werk
First Post
In a group that I joined recently (maybe 6 sessions ago) the PCs have way too much loot!
Many of you may laugh and say "You can never have too much loot!" but I disagree.
When I DM I keep a close eye on character wealth, as I feel it really skews the party's challenge rating, and when I created my PC for this group (~10th level), I was instructed to use the wealth guidelines. Immediately upon starting, I was given an item from party loot that was more valuable than all of my wealth. Awesome, I thought.
Since then, I've experienced 3 near TPKs because he is throwing very over CR'd bad guys at us, using the number of party members as justification, but it's really the gear that is making the party overpowered, not the numbers. If every bad guy is a BBEG, are they still BBEGs, or just BEGs, or just EGs...Gs?
To compound the situation, it's is a completely homebrew'd campaign, and one player is playing a homebrew'd race (that gets free true rez when it dies) and some kind of homebrew'd class variant or something. So he recently died, again, like usual, and, like usual, we gathered up his gear to wait for his return. For story related reasons his char did not rez like usual, so the party blew a wish to bring him back (yeah, they have wishes at 10th level)...with all his gear. So now we have two full sets of uber crazy DM loot, millions, literally. Named swords, epic items, enough single-use items to fill a large barn, etc.
Here's the real kicker...the rub that chafes...They start an hour before I get off work (every session), so they distributed all of his duplicate gear among the players that were there, including the no-longer-dead PC. So the cleric has a +6 Str belt, the warlock has a crazy sword, stuff like that. Not my dwarven fighter, oh no, he's still got the stuff he had on char gen, because loot gets dispursed at session start, when I'm not there...but was told would not be a problem because it's mostly prep work anyway. I'm effectively 10x below the party average for wealth...if their wealth could even be summed up with any accuracy. There is another new character, who was poorer than I due to confusion over LA, ECL, and wealth, but he's now been bolstered up with some of the extra gear.
To top that off, all the casters only prepare offensive spells, which are poorly tracked, but still have AC in the low stratosphere. I've almost run through all of my potions just trying to survive until the rest of the party turns the bad guy into red mist or vice versa. Since it's his homebrew, some modifiers stack that wouldn't normally in D&D3.5, and others don't stack, much like they should...I can't really get a handle on his houserules, and I think he just rules however he feels at that moment. He's tried to explain some of his house rules, but they tangent into his homebrew history/cosmology and eventually wander into unrelated territory with no real answers provided.
I pretty much know what I want to do, but I thought I'd appeal to the pros out there to see what you would do in this situation, any ways you'd try to salvage the experience, and, really, just any feedback at all. And I know it really just sounds like sour grapes, so if you want to tell me off, put me in my place, or just ride me...go ahead
Many of you may laugh and say "You can never have too much loot!" but I disagree.
When I DM I keep a close eye on character wealth, as I feel it really skews the party's challenge rating, and when I created my PC for this group (~10th level), I was instructed to use the wealth guidelines. Immediately upon starting, I was given an item from party loot that was more valuable than all of my wealth. Awesome, I thought.
Since then, I've experienced 3 near TPKs because he is throwing very over CR'd bad guys at us, using the number of party members as justification, but it's really the gear that is making the party overpowered, not the numbers. If every bad guy is a BBEG, are they still BBEGs, or just BEGs, or just EGs...Gs?
To compound the situation, it's is a completely homebrew'd campaign, and one player is playing a homebrew'd race (that gets free true rez when it dies) and some kind of homebrew'd class variant or something. So he recently died, again, like usual, and, like usual, we gathered up his gear to wait for his return. For story related reasons his char did not rez like usual, so the party blew a wish to bring him back (yeah, they have wishes at 10th level)...with all his gear. So now we have two full sets of uber crazy DM loot, millions, literally. Named swords, epic items, enough single-use items to fill a large barn, etc.
Here's the real kicker...the rub that chafes...They start an hour before I get off work (every session), so they distributed all of his duplicate gear among the players that were there, including the no-longer-dead PC. So the cleric has a +6 Str belt, the warlock has a crazy sword, stuff like that. Not my dwarven fighter, oh no, he's still got the stuff he had on char gen, because loot gets dispursed at session start, when I'm not there...but was told would not be a problem because it's mostly prep work anyway. I'm effectively 10x below the party average for wealth...if their wealth could even be summed up with any accuracy. There is another new character, who was poorer than I due to confusion over LA, ECL, and wealth, but he's now been bolstered up with some of the extra gear.
To top that off, all the casters only prepare offensive spells, which are poorly tracked, but still have AC in the low stratosphere. I've almost run through all of my potions just trying to survive until the rest of the party turns the bad guy into red mist or vice versa. Since it's his homebrew, some modifiers stack that wouldn't normally in D&D3.5, and others don't stack, much like they should...I can't really get a handle on his houserules, and I think he just rules however he feels at that moment. He's tried to explain some of his house rules, but they tangent into his homebrew history/cosmology and eventually wander into unrelated territory with no real answers provided.
I pretty much know what I want to do, but I thought I'd appeal to the pros out there to see what you would do in this situation, any ways you'd try to salvage the experience, and, really, just any feedback at all. And I know it really just sounds like sour grapes, so if you want to tell me off, put me in my place, or just ride me...go ahead
Last edited:
