They are serious about ending expected wealth by level!

[tlantl]

We certainly did, but it comes as no surprise that we all played the game in our own way.

I don't necessarily agree that the concept of wealth by level is as intrinsically linked to player entitlement, magic marts, etc., as you suggest. For me it has always been, and always will be, a tool for building PC's that could all drop into the same game without any drama.

It's perfectly valid to respond to the issue by saying, "I fit the campaign to the PC's", but in the larger ecosystem of published adventures, organised play, and player migration from one table to another, wealth-by-level is not, IMO, an issue that goes away just for being ignored.

I never said they didn't get them I said I din't like having to follow a formula to ensure the players weren't being short changed because the game designers baked these bonuses in their math.

I was actually pretty generous with magic I just kept a lid on armors and weapons to keep the game from becoming too easy for the players or too hard for me to challenge them. I made sure the game breaking spells were never found or the wizard had to expend most of their wealth to research them. Thankfully the two players who reached high level with their mages weren't power mongers and that AD&D spell rules made abusing them much less likely than in 3e.

The guys I played 3e with didn't care for spell casters so I never experienced the scry & fry approach to encounters or the brokenness of CoDzillas. I did experience a lot of other things I have come to hate about the 3e system though. Now I play because my friends need a DM, not because I enjoy it.

 

[Victim]

I loath magic marts. I don't like players being able to make magic items anytime they get the whim. I hate having to include 50,000 coins in five different rooms in a dungeon so that everyone gets their expected share of loot because they have reached a particular level.

As opposed to having to include 50 000 coins so the PCs could level?

 

[drothgery]

Expected wealth by level is terrible, but it's just a symptom of the real problem, not the problem itself. As long as the real problem remains, other symptoms will just appear in its place.

Yup. I don't believe you can have useful magic items existing at anything like non-Dark Sun D&D levels (as shown in what pre-3e adventures actually gave out and what you need to fight otherwise level-approriate monsters, 3e/3.5e/PF wealth-by-level tables, or 4e character wealth guidelines) and not have some sort of guidelines on what should be given out when if you want anything resembling a balanced game. Which means either explicit or implicit wealth-by-level guidelines.

 

[tlantl]

As opposed to having to include 50 000 coins so the PCs could level?

As a matter of fact I never worried about how much treasure I included in hoards. If you followed the monster's treasure type, and rolled the results, it all came out in the wash. But since you made such a comment that must mean you never actually played 1e or you'd know this.

I have agonized over which magic items to include at times but not for xp reasons. I could honestly care less how long it took the players to level up. I still don't care how long it takes for a character to level up.

What I do care about is being forced to worry about what crud I need to give a player, or how much coin they need to keep from making it impossible to play their characters because of the way the game assumes certain equipment by level.

 

[D'karr]

Which means either explicit or implicit wealth-by-level guidelines.

I agree. What I'd like to see are "flavor specific" or "thematic" guidelines.

For example if I want to run a low-magic campaign the designers should provide a guideline to do so, and define specifically what their assumption of a low-magic campaign entails. Since my interpretation and theirs could be worlds apart.

Then they could define a no-magic, and medium-magic, and a high-magic. They should also take the time to define what the design assumption was for the default in the books.

If I read the books and assume they are doing high-magic but their design assumption for monters and equipment was medium-magic then it would make sense for them to let us know.

If they took the time to think about this the game doesn't need to be balanced to a gnat's ass precision. It can be balanced to taste by the DM and players if they know what the base assumptions were in design.

 

[Victim]

Yup. I don't believe you can have useful magic items existing at anything like non-Dark Sun D&D levels (as shown in what pre-3e adventures actually gave out and what you need to fight otherwise level-approriate monsters, 3e/3.5e/PF wealth-by-level tables, or 4e character wealth guidelines) and not have some sort of guidelines on what should be given out when if you want anything resembling a balanced game. Which means either explicit or implicit wealth-by-level guidelines.

I agree. And the 5e playtest already shows significant power returns from wealth. The best armors for each type are dramatically more expensive than the others. Along with the ability to buy healing resources, ala the 3.x wand of cure light - a Healer making potions is only slightly less efficient than buying cure sticks outright. How much money a party is investing into themselves is already making a pretty big difference even without magic items so far.