Wealth Balancing System Proposal

I have been toying with the implementation of a balancing mechanism for character wealth for a few day and I would like feedback on the following proposal.

This proposal relies upon a couple of premises which I am not certain are accurate - though I believe they are.

• Since their are five "item slots" at each level for a party of five a PC who recieves a different slot at levels 1-5 should be relatively balanced with another PC whose slots were in a different order. Thus over five level a PC who starts off with a level 5 item should even out with one who begins with a 2nd level item, etc.
• Characters classes benefit similarily from different levels of items.

My suggestion is that each player begins with four or five slots. I would prefer four which would be slightly higher powered than the DMG, but would allow for each character to recieve a magic item at every level - which I think is reasonable given the slow pace of PBP. We have also established a precedent of having a slightly elevated power level given the point buy, etc. Each PC would also recieve 1/5 th of the recommended gold value each level.

These slots would be recorded upon the players character sheet.

So a starting PC would have...

Reward Slots:
1 2 3 4 (these slots do not correspond to item levels, but rather to the place upon the charts on page 126 of the DMG)

His first DM would then be able to choose any of these slots for his item.

So Phoenix decides to give Brudd a 5th level item and would then tell me to remove my number one slot. The DM running the game Brudd is in as he goes from 2nd to third level then deicdes to give Brudd an item of 4th level which at 2nd level corresponds to the third slot.

Brudd's sheet would now read...

Reward Slots:
1 2 3 4

Obviously adopting such a system would involve a little more book keeping and would require DMs to tailor items to players and for players to occasionally not vie for an item that they would like, but know in OOC is not meant for their character. But I believe it would be an excellent balancing mechanism.

I know that the current system is wait and see, but I thought I would put this out there for consideration.

Sounds like a cool system to me, Halford. I'm too tired to dig into the guts of it or anything, but on the surface it sounds very balanced.

Phoenix8008 said:

Sounds like a cool system to me, Halford. I'm too tired to dig into the guts of it or anything, but on the surface it sounds very balanced.

Click to expand...

Ditto. I'm fine with a systematic way of distrubiting treasure, and this seems relatively simple.

Its ok with me as long as this merely serves as a suggested guide to DMs for handing out treasure and not a strict rules system that necessarily need to be conformed to.

There should (in my opinion) always be room for surprises, divergence, and creativity, so that PCs aren't necessarily able to predict their next level of treasure.

Dunamin said:

Its ok with me as long as this merely serves as a suggested guide to DMs for handing out treasure and not a strict rules system that necessarily need to be conformed to.

There should (in my opinion) always be room for surprises, divergence, and creativity, so that PCs aren't necessarily able to predict their next level of treasure.

Click to expand...

Well put. I'd been struggling to articulate my reaction to all this, but that does the job nicely.

I think basically that I agree with the "suggestion not rule".
With the potential for characters and DMs dropping out (or character death) and other weirdness it's almost impossible to guarantee a result.

Ere's proposal, which was voted on and approved, had a degree of interest for me (because I liked the idea that being heroic, was in and of itself enough to empower items wielded by that hero) but the systems don't conflict.

That one was an IC effect. If you're "this heroic" your sword becomes "this awesome".
This one is more OOC.

Effectively Ere's system will only apply to characters leveled with xp.

[d]--[/d]

To make sure I'm understanding it correctly:

If there were a 3th level character:So if Brudd, 3rd level has a +1 weapon (lvl 1), a cloak of resistance +1 (lvl2), Dwarven Armor + 2 (lvl 7), and Dwarven Greaves (lvl 7)

(maybe the dwarven greaves were meant for another character who dropped out of the adventure after they were handed out and Brudd just claimed them)

I suppose that you'd have the two level 7 items count as 1 and 2. And that would leave the DM with a level 5 item and an level 4 item (probably for weapon and neck slot) to hand out.

The PC would then be able to sell or trade away his old sword and cloak, right?
Lets assume he gets a Terror Weapon +1 (lvl 4) and a neck item (lvl 5).

Brudd levels to 4th level. His new slots are He's got two 7s, a 5 and a 4.
One 7 is obviously item #2.
The other is... #3 (6th)? or #1 (8th?)?

(Do we care about the fact that he has a 4? It's not like a +1 Terror weapon is a bad item at that level...)

Just mucking around to make sure i have it right...

(My instinct would be to say these are better off as no-binding guidelines... it'd be a bit intimidating for DMs for this to be a rule, I think)

I would suggest that we do not worry about which item a slot is used for, but rather which slots have been used. Buying items with gold does not effect your slots, nor does selling items that you recieved as slot items.

A suggestion seems to be the consensus and I certainly don't object to the idea. I don't find it likely that any of our DM swill go crazy handing out magic items galore or anything.

But I suppose I would like some manner of check to prevent some characters becoming more well endowed than other, this couldas easy as judges taking a quick look at magic item compliments at level up approvals and suggesting to their next DM that they go easy on the items for Brudd who already has more than his fair share of items, etc.

Halford said:

I would suggest that we do not worry about which item a slot is used for, but rather which slots have been used. Buying items with gold does not effect your slots, nor does selling items that you recieved as slot items.

A suggestion seems to be the consensus and I certainly don't object to the idea. I don't find it likely that any of our DM swill go crazy handing out magic items galore or anything.

But I suppose I would like some manner of check to prevent some characters becoming more well endowed than other, this couldas easy as judges taking a quick look at magic item compliments at level up approvals and suggesting to their next DM that they go easy on the items for Brudd who already has more than his fair share of items, etc.

Click to expand...

The word slots is confusing me. Do you mean... slots on the chart (#1, #2) or slots on the body (weapon, neck, etc). The former right?

So people are supposed to keep track of their slots received (the #s), even after they've sold/traded an item?

Yes, the former Graf. Well my suggestion would be that everyone just ticks off their reward slots when they get the corresponding item. At 5th level they get a new set of reward slots, etc.

I agree that the term slots is confusing, perhaps, umm, well any suggestion? Perhaps I just need to use reward slots?

Does not sound like there is much of a response though, and I don't want to bet a dead horse as it were.

Graf said:

I think basically that I agree with the "suggestion not rule".
With the potential for characters and DMs dropping out (or character death) and other weirdness it's almost impossible to guarantee a result.

Ere's proposal, which was voted on and approved, had a degree of interest for me (because I liked the idea that being heroic, was in and of itself enough to empower items wielded by that hero) but the systems don't conflict.

That one was an IC effect. If you're "this heroic" your sword becomes "this awesome".
This one is more OOC.

Effectively Ere's system will only apply to characters leveled with xp.

[d]--[/d]

To make sure I'm understanding it correctly:

If there were a 3th level character:

1 Magic item, level 7
2 Magic item, level 6
3 Magic item, level 5
4 Magic item, level 4
​

So if Brudd, 3rd level has a +1 weapon (lvl 1), a cloak of resistance +1 (lvl2), Dwarven Armor + 2 (lvl 7), and Dwarven Greaves (lvl 7)

(maybe the dwarven greaves were meant for another character who dropped out of the adventure after they were handed out and Brudd just claimed them)

I suppose that you'd have the two level 7 items count as 1 and 2. And that would leave the DM with a level 5 item and an level 4 item (probably for weapon and neck slot) to hand out.

The PC would then be able to sell or trade away his old sword and cloak, right?
Lets assume he gets a Terror Weapon +1 (lvl 4) and a neck item (lvl 5).

Brudd levels to 4th level. His new slots are

1 Magic item, level 8
2 Magic item, level 7
3 Magic item, level 6
4 Magic item, level 5
​

He's got two 7s, a 5 and a 4.
One 7 is obviously item #2.
The other is... #3 (6th)? or #1 (8th?)?

(Do we care about the fact that he has a 4? It's not like a +1 Terror weapon is a bad item at that level...)

Just mucking around to make sure i have it right...

(My instinct would be to say these are better off as no-binding guidelines... it'd be a bit intimidating for DMs for this to be a rule, I think)

Click to expand...

I would suggest that if Brudd has at 3rd level has a +1 Terror weapon (lvl 4), a cloak of resistance +1 (lvl2), Dwarven Armor + 2 (lvl 7), and Dwarven Greaves (lvl 7) we check the relevant reward slot off as he recieves each item...

Reward Slots
1 - Used for Dwarven Armor +2, 3rd level (lvl 7)
2 - Used for Dwarven Greaves, 4th level (lvl 7)
3 - Used for +1 Terror Weapon, 2nd level (lvl 4)
4 - Used for Cloak of Resistance +1 at 1st level (lvl 2)

I'm not sure how items relate level wise are two level two items worth one level 4? Or is there no such correlation?

Gah, I'm starting to confuse myself!