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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Victim" data-source="post: 745182" data-attributes="member: 78">The chart is a guideline based on average treasure from a mix of enemies.  Or you could say that the average treasure per encounter is the change in wealth guideline over 13.33.  Same thing.  But the chart is A) a guideline, and B) based on a mix of encounters with average treasure.  The chart is a great way to bring in new characters with appropriate gear.  But in play, things can get a bit messier.If a group doesn't fight a mixed bag of enemies, then the group's net worth will become distorted.  Animals, Dire animals, etc generally have no treasure.  A group running around the woods fighting rabid animals isn't going to pick up treasure quickly.  Similarly, foes like dragons have triple normal treasure.  A group that fights 13 battles with equal CR animals will be dirt poor, while dragonslayers will be rich.  Also, some treasure rolls will result in distorted wealth values.  For example, in one WotC adventure, our group found a Helm of Teleportation.  At our level, the value of the item exceeded the value from the reccommended wealth by level chart.  Obviously, someone was going to be too rich.  Getting lucky on the treasure tables a couple of times might also make a group richer than would be expected.Item creation also distorts the wealth by level values.  Let's take a nominally 9th level group.  IIRC, 9th level means 36k XP, and 36k GP.  What if the wizard decides to craft a bunch of items for himself?  Because items are made at half price, he can effectively double his wealth by making all of his own gear.  So he has about 72k worth of stuff, but is only level 8 because he spent 1440 XP.  Now we've got an 8th level character with wealth that's close to the gear of an 11th level character.  Also, he can craft stuff for the rest of the group too.  Then the whole group has maybe 60k worth of stuff each because he can't craft everything, and the wizard is still 8th level.   There's a big difference between the capabilities of those groups.  Finally, characters can make money without necessarily earning XP.  There are plenty of ways for clever people to make money.  If someone comes up with a good way for their character to earn some cash and it actually has a good chance of working, I'm not going to say, "Sorry, your character is too low level to have that money."  Characters can steal stuff, casters can sell spells or make items, etc.  Heck, if my wizard is jaunting around between two distant areas with teleport, he can find out what goods sell for different prices and sell them each trip.</blockquote>

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