Handling WBL in games?

[Thespianus]

As our campaign moves on to character level 10, I believe our little group of hardy adventureres are running into a bit of a monetary problem. I'd like to know how this is normally handled in your games, Playgrounders.

The deal is this: As we adventure our way through the world, we run into monsters. We kill them and loot them. So far, so good. :)

What we normally do when we find loot is to see if someone in the party wants the item, and if not, we sell it and buy stuff we want. This leads to the problem that even if our DM supplies us with a reasonable amount of loot to put us around 49000 GP @ level 10 per character, as specified by the DMG (we dont use the WBL as a strict rule, obviously, merely as a guideline), we end up eith 49000 / 2, or 24500 GP per character due to the "sell at half price" rule.

Some of the stuff we've found, we're using, but we've been selling most of it, and hence, we have less resources than WBL gives us, even though the DM has given us WBL-appropriate levels of loot.

DMs: How do you handle this? Do you hand out items more tailored to the party, so that less items need to be sold? Or do you hand out more than "WBL appropriate" amounts of loot, so that your players reach WBL even if they sell most of what they find?

Players: Do you find a way around this problem?

Also: How do you value Legacy Weapons? We have found a few Legacy Weapons, but I'm not sure how to calculate their worth.

I hope you can understand what I'm asking here, I'm not sure I'm explaining it all that well. :) Thanks.

[sonofzeal]

My preference is to give occasional unique drops for the heroes, that may not be listed in any book, and a healthy sum of raw gold so they can buy what they need from the basics. But I never use loot tables unless I'm in a silly mood.

[Keneth]

Players should use appraise to determine the items' worth, then use diplomacy to haggle for a better price. This should somewhat improve your net profits. Also, unless everyone in your party is "the one" (i.e. you're the only people in the world who need the equipment and the merchants just buy it from you for kicks), then you should consider exchanging the roles -- take some downtime once in a while and set up a merchant stand of your own (at whatever fee the city demands). This method of course requires that your party's quest is not urgent, if the destruction of the world is imminent, then there's usually no time.

The DM should also offer their players a decent sum of standard valuables (gold, gems, etc.) with the loot so the losses aren't so great when selling stuff. Lastly, every DM should be aware, at least to some degree, what their players actually want and try to populate the encounters with some of those items as well as take into account the loot that will most likely be sold and adjust the gross profits for the players accordingly.

[CTrees]

-snip-

Pretty much this. Also, when handling encounters where enemy equipment is most of the treasure, and the specific equipment is not likely to be that useful to the party (no needs half a dozen suits of half-plate), I tend to increase the available loot a bit over what would normally be recommended, just to account for the party likely losing half the value of said loot.

[Golkiwu]

We reworked the Magic Item sell back in our campaign. It is wholly ridiculous to only get 50% back for a magic item. Diplomacy and appraise are used to determining value/selling price versus the buyers roll. The DM has a chart that he uses for item availability, and is scaled for settlement size. No body sells anything at an automatic 50% loss, it is just bad economics all around. Now selling the Magical items is not always going to be easy, seeing that outside of being in a Metropolis, not many will have the resources to purchase the high gold piece Magic Item just anyplace.

Just how we do it. :smallbiggrin:

[Mr. Zolrane]

This is a bit of a different solution, but here it is:

As a DM, I streamline most of the minutia. There are no experience points, players just level every so often (at a rate that starts out rapid but slows as they level) and every time they level they get an amount of gold equal to what they're entitled to by WBL. If they want to exceed WBL, that's fine, but they have to earn it, be it by crafting or going out of their way to earn more gold (say, by having the rogue steal).

Giving them raw gold gives them complete freedom to build as they see fit, and cuts out a lot of the hassle for me as DM.

[Big Fau]

Giving them raw gold gives them complete freedom to build as they see fit, and cuts out a lot of the hassle for me as DM.

"But then you have magic markets everywhere!"


I do the same myself. Sigil and the Outlands do exist, after all.

[ericgrau]

Normally you ignore the WBL tables and go with the treasure tables. It's already expected that you'll sell a great deal and that WBL isn't exact. For example on level 5 the treasure tables give about 25% more than WBL would, meaning you could sell 40% of your loot for half and still hit WBL. Besides that you only follow WBL for new characters and ignore it otherwise; as long as the party is in the right ballpark that's fine.

Even if you don't like the treasure tables there are average expected gp values in them too which you can use for other treasure.

While you shouldn't have "magic marts" for items above 3,000 gp, large cities should have a handful of high level NPCs willing to craft or, with a lot of luck, sell what the PCs want. The crafting down time can also provide down time for the PCs or a source of plot (assassins while your gear is being upgraded, being unable to leave town while X is after you, etc.).

[Mr. Zolrane]

"But then you have magic markets everywhere!"

Was that meant to be a reference to something (if so, I missed it) or just the usual protest that someone might raise to such an arrangement?

In any case, I'd be fine with that. I run a pretty high-magic setting, so it works out just fine.

[Big Fau]

Was that meant to be a reference to something (if so, I missed it) or just the usual protest that someone might raise to such an arrangement?

In any case, I'd be fine with that. I run a pretty high-magic setting, so it works out just fine.

The latter. I'm fairly comfortable with it myself, seeing as the Devs at least intended it to happen (why else would the Outlands exist?).

[Curmudgeon]

The deal is this: As we adventure our way through the world, we run into monsters. We kill them and loot them. So far, so good. :)
Actually, not so good; that's your problem right there.

If random encounters are the only way you acquire loot, you're missing out on lots of other opportunities and should expect to underperform the average wealth. You could be doing things like taking commissions to fix a problem (raiders picking on supply trains, for instance) and getting paid for that in addition to looting the bodies of those you kill. Or you spend some time tracking down rumors of a treasure-filled dungeon, where you'll loot the bodies of the dungeon dwellers and find some extra treasure that's been hidden away.

Your party needs skills other than just in combat. Usually that requires a social engineer (party "face") to cut deals, and someone good at finding what others don't want found (skillmonkey). If these roles are performed well, you'll probably earn above the average. If these roles are performed poorly (or not at all), you'll earn less.

[Tyndmyr]

For me? Crazy mix of random loot, stuff players connive to get somehow, quest rewards, etc. It usually ends up approximating wealth by level, but it does vary higher and lower at times.

I view it more as a guideline that, while helpful, need not be followed exactly.

[tyckspoon]

We reworked the Magic Item sell back in our campaign. It is wholly ridiculous to only get 50% back for a magic item. Diplomacy and appraise are used to determining value/selling price versus the buyers roll.

It's not that bad- if you look at the closest real-world analogues we have (used media stores, pawn shops, estate/liquidation/junk auctions, anything where you give it to somebody else and say "just give me money now, you handle selling it yourself") 50% is really quite generous. If the party wants to play merchant themselves- set up a shop front, spend a few weeks making Gather Infos to track down an interested buyer/somebody who will make a direct swap for what they want (the equivalent of putting out classifieds/Ebaying/Craigslisting your item instead of just selling it to some other outlet, with the attendant risks of getting scammed/forced to honor a very low sale price/never successfully selling it) they can and should very reasonably get more for it. Those kinds of activities are just not what the usual adventuring party cares to spend their time in.


Normally you ignore the WBL tables and go with the treasure tables. It's already expected that you'll sell a great deal and that WBL isn't exact. For example on level 5 the treasure tables give about 25% more than WBL would, meaning you could sell 40% of your loot for half and still hit WBL.


This would be because the treasure tables will generate huge amounts of completely useless junk and duplicate common magic items. As well as having 0% chance of ever generating any of the really neat magic items introduced after the tables were laid out (using the MIC tables fixes this a bit, but still only covers DMG + MIC stuff.) You have to sell most of what you find, if you don't want to become the magical equivalent of a charity shop carrying around a dozen different +1 Bane (specific humanoid subtype) weapons that nobody in the party wants or uses.

@ thread topic: I'd ask for/work in more directly fungible loot- coins, gems, jewels, art objects, and other things that trade at 1-1 instead of material goods. Otherwise, although I'm not personally fond of the idea (like I said, I'd rather just have trade goods or more personalized loot to start with) find a point in your adventures where taking a couple months off won't do any immediate harm and play merchant for a bit.

[Thespianus]

First off, thanks to everyone for contributing. I really appreciate it. It's good to get oterhs perspective. Thank you.


Actually, not so good; that's your problem right there.

If random encounters are the only way you acquire loot, you're missing out on lots of other opportunities and should expect to underperform the average wealth.

All the encounters are not random, in fact they're usually part of the task at hand: Guards in Fortresses, monsters, mini-bosses etc. The campaign is, however, "fast paced", and there is very little down time, so little down time that even finding time to write new entries into the Wizard's spellbook (outside of spells gained at new levels) is hard and gets the rest of the party in trouble. We don't mind this, it gives us a feeling of urgency and desperation.

But, yes, it limits the amount of time we can spend on side-quests and other ways to gain wealth and resources.