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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 7327299" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>One of the dirty secrets of 3.x is that the Wealth by Level table in the 3.0e DMG (which wasn't updated for 3.5e) was actually generated from the random treasure tables - the game assumed 13.3 'balanced' encounters per level, each 'balanced' encounter gave an average treasure value (that varied by level), so they multiplied those together, multiplied by 80% (to account for use of consumable items), and added it to the total from the previous level.</p><p></p><p>3e's Wealth by Level wasn't a guideline to the DM, "you <em>should</em> give out this much treasure", it was rather a reflection of how it was likely to work out - "if you use an average number of encounters and have average treasure rolls, your PCs will end up with this much treasure".</p><p></p><p>(They did screw up in at least one way: their treasure tables didn't account for selling recovered equipment, so if you used lots of humanoid villains your PCs would very quickly break the table.)</p><p></p><p>And 3e did explicitly state that all of these were guidelines. (Furthermore, if you did through the work done on "Trailblazer", you'll find that the game, or at least the core rules, are designed assuming the PCs <em>don't</em> have access to any particular items at any particular levels. They're assumed to have <em>some way</em> to bypass damage reduction, but not necessarily permanently-active magic weapons.)</p><p></p><p>(And, of course, there's the second big mistake - 3e also gave PCs the ability to easily craft items, so <em>of course</em> the PCs will have them!)</p><p></p><p>However, the perception very quickly became that you <em>did</em> have to give out those items, and that if the DM didn't give enough treasure he was short-changing the PCs. (And by later in the edition the analysis had changed, and it was assumed that PCs <em>did</em> get those items.)</p><p></p><p>TL;DR version: it's not enough to clearly state that all of these are guidelines, because people are much more likely to see a "Wealth by Level" table and assume it is holy writ than they are to read the accompanying guidelines.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, it does occur to me that the designers of both 3e and 4e missed a trick when building the reward scheme for those editions. For 5e, given that there's no fixed guideline, I'm inclined to use this convention for PCs generated above 1st level.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 7327299, member: 22424"] One of the dirty secrets of 3.x is that the Wealth by Level table in the 3.0e DMG (which wasn't updated for 3.5e) was actually generated from the random treasure tables - the game assumed 13.3 'balanced' encounters per level, each 'balanced' encounter gave an average treasure value (that varied by level), so they multiplied those together, multiplied by 80% (to account for use of consumable items), and added it to the total from the previous level. 3e's Wealth by Level wasn't a guideline to the DM, "you [i]should[/i] give out this much treasure", it was rather a reflection of how it was likely to work out - "if you use an average number of encounters and have average treasure rolls, your PCs will end up with this much treasure". (They did screw up in at least one way: their treasure tables didn't account for selling recovered equipment, so if you used lots of humanoid villains your PCs would very quickly break the table.) And 3e did explicitly state that all of these were guidelines. (Furthermore, if you did through the work done on "Trailblazer", you'll find that the game, or at least the core rules, are designed assuming the PCs [i]don't[/i] have access to any particular items at any particular levels. They're assumed to have [i]some way[/i] to bypass damage reduction, but not necessarily permanently-active magic weapons.) (And, of course, there's the second big mistake - 3e also gave PCs the ability to easily craft items, so [i]of course[/i] the PCs will have them!) However, the perception very quickly became that you [i]did[/i] have to give out those items, and that if the DM didn't give enough treasure he was short-changing the PCs. (And by later in the edition the analysis had changed, and it was assumed that PCs [i]did[/i] get those items.) TL;DR version: it's not enough to clearly state that all of these are guidelines, because people are much more likely to see a "Wealth by Level" table and assume it is holy writ than they are to read the accompanying guidelines. Yeah, it does occur to me that the designers of both 3e and 4e missed a trick when building the reward scheme for those editions. For 5e, given that there's no fixed guideline, I'm inclined to use this convention for PCs generated above 1st level. [/QUOTE]
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