I had a similar problem with my group when running. What I did was tally up the "gp" value of the dead pc items and allowed them to "purchase" based on where the group was in the module. If they were not in a place that had a high enough settlement rating to carry a high level magical item then they would have to wait and get one in game. It has been my experience that the Core Character Wealth and the "treasure" from the Campaign series does not equal up, and most reasonable players will understand that to let them go to Magical Walmart (*love* that term!) will unbalance the campaign.
The other option is to give the "new" pc the "old" pc's gear instead of shopping for new stuff. They then have the option to sell stuff that they no longer want/need but they don't automatically start out with uber magic. I call this the "reincarnation" rule (as if they had been hit by the spell).
As for them not wanting to follow the plot but to head off to purchase magic items, I like to use the "travelling wizard" trick. I simply place a wizard's tower on the path between plot points (treating it like a random encounter), and give him a limited selection of items on hand. If the players want something specific, he will offer to craft it for them for a small additional fee or for the book price if the players want to wait the crafting time. It is a bit munchkin, but the character interaction between the wizard and my pcs has been fun, and his tower has shown up in multiple campaigns, making him a tongue in cheek reoccurring NPC (and why wouldn't he? These guys spend lots of gold with him!)
Hope this gives you some ideas, and remember - ultimately you are the GM, you can set any House Rule you like and as long as you are consistent most players will be okay with it.
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I would determine the wealth level of the party, then give them that much gold to work with.
If they have one or more magic item crafting feats, give them 10% x (minimum level for the feat) more wealth (up to 100% if they can literally craft everything), but have them buy at normal prices. This represents the fact that not everything is going to be crafted.
10% is a completely arbitrary number, btw. YMMV.
Don't have my book with me to check but I'm pretty sure under creating a higher level characters it gives the recommended amount of gold a character of each level should have but also says that it's up to the GM to set a value they feel is appropriate.
Some suggestions I have are:
1. Talk to your players about what exactly they want to do with their WBL and why they feel that they need it so much. It might that they feel they need more power after the TPK because they fear it might happen again
2. Enforce not being able to spend more than half your wealth on a single item.
3. Don't allow crafting feats to influence starting gear, or allow them to say only use 1/4 of their GP to craft with
4. If your intent is for them to find the old PCs gear again then perhaps start them a level or two lower for WBL, because that's what causes the biggest problems I find.
5. Obviously you should vet which magic items they purchase to avoid causing any sort of problems
6. This is less relevant for your current campaign, but for the next campaign you run I might recommend using Automatic Bonus Progression or one of the alternatives that people on the forums have come up with to help alleviate some of the magical Walmart issues you have.
My suggestion, which I'm sure most folks will hate, is that "replacement" PCs should use NPC Wealth By Level instead of what PCs get. This way new PCs won't come into the game better equipped than the old ones. For 9th level PCs this would be just 10,050gp. If that seems too cruel I guess you could give them half of the normal PC WBL (23k in your case). Another time honored option is to simply have the new PCs start a level behind the existing PCs (which would give them 33k in this case)
If you're suffering TPKs another option which might be worth considering is using Hero Points. Since they're built up over levels they'll tend to help long term PCs more than new ones, but either way they could help you to avoid more TPKs and more PC turnover. I guess this might be especially important if you choose to punish replacement PCs in one of the manners I described above, but I'd recommend it even if you decide to let them have full levels and wealth. In that case you could bring make sure that the original PCs have more Hero Points than the new ones (1 to 0 or 2 to 1)
In the end you should be aware that the players saying that they "should" be able to purchase items up to the full 46k are basically right. By the rules as written, letting your PC die and get replaced is usually a pretty great strategy, especially if the DM allows the party to keep the gear from the fallen PCs too. Groups I play in generally have it disappear (maybe it goes to the PC's heirs)
Hello folks,
I have a very important question regarding Loot & new character creation, which is causing some "anger" in my group. I'm the gamemaster and we're playing an adventure path with 4 players. We had a TPK at our last session and 2 players wanted to create new characters, while 2 want to stay with their old characters.
We will start the 4th book of Carrion Crown next week and have some kind of major problem: there is a huge discussion about the Character Wealth. Some players argue that when a new high level character is created (level 9 in our case) that they have the right to purchase magical items for this characters which they choose as long as they stay within the potential wealth, that a 9th level character should have - which seems to be 46.000 gold. The old characters argue, that this is some kind of unfair, cause they didn't achieve so many & good magical items - those players really want to just purchase awesome stuff for their characters to max' them out.
How do you handle problems like these? Should new characters on higher level be allowed to just buy what they want? I really dislike some kind of magical Walmart. That's also a problem in a campaign, characters don't follow the plot - they want to go to the next huge town, to buy magical items for their characters...
Are there any rules or some advice?
Thanks
Start using automatic bonus progression rules. That should get rid of the main problems.
In Pathfinder, magical items are as much a requirement for becoming more powerful as gaining levels is. So, denying them the right to choose magical gear that is meaningful for their character can make playing a character quite difficult. While it might seem to be a "magic mart", Pathfinder is built on the assumption that characters have access to the "Big Six". Automatic Bonus Progression gets rid of those, and instead bakes them into character progression.
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Easiest solution is let the 'old' characters re-equip up to the same value.
Hello folks,
I have a very important question regarding Loot & new character creation, which is causing some "anger" in my group. I'm the gamemaster and we're playing an adventure path with 4 players. We had a TPK at our last session and 2 players wanted to create new characters, while 2 want to stay with their old characters.
We will start the 4th book of Carrion Crown next week and have some kind of major problem: there is a huge discussion about the Character Wealth. Some players argue that when a new high level character is created (level 9 in our case) that they have the right to purchase magical items for this characters which they choose as long as they stay within the potential wealth, that a 9th level character should have - which seems to be 46.000 gold. The old characters argue, that this is some kind of unfair, cause they didn't achieve so many & good magical items - those players really want to just purchase awesome stuff for their characters to max' them out.
How do you handle problems like these? Should new characters on higher level be allowed to just buy what they want? I really dislike some kind of magical Walmart. That's also a problem in a campaign, characters don't follow the plot - they want to go to the next huge town, to buy magical items for their characters...
Are there any rules or some advice?
Thanks
Generally new PCs start with WBL.
A few questions- what did the party do with the dead guys loot?
why dont the existing characters have WBL by now? Are you sure they dont?
If you had a TPK, how come two PCs remain? What sort of gear do they have?
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the 2 living should be near WBL meaning making 2 new people at WBL not a problem. If the living are greatly under WBL I'd give them money to match the new people.
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the 2 living should be near WBL meaning making 2 new people at WBL not a problem. If the living are greatly under WBL I'd give them money to match the new people.
If your solution to restoring the 2 dead PC's was to have someone revive them, perhaps identify the value gap between WBL and Current Gear on the revived Characters. The two characters that are not revived have their gear collected and sold in order to:
1. Pay for the revive costs.2. Cover any Random Overhead costs (burial/disposal of bodies, support for deceased members family, purchasing a housing "Base" that the entire party will get to use...).
3. The Remainder can conveniently supplement the revived players with the difference between their current gear value and the WBL value.
If the 2 old characters come back to life they probably get the old PC's stuff. That should put them above WBL even with resurection costs. Otherwise I would just let the new characters have wealth similar to their old characters minus resurection costs. Usually I put new char wealth below the current poorest living player anyway as a death penalty so to speak.
Personally, I think there are several great ideas which have already been suggested. One of the ones I have used is with Magic Item creation feats, the rule is simple: when creating a higher level character, a magic item creation feat allows one item to be purchased at a reduced price. So Craft: Arms & Armor could allow for the player to get the Uber Sword of Evil Slaying with a discount of X% (i personally use 50% price reduction, but some may find that too generous).
On the other hand, I agree with two points:
The Automatic Bonus Progression is one of the best canon ideas to come about which directly addresses and fixes the issues of the "Christmas tree" effect.
2) Average the party's wealth across the characters prior to your TPK moment. Look to see if that wealth is on par with the AP challenge levels, if not adjust it. Allow the new player to build their toon to be on par with the current wealth level of the party.
Restrictions: I NEVER allow a player to dump 1/2 their wealth into one item. I typically restrict such purchases to a max of about 20% (at most) to any one item. This is actually a recommendation in one of the books, but I cant think of which one at the moment. I know this suggestion was made in the 3.5 DMG.
If your party is under WBL, then it is possible that this contributed to the TPK. Even out the playing field and give the old characters their missing wealth to get them up to WBL and allow the new players to start with their appropriate WBL.
Problem solved.
Consistency of plot is very important to me If you have a revolving door of new characters, it diminishes the investment of the characters in the story and severs any bonds that might have been created with NPCs.
Because of that I would want to avoid creating any incentives to choosing to create a new character rather than trying to continue with the existing ones (insofar as possible).
To start with, any 'new' character build may have advantages over an 'old' character build, insofar as they can be built "at level" and don't have to choose to balance early level effectiveness against later level payoff. So that creates some small staryting incentive towards choosing a new character over an old character.
If you allow the 'new 'characters to come in with wealth beyond that of the 'old' characters, that creates another incentive to choose new over old.
Or, even if you ensure that the new characters have equivalent wealth to the old characters, but allow the new characters to pick and choose their gear, rather than working with whatever happens to be found, that also creates an incentive to choose new over old.
While you may get some players who will stick to their old characters for the sake of the story/plot, regardless of any incentives to the contrary, they may feel put out that the new characters come in with better gear and end up being more effective than their character.
So with all that in mind, I would advise being very careful to ensure you limit the incentives to creating a new character over trying to get an old character raised/resurrected/reincarnated.
This shouldn't be a problem typically. The wealth by level guidelines limit you for 25% on weapons, 25% on armor, 25% other 15% consumables, and 10% non magical gear. What remains is left over gold.
So that $11,500 for weapon, that's a +2 weapon and some gold left over. Armor is +3 and some left over gold. For others magic items you'll get 1 medium or bunch of lesser magic items. Typically you will actually end up with less than what other players are getting because they got find stuff so that's 1/2 price. That's how we divide treasure, if you want it out of the loot you pay half price otherwise it gets sold. So if find a weapon +3 I'm getting it for 9160 gold for a weapon that 20 gp non magical. The new character has +2.
Now where this can be problematic is Adventure Paths. Typically adventure paths are stingy on treasure in books 1 and 2 then in book 3 dump the treasure big time often exceed wealth by level. Book 1 is typical 1st -4th and 5th to 7-8th it sounds like you are entering the rich part of the AP. You're player are probably just starting it so existing character would below wealth by level and new character would come out better off and gain a bunch on top of it. So how I do it is reduce wealth by level for new character in first two books of an AP and go with normal after that.