Abstract Gear Handling

[Elephant]

Has anyone used the variant equipment handling where, every time a PC levels up, that PC simply selects new gear whose value adds up to the appropriate entry in the Wealth By Level table in the DMG?

How does that end up affecting the game?

 

[Obergnom]

I once used a system somewhat like that in an Arcana Evolved game. I created a system where every character had an amount of ritual points and was able to spend those in rituals costing a small amount of gold to improve his gear or enhance certain items closely connected to him. In essence it was just an abstract "equip yourself" system, I just thought that would be a nice way to tie it to the Ritual heavy world of Arcana Evolved.

It worked okay, but my players missed the loot.

 

[Will]

I did that for a while. The one part that was a little weird was figuring out how to handle potions and other 'used up' stuff.

Eventually I decided to calculate potions as 'use per week' items, with the hand-wave that potions were essentially restocked roughly once a week.