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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Forrester" data-source="post: 250932" data-attributes="member: 1279">Thoughts . . .Excellent thoughts, all. I'm seeing a couple different issues emerge, though, as the thread progresses. To wit:1) It's *impossible* to give even an approximate estimate of how much more powerful fully-equipped parties are than "naked" parties. However, it seems obvious that fighter-types benefit from magically goodies more than spellcasters do.--I can appreciate why people say this, but frankly, I don't think this is a good enough answer. I think we *need* to get a good estimate of how they measure up. Is a fully-equipped fighter twice as powerful than his naked equivalent? Four times as powerful? EIGHT times as powerful? Perhaps this would mean doing a run through a set group of encounters with two parties: one 15th level naked party (fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard) and one 9th level equipped party of the same composition. And find which one drops first, against a variety of different foes. I would be willing to talk my group into doing a one-shot with some 9th level (or 15th level) guys, and/or setting up the encounter list. If we can get two or three or four other DMs, w/groups, to do the same, perhaps we can answer this question a little more systematically. Anyone interested? It's for science! 2) A good GM can and should control his campaign so that it's NOT all about the "magic shoppe", and make it so that even if the requisite amount of gold and items are handed out, getting items that are *ideal* for character power maximization is difficult. (Credit to creamsteak, hong, Tengar, Tallow)--This is a separate issue. I agree that a good GM should, and needs, to do this. I find it irritating that it's so immensely important, though, and that there seems to be such a huge difference in power level between a 12th level party that can buy whatever they want, and a 12th level party that has difficulty trading in their +1 longswords for +1 greatswords or Wands of Healing (or whatever). In my campaign, there are very few magic shoppes that sell permanent items. I couldn't figure out how the shop owners would protect themselves from Charms and Suggestion, much less thieves with Dimension Door, Teleport, Gaseous Form, and so on, much less any high level thugs that can figure out where he lives. A group of 12th level evil adventurers would be MORE than happy to break out all the stops to steal the number of items that are supposed to be available for purchase in a medium-sized town, I think. Do medium-sized towns usually have 12th level guards for hire? If the merchants aren't high-level, they'd be screwed. So in my campaign, most magic item purchasing and trading goes through brokers. So I've solved the problem by using brokers, right? Not quite. There's a high-level party of elves on the party's trail, with some very nifty custom-made equipment given to them by the King himself. These elves probably have about x1.5 the average loot that *PCs* of that level should start with. So this 8th level party of elves is overequipped (just like I want them to be). How much does this overequipping add to their effective level? One level? Two? Three? I NEED to know -- because there's a big difference in presenting my party an overwhelming challenge, and presenting them a challenge that they have *no* hope in overcoming. After all, the 7th level party of PCs is (slightly) underequipped. How much will this affect them? The CRs in the MM suppose that the party they are fighting are equipped with items that are generally useful. Aren't you curious as to about how much weaker the party is if only half their goods (or a quarter of their goods, or less) are immediately useful to them? Wouldn't it be disturbing if the answers were "about half as powerful, or about a quarter as powerful"?</blockquote>

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