ZEITGEIST Mistake on appropriate wealth for PCs in 4e by the end of Digging for Lies?

EarthSeraphEdna · Jun 25, 2018

4e PCs start with 100 gp.
Before the Axis Island mission, they earn 728 gp.
At level 2, they earn 1,072 gp.
At level 3, they earn 1,479 gp.
At level 4, they earn 2,096 gp.
At level 5, they earn 2,900 gp.
At level 6, they earn 3,760 gp.
At level 7, they earn 5,260 gp.

Therefore, by level 7, the PCs should have a stipend of 17,395 gp each.

However, Saxby is supposed to cut down the party to 12,800 gp early into the third act of Digging for Lies. Is this correct, or is this a mistake, and should the PCs should be able to keep their stipend of 17,395 gp?

If it is correct, then does the 12,800 gp effectively "reset" their wealth and wipe clean the slate of any consumables, rituals, and so on expended? Or does the 12,800 gp still have any consumables, rituals, and so on still deducted from it?

For reference, these are the 4e wealth-by-level tables.

Andrew Moreton · Jun 25, 2018

I have never bothered with 4th ed so my advice may be wrong

In general since the concept of WBL was introduced it has been assumed rightly/wrongly that pc's will use up consumables so the total amount of wealth they will have received by a specfic level is greater than the value of the equipment they will own at each level. However as WBL is just a guideline if your players are stingy like my experience of players in general and hate to use consumables they will often end up with more gear than the WBL table , certainly this is true for all pathfinder AP's I have actually run or played also most published AP's provide slightly more treasure than needed as some may be destroyed/not found/used rather than looted.

For this AP I have kept things simple rather than bothering with stipends and giving them lumps of cash at intervals I just let them have WBL of equipment each time they level up and let them replace any gear they want to replace, it may be more complicated if the pc's can craft their own items but so far I have not had to worry about that.

So decide if you care about the difference between actual wealth and the WBL if you do wreck enough of their gear to bring them down (your players will hate you but it may be fun for you!) or give them less cash in the future until things even out. Or go with the flow and upgrade the opponents if it starts to matter, I find I have to rebuil most if not all combat encounters anyway as the level of character optimisation is impossible for the author to predict and my players normally overshoot and would walk most published encounters.

ZEITGEIST Mistake on appropriate wealth for PCs in 4e by the end of Digging for Lies?

EarthSeraphEdna

Explorer

Andrew Moreton

Adventurer

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