Remove Expected Wealth Levels

[Tequila Sunrise]

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

QFT. I'm sympathetic to the OP's hopes, but there's also way too much rose-tinted hindsight going on in this thread. If the 5e team applies the same reasoning to its wealth guidelines [or lack thereof] that the OP does, I'll happily ignore the next 4-6 years of D&D "development."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Yeah, now that I think about it I think XP for monsters had a multiplier in AD&D as well, so low level PCs would get more XP from fighting them than higher level guys would, above and beyond each XP just being plain more valuable to them. It didn't make a HUGE difference if you were using XP for GP in 1e, since monster XP was usually a rounding error, but it could make a big difference in 2e.

 

[Kraydak]

Why on earth do people hate EWLs? Frankly, if you don't understand why an EWL chart is valuable, you are the type of person who needs it most. EWL charts are tools for DMs to keep things sane and friendly. As with many things, a DM who understands the chart can improvise or riff around it. A DM who doesn't understand it should hew more closely.

DnD has been a game about killing things and taking their stuff. The reward for playing is taking stuff. Yes, there are some RPGs that are less item-centric, but note two things. Firstly, every GM complains about their players being item-centric even if the game isn't, and secondly, the games are niche. 5e play will, of course, center around killing things and taking their stuff.

Of course, you don't need EWLs if the loot doesn't do anything... but tabletop play isn't online play with a huge player pool. Online, having gear with the same stats but a unique skin can let you show off, giving it value even in the absence of stats. In your friend's living room, everyone already knows what you did, because they were there when it happened. Loot that people want to get, in DnD, has to have useful stats. Which makes it important, power level wise. There is, of course, a lot of slop is the system. Different groups and players have different levels of optimization standards and skills. But an EWL chart is still an important tool for keeping things more-or-less under control. The more experienced and savvy a group is, the less attention they'll need to pay to it. But part of being experienced and savvy is knowing when you don't have to pay attention to a rule, and when you should houserule something. Rules should be written for the less experienced players. Because they need the guidance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

QFT. I'm sympathetic to the OP's hopes, but there's also way too much rose-tinted hindsight going on in this thread. If the 5e team applies the same reasoning to its wealth guidelines [or lack thereof] that the OP does, I'll happily ignore the next 4-6 years of D&D "development."

Eh, it is all trade-offs.

Personally I think there are 2 issues that tend to get confounded. One is the 4e 'parcel' concept where a given treasure is based on the PCs level and you always expect to get a fixed total amount per level and the other is wealth at level X. Somehow regulating 'wealth' (in its broadest definition) that a character HAS at a given level doesn't seem like a bad idea at all, and I think that has always been the main aim.

Unfortunately there are a bunch of nasty effects of regulating the specific amounts of treasure given out along the way. Of course you have to do that to some degree in order to end up hitting overall wealth targets, but the mindset it creates is rather pernicious. I think it would be better to simply have a set of overall targets (10th level PCs wealth target is 50,000gp) or something like that. The DM and players can bank on that expectation, but if the PCs happen to get a huge treasure or lose/spend a lot of treasure along the way the DM can consider how (and if) the opportunity to make that up will come along.

 

[FireLance]

Frankly, I don't see the need for expected wealth levels at all, although I will happily use them as they make it easier (oh, so much easier) to manage treasure and equipment in my campaign.

What I do see the need for is guidelines for the relationship between PC power, magic item power and monster power. 3e and 4e basically took the approach that a party of level X PCs, each equipped with the magic items that a PC of level X was supposed to have, should be able to take on a monster of CR X (3e)/an equal number of level X monsters (4e), presumably on the basis of simplicity since there would be no need for additional math - just a simple check that all the numbers tally.

Taking magic items out of that base relationship doesn't change the math. It just means that you need to do more calculations when (and if) you give magic items to the PCs. So, if a PC of level X, without magic items, is able to take on a monster of level X, give the PC a magic item of power level Y, and he will be able to take on a monster of level Z, where Z is some function of X and Y.

At its simplest, Y can just be additive, and maybe even fractional. Adding a powerful magic item could increase the PC's effective level by 1 or 2. Adding a weak item might increase it by 1/3 - not enough to make much of a difference, but adding another two of the same power might bump the PC's effective level up by 1.

 

[Lanefan]

First off, I think I'm in a significant minority here when I say that I have no real problem with simple +x weapons.

That said, I don't like expected wealth levels being hard-coded like they were in 3e. Sure, there's an inherent expectation that in general characters are going to get wealthier as their careers go on, but that wealth gain can (and, IMO, should) vary widely from one campaign to the next.

Another thing to consider is that in 1e-2e magic items were much more likely to break or get destroyed than in 3e and (I think) 4e. What this means is that a 1e-2e DM can take an attitude - as I do - of "easy come, easy go" when it comes to magic, but a 3e-4e DM has to consider when giving out a permanent magic item that said item is probably going to be around forever. It also means that a given character's wealth is likely to fluctuate much more in 1e-2e...you can be richer than kings one day and broke the next if your items all fail vs. the fireball you just ate.

Lanefan

 

[ExploderWizard]

I believe that in a manner not unlike the "what the customer wanted" swing cartoons, the "PC progression math" of 4e started out with a rather simple objective that gradually got more and more complicated.

The first, rather simple idea: To make adjusting monsters on the fly easy for the DM, increasing a monster by one level should increase its attack bonus and AC and other defenses by 1, and its hp by a number (6 to 10) according to its role.

Step two: This creates a 29-point difference between a 1st-level monster and a 30th-level monster. In order for the PCs to keep up, they need to gain about +29 to attack rolls and AC and other defenses between 1st to 30th level.

Step three: Level-based increases should take care of some of the difference. We'll go with a rather simple 1 point per 2 levels, instead of a more complicated formula like 2 per 3 levels or 3 per 4 levels. That takes care of 15 points, leaving us with 14.

Step four: Ability score increases would further close the gap. 3e gave +1 to an ability score once every 4 levels. To make it easier for the players to remember, we'll give out a +1 to two ability scores at every level ending with "4" or "8", and at the start of the Paragon and Epic tiers. That makes +8 to two ability scores, which accounts for another 4 points, leaving 10.

Step five: Traditionally, we also have enhancement bonuses from magic items. Since they can now go up to +6, that leaves just 4 points. We'll have a variety of methods to close the final 4 points: some feats, some item bonuses, some powers, etc. Most players would have one or two of these, and even if they don't, a four-point gap probably shouldn't be crippling.

So you see, if they were willing to use more complicated formulae for monster math or PC level-based increases, we wouldn't "need" magic items to balance the math: a 2/3 progression (+20 over 30 levels) would reduce the "required" bonus from magic items from +6 to +1, and a 3/4 progression (+22 over 30 levels) would eliminate it entirely.

OR one can take a quick glance at the formula and realize that a +29 bonus in a system that primarily uses a d20 for resolution is just insane.

Tougher monsters were given higher damage output, hit dice and hit points to account for their prowess. Defenses were served by having better saving throws. Making higher levels harder to hit AND ramping up the hit points to infinity was just a formula for gind.

Who cares if the higer level fighter hits with almost every attack? Its a high level character, it doesn't make sense to still miss almost half the time. The higher hp totals reflect the monsters toughness enough.

A small army of mercenary soldiers should be able to take down a giant. A giant is pretty big and not unhittable, it just has a lot of hp and will take many hits to bring down. Meanwhile it will crush a soldier into pulp with each attack. A high level fighter could actually fight one by himself and win.

A 4E giant with mid-paragon tier defenses is virtually hit proof against the common soldier and wade through an entire army without a scratch. That kind of power disparity based purely on level is what makes the 4E world feel like an MMO. The giant against an army feels like taking a level 85 orc warrior into Goldshire and watching 30 things pound on you with 0 effect.

 

[FireLance]

OR one can take a quick glance at the formula and realize that a +29 bonus in a system that primarily uses a d20 for resolution is just insane.

Tougher monsters were given higher damage output, hit dice and hit points to account for their prowess. Defenses were served by having better saving throws. Making higher levels harder to hit AND ramping up the hit points to infinity was just a formula for gind.

Who cares if the higer level fighter hits with almost every attack? Its a high level character, it doesn't make sense to still miss almost half the time. The higher hp totals reflect the monsters toughness enough.

A small army of mercenary soldiers should be able to take down a giant. A giant is pretty big and not unhittable, it just has a lot of hp and will take many hits to bring down. Meanwhile it will crush a soldier into pulp with each attack. A high level fighter could actually fight one by himself and win.

A 4E giant with mid-paragon tier defenses is virtually hit proof against the common soldier and wade through an entire army without a scratch. That kind of power disparity based purely on level is what makes the 4E world feel like an MMO. The giant against an army feels like taking a level 85 orc warrior into Goldshire and watching 30 things pound on you with 0 effect.

A giant is, if you will pardon the pun, an easy target. At the very highest end of the power tier, at the level of great wyrm dragons, pit fiends and balors, it is less clear-cut whether even an army of normal, low-level soldiers should have any chance of defeating them. Depending on their personal outlook and preferences, some groups would say yes, others would say no.

In any case, whether the bonus disparity is +29 or +129 makes no difference to the players, as long as their own numbers keep pace (this includes damage numbers too, by the way - higher-level powers do tend to do more damage, although whether the increase was actually sufficient to keep pace with monster hp growth is another matter). The system breaks down not so much for monsters vs. PCs, but monsters vs. the rest of the world (which admittedly, is one of the weaker points of 4e).

 

[Mattachine]

OR one can take a quick glance at the formula and realize that a +29 bonus in a system that primarily uses a d20 for resolution is just insane.

Tougher monsters were given higher damage output, hit dice and hit points to account for their prowess. Defenses were served by having better saving throws. Making higher levels harder to hit AND ramping up the hit points to infinity was just a formula for gind.

Who cares if the higer level fighter hits with almost every attack? Its a high level character, it doesn't make sense to still miss almost half the time. The higher hp totals reflect the monsters toughness enough.

A small army of mercenary soldiers should be able to take down a giant. A giant is pretty big and not unhittable, it just has a lot of hp and will take many hits to bring down. Meanwhile it will crush a soldier into pulp with each attack. A high level fighter could actually fight one by himself and win.

A 4E giant with mid-paragon tier defenses is virtually hit proof against the common soldier and wade through an entire army without a scratch. That kind of power disparity based purely on level is what makes the 4E world feel like an MMO. The giant against an army feels like taking a level 85 orc warrior into Goldshire and watching 30 things pound on you with 0 effect.

Fourth edition mechanics aren't designed for pitting a giant against an army. That situation would be resolved by DM narration, just as you say--the giant loses and a bunch of soldiers are squashed. No rolls are needed. The 4e DMG even has advice about this sort of thing (not everything has to be rolled), and the DMG2 has even more guidance. I find that the "no need to roll for every little thing" harkens back to 1e and 2e, and the desire for the numbers to match every given situation was a mistake made by 3e.


In any case, I think EWL is needed if the game is going to have the amount of magic that we've seen in standard games since AD&D. If characters are going to get items with +'s, then that should be taken into account when classifying the difficulty of monsters, for instance, and the power of feats and class features.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Fourth edition mechanics aren't designed for pitting a giant against an army. That situation would be resolved by DM narration, just as you say--the giant loses and a bunch of soldiers are squashed. No rolls are needed. The 4e DMG even has advice about this sort of thing (not everything has to be rolled), and the DMG2 has even more guidance. I find that the "no need to roll for every little thing" harkens back to 1e and 2e, and the desire for the numbers to match every given situation was a mistake made by 3e.

Yes, 4E mechanics are not suited for depicting a cohesive world. A world in which PCs may often have hireling soldiers or even a freindly stone giant as allies. I want game rules to help determine the outcomes of interactions between things in the world not dictate which limited interactions actually work and to handwave the rest.

In any case, I think EWL is needed if the game is going to have the amount of magic that we've seen in standard games since AD&D. If characters are going to get items with +'s, then that should be taken into account when classifying the difficulty of monsters, for instance, and the power of feats and class features.

Then why give them out? If every hard won advantage a PC mananges to win is to be simply cancelled out by adjusting the math on the other end then magic items are utterly worthless.

I much prefer magic items to be treasure rather than gear.