How do the Wealth Guidelines affect your style of play?

[BSF]

Brought from Crothian's Would you give your 2nd level parth 30 thousand gold thread.

I break the wealth guidelines all over the place.

That's not my style of play, but you are certainly welcome to it.

So what exactly is your style of play and how do you allow the wealth guidelines to dictate/define it?

Challenge Ratings and magic items are closely tied in that some monsters have abilities that require magic items to counter/overcome. Wealth and magic items closely tied as well, so default wealth guidelines are related to the CR of creatures you throw at a party.

So do the wealth guidelines dictate your style of play? If so, how? How comfortable are you with deviating from the wealth guidelines?

 

[Crothian]

I ignore them. I am very comfortable with that.

 

[Aeric]

I haven't run a campaign long enough to notice, but as a player, I know that my characters (and those of my fellow players) have usually been well below average in the wealth department, and we've done just fine.

 

[painandgreed]

Wealth guidelines are only used for creating characters coming in at higher than 1st level. I might look at them to see how the players were doing but I woud expect parties that have made good decisions and performed well to be higher than the wealth guidelines and those that have made poor decisions to be below to reflext the rewards and punishments for play.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

DMing Style & Treasure Guidelines

So what exactly is your style of play and how do you allow the wealth guidelines to dictate/define it?

To fully describe my style of play would take a bit of time, however I believe the term "ruthlessly brutal" will suffice.

Like many DMs ... I create fairly challenging encounters, and unless the PCs have appropriate treasure for their level, they will be summarily butchered.

I tend to stick to the wealth guidleines in the DMG (using occasional audits to keep track of things) because it easier for me to balance the encounters that way.

Although I have accidently over-rewarded PCs in the past, it created more complexity than I cared to deal with.

 

[BSF]

Please eleaborate if you wish.

For most of my players, smart decisions and clever tactics dictate whether they live or die. Items help because they provide more options, but items have only occasionally been the deciding factor in a battle.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

The Perils of Laissez-Faire Treasure Distribution

For most of my players, smart decisions and clever tactics dictate whether they live or die.

All the craftiness in the world is of little use if you are facing a monster that you cannot effectively damage because you have underpowered weapons.

 

[Kelleris]

I stick to them for making characters above first level (which is to say, almost all characters in games I DM), but only use them as loose guidelines after that. My characters just hit 7th level (started at 6th) and are actually poorer than when they started the game because they've been aggressively spending money in pursuit of their goals. But they've been making progress toward those goals and there haven't been any opportunities to show them with wealth thus far, so I'm comfortable with how they're doing.

EDIT: I should say, this isn't a "matter of principle" or anything for me. I'm just too lazy to do it the other way, and my off-the-cuff DMing style leads more to +4 bladed tesseracts, +7 vs. consructs than cloaks of resistance +1, so players don't really get a lot of utility items.

 

[IronWolf]

In past times I have tried to stick to the wealth guidelines. Most of this is due to the days I was new to DM'ing way back in 1st edition and tended to hand out too much loot that consisted of too many powerful magic items and gold that allowed for easy purchase of powerful magic.

One thing I am learning as I continue playing and am spending time as a player this campaign is sometimes it is good to let the players have the fun and not be a too power controlling DM. Now I think it takes an experienced DM to pull this off (and our current DM certainly meets the definition of experienced), but if you have one I think you can push the limits a little without throwing the game out of balance or into munchkin land.

A lot of this has to do with what your options will be to spend the money. Certain towns won't have what you want or need, it is simply too powerful. Maybe no one will change that gem or jewel in on spendable coinage, so you have a 5,000gp valued gem that you can't really use for trade as no one is willing to take it in on exchange. Maybe you can only purchase land or a business. While a good investment, it certainly isn't game unbalancing to own a business or land too early in the game. So there are a multitude of factors to consider when it comes to what wealth the players have.

These conversations and most recent campaign have really opened my eyes to what this is all about - playing a game where everyone has fun and looks forward to the next session.

 

[Psion]

So what exactly is your style of play and how do you allow the wealth guidelines to dictate/define it?

Well, I let beginning PCs enter play assuming them, but really don't track PC wealth that closely afterwords. But I usually try to keep it tame when it comes to rewards, and I don't make items easily liquidatable or obtainable. There is no magic-ebay or -amazon in my world, so if you don't contract someone to build a specific items, it is not automatically on the market. On the other end, the magic trade is usually controlled by brokers and PCs can only rarely get book value for resold items.