Value of Character Equipment

[the Jester]

Depends on the size of the town they're in, as per the GP limit.

Now this is a great answer.

 

[Drowbane]

I use 20%, flat, for any single piece of equipment. It works for me.

Really, if your player wants to be "sir Min-max, Posesser of the +1 vorpal" at 11th level, teach him the folley of putting all his coins in one basket.

One of my players do this for a 10th level module. Then the party ran into those Armor sundering Spider-demons... He about had a fit.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I agree with the sentiment, and don't understand why people have a limit on max price of a single piece of equipment.

Well, really if I DON'T put a max price on a single piece of equipment, then someone who dosn't agree with the sentiment "don't put all your eggs in one basket" is going to do just that. Eventually, it will come around to bite them on the ass. Mr. "I have a +1 Vorpal blade" is going to get it sundered, or he'll discover WHY people wear magical armor at higher levels (because when all he bought was a chain shirt, everything seems to hit him.)

 

[Jdvn1]

Well, really if I DON'T put a max price on a single piece of equipment, then someone who dosn't agree with the sentiment "don't put all your eggs in one basket" is going to do just that. Eventually, it will come around to bite them on the ass. Mr. "I have a +1 Vorpal blade" is going to get it sundered, or he'll discover WHY people wear magical armor at higher levels (because when all he bought was a chain shirt, everything seems to hit him.)

But, that's the player's own prerogative.

If he wants to built a sub-par character, he can. He may even have a story-reason to have such an item or it may be an aspect of the character.

Do you have other rules to make sure people make characters that are well-made?

 

[ranger89]

A few years back, my group fell apart because we were using the starting gold as stated on pg135 of the DMG and then using the DMG as a shopping catalog. It was a high level campaign (started at level 8 or 9) and all of our PCs ended up just being a collection of stuff. None of us really enjoyed it much (ie., too much powergaming and not enough role playing) and came up with this house rule:

For a Level Y PC, where Y >= 2
Starting GP = PH Level 1 Starting GP x Y

GM will then assign additional items at his or her discretion to account for the new character's advance level. As a rule-of-thumb, the total value of player selected and GM assigned items should be less than or equal to 50% of "character wealth by level" amount listed in table 5-1 of the DMG (DMG pg135)​

I realize that that may not be everyone's cup of tea but it works really well for us. I should also mention that our campaign is low-magic (e.g., magic items can't be purchased everywhere). High magic campaigns should have higher % of DMG RAW character wealth.