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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3921701" data-attributes="member: 710">I have no familiarity with OD&amp;D and AD&amp;D so far, but here are a few guesses:3rd edition was probably the first game to explicitely state how much wealth a character should have, and basicaly enforced this system with the Encounter/Challenge Rating mechanics. If you're a 10th level Fighter, you better have a +3 weapon and a Belt of Giant Strength +4, otherwise you will have serious trouble beating your level appropriate enemies. I assume that the older editions, lacking such a tight CR and wealth by level system, didn't enforce this that much. THe DM had to eyeball combat and appropriate enemies anyway, so adding variable wealth into it didn't change much.Furthermore, since the rules assume a certain wealth by level, DMs can feel forced to include a lot of magical items or even provide a magical item market in their game. (After all, by RAW, players seem entitled to it!)Item prices in 3rd edition scaled quadratic with power. This enforced getting a lot of weaker items (filling all body slots with &quot;bling&quot;) instead of a single powerful one.If D&amp;D 4 changes the quadratic increases in price and no longer assumes that PCs have a certain amount of items, there is no inherent need for these items any more. PCs that have a lot of wealth will be more powerful then &quot;expected&quot;, but maybe there will be guidelines on how to rule this. (Maybe a Level 10 weapon will be considered as a further level 10 character in the group. There is no indication so far that this actually will happen).Without quadratic price increases but with less allowed stacking, characters might still want a powerful item, but they don't need dozens of them. Which also means that DMs will not feel forced to give them to them, which is also an important part.There are still a lot of &quot;if&quot;s involved at this point, and I remain some skepticismn. I definitely need to see more on this. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 3921701, member: 710"] I have no familiarity with OD&D and AD&D so far, but here are a few guesses: 3rd edition was probably the first game to explicitely state how much wealth a character should have, and basicaly enforced this system with the Encounter/Challenge Rating mechanics. If you're a 10th level Fighter, you better have a +3 weapon and a Belt of Giant Strength +4, otherwise you will have serious trouble beating your level appropriate enemies. I assume that the older editions, lacking such a tight CR and wealth by level system, didn't enforce this that much. THe DM had to eyeball combat and appropriate enemies anyway, so adding variable wealth into it didn't change much. Furthermore, since the rules assume a certain wealth by level, DMs can feel forced to include a lot of magical items or even provide a magical item market in their game. (After all, by RAW, players seem entitled to it!) Item prices in 3rd edition scaled quadratic with power. This enforced getting a lot of weaker items (filling all body slots with "bling") instead of a single powerful one. If D&D 4 changes the quadratic increases in price and no longer assumes that PCs have a certain amount of items, there is no inherent need for these items any more. PCs that have a lot of wealth will be more powerful then "expected", but maybe there will be guidelines on how to rule this. (Maybe a Level 10 weapon will be considered as a further level 10 character in the group. There is no indication so far that this actually will happen). Without quadratic price increases but with less allowed stacking, characters might still want a powerful item, but they don't need dozens of them. Which also means that DMs will not feel forced to give them to them, which is also an important part. There are still a lot of "if"s involved at this point, and I remain some skepticismn. I definitely need to see more on this. :) [/QUOTE]

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