Wealth Per Level Guidelines?

[occam]

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.

That may be. I was going to mention that, but didn't want to complicate the issue. I wasn't speaking to the accuracy of the starting gear guideline as it might reflect actual play, even for a DM strictly abiding by the parcel system; it's just that it's the only wealth-by-level guideline we have in 4e.

You can view the wealth-by-level numbers I gave as lower bounds. If you need upper bounds, then you could total up the value of treasure parcels for each level and divide by 5. I'll let someone else work on that.

 

[Nytmare]

If you need upper bounds, then you could total up the value of treasure parcels for each level and divide by 5. I'll let someone else work on that.

That's actually what I did, and it wasn't tough to do at all.

 

[DracoSuave]

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?

If by 'complete bumpkiss' you mean 'close enough to be servicable without allowing the new character to overshadow the history of loot of the old' you'd be correct.

Why does a new character have to have exactly the same loot? Is that extra 20 gp going to make a huge difference? Is it going to be the difference between a broken character and a balanced one?

No.

The treasure tables themselves are just guidelines. Just have them kill a dragon, update their weapons, armor, and give them a lump sum of treasure, and be on your way.

Gold does NOT have to be an exact science, it just has to be 'good enough to do.'

 

[Nytmare]

Gold does NOT have to be an exact science, it just has to be 'good enough to do.'

You're reading a whole heck of a lot of intent behind that one word. You might notice how the rest of the thread is nothing but, "how do I figure out what's good enough."

I was between 3,000 to 10,000 gold off per character and had no way of knowing how far behind they were. Trying to meaningfully convert three dozen 1st through 10th level items into nine equivalent level +1, level, and level -1 items wasn't an option.

 

[DracoSuave]

You're reading a whole heck of a lot of intent behind that one word. You might notice how the rest of the thread is "good enough to do."

I also notice a lot of the rest of the thread is... a little bit too complicated to solve what is essentially, a relatively minor problem with a relatively painless solution.

It's like breaking out the calculus when trying to bake bread... yeah, it's -exact-, but the recipe is 99/100 times out of ten good enough, even if it's not precise to your elevation or oven temperature, etc. etc.

And in that 1/100th occurance, the fix is so easy that the calculus would STILL be too much work.

Is there a margin of error between the 'here's a new character, give them this' and 'here's the calculated wealth over time for a character from level 1 to level n'? Yes. Is that margin of error so much that the original guideline is butkiss? No, because the original guideline isn't trying to be an exact measurement.

So, what are you trying to do? You're trying to get your players caught up so they can fairly meet the challenges. As such, the shortage comes in the form of the tools to do the job. So, give them the tools, and a handful of gold for rituals and other stuff, and you've solved the problem.

The advanced levels of calculation and tables are simply avoiding that -very straight forward issue.-

And if that issue does not actually exist... then if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[Ahrimon]

I'd say the easiest way is to go through each character, add up the full value of all of thier items + thier gold. Then compare that to the value of items lvl +1, Lvl and (lvl -1) x 2 (per a starting character's gold past lvl 1). If they are ahead, then good. If they are behind then look to see how even it is across the board. If one character is significantly behind the others, throw him an item or two to catch up. If they're all pretty close but still behind then just throw in some extra gold to catch everyone up.

 

[ourchair]

We also had a wealth shortage problem by not remembering to consistently dole out treasure over a few games, and we resolved it when our DM lead us into a market trading adventure.

Sure, it's not as exciting as combat but if you and your DM are good with it, you can really play up the RP aspect and have fun with what is essentially prolonged skill challenge of haggling, persuading and impressing market folk into buying your goods at higher prices.

I posted about it here.

 

[keterys]

The value of loot multiplies by 5 every 5 levels - pretty quickly a minor imbalance in either direction basically disappears.

 

[Mengu]

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?

Just for my education is "bumpkiss" a meme I'm missing, or do you actually mean bupkis? I suspect the latter, but asking just to be sure...

 

[Nytmare]

Just for my education is "bumpkiss" a meme I'm missing, or do you actually mean bupkis? I suspect the latter, but asking just to be sure...

It was at least the pronunciation my grandmother had for it, but that was yiddish via a Polish ghetto in Rhode Island.