They are serious about ending expected wealth by level!

[wedgeski]

The thing about expected wealth by level that was so distasteful for me was that I really had no control over the treasures I gave out. if I didn't follow those rules then the monsters were too powerful for their encounter level and the players suffered.

Why do you think this problem is going to go away?

Even if Next eschews +x items and general number inflation in favour of monsters and encounters that apply new conditions or generally do "different things" than their lower-level counterparts, this will still create an expectation in players that the DM is going to provide them the tools to deal with these challenges.

If equipment in any way contributes to a PC's power and options (and if it doesn't, why have magic items at all?) then when I sit down to start a campaign at, say, 10th level, I am absolutely going to want to know what kind of equipment and magic I should be giving out. Why are formalised guidelines such a bad thing?

I'm more then happy to be wrong, because it will only make my life easier!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Confound that 1E D&D, with it's low-level monsters with immunity to non-magical weapons!

More seriously, wealth by level was there from the beginning--it was only formalized by 3E. Before that, you had to more-or-less guess.

I played a whole lot of 1E back in the day, and IIRC there wasn't much guessing involved. I knew what equipment the party had, so I only used such creatures if I wanted an encounter where I didn't plan for the PCs to beat those particular monsters in direct combat.

This reflects my basic approach - I designed encounters with the party's gear in mind, not the other way around.

 

[tlantl]

And having to make NPCs that were laundry lists of magic items that just became PC junk to sell (as it was often inferior to what the PCs had).

Oh gods! Building NPCs was the worst. Hours of work just to see them destroyed in minutes was traumatic.

 

[slobo777]

This reflects my basic approach - I designed encounters with the party's gear in mind, not the other way around.

Obviously not possible for a published adventure starting at a high level.

But the adventure designers could include a note about expected gear for the adventure (perhaps with suggested adjustments to the adventure, not to the gear, if PC resources are far away from the adventure design).

Of course if all published adventures follow the same expected amounts by level, then that's just expected wealth from the D&D Next design team, but hidden away unpublished.

 

[tlantl]

Why do you think this problem is going to go away?

Even if Next eschews +x items and general number inflation in favour of monsters and encounters that apply new conditions or generally do "different things" than their lower-level counterparts, this will still create an expectation in players that the DM is going to provide them the tools to deal with these challenges.

If equipment in any way contributes to a PC's power and options (and if it doesn't, why have magic items at all?) then when I sit down to start a campaign at, say, 10th level, I am absolutely going to want to know what kind of equipment and magic I should be giving out. Why are formalised guidelines such a bad thing?

I'm more then happy to be wrong, because it will only make my life easier!

If the devs mean what they say I can include items that are less important to the player's ability to keep up with the monster's increasing power.

In my AD&D games I didn't have to make sure everyone had a +3 weapon when they were in the upper levels. I didn't have to break my immersion in my game setting to accommodate five guys needing to improve armors and protection rings and amulets and the half dozen other things that I do in Pathfinder or 3e.

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.

I like to have interesting items that don't increase the player's basic ability to destroy stuff. I want to be able to give a simple ring of protection as a bonus to the character's already adequate defenses. I want to drop bags of holding or similar goodies occasionally at lower levels, you know, to let the players discover magic in the setting rather than being forced by the rules to replace interesting, if not very powerful, goodies with yet another suit of armor with a higher plus on it.

If the games math doesn't include the need for certain items with a specific bonus then I don't have to worry about having to make sure they are there. It gives me the freedom to do as I please.

If using these things means I have to adjust encounters a little bit I'm going to be much happier than if I have to design each encounter, each pile of coin, and every magic item I include to fit some asinine formula.

 

[Ratskinner]

Why do you think this problem is going to go away?

Even if Next eschews +x items and general number inflation in favour of monsters and encounters that apply new conditions or generally do "different things" than their lower-level counterparts, this will still create an expectation in players that the DM is going to provide them the tools to deal with these challenges.

It didn't in the old days. I've been in more than one party that faced a beastie that we quickly realized we had no ability to hurt. I'm sure people's experiences vary, but I don't recall anyone ever expecting to be handed magic items until 3e came along and put price tags on them and told you how rich you should be at level X.

Of course, it ain't the old days anymore. I'd be mildly surprised if time and fashion hadn't changed that expectation.

If equipment in any way contributes to a PC's power and options (and if it doesn't, why have magic items at all?) then when I sit down to start a campaign at, say, 10th level, I am absolutely going to want to know what kind of equipment and magic I should be giving out. Why are formalised guidelines such a bad thing?

Honestly, its really not that hard. (at least it wasn't "back in the day") Furthermore, it sounds to me like they are intentionally trying to make it easier than in the current editions. 3\4e exacerbate balance issues by ratcheting up ACs and DCs every level, that's part of the problem that Bounded Accuracy is intended to solve. (Experience with some older versions would indicate this is quite likely to work.) Besides, wouldn't you want control over things like the difficulty of the encounters to set a mood for the campaign?

Now, as for formalized guidelines being bad....well that depends on a few things. Firstly, the presentation of the guidelines. Experience/history indicates that the probability of the players considering a guideline the "word of the gods" is directly proportional to the specificity of that guideline. (Especially if there is a hint of "math" to it.) If you include enough of those in your game...suddenly you've locked-down playstyle. The second thing I've noticed is a bit more subtle or perhaps subjective. If the guideline in question can be construed as, and especially if its presented as, being important for "fairness" or "balance" wrt to DM/player interaction...it will be assumed "word of the gods or you're a bad DM. It says so right here."

 

[Ratskinner]

Confound that 1E D&D, with it's low-level monsters with immunity to non-magical weapons!

More seriously, wealth by level was there from the beginning--it was only formalized by 3E. Before that, you had to more-or-less guess.

uhhhm...having a few such monsters that may or may not ever show up in your game does not somehow impose wealth-by-level guidelines. I played in AD&D campaigns that dripped with magic items and campaigns where a +1 sword was gift from the gods (literally, in one case). In neither extreme did it "break" or did the DMs complain that balancing encounters was some kind of insurmountable difficulty. Later editions "tightened the math" around the expectation of "having +X items at Y level" so much that missing them can really wonk things up, even with normal or mundane enemies. The problem works the other way, too. In one of my earlier 3e games, I gave a PC and heirloom +4 sword at first level....yoi, bad idea. When I did it, I didn't think anything of it, because in one of my 2e campaigns I gave a first level PC a +3/+5 vs undead sword...and lo, the game didn't collapse.

As others have mentioned, the key is to plan your encounters around the party, not the party around the encounters. Tailor your game for the players around your table.

 

[wedgeski]

In my AD&D games I didn't have to make sure everyone had a +3 weapon when they were in the upper levels.

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.

 

[Grazzt]

I think that you guys are missing the point- much like in early D&D, magic items/better armor/etc. are bonuses now- they are "wow, I'm awesome!" items instead of "wow, I don't have a level-equivalent weapon, I suck!" items.

Tied to this: I really hope that we return to the days when the idea that your gear might be broken, destroyed, lost, stolen, dissolved or rusted into nothingness was a significant element of the game.

Must spread XP apparently, but I agree with ya on all of this.

 

[billd91]

I'm sure people's experiences vary, but I don't recall anyone ever expecting to be handed magic items until 3e came along and put price tags on them and told you how rich you should be at level X.

We certainly had expectations - they were just pretty open and flexible. We expected magic items to be in the loot mix from time to time. I just don't recall that we had any expectation about what they were and how effective they were likely to be. Some armor and weapons here and there, some potions, some miscellaneous magic and we could be fairly well satisfied that we were getting somewhere.