Hey all!
I'm a fairly new player. Just hit level five and completed the first chapter of Rise of the Runelords. My entire group is totally in love with it so far (we're all first time players), but we're getting a little frustrated with the lack of gold we're receiving.
Browsing the shops, we see there are tons of expensive stuff (that we'd like to get!), but we just haven't even come close to accumulating the wealth to do so. Our GM usually squashes any attempt I make, as a rogue, to sweet talk NPCs into rewards and the loot we've found rarely covers our expenses for our potion supplies. None of us have really surpassed the 1000GP limit yet.
We split all gold found evenly amoungst our five members unless it's award to a specific character for a specific reason. Our biggest pay out was a hidden chest in Thistletop, so far. But we figured beating the final boss (not naming names for spoiler reasons) would yield a higher gold payout than 15GP each. Granted, we haven't appraised or sold any of the gear we looted off her yet.
I just feel like we'll be leaving Sandpoint soon and we haven't had the chance to accumulate the wealth needed to buy any of the more useful items in the stores yet!
Is this a standard thing? Is our GM not scaling the gold drops for the size of our party? Or should we just expect to be scraping by for awhile? Is there something we're doing wrong as a party?
I remember thi king the loot was light when I was playing the first bit of Runelords as well. This could be because both of our parties missed some good hidden stashes. I also,seem to recall most of our profits coming from stuff we sold, rather than straight cash, excess weapons and armor, dinky magic items we didn't want, that sort of thing.
If your DM is following an Adventure Path, the equipment should be balanced already from the spoils of your conquered enemies. Make sure you're using Detect Magic frequently to pick up any loot on corpses that might be enchanted. Use the Appraise skill to determine if something has a value above the standard book price. Even a common dagger can be worth hundreds if it's masterwork quality.
Finally, if all else fails, speak to the DM and mention that your character doesn't have an appropriate wealth by level. It's their job to make sure the treasure balances out to give everyone more or less what they need at their character's level, but often this can sometimes slip through the cracks between all the other work that goes into running a campaign.
this question just may have been raised once or twice before
General concensus is that the AP is a little light in the first 1-2 books but you soon catch up, and a lot of the wealth is bundled in to batches and as you approach a batch you may feel a little poor, but then more than catch up, slowly decline and then catch up again.
Also if you are more than a 4 player party your GM has several choices in how to balance encounters, one of those is limiting party wealth (it's not always the best one as parties will then focus only on items they really need like armour and weapons, rather than the nice idiosyncratic trinkets GMs love to see used in clever ways).
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You only have one extra person, so I wouldn't expect you to be drastically affected.
What are your expectations? What kinds of gear are you wanting to buy at fifth level?
And how much are you investing in potions? That's not something I've ever had be a significant party expense, either as a player or a GM. What kind of potion expenses do you have?
Is this a standard thing? Is our GM not scaling the gold drops for the size of our party? Or should we just expect to be scraping by for awhile? Is there something we're doing wrong as a party?
Murder-Hobo plan (aka, nearly every D&D/Pathfinder adventure ever):
Step 1: Break into the homes of the "bad" guys
Step 2: Kill the "bad" guys
Step 3: Take their stuff
Step 4: Profit!
That random fighter you just took down who has a breast plate, a masterwork longsword, a composite longbow (+1 str), and a potion of Cure Light Wounds? That is not unlikely equipment for a 2nd level mook to be carrying around. You can sell that for 100 + 157 + 100 + 25 = 382 gp.
Fought a random 4th level wizard? Make sure to grab that spellbook. Oh, look! 2nd—glide, knock, levitate, rope trick 1st—ant haul, enlarge person, erase, expeditious retreat, gravity bow, hold portal, jump, magic weapon, shield. All together, that's worth 365 gp. Sell for half - 182 gp.
Get a Handy Haversack or Bag of Holding or just a donkey and load it up with all the random stuff you find. You'd be surprised at how much some of that is worth.