Question:
In my campaign, the heroes are often paid for their services. The Wealth Bonus Adventure Reward Table on page 204 tells me how much of a bonus they should get, but not how much money that represents. It would be nice if I could actually come up with an amount to bandy about while they're speaking to their employers. How can I figure that out?
Ultimately, the actual monetary amount is really just a color element -- a bit of dungeon dressing that adds to the story and atmosphere of the adventure but has no effect on game mechanics. So, as with any other story element, feel free to make up whatever seems right.
That said, here's a rule of thumb. First figure out what Wealth bonus each hero is going to get from the adventure. To figure out what that means in real money, start with the party's average Wealth bonus and add 10 to get a value that I'll call the modified base Wealth bonus. Pretend that number is a purchase DC and convert it to dollars using Table 7-1 on page 204. Then add the per-hero adventure reward to the modified base Wealth bonus and convert that result to dollars using the same table. Subtract the smaller dollar number from the larger to get the monetary amount per hero, then multiply that by the number of heroes in the party to get a rough dollar amount for the award.
Here's an example. Let's say you have five heroes, and their current Wealth bonuses average out to +6. You know that the total Wealth award for the adventure is going to be +15, which will amount to +3 per hero. Adding 10 to +6 gives 16, which equates to $650. Adding the +3 per-hero award gives a result of 19, which equates to $1,500. The difference ($1,500 - $650) is $850 per hero. Multiplying that figure by five heroes gives a total of $4,250. I might be inclined to round that value up to $5,000, just to keep things nice and clean.
