pc wealth by level rule...more of a guidline

[emanresu]

looking at the wealth by level rule I quickly noticed that I am over, what a shock right. Problem is our group has 1 pc for arms n armor, 1 wand maker, 1 wonderous item etc SOOO I have been having pcs make items instead of buying at full book price. We are a gestalt group which I understand adds +2 ecl? So should I base my pc wealth off actual level or the inflated ECL.

As a side note, what do you DMs do in this situation: My PC was pretty close to the $ of WBL, within 3,500, UNTIL we killed the BBeG whom as it turns out had a +3 sword w/ +1 enhancement, thus a +4 sword worth some 32,000. This $ shoots the pc way over the WBL mark....does pc just say Oh thanks? or does the DM sunder the item?

eman

 

[Ahnehnois]

It is indeed a guideline, and not a rule.

You definitely don't want to get into sundering/stealing/etc. just to conform to this guideline. If you come upon material wealth, it's yours. If that ends up being a lot, so be it. Sometimes, a DM might more indirectly manage things, say by throwing you against a bunch of monsters with no treasure for a while. I'm not a huge fan of that, really. Still metagaming.

Gestalt doesn't have anything to say about wealth, so by default you'd still be looking at it in terms of your character level. However, you're right that it's really appropriate to look at it in terms of increased power level , which could reflect your gestalt-ness, your starting ability scores, or other considerations.

I generally start PCs off at triple the book value for wealth and they trend upwards from there, as well as having higher ability scores and more epic-ness in general. My DMG hasn't burned to a crisp or anything.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

My suggestion is to compley ignore that chart

 

[Crothian]

If the players have too much wealth then it is a good thing. People who are rich and can't protect their wealth soon lose it. You can have them be robbed, swindled, or anything else to add to the adventure. One great way is to tax them especially if all their wealth is tied up in magic items and very little of it is liquid.

 

[Celebrim]

You can safely ignore it (I always have) provided you are careful to consider the potential balance issues.

If the party is well above (or below) their wealth by level guidelines, the effective party level may need to be mentally adjusted as wealth is party of the assumed ability of the party to handle challenges.

Likewise, if you ignore the wealth by level guidelines for NPCs, you may need to adjust down the calculated CR of the NPC by 25% or more depending on how little gear the NPC has.

 

[Greenfield]

We use that rule when creating new characters at some level over 1st.

We also use it as a general guide to how much treasure a DM should be handing out. When the party wealth is running high, A Dm can engineer a few additional expenses, set up situations where they'll dip into their consumables, or adjust the way treasure is handed out.

For example, instead of giving out coin in a treasure award, give out lower level magic items of the same value. The party, not needing another set of +1 throwing daggers, will sell them, netting half market value in cash.

Alternately, shift the treasure composition towards more consumable items, knowing that, while it adds to the party wealth, they'll be consumed, making it a self correcting problem.

Remember that the "problem" of an overly wealthy party isn't that they're at risk of becoming the 1% (they probably already are), but the fact that wealth, in terms of magical gear, makes them harder to challenge in game.

If you challenge them with treasure or gear rich opponents, they can become more out of balance, and you find yourself in an arms race. This is the real issue.

So avoid that issue. Be cheap for a while.

 

[emanresu]

powerful magical items such as the +4 sword I just got commonly are old, have a history, are well known and most everybody will hear how it became yours. Not that a +4 sword is a good use of 32,000 who the heck has 32,000 just laying around?

In our latest campaign, we learned of a rich noble that inherited this family blade, a +3 keen rapier, I killed him for it, and now await retaliation. Our fighter/Paladin of Tyranny just killed a paladin / purple knight of some sort, I think its a guild, but we are to expect retaliation for this as well.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I ignore that chart.

 

[Iconic Maps]

I think the questions has to be, how important is CR balance in your campaign? If it is an important factor in the way that you design encounters, then the wealth-by-level chart ought to be more ore less adhered to, since it is an important determining factor in the party's CR vis-a-vis that of an encounter they are facing. On the other hand, if this form of game balance is not a high priority then you can safely ignore the chart.


Speaking from my own experience, I used to stick pretty close to the WBL chart when I played 3.5e and Pathfinder. However after having had some experience with older styles of play I find that game balance is no longer a high priority for me. In fact, sometimes it's not desirable at all. Where the notion of balance is useful is in thinking through planning out encounters that are part of a larger linear story arc (such as one of Paizo's adventure paths). Since you want the narrative as a whole to present interesting (but not in general deadly) challenges to the party it pacing becomes important. You want to offer your party a healthy dose of easy to moderately challenging encounters, a few more challenging ones along the way for variety, but save your most challenging encounters for the key moments of the narrative. To do this well requires attending to issues that might imbalance these encounters. On the one hand you want to avoid TPKs where possible since they will kill a narrative arc straight away. On the other hand you also want to avoid removing any real suspense from the game. Attending to the wealth by level chart is one among many ways of attempting to mitigate either of these two pitfalls.


Where balance does not work so well however is in a sand-box form of game-play in which the PCs are in direct control of shaping the narrative. This is especially true of conventions such as the classic dungeon or hex crawl. It is typical of such conventions that the further down the dungeon (or into the wilderness) you go, the deadlier and more rewarding the encounters become. The PCs are in the driver's seat here. If they want to play it safe they can keep to the upper dungeon levels for the first few levels, though this will mean that the rewards will be slimmer. If they wish to take more risks they can delve deeper. If through luck or ingenuity a low level party manages to make off with a dragon's horde then more power to them. Let them enjoy their justly earned rewards.


So again it all comes down to what sort of game you wish to play.


Cheers,
-Tad