Good ideas, 
and I just had another interesting idea. I am now considering simply looking at the table showing how much gold the characters are expected to have at that level and allowing a certain fraction of that to be 'spent' on inherent abilities that magic items would have for the character who rejects material possessions. Of course, the abilities have to be consistent with the character concept and would be subject to DM (and therefore my) approval and veto. The only problem is that I am unsure what fraction of the 'gold expected at that level' (let's call it virtual gold) should I allow to be thusly used, since there are several issues:
1) Not all of the money of ordinary characters is held in magic items.
2) I would have to have some mechanism to make sure all 'virtual gold' cannot be hoarded and spent on powerful abilities at a higher level. This is not such a problem for a character that starts at level 1 (hey, if he/she wants to remain weak at first and survives to spend the 'virtual gold' later, that's his/her choice), but since this character is starting at level 10, I should perhaps rule that only a certain percentage of gold can be saved from level to level. But then the question of what percentage comes up...
3) I should probably limit the maximum cost of powers that can be 'bought' based on level, but I am not sure how.
4) Having inherent abilities is better than having abilities in magical items, since they cannot be stolen or otherwise taken away and one does not need to 'switch items' to use them.
What do you people think? Any ideas as to how I can solve the above?
and I just had another interesting idea. I am now considering simply looking at the table showing how much gold the characters are expected to have at that level and allowing a certain fraction of that to be 'spent' on inherent abilities that magic items would have for the character who rejects material possessions. Of course, the abilities have to be consistent with the character concept and would be subject to DM (and therefore my) approval and veto. The only problem is that I am unsure what fraction of the 'gold expected at that level' (let's call it virtual gold) should I allow to be thusly used, since there are several issues: 1) Not all of the money of ordinary characters is held in magic items.
2) I would have to have some mechanism to make sure all 'virtual gold' cannot be hoarded and spent on powerful abilities at a higher level. This is not such a problem for a character that starts at level 1 (hey, if he/she wants to remain weak at first and survives to spend the 'virtual gold' later, that's his/her choice), but since this character is starting at level 10, I should perhaps rule that only a certain percentage of gold can be saved from level to level. But then the question of what percentage comes up...
3) I should probably limit the maximum cost of powers that can be 'bought' based on level, but I am not sure how.
4) Having inherent abilities is better than having abilities in magical items, since they cannot be stolen or otherwise taken away and one does not need to 'switch items' to use them.
What do you people think? Any ideas as to how I can solve the above?
