ECL and starting money

[Jhaelen]

Here's a quote from the SRD: "Also use ECL to determine starting wealth for a monster character."

Although it's seems not be directly relevant to the OP's question, I'd like to point out that npcs are treated differently. Here's the quote from MM5, page 7, 'Typical Treasure':

A creature that has been advanced by class levels has treasure equal to an NPC of its Challenge Rating, not its ECL.

 

[werk]

Although it's seems not be directly relevant to the OP's question, I'd like to point out that npcs are treated differently. Here's the quote from MM5, page 7, 'Typical Treasure':

NPCs have a different wealth table too.

PCs=DMG 3.5 pg. 135
NPCs=DMG 3.5 pg. 127

Or that's what my notes say, I'm away from my books.

 

[eamon]

Although it's seems not be directly relevant to the OP's question, I'd like to point out that npcs are treated differently. Here's the quote from MM5, page 7, 'Typical Treasure':

This directly contradicts pre-existing rules (the SRD, for instance). That's a good thing! If you grant monsters wealth by ECL you'll completely break the CR system.

Broken old system: A stone giant is CR 8, and has 3400gp worth of treasure. A Stone-giant/fighter(1) is (officially anyhow) CR 9, ECL 19, and has 170000gp worth of equipment. It doesn't take genius to realize that a CR 8 beastie, when advanced by a level, gaining a few hp, a BAB, two feats, the elite ability array, and oh, an increase in equipment by a factor 50, isn't merely a CR +1 increase. In any case, you'll mess up character wealth no matter which CR you assign this combo (10? 11?), because even for an unnaturally high CR, the wealth is just too much. When adding class levels to monsters, make sure you do a reality check, the guidelines in the MM and DMG do not work very well at all.