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As a GM that runs both APs and a Homebrew, I can say with experience that keeping track of player wealth is not something I am very good at doing, and it is an area I need to work on improving too so this post is in no way meant to be me saying "you are doing it wrong."
What I am asking of other GMs especially, but players as well:
Do you treat treasure as a renewable resource or a limited resource you only get so much of?
I feel like the advice in the player's guide is for GMs to treat it like a renewable resource, and if PCs are using that resource, like by using consumables, breaking shields, giving away treasure to those in need, the GM is supposed to check in and make sure that the party is getting more loot drops. The wealth by level chart should loosely match characters in play, not just new players starting at X level.
Traditional APs though do a terrible job of setting this expectation and pretty much run exactly the opposite, making wealth a total set number per book and GMs (Myself included) rarely double check it. I think that the books tend to award too much treasure, rather than too little, but I doubt many GMs count it out and make sure that players aren't ending up with too much if they horde it, or not enough if they use it.
I will say, from playing PFS, I have realized that the game plays a lot smoother and more player friendly when the player uses resources quickly, rather than holding on to them, and I think a lot more players would have more fun if they realized that using their shield to block the mega hit and stay on their feet to save the poor helpless prince was more likely to result in the prince giving them a new, more level appropriate shield as a reward, rather than thinking that sparing the shield is more important because if you let it get destroyed, it is wealth gone.
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I’ve had a much different experience with a GM that used to run for my group. He never gave us opportunities to spend money in the game due to a traditional belief of magic items being found and not traded.
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I can certainly understand the issue for offline games, but if you're using Roll20 or similar VTTs, they will often track the item value of gear possessed by the player characters. It's as simple as looking at the character sheets, collecting the 4-6 values, determe the sum, then match that to the party treasure values of the Core Rulebook.
For individual characters, simply match the individual values against the expected Lump Sum values in the Core Rulebook for their current and next level, and you'd have a pretty good idea of where their character stands, and whether or not adjustments should be made.
Another check you can do is to see if they possess any items of a level equal to or greater than their character level. If not, then you're likely doing just fine.
For me personally, I oftentimes end up hoarding wealth simply because I forget to use it. It gets worse as time goes on and my treasure and spell lists get larger and increasingly difficult to track (especially in VTTs, where big lists tend to generate lag).
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I've been having an absolute blast using Hero Lab Online recently, since we all started using it as our sole source of truth for character tracking. I hop in and check their current gold, total gear value, and what sort of things they own and whether those are contributing significantly to player power. I can give pointers about how to spend their money if necessary, but also drop items in loot that might shore up someone who is falling behind.
I can certainly understand the issue for offline games, but if you're using Roll20 or similar VTTs, they will often track the item value of gear possessed by the player characters. It's as simple as looking at the character sheets, collecting the 4-6 values, determe the sum, then match that to the party treasure values of the Core Rulebook.
For individual characters, simply match the individual values against the expected Lump Sum values in the Core Rulebook for their current and next level, and you'd have a pretty good idea of where their character stands, and whether or not adjustments should be made.
Another check you can do is to see if they possess any items of a level equal to or greater than their character level. If not, then you're likely doing just fine.
For me personally, I oftentimes end up hoarding wealth simply because I forget to use it. It gets worse as time goes on and my treasure and spell lists get larger and increasingly difficult to track (especially in VTTs, where big lists tend to generate lag).
As a player, I forget to use things all the time as well, which can happen when you have more than one character going at a time. (PFS is really bad about encouraging you to have 4 or 5 characters active at at time). I think the suggestion about tracking players wealth via VTTs is a good suggestions that I will try to internalize as well.
It seems like most of you who have responded thus far do think about treasure as a renewable resource. Do you find that your players treat it that way? Do you think running an AP vs a homebrewed game makes a difference?
Honestly I am surprised I haven't heard more people talk about wealth as a limited resource because there is a large block of posters to this forum that have pretty negative opinions about consumables and view the destructibility of shields as an impediment to their use as opposed to incentive for the GM to keep giving out new, more level appropriate shields as the game progresses.
And I get it. It probably feels counter intuitive as a player to think of wealth as a flexible and renewable resource, since it doesn't necessarily line up with how things work in the real world, but that definitely does not appear to be a part of the world that the PF2 game system is keen to recreate.
Like most parties in a PF2 AP are probably going to get more use out of 4 scrolls of level 1 heal than a single level 1 wand of heal (you might have leveled up 2 times before you can even use your wand of heal 4 times in many APs, but I see few players think this way.
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I don't honestly believe there is a GM alive who would bother tracking treasure with such specificity that one could consider it a finite resource.
Rather, I think every couple levels, a GM might tally things up as a quick audit. If nothing looks egregiously out of place, nothing really happens. If it does, then perhaps the GM lowers or raises coming treasure as appropriate.
In any case, spot audits like the above most likely wouldn't account for expendables that were already consumed.
Unless you're playing PFS...but those guys are crazy! XD
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I think a big issue when thinking about money is that as you level, the value of all your money and items goes down, because the cost of at level items goes up very quickly. So trying to save up for something for next level can often be a bad idea because you'll earn a lot more money next level then your current level. If you perhaps let players know they are expected to make 50% of everything they own next level, so if their total worth is 2k they will earn close to 1k next level, that might go a long way to encouraging them to buy at level or lower level stuff, try to find things that are great value and maybe even cheap consumables.
I personally hate consumables so my summoner has followed in our TMI rogues foot steps and working towards having a wand for every occasion. Scrolls for super niche spells are good to have though, glad I had tongues when we came across an important NPC that didn't speak common.
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Do you treat treasure as a renewable resource or a limited resource you only get so much of?
I feel like the advice in the player's guide is for GMs to treat it like a renewable resource, and if PCs are using that resource, like by using consumables, breaking shields, giving away treasure to those in need, the GM is supposed to check in and make sure that the party is getting more loot drops. The wealth by level chart should loosely match characters in play, not just new players starting at X level.
Very interesting question, but it needs a bit of unpacking to give a good answer.
Consumables
Here we're talking about talismans, scrolls, potions, mutagens, elixirs and whatnot. These have so-so resale value and have a very definite "best by level" after which the benefits become kinda marginal. PFS has coached players a little bit to "use it or lose it" and I think that's how they're meant to be used in APs too. From an economic viewpoint most of these don't really make sense. Few talismans are good enough that anyone is going to set out to make on-level talismans - they're too expensive for that. Meanwhile, the effects tend to be too marginal to bother with them later on. But if you found them, and the resale version isn't great, then you might as well use them if the situation comes up.
Breaking shields
This is something Paizo goofed with a bit. We can break down the shields category (see what I did there) into three main groups. Shields designed for blocking, shields designed for just raising, and the... remainder. Sturdy shields work perfectly fine in the first subcategory. Actually that whole subcategory is just sturdy shields. The second category is stuff like a Spellbane shield that's perfectly nice to use for someone who just wants AC bonuses and some other benefits, and never planned to use the Shield Block reaction. And the last group is shields that require you to use Shield Block but don't have sufficient HP/hardness to do that well. These are just disappointing and basically broken design dreams. They don't seem priced as consumables and aren't listed as such. My advice is: don't treat shields as a consumable category. Shields getting destroyed should not be normal at all. You could stealthily replace category 3 shields with category 1 or 2 shields when looking at loot drops.
Giving away to those in need (and other ways to "leak" wealth)
Sometimes the AP makes some rather weird assumptions about what the PCs will loot, like taking the stuff from random bystanders, plundering graves and whatnot. And sometimes players will give something away. I'd say, take note of this and you might want to replace some of it. In fact, some NPC taking note and giving something back can be a good way for you to make sure the PCs get some loot that's nicely tailored to them. That's a good thing, because often a big chunk of the loot of an adventure is tied up in items that make sense for the main antagonist to own, but that's useless to the players. Like if the BBEG is a greataxe-wielding maniac and you have a party of rogues and investigators.
The Wealth By Level Chart
Danger danger! There are two of them. Table 10-9 describes what the whole party should find during a level. Table 10-10 describes what a single freshly built character should have at the start of a level. They're pretty different. Table 10-9 distributes two L+0 and two L+1 items per level, while Table 10-10 lets you have at most L-1 items.
You clearly don't want to constantly hold people to Table 10-10, that's holding them back about 1.5 level in gear! So why is Table 10-10 so low? Because you get to cherry-pick. When building a new character and selecting stuff, you don't take anything stupid from five levels back that's totally obsolete. And you can aim for all the good combinations. That's supposed to be better than just hoping good stuff "drops" from Table 10-9.
So is the idea that Table 10-9 is total potluck? Not really. I wouldn't say AP volumes do a great job of using it, since authors sometimes get carried away trying to give "interesting" loot when what the players want is "useful" loot. The Gamemastery Guide (p. 38) advises that 50-75% of the permanent items in loot should be "core" items. That doesn't mean they have to be entirely no-frills, but if the players are regularly selling off most of the high-level items they find, then clearly the adventure is doing a poor job of handing out treasure the players are actually happy with.
I think when used right, Table 10-9 is extremely useful to GMs. The key message is that everyone gets one significant new magic item per level, and it's on-level or just above. So if a given AP book takes the players through 4 levels, that's 16 items you need to keep your eye on. Manageable, I'd say.
I do think the selection of items needs a bit more GM intervention than just doing the AP as written. Enough of these "primary" items really should feel like they're the main prize when it comes to the loot. If you find eight items that give skill boosts to skills you don't use a lot while everyone is desperate for some new fundamental runes... it's gone wrong. I think some writers have it stuck in their head that something like fundamental runes is "boring" and that you need to be super creative. I think that's wrong. You can make them interesting, with descriptions, backstories, or the encounter where you get them.
And they don't always have to be exact matches for what the players would take as their first pick. But you should understand the players' build. If a player is using a shield block heavy build, you're not really making them happy with a low-durability shield with cool properties when raised. Nor is the rogue going to be thrilled with a unique greatsword.
Table 10-9 indicates that loot can be higher level than stuff you can buy, or craft. So a level 3 character can find a Striking weapon. That's a pretty big deal. That's really the genius of the system, when used well - you can have loot that feels good, without setting up long-term imbalances.
Traditional APs though do a terrible job of setting this expectation and pretty much run exactly the opposite, making wealth a total set number per book and GMs (Myself included) rarely double check it. I think that the books tend to award too much treasure, rather than too little, but I doubt many GMs count it out and make sure that players aren't ending up with too much if they horde it, or not enough if they use it.
I will say, from playing PFS, I have realized that the game plays a lot smoother and more player friendly when the player uses resources quickly, rather than holding on to them, and I think a lot more players would have more fun if they realized that using their shield to block the mega hit and stay on their feet to save the poor helpless prince was more likely to result in the prince giving them a new, more level appropriate shield as a reward, rather than thinking that sparing the shield is more important because if you let it get destroyed, it is wealth gone.
I'm playing Agents of Edgewatch now, and as a group we've taken a long hard look at the rather strange way much of the first book was set up. It felt like we were expected to be more like thugs than the Lawful Good policefolk that the players' guide told us to be. A lot of treasure seemed based on shaking down criminals and seizing anything even if it might have more properly belonged to victims of crimes or their next of kin.
We've adjusted - we get more of our gear from the city now. Another change is that we have a supply line of fast-spoiling alchemical resources. Rather than rather iffy "camp in the dungeon to heal" tactics, we get a LOT of elixirs that will spoil within 24h. But they allow us to conduct a police raid at a bit of tempo, which really improves the flow of the game.
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Honestly I am surprised I haven't heard more people talk about wealth as a limited resource because there is a large block of posters to this forum that have pretty negative opinions about consumables and view the destructibility of shields as an impediment to their use as opposed to incentive for the GM to keep giving out new, more level appropriate shields as the game progresses.
I feel compelled to chime in as a staunch anti-permanent-item destruction poster. I still strongly support consumable use and am a huge fan of tactical scroll use and the spell slot liberation that comes with them.
My beef with shield destruction in particular is that shields aren't consumables - they're permanent items - and therefore occupy a different role in the game's economy. The game is ready and balanced around players spending consumables but not magic item.
This thread needn't become another shield thread (and I apologize in advance if I inadvertently cause that to happen) - just wanted to clarify why someone might be vehemently against permanent shield destruction but not consumable use.
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As a GM, I rather frequently give out consumables like scrolls earlier than the players are expected to have them - to give the players a taste of later power (potentially influencing their build decisions if they find a spell they like more than expected), and giving them a super-tool to get them out of a jam.
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Honestly I am surprised I haven't heard more people talk about wealth as a limited resource because there is a large block of posters to this forum that have pretty negative opinions about consumables and view the destructibility of shields as an impediment to their use as opposed to incentive for the GM to keep giving out new, more level appropriate shields as the game progresses.
I tend to see DM's give out wealth in a finite way: if I spent all my wealth on scrolls and used them I wouldn't expect to trip over a new pile of treasure because of it and I'd be at a negative vs others that bought/kept non-consumables. It's very rare for me to keep non-McGuffin consumable, as I see them as odd shaped gold pieces...
As to hoarding, I don't really see that: IMO, I see saving for the next item you want. The only issue that might come up if a lack of places to buy/sell things: if I'm out in the wilderness for a few levels, I might have a backpack of items [useless to me] to sell off so I can buy what I want.
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"Megalixir Syndrome" is a thing for sure, and it ties into the way that people interface with games. One of the best ways to make sure players are using the consumables and gadgets they find is to present them with situations where said consumables or gadgets are going to be useful.
For example, don't put the golembane scarab into a chest you only find after you've beaten the golem, put it somewhere the PCs are highly likely to find it before the golem fight so they can see it in action. If there's a bandoleer of alchemist's fire vials in a chest, put an encounter somewhere nearby with a high AC creature that is weak to fire.
The longer that you let the game run between the PCs finding a useful consumable and that consumable actually being useful, the less likely the PCs are to use it instead of selling it. Once the habit's formed, it's much harder to break. So start out by sprinkling them around where they'll be useful or even straight up having an NPC say "Yo, that white dragon wight will get absolutely torched by fire, so stock up." People do whatever the game leads them to believe is the best thing to do, whether it's actually the best thing to do or not, so make sure the game is telling them "You want these things and you should use them." And be open to the idea that if the treasure drops less than a day's walk away from a fence who can help the PC convert it into a new magic weapon and there's nothing between where they find it and said fence that it's going to be useful against, then they're probably just going to sell it.
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I think that Unicore made a call out to my party with the statement, "giving away treasure to those in need." Such generosity has been a characteristic of those players across many campaigns.
These players mastered teamwork and tactics, so they can win level-appropriate battles while underequipped. And they would be bored with counting coins to upgrade gear. Therefore, their favorite use for treasure is to give it away.
I’ve had a much different experience with a GM that used to run for my group. He never gave us opportunities to spend money in the game due to a traditional belief of magic items being found and not traded.
My wife says that magic items feel more special when found. However, some of her characters have been crafters. When a crafter makes a magic item (or technological item in the Iron Gods campaign), my wife says it feels like an extension of the character's abilities. In contrast, buying a magic item from a shop makes it mundane, regardless of the level of the item.
Consumables are not meant to feel as special, since using them destroys them. My party uses consumables, but typically acquires them as found or donated items. In some situations, where their information gathering warns of a particular damage ahead, such as poison, they will forearm themselves with the antidotes and countermeasures.
I mentioned donated consumables, which might seem weird. Sometimes grateful villagers rescued from danger will give gifts to kind adventurers. Roleplaying their gratitude highlights how heroic the PCs are. These gifts are small, since villagers are poor compared to adventurers. A potion or talisman for which the villager has no personal use, perhaps inherited from an adventuring cousin, is a plausible gift.
As for permanent items, I put what I think will interest my players into treasure troves and hope they keep them. If they give them away, then their wealth is still deficient, so I put other tempting items into the next treasure trove. The runes are so powerful that they understand they can delay adopting them for only a few levels. This strangely makes the raw materials for transferring looted runes their favorite treasure in my PF2 Ironfang Invasion campaign, where they lack opportunities to visit town.
As for individual preferences, the 8th-level halfling rogue/sorcerer is very fond of some looted wands of 1st- and 2nd-level spells, since he invested in the physical aspects of the bloodline and has not learned slotted spells yet. The gnome thief rogue in the party appears more interested in the consumables, since she likes clever little advantages in combat. The goblin champion likes her lesser sturdy shield, since it fits her concept of a defensive champion. The elf ranger prefers the Striking runes, since he wants to deal significant damage via archery or Twin Takedown melee. The gnome druid is a puzzle. She often forgets the items she already possesses. I will have to find some item that boosts a skill. The two newest members are still mysteries.
I guess the dynamic in my games is that my players do not buy things; instead, they prefer to give away wealth and enjoy finding interesting items.
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People forgetting what gear they have and being afraid they will need consumables is a tough combo to overcome.
I don't honestly believe there is a GM alive who would bother tracking treasure with such specificity that one could consider it a finite resource.
In my PF1 Iron Gods campaign, the party allocated treasure by consensus about individual need. The newbie player of the fighter Kheld wanted to be the best at everything. He realized that better gear would make him better, and more treasure for Kheld would let him craft better gear. He asked for the treasure to be divided into equal shares among the five party members.
The more experienced party members modified that to six shares, one for each party member and one for overall party needs. And Kheld had to track the treasure.
Kheld then learned that equal shares had cut his income in half. The previous consensus was that the newbie player's character Kheld needed a double amount of treasure to make up for the player's inexperience.
My main point, besides the karma in the above paragraph, was that the newbie player was not good at tracking treasure, so the task was reassigned to the NPC Val Baine. This meant that I handled it myself. I listed everything in a spreadsheet, assigned requested items to the characters, summed up the values, and assigned the cash to cover any deficiencies. A player who is an expert in Excel set up the spreadsheet for me.
Donated treasure was deducted before the remaining treasure was divided into shares.
I think that Unicore made a call out to my party with the statement, "giving away treasure to those in need." Such generosity has been a characteristic of those players across many campaigns.
I hope you use "call out" here in a postive context. I very much prefer for heroes to feel like there is reasonable in game incentives to act like heroes.
People forgetting what gear they have and being afraid they will need consumables is a tough combo to overcome.
I agree, especially because "renewable wealth" runs counter to so many other games, and probably how many GMs approach it, especailly ones running APs "by the book" and only giving out treasure where it says to in the book, and not adjusting for players missing any thing or using resources and falling behind in wealth by level.
But at the same time, I don't think it is that big a deal for PCs to end up not using a consumable and ending up selling it. The way wealth works in PF2, that isn't going to tip the scales much. What I do want to get better at myself, is making it more clear to the players that if they do hoard it and sell it off eventually, they are not going to end up with more wealth than if they used the consumable in play. If my players are buying and using scrolls to have longer adventure days without needing to rest, I am going to give them more treasure, and other benefits that can be exploited in down time.
Interestingly enough, the players I have in one AP that I am running are all new to PF2 and haven't played any RPGs in a decade. They are not optimally built at all, but they burn through consumables like kids with candy at Halloween, and actively research problems and then go buy consumables to help them prepare for them and they are crushing encounters that I hear lots of folks struggle with. They go through them so fast that it was what prompted me to check the character wealth and realize that many of them have fallen behind on "core items" but neither they nor I even noticed.
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What I do want to get better at myself, is making it more clear to the players that if they do hoard it and sell it off eventually, they are not going to end up with more wealth than if they used the consumable in play.
For myself, that wouldn't be a game I'd enjoy: if a person that thoughtfully manages their resources ends up with the exact same wealth as someone that always blows through their money by making it rain consumables, it seems quite unfair to keep tossing free money to one and not the other.
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In PF2, can you upgrade a +1 rune to +2, or do you just have to replace it? An item that can be upgraded is never truly obsolete.
What I do want to get better at myself, is making it more clear to the players that if they do hoard it and sell it off eventually, they are not going to end up with more wealth than if they used the consumable in play.For myself, that wouldn't be a game I'd enjoy: if a person that thoughtfully manages their resources ends up with the exact same wealth as someone that always blows through their money by making it rain consumables, it seems quite unfair to keep tossing free money to one and not the other.
I believe the intent is to incentivize the use of consumables not to punish those who wish to save up their wealth for the right item or moment.
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In PF2, can you upgrade a +1 rune to +2, or do you just have to replace it? An item that can be upgraded is never truly obsolete.
Weapons and armor can be upgraded via that method. I believe other items are more static to item level.
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interestingly, all items are consumable/disposable and are useful for 3-4 levels at most. A +1 rune quickly becomes obsolete, wands last maybe 3 levels before they become niche items for camping, and do we even have to mention the shaft that are staves? Once players realize this, then I think the issue of hoarding (as opposed to saving for a thematic item) becomes manageable.
This isn't really true as you can upgrade items: so you don't toss that +1 rune but upgrade it to a resilient or striking rune. As to wands, you can find even 1st level wands that never go out of style: Negate Aroma, Ant Haul, Unseen Servant, True Strike, Pet Cache, Ventriloquism, various summons, ect... Having a summons or Unseen Servant interact with a questionable item can be useful no matter it's level.
I believe the intent is to incentivize the use of consumables not to punish those who wish to save up their wealth for the right item or moment.
If that's brought up beforehand then it's fine, the player was warned: IMO, that wouldn't change the fact that that WOULD punish the cautious player and incentivize blowing through consumables as quickly as possible so more free items rain down on them. I don't think intent would change how the cautious player feels as, IMO, they'd get the short end of that stick.
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I believe the intent is to incentivize the use of consumables not to punish those who wish to save up their wealth for the right item or moment.What I do want to get better at myself, is making it more clear to the players that if they do hoard it and sell it off eventually, they are not going to end up with more wealth than if they used the consumable in play.For myself, that wouldn't be a game I'd enjoy: if a person that thoughtfully manages their resources ends up with the exact same wealth as someone that always blows through their money by making it rain consumables, it seems quite unfair to keep tossing free money to one and not the other.
Those are at constant odds, though.
Valuable consumables cost valuable gold, and aren't always available at certain shops or are just random drops. They also don't scale well compared to other items, and on-level or above-level consumables are damn expensive on your WBL chart for what little they offer, which are usually one-shot bursts that might crap out depending on the consumable, or be easily outscaled by the time it needs to come into play.
Whereas permanent items provide constant benefits of a greater magnitude and don't get so easily outscaled. Here's a fair example that I had in play not too long ago.
Let's take an 11th level adventurer who's a bit undergeared because they've been wanting to upgrade their previous gear, since they don't have access to or had other items drop. Unfortunately, they didn't find much in the way of gold because the GM (and by relation, the game) has been sprinkling loot in the shape of consumables, permanent items, and a few trinkets that turns out aren't worth a whole lot, and not giving much gold because they weren't going to be in a valuable town for a few levels.
So, when Adventurer McAdventureface finally gets to town and gets his share of the loot, since he already got a solid piece of armor and a solid weapon (which he still wants to upgrade), and a handful of garbage consumables from adventuring, he only gets 500 gold to work with, since those two main pieces take up a large portion of his WBL, unfair to the other adventurers in the party who didn't get those same things.
Now, Mr. McAdventureface might want to sell some of his consumables, but since they are lower level, they won't be worth much. He'll get maybe another 200-250 gold's worth of consumables. (Quite a bit, considering they're about 4+ levels below his level, and are much cheaper in price.) So, 750 gold?
Looking at consumables, he can buy a couple on-level consumables for a fair price, but those are one-shot items that can be lackluster, and he can probably find more of them as he adventures. Greater Potion of Healing, which takes 2 actions and heals for much less than a Battle Medicine or Heal spell, plus requires free hands? Yawn. What about a bomb? Does less damage than his weapon, it's ranged and might trigger weakness, but also has friendly fire. Too bad. What about a talisman? The Fortifying Pebble is nice and cheap, but I can only have one active at a time, and I don't have a shield, damn. Let's see...
But what's this? A Boots of Bounding is available, and it's only 340 gold? It gives +5 movement speed and better jumping capabilities! Sign me up! But I also want something that boosts my intimidation, because I've been failing at that lately...AH-HA, A DEMON MASK! 85 gold, +1 to Intimidation checks, score! And I still got 325 gold to work with to shore up a couple of my other capabilities with lower level permanents! Screw getting a Greater Bottled Lightning, give me these lower level items!
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I always fear, assume and prepare for the worst in that a random GM WILL treat total WBL over a character's entire career as a finite resource, and as such will cripple any character who owns a stash of funny but non-Fundamental magical trinkets.
Just to be extra safe, for clarity.
I always fear, assume and prepare for the worst in that a random GM WILL treat total WBL over a character's entire career as a finite resource, and as such will cripple any character who owns a stash of funny but non-Fundamental magical trinkets.
Just to be extra safe, for clarity.
And that is why I am bringing this up. It is very clearly an area where expectations can easily get off balance between players and GMs if it is not talked about.
For me, if players are going to meta game that hp is a renewable resource, it is pretty important to establish that wealth is too or else you end up in those situations where players would rather their characters die than lose an item.
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People forgetting what gear they have and being afraid they will need consumables is a tough combo to overcome.I had a player complain at the end of an adventure that they were never on full health after it started. I asked them to have a look at the party inventory. At least a dozen healing potions/elixirs.
Yes. I know I have a completely different relation to items I chose (and bought usually), which I cherish and know inside out, and those the adventure just drops in my lap and that I tend to forget about. Especially consumables that change my PC's abilities just once and for a short time.
I find the latter both boring to list and manage and cumbersome to use. YMMV obviously.
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People forgetting what gear they have and being afraid they will need consumables is a tough combo to overcome.I had a player complain at the end of an adventure that they were never on full health after it started. I asked them to have a look at the party inventory. At least a dozen healing potions/elixirs.
But those are needed when things do become really difficult and dangerous, not for squandering during our heroes "day-to-day" challenges!
/irony
However I have to admit that I am prone to the "stockpiling syndrome" too, especially when it comes to computer RPGs.
1. Find a consumable.
2. Save the consumable for the "hard fight".
3. Adopt your fighting and play style to never use consumables at all (tactics, reloading etc).
4. Master the hard fight without consumables.
5. End the adventure/game with a huge stash of mostly obsolete consumables (if you have not yet sold them already).
On the plus side our party busted through a stockpile of 25+ healing potions after a fight with a Flesh Golem in order to get rid of our Cursed Wounds, which was a nice relieve of our inventories and a good use for even older 1d8 potions.
Do you treat treasure as a renewable resource or a limited resource you only get so much of?
Since Starfinder, as a player I consider my entire inventory as consumables. If my magic weapon is broken, I know I will buy the same one before the end of the level for the price of a consumable of a few levels higher. So, you can strip my character of its entire inventory it won't reduce its actual fighting efficiency for more than a level or two.
The only thing I dislike is if the GM forces me to go adventuring without equipment, like if I get my sword destroyed and have no backup weapon. But that's a situation I make sure to not end up in.So, I don't hoard at all. Every level, I spend my entire cash (I play mostly PFS) as there's just no point keeping cash considering how it quickly loses its value.
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Table 10-9 guides the GM what kinds of treasure to stock a level's worth of adventuring with, and I think it deserves intense study.
Treasure is for the party, not per individual
We've been conditioned just a little bit by 1E to think in personal WBL and "am I on track". 2E isn't doing this very much, in fact if you look at Table 10-10 it would seem that the sum of the parts is a lot smaller than the whole. If you got to level 10 during organic play you should own a level 9 item and about a 50% chance of a level 10 item (and 50% chance that someone else in the party got it). If you got there using Table 10-10, you get the level 9 item but 0% chance of the level 10 item.
Treasure found isn't always treasure kept
Again demonstrated by comparing Table 10-9 and 10-10. The second one gives an estimate of what you'd end up with after spending consumables, losing or missing some stuff, and selling off items that aren't useful. That said, the GMG does advise the GM to ensure that the share of "keeper" permanent items should be pretty substantial. If markets are highly accessible, loot should still be relevant enough to the PCs' characters that they keep about 50% of it. If markets are poorly accessible (campaign in the howling wilderness, or just no time for any side treks) then 75-100% should be "keeper" items.
The columns in the table are there for a reason
If having permanent items or consumables was intended to be a total free for all, there'd be no reason to have separate columns advising how many permanent and consumable items to put in. Even lower-level permanent items are better than many niche consumables, as Darksol explained nicely. That doesn't mean you should just stop handout out consumables and give people only permanent items and gold to buy permanent items. Consumable items have a place in gameplay. But you should probably aim to hand out fewer totally niche consumables and more useful consumables.
In our Edgewatch campaign, it was creating immersion-breaking problems that the story makes you think a police raid on a building should be done at some speed (innocents in danger, bad guys might escape) but there are like a dozen encounters there that can all drain HP. Stopping for 10-30 minutes after each encounter to heal up would be like playing a geriatric SWAT team. So our GM ruled that the Edgewatch got access to a friendly alchemist who makes daily batches of items, which will expire after 24h. But while they last, they give us a lot more push-onward capability. This makes consumables work as intended much better because:
- Using them has no impact on your ability to buy shiny permanent items. You're not burning money.
- They're highly relevant consumables. This isn't a writer trying to break the humdrum. They're unabashedly mostly elixirs of life with a slew of antitoxins thrown in.
- There's no point in holding on to them for much longer, since they expire in 24h.
So to circle back to Unicore's question about "finite" wealth:
* I think wealth should be semi-finite. The escalating value of stuff you get each level means that being over or under budget at a given level quickly fades in 1-3 levels. You usually won't need to GM-intervene to put people back on track, the system does it already.
* I think the budgets for consumables and permanent items are intended to be softly silo'ed. Selling all consumables to buy better permanent items isn't intended.
* Consumables work best when they're useful so that they'll be used. Don't be afraid to let 60% of them be healing potions.
* The role of consumables should be to let the party press on when resources are tight but the plot is intense, or to let them deal with unusual/extreme problems. When seeding consumables, you should make sure that they're likely to be useful.
* APs probably put in more treasure than needed to stay on track, on the assumption players don't find everything and that some of it won't be relevant and gets sold (and selling is wasteful). A home campaign where the GM knows the players' builds and the % of relevant loot is higher, needs less overall loot to get the same amount of good stuff in players' hands.
* Permanent items in loot probably need a bit more tailoring to the players than APs can typically manage. The goal to strive for is that players go "neat" not "I wish it had been something else". Cynical players may feel that dummy loot displaces useful loot from its "slot" on that level's loot pile. But they're not wrong...
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What I do want to get better at myself, is making it more clear to the players that if they do hoard it and sell it off eventually, they are not going to end up with more wealth than if they used the consumable in play.For myself, that wouldn't be a game I'd enjoy: if a person that thoughtfully manages their resources ends up with the exact same wealth as someone that always blows through their money by making it rain consumables, it seems quite unfair to keep tossing free money to one and not the other.
Do we save the princess on time, or on budget?
I think you can go too far in either direction. Being too strict in managing your wealth in the optimal way can kind of hold the game hostage.
Player: "You have to give us more time to heal in between encounters."
GM: "Why don't you use the healing potions you found, the bad guys are getting away."
Player: "We sold them because consumables are suboptimal, Medicine-based healing is better."
GM: "Not if you're on a deadline."
Player: "Then don't put us on a deadline."
Of course you can also go too far in the other direction. I wouldn't normally buy a lot of consumables, but I think selling consumables that you looted shouldn't be the default reaction either. If it happens too much then they're probably not relevant enough (need better loot selection) or not needed enough (maybe raise plot urgency a bit).
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Player: "You have to give us more time to heal in between encounters."
GM: "Why don't you use the healing potions you found, the bad guys are getting away."
Player: "We sold them because consumables are suboptimal, Medicine-based healing is better."
GM: "Not if you're on a deadline."
Player: "Then don't put us on a deadline."
Given the rather... modest amount of healing you get from potions/elixirs, you could have this exchange:
Player: "You have to give us more time to heal in between encounters."
GM: "Why don't you use the healing potions you found, the bad guys are getting away."
Player: "We used them all and we only got back a fraction of our hp! They only heal a 1d8 and we rolled a bunch of 1's and 2's! We'd have been better off selling them since we STILL have to use Medicine-based healing after using them."
GM: "But the deadline!"
Player: "We already lost them as it takes a whole round to take one potion and we've already taken several so they are multiple rounds ahead of us already. If we're rushing, a bucket of healing potions is just slowing us down."
Actually the resale value is great. You only need eight consumables to be able to purchase a permanent item. (Half price on four is eight). That's the lowest amount in any version of D&D ever. And it is insane to expect players to just piss (or, rather, drink) all that wealth away just for a small one-time bonus that's mostly a pain to track.
But not always true. Let's say you want a +1 weapon potency rune cost 35gp. You have 4 crying angel pendants cost 7gp each resell value 3.5gp each for a total resale value of 14gp and 4 Darkvision elixirs (lesser) cost 6gp each resell value 3gp each for a total resale value of 12gp.
14gp + 12gp = 26gp. Not the needed 35gp for a +1 weapon potency rune even though you had 8 consumables.Or lets throw out the items as items and just talk level 2 consumables gp to buy that 35gp +1 weapon potency rune or that 30gp hat of disguise or that 40+gp cold iron weapon. You have 8 7gp consumables resell value 3.5 each total resale value of 28gp.
Those 8 consumables won't get you enough to buy any of those permanent items.
If you are selling Level +1 consumables for onlevel permanent items then it works but not for straight up level consumables for level permanent
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Thinking back, the only potions my party buys are healing potions. Every character basically has at least one, either to pick someone up off the ground or to use if they themselves are on the ground.
Even 1 HP of healing is valuable for this purpose, so they don't seem to mind so much about healing efficiency.
The only other consumables they buy are scrolls of rarely used, but useful spells. I think that's driven by improving day by day spell selection though, so they don't feel like they're letting the team down if a spell they could cast comes up but they don't have it memorized.
Consumables found are almost never used it seems, unless they're healing potions or just happen to be the right tool for the job at hand, and even then not necessarily.
But I think people might be looking at this wrong. It's not the GM's job to dictate how the players use their loot. If they want to hoard consumables, that's their prerogative. I certainly don't drop more consumables to replenish their stock if they burn through it faster. If they spent all their money on scrolls they use, I'll know why their total wealth is lower than their party's but I'm not going to do anything specific about it. The group will continue to get money, and they'll continue to split it evenly, and the players who fell behind because they used consumables can lobby their group for some consideration if necessary.
Thinking about consumables exclusively as healing potions is going to result in players undervaluing them for sure. Not that a lot of consumables won’t be, but ignoring everything else is the problem that leads to the whole party getting out classes by challenging encounters because they are ignoring how easily a few consumables can go in shifting the advantage in a battle.
For example, generally memorizing a resist energy spell, “just in case” is going to result in as much as a 10%-20% reduction is spells a caster has in a day at levels three to six. A second level wand is really pricey and only going to be usable 1 time per day if you are treating it like a permanent item. Scrolls are a really, really economical way to let your caster cover the vast majority of situational spell buffing that will let your fighter stay toe to toe with a monster like an ooze, without sinking any significant party resources into it.
The party that looks at consumables as wealth only is deliberately making the game more difficult for them selves as they are essentially operating at a 10 percent loss of gold at all times. Parties that expertly use consumables (which requires GMs tailoring treasure to do so) are probably operating at a 10 % boost over average, but a 20% boost over the hoarders. This is not a trivial consideration for GMs. And I don’t think the hoarder will ever really be able to catch up by having 20% of last levels wealth extra.
Loooking at treasure as a simulationist mechanic in PF2 is as troubling a position as trying to look at HP as a simulationist mechanic of the real world. Wealth is an active part of character growth and power level. You may not want to make it a hugely visible aspect of the game, but if you are a GM and you are not paying attention to how your PCs use or don’t use their wealth, you could be looking at making life a lot more difficult for them.
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Loooking at treasure as a simulationist mechanic in PF2 is as troubling a position as trying to look at HP as a simulationist mechanic of the real world. Wealth is an active party of character growth and power level. You may not want to make it a hugely visible aspect of the game, but if you are a GM and you are not paying attention to how your PCs use or don’t use their wealth, you could be looking at making life a lot more difficult for them.
Counter point: You could be ruining the game for people who are trying to imagine playing in a world where their decisions about money and wealth matter.
If I started micromanaging my players' consumable usage, 1. They would probably ask me to stop and 2. they would realize my reason for doing so is game and mechanic driven, and that would take them out of the fantasy.
Also, did it not occur to you that people hoarding consumables might *enjoy* playing on "hard mode" and treat their stack of unused consumables as a way of keeping score?
I'll say it again: It's not the GM's job to dictate how the players use their loot. If they're having problems you can give them advice, but if you're planning on making changes ONLY for the sake of encouraging consumable use, you are definitely looking at it the wrong way.
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The party that looks at consumables as wealth only is deliberately making the game more difficult for them selves as they are essentially operating at a 10 percent loss of gold at all times.
No, they are operating with MORE permanent items so it's a wash on GP: with finite wealth, EVERY SINGLE consumable used drops your total wealth permanently.
Parties that expertly use consumables (which requires GMs tailoring treasure to do so) are probably operating at a 10 % boost over average, but a 20% boost over the hoarders. This is not a trivial consideration for GMs.
News at 11! Parties where DM's ONLY every drop exactly what the party needs at the moment they need it operate better than other parties... It would be shocking news if they DIDN'T operate better.
And I don’t think the hoarder will ever really be able to catch up by having 20% of last levels wealth extra.
Honestly I don't see how the wastrel catches up in wealth unless the DM makes wealth infinite. Getting actual items quicker and more frequently can be as much of a factor as a one time item AND they don't go away afterwards.
You may not want to make it a hugely visible aspect of the game, but if you are a GM and you are not paying attention to how your PCs use or don’t use their wealth, you could be looking at making life a lot more difficult for them.
I think it's a difference of expectation. Most people aren't expecting consumables to rain down on them so they can burn through them as soon as they get them: sure that makes things a LOT easier but it seems a very odd set of expectations to have, both for the players and DM.
Sure players could be deliberately making things harder on themselves by not even considering how using consumables could help them succeed, just like PCs can choose not to ever use the medicine skill to restore HP and always push on to the next encounter as quickly as possible.
But talking to your players about how they are really not pulling one over in the game by not using consumables that seem useful at the time is a way to help players that are feeling overwhelmed already by the “difficulty” of the game. If you know your players won’t use consumables then it is probably a good idea to rethink giving them out as loot and either just give some kind of commodity that is about 10 more valuable than the consumables you are replacing. Your party is also going to struggle a lot more in challenges that string combat encounters togethers and challenges that put an emphasis on finding the weakness of the encounter and exploiting it. This will probably include combat encounters vs higher level solo monsters , especially if they pop up in a string of encounters with little advanced notice.
The party that looks at consumables as wealth only is deliberately making the game more difficult for them selves as they are essentially operating at a 10 percent loss of gold at all times.No, they are operating with MORE permanent items so it's a wash on GP: with finite wealth, EVERY SINGLE consumable used drops your total wealth permanently.
Parties that expertly use consumables (which requires GMs tailoring treasure to do so) are probably operating at a 10 % boost over average, but a 20% boost over the hoarders. This is not a trivial consideration for GMs.News at 11! Parties where DM's ONLY every drop exactly what the party needs at the moment they need it operate better than other parties... It would be shocking news if they DIDN'T operate better.
And I don’t think the hoarder will ever really be able to catch up by having 20% of last levels wealth extra.Honestly I don't see how the wastrel catches up in wealth unless the DM makes wealth infinite. Getting actual items quicker and more frequently can be as much of a factor as a one time item AND they don't go away afterwards.
You may not want to make it a hugely visible aspect of the game, but if you are a GM and you are not paying attention to how your PCs use or don’t use their wealth, you could be looking at making life a lot more difficult for them.I think it's a difference of expectation. Most people aren't expecting consumables to rain down on them so they can burn through them as soon as they get them: sure that makes things a LOT easier but it seems a very odd set of expectations to have, both for the players and DM.
Permanent items are not actually universally better than consumables though. Wands for example can be kinda cool, especially for spells that last a very long time, but are 2 levels higher of an item than a scroll. This makes very few wands of 1st level spells more useful to a caster than 15 first level scrolls, especially at levels 2 to 4. The way adventuring and down time work, getting your character to the next level boosts your “income” so fast that spending wealth to get there quickly is much much more efficient than taking things slowly and saving up. The economics of being a PC do not match the slow and steady progress of investing in bonds over gambling on high risk stocks.
Fundamentally a lot of this will boil down to play style, but using consumables instead of hoarding them enables faster pace more high action play that many players want to experience. It is important for GMs to help players find the tools to enable the play style they are most interested in.
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Permanent items are not actually universally better than consumables though.
They are though as they do not go away when used...
Wands for example can be kinda cool, especially for spells that last a very long time, but are 2 levels higher of an item than a scroll.
*shrug* A spell I can cast every day is always going to be worth more than one I can use once. They is especially true when the Dm isn't putting the exact right item in the players hands when they need/want it.
Fundamentally a lot of this will boil down to play style, but using consumables instead of hoarding them enables faster pace more high action play that many players want to experience.
Agree to disagree: juggling a backpack of consumables doesn't seem like 'fast paced' to me nor looking of a consumable every round.
For those of you who institute finite wealth, what do you do about non-material expenditures?
If a character donated money to the poor, bribed a guard to look the other way, retrained a few abilities under a costly tutor, or payed for a dozen new spells to add to their spellbook via Learn A Spell, do you honestly track that expense for the entirety of the character's career?
In most of those situations, I'd argue that the character does not end up being more powerful as a result, and thus any such micromanagement would only prove to be an unnecessarily punitive measure.
If wealth is going to be finite, I'd recommend only tracking that which meaningfully and perpetually effects the power balance of a character. After all, that's what the wealth guidelines are for right? To ensure that everyone remains relatively balanced against one another and against the things they encounter?
Permanent items are not actually universally better than consumables though.They are though as they do not go away when used...
Wands for example can be kinda cool, especially for spells that last a very long time, but are 2 levels higher of an item than a scroll.*shrug* A spell I can cast every day is always going to be worth more than one I can use once. They is especially true when the Dm isn't putting the exact right item in the players hands when they need/want it.
Fundamentally a lot of this will boil down to play style, but using consumables instead of hoarding them enables faster pace more high action play that many players want to experience.Agree to disagree: juggling a backpack of consumables doesn't seem like 'fast paced' to me nor looking of a consumable every round.
This mentality about the wands and scrolls is exactly what I am talking about with the difference between viewing wealth as a static or renewable resource.
The core game math does not view wealth as a purely static resource. Just like it doesn't treat HP as a purely static resource either. Both HP and GP are things that can be earned with time and player investment. So lets look at a level 1 wand of heal as a treasure drop for players.
How many adventuring days will a level 1 wand of heal be a used and appreciated item by a party? Its ability to cast the 2 action heal spell instead of just be a flat 1d8 extends its usefulness for many levels, no doubt, but by level 5, it is very, very unlikely that any character is going to want to be carrying that wand in hand anymore when headed into an encounter and more than likely it is going to sit in a bag for use and get used once or twice more for the rest of the character's life, especially, as you point out, the situations where a player would take the time to get it out are probably superseded at level 5 by effective medicine usage.
If characters spent 10 days of adventuring per level, the wand would be the vastly more useful resource than the scrolls. But they don't. In many APs it is about 8 to 10 encounters to level up, and set an average pace of 4 to 5 encounters per day. That means that your first level wand, that you maybe got at level 2 (if you were lucky) is going to see 4 to 6 uses as a level appropriate item where you might actually want to be carying it in hand. (Heal is a little bit of a weird spell in this regard, since it is usually more of a round 2 or 3 spell than a round 1 spell but its value is relatively easy to quantify in comparison to what else a character could be holding in that hand).
By level 5 the party is probably earning about 135 gp per encounter in a party of 4, that is a little more 33 gp average per encounter. As a caster, you can relatively easily afford to be using a scroll that is highest level -1 every encounter and still be keeping up with your core items. If you do this, you are probably more likely to be able to complete 8 to 10 encounters in a day than 4 to 5.
None of this is to say that using consumables is the better play style than choosing not to use them, but as a GM you have to decide if you are going to push a pace that expects the players to be able to get through 4 encounters a day, 6 encounters a day, or 8 encounters a day.
At 6 encounters a day, a party that refuses to use consumables is probably going to be feeling pretty overwhelmed by encounter 5 or if there are any severe or extreme encounters in there, maybe even after 2 or 3. A party that does use consumables to gain an advantage in encounters might be more comfortable at 6 or even 8.
As a GM, you want to balance your game around your players play style more than a set idea of what you want their play style to be, but you might also want to consider how you might occasionally give them choices that are worth considering as far pushing outside of their typical ideas about item usage, or at least make it where choices have varied consequences instead of just always being true that using consumables is necessary to keep up or a complete waste of resources. Players like being rewarded for accomplishing a little bit more than is expected of them, even if it is just earning an ally's extra gratitude. Although the Game offers lots of ways for even that to turn into an economic advantage as well.
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For those of you who institute finite wealth, what do you do about non-material expenditures?
I *suppose* I could be considered a GM who uses finite wealth. My answer to this question reveals how that isn't the whole story though. I'll break it down into parts:
Part 1: Party's Autonomy
My party has a sense for how much wealth they have and how much they'd like to have. If they start missing against enemies, or not dealing enough damage, they start trying to buy upgraded gear. If they don't have the money for it, possibly because they gave it away, they will look for ways to make money.
In that sense, in my games, it's often a self-correcting problem. If they are cash strapped, they'll start digging deeper into dungeons, plotting how to sell more stuff they might have left behind, or start haggling more with their employers. They've even gotten a loan in advance of a difficult job, which they were able to get because of their good reputation.
Part 2: GM's Duty
Part of a GM's job is to make sure that the party is acquiring satisfactory loot. Often I use randomly generated loot, which is fine as a default, but I will sometimes add items with specific characters in mind to see their faces light up when they find something *just right*.
Now, if I see that they're falling significantly behind their expected wealth and are missing key items I might have expected them to buy, I might tailor more loot drops than I normally would. This gets items the game expects them to have into their hands without money being involved. This type of wealth distribution is almost never considered "infinite wealth", partly because they still have to work to get those drops.
Part 3: GM's Favors
In some cases I've seen my players go far out of their way to ignore some extremely valuable things I put in the game for them to take and sell. This goes beyond them being unwise with their money and needing a little boost to keep the game going. This is on the level of ignoring a full level's worth of gold because it's what their characters would do.
The group donating a huge amount to a worthy cause falls into this type of behavior. It's outside of my planning, and ultimately could cause some serious downstream effects.
In those cases I recognize I miscalculated and will soon thereafter offer a lucrative side quest that they can take to get somewhat back on track if they so choose. If they turn down these side quests (which could be extra rooms in dungeons, merchants on the road needing help, or any number of things) then they are on their own and will have to get by on drops going forward. This isn't so bad, however, because the way wealth scales in a level or two their missing wealth will almost be forgotten.
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I think it comes down to the fact that my characters exist in a world, not just within the confines of a pre-written adventure, and if they want more money they have to do something to get it.
If I were running a pre-written adventure and they weren't on-track with wealth, I would likely add side quests they could take to get back on-track, but I wouldn't just add sacks of gold to the existing encounter loot tables.