Character Wealth By Level - 2 charts for 5e and a bit of comparison to 3.5

[Accy_Sevin]

The thing I missed most when I switched to 5e from 3.5 was the nice concise character wealth by level chart that made generating higher level PCs quick and simple and so a while back I set out to build my own for 5e. I ended up with two: a median wealth by level value and a wealth by level value if the characters gained optimal wealth at each level. Now I'll couch this in disclaimers since I'm no math major; the chart is intended only as a base point for figuring out how much wealth you want the characters to have. I do not guarantee it is entirely correct but I gave it a good go. As always: your mileage may vary.

These charts assume no treasure hordes; just xp grinding CR appropriate encounters and the resultant loot chart.

Median Wealth by Character Level:

1 – 0
2 - 31
3 - 62
4 - 123
5 - 205
6 - 282
7 - 359
8 - 592
9 - 826
10 - 1275
11 - 1803
12 - 2335
13 - 2869
14 - 3355
15 - 3863
16 - 549
17 - 7506
18 - 9568
19 - 13102
20 – 16636

Optimal Wealth by Character Level:

1 – 0
2 - 60
3 - 120
4 - 239
5 - 393
6 - 542
7 - 691
8 - 1339
9 - 1987
10 - 2912
11 - 4022
12 - 4947
13 - 5872
14 - 6797
15 - 7629
16 - 12363
17 - 17097
18 - 21831
19 - 28458
20 – 35085

The striking bit about it to me comes when you look at not just the difference in wealth between 3.5 and 5e, which as we expect is heavily skewed in favor of 3.5 but in looking at the change in item prices between the editions. In most cases the price for an item in 5e is much higher than the price in 3.5 leading to an even greater wealth disparity.

When looking at the ratio of wealth from 3.5 to 5e we find that on average 3.5 has 42.1:1 more wealthy characters than 5e with even the characters taking the optimal route sitting at a 19.7:1 deficit.

In the case of specific items it becomes even more visible. [armor]+1 costs on average 2.5 times more than it did in 3.5 leading to a cost ratio of 105.3:1 when figured against the average wealth a character should have in 5e compared to 3.5

I really don't know what to make of it; but found it interesting enough to stop lurking on these boards and post something.

Cheers!

(When I find time and I'm not at work I'll post a link to the document on my gdrive.)
As promised Gdrive link to my full results.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwPt5SLlzWwnQ216WEhfcWhJTXc/view?usp=drivesdk

[Unoriginal]

5e doesn't really have set prices for magic items or the like.

In 3.X, you're expected to farm for gold, spend it on the next upgrade on magic items, then repeat.

In 5e, you're expected to get rich (or at least try) from your adventuring, and once you get your good but non-magical equipment keep the gold to do whatever rich people activity you want, like wearing a top hat and a monocle.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

This is really interesting, because in my current game I used Suggestion in a really surprising way to net my Level 3 party of 4 about 10,000 gold. The DM pre-established the value for something and had no category in his mind for the events that unfolded over the next 3 sessions. Finally, when I cast Suggestion and succeeded he was kind of restrained by the context and the rules to rule in our favor (though he didn't really begrudge us since we worked together in a creative way). So I always knew we were way more wealthy than we should be, but it's interesting to see just how drastic that difference is for a standard adventuring party.

[Accy_Sevin]

Good on you for being so far ahead at third level :D

To be fair extra money doesn't seem to matter much since PCs seem to spend it in droves on random stuff anyway. :p

[DrowPiratRobrts]

Good on you for being so far ahead at third level :D

To be fair extra money doesn't seem to matter much since PCs seem to spend it in droves on random stuff anyway. :p

You mean like a dock for an airship that we don't have? That's preposterous...who would do such a thing?

[Accy_Sevin]

You mean like a dock for an airship that we don't have? That's preposterous...who would do such a thing?

Hey, that's smart. You bought your GM a plot hook. They now know you want an airship and can sculpt the adventure you want.

[Kalendraf]

Thanks for the tables. I was a long-time 3.x player and recently returned to playing in a 5e campaign after several years away from the game. The lack of magic gear in 5e is a stark difference from 3.x where it was relatively common, but I wasn't sure if that might be due to this 5e campaign being intentially low-magic. Based on our current wealth (~400g @ 5th) we're actually right on track for the optimal wealth table. Among the party of 6 characters, I think only 1 player has a magic weapon, and a few have some healing potions. That's it. By contrast, in a 3.x campaign, it seemed fairly common for everyone in the party to have at least 1 to 2 pieces of magic equipment (+1 weapon, +1 armor, etc) and usually some various one-shot or charged items (potions, scrolls, wands, etc) by 5th level.

I actually like playing in lower magic campaigns since it tends to make character abilities and player decisions more important than gear. Too often I've seen magic-laden parties become over-confident, only to be exposed as paper tigers when something unfortunate happens to their equipment.

[Darkstar952]

this is interesting in that your figures are far lower than I have seen in actual play at pretty much every table I have played.

For example in almost every game I have played the Heavy armour using martial characters are able to afford Plate armour (1500g) by about lvl 5 or 6 at the latest.

[Kalendraf]

One of our players managed to obtain Plate, but he didn't buy it. Instead, it came from salvaging a suit of plate off of an enemy in our last encounter and then having a smith provide the necessary adjustments to make it fit him with the resizing cost coming from other items we sold to the smith. (For the rest of the party, the rest of the gold from the sold items was divvied up as part of our gold reward.) If you factor in all his gold + gear, that player's net worth is probably closer to 1800 right now. However, he and the character with a magic weapon are the exceptions in the party. Everyone else is back around 400 gold + their basic gear.

Compared to earlier editions, not having plate by level 5 may seem unusual, but it seems to be fairly balanced for the 5e combat rules.