What's the best way to encourage players to actually use their disposable items rather than hoarding them?
Depends on the general approach the players and GM have to the game. And 'best way' is a very subjective phrase.
I've found that giving the players opportunities where using the item is the most effective way of resolving the issue, is generally the preferred method of getting them to use said item. Players will always tend to use a bigger application of force to solve most problems, rather than use a consumable item. They have to be shown that the easiest method is not always the best method (this is in regards to renewable class abilities).
I like rapid-fire encounters and a constant, slow drain on hp and other resources so it's a choice between potions and death.
Add in a ticking clock to keep them moving forward instead of resting and regaining all of their non-consumables.
And then, of course, there's making consumables plentiful enough that the party feels like they can use them and then replenish their store.
What's the best way to encourage players to actually use their disposable items rather than hoarding them?
Encourage the behavior you want by rewarding it.
Have using the disposable items be good solutions to their problems. Given them disposable items that let them do things they can't do with their own abilities, then make those things relevant to the story. Make sure new disposable items come their way more frequently when they make use of them. You can also have both allied and enemy NPCs get effective use out of disposable items, to show their potential.
You can also discourage hoarding in various ways. The best is probably to simply not give out or give access to more disposable items once they've hoarded a certain amount.
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If my players have few consumables, they won't use them in case they need them.
If my players have many consumables, they forget what they've got and don't use them when they should.
How to give them the exact right amount?
They find a bottle of antivenom... the vial is poisoned.
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Best way? Remind them. In APs especially if you get a niche consumable you can kind of assume what's coming.
Like Stone Salve in Book 2.
Best way? Remind them. In APs especially if you get a niche consumable you can kind of assume what's coming.
** spoiler omitted **
In a weird way, that kind of adventure design can exacerbate the problem. When players expect that there will be a "correct time" to use their consumables, they will hold onto them until the situation is perfect.
For example, suppose the adventure assumes the "perfect time" to use the antivenom is in the giant centipede encounter. If no one fails their poison save in that encounter, the item is now sitting forever in inventory, and players are left to wonder if the other shoe is ever going to drop on the "poison boss."
Best way? Remind them. In APs especially if you get a niche consumable you can kind of assume what's coming.
** spoiler omitted **
In a weird way, that kind of adventure design can exacerbate the problem. When players expect that there will be a "correct time" to use their consumables, they will hold onto them until the situation is perfect.
For example, suppose the adventure assumes the "perfect time" to use the antivenom is in the giant centipede encounter. If no one fails their poison save in that encounter, the item is now sitting forever in inventory, and players are left to wonder if the other shoe is ever going to drop on the "poison boss."
Antivenom is a difficult answer since it's best use is before you are afflicted(It also only works for a specific poison), but the point sorta stands.
If the consumable is niche enough to have the potential of only being used once I don't think it's great to hand out. Change the example to a potion of Neutralize Poison and there's a strong possibility of it coming up later to be used.
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Adhering to wealth by level guidelines by ensuring that player wealth rubber-bands back to normal relatively soon after using consumable items is a pretty good way of encouraging their use--so long as players are aware this is being upheld. Cracking that scroll isn't nearly as big of a deal when they know that more treasure is on the way to make up for it in a couple of sessions. Just make sure to follow through.
Apart from that, there's nothing wrong with players having a few situational aces up their sleeve even if they never end up used. Some of them *will* end up used, and the players will feel clever having prepared to escape from 100 nasty situations even if they only end up in 10 of them.
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Why do you think you should encourage this behaviour in players?
Adhering to wealth by level guidelines by ensuring that player wealth rubber-bands back to normal relatively soon after using consumable items is a pretty good way of encouraging their use--so long as players are aware this is being upheld. Cracking that scroll isn't nearly as big of a deal when they know that more treasure is on the way to make up for it in a couple of sessions. Just make sure to follow through.
Now this is interesting to me. I'd always considered expendable items to be a part of the Average Wealth by Level. Imagine a potion maker blowing 100K gp on potions, using them all in a dungeon, then expecting to be compensated by the universe. That's an extreme example of course, but I've got to believe that the RAW treats expended expendables as part of wealth.
Choosing to move away from that could indeed solve the phoenix downs problem. I worry about the implications though, even from a bookkeeping perspective. A GM would have to track expended potions and scrolls and such in order to keep up with things, or else have a well-documented party loot document.
It's not a you problem. It's a problem for them. You can adjust difficulties if the PCs routinely don't bother healing up after a fight, you can offer advice, but essentially if they'd prefer to make their beds out of unused consumables that's on them.
It's not a you problem. It's a problem for them. You can adjust difficulties if the PCs routinely don't bother healing up after a fight, you can offer advice, but essentially if they'd prefer to make their beds out of unused consumables that's on them.
Now that I think about it, do you know where I've seen the most potion use? It's with this silly thing:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/alchemical-allocation/
Having your cake and drinking it too, as it were. I just think players hate to "lose" treasure no matter the situation.
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I find that players will use consumables freely if they're somebody else's consumables.
If a quest-giver tells them, "Here, take these. Any that you don't need, you can give back to me when we meet up next week." then they will need all of them within that week.
Unless they are in a position to deceive the quest-giver and hoard their consumables as well...
To be fair, I have seen things go the other way: using consumables, not needing them and then wishing you had them later. That's painful.
The problem with wands is that unless the spell works well at minimum caster level and continues to do so (CLW, Mage Armour, Detect *) they become obsolete before you've used up the 50 charges. Even if you use 1 charge every encounter (which gets old fast) you'll be 4 levels higher when it's finished, assuming 13 equal-EL encounters.
If you can buy partially-charged wands for proportional cost, this problem diminishes, but that's IMHO cheese.
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The problem with wands is that unless the spell works well at minimum caster level and continues to do so (CLW, Mage Armour, Detect *) they become obsolete before you've used up the 50 charges. Even if you use 1 charge every encounter (which gets old fast) you'll be 4 levels higher when it's finished, assuming 13 equal-EL encounters.
If you can buy partially-charged wands for proportional cost, this problem diminishes, but that's IMHO cheese.
When that works well is when, for instance, the level 2 wizard finds a wand of fireball with 4 charges left.
That wand will never be more powerful than if he uses it right away. It's power (relative to the party) only diminishes. The player also needs to think carefully as catching a fighter with two hit-dice in that fireball is seriously dangerous. There is also a nice tug between saving it for swarms/groups/BBEG and just blasting a couple of mooks to end encounters.
Weight is an option. My players have to deal with the weight of the stuff they're carrying. So, I mean, they could hoard stuff, but it gets heavy. (Granted, potions are only one ounce...)
I actually drop relatively few consumables as loot though. Sometimes stuff they wouldn't want to use, like Inflict potions. They do have some holy water and some alkali flasks though. I think right now they're walking around with some unidentified potions too.
Having an alchemist in the party (I don't anymore) means at least one person wants to use them.
I find that players will use consumables freely if they're somebody else's consumables.
If a quest-giver tells them, "Here, take these. Any that you don't need, you can give back to me when we meet up next week." then they will need all of them within that week.
Definitely not an all-the-time fix, but I really dig that as a solution for using interesting potions on *particular encounters.*
As an example, imagine that you'd drawn up an amphibious assault as a set piece encounter. Your allied pirate captain passes out the potions and lays out the clever plan. Sure the PCs could just use a boat or fly or whatever, but that messes with the fun dynamic of getting attacked by aquatic critter while water walking.
...I'd always considered expendable items to be a part of the Average Wealth by Level...I've got to believe that the RAW treats expended expendables as part of wealth...
I'm level X.
I posses wealth Y.
I consume a scroll/potion/wand/feather token/whatever with value Z.
Now my wealth is Y-Z.
I no longer posses the suggested wealth for a character of my level.
--that's about as straightforward and clear-cut as I can imagine.
...I'd always considered expendable items to be a part of the Average Wealth by Level...I've got to believe that the RAW treats expended expendables as part of wealth...I'm level X.
I posses wealth Y.
I consume a scroll/potion/wand/feather token/whatever with value Z.
Now my wealth is Y-Z.
I no longer posses the suggested wealth for a character of my level.
--that's about as straightforward and clear-cut as I can imagine.
Yknow the gm is supposed to budget for consumeable use in treasure right? Its not meant to be a permanent loss of wealth.
Yknow the gm is supposed to budget for consumeable use in treasure right? Its not meant to be a permanent loss of wealth.
I do know this. It is the very point I illustrated with my post, in fact.
Two of the possible scenarios:
(a) The GM is tracking how much wealth you have and trying to keep you to WBL. If you use a lot of consumables, then you will find more treasure to replace them.
(b) The GM is putting what seems like a sensible amount of treasure in the adventure, or running an adventure path without modifying it. There's some money in there that's budgeted for consumables, but if you don't need them, you can use that money for the stuff you really want. If you overuse consumables, then you must suffer the consequences of your poor decisions.
Scenario A (which causes more work for the already overworked GM) creates an incentive to use consumables. Of course, in theory these players could spend their money on level 9 scrolls to insta-win encounters and be rewarded with extra treasure as a result. The metagame here is that consumables are effectively free as long as you don't push things too far and annoy your GM.
Scenario B punishes use of consumables. A smart player will still use them when it keeps the party safe; a few levels later exponential WBL growth means that the money spent will look pretty trivial in retrospect.
I think the pain of using consumables is greatly reduced if they are the only way to produce a particular effect.
I'm reminded of the game Diablo II. Consumables ran the gambit in that game. Some created effects you could get elsewhere (Identify scrolls), some produced effects that were stronger than anything you could get elsewhere (healing potions) and some produced effects that couldn't be otherwise reliably replicated in the game (Town Portals and Mana potions).
In that game Identify scrolls became money after a certain point and I would eventually replace all of my healing potions with regeneration potions (they gave health and mana). Town portal scrolls had a permanent spot in my inventory from start to finish and I would gladly throw as much money as I needed to at them to make sure i had a full stock at all times.
Pathfinder is similar except that most consumables fall into that first category. They replicate effects that can be reproduced using renewable resources. As a result you end up not using them except to deal with emergencies.
I think if you truly want to encourage consumable use, make the consumables do something that can't be replicated in any other way. It's worth noting that even Diablo completely did away with consumables. In Diablo III you still have a healing potion but it's just another ability with a cooldown.
Personally, I'd rather spend my money on items like a bead of healing than potions/scrolls. Sure, I could get potions and scrolls enough for less than 9k. But I can use the bead freely without worrying that it's been "wasted". Heck, I'll probably use it before letting the cleric cast a spell since their spell slots are a more versatile renewable resource.
Yknow the gm is supposed to budget for consumeable use in treasure right? Its not meant to be a permanent loss of wealth.
I admit that I've been making some assumptions on this point, so I went ahead and looked at the rules surrounding the wealth by level chart. I found the following text:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls) and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
If I'm reading this right, that means you aren't carrying that amount of wealth on your person at all times. You "drink" some of it over the course of play.
I mean, imagine if you spent your suggested WBL on 1,000 potions, then demanded that the game world reimburse you for the equivalent amount of gp. By my reading, it's a pretty literal have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. Or am I missing something here?
...I'd always considered expendable items to be a part of the Average Wealth by Level...I've got to believe that the RAW treats expended expendables as part of wealth...I'm level X.
I posses wealth Y.
I consume a scroll/potion/wand/feather token/whatever with value Z.
Now my wealth is Y-Z.
I no longer posses the suggested wealth for a character of my level.
--that's about as straightforward and clear-cut as I can imagine.
That's called spending money. It's why, as a GM, I give the characters money in their loot.
I refuse to feel bad for the characters spending their money. They don't have to if they don’t want to. It's completely up to them.
You WILL spend some of your WBL on consumables. Or, you won't have consumables. It's your choice.
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls) and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
If I'm reading this right, that means you aren't carrying that amount of wealth on your person at all times. You "drink" some of it over the course of play.
It's not written very clearly, but I think it means that the WBL is what the PC is expected to have left at any given level, even after using some consumables. At least, that's how they seem to design their Adventure Paths.
WBL is what they are supposed to HAVE LEFT?!?! Have left AFTER WHAT?!
AFTER they buy their consumables? They are STILL supposed to have their complete WBL? I mean, don't they still have it in the sense of still having a headband after spending money on it? Sure, consumables will be, well, consumed. But the wealth will be replenished... as will random consumables along the way.
As long as they hit "that number" at some point in "that level", they are on track for WBL.
Spend it. Hoard it. I don't care. WBL is given in loot as shields none of them use, weapons they aren't proficient with, all sorts of magic items that they don't care about, consumables they can or cannot use, it's a literal fuster-cluck of valuables that they get to identify and sort through and sell what they don't want. But absolutely in all of that madness is each and every one of their WBL.
Does everyone have at least one weapon with an enchantment bonus equal to, or greater than, 1/4 of their character level? Yes? Good. No? I will throw something in the next batch of loot that you might find interesting. You may, or may not, have to really earn it.
WBL, like XP, and most rules in general, are guidelines. Plus or minus. Close enough for government work. Who cares? It's a concept... a rather incomplete one, at that. Does keeping an item instead of selling it double its value? It's supposedly worth 100,000gp, but it will only sell for 50k...
Yknow the gm is supposed to budget for consumeable use in treasure right? Its not meant to be a permanent loss of wealth.I admit that I've been making some assumptions on this point, so I went ahead and looked at the rules surrounding the wealth by level chart. I found the following text:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls) and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
If I'm reading this right, that means you aren't carrying that amount of wealth on your person at all times. You "drink" some of it over the course of play.
I mean, imagine if you spent your suggested WBL on 1,000 potions, then demanded that the game world reimburse you for the equivalent amount of gp. By my reading, it's a pretty literal have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. Or am I missing something here?
No it means that consumables are included in what you HAVE, but you should HAVE the next levels WBL at that level. so if you've got say WBL of 10k, and you spend 1k on scrolls/potions/wands, but next level's WBL is 15k, then at that level, REGARDLESS OF WHAT CONSUMEABLES YOU'VE USED TO GET THERE, you should have 15k
WBL is what they are supposed to HAVE LEFT?!?! Have left AFTER WHAT?!
AFTER they buy their consumables?
I mean What they're supposed to have left after having consumed a 'normal' amount of consumables over the course of their career.
As opposed to: What they could have had if they had never used any consumables.
WBL is what they are supposed to HAVE LEFT?!?! Have left AFTER WHAT?!
AFTER they buy their consumables?
I mean What they're supposed to have left after having consumed a 'normal' amount of consumables over the course of their career.
As opposed to: What they could have had if they had never used any consumables.
I think the more relevant information is
Will the proper consumeables keep my character from dying
If you sell the cache of 6 protection from fire potions to get that extra +2 on your stat belt only to die to a red dragon two sessions later thats not a wise use of WBL
I was looking at it from the GM's point of view. The GM can provide the potions. They can even provide replacement potions whenever they get used. But they don't have much control over what the player does with them.
From the player's viewpoint: Some people find it weirdly difficult to use consumables. They see an encounter where they used something expensive as a failure. "Yes, we survived. But I had to use a Potion of Fly, and those cost 750gp. So now I'm going to be permanently 750gp behind where I ought to be. And that means I'll always have worse equipment than I ought to, so I'll probably have to resort to using even more consumables to make up for the deficiency. Soon I'll be in a death spiral as I fall further and further behind the curve..."
This is a flawed way of thinking, given the generosity of loot at high levels and the finite length of an adventure, but it's hard to talk that kind of player out of it.
WBL, like XP, and most rules in general, are guidelines.
Not exactly. WBL effects the CR of NPC enemies. NPCs with player wealth are +1 CR. So removing wealth from the players is recognized by the game as lowering the challenges they're able to feasibly contest with.
I mean, imagine if you spent your suggested WBL on 1,000 potions, then demanded that the game world reimburse you for the equivalent amount of gp. By my reading, it's a pretty literal have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. Or am I missing something here?No it means that consumables are included in what you HAVE, but you should HAVE the next levels WBL at that level. so if you've got say WBL of 10k, and you spend 1k on scrolls/potions/wands, but next level's WBL is 15k, then at that level, REGARDLESS OF WHAT CONSUMEABLES YOU'VE USED TO GET THERE, you should have 15k
But that's exactly what DRD1812 discribed. By your numbers, if you spend 10% of your 10k wealth on consumables, you have to find 6k during that level to get to the enxt level's WBL. If you spend all your wealth on consumables, you need to find 15k wealth, 2.5 times as much, to have the expected WBL next level. What you describe only works if spending wealth generates treasure!
The easiest solution is to use Automatic Bonus Progression, which guarantees functional characters (equipment wise) now matter what the PCs do with their wealth. Doesn't remove all hesitations to use consumables, but at least it removes the "it might be better to save it so I can sell it and spend the moeny on a weapon/cloak/etc." issue.
WBL, like XP, and most rules in general, are guidelines.Not exactly. WBL effects the CR of NPC enemies. NPCs with player wealth are +1 CR. So removing wealth from the players is recognized by the game as lowering the challenges they're able to feasibly contest with.
Sure, but it's still best thought of as a guideline. (Paizo seems to agree with me; when I ran Jade Regent the first two books gave the party two powerful magical artefacts that could have been worth hundreds of thousands of GP.)
A GM has take into account things like character-build optimization, point buy or rolled stats, power creep from later books, the number of PCs (five is a lot stronger than four), whether the party is lacking in certain types of magic, the way some classes are just better in combat than others, the tendency for 'encounters' to merge as monsters investigate noises in nearby rooms, the possibility of helpful NPC allies, and so on.
If player wealth differs from expected WBL, then it's just another distortion of the difficulty curve. Diverging from WBL can make things easier or harder for the players, but sometimes that improves the challenge level if it wasn't perfectly balanced to begin with.
Let's look at it a different way.
A level 3 pc should have 3000gp of stuff, A level 4 pc should have about 6000gp.
That means a party of 4 should find about 12000gp worth of loot on their way from level 3 to 4.
On the medium xp track, a level 3 character needs 4000 xp to get to level 4; multiply that by 4 and you need 16000 xp for a party of four to go from level 3 to 4. That's 20 cr3 encounters or the equivalent.
Table 12-5 in the CRB says that an average encounter (CR=APL) for a level 3 party using the medium xp track should award the party 800gp. Multiply that by 20 means it's recommended the party receives 16000gp worth of loot.
But wait, wasn't our hypothetical party supposed to be getting only 12000gp worth of loot? Correct. The extra value there is in consumables that the party is expected to be using on their adventure.
Let's look at it a different way.
A level 3 pc should have 3000gp of stuff, A level 4 pc should have about 6000gp.
That means a party of 4 should find about 12000gp worth of loot on their way from level 3 to 4.On the medium xp track, a level 3 character needs 4000 xp to get to level 4; multiply that by 4 and you need 16000 xp for a party of four to go from level 3 to 4. That's 20 cr3 encounters or the equivalent.
Table 12-5 in the CRB says that an average encounter (CR=APL) for a level 3 party using the medium xp track should award the party 800gp. Multiply that by 20 means it's recommended the party receives 16000gp worth of loot.
But wait, wasn't our hypothetical party supposed to be getting only 12000gp worth of loot? Correct. The extra value there is in consumables that the party is expected to be using on their adventure.
Look at you and your math stuffs!
It's almost as if you actually don't have to pamper the party because their precious consumables are accounted for. Huh.
Some of that extra 4000gp is lost through selling +1 Ogre Hooks and other useless junk for half price.
Some of that extra 4000gp is lost through selling +1 Ogre Hooks and other useless junk for half price.
If the WBL guidelines don't account for selling loot at half price, then the whole system is completely f!cked to begin with. It's quite freaking obvious that you will be selling your loot at half price. The game already knows this... or it should, otherwise it's meaningless.
Some of that extra 4000gp is lost through selling +1 Ogre Hooks and other useless junk for half price.If the WBL guidelines don't account for selling loot at half price, then the whole system is completely f!cked to begin with. It's quite freaking obvious that you will be selling your loot at half price. The game already knows this... or it should, otherwise it's meaningless.
This. If the PCs aren't going to use a weapon, it should be counted as its sell price to their WBL.
Also as for helping PCs use stuff, I've taken a book from 5e, I think. Recharging consumables have been a favorite of my players. Having a wand of fireball that has 9 charges and regains 2d4+1 at the start of each day pretty much guarantees that the PC will use at least 3 per day, which will get them in the habit of using it more.
And if the WBL is, in fact, based on selling loot at half price... then, if they decide to keep something, are they now over WBL because it's worth twice as much to keep as sell?
I'm telling you, WBL, XP, CR... it's all trash. Just play the game and have fun. Throw monsters at them until someone goes down. Yay, that was a challenge. Here, have some loot. You earned it. Oh, have we done this a few times now? Have a level, as well.
I promise it can be fluid, instead of this rigid, janky BS.
It still helps to have a guide line. You can pull info from WBL. A character shouldn't get a +2 weapon (on average) until 6th level, when it should eat up 50% of their wealth. A 10th level character can technically afford a +5 weapon, using up most of their WBL, but characters shouldn't be able to spend more than 50% of their wealth on a single item. This means that a 10th level character should only have a +3 weapon.