Treasure and Items Ascention Tiers

[Judging__Eagle]

Level. Amount Item Power level, (economy notes)

1. 1 Minor Item; Silver Economy Tier (items under 1 gold are valueless)
2. 2 Minor Items
3. 3 MIs
4. 4 MIs
5. 5 MIs
6. 6 MIs, 1 Moderate Item; Gold Economy Tier (can purchase any one item that has a gold cost per adventure; from a radish to a castle)
7. 7 Min, 2 Mod
8. 8 Min, 3 Mod
9. 9 Min, 4 Mod
10. 10 Min, 5 Mod
11. 11 Min, 6 Mod, 1 Major Item; Wish Economy Tier (gold is valueless to a PC; Trade in Moderate and Major Magic Items, Souls and Raw Power)
12. ~ Min, 7 Mod, 2 Major
13. ~ Min, 8 Mod, 3 Major
14. ~ Min, 9 Mod, 4 Major
15. ~ Min, 10 Mod, 5 Major
16. ~ Min, 11 Mod, 6 Major
17. ~ Min, 12 Mod, 7 Major
18. ~ Min, ~ Mod, 8 Major
19. ~ Min, ~ Mod, 9 Major
20. ~ Min, ~ Mod, 10 Major

That's probably a decent breakdown for how to figure out item wealth by level, or is it? I'd appreciate some advice.

[Meikle641]

This looks like it has potential. I'd consider using it for games, assuming people point out problems first.

[Kaelik]

The level 6 "Gold Economy Tier" thing is dumb and oversimplified.

For the first 8 levels, gold is your economic standard. At level 3, it really is a choice you make between having one more Minor Magic item vs having a purse of Potions and Acid flasks and Tanglefoot Bags. That's totally a character decision.

That ability needs to be expanded over the length of levels 2-8.

And honestly, you should let when the players hit Wish economy determine when they hit Wish economy. Sure, feed them soul quests and stuff after level 9. But if they don't have a Wizard in the party, make them participate in the Wish economy in the way they are capable of, and in the gold economy as people with so much wealth it's sickening, only if they actually have that much wealth. Don't just hand them a free Efferti to be their Wish slave just because they are level 11.

[Red_Rob]

As a rough guide this looks okay. However, a few things to consider:

Items don't fit into a nice "1 per level" progression like this at all at lower levels. Firstly, wealth grows exponentially whilst minor items will have a fixed price. This means that characters can gain 2-3 per level once they hit levels 7-8 if they want. Also, assuming the BoG 8 item limit characters will rush to get their first 8 items, then slacken off to only upgrading to more powerful effects. Barring back-up effects a character may never want more than 8 minor items.

I noticed you have moderate items as Wish level items (at least they don't become infinite after level 11). This does make sense unless you want characters decked out in moderate items after you hit wish level.

The silver and gold tiers don't really work, I would remove them. Minor items cost gold, so you are already in the gold economy at level 1. Tomes outlined turnip, gold & wish economies and characters start above turnip so I'd just stick to Gold and Wish.

Don't forget, Wish economy simply means "the character has enough gold that they would no longer trade away things they valued for more of it". How they got that much can vary considerably, from Wishing for it, to Fabricating expensive items, to using Teleport to set up a trade monopoly to Plane Shifting to simply owning a diamond mine. To say that occurs at exactly level 11 and no earlier is wishful thinking - its highly campaign and character (or player!) specific.

Finally, the level that most characters enter the Wish economy sets the highest Caster Level itsm you can buy for gold. If its a given that characters will be creating more gold than they can spend each day upon reaching level 9, nothing that it takes a level 9 character to make will be available for gold. This way you can set which items lower in price than 15,000gp are also Wish economy items. A simple example is a scroll of Lesser Planar Binding. The PHB states it costs 450gp, which is well below the 15,000gp limit for wish economy items, however it requires caster level 9 so its creator will only accept wish-economy level payment.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, the breakdown that I'm going for is something like this:

Level 1: you care about things that cost "gold", but not 'silver', or 'copper'. It's assumed that the PCs can just buy any basic meal at that point. PCs should be able to interact in the Turnip Economy if they wish.

The minor Items show up 1 per level because I prefer to have levels determine max attuned Magic items (capping at 8 by level 8).

The ~ at level 12, for Minor items is to represent the fact that at level 12, you don't care about how many Minor items a PC owns anymore; but they have to be able to have up to 11 by level 11.

Likewise, for level 18, it's assumed that the PCs can probably just "have" somewhere in their collection, a moderate magic item that can be useful for this current adventure.

[angelfromanotherpin]

This system seems to break down once looting takes place. If a level 2 character is supposed to be walking around with 1 or 2 minor magic items, then it's really trivial to fill up on those, well before 8th or 12th.

Now, experiential disclaimer aside, in my current campaign, the PCs are 3rd level, and they're walking around with like 5 minors apiece... and it's really no big deal. I don't think it would be a big deal if they were walking around with a full 8 apiece. Which I think was the point of the whole scaling/tiered benefits thing in the first place.

[Judging__Eagle]

I think that using this list as a "minimum" values is probably the goal. PCs having "more" treasure, due to adventures, is something I'm fine with.

Organic PCs always have more power than pre-generated PCs.

[Blicero]

Organic PCs always have more power than pre-generated PCs.

Really? That has never been my experience, in D&D or in RPGs, assuming that you are familiar with what you're doing and not just handed a book and told to make a lvl 20 character.

This is because pre-gens tend to be made with a single build in mind, so the player can totally choose shitty feats early on that would make his/her character all but unplayable at lower levels but lead to the srsly hardcore shit at high levels. Organic characters tend to be, well, organic. The player might start out with one concept in mind and then buy a new splatbook and slowly alter anything, or whatever.

I'd say it might be more accurate to say that organic characters have less predictable power. They might've totally fucked up their early careers in a way that still has negative consequences now (a wizard player putting his second highest stat is Wisdom rather than Con or Dex because he wants to be able to see well or whatever), but they also might've bathed in the Fountain of Pure Awesomeness which has given them this power that's all but impossible to replicate.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, in the sense that an Organically grown PC will have items, contacts, and other "background" that they haven't had to pay for in terms of Feats, or Class levels, or items out of their WBL.

[Kaelik]

Well, in the sense that an Organically grown PC will have items, contacts, and other "background" that they haven't had to pay for in terms of Feats, or Class levels, or items out of their WBL.

WTF JE, yes if you give out artifact swords people will have artifact swords, but that's fucking retarded.

Created PCs will have contacts. And organic characters won't have items out of WBL, because, and this is important, that's fucking stupid.

The whole point of a system for determining character wealth by level is so that you know how much fucking wealth to give characters to keep them in line. If you give them more than that, you have explicitly chosen to chuck the fucking WBL and so any character made at a higher level would also have more Wealth.

I mean fuck JE, you are seriously the last person who should draw up a By level chart of items, because you apparently think that if you just hand out arbitrary numbers of Major items to level 3 characters because they are "organic" you are still following the chart. Because you don't know what a fucking chart is apparently.

[Crissa]

WBL should be a range of expectations for the PCs. But created PCs should be below average of that range: Because they didn't have the chance to blow the dragon's horde. But organic PC's probably should have a level where you know you're above the curve and bathing in Loth's pools might be one of those points.

Or whatever. But a totally planned character will always beat an organic character because the planned character didn't need to buy things out of order or accidentally drop their loot into the crevasse.

We should, though, make rules such that the organic character isn't screwed by making these choices as 'optimal at the time'. Nor that being unoptimal at any point is better 'later'.

-Crissa