Balthanon
2015-07-21, 01:55 AM
This is essentially a house rule that I am considering implementing in my group's version of "3.75", but it probably needs its tires kicked a bit. Basically, I'm thinking of instituting a wealth by level multiplier for ECL as it relates to assessing CR for a party and potentially assigning XP (though I tend to go with goal based XP/leveling, so this is less relevant for my campaigns.)
What I'm thinking of is something like the following:
Wealth by Level Modifier
If your utilized wealth is significantly outside of the wealth by level guidelines presented in the DMG, your ECL will be adjusted appropriately to reflect the change.
As a rule of thumb, this is handled through the following formula:
Utilized Wealth / Wealth by Level = Wealth Ratio
(Wealth Ratio - 1)/5 = Wealth Modifier
ECL * (Wealth Modifer + 1) = New ECL (rounded)
What this boils down to is that for each 50% by which your wealth exceeds the wealth by level guidelines, your ECL is considered to be 10% higher. (Or 10% lower if your wealth is below average by the same amount.)
This will typically impact the encounters that you will run into and the XP that you will receive for any given encounter.
Utilized wealth is equal to the total gold value of armor, weapons, and clothing that you are wearing or wielding, tools that you have on your person and can easily retrieve, and other items that are directly contributing to your ability to overcome encounters. Items that can’t be used simultaneously, gold, art, and other forms of wealth do not count towards this total.
As an example, if you had three two-handed weapons of different materials that were worth 2,000 gold, 5,000 gold, and 18,000 gold, your utilized wealth from the weapons would only be 18,000 gold, not 25,000 gold. If, however, you typically wield two-handed weapons when two-weapon fighting and had the same equipment, then you would have a utilized wealth of 23,000 gold.
This results in:
2nd level - 1800 gold/900 gold = 66% over = 1.1 modifier = ECL 2.4-- no change. Seems fair-- full plate plus a masterwork weapon at 2nd level isn't going to be game breaking. Get much above that and playing with magic items and I could see it being iffy.
5th level - 1500 gold/9000 = 16% of average = .8 modifer = ECL 4. If you don't get a single bit of loot for 4 levels, I could definitely see you being a level under (power wise) at 5th level.
10th level/75,000 gold - 53% above 49,000 gold; ECL is considered to be 11. Seems fair-- you're halfway to the wealth by level for ECL 12, but you still only have 5th level spells/maneuvers/etc...
20th level/1,000,000 gold - 31% above 760,000 gold; no change. As soon as you hit that 50% though, you're jumping two levels. Might be better to go more granular at 25% for a 5% change, but I don't know if it is really necessary.
(Note, the above was posted privately elsewhere and was before I had "generalized" the formula for the modifier. It assumes that you only make changes at the 50% mark.)
This takes into account item creation to a large extent-- say you created all of your items, so you have twice as many items as an average character of your level. You're probably a level or so under your companions, but your ECL is now 20% higher, so if you were in a party of 10th level characters, your level would be 9, but your ECL would be 11 (10.8 technically). That is probably accurate-- the optimization boards almost always considered crafting an optimal use of gold. On the other hand, if you had crafted, but were distributing it around the party, then your multiplier might be lower and you might only be considered ECL 10.
It's obviously not going to be perfect, but I kind of like it as a method of balancing out extreme imbalances in wealth. (Which we tend to have in our regular group quite a bit-- I tend to be a bit stingy on handing out items, another DM has horrible luck for himself on the random item table, and this would help to streamline encounter design in those situations.)
It also potentially lets characters still get really wealthy, but then put it into something like a Stronghold without significantly impacting their encounter levels. And it explains why characters would tithe-- they're trying to keep around their wealth by level so that they don't get encounters that are quite as swingy.
At any rate, I would be interested in hearing what people think about it-- whether it seems like it would work, does it penalize the players too much, does it give the DM yet another tool to torture players by making them destroy their own magic items...?
What I'm thinking of is something like the following:
Wealth by Level Modifier
If your utilized wealth is significantly outside of the wealth by level guidelines presented in the DMG, your ECL will be adjusted appropriately to reflect the change.
As a rule of thumb, this is handled through the following formula:
Utilized Wealth / Wealth by Level = Wealth Ratio
(Wealth Ratio - 1)/5 = Wealth Modifier
ECL * (Wealth Modifer + 1) = New ECL (rounded)
What this boils down to is that for each 50% by which your wealth exceeds the wealth by level guidelines, your ECL is considered to be 10% higher. (Or 10% lower if your wealth is below average by the same amount.)
This will typically impact the encounters that you will run into and the XP that you will receive for any given encounter.
Utilized wealth is equal to the total gold value of armor, weapons, and clothing that you are wearing or wielding, tools that you have on your person and can easily retrieve, and other items that are directly contributing to your ability to overcome encounters. Items that can’t be used simultaneously, gold, art, and other forms of wealth do not count towards this total.
As an example, if you had three two-handed weapons of different materials that were worth 2,000 gold, 5,000 gold, and 18,000 gold, your utilized wealth from the weapons would only be 18,000 gold, not 25,000 gold. If, however, you typically wield two-handed weapons when two-weapon fighting and had the same equipment, then you would have a utilized wealth of 23,000 gold.
This results in:
2nd level - 1800 gold/900 gold = 66% over = 1.1 modifier = ECL 2.4-- no change. Seems fair-- full plate plus a masterwork weapon at 2nd level isn't going to be game breaking. Get much above that and playing with magic items and I could see it being iffy.
5th level - 1500 gold/9000 = 16% of average = .8 modifer = ECL 4. If you don't get a single bit of loot for 4 levels, I could definitely see you being a level under (power wise) at 5th level.
10th level/75,000 gold - 53% above 49,000 gold; ECL is considered to be 11. Seems fair-- you're halfway to the wealth by level for ECL 12, but you still only have 5th level spells/maneuvers/etc...
20th level/1,000,000 gold - 31% above 760,000 gold; no change. As soon as you hit that 50% though, you're jumping two levels. Might be better to go more granular at 25% for a 5% change, but I don't know if it is really necessary.
(Note, the above was posted privately elsewhere and was before I had "generalized" the formula for the modifier. It assumes that you only make changes at the 50% mark.)
This takes into account item creation to a large extent-- say you created all of your items, so you have twice as many items as an average character of your level. You're probably a level or so under your companions, but your ECL is now 20% higher, so if you were in a party of 10th level characters, your level would be 9, but your ECL would be 11 (10.8 technically). That is probably accurate-- the optimization boards almost always considered crafting an optimal use of gold. On the other hand, if you had crafted, but were distributing it around the party, then your multiplier might be lower and you might only be considered ECL 10.
It's obviously not going to be perfect, but I kind of like it as a method of balancing out extreme imbalances in wealth. (Which we tend to have in our regular group quite a bit-- I tend to be a bit stingy on handing out items, another DM has horrible luck for himself on the random item table, and this would help to streamline encounter design in those situations.)
It also potentially lets characters still get really wealthy, but then put it into something like a Stronghold without significantly impacting their encounter levels. And it explains why characters would tithe-- they're trying to keep around their wealth by level so that they don't get encounters that are quite as swingy.
At any rate, I would be interested in hearing what people think about it-- whether it seems like it would work, does it penalize the players too much, does it give the DM yet another tool to torture players by making them destroy their own magic items...?