Remove Expected Wealth Levels

[Endur]

First of all, it has been my experience that players will calculate their wealth on their own far more than the DM does and get disgruntled if the DM is not giving them "their fair share."

I agree 100%. The decision whether the campaign is a monty haul campaign where everyone has millions of gold or a "vow of poverty" campaign where all the gold is given to starving orphans and the PCs wear rags, should be part of the campaign story. Wealth should not be based on an expected play balance chart.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Magic items should go back to being useful and treasured, not expected and necessary.

Imho that's never been the case, magic items have always been both expected and necessary.

Expectations are raised by a number of information sources - the sheer variety of magic items in the DMG, monster treasure type, pre-gen PCs in modules, published NPC write-ups, rules for generating high level PCs from scratch both in the main rules and Dragon magazine, and the supposed limitations on paladins in terms of the number of magic items they can carry.

Magic weapons are regarded as a necessity for mid to high level physical combat classes, such as fighters and thieves because many of the tougher monsters can only be struck by such weapons.

 

[LostSoul]

So maybe what they should do is remove the idea that a level X monster is appropriate for a level X character.

You can say, "This monster is level X, so therefore it has level X loot/rewards, and this is how you build a level X monster", but you don't need to say "A level X monster is a good challenge for a level X party/PC".

I don't know how that would work for "adventure paths" or that style of DMing - the DM wouldn't be responsible for judging adventure or encounter difficulty, the players would.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Let me put it this way - if you were a player in a 1e game, your party had killed half a dozen adult dragons and none of them had any magic treasure, what would you think? You'd feel cheated wouldn't you? Now how could you possibly feel cheated if there were no expectations in 1e?

 

[billd91]

edited

Nothing to see here any more.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I would love to get back the ability to drop a brand new character into the game at 1st level with other players who have been playing for a while who are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th level without necessarily feeling like the 1st level guy is going to be ineffective and not enjoy himself. It has always been my experience that players appreciate characters that they build from the ground up more than characters created at higher levels who do not have the luxury of developing organically.

That's not the advice in the 1e DMG.

Experienced players without existing characters should generally be brought into the campaign at a level roughly equal to the average of that of the other player characters. If the average is 4th level, far example, an "average" die or d4 + 1 can be rolled to find a level between 2 and 5.​

- pg 111

 

[Doug McCrae]

Since I don't have any expectation of being cheated by any Romani, I don't think "gypped" is the right ethnic slur.

You're quite right. I apologise unreservedly for the use of the term, I wasn't thinking. Now amended.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think that, clearly, we have different definitions of "broken" math. I don't believe there's anything wrong with a little give in the gears. Balancing the math around a knife's edge, in my opinion, is more "broken" than a little give and take in the math because the game loses tolerance for variations. In AD&D, it was OK to adventure with some significant gaps in levels or stat abilities, but the more a game gets balanced on the knife edge, shooting for some designer's idea of a "sweet spot", the less it tolerates that sort of play and I think that's a terrible shame.

I fail to understand the logic of this kind of statement. If it was OK for different PCs to vary by 2-3 or 4 points in to-hit in AD&D, then it is equally OK (or not) for them to vary the same amount in 4e, or in 5e. Either it is a problem or it isn't a problem, make up your mind.

Likewise if you're not all that concerned about whether various PCs are balanced or not vs each other, then again why is it a problem? The 'knife edge' you talk about is simply a DESIGN goal, it need not be a goal or even at all relevant for any given set of players playing the game, at which point it is utterly irrelevant.

It is fine to compare a game, say 4e, with the design goals of that game, but it makes no sense at all to compare the implementation of one game with the design goals of another, or to compare design goals with the goals of players playing the game. The two things simply aren't comparable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Get back? This never existed in any edition of D&D, despite lots of people trying to do it pre-3e.

Yeah, no kidding. In fact it works BETTER in 4e than it did in previous editions. Maybe you can't contribute a VAST amount when you're 5 levels behind, but slap some of the higher level guys spare gear on that character and how far behind are you really? Not THAT much. At least even a 5 or 10 levels behind 4e character is going to be reasonably tough. They'll have to lie low, but they can certain do something. Being 5 levels behind the party in AD&D was usually like you might as well not be there, you'd get crushed like a bug.

OTOH the steeper geometric XP cost increases of levels (and 1e's XP per GP) did help you catch up more and faster. It is somewhat harder to catch up in 4e, though less absolutely necessary.

 

[D'karr]

OTOH the steeper geometric XP cost increases of levels (and 1e's XP per GP) did help you catch up more and faster. It is somewhat harder to catch up in 4e, though less absolutely necessary.

I even fixed this for one of my games by adopting a variable XP table similar to the one in 3.5. Lower Level characters get a little more XP from a higher level encounter. I only used it when I had a situation with a character that was 3 levels lower.