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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paxanadu" data-source="post: 7063779" data-attributes="member: 55358">Having a table showing "true" accumulated wealth and give that to new PCs would create lots of problems:#1 - Some could game the system easily (particularly if GM is not too bright): party is in big city between 2 adventures, and knows the party is going to stay in the city for a while. Player tells GM they want to play something different just for a few adventures, but don't want to fully abandon their old PC. They make a new "disposable" PC with personality Flaw "Thinks giving outrageous gifts to close associates actual buys friendship." Receive tons of cash to equip it, but keep most of it available for spending. Then of course proceeds to "penalize himself" by paying for everything the party needs and giving tons of gifts to them, maybe even earning Inspiration while he's at it. Of course, also tries to gives gift to the old PC if he is somehow still around a little bit. Then, only a couple games later, kills off the PC or tells GM: "Oh well, that was a bad idea, this new guy is dull, I preferred playing my old PC."  I've seen an actual GROUP of players use such a tactic, all "in" on the "deal", except the GM, to take action against a DM that gave new characters "Better than average starting wealth" but was super-stingy with loot afterwards.#2 - It's bad to make the *default baseline* assume that all the fun and loot and treasures and adventures were in the PC's background stories instead of (or equivalently to) actual game sessions.  Starting a PC at level 15 doesn't necessarily mean that that PC lived a ton of high-danger high-pay adventures already. For example, let's imagine a short campaign going from levels 15 to 20. Forcing players to have character concepts that are all very experienced veteran adventurers can be is pretty limiting. What if a player is wanting to play a very young super-prodigy wizard, that had the benefit of the personal teachings of the god of magic himself ? That young guy is powerful, but still has zero adventuring experience, so why should he *obligatorily* has to start off as rich as a mere mortal that raised his levels to 15 the hard way? What if the DM's campaign concept is "all PCs are the sons and daughters of actual gods, they start off quite badass already." That doesn't make them experienced or rich or full of magical items already.#3 - There is a HUGE difference in "true" value to a player between FINDING a "semi-random" magical item, put there by the DM, and starting right off the bat with a magical item that, oh so conveniently, more often than not will be exactly (or nearly exactly) what the player wants and does the perfect combo with his PC'S capabilities. PCs that have been played since level 1 are often "organically grown" and have several character sheet choices that are there more for strictly story and roleplay reasons, than "perfect combo of pure power". Fully played PCs are way less "optimized" that "start-high-level-right-from-off-the-bat" PCs.#4 - Assuming the PCs haven't actually neither SPENT nor LOST anything during their background is also a mistake.  PCs spend stuff all the time, and even lose stuff all the time. I've seen a party buy a galleon once. Made a profit on it being "mercenary merchants". Then the big boat sank, with their new wealth also in it. Not in the next couple adfventures,., mind you. Such a DM would just be acting like a jerk. The event was also story-based, independent on the PCs having a boat, not a "DM wants to get rid of annoying boat, let's add a random encounter specifically to do that". So yeah afterwards they were high level, but quite poor. Everybody still had a fun time and loved taking revenge on the big baddie that sunk their boat and "left them for dead thinking the PCs drowned".  Or those low-magic campaigns where the timeline isn't all cramped "from level 1 to level 20 within one in-game season", and there is still lots of traveling around and the way to travel involves buying rations and paying for every stop at every little inn along the road (instead of, you know, just teleporting right in the big bad's bedroom during his sleep). Especially if the PCs'" standards of living" are high for whatever reasons. But even at very common fare it's about 4 gp per day for the entire party.  A simple 100 miles boat trip is about 100 gold for a 5-PC party (you also have to pay to come back, right?). If every adventure is 2 months away then that adds up to thousands and thousands of gold in the long run. Tons of ways to make players actually WANT to spend cash.#5 - It's just no good to start off a campaign with the PCs already too rich.  That makes the typical and very common (and simpl)e adventuring motivation of "becoming rich" to become kind of a stupid motivation for PCs.#6 - And probably my biggest beef with it of all, and this, by a very wide margin: giving new PCs the SAME (or almost the same) amount of treasure and magical items as every other PC that has actually been played through tons of gaming sessions, that will just greatly cheapen the rest of the PCs accomplishments.  How can you be proud to have accumulated all that stuff (and power) when poof, somebody else also gets it for free merely for showing up for the first time? Kinda make you thing "what was the point", no ? If the point was merely to have fun during the gaming sessions, not to ALSO have fun amassing cash and magical items, then by that VERY same logic, new PC s*also* doesn't have to have lots of cash and items, right ? Fair's fair after all.Sure, you can always say "DM can always adjust". But then we don't need to pay for a book that presents weak mechanics and just just tells do do that, do we ? That is like a restaurant cook cooking his meal only halfway and then telling you "you can always cook it yourself your own way, you know!". the base rules should try to cover not only the default situation, but the commnon exceptions too, and in a way that makes the DM's job EASIER, not HARDER. So it's better for the baseline to be quite low. that sets the bar of player expectations. When a DM wants to give "only a little", he can. When he gives "a lot", he gives extra and players are happy. The opposite would be, when DM "gives a little", players complain they get nerfed, and when he gives "a lot", players consider that totally normal as they deserved it (despite having not done anything to actually "deserve" it.).So basically it's simply way better to *greatly* err on the side of caution to have better chances to avoid these potential problems. For DMs, it's much easier to give than to take away.Anyway, even the DMG p.136 treasure tables themselves are quite ridiculous. Expecting me to think that a CR 1/4 random Goblin will have the same pocket change as a CR 2 random Ogre and also the same as as CR 4 random Ettin, this is just plain stupid. DM fiat is badly needed in that section. But if all DMs were that good they wouldn't need to buy a book. The reason the book is there is not to tell the DM "you can do it like you want anyway", every DM already knows that rule. They are to give DMs precise and complete mechanics that make sense and that they don't need to work a lot on unless they want to.</blockquote>

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