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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeavyG" data-source="post: 1085104" data-attributes="member: 431">Re: Re: starting gold, and how it's messed up.Here's one problem with this :According to the sidebar on page 54 of the DMG, the encounters necessary to gain a level should yield slightly more gold than neceaary to follow the expected "wealth by level" value.That is, a 6th level character is expected to gain 6000 gp by the time he reaches 7th level and the average yield for the encounters needed to gain that much XPs is 6665 gp.The difference is explained by the fact that characters use expendable items, food, spell components, ammunition and so on.However, a couple of things throw a wrench in that theory :1) A significant percentage of treasure is hidden, and PCs will not often find all of it.2) At least in WotC published adventure, there is way over 10% of "expendable" items, so people will come away from an adventure with less treasure than they seem to think.3) The rules encourage a style of play where PCs sell most of their "loot" at half price and then buy what they want with the cash.Number 3 is the most important point here because, assuming you do get enough gear to get your 6000gp of treasure, chances are you won't want or even be able to use more than 50% of it, unless your DM tailors all treasure to the PCs.  So, assuming you sell half of your treasure and keep the other half, you actually gain only 4500 gp and are now behind the sacred "expected wealth per level" table.Starting from the theory that a magical item you choose will be more useful than one you find randomly, and the fact that the rules say that you can basically sell items you don't want for half price, then it makes sense that while a character built at 1st level and raised to, let's say level 12, should have around 88000gp of randomly generated stuff, or 44000 gp of chosen stuff, or more likely a mix of the two.If you let a newly generated character choose 88000gp of equipment, they will clearly be way overpowered compared to one that actually adventured for 12 levels.  The most realistic approach would then be to roll up magical items randomly until the player character has 88000gp worth of them, then the player could sell those he doesn't want for half price and get what he wants instead.  Or just give newly generated characters half treasure and let them choose.</blockquote>

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