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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5001827" data-attributes="member: 51942">Putting it all togetherThe old system distributed approx 1.9ei per person rather than the 2.72ei required when you randomize loot.  This means that we'll need to add treasure parcels or raise the level of treasure parcels.  As it so happens, 1.9ei * 1.38 is only slightly less than 2.72ei:  so if a DM simply raises the level of all magic-item parcels by 1, the new system balances out (roughly, it's a tiny bit low, but that shouldn't matter).That's easy eh?The Complete System:If you allow selling items for HALF price rather than one-fifth, and raise all item treasures by one level, and finally choose magic items randomly (e.g. using <a href="http://www.asmor.com/scripts/4eMagicItems/randomTreasure.php" target="_blank">Asmor's Quartermaster</a>) then the game retains its normal balance.  The fact that you sometimes need to sell items you just found is then balanced out by the slight increase in overall treasure and the fact that reselling involves only 50% loss rather than 80% loss.  The PC's will need to be able to spend their wealth buying magic items for this to work.Balance assumption madeYou're "random" picks are assumed to roughly ensure that 10% of items are things the PC's would have picked anyhow, and 15-40% of items are things the PC's wouldn't buy, but won't sell even if there's something interesting on offer.  By design, however, if you violate this assumption balance will still largely be fine.For instance, if by chance you give the PC's only trash, they'll be just 15% behind - which is OK. If you accidentally give em 25% perfectly tailored items they'll be 6% ahead.  Both of these margins represent a fraction of a single level, in part because sale price isn't all that different from buying price so it's no longer that important to get just the right stuff.The second assumption made is that most of the loss PC's experience over their career is due to selling due to the difference engine.Both of these assumptions were chosen conservatively to avoid accidentally overpowering PCs.  Also, raising item levels by 1 is slightly less than demanded for balance.  That means this new system will most likely produce slightly lower wealth than the DMG system, but with more player flexibility: if you use this system, expect existing characters to look a little more like new characters (that should generally have lower wealth but more appropriate items than naturally grown characters).[sblock=minor variant]Raising treasure item levels by one means handing out a parcel of level+6, however, so perhaps that's  unwanted.  If it is, you can instead add extra parcels equivalent to  0.82ei per person.  For various party sizes that's then:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">1 PC: add a level+0 item</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">2 PC: add a level+2 item</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">3 PC: add level+2 and level+0 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">4 PC: add level+3 and level+0 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">5 PC: add level+3 and level+2 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">6 PC: add level+5 item</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">7 PC: add level+4 and level+2 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">8 PC: add level+4 and level+3 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">9 PC: add level+5 and level+2 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">10PC: add level+5 and level+3 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">11PC: add level+4, level+3 and level+2 items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">12PC: add level+4 and two level+3 items.</li> </ul>This list gives small parties slightly more p.p. that large parties; the  idea here being that randomized items are harder on small parties;  though even the 1 person party gets just 1ei instead of 0.82ei extra and  the 12 person party gets 0.73ei per person.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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