Wealth Per Level Guidelines?

I was kinda sloppy for a handful of levels with my treasure parcels, and now I'm looking to right the boat and figure out where we stand.

Unfortunately, the chart I was expecting to find, doesn't seem to exist.

Is there a way for me to just tally everything (and man, it would be great to have a DM control panel in the character builder that did this) and check it against a figure somewhere?

I know about the parcel lists on 126 in the DMG, but was hoping to find a way of doing this that didn't include quite so much paper shuffling.

It depends on what you are trying to do. I, as well, screwed up 2 or 3 levels of treasure parcels and one PC ended up with +1 items until level 8 or 9.

Anyway, what I usually do is make up a spreadsheet at the start of the level (or adventure) and list all the items that the PCs are supposed to get. That is, magic items, gold, and miscellaneous items. At that point I sift through the character builder to find items that fit with the characters' wishlists, that would fit with the adventure's theme, or that fill out roles.

With magic items done (roughly, I usually replace them later), I pick out any odd items that the players might get (rituals, wonderous items, or other non-slot magic items). I then divide up the gold into several parcels (I usually don't follow the DMG's guidelines here), then detail those parcels based on where they're found in the adventure. I replace chunks of gold with the miscellaneous items where appropriate.

I'm not sure how you could "fix" the wealth disparity from past levels, other than give it to them over the course of one or two levels. If you forgot to hand out 10,000 gold, then give it to them in 2,000 gold chunks on top of the other stuff. Or if you missed an item or two, just find some reason to hand the lacking players some interim gear until their real loot kicks in. In my case, I handed the player a +2 weapon for a battle or two until his real magic item showed up (a nice +3 weapon), after which the +2 weapon was handed back with no wealth-gain from it.

I had a party of four which became a party of three. I ignored the parcels for a while, had a player who "misunderstood" the item creation ritual for a while, and had a string of encounters where the players never found the treasure, let bad guys get away with their treasure, or let obnoxious NPCs sweep through after they had cleared out all the monsters and keep all the loot for themselves.

Now, we have a brand spanking new fourth character, and I realized that the rest of the group's equipment, though more plentiful, wasn't as fancy as his shiny new set of three items.

I'm woefully behind, but thankfullly they just cleared out the Horned Hold and are staring at a huge pile of loot, unopened treasure chests, and a stockpile of crated goods that I can fill with whatever the hell we need.

What I ended up doing was just tallying their magical, non-potion equipment and figuring out the total parcel "weight" for a four man, ninth level party, which actually wasn't anywhere near as hard as I had assumed it was going to be. Then I just filled the list up with a chunk of wishlist items till the numbers matched.

I'm ignoring (and assuming that in the long run it won't matter) actual item levels and consumable magic stuff. I figure that as long as the item worth stays close to the right amount, and that the money and consumables I give them never goes over what they should be getting just for that level, then it's good enough.

Nytmare said:

I was kinda sloppy for a handful of levels with my treasure parcels, and now I'm looking to right the boat and figure out where we stand.

Unfortunately, the chart I was expecting to find, doesn't seem to exist.

Is there a way for me to just tally everything (and man, it would be great to have a DM control panel in the character builder that did this) and check it against a figure somewhere?

I know about the parcel lists on 126 in the DMG, but was hoping to find a way of doing this that didn't include quite so much paper shuffling.

Click to expand...

Three answers, in order of increasing complexity and accuracy:

1- Compare their "big 3" (weapon/implement, armor, neck) plusses to the DMG2 inherent bonus rules.
2- Compare their "big 3" plusses to their level as described below.
3- Use the magic item wealth by level table I posted below.

1. Compare their "big 3" plusses to the DMG2 inherent bonus rules.

The only wealth that really matters in 4e is magic items, unless your campaign is unusual, and the only magic items that have a major mechanical effect are the big 3 of neck, armor, and weapon/implement. The DMG2's inherent bonus rules describe what plusses the players should have at each level, so just compare what your players have to that guideline and adjust accordingly.

2. Compare their "big 3" plusses to their level.

Option 1 lacks finesse--it gives everyone the same bonuses at the same time. You can smooth it out a bit.

Big 3 plusses correspond roughly to half-tier. By the end of level 5, everyone should have at least +1 everything; by the end of level 10, everyone should have at least +2 everything; and so on.

Filling in the gaps, that means that (in a five-person party) at the end of level 1, there should be one +1 weapon/implement, one +1 armor, and one +1 neck-slot item. At the end of level 2, there should be two +1 weapons/implements, two +1 armors, and two +1 neck-slot items. At the end of level 3, there should be three of each. And so on.

Carrying this forward to the other tiers gives you two of each +2 item at the end of level 7, with the rest being +1; four of each +3 item at the end of level 14, with the rest being +2; and so forth.

3. Use the magic item wealth by level table I posted below.

If your party spends their treasure optimally, they'll end up averaging a level+2 item per person each level. (One person will purchase a level+0 item and the rest will find level+1 through +4, but it averages out to level+2.) Ignoring the rest of the monetary treasure, which is pretty trivial, the average "expected wealth per level" of a character at level N is the sum from 1..N of a level N+2 item.*

*Some of that treasure eventually gets sold or abandoned, but we can ignore that since old treasure is worth so little. Also, there's an adjustment at level 29 and 30 since magic items don't go above level 30.

In other words, this (per person):

1 680
2 1,520
3 2,520
4 4,320
5 6,920
6 10,320
7 14,520
8 19,520
9 28,520
10 41,520
11 58,520
12 79,520
13 104,520
14 149,520
15 214,520
16 299,520
17 404,520
18 529,520
19 754,520
20 1,079,520
21 1,504,520
22 2,029,520
23 2,654,520
24 3,779,520
25 5,404,520
26 7,529,520
27 10,154,520
28 13,279,520
29 16,404,520
30 19,529,520

(The spreadsheet formula for calculating magic item cost is =(160*MOD(A2,5)+200)*5^INT(A2/5) where A2 contains the item's level.)

Nytmare said:

a four man, ninth level party

Click to expand...

Assuming they've found all the ninth-level treasure, they should have 9 +2 items, 3 +1 items, and 3-12 nonplussed items. The plussed items should be evenly distributed so that everyone has a magic weapon/implement, magic armor, and magic neck-slot item. If they have little cash, they should have 12 nonplussed items. If they have been hoarding their cash, they should have 3 nonplussed items, because they can use their cash to make up the difference.
If they haven't found any ninth-level treasure yet, they should have 6 +2 items, 6 +1 items, and 2-11 non-plussed items.

Truename said:

3. Use the magic item wealth by level table I posted below.

If your party spends their treasure optimally, they'll end up averaging a level+2 item per person each level. (One person will purchase a level+0 item and the rest will find level+1 through +4, but it averages out to level+2.) Ignoring the rest of the monetary treasure, which is pretty trivial, the average "expected wealth per level" of a character at level N is the sum from 1..N of a level N+2 item.*

*Some of that treasure eventually gets sold or abandoned, but we can ignore that since old treasure is worth so little. Also, there's an adjustment at level 29 and 30 since magic items don't go above level 30.

In other words, this (per person):

1 680
2 1,520
3 2,520
4 4,320
5 6,920
6 10,320
7 14,520
8 19,520
9 28,520
10 41,520
11 58,520
12 79,520
13 104,520
14 149,520
15 214,520
16 299,520
17 404,520
18 529,520
19 754,520
20 1,079,520
21 1,504,520
22 2,029,520
23 2,654,520
24 3,779,520
25 5,404,520
26 7,529,520
27 10,154,520
28 13,279,520
29 16,404,520
30 19,529,520

Click to expand...

These numbers are generally too high, since the cumulative effects of selling old equipment do mount up. The clearest statement of expected wealth per level given in the game is on p. 143 of the DMG, which states how much starting characters over 1st level should possess: one item of level + 1, one item of level, one item of level - 1, and cash equal to one item of level - 1. Converting that to cash values gives the following table:

1 100 (starting cash for 1st-level PC)
2 1,920
3 2,560
4 3,200
5 4,480
6 6,400
7 9,600
8 12,800
9 16,000
10 22,400
11 32,000
12 48,000
13 64,000
14 80,000
15 112,000
16 160,000
17 240,000
18 320,000
19 400,000
20 560,000
21 800,000
22 1,200,000
23 1,600,000
24 2,000,000
25 2,800,000
26 4,000,000
27 6,000,000
28 8,000,000
29 10,000,000
30 14,000,000

occam said:

The clearest statement of expected wealth per level given in the game is on p. 143 of the DMG, which states how much starting characters over 1st level should possess:

Click to expand...

I thought that those guidelines were understood to be complete bumpkiss when paired up against a character who had gained loot via leveling up and adventuring?

That, in general, the new character will have fewer pieces of higher level equipment, and an adventure-built character will have a more expensive, and wider array, of lower level items.

occam said:

The clearest statement of expected wealth per level given in the game is on p. 143 of the DMG, which states how much starting characters over 1st level should possess: one item of level + 1, one item of level, one item of level - 1, and cash equal to one item of level - 1. Converting that to cash values gives the following table:

1 100 (starting cash for 1st-level PC)
2 1,920
3 2,560
4 3,200
5 4,480
6 6,400
7 9,600
8 12,800
9 16,000
10 22,400
11 32,000
12 48,000
13 64,000
14 80,000
15 112,000
16 160,000
17 240,000
18 320,000
19 400,000
20 560,000
21 800,000
22 1,200,000
23 1,600,000
24 2,000,000
25 2,800,000
26 4,000,000
27 6,000,000
28 8,000,000
29 10,000,000
30 14,000,000

Click to expand...

BTW, if you prefer formulas to tables, for L = level, W = wealth:

L mod 5 = 1 (1st, 6th, 11th, etc. levels) => W = ~928 * 5^(L/5)
L mod 5 = 2 (2nd, 7th, 12th, etc. levels) => W = ~1009 * 5^(L/5)
L mod 5 = 3 (3rd, 8th, 13th, etc. levels) => W = ~975 * 5^(L/5)
L mod 5 = 4 (4th, 9th, 14th, etc. levels) => W = ~883 * 5^(L/5)
L mod 5 = 0 (5th, 10th, 15th, etc. levels) => W = 896 * 5^(L/5)

If you average that initial factor to 938, so that the formula for all levels becomes:

W = 938 * 5^(L/5)

then the table smooths out to the following:

1 1,294
2 1,786
3 2,464
4 3,399
5 4,690
6 6,471
7 8,928
8 12,318
9 16,996
10 23,450
11 32,355
12 44,641
13 61,592
14 84,980
15 117,250
16 161,773
17 223,203
18 307,960
19 424,902
20 586,250
21 808,867
22 1,116,017
23 1,539,802
24 2,124,510
25 2,931,250
26 4,044,333
27 5,580,086
28 7,699,010
29 10,622,552
30 14,656,250

Nytmare said:

I thought that those guidelines were understood to be complete bumpkiss when paired up against a character who had gained loot via leveling up and adventuring?

That, in general, the new character will have fewer pieces of higher level equipment, and an adventure-built character will have a more expensive, and wider array, of lower level items.

Click to expand...

Although the new character will have better optimized items, which has some value - potentially a lot of value.

Nytmare said:

I thought that those guidelines were understood to be complete bumpkiss when paired up against a character who had gained loot via leveling up and adventuring?

That, in general, the new character will have fewer pieces of higher level equipment, and an adventure-built character will have a more expensive, and wider array, of lower level items.

Click to expand...

Every 5 levels you will be losing 80% of the value of 3 magic items per party member. As each person trades in their +1 item for a +2 and so on you only get 20% if you sell or disenchant it and keep the residuum. This is a bare minimum loss. The difference between the two tables is about 30%. This is reasonable as the 80% loss is always on lower level/value items.

14,000,000 / 19,529,520 = .716

If you were to spend the "cash" you could have what they suggest OR you could have more lower level items. Be aware that some items do not repeat (such as a bag of holding) so you may have to look at much lower level items to find everything you want.