Wealth DC vs Ol' Fashioned GP

[Grinner]

I'm at a bit of a crossroad right now.

I'm putting together a d20 game, but since it's multigenre, I'm drawing from both the Modern SRD and the D&D 3.5 SRD. At the moment, I've already transcribed the D&D 3.5 SRD equipment list and am in the process of figuring out how to convert the Wealth DCs given in the Modern SRD to a GP equivalent. That presents its own set of challenges, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I read this article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/article/20020801b) earlier, and it makes a convincing case for using Wealth checks instead of keeping tally of gold pieces. The setting I have in mind is presently flexible enough that it could use either, and using Wealth checks would save me a ton of work. Still, I have to wonder which is best from a mechanical perspective. Some outside opinions would be useful here.

[Urpriest]

Wealth checks are pretty insanely breakable. The problem is, you can sell items to get temporary bonuses to wealth, then use that higher bonus to buy more expensive items, until the whole party has helicopters and rocket launchers.

I forget which houserule I used to fix this in my old Psionic Tippyverse game, but it essentially gutted the wealth system completely, and the only reason it worked was because the characters weren't ever going to get real "loot". For a D&D-esque system you'd have to fix things quite a bit more thoroughly.

[Grinner]

Well, I kinda liked how Wealth checks could plug into the rest of the d20 system, but if they need that much finagling, I guess I'll stick with cold hard cash. At least I get to keep the magic item creation rules...

Thanks, Urpriest. :smallsmile: