Treasure and Mechanics

[Wandering Star]

I find it very dry and mechanical to think that every low level fighter in the world will have roughly the same amount of treasure, and that every character's level can be guessed by the amount of valuables he/she has. So I want to know how many of you out there regularly 'tweak' the treasure awarding rules, and what sort of impact this has had on your game so far.

I'm considering beefing up treasure hoards for my begginer crew of gamers, and I dont want to totally unhinge the game. How much impact could treasure really have? Is it really that big a deal?

What about things like building and maintaining strongholds? How does this factor into character wealth? Presumeably, a character who invests the 100s of thousands of gold into building and maintaining a stronghold will be 100s of thousands of gp less effective in general?

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The issue with treasure is it's potential use to grab hold of unbalancing magic items they aren't high enough level to be appropriate yet. This is why the Wealth by Level charts were made.

[h1]Now let me say I've discarded them.[/h1]
In 3e the listed treasures are paltry, go back and check a 1e module and compare what got carted out at the end by the PCs in terms of wealth. A CR8 monster has about enough gold to fill an evian bottle. For me at least it doesn't fly, I like recapturing the 1e feel where PCs that slay a powerful dragon have to haul the loot out in caravans.

But this opens up the spectre of magic item inflation that can kill a campaign via the arms-race phenomena. Where PCs that are nuke armed eggshells need to be faced by monsters so much above the level they should be facing just to account for the magic items a single unlucky roll likely means immediate death for the character.

Instead I'll point to a resource that I've gotten endless use from, and it's totally free. The Dungeonominicon. Following its guidelines I altered the economy so that powerful magic items operated in a different economy fueled by planar currencies like souls, raw chaos, magic gems, etc. That way I can pump out huge amounts of gold without destroying game balance because gold can only buy items lacking the power to break the balance of the game.

The Dungeonominicon

 

[Wandering Star]

Nice, I really like this idea. I havent had a look at the link yet, though it should be interesting to check out. Basically, it's not a matter of controlling the PCs wealth, but more keeping control of the items that they have access to? That seems to make sense on the surface.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Just the fact that you're aware of the interaction between treasure and game mechanics is a good sign. In the last campaign I played, the DM had our 3rd-level party fighting (and looting) goblins who randomly had +2 weapons, while the newbie player with the sorceress never found a single scroll or wand. She was stuck still casting magic missile round after round while we were hacking and slashing our way through all opposition. In a related issue, I originally intended my (Eberron) shifter to take a feat allowing him to fight with natural claw attacks, but the racial bonuses to damage just couldn't compete with the overpowered magical weapons we were finding.

 

[Doug McCrae]

She was stuck still casting magic missile round after round

You could've helped out a newbie by telling her about the best spells - color spray, ray of enfeeblement, prot from evil, glitterdust, web, mirror image, etc.

 

[Wandering Star]

Just the fact that you're aware of the interaction between treasure and game mechanics is a good sign. In the last campaign I played, the DM had our 3rd-level party fighting (and looting) goblins who randomly had +2 weapons

Ohhhhhh...ummm 'yeah...'. So.... *Furiously scribbles in campaign book*

 

[Sitara]

One way to do it in low magic games, which I prefer, is simply reward pc'swith a ton of cash (i.e.gold, platinum etc). Soif htey kill a dragon, give them tons of cash, and maybe that rare +1 sword of flaming or something.

Now, they can use this cash to build strongholds, a retreat, raise a small garrison, donate to the poor, etc etc. Basically it helps in world building, roleplaying, etc and helps the players feel they are contributing to the world.

 

[S'mon]

2 points:

1. Wealth by Level (PC and NPC) is purely about what gear they should have; specifically it's about combat bonuses. Personally I think it was a big mistake to tie this to wealth, I'm glad 4e is treating it separately.

2. Concerning gear, at low levels there doesn't seem to be any problem with PCs having more than they 'should' - a +2 item at 3rd level doesn't break the game in my experience; for weapons it's the difference between STR 14 and STR 16, no big deal. Conversely underequipped high level PCs and NPCs do invalidate the CR system.

The best approach I've seen is BECMI D&D, where each box signifies a group of levels, each group gets its own treasure table. This allows for plenty of variation but also unlike AD&D it ensures no 1st level Fighters with +5 swords; AIR the best weapons by level are:

1-3: +2 sword
4-14: +3 weapon
15-25: +5 weapon
26-36: Artifact

 

[Wandering Star]

1. Wealth by Level (PC and NPC) is purely about what gear they should have; specifically it's about combat bonuses. Personally I think it was a big mistake to tie this to wealth, I'm glad 4e is treating it separately.

Yeah, I suspected as much. So if a character has been getting RAW treasure carreer long, and decides to build and maintain a stronghold using the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, the character is likely to be very underpowered?

 

[howandwhy99]

The tables are curved in that the higher you go up in level the greater portion of a PCs' power comes from magic items. Being a curve this makes it hard to make a simple rule for how much magic you should give out at any level, but it's one of the few curves they kept in from the previous game.

Personally, I like both. I think PCs overall power should be accounted more from magic items as they go up in power. However, I realize this is a personal taste, so being able to adjust that knob would be nice. Easily made into design? I don't think so.

And I also like curves. The more I've learned about this game the more I learn curved relationships are all over the damned place. That does make it hard to correlate though. I think it's mechanically unintuitive, but by feeling nature right on target.

To answer your question, the best solution I've found to your dilemma is to "silo" the two. In 3e, figure out the degree magic items affect a character, say 10% -> 15% -> 20% -> 30% for the 4 quartiles. Then, and this is the important part, measure your PCs true level not by PC level, but by class level + magic item level. Sometimes it will be over, sometimes under.

In fact, I'd say never worry about whether those totals are dead on or not to 100%. 20th level PCs can lose everything they own just as 1st levelers can find and use artifacts.