How would you adjust a party's APL to compensate for additional player wealth? For example, how would a party being 4 levels over WBL effect their APL?
Coming at it from another angle, how much additional wealth could you dump on a party of 2 to help bring them up to par (or close to it) with a party of 4?
I realize action economy is hard to compensate for, and I acknowledge the fact that a party of four is going to be much more versatile than a party of two. I'd just like to have somewhere to start when making encounters for a group that is significantly over APL, or when adding loot to an AP to help out a smaller party.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I think this is going to depend a lot on what level the PCs are and provide a larger power increase the later you get.
A party of level 1 PCs with 10.5k gold probably can't beat a party of level 3 PCs. The extra hit dice or higher level spells would just be too much of an advantage. But a party of level 10 PCs 185k could probably beat a party of level 12s with standard 108k.
For trying a 2-player party I'd suspect it might be easier to do something like a gestalt character, or potentially give them some extra power like access to low level mythic abilities to make them as strong as a 4-person party.
players give action economy, 4 good guy rounds over 2 good guy rounds is twice as many good guy turns. Money can't change this.
Money is used to get numbers to make rounds more effective. This has a much smaller affect than an entire turn, and scales poorly. Getting +2 str is 4000, but another +2 for a +4 is 16000, or 12000 more. So money can go really fast and not give as big a bonus as you'd think.
So in the end, money makes for slightly more effective turns and slightly more survivable players, it struggles to make up for the loss of an entire turn.
I'm in agreement with Halek: encourage them to be casters and have summoning magic fix the action economy. Action economy can't be fixed by wealth. When I run low amounts of players, I don't start at level 1. Ever. Level 3 is the bare minimum (and this is for HD and wealth). Then, I run things as though they were level 1. Even doing this, people still die. Action economy is a very real thing, and 3 orcs with falchions (just what's in their stat block) can kill level 3 characters with impunity if they aren't ready for them.
Character wealth is a balancing factor against the increasing statistics of the monsters. The extra options from magical items and the extra +1s even the PCs against the monsters. It's not meant to make up for extra PLAYERS. They discuss how to handle low player counts. The method involves changing the CR of encounters (and making sure not to mob the players, suggesting lower level solos or small groups), not giving the players more wealth. Perhaps try approaching the problem from the suggested avenue first, then tinker with other variables until you find the right balance and your party is having fun. Some people would prefer a struggle, anyway, so you may not need to do much tinkering at all.
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Playing summoners or druids gives a normal action economy for 4 players. An animal companion and eidelion are as good as having another fighter. A party of 2 druids can wipe the floor of a normal AP if they are built well.
Animal companions are easily replaceable meat shields. Druids have amazing spells and can easily lockdown groups of enemies and then just kill them from range.
Alternatively, make them gestalt and give them the dual initiative mythic ability. They feel super powerful, and you essentially have four players. Win-win all around.
Just recently I gave some thought to this in another post
the Advanced template gives a +4 to all ability scores a +2 of natural armor, if you wanted to replicate that with magic items it will cost
4*4*1,000=16,000*6=96,000
+
2*2*1,000=4,000
=100,000
(I know natural armor cost 2,000 but that have always seems odd to me, also multiplying by 1,000 allows for a practical number of 100,000)So in theory you can increase the Cr by +1 giving magic items equivalent to 100,000 gp.
And if you wanted to replicate how the advanced template stacks, each increase on CR will cost more and more GP so +2 to CR will be 400,000, a +3 will be 900,000, and so on. In summary it will be the intended increase to CR squared * 100,000
So if remember correctly for each character less than four the APL decrease by one, so you need to increases their APL by two, which means dumping of 400,000 GP for each PC. I hope that helps you but I also needs to warn you that the formula above is just a theoretical exercise from my part and has not be properly tested.