still end up with a ridiculous amount of magic and power by time they hit 12-13th level. I can't imagine how over-powered PC's are in games where there are fewer restrictions. You can always give more power if you need to, but trying to limit it after the fact is like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube......not likely.

IMO