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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7885451" data-attributes="member: 53980">You could of course ignore wealth by level. However, that meant also tossing out CR as a tool for estimating encounter difficulty, since WBL was factored into that difficulty.Coming from 2e, some of the DMs at my table felt that the expected treasure from WBL was Monty Haul, and therefore handed out significantly less treasure. As result, the party kept getting their butts kicked after the first few levels, and deaths were frequent. This encouraged the 5MW because we were so below par that we had to Nova hard to get through a single encounter, with maybe just enough to spare in case something attacked while we were resting. These DMs then complained about those habits.I tried explaining to them what was happening, but they didn't listen. One DM went so far as to rig an encounter to "prove" his point that WBL was overpowered. He placed two hidden rogues in trees and spent the party's entire WBL budget on invisibility potions. He gave them surprise and annihilated the party. 2 members were dying before we could act. The other two could probably have run away but tried to save their companions, and were subsequently easily dispatched as well. He claimed this proved that WBL was overpowered. When I pointed out that he had set up this encounter specifically so that we had no chance, and that moreover the party wasn't likely to blow all of their treasure on a single encounter, he dismissed my analysis and told us it had all been a dream.Shockingly, whenever I ran 3.x (using WBL) the party could typically get through multiple encounters. Eventually those DMs picked up from my example that that's how the game was meant to work. Death wasn't uncommon in my games, but the turnover wasn't nearly as high, and 5MW was less of an issue, although it could rear it's head if the dice were against the party.Sure, if you ignore WBL and ignore the encounter guidelines and ignore the monster design rules you could run in a very 1e/2e style that was generally pretty good. I only knew one DM who ever mastered that method. It wasn't me. (Although in fairness I was relatively inexperienced as a DM back then.)So no, I wouldn't call it a choice per se. I don't doubt that there were DMs like yourself who could pull it off, but not everyone had the skill to do so. For those who lacked the skill, it wasn't a choice. Sure, I could leave off tallying skill points or the like if I was feeling lazy. But especially for a caster, not picking low level spells and then using them at whim would have felt like cheating. If the players have to memorize their spells, then so should my NPCs. That's fair. I did occasionally leave off memorizing all their spells, but in those cases they were considered to have been expended earlier in the day. 3.x was exhausting for me to run (and even to a lesser extent to play, as I had some characters that required a spreadsheet). It was not an easy game to run RAW.</blockquote>

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