Equipment per level and character balance

[Frum]

Hi everyone! I really wanted to post this in the Rules forum, but I think it is more appropriate here. What do you think the result would be if the character wealth per level amounts were changed, say to 1/2 or 1/4 normal? What changes would that make to the CR of creatures the party could handle?

I know that for monsters with damage reduction, this would be a significant hindrance. Player characters would have a good deal of trouble with such creatures. But for other monsters, and in general, what do you think? And be specific if you can.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

 

[drunkmoogle]

The easiest way to determine the CR is to compare the statblock of the character to the statblocks of several monsters in the MM. Compare HPs, bonus to hit, attacks, damage outputs, and saves. Once you've pinged a specific CR, search for similar entries for confirmation. Before you know it, you've got an effective EL!

I just recently stripped the characters, level five, buck naked and threw them in a multiple level dungeon, using only what they scavenged. It was a party of three: a bard, a ranger, and a rogue. Throwing 4 CR 3's at them and two CR 4's, I've got them to use up most of their total resources, most of which they scavenged. I gave standard treasure, as per the DMG.

I don't know about later levels or earlier levels. It doesn't hurt as much if your first level character's wealth is halved, and it hurts like hell if you just had your wealth halved at level 15. You're best off spending more time carefully looking at statblocks; CR isn't an exact science and you don't want a TPK (or do you?).

 

[Ibram]

Two things:

1) I'm not very anal as a DM, I dont keep track of every trail ration or inch of rope. I've told my players before that if i want them to run out of say arrows arrows theny they will be out of arrows.

2) I enforce the High Living rule from Conan d20: as long as the PC's have over 100 sp they lose 1/2 of their wealth each weak. it keeps my players from walking around with 50lb bags of gold.

 

[Zad]

It will have an impact. I'm in a long running campaign where we were definitely under-book-value. There's nothing wrong with it, provided you compensate accordingly. For my DM, the equipment deficit was FAR outweighed by the fact that we had six players rather than the standard four, so he was usually adjusting things up rather than down.

That said, I think there's probably no hard-n-fast rule. You have to just evaluate each encounter as it comes. The CR system's margin of error is so large that this probably falls within it. (Rast?!? CR6?!? Oh please.)

Pay particular attention to DR (as you said) and to saving throw DCs. You can always just take the encounter as written but downgrade a DC by a point or two if you like as well.

The other thing to realize is that the gap gets wider as you go higher in level. At mid-levels it may be pretty small, but in the teens it's going to be much more noticible and you'll have to compensate more.