While Wealth By Level is reported per individual, it is inherently a collective concept. What it is is the total usable items found or purchasable with found monies by the party divided among the members of the party. So the statement "increases the character's wealth by level by X" and the statement "increases the party's wealth by level by X" are completely interchangeable. That we choose to talk about Wealth by Level per individual rather than per party is a wholly arbitrary choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing it that way, but the choice doesn't really matter in terms of the results the numbers have.deaddmwalking wrote:I am baffled why an item that Patrick gives his companions counts against his 'wealth by level'.
So if one of the characters is 10,000 gold above their wealth by level guidelines and another character is 10,000 gold below their wealth by level guidelines, the players are still at their wealth by level guideline point. If you arbitrarily announce that one character's wealth by level target is 10,000 gold higher, it doesn't actually matter who on the team gets the goods for that guideline to be achieved. All the extra equipment could go to the character in question, or to another character, or it could all be split evenly so that five different characters get a bonus 2,000 gp item. It genuinely doesn't matter.
Now there are a lot of problems with Wealth By Level. The numbers don't actually output the kinds of equipment that characters should actually have when facing level appropriate opposition at most levels. The entire concept is based on the idea that the MC is in essentially full control of the wealth acquisition of the player characters, which requires believing that the players of mercenary treasure hunter and inquisitive artificers have no agency at all in whether and how much treasure and gizmos their characters acquire and build. So WBL numbers are bad and probably aren't enforceable anyway.
Such that WBL guidelines have any purpose, it is to act as an objective measure for claiming that an MC is being too stingy, too monty haul, or displaying too much or too little favoritism to one of the characters. But again and still, that's all a question of placed treasure. WBL guidelines aren't so much about what you get, but whether the DM should give you any more. And from that perspective, whether the players have decided to stash all their magic items on Kevin or not doesn't really enter into it.
-Username17