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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 4616125" data-attributes="member: 35909">Wow am I in the minority!Which isn't to say the christmas tree effect doesn't bother me a bit and I'd like to cut down on it.  And for certain settings with lower magic, it'd be entirely inappropriate.  But there was only a firm good or bad to chooe from, and overall, I like that money can buy rather significant power.  While levels is the ultimate form of power (with "level checking" spells like Blasphemy ot painfully enforce this world order), gp is the main form of comparitive power between two similar characters of equal or near equal level.  I like that people who are smart with their loot and how it's spent and strive to earn as much of it as possible do better for themselves.I played for a while in an online community where everyone had many characters in all in the same kingdom, could freely switch between them, and time went by equal to real time (on the larger scale; one week = one week.  5 Hours real time in a dungeon might be 1 hour).  When i joined, people were obsessed with levelling up as fast as possible to gain more power for their characters.  I decided to take my xp at a slower rate and enjoy each stage of my PC's career, instead focusing solely on getting the most money possible for my level (the all-important "gp/xp" ratio).  And...my characters fell behind in levels to others that were created at the same time.  However...groups are put together based on a level range, and my PCs, due to exorbitant wealth, eventually became incredibly powerful relative to their dungeoning peers.  Suddenly, the people who were happy to jump two levels in a month by doing lots of training and sparring (which gave no gp but ridiculous amounts of xp) were pretty upset at my inferior method of levelling.  <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[sblock]Part of my motivation wasn't just to be a power gamer but out of protest for the houserules they had.  I tried to provide rational arguments on why it was stupid to have training rules that literally allowed PCs to gain hundreds (and by level ~9 over a thousand) of xp a week without having to do anything -- merely pick another PC and "train" with her for the week.  But they wouldn't listen, so I attacked it in two ways.  I had my casters run up fortunes with item creation and not care about levelling fast, and had a VoP character abuse the training rules with another VoP character (her boyfriend), literally gaining a level every month doing absolutely nothing.  The casters were stronger than similar characters 3 levels above them, and the VoP characters caught up in level to others who had been around much longer w/o and real penalty for lack of gear.  As for if it was successful in teaching them?  Well, the training rules are still there, and i left.  *sigh*[/sblock]Even in a normal campaign this can apply.  Take those item creation feats.  Sell stuff off and craft every second of downtime you get.  Sure, you'll fall back in level, but then you'll just get more xp back from the same fights compared to your peers.  Eventually, you'll have so much wealth you're just plain better than someone of your ECL.Some see this as a problem.  I don't.  Why?  The DM controls your wealth access.  Amount of downtime is entirely up to him.  The enemies you face and loot they have?  Up to him.  Gaining power from wealth to me is just another form of system mastery*, and while I would like ot see PCs be less reliant on gear, I do like having such a function in the game and would find it rather boring if the only major way to gain power was levelling.  The double axis makes things more interesting.  Sure, he may be a level 12 aristocrat and you guys are level 16 PCs, but he has MILLIONS of gp in defenses, hirelings, traps, gear,and consummables.  He will not be a push over.  Frankly, I'm on the opposite of this issue from most.  I would like to see MORE major methods of power growth besides levelling up and getting money.*Yes, I admit it.  I love, love love, love, love, LOVE system mastery!  I know it's recently become a dirty word (err...two words) around these boards, but I can't help how I feel.</blockquote>

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