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I have been busy running some older APs for a while, so I hadn't looked at too many newer APs, especially with so many 3 book ones coming out so recently, but when did we lose the chapter by chapter treasure list?
I am curious why this decision was made, because it seems like there is still plenty of room for it in the chapter summary side bar at the start of every chapter? I have found those lists really useful when preparing a new chapter for my party and seeing what kind of treasure they might find to make adjustments up front to better fit the party make up. Were they causing problems?
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Treasure was always my bane in AP's. I'd look through it with an eye to running it and see "2 X stand lookout here, Pathfinder Beastiary X, Page X" so I'd go there for the stats and see "Treasure Standard (Club, Other treasure) and I'd never know if the treasure for the encounter has been scattered in the random loot drops through that chapter e.g. "if they search here they find a chest with 20 gold, 2 potions of cure light wounds and an elemental earth gem" or if I was supposed to work out 400 GP of treasure myself for that encounter and scatter it somewhere for the party.
Treasure was always my bane in AP's. I'd look through it with an eye to running it and see "2 X stand lookout here, Pathfinder Beastiary X, Page X" so I'd go there for the stats and see "Treasure Standard (Club, Other treasure) and I'd never know if the treasure for the encounter has been scattered in the random loot drops through that chapter e.g. "if they search here they find a chest with 20 gold, 2 potions of cure light wounds and an elemental earth gem" or if I was supposed to work out 400 GP of treasure myself for that encounter and scatter it somewhere for the party.
In published material, there is usually more than enough treasure scattered throughout the adventure to meet the expectations of the charts in the GM section of the core rulebook...but there is an assumption that the players will use some/most of the treasure as they find it and not sell everything for half the value. If they sell everything, and don't find everything, it is more than possible for the party as a whole to fall behind. This is especially true if the party does keep a small number of very expensive items from the adventure, but doesn't distribute them well amongst the party. Like if the adventure includes a couple of runed up weapons and Armor that are top end items by level for the party, and both go to the fighter, but everything else gets sold at half value, the fighter might be far ahead of the their own wealth by level chart, but the rest of the party could have fallen behind.
So as a GM, it is recommended that you check in approximately 1x per level and just see if every character has about the right amount of treasure in permanent items they really need, and then some extra/utility items and consumables that they are at least occasionally using.
One of the reasons I really liked the list at the start of each chapter is because I could look over it as a whole and figure out what would probably get used, and what would probably get sold, and then see if there were any items I could replace that would make more sense for my specific party. Now I have to look through the entire chapter to figure that out, where when I had the list, I could just flag the items I wanted to replace and then replace them when they came up.
In published material, there is usually more than enough treasure scattered throughout the adventure to meet the expectations of the charts in the GM section of the core rulebook... [snip] Now I have to look through the entire chapter to figure that out, where when I had the list, I could just flag the items I wanted to replace and then replace them when they came up.
Like that you pointed out the Wants, Needs and "can the PCs even use this" parts.
Granted in some PF1 APs even NPCs were often behind in WBL, Jade Regent really loved those Masterwork Katana, even in book 6.