Increasing Treasure for a larger party??

[ValkaS63]

Hello Guru's,
I am currently running an AP for a group of 7 players. The AP was written for 4. Should I increase the amount of treasure for the increased number of players?

If yes, just coins or weapons too? what about magic items?

The table in the core rule book pg 399 table 12=4 mentions that players should have XX wealth at specified levels. I am taking that with a grain of salt but if I do not increase the treasure they will be no where near the number in the table.

The AP is the Mummy's Mask which I, and they are enjoying immensely.

[Today is a good day to... halp]

Take this with a grain of salt from someone without any real knowledge in adventure design... but would it be out of the question to have your player characters get their wealth by level while simultaneously keeping the actual listed treasure as potential collective party loot or would that be a step too far and/or prohibitively much too generous?

[TxSam88]

Ignore wealth by level, ignore the treasure in the books, give treasure as liberally as you think is appropriate for the power level you want in your game. I have yet to see an AP grant enough treasure to even come close to Wealth by Level tables. (Most players want way more treasure than is in the APs, like 5-10 times as much)

[Valandil Ancalime]

If you are increasing the challenges/encounters for a larger party, then an increase in treasure is probably a good idea.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I don't know the AP so I don't know if there are areas in the plot for downtime, item crafting, buying/selling items, etc. If there are, I'd consider adding extra treasure to accommodate a larger group. WBL is a guideline, as much as the CR system is a guideline; you don't need to stick to it super rigidly.

That being said, most APs and boxed adventures assume PCs will have a certain amount of consumable items such as splash weapons, torches, potions, scrolls, wands and so on to succeed in their quests. If the PCs are trying to stretch 4 people's worth of loot across the 7 of them, these consumables will be in short supply meaning progress through the adventure may slow down and the players may become disheartened/disgruntled over that lack of progress.

[Ryze Kuja]

I play with a large party, usually 5 to 6 plus myself. I keep track of WBL on an excel spreadsheet and use excel formulas to quickly do all the math for me.

At the beginning of the campaign, create an excel spreadsheet and start naming all the different times you hand out loot, putting "Banshee Fight", "Colonel Bartholomew Fight", "Red Dragon Loot Horde", "Random treasure chest in a cave", "Payment from Lord RichGuy", "Orc Raid", "Caravan Heist", etc. in your B column and date them in your A column so that you know the exact date/session these different loot hordes were given out, just in case there are any discrepancies you can easily find them and fix them. Then in your C column, start putting the various gold values, for example, 100.75 would be equal to 100 gold, 70 silver, and 5 copper. Include items in here as well, example: if you hand out a +1 longsword, that's 15gp for the longsword, +300gp for Masterwork, and +2,000gp for the enchant, so 2,315gp.

Example:
....A..............................B....................................... .....................C
Sesh20 7/1/22...... Banshee Fight............................... 10,074
Sesh21 7/8/22..... Colonel Bartholomew Fight.......... 1,290.73
Sesh22 7/15/22... Red Dragon Loot Horde.............. 28,441.21
etc.

You can even right-click the 10,074, 1,290.73, and 28,441.21 cells individually to add comments/notes and you can copy/paste a detailed breakdown of the entire loot pile if you want. So you could put "Greater Hat of Disguise, +1 Longsword, and 1,027gp 27sp 9cp" in the comment if you wanted.

Next, go your F column in row 4 and type: "Total Loot:" and right next to that in G4, put this equation: "=SUM(C:C)", and it will total your entire loot pile that you've ever given out and anything that you give out in the future. In your H row next to G4, put this equation: "=(G4/7)". If you have 7 players, then put G4/7, if you have 6 players, put G4/6, if you have 5 players, put G4/5, etc. This column gives you the entire amount of loot divided by the total number of players, and now you can compare whatever this =(G4/7) value is to the WBL guideline in the Gamemastering section. Now you know if you need to give players more loot or pump the brakes a bit.

^------ I cannot even begin to think about how many hours doing loot like this has saved me. It's super quick and hardly any effort, and any discrepancies are fixed later in mere seconds or minutes of research.

========================================

If you're running an AP that is designed for 4 people but you've got 7 players, then all you need to do is take the total value of the loot drop and divide it by 4, then multiply that by 7.

For example, the PC's kill the notorious pirate Morgan "Four-Teeth" McClardey and according to the Adventure Path 1000g is the total loot pile that is given out. This 1000g is meant for 4 people, so divide this by 4 and you get 250gp. Now multiply this by 7 PC's and you should get 1750gp. So rather than give 1000g as the AP wants you to, you hand out 1750gp instead, and each PC gets 250gp as the AP intended.

[TxSam88]

This is a good time to reiterate, Many APS do not have enough treasure in them to meet wealth by level tables.

[Ryze Kuja]

TxSam88 wrote:

This is a good time to reiterate, Many APS do not have enough treasure in them to meet wealth by level tables.

The loot from an encounter in an AP is given with the expectation that the Dungeon Master is going to be adding loot to the NPC's to adjust the encounter levels (and loot levels) to meet the challenge rating that is appropriate for their party. As a DM, you should be doing this to tailor the game experience as needed because every party is different. The listed loot in the AP's *should* be thought of as the "minimal loot" to be handed out <---- This is DM customizability time; add whatever you deem is appropriate. Or, generate your own additional encounters to increase the loot to what you want.

As the DM, you should be tailoring the loot, encounter frequency, and encounter difficulty as you see fit for your party, and the "average" or "median" you *should* be shooting for as a loose guideline is in the Gamemastering section. You don't have to follow this, obviously, but if you're finding that the loot levels of a given AP that you're handing out is roughly WBL=APL*0.85, and then you and the PC's feel like they're not adequately geared, then maybe you should increase this to WBL=APL*1.0, and if you're still running into gear issues, possibly increase it to WBL=APL*1.15; if WBL=APL*1.15 seems too overpowered, then rein it back in and go down to WBL=APL*1.05 or WBL=APL*1.08.

TLDR; Run your game as you see fit. If an AP isn't giving adequate loot, increase it.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

My experiences with AP and loot therein is odd, in some cases actually abnormal, so I can't really offer a good opinion on how they work when run as intended. I have spoken to people who have run them more or less as intended, however, and the consensus is: add or remove encounters as you see fit, adjust loot as you see fit.
Trying to run them wholly as written will likely be frustrating .

In this particular case, if you are worried about giving too much loot, it really depends on how you handle the AP. If there are 7 PCs but you still run the encounters as written (i.e. assuming ca 4 PCs), you may want to be a bit careful about giving increased loot so the PCs aren't even more powerful than the AP intends. OTOH, if you increase the difficulty of encounters to match the PCs, I recommend increasing loot as well.