Calculating party wealth in a conquest (solo-ish) campaign

[LucyG92]

I'm running a solo campaign for my husband - though he has a party of support characters that I control (his choice), so it's still a traditional party setup.

It's based around conquest. He's trying to raise an army, and has a small group of NPCs currently in this role who travel with him. Not actually enough for an army, but that's the plan long-term. A couple of those NPCs could be swapped with main party members at any point too, but mostly they're just low level.

I've been keeping track of party wealth and suspect I'm doing it wrong in this situation. I have the wealth for each main party member, then all the supplies (mundane weapons/armour/trail rations/horses/wagons) for upkeep of this large group of people and potential recruits, as they won't come with their own stuff. In addition I've tracked the value of the two Owlbear cubs he's having trained as guardians.

I'm not tracking what the recruits carry personally as that's considered theirs'. They have been keep out of combat thus far, for the most part.

So, the party wealth is currently well over what it should be for their average level (4). However, I don't feel the equipment for each party member really reflects this. We're quite new to Pathfinder, so I don't know what sort of stuff they should have... but magical items are scarce amongst them and we only just manage to purchase masterwork armour/weapons - which I've noticed most pre-made NPCs have at lower levels.

Because of the way I've done it, the individual party members are under their expected wealth levels from their personal belongings - including the main player. Meaning encounters are probably going to be harder than they otherwise should be.

Sorry if this isn't explained very well. Just wondered if anyone can comment on how the party wealth should be calculated. I'm considering only counting their personal wealth now.

In addition, they don't intend to sell the owlbear cubs or even use them in combat when they're fully grown. They're more there for flavour reasons. So I suspect at least their value should be removed.

[Dasrak]

The wealth guidelines are just that, guidelines. They're not hard rules, just useful numbers to help keep the power of the party's magical equipment in-line with their level. The kind of campaign you're running is poorly suited for the wealth guidelines. The party is diverting a significant amount of their expenditure away from themselves, which means to keep their magical equipment up to par for their character level you need to award them more treasure. However, as the GM you do not control how the party will spend this treasure so there's no "right amount". The same amount of treasure could result in the party being under-equipped or over-equipped depending on their choices.

That's not to say that you should ignore the guidelines, just acknowledge that you're stepping outside of the kind of game they were written for. Pay attention to the equipment the characters actually are using, and try to accommodate if it falls too low or rises too high above the guideline. Personally I would err on the side of giving too much treasure rather than risk giving too little. Magic items tend to be a bit of an equalizer between the more powerful and less powerful classes, and having too few can exacerbate preexisting balance issues. Too many magic items is a better problem to have than too few.