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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 909843" data-attributes="member: 3433">In theory, this is the way things should work out.  However, what seems to happen is somewhat different.  Here's the situation I'm faced with:There are 5 characters, all which have adventured long enough to have earned about 13 levels worth of exp and wealth (110K gp).  However, each has died at least 1 time, and some of them have died multiple times, so their resulting character levels are currently 10th, 10th, 11th, 11th, 12th.  Also, let's assume that the wealth has been somehow "redistributed" so that the 110K gold per character is still in effect in spite of some characters coming and going.  Next, one of the 10th level (actually 10.5 level) characters dies.  The remaining 4 divide up the 110k of wealth (27.5K per character), and wind up with close to 137.5k per character which is rapidly approaching the wealth of a 14th level character.  This may not sound all that bad, but it is.  Finally a new 10th level character joins up with 49K worth of stuff.  To get their experience back in line with treasure, they are going to need to gain 3 to 4 levels of experience.  At the rate they've been progressing, that might be around the December timeframe.  That's a lot of weekly playing sessions to work thru before reaching equilibrium.It is true that they should have an easier time surviving the next bunches of encounters with the extra loot.  But the challenges become almost too easy.  This leads them to overextend themselves ("Let's keep going, I'm barely hurt, wizard still has half his spells, and we whipped those last 3 groups easy"), and they stumble into a tough ecnounter.  They wind up with yet another character death, putting them right back where they started in terms of exp.I mentioned the challenges are getting harder to judge.  Both of the recent character deaths have come at the hands of EL9 encounters (3xCR6, 8xCR3), but they usually plow thru EL9's, EL10's, and EL11 with ease.  I've even seen them mow down hard EL13 and EL14 encounters w/o breaking a sweat.  My hunch is that the items are related here, making many of these encounter easier than you'd expect, but sometimes the items aren't much help, and that's when they get plastered.  At this point, I wouldn't be shocked to see this group pull off a 1-turn kill against an EL16, but then find a way to walk into a Total Party Kill vs. an EL4!.</blockquote>

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