Magic weapon by level

[Lord.Sorasen]

So, I'm trying to find out what sorts of magic weapons players should be expected to have at certain levels. I thought I could balance it via wealth by level but I don't really get how wealth by level is generally balanced between different things, so I decided I would ask you all instead, as honestly your collective wealth seems to stomp on the DMG ususally.

I thought it would work to model soulknife or ancestral weapon rates, but I hear constantly that at least the former is terribly out of sync with how it actually works.

Sorry if I make no sense, it is tired and I suddenly had a huge desire to know how an adventurer is supposed to spend money on equipment.

[Curmudgeon]

Wealth by Level is only of interest if you're creating characters above 1st level. What the DM needs to pay attention to instead is Table 3–3: Treasure Values per Encounter (page 51 of the Dungeon Master's Guide). Present that amount of treasure to the PCs and you'll be doing your job.

As for particular magic weapons, don't worry about that. Make weapons in treasure be what the enemies would use for themselves. Some of those weapons will be useful to the PCs, and some they'll sell. Individual players may decide to have their characters take feats or class levels to leverage the items that they find; others will just sell things and keep to their character development plan. It's all supposed to average out in terms of fairness.

[darkdragoon]

Magic Item Compendium and other late books do have a suggested level in their entries, but it's not particularly relevant.

[McSmack]

I'm working on a similar issue in one of the campaigns I'm running right now. A couple of the players wish to have signature weapons that will gain in power as the level.

Looking at Weapons of Legacy and the Legacy weapons in ToB I've been really underwhelmed at their power level.

Personally, unless some better idea comes along I plan on giving the weapon a new ability around every other level. I'll probably do an additional +1 enchancement or cost equivilent every 4 levels starting at level 2. And then another bonus or special every 4 levels starting at level 4. The secondary bonus will either be access to a mediocre feat or a bonus on a skill or special attack. (e.g. + to initiative, +X' to base speed, bonus sneak attack dice, 1 extra action point per day, + crit confirmation roll, +X to Y skill, etc). This makes the weapons slightly stronger than standard magic loot but not by much, and players get some new bonus every even level, which is nice.

You can make the characters 'pay' for this in a couple of ways. One is to have rituals that must be performed to increase the weapon's potency, another is to allow item enhancements to be transferable from weapon to weapon, so instead of the fighter upgrading from his +1 greatsword to the +1 flaming greataxe the party looted, just allow him to swap the enchantments on the two weapons via a local wizard.

Another resource you might look into is the Item Familiar feat from Unearthed Arcana. Magic weapon familiars auto upgrade as you level, IIRC.

As for WBL it depends on how I'm running the loot. If I'm using the average gold per encounter chart I just skim a little off the top (100ish gp per encounter) once they reach mid levels. If I'm rolling up random loot I just roll at EL-1 for a while.

Honestly I wouldn't sweat the WBL stuff too much. It's just a guideline after all. Don't go crazy with it and you'll be fine.

EDIT: Realized after posting that my response is somewhat tangential to the OP. So here's the tl;dr version +1 or equivilent every 4 levels starting at level 2, don't sweat the WBL, just use EL-1 for loot.

[Keld Denar]

WBL is actually useful after creating a character. While its not obligatory for a DM to always give a PC loot according to the WBL guidelines, he should at least keep an eye on the PCs total wealth vs the WBL table. If the PCs have dramatically more money than the WBL guidelines permit (between 1.5x and 2x is a good rule of thumb), they are much more powerful than the CR system anticipates and should probably face higher EL challenges to be properly challenged. Conversely, if they have significantly less cash than the WBL guidelines, it would be a good decision to use lower EL challenges or your PCs might feel overwealmed.

Again, WBL is not required to be adhered to, but it should be kept in mind.

[Lord.Sorasen]

WBL is actually useful after creating a character. While its not obligatory for a DM to always give a PC loot according to the WBL guidelines, he should at least keep an eye on the PCs total wealth vs the WBL table. If the PCs have dramatically more money than the WBL guidelines permit (between 1.5x and 2x is a good rule of thumb), they are much more powerful than the CR system anticipates and should probably face higher EL challenges to be properly challenged. Conversely, if they have significantly less cash than the WBL guidelines, it would be a good decision to use lower EL challenges or your PCs might feel overwealmed.

Again, WBL is not required to be adhered to, but it should be kept in mind.

Should I be keeping track of all the wealth a player has over time better? Admittedly I'm not the best at it.

What's a big thing is that my campaign hasn't really given the characters much chance to earn money. So a lot of there "earning magic things" has been determined by me. While I get that I should just supply enemies with weapons they should have, it's more the power of the weapon that concerns me. Im going to go by the information given above, I think.

[LordBlades]

IMHO WBL doesn;t really work for the following reason: if you can use the item, it adds it's full value to the WBL, if you can't, you need to sell it and buy stuff you can therefore it adds only half of it's value to your WBL. The problem is that different chars have different levels of item usability.

Let's say you have a party of 2 characters: character A is something with very specific gear needs (like let's say a druid) and he ends up being able to use only 10% of whatever loot they find while character B is something that can put almost anything to good use (like a cleric with Magic domain for example) and ends up being able to use 90% of the loot they find.

Now, the most logical way to split loot is equally based on value; if the above party does so, char A ends up using 10% of his share at full value and he has to sell the rest at half value to buy stuff he can use. He ends up adding 55% of his share to his WBL. Char B on the other hand, can keep 90% of his share, and only needs to sell the remaining 10%, therefore adding 95% of his share to his WBL.

[faceroll]

WBL is actually useful after creating a character. While its not obligatory for a DM to always give a PC loot according to the WBL guidelines, he should at least keep an eye on the PCs total wealth vs the WBL table. If the PCs have dramatically more money than the WBL guidelines permit (between 1.5x and 2x is a good rule of thumb), they are much more powerful than the CR system anticipates and should probably face higher EL challenges to be properly challenged. Conversely, if they have significantly less cash than the WBL guidelines, it would be a good decision to use lower EL challenges or your PCs might feel overwealmed.

Again, WBL is not required to be adhered to, but it should be kept in mind.

It really depends on how well itemized that loot is. If it's all random drops in a campaign without magic marts, it may not be as useful as it would if turned directly into magic item wish lists at a 1-to-1 ratio.

[Cyrion]

Should I be keeping track of all the wealth a player has over time better? Admittedly I'm not the best at it.

What's a big thing is that my campaign hasn't really given the characters much chance to earn money. So a lot of there "earning magic things" has been determined by me. While I get that I should just supply enemies with weapons they should have, it's more the power of the weapon that concerns me. Im going to go by the information given above, I think.

If you're thinking about "what + should a weapon have", consider that weapons have a maximum bonus of +5, and there are 20 levels of non-epic play. So, for about levels 1-4 they should be looking at +1 weapons. From levels 5-8 they should be graduating into +2 weapons, and so on. You can add special abilities to get the "equivalent" of a +10 weapon, so you'll want to give them the opportunity to find or commission the occasional stronger weapon, especially as they hit mid to high levels. Naturally, you'll have to adjust this depending on the foes they fight.

If you're interested in the waepon's equivalent + keeping pace with character and monster power, you'll have to throw out the MIC random tables for treasure generation; they're entirely useless regarding armor and weapons.