WBL and inheritence

[Mastikator]

This is a question regarding the immediate acquisition of large sums of wealth in a short time and how it affects level, or how it's affected by level.

Basically the WBL states that any given creature or person should have a set amount of wealth based on their level, from a balance perspective this makes sense.
However, from a simulationist or roleplay perspective it makes zero sense and imo is only detrimental when we come to things like inheritance. I mean, if a relative dies to somebody and they inherit some of the gold, is the amount of gold adjusted by the level of the inheritee? And from a roleplay or simulationist perspective how can that be justified?

[Yora]

Give the player the whole money and then make the treasures for the following encounters so that the other pcs can catch up.

[Salanmander]

So, what WBL says is "We recommend players have roughly this much wealth at any given level."

If you break down /why/ that recommendation is there, it works out like this: "If players have significantly more or less wealth than this at a particular level, their power level will be higher or lower, respectively." So go ahead and give them the gold, make sure the party balances out very quickly if they don't share it (as Mastikator said), and throw slightly more challenging encounters at them.

[averagejoe]

In games where PC wealth is important, I like to make magic items function in a separate economy. So you use gold to buy beer or cows or castles or whatever, but magic items generally have no gold value, or one so high that no one will realistically pay for it, because of their uniqueness and rarity in the world at large. Or maybe there's some bogus physics, "Only magic can pay for magic," universal law in effect. Either way, the magic item economy is more trade based, which also means that you have to give them less gold rewards and more useless magic items so they have things to barter with. In this case I'd probably also allow art to be exchanged for magic items, since such things have their value inflated beyond the base items in a similar way. Maybe the anchor Quaal's feather tokens are used like money in magic item exchanges.

[Keld Denar]

Yea, Salanmander hit it on the nose. WBL isn't something you are obligated to hold to, nor is it something the players are entitled to. Its simply a measuring stick when comparing PCs to challenges. A party of four 5th level PCs with ~WBL cash should be able to take on an EL5 encounter with ~20% daily consumable resources expended. Of course, this is all mostly approximation, so take it with a grain of salt. Now, if the 5th level party has twice as much money as WBL indicates, they'll probably finish that same EL5 encounter expending only a fraction of the resources that the standard WBL group expended (possibly as low as 5-10% daily consumable resources). That means that they can handle MORE, and MORE DIFFICULT challenges on a given day.

[Urpriest]

Not that this will solve the problem in all cases, but it's important to point out that few players will have relatives that they can inherit a meaningful amount from, given how quickly WBL scales up from the wealth of a non-adventuring NPC. The few people in the world with that kind of wealth are going to be part of the story, not the PCs' backstories. After all, nobody likes a Mary Sue.

[averagejoe]

Not that this will solve the problem in all cases, but it's important to point out that few players will have relatives that they can inherit a meaningful amount from, given how quickly WBL scales up from the wealth of a non-adventuring NPC. The few people in the world with that kind of wealth are going to be part of the story, not the PCs' backstories. After all, nobody likes a Mary Sue.

Of course, this is also somewhat self-correcting. PC's gain enemies, and enemies love to use the families of PC's to their advantage; this is why so many PC's are orphans. I could definitely see someone kidnapping a wealthy PC's family in exchange for a hefty ransom.

[Ravens_cry]

Pathfinder has a trait system. One of them increases starting gold to 900 gp. I think this provides for a character who has significant assets from family.
Actually, I know the orphan is technically common, but the disinheriting or non-inheriting younger child of minor nobility made the most sense to me for many adventurers. In medieval and older times, sure, you might inherent wealth, but you would also inherit responsibilities. You can't just run off and go who knows where, you have to manage the family business or manorial estate, raise a family, produce an heir. It is the younger children, used to a life of wealth, but not guaranteed access to it with the death of the parents, (to stop the fragmenting of estates it was eldest take all) that would be willing to take risks for potential rewards and would have starting wealth equivalent. Peasants wouldn't have the means, except under special circumstances, middle class would generally all have family business, and greater nobility could be guaranteed stations other ways. The second son (or daughter in more egalitarian campaigns). the bastard child, those are the ones who would be adventurers. Mostly.

[Gnaeus]

I agree with Ravens that that would be a very common adventuring background, and it is one that I have seen often in play. Another very common adventuring background would be the child or other heir to another adventurer. That old childless wizard who taught you magic could have significant wealth. Even the retired fighter now running a bar could have a fair chunk of change in gold or items.


It is the younger children, used to a life of wealth, but not guaranteed access to it with the death of the parents, (to stop the fragmenting of estates it was eldest take all) that would be willing to take risks for potential rewards and would have starting wealth equivalent.

Minor nitpick: in England and probably some other countries it was as you describe. Other medieval states used other rules which did involve fragmentation of family estates. One example is France after Charlemagne. Places like the Ottoman empire had more violent methods of settling inheritance disputes.

[averagejoe]

Pathfinder has a trait system. One of them increases starting gold to 900 gp. I think this provides for a character who has significant assets from family.
Actually, I know the orphan is technically common, but the disinheriting or non-inheriting younger child of minor nobility made the most sense to me for many adventurers. In medieval and older times, sure, you might inherent wealth, but you would also inherit responsibilities. You can't just run off and go who knows where, you have to manage the family business or manorial estate, raise a family, produce an heir. It is the younger children, used to a life of wealth, but not guaranteed access to it with the death of the parents, (to stop the fragmenting of estates it was eldest take all) that would be willing to take risks for potential rewards and would have starting wealth equivalent. Peasants wouldn't have the means, except under special circumstances, middle class would generally all have family business, and greater nobility could be guaranteed stations other ways. The second son (or daughter in more egalitarian campaigns). the bastard child, those are the ones who would be adventurers. Mostly.

Oh, I'll agree it makes sense from an in-game perspective. The orphan thing makes sense from a meta-game perspective, though.

[JonestheSpy]

WBL isn't something you are obligated to hold to, nor is it something the players are entitled to.

Heresy, sir! Black heresy!

Seriously, this reminds me more than anything else of some old Knights of the Dinner Table strips.

DM: Hey, why does your first level character have all those magic items written on their character sheet?

PC: He's the nephew of my old character the 15th level ranger and inherited them. See, I drew a family tree!

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

You can come up with coherent backstories for people of any station. Kings can be exiled, orphans can steal their way to the top, and first sons of noble families can have their inheritance taken away.

As far as the OP goes, it's mostly been answered, but to reiterate: WBL is the amount of wealth the designers expected a party to have when assigning challenge ratings. They also assumed the party would be composed of a blaster caster/healbot/skill monkey/meat shield combination. Assumptions get broken, but keeping in mind designer intent when creating encounters can save you a lot of headaches.

[Talya]

Heresy, sir! Black heresy!


to take it a step further, by RAW, treasure is RANDOM. Any given party will be unlikely to match up to WBL. Depending on what they have been facing and how the DM rolled on those random treasure tables, they may have significantly more...or less...than WBL. WBL only represents an average.

[stainboy]

The core idea of WBL is good - that you should take into account reasonable expenditures and adjust treasure accordingly. If you make a rogue fight undead for a few levels he's going to burn tons of money on UMD and there's not much he can do about it. WBL also means the system doesn't reward refusing to spend a single gold piece on anything but magic items. It means selling magic items isn't a big permanent power loss (which is a big deal for small characters, exotic weapon users, etc). It keeps item creation from doing what it did to Living Greyhawk.

The alternative to WBL is that we don't have a magic item economy at all (beyond constantly used consumables like Cure Light sticks). I think that way would be better, but at least somewhat following WBL is a good idea if your game has magic marts.

@Mastikator: No, the value of the inheritance isn't adjusted. The amount of gold a PC gains in the future might be adjusted to compensate though. What Yora said.

[Salanmander]

Heresy, sir! Black heresy!

Seriously, this reminds me more than anything else of some old Knights of the Dinner Table strips.

DM: Hey, why does your first level character have all those magic items written on their character sheet?

PC: He's the nephew of my old character the 15th level ranger and inherited them. See, I drew a family tree!

I wasn't at all saying that players are in control of their wealth, that's still the DM, and it's still a good idea to stick to WBL in general. But in the situation above there are a few reasonable responses:

"No, I'm planning to run a low-power game, and a character with 15th level wealth would screw that up."

"No, I don't really want the headache of figuring out how powerful extra wealth makes you, we're sticking to roughly WBL."

"Okay. Hey everyone, you've all just gotten a windfall inheritance from X's 15th level ranger. He left X these magic items, and everyone else in X's party (large sum) worth of other stuff. You can figure out what it is before next session. For now just assume you have +4 to your primary stat, +3 to-hit and damage, and +6 to AC." [scribbles increased stats for enemies]

"Okay, but you'll need to split it amongst the party. Treat it like the treasure from a dungeon. While you figure that out, I'll be over here changing up the encounters."

My point was that a DM /can/, if he/she so chooses, allow people to be vastly above WBL and account for it with encounters. Or vastly under, if they intentionally want to run low-power. However, a major stray from WBL should be a deliberate choice on the part of the DM.

@Talya: With the number of times random treasure is rolled, the average is going to be close to the actual number. It's like rolling 20d6: I'll bet your result is between 60 and 80.

[stainboy]

to take it a step further, by RAW, treasure is RANDOM. Any given party will be unlikely to match up to WBL. Depending on what they have been facing and how the DM rolled on those random treasure tables, they may have significantly more...or less...than WBL. WBL only represents an average.

I think that approach becomes a problem with niche itemization. Some builds can function alright with whatever they happen to pick up, but the gnome paladin is just never going to find a Small lance and dire weasel barding in a dungeon. He has to sell found loot and buy loot he can use at a big net loss.

Using random treasure laissez-faire style hurts melee more than casters too. A caster can change her spell loadout to complement whatever she picks up, but a martial type needs a specific weapon (and a specific grade of armor, and a specific belt, and so on). Martial types also usually lean harder on consumables and don't have any way to generate money during downtime.