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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 5555743" data-attributes="member: 2303">What Wealth by Level does is turn gold into just another form of xp. You now have two gauges of character efficiency - xp and net value. A character can have a lot of xp and under-perform because of low item budget, and the reverse is also true. But the problem is not really with wealth per level - that was an attempt to save the system introduced from the very start where a character IS his magic items.My 1E experience of fighters is that they were very much differentiated rules-wise by the magic items they had. Things like Gauntlets of Ogre Power had an extreme effect on your character, and once everyone had such things very little of the characters attributes mattered any longer.  The main difference between two characters was that one wielded a Flaming Sword and the other a Nine Lives Stealer. While magic items of this kind gives a fantastic air to the game, I think it is self-defeating in the end. The big six of 3.5 and item slots of 4E are symptoms of this - these are not cool bling that lets you shine, they are necessary gear to avoid sucking. And when magic items are used not to suck, they are no longer fun. Another bad thing about this is that PCs are no longer rich or poor - they always lock up 90% of their funds in their gear, giving them a comfortable but not extravagant lifestyle. Wealth has simply disappeared as something to differentiate characters with.In my current games, I use a point-bye system where you are free to pick items or powers to do something - items have less prerequisites but can be lost or stolen. This has led to players keeping few items, while the few items they do have are things that let them step outside their normal role (like the cat shapeshifter with a collar that has group telepathy, quite outside her normal sneaker skill set).</blockquote>

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