I just made up my own spreadsheet, and I get totally different results from Stringbean. At level 5, he gets 4480 for a DMG char, and 9186.4 from treasure parcels. I get 4480 for a DMG character and 4751.2 for treasure parcels. Treasure parcels are always ahead of the DMG after level 2, but not by that much.
One thing I did wrong on my first pass is that I gave level N characters the treasure parcels for level N - that's what they get awarded during level N. A character starting level N only has the treasure from level N-1. But even if your numbers from the DMG are 1 level too high, I still only get 7071.2, not 9186.4.
Huh, yeah, that's my bad. The first bloody formula was off, which snowballed on me. What I get for doing it at work, I guess. Ignore the numbers I had befoire, way higher than they should have been. JoeNotCharles or someone else, can you check this before I run it for all levels? For level 5, the math I'm using (after taking out the idiot formula blunder):
Starting GP: 100
Level 1 Parcels: 720 gp Monetary + 520 gp MI2 + 680 gp MI3 + 840 gp MI4 + 1000 gp MI5 = 3760 gp Total
Level 2 Parcels: 1040 gp Monetary + 680 gp MI3 + 840 gp MI4 + 1000 gp MI5 + 1800 gp MI6 = 5360 gp Total
Level 3 Parcels: 1355 gp Monetary + 840 gp MI4 + 1000 gp MI5 + 1800 MI6 + 2600 gp MI7 = 7595 gp Total
Level 4 Parcels: 1680 gp Monetary + 1000 gp MI5 + 1800 gp MI6 + 2600 gp MI7 + 3400 gp MI8 = 10480 gp Total
Totals for Parcels: 3760 + 5360 + 7595 + 10480 = 27195 gp
Totals for Player at Level 5: (27195 / 5) + 100 = 5539 gp
I thought that at first, too, but there's no level 1 magic items in the parcels. If you put the 20% back, the amount I'm off before the fee is 400 gp. So it looks like I'm 100 gp less than JoeNotCharles per level of treasure. So here's what the DMG gives, what I get, and what I think JoeNotCharles gets (adding that 100 per level of treasure in) at the various milestones.
Level 5: 4480 DMG, 4431.8 My Calc, 4751.2 JNC Calc
Level 10: 22400 DMG, 28431.2 My Calc, 29151.2 JNC Est. Calc
Level 15: 112000 DMG, 148431.2 My Calc, 149551.2 JNC Est. Calc
Level 20: 560000 DMG, 748431.2 My Calc, 749951.2 JNC Est. Calc
Level 25: 2800000 DMG, 3748431.2 My Calc, 3750351.2 JNC Est. Calc
Now those numbers are a lot closer (amazing what happens when I don't compound the rewards with interest!). Still, there is a widening between my calcs and the DMG method values. I'd want someone to confirm those numbers before I trusted them completely, but it's using the same method I used with the level 5 calculation shown above. And I'm just guessing on the reason my numbers are off from JoeNotCharles's; if it's something else causing it, those last numbers will be very different.
Ah, I'm including the 100 gp for a starting character in the 1st-level wealth. (No, wait, if I used that but you didn't, you should be off by 100 total, not 100 per level. Maybe I accidentally added it every level...)
I added it once after splitting the parcels by five (because at first I had made the mistake of adding it each level), but if you added it every level that would be four extra levels at level 5, which matches the differences perfectly. Not that it matters that much in the long run; even if you add 100 gp each level through 30 levels, you're still only 3,000 gp up. Honestly, at level 30 if I'm still worrying about 3,000 gp when my total wealth is in the millions, there's something off...
As a bonus, that may be the most times I've used the word "level" in a single paragraph.
At any rate, looking at the spread, by level 10 you'd be ahead of the DMG method of wealth calculation by 6,031.2 gp. I don't have my books or my spreadsheet at hand, but that's an extra magical item of a not-inconsequential level at that point. Maybe level 7 or 8? You'd have to check the books for the exact level. So if you adopt this method of character generation from retired/dead characters at all levels, the new characters will have a leg up on the straight-through adventurers for sure once things reach late heroic tier.
Ok, I checked, and I was adding the 100 at every level Here's my spreadsheet if anyone wants to look. (I couldn't make the formulas visible without letting everyone edit it, so please don't screw it up. I did save a private backup, though.)
At level 2, the DMG gives 125% more than the treasure parcels do (that's 125% more than it, not 125% of it, so 2.25 times as much). At level 3 it gives 33% more. At level 4, it gives 7% less. For levels 5 to 8, it gives 20-25% less, then it jumps up to 30-40% less and keeps bouncing around that until level 30.
So what exactly is the proposal again?
Last edited by JoeNotCharles; 18th July 2009 at 04:19 AM..
I really like the idea of using the treasure parcels for both time gold and starting wealth, but I've lost track of whether the 80% penalty was for retiring characters but not time gold, or vice versa, or both, or what. And I think the 80% was sort of pulled out of a hat - what's the reason for it, and is that the right amount?
<SNIP> but if we took the average expected net worth of a PC who has adventured to level 2 and gotten 1/5 of the standard 10 treasure packets, took off, say, 20% as a "retirement fee", and used that number as the starting wealth at level 2?
As far as I can tell, that's where the 80% came from, for retiring folks only. I think this discussion is (and should be) separate from the time gold discussion. Covaithe later asked for a breakdown at higher levels (which I screwed up and took the thread off course in doing), but since he was the one who both suggested the 20% fee and asked for the high-level breakdown, I threw it in to my calculations. Is it the right value? Dunno. If we increase the value, it will take longer to hit that 30-40% over area, but we'll still hit it. Decrease it, and we hit it sooner.
Well, I assume if we're charging a "retirement fee", then we'd be taking 20% (or whatever) off the top of whatever method we choose, which is why I was comparing Cumulative Parcels -20% with DMG Higher Level Characters -20%.
I guess a retirement fee is a good idea, but is 20% too much? I'd say more like 10%.
20% was just a number I pulled out of mid-air for no particular reason. My thought was that retirement should have some cost associated with it; a character built to replace a retired character should be (I thought) somewhat weaker than original character. Otherwise it creates a perverse incentive to retire early and often, which is bad for character continuity and the community and motherhood and apple pie and so forth.
I still think that there ought to be some kind of cost, but, playing with Stringbean's spreadsheet while ENWorld was down this morning, I now think that factor has a more important role to play: it accounts for obsolete equipment. When you go from a +1 weapon to a +2 weapon, the +1 weapon doesn't magically turn into gold in your pocket. The best you can do is sell it for residuum, which represents a significant loss of wealth over a 30-level career. How significant? Well, we can try to guess how significant by tweaking the 20% number that I pulled out of the air, and comparing it to the DMG-suggested starting wealth.
Based on that, it looks like 67% tracks the DMG suggested starting wealth most closely, though there are some levels that are outliers. This is easier to see on a graph, but I don't feel like trying to post graphs here at the moment.
Good point about obsolete items not being worth as much. Maybe we should run the spreadsheet again with all items more than 2 levels before the current counting as 1/5 the value to represent the sell price and see how that compares.
I think using the 67% value or something similar is better than to assume items two level and lower are going to be resold.
In practice, I know for a fact that many a 12th level melee character would still be wearing his 6th level Iron Armband of power, for example.
There are 12 item slot and only 3 are truly essential. Someone with decent enchanted boots is likely to keep them a long time, especially since the usefulness of the non-essential items vary a lot from classes to classes. Something like Fencer's boots might last a rogue for 8 levels or more.
There is just not convenient way to take this into account other than by applying a sensible penalty.
So to summarize - if you add up the total wealth an adventurer will get throughout their career based on treasure packets, the DMG higher-level awards are roughly 2/3 of that except at level 2-4, where the DMG is substantially ahead (> 20%). Such a large discount seems reasonable because adventurers playing through the levels will spend a lot of their wealth on items which will be replaced later.
Here's the actual percent difference between the DMG and 2/3 of the treasure packets:
I'd also guess that at levels 2 to 4, the effect of obsolete items is much less because there hasn't been time to replace anything.
Based on this, I'd say to either:
Award 66% of the time gold all the way through, and low-level characters get shafted a bit (which isn't as big of a deal since there's a lot of variance at those levels anyway, and it's less hardship to throw away a level 1-4 char than to retire and replace a level 8 or 9 char that you've got a lot more invested in)
Award full time gold (maybe with a -10% to discourage character swapping) for new characters at levels 2-4, and just use the DMG numbers thereafter.
On thinking about it more, we're just guessing about how much the turnover in obsolete items is really worth. I'm convinced that the "people playing through get more gold than the DMG says" argument is overblown, because of the depreciation in old items, but the only real guide we're using for how much to factor this in is the DMG! So we might as well just use the DMG numbers.
So I propose that when creating a new character of levels 2-4, we award time gold -10%, and thereafter we use the numbers from the DMG.
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