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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 2492277" data-attributes="member: 13098">Like most people it is not easy to succinctly describe my play style.  First of all, my playstyle differs based on the game I am running at the time.  As an example, I am getting ready to start a mini-campaign once a month that has all the PCs as non-native, good-aligned outsiders serving the good gods in my homebrew.  Mundane treasure is a little less relevant for these PCs.  However my normal campaign has PCs that are a little more concerned with money. Still they are not very mercenary and have turned down several opportunities to get cash, instead focusing on things the characters would be interested in.Perhaps my playstyle could be better described as character driven?  The last campaign I ran, the PCs were behind on the wealth guidelines.  Yet they all had stuff to get the job done.  And they did a damn fine job getting the job done.  At the end of the campaign, I eyeballed their wealth values and the group was ~ 20% behind wealth for their level.  We broke that game around 15th level.  But the characters were able to overcome every challenge.  It wasn't always through direct combat.  Now this isn't to say that I was an easy DM on them.  One of the PCs died 5 times.  Others died fewer than that, but death and hardship was definitely a real threat.  The PCs also lost equipment a few times.  The fighter/cleric was particularly bad.  He lost his greatsword so many times that it became a running gag.  I think the most depressing was when his newly created holy greatsword was sundered by a deathknight.  He did take the deathknight's greatsword after they defeated it though.  Of course, he later fell unconscious at the edge of a chasm and lost it there.  I worried a lot about the wealth guidelines in that game.  But at the same time the PCs were handling the challenges pretty well.  So I just worried about it and tried not to give them anything clearly outside the bounds of their level.For this latest campaign, I decided that I wanted to try to break the money/magic relationship.  Now obviously you can't do that completely.  If you give the PCs resources of any sort, they will try to leverage those resources into a form they believe is useful.  But I didn't want to worry so much about what magic they would have if I gave them money.  Fortunately, the Artificer's Handbook is helpful there.  I know that not everybody likes it, but I really appreciate that the limiting factor for creating items is the number of spellslots available to a caster.  Without high enough level spellslots, in enough quantity, higher end items cannot be created.  I also shifted around the breakdown of NPCs in the community.  I have created setting specific reasons why higher level characters are rare.  The players understand the reasons and seem to appreciate the limitations.  But this gives me yet another reason to limit magic items.  The result is that the PCs are more inclined to custom build the items the want the most.  Of course, a few items also come from specific adventures.  The 5th level Favored Soul ended up with a +3 returning trident.  But that is a gift from his god and he won't be trading it out anytime soon.  I figure it has to last him for several levels.  In the interim, I have at least one PC with a magic weapon.  The other magic weapons have been lost to the group, so it is good to have one!  It also gives the player a nice little hook to RP off of.  This campaign is very far off from the wealth guidelines in terms of magic items.  But the PCs have wealth in other ways that would probably bring them pretty close in line with the book. If they would also stop and train, then make items, they might be closer.  The odd thing is that they don't want to take that time off in character.  So they are partially responsible for driving what they have.  I have been lucky with my efforts to leave the wealth guidelines behind.  My players are involved in the process and they have seemed to been having a good time overall.</blockquote>

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