Wealth By Level

[Username17]

So we all know, accept, and understand, that Wealth by Level blows. The concept is fairly bad, and the implementation is not terribly good either. But there's a core idea of it that is pretty good. Much better than the treasure parcel system anyway. The idea is that people of a particular level should, on average, have a roughly equal amount of bonus power from magic items - at least from the standpoint of the kinds of theoretical averages that we use to compare hypothetical characters to hypothetical situations for game balance discussions. After all, if the power from magic items is always asymmetric, then there's really no ability to compare any characters to any others or to any challenges, and a balanced game cannot be made.

Now, when K and I were working on the Book of Gears material, the first major hurdle that we faced was asymmetric bonuses from the items themselves. Characters investing in a singular "big" item pushed them well off the scale in one direction, while characters who tie a bunch of smaller separate bonuses together push the scales over in another direction. And we hit those problems with a one-two punch of:

• The Eight Item Limit
• Fixed level appropriate bonuses even on major magic items

That gets rid of a lot of the painful disparity and the horrible accountancy of long lists of tiny bonuses or the lingering dread of having to constantly spend every red cent that you own upgrading your basic equipment and frees people up to pursue getting actually new stuff.

But as you're no doubt aware, that's not a magic bullet that solves everything. There's still a lot of disparity to be had, armor of Heavy Fortification is just not worth the same as Called Armor, even if they have the same enhancement bonus.

So the next step was to divide items into ranks. Minor, Medium, and Major items, right out of the DMG. And in so doing, it offered the opportunity to get some straight up vertical tradeups, which is actually good if people are supposed to be getting magic items for 20 levels straight and there's an 8 item limit. Because it lets people collect a total of 24 magic items: a Minor for each slot, a Medium for each slot to replace it, and then a Major to replace each of those.

But seriously, that's as far as we got. We never made builds with various numbers of Minor, Medium, and Major items at various levels to do Same Game Tests with. I'm genuinely not sure of how many Minor magic items a character "should" have at level 4, nor am I sure at what level characters "should" start accumulating medium and major magic items.

-Username17

[Tequila Sunrise]

But seriously, that's as far as we got. We never made builds with various numbers of Minor, Medium, and Major items at various levels to do Same Game Tests with. I'm genuinely not sure of how many Minor magic items a character "should" have at level 4, nor am I sure at what level characters "should" start accumulating medium and major magic items.

-Username17

Near the end of my 3e career, I got fed up with WBL and how lopsided it is. I decided to split the Big 6 into five tiers, in an effort to codify what PCs of a given level 'should' have: +1, +2, +3, +4 and +5. +1 items are for 1st to 4th level PCs, +2s are for 5th-8th, and so on. By each 4th level, a PC should have eight items of appropriate bonus. For the purpose of stat boosters, the bonus is doubled -- and yes, I allowed +10s pre-epic.

I also banned items that give unusual bonuses, inherent bonuses, and wishing for stat boosts. All of that is unorthodox, and lavish at low levels -- but there ya go, at least it's somewhat consistent. Hope that helps.

...

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

[Lago PARANOIA]

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

4E loot has every problem that 3E loot has except for two; that being that the acquisition of bonuses is fairly linear rather than, as you noted, horribly lopsided at around levels 2-5 and that you can no longer trade experience points for more equipment.

People going entire tiers without item slots filled? That's still there. People scrounging up small unrelated bonuses because the magic item pricing system sucks anus? That's also there. Massive imbalances between pre-created and organic characters? That is also still there.

In your own failed thread your system of wealth stalled out because you couldn't even come up with any benchmarks of how much wealth PCs are supposed to have. That should be more than enough indication that as awful as 3E's system is 4E's fails even harder because the latter doesn't even have any clear design goals..

I have no idea why you keep repeating this bullshit and pretending as though the parcel system is an improvement. But that's definitely something you want to keep to yourself.

[RandomCasualty2]

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

How so? 4E is all about collecting a bunch of minor items to equal big bonuses. Despite the fact that the designers said they fixed this problem, christmas tree magic items are just as present in 4E as they were in 3E. In fact, 4E seems to have even fewer interesting items and just a bunch of items that grant small bonuses. The game really is just about trying to catch 'em all. Most of high level 4E is just knowing how to dumpster dive the adventurer's vault books.

[Koumei]

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

Frank, are you sure it's not possible to hate someone to death?

[koz]

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

Clearly you are very well-endowed. Cranially. My response would have been more like:

And then 4e came along, and I said "Wtf? They just added so much Diablo to my D&D, I can scarce recognize it!"

I daresay that the vast, overwhelming majority of TGD had an experience closer to my own than yours, TS.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Wow, 4 for 4! Well if there's one thing that TGDers are, it's predictable.

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

How so?

What I mean is, Diablo generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to whatever devices you can think of to twink out your toon. There are zero guidelines (obviously) or guarantees other than 'the more time you spend grinding, the more [mostly useless] items you get.' Also, different classes have varying levels of dependance on items: a barb is screwed without his toys, but a sorceress dominates almost as easily without hers.

Sound familiar? Pre-4e generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to twink your toon by whatever means the DM will let you get away with. Have a chunk of change? Don't bother upgrading something you already have, convince the DM to let you buy sacred/profane/luck/insight/whatever bonuses! 3e has WBL, which is mostly just a numeric way of saying "If you follow these guidelines, anal retentive accountant min/maxers will dominate the game and leave casual players in the dust." (Much how Diablo grinders leave casual players in the dust.) Also, different classes have varying levels of dependance on items...ah hell, you all know this part.

Btw, thanks for being the only poster to not be immediately offended by that comment.

I daresay that the vast, overwhelming majority of TGD had an experience closer to my own than yours, TS.

So that's like, what, .1% of the gaming population?! Oh noes!

PS: Before someone points it out, yes I realize that D&D predates Diablo. And yes, there's a similarity between Diablo and any game that expects you to have magical toys.

[A Man In Black]

What I mean is, Diablo generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to whatever devices you can think of to twink out your toon. There are zero guidelines (obviously) or guarantees other than 'the more time you spend grinding, the more [mostly useless] items you get.'

How is this not a description of 4e?

[Akula]

@TS: I fail to see your point on the Diablo comparison. Everything you listed is the same between the editions, with the exception that no one can do anything without gear in 4th. Except where it is only applicable for 4E, like where there are no guidelines except for the "time spent grinding."

[Username17]

@TS: I fail to see your point on the Diablo comparison. Everything you listed is the same between the editions, with the exception that no one can do anything without gear in 4th. Except where it is only applicable for 4E, like where there are no guidelines except for the "time spent grinding."

No. See there's one difference:

In 4e, items are not generated "randomly" with an option to be generated arbitrarily by the DM. Instead they are generated arbitrarily by the DM with nothing whatever to compare it to on the impartial side. This means that from the standpoint of the players, it's basically the same as completely random generation save for the fact that the players are no longer privy to the information as to whether they have gotten average, above average, or below average swag. And of course, neither is the DM, so he has no basis to even ask whether he is giving out too much or too little.

But the take home message is that TS is spouting mouth diarrhea. None of that makes sense at all. Here's the crux of his argument:

Sound familiar? Pre-4e generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to twink your toon by whatever means the DM will let you get away with. Have a chunk of change? Don't bother upgrading something you already have, convince the DM to let you buy sacred/profane/luck/insight/whatever bonuses! 3e has WBL, which is mostly just a numeric way of saying "If you follow these guidelines, anal retentive accountant min/maxers will dominate the game and leave casual players in the dust." (Much how Diablo grinders leave casual players in the dust.)

What he is arguing is the point in 4e where no one fucking knows what the design intent is, or what kind of spread of equipment people are supposed to have, or even how much of it each individual character is supposed to get - that's an advantage. Because um... if you don't have consistent inputs then players with more system mastery won't reliably get better outcomes.

Which of course, is basically bullshit on every level. System mastery is not penalized by completely not knowing what kind of equipment upgrades you can expect and when. And the positive outcomes of min/maxing equipment are totally off the hook in the 4e Treasure system, where cashing any treasure parcel in for an item several levels lower s always an option. Getting a stacking +2 bonus is in all ways better than improving one of your bonuses by +1, so dumpster diving the Adventurers' Vaults for stackabonuses is basically always the plan for whatever wealth you happen to get. It's just that in 4e there isn't an "average" point for players and DMs to estimate how much gold that might be.

I don't think that Tequila Sunrise is trolling. But he may be an idiot.

-Username17

[Roy]

And then 4e came along, and I said "Sweet, they finally took the Diablo out of my D&D!"

Clearly you are very well-endowed. Cranially. My response would have been more like:

And then 4e came along, and I said "Wtf? They just added so much Diablo to my D&D, I can scarce recognize it!"

I daresay that the vast, overwhelming majority of TGD had an experience closer to my own than yours, TS.

I dunno about that. If they really did add lots of Diablo it might actually be a good grinding game. After all, Diablo combat is fast.

[Psychic Robot]

Everyone, please ignore the blatant troll.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, if magical items in 4E sold for a hundred percent of what they cost I could--with a LOT of effort--construct a chart that guesstimates just how much swag people are supposed to get. But you can't, for one fatal flaw.

It is totally design intent that players get hosed for selling items because the game doesn't want players to pick their own items. Seriously, this is the one thing that 4E makes perfectly fucking clear. I used to think that it was the game designers being Gygaxian dicks, but according to some people it's because they want the DM to control all player advancement. Which is still being a control freak, but the veneer of the excuse this time is to prevent min-maxxing. Which, um, is usually the first virtue of a Gygaxian dick.

Any redesign of the treasure parcel system is going to have to address this fundamental problem, but once we do that we're going to have wealth-by-level which is apparently what the TP haters don't want.

[RandomCasualty2]

You know, if magical items in 4E sold for a hundred percent of what they cost I could--with a LOT of effort--construct a chart that guesstimates just how much swag people are supposed to get. But you can't, for one fatal flaw.

It is totally design intent that players get hosed for selling items because the game doesn't want players to pick their own items. Seriously, this is the one thing that 4E makes perfectly fucking clear. I used to think that it was the game designers being Gygaxian dicks, but according to some people it's because they want the DM to control all player advancement. Which is still being a control freak, but the veneer of the excuse this time is to prevent min-maxxing. Which, um, is usually the first virtue of a Gygaxian dick.

Well, I don't have so much of a problem with people not picking the exact item they want, given that people always taking the same items just leads to a boring game. Of course, in 4E it doesn't really matter so much, because there aren't any items that actually do interesting things, so it's just cherry picking the slightly higher bonus.

But for games that have interesting magic items, I've always found it's more fun to have people have some magic items they didn't intend for, for the same reason most people find rolling for stats more flavorful than point buy.

Besides, I hate the flavor behind buying magic items... just kills the magic aspect for me when you've got magic items churning off an assembly line.

[NineInchNall]

So ... If you happened to have a magic item that you weren't going to use anymore, you'd refuse to sell it to an up-and-coming adventurer who was offering you Cash Money for it?

[RobbyPants]

I used to think that it was the game designers being Gygaxian dicks, but according to some people it's because they want the DM to control all player advancement. Which is still being a control freak, but the veneer of the excuse this time is to prevent min-maxxing. Which, um, is usually the first virtue of a Gygaxian dick.

The fact that they'd try to build in an anit-min-maxing clause makes me think that they still didn't really design a balanced game and they know it. It seems like if they accomplished their goals, there'd be no min-maxing in the first place.

[koz]

Everyone, please ignore the blatant troll.

The thing is, PR, this guy is no troll. He has an established history of posting stuff which makes no sense except in his own weird world where 1 != 1 and other amusing things like this. He actually believes he knows what he's talking about, and that everyone else is just misunderstanding or doesn't know how wonderful or brilliant his thinking is.

Read his response to my post. Seriously, if that's not proof of single-digit IQ and a complete lack of reading comprehension, I'm not sure what is.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But for games that have interesting magic items, I've always found it's more fun to have people have some magic items they didn't intend for, for the same reason most people find rolling for stats more flavorful than point buy.

I recommend having a lottery on top of being able to select your magical items. Which is in fact what I do for my games; that way people still get their Iron Armbands of Power and Boots of Eagerness but they get the excitement of rolling for a random belt or magic armor.

[RandomCasualty2]

So ... If you happened to have a magic item that you weren't going to use anymore, you'd refuse to sell it to an up-and-coming adventurer who was offering you Cash Money for it?

Well it's not so much that, it's just that I don't believe that magic items should be commonly sold. I mean you may occasionally have someone looking to sell off a magic item, but I just don't like this concept that every magic item you could ever want is somehow automatically available, and all it takes to create a new item is putting a bunch of gold in a jar.

And honestly I can't really see all that many magic item deals happening with adventurers you don't know well, simply because the chance of a doublecross is so high. So while you may deal with people you know, dealing with adventurers who just walked into town this morning probably isn't a great idea. Lets remember they can rather easily murder you and leave town before anyone knows what's going on.

Really, advertising a magic item sale is just going to make you a big target.

[NineInchNall]

Of course, in a world with magic items that people would be willing to sell for cash, it would be rational for those people to work together, perhaps by forming a trade group that manages prices and employs safety precautions (such as guards with magical ability). Or perhaps the people willing to sell would do so through established merchants capable of and accustomed to safeguarding merchandise against the roving hands of greedy adventurers.

The point is that wherever there is a market for a class of item, an economy will form around it. It's actually more unbelievable that a world doesn't have magic shops.

[souran]

Random, there is no good way to get around it.

Either magic items have so much value they are priceless. In this game every player hands every magic item they find to another player or an NPC they know personally. All magic items come from the DM. Its impossible to buy them and its impossible to make them.

This is basically the 2e model. The only thing is, eventually it has to break down in order for the games mechanics to keep functioning.

IF you play and get Lago's fabled organic characters they are going to end up with the christmas tree syndrome. At that point they have to start selling magic items, meaning they have to have some sort of gold value.

Once your game attaches ANY gold value to a magic item its for sale. If nothing else, you have just established the minimum price for one adventuer to pay some other group of adventuers to go on an adventurer and STEAL said item for them.

A players current location may not have any magic items for sale, but somewhere there are people dealing in magic items. Otherwise if magic items really are invaluable then there can be no adventuers where a nobel pays a party to get his families magic sword back. There couldn't be because the moment you are in possession of the sword you hold something no amount of money could buy.

[Username17]

From the standpoint of the world, magic items want to b treated either like technology or like art. In either case, an economy in them is inevitable. The primary difference is that with technology, a buyer can look for things that have certain specifications; and with art, a buyer can simply try to find specific pieces or objects made by a specific artisan. But in either case, a potential buyer is going to be able to go out and track down something that they are willing to exchange goods and services for, and then give those away and get the item in question in return.

From the standpoint of the game, it's a fuck lot easier to treat things as technology than it is to treat them like art. Because all the powers and bonuses a magic sword can have have to be put into a table in the first place, so it's zero extra steps of effort having the PCs use those tables like the Tiger Direct catalog and asking them to treat magic item accumulation like a trip to Sotheby's is some number of extra steps and mechanics.

The usual solution is to treat magic items below a specific threshold like technology and magic items above a specific threshold as art. Artifacts and "epic" items are almost always considered Art, minor magic items are almost always Technology, and people vary on how they want to assign Medium and Major magic items.

For the purposes of playability and all around sanity, we posit that mundane items are turnip economy or gold economy, Minor magic items are gold economy exclusively, and Major Magic items and Epic Magic items are Wish Economy exclusively, and... we never really settled on where to put Medium Magic Items. They were probably going Gold economy though.

Indeed, the solution we were leaning towards was:

• Minor Magic Items are like technology in the Gold Economy - if you want a fire sword or a poison blade, you can go to the shops and track one down.
• Medium Magic Items are like art in the Gold Economy. Oathbows and Lifestealers exist, and are traded for gold, but they are like works of art and there is no guaranty of you being able to tack one down or that any one of them is not unique.
• Major Magic Items are like technology in the Wish Economy. If you have some planar pearls or some souls, you can go to Finality or Sigil and track down a Ring of Telekinesis or Regeneration and buy one.
• Artifacts are like Art in the Wish Economy. While The Sword of Kas may well sell in an auction for some Raw Chaos or something, there's only one of it. And if the current owner is using it right now, it's not for sale at all.

-Username17

[PhaedrusXY]

I am using the Tome 8 attuned item limit, the scaling bonuses, and allowing them to change which items are attuned with 15 minutes of "meditation". However, instead of having to go through every damned magic item in existence and assign it to "least, lesser, and greater" status, and then decide how many of each of those a character should have at every level, I decided to use a modified version of the chart in the Magic Item Compendium that determines how many items of each level a character should have. The items indicated on the chart are a bit weak, so I bumped it up a bit. Here is the post from the house rules for the game I'm using this in describing it, with charts!

Magic items that just provide a bonus scale with your levels according to the chart found here. They "cost" the amount of whatever the least magic item of that type costs (So "magic armor" costs 1000 gp, plus the mundane item's cost). Items that provide a bonus to an ability score start at +2 (and 4000 gp), but do scale through odd numbers as you level (so at level 9 they'd give you a +3 Actually, you round up on these. So at level 7, they'd give you a +3, and at level 10 this would increase to +4). Items that provide a competence bonus to a skill start at +5 (and 2500 gp).

Item Levels
Ok... I was just looking over the table on magic item levels in the MiC on page 225... and I'm realizing that it isn't actually all that great for what I'm trying to use it for. It's really for equipping NPCs. They list a +5 vorpal sword as being a 25th level item. WTF? And a +2 stat boosting item is listed as 8th level, but I'd like them available a bit before that.

So... I'm going to revise this a bit. We'll still use the chart, but for PCs we're going to do a little calculation to determine what item levels are appropriate. We're going to divide your level by 2, round down, and add that to the item level that is appropriate to you on the chart. So for you guys, that would be 7/2 + 7, or 10th level items.

We'll say that you can have only one item of each level above your actual character level (so for a 7th level PC that would be one 10th, one 9th, and one 8th), but basically as many as you want of lower level items.

(Added 12/9/09) We'll say that you can add non-magical things to your equipment without increasing the effective item level. So you can have mithril or adamantine armor for free, basically. You can also add mundane items to your magic ones for free, like adding the function of a masterwork tool to a magic cloak. I think some of you have already been doing this, anyway.


Here are some charts if you'd rather just look at them instead of doing the calculation yourself.

Original chart, as in MiC:

Code: Select all

Item Level   Market Price  Range (gp)
1/2		1 - 50		
1st		51-150		
2nd		151-400		
3rd		401-800		
4th		801-1,300	
5th		1,301-1,800	
6th		1,801-2,300	
7th		2,301-3,000	
8th		3,001-4,000	
9th		4,001-5,000	
10th		5,001-6,500	
11th		6,501-8,000	
12th		8,001-10,000	
13th		10,001-13,000	
14th		13,001-18,000	
15th		18,001-25,000	
16th		25,001-35,000	
17th		35,001-48,000	
18th		48,001-64,000	
19th		64,001-80,000	
20th		80,001-100,000	
21th		100,001-120,000
22th		120,001-140,000
23th		140,001-160,000
24th		160,001-180,000
25th		180,001-200,000
26th		200,001-220,000
27th		220,001-240,000
28th		240,001-260,000
29th		260,001-280,000
30th		280,001-300,000

New chart

Code: Select all

Char Level   Items
7		One each from 8th to 10th on the chart above
8		One each from 9th to 12th on the chart above
9		One each from 10th to 13th on the chart above
10		One each from 11th to 15th on the chart above
11		One each from 12th to 16th on the chart above
12		One each from 13th to 18th on the chart above
13		One each from 14th to 19th on the chart above
14		One each from 15th to 21st on the chart above
15		One each from 16th to 22nd on the chart above
16		One each from 17th to 24th on the chart above
17		One each from 18th to 25th on the chart above
18		One each from 19th to 27th on the chart above
19		One each from 20th to 28th on the chart above
20		One each from 21st to 30th on the chart above

You can still only have 8 items "attuned" at once, regardless of how many you have, and it takes 15 minutes of "meditation" to change which items are attuned.

Overall I love the Tome stuff, and am incorporating a lot of it into my game. But once you try running a game with it, you realize that there are quite a few details that still need to be worked out. So this is my attempt to put it all together into a workable system.

[Username17]

However, instead of having to go through every damned magic item in existence and assign it to "least, lesser, and greater" status, and then decide how many of each of those a character should have at every level

Unfortunately... that seriously is the only way. The primary failings of 3e WBL are:

• Trading down for stackable items is broken (fixed with 8 item limit).
• Characters fall behind the curve (fixed with scaling bonuses)
• Characters can grab items beyond themselves and destabilize the game (addressed by scaling bonuses and Wish Economy).
• Grinding (even literal farming) can break the game (limited to non-breaking status by 8 item limit and scaling bonuses).
• Items have costs that are totally fucked up. (unfixed).
• The projections of how many items people are supposed to have are bad. (unfixed).

Those last two are still serious problems, and the only way to solve them is to set new price points and new item collection standards. And those need to be tested.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

From the standpoint of the game, it's a fuck lot easier to treat things as technology than it is to treat them like art. Because all the powers and bonuses a magic sword can have have to be put into a table in the first place, so it's zero extra steps of effort having the PCs use those tables like the Tiger Direct catalog and asking them to treat magic item accumulation like a trip to Sotheby's is some number of extra steps and mechanics.

You're absolutely right that the online catalog style is easier and probably the way to go for casual hack and slash games, but I hate this approach from a flavor standpoint.

The other main problem with magic item shops is that they don't really make sense in the economy. The value of the inventory being stocked is just way too expensive and tempting a target for anyone more powerful than you. And further, it's rather specialized. You probably won't ever sell a +3 kukri, so honestly the idea that people are going to buy that for even half price just doesn't make sense. The high cost of security combined with the risk from having shit go unsold is enough to really make the magic shop business totally unfeasable beyond very simple items like healing potions.

The 4E way is actually miraculously more sensical than the 3E way. The flavor is absolutely horrid, but it makes sense. Pretty much in 4E you can make shit really fast, so everything tends to be commissioned. Stuff that gets bought just gets melted down, instead of worrying about the hassle of finding a buyer. That way people can order shit they want and get what they want because everything is custom made from scratch, and there's never any need to have actual magic items on hand. It means that sellers get hosed, but that basically makes sense, since there are no internet catalogs in a fantasy world, so finding a buyer for a magic item, even a moderately priced one, is going to be hard. In most cases, the logical thing to do is melt it down into scrap magic and restructure it to fill an order you have now, rather than waiting in the desperate hope that someone someday wants that magic kukri.

In fact, for anything you treat like technology, you may just want to go the 4E route and have them capable of being made in a day or less. With global communications you're just not going to easily be able to set up an actual magic item economy that isn't like artwork. Magic items are sold to too small of a niche market to get any sort of situation where having actual inventory would ever be a good idea.