The other table to look at is the Treasure by Level table.
My understanding of that table is that each row is the value for that level alone. Not the total that the characters should end up at.
So for example, a party of 5 10th level characters that started at level 1 should have found:
* 40 permanent items ranging in level from 11th to 1st with an approximate total value of 20385 GP.
* 59 consumables - most of which have probably been either used or sold.
* 7793 GP in coins. (remember to adjust for the 5th character)
Dividing that up among 5 player characters and ignoring the consumables, each character should have approximately:
* 8 permanent items of about 4000 GP.
* 1500 GP in coins.
A party of 5 starting at 10th level should each have
* 6 permanent items of up to 9th level.
* 350 GP in coins.
or
* 2300 GP in coins that they can spend to buy items before the game starts.
If the level 1-10 players sold all of the permanent items that they found for 50% of list price, then they should have about 3500 GP each in coins or items of their choice that they bought.
I haven't ever started a character or started GMing a game at that high of a level. But the tables indicate that the level 1-10 characters should have at least slightly more wealth than ones that just started at level 10.
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I'm not understanding what you are asking about with retraining or ability scores.
A character starting at level 10 should have the normal ability score increases that are included at level 5 and level 10 (in addition to all of the ability score setup at level 1). They wouldn't need to retrain anything since they are being created at that level.
When my wife ran the Rise of the Runelords adventure path at the Family Game Store, we had a few people leave the game and a few people join the game. We noticed that the new characters who joined at 6th and 7th level were better equipped than the characters who had worked their way up from lower levels. When a sorcerer joined at 7th level, she had him initially imprisoned by the enemy and the party rescued him from his cell. We did not find all his items. She pulled that dirty trick to balance the gear. And the next player to join the game was her, when she stepped down as GM and I took over. She deliberately made her new character with less gear than the rulebook recommended.
That was the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 version of Rise of the Runelords, which she was converting to Pathfinder 1st Edition rules before Paizo did the conversion themselves in their anniversary edition. I later read that the lower levels of that version of Rise of the Runelords shorted people on treasure, not giving them enough for the full wealth by level.
If a GM is homebrewing the adventure--or in my current case converting a PF1 adventure path to PF2--then the GM has the responsibility to provide enough treasure. The Treasure section, page 508, of the Rewards section of the Game Mastering chapter of the Core Rulebook explains how and gives TABLE 10–9: PARTY TREASURE BY LEVEL.
But sometimes the GM makes a miscalculation, or the party does not explore and loot all the rooms, or the party gives away treasure to the needy. Then the PCs end up under-equipped in gear. A new PC will follow the rulebook and be properly equipped.
My own players love to give away treasure. In my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, they gained piles of +1 weapons and armors from defeated Ironfang Legion soldiers. I put a Bag of Holding (Type I) in a treasure trove so that they could carry it and sell it. They didn't. They gave the weapons and armor away to local villagers so that the villagers could defend themselves from the enemy army. In order to give them treasure that they kept, I selected future items in treasure troves so that they directly appealed to the interests of the PCs. These select items were often above the level of the PCs, because high-level items are more interesting. For example, I put a 16th-level major sturdy steel shield in the supply room of a major Ironfang base for the 12th-level champion who routinely uses Shield Block. She kept it. On the other hand, that champion at 13th level gave away the 16th-level high-grade djezet shield from a lava-filled vault, which would have let her block energy attacks, to Karburtin, the royal archivist of Kraggodan, because it was a historic item.
They also gained goodwill from their generosity, so that the locals frequently provided timely aid, such a free services or accurate rumors about the upcoming location. Karburtin and his paladin friend Colga became good friends of the party and smoothed their interaction with the government of Kraggodan.
Untimely aid would be a way to correct an imbalance of wealth. If a new PCs shows up and the contrast reveals that the old PCs are under-equipped, then make a gift. The local baron sends a belated gift to the people who rescued one of his villages from monsters. The old PCs get the gifts because they were in the rescue, and the new PC does not because he joined afterwards.
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About the first part, it was a comparison between characters and brand new characters of the same level.
It seems that the former ones are always behind in terms of loot
If we are just going off of the tables (theorycrafting), then I don't see how 3500 GP is less than 2300 GP.
But that is just theorycrafting. Actual gameplay may end up different.
However, if the player's wealth drops below the new character wealth table entry, the GM should do something to correct that. That table should be considered the minimum for characters in-play.
Plus, most of the settings seems to be very low level, resulting in players not being able to properly expend their coins, resulting in a similar amount of golds but different item power.
I could see this being a problem. We are somewhat having that scenario in a current game I am playing in. We aren't able to buy fundamental runes in the settlement that we are in. But we have been finding them. So only some of us have runed weapons at level 4. One character has a +1 weapon and another one has a +1 striking weapon. The other 5 of us are still using base weapons.
We plan to use some downtime shortly to duplicate and transfer the runes that we have onto everyone else's weapons.
So yes, the GM should not be permanently preventing the characters from getting items that are appropriate to the character level. It should be a temporary problem for theme and pacing of the plot.
As for the retraining, it was a different question ( I just added it to this topic since it was somehow related to party wealth and characters disparities).
Shortly, since it is up to the DM, what would be a fair amount of time to prevent characters disparities?
Earn Income during downtime is not the primary way that characters gain wealth. A difference of 66 GP at level 10 is trivial.
Characters that are built and designed to make heavy use of retraining as they level up are going to pay a premium for that, yes. I think that is by design. Min-maxing through retraining should not be encouraged.
As for retraining, I dislike that the old PCs had to chose feats for their usefulness at low levels but the new PCs selected all their feats to be effective at their current level. Fortunately, PF2 design is better about old feats being good at higher level than PF1 design.
My wife and elder daughter were in a PF1 Serpent's Skull adventure path campaign where my daughter played a gnome barbarian named Muffin. Muffin disappeared when my daughter moved to Seattle, but my daughter left her character sheet with my wife. A few months later, my wife talked me into joining the game. Rather than making a new character, I returned Muffin to the game as my character. Muffin's character sheet had some unusual choices for a barbarian, such as Renewed Vigor and Raging Swimmer rage powers. In online conversation, my daughter explained that she had to choose those abilities for survival while shipwrecked without a healer on an unexplored island in the 1st module, Souls for Smuggler's Shiv. I chose to keep those choices, playing a wilderness-survival barbarian rather than a standard massive-damage barbarian, but I have practice making effective use of non-optimized builds.
Due to my biases, as a GM I usually handwave any retraining, just like the game handwaves the training for gaining new abilities upon leveling up. (In 1st-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons characters had to take time off for training in order to level up.) If the retraining makes sense in light of the player character's past actions, i.e., the PC has not used a particular feat in a long time, then we claim that the PC has been gradually retraining while adventuring.
breithauptclan is right about earning money during downtime. The wages are terrible. Adventuring is much more lucrative. My players spend downtime on customization instead, such as transferring powerful weapon runes from the captured weapon of a boss battle to their favorite weapons instead. Contrarily, the PF2 creature rules allow those bosses to have the benefit of greater striking runes without actually putting greater striking runes on their weapons, but I include the runes because looted runes are one of the treasures that my players will keep.
Find some excuse to give the players the resources they need to have fun. However, min-maxing is not necessarily fun. Mastering feats is more fun than swapping out feats. I had lots of fun playing wilderness-survival barbarian Muffin.
Treasure found should always have a higher nominal value than the wealth of characters jumping in, because not everything found is useful.
For example, a party might find four +1 weapon runes (nominal value 140 gp), but if they have a monk and a wizard, they would have spent 140 gp in cash differently.
The utility isn't 0 (in the example, the value isn't 70 gp, since +1 runes on backup weapons have some value) but it's going to be between 50% (it can't be less than 50% because the party can always sell it for 50%) and 100%.
There's no theorycraft at all.
You can object it's my own experience, but reading mathmuse I can pretty understand I am not the only one.
Yes. I acknowledge that. As I said, I don't have actual game experience with this.
And the game rules and those two tables are likely also built using theorycrafting since the are in the CRB.
Actual gameplay may indeed be different than expected.
And the real issue is how to balance it ( or why it's not properly balanced between AP and table).
The big thing is for the GM to keep a rough estimate of how much wealth and items the player characters have. Compare that to the new character level table and adjust if they are falling below that.
It shouldn't be the case that a new level 10 character being added to a group should feel more wealthy and have better items than the level 1-10 characters that are already in the game. If that does happen, then something needs to be adjusted on the GM's side of the screen.
One would be as you pointed out - if the items available for purchase are way lower level than the characters should have access to. That means that the PCs could get a ton of items, but none of them would be powerful enough to do much good.
Another would be giving out items strictly by the book rather than tailored to the characters. That means that more of the items will just get sold for 50% of their value rather than being used for 100% of their worth.
There may be other causes like that that I haven't thought of. But the short answer is that the GM should be at least roughly aware of the character's wealth and making sure that they are finding enough stuff to keep them up to standards.
If the GM doesn't want to do that, that is what ABP is for.
Yes, absolutely theorycrafting here - and trying to come up with a ruling that is reasonable and fun without being abused.
As for downtime, it was a comparison between a very long retrain and a very long downtime, in terms of "how much powerful would result a character who spent 3/4 months of earn income compared to another one who redo their character.
Doubts here are that there may be a sensible discrepancy between the wealth of the 2 characters ( which might end up being immense with also ability score retraining).
Generally if the need for retraining is because of miscommunication between the GM and the player, then I wouldn't expect much cost in game time or gold to do the retraining.
For example, if a player took Shining Oath and then realized later that there are practically no undead in the campaign - I would let them swap that out pretty much for free.
Similarly if they took a feat expecting one ruling, but I end up running the game differently than they expect and their feat doesn't work the way they wanted it to. They could swap that out for no cost.
On the other hand: if they choose a feat at low level because it is good at low level, use it for several levels, then retrain out of it once something better comes along and they need that feat slot to fill a prerequisite - for that they are going to have to pay the normal retraining costs. They got the value out of the feat that they were expecting.
And in addition to this, trying to understand how to deal with ability score retraining ( which are possible, but left up to the DM).
This would fall into theorycraft, reason why I asked the community for tips and past experiences.
Ability score retraining is almost certainly going to fall into that first category - the player didn't realize that they needed different stats than what they chose at 1st level once they reach level 7 or 8 or so. I probably would make them do the retraining time during downtime just so that it doesn't impact the current adventure. But I wouldn't charge them much for it in terms of gold, or make it take more downtime than they would have during a gap in adventuring.
As for the appropriate level of gear, I witnessed that either EC and AoA do no allow this ( not sure whether to push the party to travel to metropolis or to give crafting more impact ) because of the extremely low level settlements ( which are already lower, or if you are lucky borderline, to the level the book starts, resulting in being lower more and more the party gains level during that book ).
I ended up giving more golds, and allowing them to buy stuff for their level, but still I'd like to understand its purpose ( or if we played it wrong ).
It may be that those two were written before this problem was fully realized by the AP writers.
Not sure about the other campaigns written later. I imagine that Agents of Edgewatch wouldn't have this problem though.
We haven't finished AoA yet - or even gotten through the first book. If it becomes a problem, I would recommend using downtime to order in goods from a bigger settlement - Amazon style. That's how we deal with it IRL after all.
You can object it's my own experience, but reading mathmuse I can pretty understand I am not the only one.
The Core Rulebook devotes 3 and a half pages talking about treasure rewards because giving out the proper amount of treasure so that the PCs have the expected gear is difficult.
I explicitly said that everytime I confronted one of our characters with a brand new one ( whether with the listed items plus the extra amount of golds or just the gold value) the brand new character always end up being better, by far.
The "by far" part is unexpected. In my experience, the better gear is noticeable, but noticeable requires only 20% better overall in combat.
And the real issue is how to balance it ( or why it's not properly balanced between AP and table).
My players handle discrepancies their own way: through teamwork. Because they use teamwork tactics that support individual strengths (and they design those individual strengths to work well with teamwork), each character has an opportunity to shine. One character best suited against the particular enemy gives their all, supported by the rest of the party through buffing, healing, battlefield control, or fighting shoulder to shoulder, and if they falter, then the party guards their retreat to safety while the former support crew steps up as the second wave. Who is stronger becomes blurred when the team is all for one and one for all.
But that is how my players chose to play. Other players play differently.
For example imagine a Thief becoming a ruffian, or a melee ranger becoming a ranged one, or even a cloistered cleric becoming a warpriest ( just to say some ), because of new party composition or just because the desire to try something different.
I have a situation like that in my Ironfang Invasion campaign. The ranger Zinfandel took Twin Takedown as his 1st-level ranger feat, because the player realized that with a spellcaster and two shortbow-wielding rogues in the party, he would be the melee character. But over many levels, a champion and a monk joined the party, and one of the rogue multiclassed to sorcerous magical trickster and fights with Dragon Claws in melee. Zinfandel instead attacks with his longbow. Because he stands 30 feet or farther away to bypass the volley liability on the longbow, he seldom has the opportunity to draw his two kukris (I allow drawing both in one Interact action) and close in. Twin Takedown is mostly a dead feat, but Zinfandel is not interested (and lacks the time) for retraining.
I was reading about General Azaersi, leader of the Ironfang Legion in Lost Omens Legends (I love source material) and saw under prestigious rewards for her lieutenants: "Tamrakh’s Fist: This +1 striking composite bow generates two explosive arrows per day. These arrows can only be shot from Tamrakh’s Fist and crumble into ashes if used with any other weapon. Only two such arrows can exist at any time." A month ago real time, I statted it out compeletely as an Item 13, removing the volley trait but keeping it a longbow, and placed it as treasure in the hands of one of Azaersi's petrified lieutenants. The party unpetrified that lieutenant, turned him over to Kraggodan authorities, and kept the bow for Zinfandel. Zinfandel was 14th level upon receiving Tamrakh’s Fist and recently leveled up to 15th. His player used it in one battle and loves it. Zinfandel still needs a little downtime to move his favorite weapon runes to it.
I try to find ways to keep my players happy with their builds. Tamrakh’s Fist will let Zinfandel fight closer to melee and maybe have more opportunities for Twin Takedown. The volley trait was messing with his style.
Currently, my players are beginning Prisoners of the Blight and the darkblight is both a disease and a curse, much like mummy rot. They have no divine casters and need a way to remove curse. On July 31 I was in a Pathfinder forum discussion about the new time mystery in Dark Archive, and I realized that that offered a solution. A friend of the party from the city of Longshadow will run cross-country at incredible speeds to deliver a Wand of Remove Curse to them, because I recently rebuilt her as a time oracle. More gear for the party that answers a plot point, hurray! Free because it is a gift from a city they rescued. And no-one has to retrain to add Remove Curse to their spell list.
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What's your experience about starting at higher levels?
To me, it seems that a brand new character has way much more resources ( either golds and items) than a character that proceeded during the adventure from lvl 1 to x ( where x is the level you want to start, making a comparison with the table).
No, the existing characters should probably be a bit richer overall. If you compare the table for new characters to the one for existing ones, existing characters can expect to find roughly one permanent item per level, of their own level or 1 level higher. Meanwhile new characters start with a handful of permanent items of 1 and more levels lower than their own.
For example, a 4P level 8 party doing a level 8 adventure expects to find 2x L8 and 2x L9 items before they hit level 9. Last level, they found 2x L7 and 2x L8. So overall they have level 7-9 items as their best. The new character on the other hand has level 6 and 7 items as their best. On the other hand, not all of the items found during an adventure are 100% what the PCs wanted so they might sell some of them, while the new character only gets their first choice.
Although the GMG does give some further recommendations to make sure that a significant chunk of the permanent items characters find is directly useful for that specific party. And that that chunk should be bigger the harder it is to get to a market that sells alternatives. So a party struggling because all the settlements are really low level and they can't get anywhere near level appropriate gear isn't really intended. (Although if you find plenty of runes and can transfer them, that's also an acceptable solution.)