Does WBL system cheapen the acts of selflessness?

[StragaSevera]

I always felt like something isn't right with WBL as a concept, and today I had woken up with an understanding - why it feels strange to me.

I'm playing in a campaign where all player characters are Good - we have a LG paladin, a NG magus, and my character is CG inquisitor. And our interparty dynamics is very interesting - we sometimes disagree on the methods of achieving our goals, but we almost always agree on the goals themselves - which is, to help people. For example, right now we are in a small town that will be attacked by hobgoblins in a week, so we are doing what we can to bolster its defences - donating most of our loot to the guards and the militia for free, refusing to get rewards for the quests we do - "use those items to help the town instead", etc.

In this situation, these acts can be interpreted as not purely selfless - after all, our survival depends on the town safety too, it's easier to help the town survive than to deal with hobgoblins on our own. But let's strip this situation from such context, to sharpen up my example.

Imagine the same situation, but without the imminent looming threat. The party is just some wandering altruists, helping people because they can, "with great power comes great responsibility" and all of that. Of course, you can argue that even in this situation the party gets benefits - for example, building up their reputation. But still, it's hard to argue that this party members are selfless, right? If they donate their healing potion to a sick child, or if they are refusing to take a +2 sword from an old guardsman, because the town guard may need it to protect the people, this may be considered a purely selfless act.

Except... with the WBL system, it isn't.

Reality is not fair. There are reasons why Just World Fallacy is a fallacy. In reality, if you donate to charity without any strings attached (like tax cuts), you just lost your resources. Period. The world would not magically see that you are a good person, and will not give you good luck to compensate for the resources you lost. That's why, in reality, selflessness is so valuable and admirable - because these people really hurt themselves to help other people.

But in a game, if you donate a healing potion, it makes your party wealth go down a little. And if you refuse to take a +2 sword from a person that may need it, it makes your party wealth not go up a lot - like it "should" have gone. And this literally will give you good luck - for example, next time you would fight a monster, it will have more treasures to compensate for this "selfless" acts, and to push your party wealth to the WBL guideline. In a tabletop game with WBL, the Just World Hypothesis is not a fallacy - it really is how the world works.

And I really feel like it cheapens the acts of selflessness. When our party healed a wizard that had gone mad, and refused to take the magic items that she offered for helping her - "No, thanks, we are equipped pretty good, donate those magic items to the town militia instead" - for me it, for some reason, did not feel like a selfless act. At that time I thought that it didn't because we were indirectly helping ourselves by strenghtening the town defence against hobgoblins, and it was just a "resource allocation" problem, but right now I understand that even if we would leave the town and never come again here, it would not be a selfless act, because GM would need to either "reward" us by giving better loot in the future, or to break the WBL rules.

Does anybody feel that way too? Are there any ways to be selfless in a world with WBL?

[Satinavian]

I always assumed WBL was a guideline of what PCs should get minus 15% for assumed lost consumables.

What players do with that money is their decision. Giving it away instead of buying stuff is not something the GM should compensate.

[StragaSevera]

I always assumed WBL was a guideline of what PCs should get minus 15% for assumed lost consumables.

What players do with that money is their decision. Giving it away instead of buying stuff is not something the GM should compensate.

That's one interpretation, which may certainly be valid. However, is it really _wealth_, if you cannot use it in any way? Maybe the correct term would be "resources acquired per level", or something like that?

UPD: I looked at the Pathfinder rules (which is the system I play), and it says:

Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level.
Note that it does not say "expected to get", but "expected to have".

[Hytheter]

Note that it only says 'expected to have' and not 'definitely does have.' If you give your stuff away, you may end up with less stuff than expected.

[icefractal]

Interesting question. Personally speaking, I don't think I've been in any campaign that continually enforced WBL like that.

I guess a similar situation I have seen is inherent bonuses. As in, instead of magic items you get certain abilities based on your level - either a fixed progression like VoP, or "virtual items" based on what your WBL would be.

Does that cheapen altruism, since the gold you're giving away may not even matter to you, depending on how the plot goes and whether the character cares about luxury? Personally, it didn't feel fake, but it didn't feel hugely impactful either. It was more like "Regdar donated 10,000 gp to help the town build a new bridge? Nice, truly a man of the people." rather than "You donated 10,000 gp?! Seriously?! Whoa ... I guess you're really devoted to your principles."

But OTOH, that's pretty much how I'd feel about a billionaire donating some amount that's objectively large but a tiny fraction of their total wealth to charity. Like, good for them, they legitimately made a positive impact, but I'm not going to sing their praises as some paragon of altruism, because for them it wasn't a big deal. And even fairly-broke high-level D&D characters are somewhat billionaire like in their capabilities, including the capability to acquire money when they need it.


On how I've seen WBL applied -
Even the more by-the-book tables treated it as an input, not an output:
* New characters start at WBL for their level (usually in the form of items more than raw gold)
* Adventures were designed such that the foes averaged out to "standard" treasure, and/or with additional rewards to counter no-loot foes.

With the result that we were pretty close to WBL. But it didn't get adjusted for what we did - if we gave stuff away or lost it, then we had less stuff. If we somehow got extra loot, then we had extra stuff. I think in a few of the games, the GM did periodically audit our total wealth, but that was like once per 1-2 levels, and was more like "guess I should adjust future loot up/down" than any kind of instant compensation/tax.

And then for the majority of games, WBL was more like a general guideline, or it was applied to new characters but not in-play. Certainly for the "sandbox" type of campaigns, the fact that you could end up richer or poorer depending on what you did was part of the point.

[StragaSevera]

I guess a similar situation I have seen is inherent bonuses. As in, instead of magic items you get certain abilities based on your level - either a fixed progression like VoP, or "virtual items" based on what your WBL would be.

Does that cheapen altruism, since the gold you're giving away may not even matter to you, depending on how the plot goes and whether the character cares about luxury?

I'm not sure. From what I know, at least in Pathfinder, if you play with Optional Bonus Progression rules (the "virtual magic items" one), your WBL is cut in half. So you get less money, and therefore, the money is more important to you, so it balances itself out =-)


But it didn't get adjusted for what we did - if we gave stuff away or lost it, then we had less stuff. If we somehow got extra loot, then we had extra stuff. I think in a few of the games, the GM did periodically audit our total wealth, but that was like once per 1-2 levels, and was more like "guess I should adjust future loot up/down" than any kind of instant compensation/tax.

I would argue that ANY audit of your wealth devalues your altruism - that's why I said it's more like "having good luck in the future" than "direct compensation". But if you don't look at the party status at all, then sure, it works - but it at least breaks the RAI (not RAW because, as Hytheter pointed out, it is "expected").

So I'm interested if there is any way to both adhere to RAI and not to devalue the sacrifices =-)

[icefractal]

I'm not sure. From what I know, at least in Pathfinder, if you play with Optional Bonus Progression rules (the "virtual magic items" one), your WBL is cut in half. So you get less money, and therefore, the money is more important to you, so it balances itself out =-)I was thinking more of the version where it entirely replaces magic items (use the row two levels higher, IIRC) or the Spheres (3PP) version where you replace all wealth with 15 points of Boons (a much better system than the ABP, IMO; it's a lot more flexible but still easy). So in those cases, gold has no use for buying magic items, only normal gear, fancy living, and (if the campaign goes that way) ships, castles, staff, soldiers, etc.

By "virtual magic items" I mean that if your WBL was 100k, then you could use that for:
Orange Prism Ioun Stone (30k), Headband of Int +6 (36k), Ring of Sustenance (2k), Belt of Dex/Con +2 (10k), Amulet of Magecraft (20k)

But you don't actually have those items, you have the properties of them as innate abilities. So again, gold has little connection to personal power and an ascetic character could eschew it and still fight at full strength. Which I think is the simplest answer to:


So I'm interested if there is any way to both adhere to RAI and not to devalue the sacrifices =-)With virtual magic items, the game stays balanced* regardless of whether the PCs pursue gold or not, and whether they keep that gold or not. Which means you don't need to abide by WBL at all, things can just yield as much gold as makes sense in-setting. However, it has pros and cons:

+ Supports (balance-wise) a wider range of character concepts
+ Can use a wider variety of adventure hooks, there's doesn't have to be a payout
+ With no magic items to spend on, people might actually buy galleons and castles and such
– Loot becomes a much weaker motivator, many adventures will need adjusting
– For characters who prefer the simple lifestyle and don't want political/social power, gold doesn't matter after a certain point and isn't much of a reward.
– Acquiring and spending loot is IC advancement (somewhat rare). Virtual magic items is just OOC advancement (plentiful, and levels already provide it).

Incidentally, D&D 5E, if going by the "magic items are seldom available for sale" guidelines, has a lot of similarities with this, including the "at a certain point players get a dragon hoard and just yawn" problem.

* To the extent that WBL is balanced. Many are of the opinion that a higher WBL reduces caster/martial disparity at least somewhat. And anecdotally - when we played Kingmaker (and had extremely above-WBL gear due to embezzlement), a Monk was a powerful and effective part of the party, which included a Psion and a Druid.

[Maat Mons]

I think we should draw a distinction between the player being selfless and the character being selfless. The character doesn’t know that wealth by level exists, or even that levels exist.

And bear in mind, adherence to wealth-by-level only makes the world fair for PCs. NPCs can’t count on DM handouts. So observations of those around them won’t give the players’ characters any reason to believe the world is fair.

It may also be worth noting that wealth-by-level has sillier effects than adding karma to the game world. If you take the morally neutral action of crafting magic items, your future luck will be worse to compensate for the extra value the items have above their crafting costs. At least with charity, you have a good rationalization for why the gods would reward you. Crafting items for yourself is just benefiting from your own hard work. I’m not sure what D&D deity would punish someone for being productive.

And what’s really weird is how, whenever the characters grow stronger, they suddenly start finding themselves facing more dangerous adversaries. When you think about it, every level the PCs gain makes the world that much more dangerous. If the players really cared about the kingdom, they’d level-drain themselves until the only threats around were weak enough that the town guards could take care of them.

[Hytheter]

I don't think contriving to ensure the party meets WBL is RAI. I could be mistaken, but I believe that when they say 'this is the wealth you are expected to have at this level' what they mean is that the game's maths is calibrated with that in mind; in other words, if you have the right amount of stuff then you will find challenges in the corresponding challenge threshold to be approapriately challenging (though of course, that's a fuzzy bar to begin with). That doesn't mean the party must have that wealth, though; it just means fights will be harder if you have less stuff than expected, and easier if you have more stuff.

Not to say keeping the party on target is wrong, either. It depends on the game. Maybe the GM finds the party lacking and generously balances the scales. That's fine. Maybe they instead keep that in mind when designing future encounters and thus make those encounters a little easier. That's fine too. Maybe the GM just trucks on like normal, and the lack of wealth becomes an obstacle that makes the game harder. That's also fine. Every table has its own playstyle - that's one of the biggest selling points of the hobby. WBL is just a tool to help the GM run the kind of game they want, to adhere to or ignore at their preference.

The problem you've outlined in the OP is therefore a mismatch in expectations. If you want a game where the your monetary choices have consequences but your DM is doing everything in their power to keep you in the right ballpark, then maybe it's time to have a talk about the kind of game you all want to be playing.

[icefractal]

And what’s really weird is how, whenever the characters grow stronger, they suddenly start finding themselves facing more dangerous adversaries. When you think about it, every level the PCs gain makes the world that much more dangerous. If the players really cared about the kingdom, they’d level-drain themselves until the only threats around were weak enough that the town guards could take care of them.A definitely benefit to playing sandbox style is avoiding that siutation. :smallbiggrin:

Although TBF, most of the linear-type campaigns I've been in did have a better explanation than that - either we were going to new places that were more dangerous, or the threats we were facing had always been a problem, just not one we'd been able to confront directly before. Or the campaign was set during a "**** hits the fan" event where things suddenly did get more dangerous for the world at large, but not because of us.

[Vahnavoi]

Wealth by level is not a guaranteed value that a character has regardless of what they do, under normal play rules it's the expected value of all the treasure a character has found at that point of their career. The whole thing largely exist to eyeball material possessions for characters above 1st level who are not created through normal gameplay. Game rules are largely silent on how this wealth is acquires or spent. A game master is not obligated to up player character earnings if players are being wasteful; to the contrary, if players are wasting resources, a game master can leave it entirely up to them to realize that they are below their nominal weight class.

For these reasons, wealth per level is largely detached from considerations of the just world hypothesis or altruism. Some version of the just world hypothesis being true makes sense for a D&D-like fantasy setting, but even then it doesn't necessarily mean material acts have material rewards. You have to account for various afterlives and the long timespans and distances involved in something like the great wheel cosmology: rather than lost wealth appearing in the next monster lair, the reward can only come after a character dies and their soul leaves for the outer planes, or in their next reincarnation, or the entire point of the exercise is that it increases the fitness of a group rather than an individual, fitting Lawful alignments and normal concepts of altruism. It's also worth noting that altruistic behaviour and rationally selfish behaviour could be congruent; or, to paraphrase a certain sci-fi author, duty is to a group what selfishness is to the individual, and it only makes sense to argue an act is one and not the other when there is genuine conflict between the two cases. In D&D terms, that conflict would be that of Law versus Chaos. Since there is such a thing as Chaotic Good in D&D's vocabulary, there is room for acts that are non-altruist yet still Good; indeed, it would make sense for any Chaotic character to scoff at the concept of "selfless" acts.

[KorvinStarmast]

When you think about it, every level the PCs gain makes the world that much more dangerous. If the players really cared about the kingdom, they’d level-drain themselves until the only threats around were weak enough that the town guards could take care of them. The party looks up and the Paladin says "Wait. Do you mean to tell me that we are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution? :smalleek:

[stoutstien]

Most integrated Wealth and/or item upgrade systems are just false complexity for the sake of it. They are half legacy from when wealth was exp and half from the progress treadmill of more modern system's number chasing.

I wouldn't read into them as something to use to make in game coherent connections.

[Kish]

My answer would be: sure but you're not thinking extensively enough. In editions with WBL, "wealth hoarding" isn't something any sane person with PC class levels would ever do. Would a wizard rather have the market value of a ring of wizardry in gold, or have a ring of wizardry? Obviously the latter, with actual money being limited to "what we expect to need for expenses." If someone has a massive pile of money they're just hanging on to, that person is something like a dungeon boss and literally exists to be killed and looted. Quest-givers have enough money to give quest rewards, but if, beyond that, they have enough for ostentatious displays of wealth, they're likely to wind up getting killed and looted at some point, either by NPC villains or by PCs, depending on their and the PCs' ethics and general behavior. This changes the entire economic system--in ways I can't begin to go into with the no-politics rule here, I'm afraid.

I will say that ignoring WBL leads to horror stories like "and then they got TPK'd by a single vampire; who knew the challenge rating had no flexibility for them having no magical weapons at all?"

[False God]

I don't think so, and I don't think WBL implies what you suggest it does.

IMO, WBL is just "This is how much money you should have earned, if you had started at level 1 and made it to level X." It's a way to keep the system balanced because enemies begin to outstrip the players in ways that the game uses magic items to compensate. It is IMO, absolutely terrible design on those grounds alone. I ignore WBL entirely because I think it's terrible, but that's me.

Selflessness is cheapened when it's not selfless. Giving a person 100gp to help their sick child isn't selfless if you know they are likely to swear a life debt to you and serve as your personal butler for the rest of their days. Giving, but not "giving till it hurts" is still selfless; if the act was done freely and is comparable to the need. Giving a 1gp to a person who needs 100gp isn't selfless when you have a million gp. It's like when rich people ask for donations for their personal hairdresser's cancer treatment.

I don't think WBL has any real impact on this whatsoever, other than to generally raise the bar on what constitutes selflessness. The party needs less and therefore can give more. A billionaire walking through town giving everyone $20 isn't being selfless, they're just being weird, at the end of the day after he gives out 2000 20's for a total of 40k, that sum of money could have been better applied where need was greater and the giver in question has the ability to do so much more.

I don't think WBL says anything about the Just World fallacy. Sure, a character could get to the level in question and have not earned that much money, but WBL is just telling you if you're playing the game by the book, that shouldn't happen. It doesn't say anything more or anything less. Applying it to the entire world is the fallacy here. It applies to just the PCs as a meta-game construct to ensure that characters are appropriately equipped to fight the threats the book says they should.

[King of Nowhere]

I don't think contriving to ensure the party meets WBL is RAI. I could be mistaken, but I believe that when they say 'this is the wealth you are expected to have at this level' what they mean is that the game's maths is calibrated with that in mind; in other words, if you have the right amount of stuff then you will find challenges in the corresponding challenge threshold to be approapriately challenging (though of course, that's a fuzzy bar to begin with).


It applies to just the PCs as a meta-game construct to ensure that characters are appropriately equipped to fight the threats the book says they should.

Indeed. the OP is giving too much importance to wbl.

in addition to that, I will add that the wbl is calculated in a way that characters of a certain level with their wbl in gear will be "balanced" against level-appropriate monster. but the problem is, the characters used for playtesting those concepts include a rogue/wizard (without any of the prestige classes that could make the option worthwile) and a monk. It is also assumed that everyone has 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 as stats array. and with those premises you can be sure a lot of that wbl is spent on crap. when experienced players with optimized characters go against "level-appropriate" threats, they mop the floor with the monsters so hard, it's not even funny.

the whole math on which the wbl hinges is founded on the whole table being noobs. which is right, because a table made of noobs will look at the tables and use them and get passable results. then they will start strategizing more, and balance will need to be reestablished in some other way. that's where various forms of balance to the table come in.



Imagine the same situation, but without the imminent looming threat. The party is just some wandering altruists, helping people because they can, "with great power comes great responsibility" and all of that. Of course, you can argue that even in this situation the party gets benefits - for example, building up their reputation. But still, it's hard to argue that this party members are selfless, right? If they donate their healing potion to a sick child, or if they are refusing to take a +2 sword from an old guardsman, because the town guard may need it to protect the people, this may be considered a purely selfless act.


this is a different issue entirely - and it's less about altruism, and more about efficiency.
I mean, is it better to use your resources to equip a large army? or is it better to have the large army less equiped, but have a group of really powerful adventurers? there's no easy answer here. It's akin to a real world army having to divide its money between light infantry and last generation planes. if a plane pilot sells his plane to buy better body armor for a thousand soldiers - or if the ministry of war reroutes funding from one more plane to better body armor - is that going to make the army as a whole more or less effective? there's not a univocal answer.
so, regardless of altruism (and I think it is an altruistic gesture in any case), it may well be that giving a random guard a sword that will increase his hit chance by 10% will make for a less effective army, when it would have been better to concentrate all the better resources and give them to some highly skilled individuals to make the best use of (like buying planes for the pilots in the real life example).

On the other hand, you can't take this too far to justify greed. you can donate a healing potion to someone in need, and possibly save their life. but doing so will reduce your chances to defeat the demon lord, so you may be actually endangering the whole world to save one person... no, this does not work. if you are facing a demon lord, one single healing potion means nothing to you; it won't actually affect your chances.
And while story-wise we know the players will defeat the final boss, the world at large does not. what if the party still dies? we will send in the second best group of champions we have and hope they get more lucky. in this case, giving all your best gear to the party means putting all your eggs in one basket.
It may very well be that if redgar donates 10000 gp to rebuild the bridge, this will increase trade and create more wealth, resulting in more magic items being produced, which means when the demon lord appears a few years later the world will be actually more prepared than if redgar had used those money to upgrade his ring of protection from +3 to +4.

tldr, asking "but if the players donate money to charity they make themselves weaker and endanger the world" is an avenue better left unexplored

[Just to Browse]

Wealth by level is not a guaranteed value that a character has regardless of what they do, under normal play rules it's the expected value of all the treasure a character has found at that point of their career. The whole thing largely exist to eyeball material possessions for characters above 1st level who are not created through normal gameplay. Game rules are largely silent on how this wealth is acquires or spent. A game master is not obligated to up player character earnings if players are being wasteful; to the contrary, if players are wasting resources, a game master can leave it entirely up to them to realize that they are below their nominal weight class.

I think this comment is a distilled version of my own thoughts on the topic, especially the stuff I bolded.

Also, I'd like to cite the 3.5 DMG here with some more bolding for emphasis:


One of the ways in which you can maintain measurable control on PC power is by strictly monitoring their wealth, including their magic items. Table 5–1: Character Wealth by Level is based on average treasures found in average encounters compared with the experience points earned in those encounters. Using that information, you can determine how much wealth a character should have based on her level.

The baseline campaign for the D&D game uses this “wealth by level” guideline as a basis for balance in adventures. No adventure meant for 7th-level characters, for example, will require or assume that the party possesses a magic item that costs 20,000 gp.


WBL is a dissociated mechanic used by DMs for balancing stuff, derived from the meta expectation of wealth per encounter. If the dragons in this session are dropping more swords in this session because you made a donation last session, you and your DM should talk about expectations.

[KorvinStarmast]

Most integrated Wealth and/or item upgrade systems are just false complexity for the sake of it. They are half legacy from when wealth was exp and half from the progress treadmill of more modern system's number chasing.
WBL itself might have been a reaction to, or a correction to, some of the AD&D oddities, like the old "monster can only be hit with a +2 weapon or greater" stuff that was a sloppy way of dealing with power creep. (I never liked that feature of the game from either side of the screen).

[Aeson]

But in a game, if you donate a healing potion, it makes your party wealth go down a little. And if you refuse to take a +2 sword from a person that may need it, it makes your party wealth not go up a lot - like it "should" have gone. And this literally will give you good luck - for example, next time you would fight a monster, it will have more treasures to compensate for this "selfless" acts, and to push your party wealth to the WBL guideline. In a tabletop game with WBL, the Just World Hypothesis is not a fallacy - it really is how the world works.
Says who? Where in the rulebook does it say something along the lines of "make an additional roll on Random Loot Table 173 for every thousand GP-equivalent that the party is short of WBL," whether for altruistic reasons or otherwise?

WBL is a guideline to help (inexperienced) DMs know how much loot to give out over the course of an adventure or how much of a 'starting budget' to give the players for equipment, consumables, and anything else they might buy or hire when they're building level N characters rather than level 1 characters for the start of the game; it's not a rule that says the PCs should trip over Gram in the dragon's lair just because they handed some poor kid a pile of gold instead of buying Excalibur.

For that matter, if you do take WBL as a rule that says you have to compensate the players for being short of where WBL says that they "should" be, where does it say that they'd only be compensated for being short of WBL for altruistic reasons? Say the party spends 50,000 GP worth of consumables getting through the last encounter; should they not be rewarded with an extra 50,000 GP worth of stuff beyond whatever they were "supposed" to get to compensate them for the wealth that they just burned getting through the fight? I don't see any reason to think that spending a scroll of Fireball is in any way, shape, or form more altruistic than spending a prepared Fireball, yet a scroll of Fireball notionally represents wealth equivalent to at least a few hundred GP which is destroyed upon use whereas a prepared Fireball spell is basically free insofar as monetary or "wealth" costs to spending it are concerned. Moreover, unless you're just having the players trip over random loot in compensation for their expenditure of wealth, a scroll of fireball that you spend during an encounter helps you get through it whereas a healing potion that you gave to some sick kid back in town does not, so even if post-encounter loot is being adjusted to compensate you for the 'missing' wealth either way I'd say that one of these two actions is clearly more altruistic than the other.

Altruism isn't binary, and in fact you could very well argue that a lot of real-world charity isn't really much better or more altruistic than giving a healing potion to a sick kid in-game when you know the DM's going to compensate you for it after the next encounter. You might not be compensated for it in the real world, but if you have a disposable income of $50,000 or $100,000 a year then giving $15 or $20 - or even $200 or $300 - a month to charity isn't going to have a significant impact on your wealth.

[Slipjig]

There have been a bunch of great points raised so far, but I would also like to add that giving up your magic items to random guards is almost certainly NOT actually a smart way to do good. Unless your PC already has a better sword, that +2 sword will almost certainly do more good in the hands of a PC than it will in the hands of Timmy the Town Guard: unless he also has magic armor, Timmy will probably go down after only 1-2 rounds of combat, at which point the sword becomes irrelevant (or, worse, is now in the hands of the enemy).

[Ionathus]

The only effective way I've found to do this is to introduce items that are scarce, even if wealth becomes a meaningless concept.

Diamonds are my most natural first pick. They are used for resurrection and are therefore, logically, worth almost as much as life itself. Finding a diamond big enough to cast even Revivify is a big deal to my players as a result, and they hoard them jealously. The paladin has had some delightful scenes where he resurrects a commoner that died because the party wasn't fast enough to save them and the rest of the party goes "dude, what the heck, we need those for us."

Having to sacrifice a magic item falls in the same boat (but only if it makes sense, like "break the magic item to deactivate the Puppy Kicker 3000"), as does having to sacrifice your time to do a good deed and therefore miss out on a short window for advancement.

[Willie the Duck]

I will as well throw my lot in with WBL being descriptive, not proscriptive. 3 lines of reasoning:

1) In particular because there is no mechanism detailed by which this happens when other similar mechanisms exist. Let's think about other types of altruism. Let's say that, instead of giving all their gold to a poor, beleaguered community, the PCs instead offer to help the adventurers of that community to get better at fighting off those things that challenge it. Perhaps the PC party of 4 high-level adventurers could pair up with a party of 4 low-level NPC adventurers and split into two half-and-half groups, each going out and taking on moderate challenges. When that happens, there are direct mechanism (CR vs. party ECL xp-granted formula) that will help the low-level-NPCs level up at a rapid pace. No similar mechanism exists for WBL.

2) If we conjecture that the books leave the actual mechanism to DM, but still assume the process (since "expected to have" rather than "expected to get"), applying that logic uniformly creates some rather unbelievable situations. Cities and towns of various sizes are also supposed to have a certain number of NPCs of a given level*, based on their population. Should we also assume that if those numbers are not met that new NPCs will pop into existence**? Perhaps it just means that one will likely show up, given that there is a power/niche vacuum to be filled. However, that (incentivization structure explanation) is more analogous to the notion that a PC with lower-than-expected WBL will likely go out and acquire more treasure, rather than some magical/karmic force will come into play to keep adventurers of a certain level. I, for one, have no problem with the notion that a PC might give up their treasure since being treasure-poor will incentivize them to go back out and look for more. That sounds like excellent RP.
*and magic items available, and some other qualities
**actually, since this site used to host Erfworld, that's not a completely impossible notion, just very very specific campaigns

3) Third. If we do suppose that mechanisms (unelaborated upon in the DMG) exist to keep PCs of a certain level matching a certain wealth threshold, why would we assume that it is the wealth that will be boosted to match the level? In a game with multiple, varied, and ubiquitous avenues for PCs to lower in level or xp total, it's equally possible that a PC who loses their wealth will find themselves inexorably drawn into situations where they will lose levels to match.


The party looks up and the Paladin says "Wait. Do you mean to tell me that we are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution? :smalleek:
If they keep level-draining themselves to help out, they will quickly become part of the precipitate.:smalltongue:

[Vahnavoi]

The party looks up and the Paladin says "Wait. Do you mean to tell me that we are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution? :smalleek:

There is an actual valid reading of the great wheel cosmology as detailed by 1st edition AD&D that works like this, but it requires accepting Druids are right, and everyone else is wrong.

To wit: True or absolute neutral believes that good and evil and law and chaos have a natural balance point, namely the natural world of the Prime Material, and this status quo cannot be significantly improved upon in any permanent way. All non-neutral alignments are unwanted calls to extremism and any of them getting what they want just means the pendulum will eventually and inevitably swing back the other way. For every Paladin, there will be a Demon for them to fight, for every tyrant, a band of rebels to oppose them, and vice versa.

Druids want none of that. They don't want a world that oscillates wildly between states. They want a world where the sun sets and rises, where plants grow and wither, where animals breed and die, day after day like they have done since the dawn of time. In this paradigm, great heroes are as much a problem as great villains, if they don't lay down their arms or vanish from the face of Earth once balance has been restored.

[Pauly]

WBL is similar to abstract wealth. It is designed to a be a tool of administrative convenience. It is not a tool designed to increase immersion.

Accept the tool as being fit for it’s intended purpose and move on.

If the tool is not fit for purpose for your table then abandon it and use a different tool.

WBL is designed to ensure that characters have “level appropriate gear” to deal with “level appropriate challenges”. Not every campaign needs to be based around the idea that the world will be designed so that characters at [X] level should have [X x N] GP worth of gear. Not every campaign needs to be based around every character having an roughly equal value of equipment.
I’ve played low resource campaigns where the party’s resources were about 1/10th of what WBL would suggest and had a blast.
I’ve played in campaigns with abstract wealth where social class was tied to wealth. Characters were limited to acquiring equipment appropriate to their social class, which prevented the wealthiest character simply buying top class gear for everyone in the party.

[MoiMagnus]

Others have talked about the fact that you can do WBL in a way were altruism is still a significant cost.

However, some tables do have a more extreme versions of WBL, and yes it cheapen acts of selflessness, but that's kind of the point: the goal of such gaming philosophy is to remove wealth (and every deep consequences linked to it) as a parameter so that it does not bother the player anymore, and on the least distributive ways.

(You could also "remove wealth" by making everything free, but that would screw up character powerlevel)

And obviously, it assumes that peoples would be bothered by the consequences of having a more realistic wealth system, so it's clearly not for every one.

With "extreme WBL", yes, giving material resources to NPCs is kind of cheap. What matters is whether or not you took the time to do it, that's where the selflessness is still present: because both characters and players have limited time and might have better things to do than caring about random NPCs.

[gbaji]

With the result that we were pretty close to WBL. But it didn't get adjusted for what we did - if we gave stuff away or lost it, then we had less stuff. If we somehow got extra loot, then we had extra stuff. I think in a few of the games, the GM did periodically audit our total wealth, but that was like once per 1-2 levels, and was more like "guess I should adjust future loot up/down" than any kind of instant compensation/tax.

Right. But that's what the OP is addressing. If your characters are below the WBL (because they donated a bunch of stuff along the way), the GM may make note of this, and adjust future treasure to account for it and bring them back up. Which, over time, means that donating money or magic items doesn't actually cost the characters anything.

If I donate a +3 sword at level 10, by the time I'm level 15 I will have the exact same (ok, approximate same) amount of total wealth (magic items, coins, possessions, etc) that I would have had if I hadn't donated that +3 sword, but instead traded it in for a ring of protection or something I want/need at the local magic mart. So the donation didn't actually cost me anything.

The OP is taking that one step further and asking "so does this cheapen the altruism of such donations"?


Says who? Where in the rulebook does it say something along the lines of "make an additional roll on Random Loot Table 173 for every thousand GP-equivalent that the party is short of WBL," whether for altruistic reasons or otherwise?

Says a number of rules quotes in this thread. All of which state that this is the amount of wealth a character "should possess/have" at a given level. It's not just how much they are handed at a level, but how much total they should "have" at any given level.

The whole point of WBL is to help balance out characters who are level X via normal advancement over time, and characters created at that level from rollup. If we are running a party of 12th level characters, and a new player joins the group, WBL allows the GM and new player to slot in that new character and have them be at the correct power level both in terms of actual character level *and* gear. But that process only actually works if the other characters have the same amount of monetary value of "gear" on their character sheets. And that only works if the GM perioidically audits the total value of gear characters have, and adjusts the loot handed out to keep it within the guidelines.


Personally, I think it's a terrible idea and don't use it at all for any game system. But, technically, if you do follow the rules as written, the GM should be ensuring that every X level character has exactly Y value of "stuff" on their sheets.
And honestly, I think part of the reason I don't use it (and suspect many don't) is because it fails to actually result in the same reward/cost assessment for decisions the players make with their characters over time. Sometimes, characters get lucky or take extra risk, and get higher rewards. Sometimes they play it safe and don't.

It's also somewhat an artifact of D&D where magic items are somewhat part of character progression and power, so they get tied into level advancement. I'm not a huge fan of that. It leads folks to do things like assume "at this level, I should have this range of X, and Y, and Z, some percent comes from my own skills/feats/whatever, and the rest from items". Ah... No. As the GM, I'll certainly take into account PC magic items and capabilities when I'm crafting/balancing some encounter for them, but I don't really do it in a level basis (except in very broad terms). I think that a lot of this comes back to the lowball expecations of the designers that DMs are going to be skilless hacks who will just blindly plug in values from tables they are provided and drop them in front of the PCs or something (along with dutifully plugging in CR values for encounters by level, per day, etc stuff).

I like to think that even semi-skilled GMs can noodle out how to balance things without needing this. And once you chuck those things out the window, a lot of the "strange things" that can result go away. And yeah, that means that if you give away some valuable thing, there's no guarntee you're going to get it back. And I'm not going to balance future encounters as though it was assumed you kept it, nor will I adjust future loot to account for the fact that you didn't. At least, I'd hope that most GMs will move away from the tables and charts and calculations at some point. But yeah, technically, if we were to follow the rules as designed and written, then this quandary does actually exist.

[King of Nowhere]

I like to think that even semi-skilled GMs can noodle out how to balance things without needing this. And once you chuck those things out the window, a lot of the "strange things" that can result go away. And yeah, that means that if you give away some valuable thing, there's no guarntee you're going to get it back. And I'm not going to balance future encounters as though it was assumed you kept it, nor will I adjust future loot to account for the fact that you didn't. At least, I'd hope that most GMs will move away from the tables and charts and calculations at some point. But yeah, technically, if we were to follow the rules as designed and written, then this quandary does actually exist.

Indeed, I've never understood this fascinaton with charts and encounter tables. they never work anyway.
the strategy I found to actually work to balance encounters is more like this


1) eyeball an encounter

2) throw the encounter at the party


was it too easy/hard? ---> YES ---> use a stronger/weaker monster the next time. Go back to 1

NO

fantastic. let's keep going

None of this requires any knowledge of wealth by level, optimization level, encounter tables, or anything else.

[AvatarVecna]

And I really feel like it cheapens the acts of selflessness. When our party healed a wizard that had gone mad, and refused to take the magic items that she offered for helping her - "No, thanks, we are equipped pretty good, donate those magic items to the town militia instead" - for me it, for some reason, did not feel like a selfless act. At that time I thought that it didn't because we were indirectly helping ourselves by strenghtening the town defence against hobgoblins, and it was just a "resource allocation" problem, but right now I understand that even if we would leave the town and never come again here, it would not be a selfless act, because GM would need to either "reward" us by giving better loot in the future, or to break the WBL rules.

Does anybody feel that way too? Are there any ways to be selfless in a world with WBL?

This is one view of WBL that doesn't really mesh with basically any table I've ever played at. If you decide to waste your money on something that's not giving you bonuses, like charity or a house for your baby-mama or higher education for goblins, that's not the DM's problem. You may as well argue that a DM is obligated to have a new wand appear out of thin air every time the old one is consumed. WBL guidelines aren't a "if players dont have this much you've made a mistake", it's more to give guidance to DMs on what to expect from the encounter, same as CR. If you have a lvl 9 party with lvl 9 gear fight a lvl 14 monsters, they're probably gonna have a bad time, and you should be ready for that. If you have a lvl 9 party with lvl 4 gear fight a lvl 9 monster, they're probably gonna have a bad time, and you should be ready for that. But "having lvl 4 gear" is their choice on how to spend their resources, same as if they decided to make a poor feat choice for flavor, or a weird garbage PrC, or spend 100k on a really nice house instead of something practical, like a sword.

Wealth is a mechanical resource, same as levels and hit points and spell slots. It can be spent in order to gain advantage on all kinds of things. Sometimes what you're buying is a cool sword. Sometimes what you're buying is goodwill of the people you were charitable to. Generally the problem I have with WBL as for how it interacts with charity, is that it's more accidentally charitable? Like your example of being donated a +2 sword...but if the people in the party who want a magic sword already have +3 swords (or better), a +2 sword is worse than useless because now they've gotta lug it around. Charity, IMO, comes down to making difficult decisions. Deliberately giving up resources you want or need in order to make someone else happy instead of yourself. Giving up what's offered because "the next dungeon will have even more loot" is still charity, but giving up what's offered because "it's worse than useless" is not charity, and is honestly kinda rude.

My bigger issue is actually charity in worlds that don't have WBL, because you're not giving up anything. In 5e, a character who accumulates 100000 gp has nothing to spend it on. Did you buy full plate? Did you fill up your spellbook? Oh, you don't wear heavy armor and you aren't a wizard, well then this pile of gold is basically worthless. Like yeah, you could buy a 100k mansion back in town. You're still spending 99% of your sleeping time in a rucksack on the side of the road, and the very little time you spend in town will pay nothing but lip service to the fact you own your own residence. Who cares? It's not magic items, it's not spells, it's not heavy armor, it's not power. It's a little sticker on your character sheet labeled "the american dream" that affects such a small percentage of your actual gameplay that it barely deserves to be called a rounding error. So if it barely matters, if giving it up is giving up nothing...why not donate the mansion to the orphanage. You've got a ring of sustenance and a working blanket, that's all your earthly needs taken care of!

When money can't buy power, donating money isn't giving up anything valuable. It's charity in nothing but name. The way 3.5 works, where being under-equipped is a serious threat to your life past about lvl 5? It means something to give up the money. Even small amounts like a mere 10k sword you can't use could've been traded away for another wand of Cure Light Wounds.

Charity is only valuable because the game runs on WBL.

[gbaji]

My bigger issue is actually charity in worlds that don't have WBL, because you're not giving up anything. In 5e, a character who accumulates 100000 gp has nothing to spend it on. Did you buy full plate? Did you fill up your spellbook? Oh, you don't wear heavy armor and you aren't a wizard, well then this pile of gold is basically worthless. Like yeah, you could buy a 100k mansion back in town. You're still spending 99% of your sleeping time in a rucksack on the side of the road, and the very little time you spend in town will pay nothing but lip service to the fact you own your own residence. Who cares? It's not magic items, it's not spells, it's not heavy armor, it's not power. It's a little sticker on your character sheet labeled "the american dream" that affects such a small percentage of your actual gameplay that it barely deserves to be called a rounding error. So if it barely matters, if giving it up is giving up nothing...why not donate the mansion to the orphanage. You've got a ring of sustenance and a working blanket, that's all your earthly needs taken care of!

When money can't buy power, donating money isn't giving up anything valuable. It's charity in nothing but name. The way 3.5 works, where being under-equipped is a serious threat to your life past about lvl 5? It means something to give up the money. Even small amounts like a mere 10k sword you can't use could've been traded away for another wand of Cure Light Wounds.

Except that's exactly the assumption of WBL. That there is a direct translation between "total wealth" and "items you posess". There are literally charts of gp value of every single magic item in the game. The expectation is that the total magic items on the sheet plus actual coins should fall in a given range for any given level. That is precisely the point of the system.

It's not just about coins. It's about the gp equivalent value of all items the character posseses. And yes, in many games, there is an expectation that PCs can buy/trade items for other magic items of equal worth. So that +2 sword you don't need because everyone already has a +3 weapon gets sold in town for gp, which then gets spent (along with additional coin gained along the way, or from selling other loot) to buy items/scrolls/potions/whatever that the character actually needs/wants.



Charity is only valuable because the game runs on WBL.


Every game I've run into that has WBL (or something similar) also has exhaustive lists equating cash to items, specifically to allow for a standardized conversion of the lists of items on existing character sheets into a single cash value amount, or to use to "spend" the WBL cash value on a list of items to put on a character sheet when generating a new character at a given level. So yes. In any system where WBL is actually being used in this way, it's correct to argue that charity doesn't actually cost you anything, specifically because the GM is expected to increase your loot over time so that when you hit the next level, you will be back at "where you should be".

Do DMs actually do this? Maybe? Not sure. But if they are following the rules as written? yes. If they don't, then new characters joining the group at a given level will not be "balanced" to the rest of the group. Also (as a couple posters have pointed out), this is tied right into the CR/encounters calculations as well. The game system assumes a specific amount of value of magic items are on each character at any given level, and dials in the expected difficulty of any given encounter based on that assumption.

So, yes, a level 12 group with level 4 gear will have a very hard time with a given encounter, but the same encounter will be "just right" if they each have the WBL gear for a level 12 character. That's literally why the system exists.

The OP is just extrapolating this effect on charity. Um... We can also extrapolate this in terms of consumable items as well. Someone mentioned the concept that a new wand appears once the old one is used up. Um... Yeah. That's actually exactly what is expected. Same deal with potions and scrolls. It's expected that at a given level you will "have" (present tense) a specific cash equivalent of items on your sheet. That includes consumables. So yeah, one can also argue that there's no real "cost" to using those potions and scrolls and wand charges up pretty much as fast as you can (only making sure to get through the current adventure). Because, over time, consumables used up will be replaced. At level X, you'll be assumed to have a specific amount of "stuff" no matter if you hoarded it over time, or spent it willy nilly.

We could go further into silliness and declare that there's no value to haggling prices down from vendors, or sleeping outdoors instead of an expensive Inn to "save money". Yes. This is absurd. But that's the point. The WBL rules, as written, are absurd. But it's the method that D&D designers choose to use to allow for "balancing" of characters.

[AvatarVecna]

Do DMs actually do this? Maybe? Not sure.

Your reading of the RAW (which I generally disagree with anyway) is irrelevant because, again, I've literally never see a DM run it that way. No DM is looking at your sheet at any point except chargen with a calculator going "you're 0.3 gp under budget, I need to add an extra backscratcher to the next hoard of items". And even during chargen, that's a big if. This isn't a thing that happens. And the concern the OP is anguishing over is only a problem in a world where that actually happens - a world that doesn't exist.

Every game I've ever played, if you buy a house, that's cool, but you're not gonna get compensated for it by the universe. If you decide to donate that house to orphans, cool, still not getting compensated. Making poor decisions with your money makes it gone. You can argue with your party members that you should get a bigger share of the next treasure hoard to compensate, but if you turned to the DM and insisted the next hoard is required to have an extra hundred grand in it because it's literally illegal for him to let you go under WBL, at best he's just gonna laugh in your face.

[Vahnavoi]

There's an obvious synthesis of the two outlooks that boils down to fixing a fallacy hidden in this part:


If I donate a +3 sword at level 10, by the time I'm level 15 I will have the exact same (ok, approximate same) amount of total wealth (magic items, coins, possessions, etc) that I would have had if I hadn't donated that +3 sword, but instead traded it in for a ring of protection or something I want/need at the local magic mart. So the donation didn't actually cost me anything.

This is exactly equivalent to arguing hitpoint loss, ability score damage or negative levels don't matter and aren't actual penalties, because if a character lives long enough, they can recover and even improve from their prior baseline.

Nothing guarantees a character will live long enough. Even if the next loot cache will compensate for the loss of that +3 sword, the character will be at disadvantage until they actually get there. Preventing that disadvantage would require an even more rigorous rubber banding than the base d20 system actually has. Wealth-per-level smoothing over differences in the long term does not guarantee those differences are smoothed over in the short term.

This becomes increasingly obvious when you consider imbalances in how the system values things. Two items with the same worth in gold pieces can have radically different situational value, two encounters with the same challenge rating might be radically different in actual difficulty, two characters with the same effective level can be world apart in ability. During normal play, a character doesn't get a lump sum according to wealth-per-level to use exactly as they see fit, they get a bunch of randomized treasure that they have to either decide to keep or try to trade for money and other items they actually want. Put all of these together, and it becomes glaringly obvious the system does not compensate for poor uses of wealth, so why would you except it to compensate for cost of altruism?

[Satinavian]

Except that's exactly the assumption of WBL. That there is a direct translation between "total wealth" and "items you posess". There are literally charts of gp value of every single magic item in the game. The expectation is that the total magic items on the sheet plus actual coins should fall in a given range for any given level. That is precisely the point of the system.

It's not just about coins. It's about the gp equivalent value of all items the character posseses. And yes, in many games, there is an expectation that PCs can buy/trade items for other magic items of equal worth. So that +2 sword you don't need because everyone already has a +3 weapon gets sold in town for gp, which then gets spent (along with additional coin gained along the way, or from selling other loot) to buy items/scrolls/potions/whatever that the character actually needs/wants.First, the basic assumption is that you can trade stuff you don't need for half worth, not equal worth.That loss is even explicitly mentioned in the WBL rules as one of the reasons WBL is average loot minus 15%, along with consumables. (Imho the percentage should be higher as in practice much more stuff is basically vendor trash, but whatever.)

Second, it is likely that the ridiculous inflation of wealth and loot value with rising level is also meant to compensate imbalances automatically with time.
Sure, being 2000 GP behind on 4th level is noticable. Being 2000 behind on 12th lv. is far less an issue, even if the GM did nothing to compensate whatsoever and you only got average loot.

[Aeson]

Says a number of rules quotes in this thread. All of which state that this is the amount of wealth a character "should possess/have" at a given level. It's not just how much they are handed at a level, but how much total they should "have" at any given level.
Provide the text. I see a rules quotation that says that the player characters are expected to have a given amount of wealth at a given level; I do not see any rules quotations that say that the players should be given additional loot or additional loot rolls or anything like that if they are for any reason short of WBL.

[King of Nowhere]

People confuse rules with guidelines. The dm handbook says much stuff, and a lot of them is optional. The wbl are "guidelines" and "recommended", not any kind of hard rules.

In the same line, there are tables for powerful npcs in a settlement, but i never heard anyone claiming "there MUST be a powerful wizard in this town, and if there isn't the dm is doing it wrong".
Expecting that the dm should compensate for donations by giving extra loot is as silly as expecting that if you kill the most powerful wizard in the city, a new one will move there next week, because the dmh says a city of that size MUST have a 16th level wizard.

[KorvinStarmast]

Indeed, I've never understood this fascination with charts and encounter tables. they never work anyway. They work pretty good for procedural generation of things for the players to encounter. You can cobble together a "plot" after you have figured out what is in the local area, wilderness, dungeon, city, etc. I did this for years in AD&D. Works very well and it unburdens a DM from having to create stuff ex nihilo.

[CENTER]1) eyeball an encounter
2) throw the encounter at the party

This works fine as your systems mastery grows within a system.

None of this requires any knowledge of wealth by level, optimization level, encounter tables, or anything else. Once you have some systems mastery, yes.

First, the basic assumption is that you can trade stuff you don't need for half worth, not equal worth. That loss is even explicitly mentioned in the WBL rules as one of the reasons WBL is average loot minus 15%, along with consumables. (Imho the percentage should be higher as in practice much more stuff is basically vendor trash, but whatever.) I disagree with this premise. One man's trash is another man's treasure. There is some RP potential here for trading, and you can use a simple 2d6 system, or if you have a plot use a plot based reason, where the magic armor you are trading is worth more or less than that nominal "half value" ... whatever that means. The 2d6 system I use for stuff like this is simple. 7 means 'half value' (which interestingly enough in the D&D 5e system is what the usual "sell stuff back" rate is from the equipment list) and the boost an offer of cost plus, or an offer of nearly nothing (12 or 2) informs the offer and the player can choose to accept such an offer or not.

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.

In the same line, there are tables for powerful npcs in a settlement, but i never heard anyone claiming "there MUST be a powerful wizard in this town, and if there isn't the dm is doing it wrong".
Expecting that the dm should compensate for donations by giving extra loot is as silly as expecting that if you kill the most powerful wizard in the city, a new one will move there next week, because the dmh says a city of that size MUST have a 16th level wizard. This post made me smile.

[Satinavian]

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.
Well, it is a roleplaying opportunity not taken, sure.

However most people i know don't really like playing out shopping trips or haggling. We all did it often enough when we were new at roleplaying but nowadays it feels roughly as much fun as real life shopping. Which for most means not fun at all, just another chore. It is even worse when selling stuff, for buying you might get some kind of excitement out of rare opportunities, but for selling even that is gone.

So, less an opportunity missed, more one deliberately skipped.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, setting aside the (incorrect) notion that WBL is a fixed number and you will always, automatically "rubberband" back to the appropriate number...the base premise doesn't make any sense anyway.

If I donate $1000 to charity, that's neat...does that mean I'm locked off from ever making money again? Is that the definition of "selfless" to you?

Just because I make that $1000 back at some point, or win it in a scratch off, or whatever doesn't negate the fact that it was given.

On a similar token, is donating part of my liver for a transplant not selfless just because it grows back? A single kidney because I really only need the one?

This is a very silly idea to me. Selflessness is entirely a function of intent, and future circumstances have zero bearing on that choice in the moment to retroactively make something "less selfless".

[KorvinStarmast]

Well, it is a roleplaying opportunity not taken, sure.

However most people i know don't really like playing out shopping trips or haggling. We all did it often enough when we were new at roleplaying but nowadays it feels roughly as much fun as real life shopping. Then you are either "doing it wrong" or I didn't get my point across clearly (the far more likely case).

The 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' theme better fits into an RP situation (not a whole game session, to be sure) where you get leads, find someone in the not-widely-known 'magic item trade business' and there is a barter - I trade you this for that. What I use the 2d6 for nowadays is 'comparative value' ... unless the player explicitly wants to trade for cash or gems. (Which isn't usually what I've seen in this edition at all).
What I am referring to is most certainly not about going to a shop and it's not about going to a magic mart, as games like WoW, Diablo, et al have as standard fare. (And I am not a fan of WBL for a lot of reasons not worth wasting time on here).

Sorry if I was unclear about that.

[Quertus]

Add me to the chorus of, “that’s not how WBL works”.

“Should”? There’s lots of potentially interesting conversations around “should”, including things like, “if a PC spends their wealth poorly, should the GM compensate by giving them more treasure?” or “should PCs be allowed to affect the difficulty of the game with their spending choices?”.

But (if my reading comprehension hasn’t failed me yet again) the primary topic of the thread takes using this house rule of self-restoring / self-correcting wealth as a given, and asks, “how can we make generosity meaningful in this context?” And, um, I agree, that’s a tough ____ to ____.

Personally, I’d prefer to ditch regenerative wealth in such a situation. But if that isn’t on the table, the 2e method of making “cash” and items different pools (by removing magic item shops, by implementing “virtual items”, whatever), and allowing PCs to spend that wealth on castles, soldiers, bridges, beer, orphanages, statues of themselves, or whatever else they choose to spend it on.

[Satinavian]

Then you are either "doing it wrong" or I didn't get my point across clearly (the far more likely case).

The 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' theme better fits into an RP situation (not a whole game session, to be sure) where you get leads, find someone in the not-widely-known 'magic item trade business' and there is a barter - I trade you this for that. What I use the 2d6 for nowadays is 'comparative value' ... unless the player explicitly wants to trade for cash or gems. (Which isn't usually what I've seen in this edition at all).
What I am referring to is most certainly not about going to a shop and it's not about going to a magic mart, as games like WoW, Diablo, et al have as standard fare. (And I am not a fan of WBL for a lot of reasons not worth wasting time on here).

Sorry if I was unclear about that.It is still a lot of time for stuff people might just find utterly boring busywork.
It is not about whether there are magic shops or not. It is about players actually have fun trying to track down potential buyers every single time they want to sell an item and then bartering.

As for whole sessions, well, yes, if 5 people each want to go shopping and you want to play it out including looking for clues about people who might have what they want or might want what you have, it will likely take a whole session. If you do standard magic mart instead, you are done in less than half an hour and then go back to stuff players actually care about.

[King of Nowhere]

I disagree with this premise. One man's trash is another man's treasure. There is some RP potential here for trading

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.


the first time we were selling a significant stash, we treated it as a roleplaying opportunity. the second and third time maybe, too. but it grows old. we gradually handwaved it more and more, and now we just sign the monetary value of items instead of the items themselves.
it's an opportunity we took, but it gets boring doing it every single time you return from a mission.

[KorvinStarmast]

If you do standard magic mart instead, you are done in less than half an hour and then go back to stuff players actually care about. It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?656426-What-makes-an-RPG-Video-Gamey). I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

[Satinavian]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?656426-What-makes-an-RPG-Video-Gamey). I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.
Nah, I and many of the players in my circle played long before MMOs were a thing or JRPGs common. We just got so bored with playing it out. I have even had players on occasion who just refused to ever update their gear just to avoid that tedious looking, shopping and bargaining.

It is not even necessarily a magic mart in fiction. Often it is just "What do you want to sell/buy" and then the rest is abstraction. Even if the PC run through the whole town trying to find potential trades and they bargain, it gets handwaved as something happening in the background.

[Stonehead]

Second, it is likely that the ridiculous inflation of wealth and loot value with rising level is also meant to compensate imbalances automatically with time.
Sure, being 2000 GP behind on 4th level is noticable. Being 2000 behind on 12th lv. is far less an issue, even if the GM did nothing to compensate whatsoever and you only got average loot.

From a certain point of view, this does cheapen charity a bit, just in a different way than OP was describing. Giving a healing potion to an npc could lower your chance of survival at level 2, but the ~50gp loss is unnoticeable at level 10.

"I don't care if I lose 50gp because the universe will reshape itself such that in a few weeks, I'll have the same amount of wealth either way" isn't exactly the same as "I don't care if I lose 50gp because in a few weeks I'll have so much wealth that I don't care either way", but they're fairly similar. IMO they're different enough though, that it becomes an ethical or economic question, and not a game question. "Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

[Rynjin]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?656426-What-makes-an-RPG-Video-Gamey). I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

Or - and hear me out here - maybe some people just have different gaming preferences than you and not everything that is not done at your specific table is "video gamey".

You wanna talk about things that are "tiresome", it's that idea right there. The "No True Gamer" fallacy is easily the most pretentious thing this community regularly produces.

[icefractal]

I wouldn't even call it (abstracting shopping/bargaining) "video-gamey" when it fits the "source material" (to the extent there is any) better than extended shopping sequences.

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

[Vahnavoi]

"Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

It's not exactly an exotic position to take that giving little out of plenty is less remarkable than giving plenty out of little.

[MoiMagnus]

"Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

Usually, the exponential increase in wealth happens at the same time as an exponential increase of peoples you could help.
Higher level characters travel further, potentially interact with more NPCs, or have interactions with NPCs representing higher number of individuals, etc.

Giving a 50gp potion to a wounded person is costly at lower level.
Giving a stock of 50gp potions (logistic included) for an entire army is costly at higher level.

It's kind of a "with great power comes great responsibility". With great riches comes the expectation that if you are actually and honestly trying to do good, you will do more than helping a single person and do acts that fit the scale of your riches.

(Small note: while have crazy amount of money and being able to spend "10k per day", outside of time manipulation no ones has crazy amount of time and is able to use "10k hours per day", so the simple fact of dedicating your time to helping others is already a significant act of selflessness regardless of the money spent in the action)

[King of Nowhere]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?656426-What-makes-an-RPG-Video-Gamey). I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping and not, for example, going to the toilet (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0086.html)? if you don't roleplay taking a dump, you are missing a roleplaying opportunity.
And if you do roleplay taking a dump, do you do it multiple times per adventure? you know, since most people pee a hlf dozen times per day?
you don't track your bladder level? that's such a tiresome and videogamey attitude.

Seriously, the first time you have to look around and find someone that will buy/trade/barter for a high cost magic item, it could be a fun adventure. but once you know a bunch of high-end traders around the world, and you have teleportation spells to visit them all in a day or two, what's the benefit of roleplaying "the twentieth time I go sell loot" rather than saying "ok, you spend a couple days and sell everything"?

[False God]

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping and not, for example, going to the toilet (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0086.html)? if you don't roleplay taking a dump, you are missing a roleplaying opportunity.
And if you do roleplay taking a dump, do you do it multiple times per adventure? you know, since most people pee a hlf dozen times per day?
you don't track your bladder level? that's such a tiresome and videogamey attitude.

Seriously, the first time you have to look around and find someone that will buy/trade/barter for a high cost magic item, it could be a fun adventure. but once you know a bunch of high-end traders around the world, and you have teleportation spells to visit them all in a day or two, what's the benefit of roleplaying "the twentieth time I go sell loot" rather than saying "ok, you spend a couple days and sell everything"?

Good gravy I've been in games with DMs and players who think the pretentious banter over bartering for items is the most fun thing they can possibly do. I don't think it's unreasonable to treat any random merchant like a car dealer, but you gotta haggle over something worth haggling over. You come in aiming to drop 10k GP, you can haggle for 9k. You come in aiming to drop 4 gp and you want to haggle for 3? Shove off.

And that's almost always what it ends up being. They want to haggle over discounts on a basic sword from the book. They want to haggle over the price of 10 rations. They want to engage in some grand roleplay with Bob the Grocer.

It's time consuming and tedious. You want to roleplay and haggle with Kevin the Magnificent Clothier of Legend, said to have crafted the Black Robes of the Lich, infamous for its destructive power? Sure great. That'll be fun and engaging. I wouldn't have bothered to make this character and add that information if I didn't want to draw players into looking deeper into them.

But the aggressive mundanity of striking up a conversation with Bill the Baker over his rather average lemon pastries and attempting to haggle him down from his 2 silver/per price? Get outta here with that.

[Quertus]

I wouldn't even call it (abstracting shopping/bargaining) "video-gamey" when it fits the "source material" (to the extent there is any) better than extended shopping sequences.

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

Of ones I've written? Two. And in one, the party was paranoid enough to stake out the place, do background research on the employees, etc, before risking actually approaching the store to engage in any high-value deals. (there's a reason you should claw your eyes out or seek out Cthulhu monsters rather than read anything I've written. :smallamused:)

As a rule, I hate that kind of thing, and prefer an end of session, "you earned X each; look up your purchases between sessions". It's only worth spending time on in a session if it helps say something about the character of the characters, or otherwise clearly adds to the experience more than anything else the characters could possibly be doing. Or just good 'ol 2e "no magic item shops" mentality, of course, with haggling over mundane goods left to the "not worth the time to discuss", just like meal prep, weapon maintenance, bathroom breaks, personal hygiene, laundry procedures, fasten then zip, the details of how the fire is built & how the food is seasoned and cooked, who ladles their food out of the communal soup bowl first, and most other minutia, most of the time. It's generally not worth the time unless a player brings it up as part of characterizing their PC (see also "spotlight sharing"). Don't put the spotlight on the dumb stuff, put it on the cool stuff, and the stuff that matters to / helps to characterize the PCs. Hint: haggling in movies is generally a few second scene if it's shown at all; anything more, and it's clearly meant to say something important about the character(s) or setting. In an RPG context, I've never seen it say anything important about the PCs (occasionally it says something about the players, and rarely anything flattering), and I have watched it eat inordinate amounts of time at numerous tables.

But this has little to do with the original topic afaict, besides the obvious "if WBL is a mandate of heaven, and your wealth will automatically be reset to expected values no matter what you do, there's no value to getting a good deal on something, so haggling is even more a waste of time than usual, and serves only to characterize the PCs. As such characterization is something I've never seen in the wild, it well and truly sets my expectations for the value of haggling in such session to be zero or less.".

[Mechalich]

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

It depends. Does the fantasy setting function like a game in that an item treadmill exists? If it does - and this is extremely common in 'dungeon hunter' manhwa or world-as-game isekai settings - then chapters dealing with negotiation for items, money, and rewards are extremely common (and the protagonists are usually incredibly money-grubbing).

The world in which we live is one in which, with apologies to MasterCard 'there are some things in life money can't buy,' but in item-laced fantasy worlds this isn't true, and money can buy anything, including healing from any illness, superpowers, and straight-up immortality. The problem is that attempting to model the social development of such a situation is very, very hard and also tends to be grimdark as f*** unless the total resource pool is expended to post-scarcity levels.

[Lilapop]

specifically because the GM is expected to increase your loot over time so that when you hit the next level, you will be back at "where you should be".

Do DMs actually do this? Maybe? Not sure. But if they are following the rules as written? yes.

No? No, that is not how it works. That's not how any of this works. The context of table 5-1 is about predicting the players' powerlevel while designing encounters and campaigns ahead of time, and it is referenced again when it comes to creating new characters. Old characters' wealth is controlled by the treasure budgets of encounters, not some gravitational pull the WBL numbers have in the calculations (they don't have any).



I always assumed WBL was a guideline of what PCs should get minus 15% for assumed lost consumables.

The other way around. Loot budgets are slightly higher than what you need to reach guideline wealth, to account for consumables, old stuff sold at half value, etc.

[Satinavian]

It depends. Does the fantasy setting function like a game in that an item treadmill exists? If it does - and this is extremely common in 'dungeon hunter' manhwa or world-as-game isekai settings - then chapters dealing with negotiation for items, money, and rewards are extremely common (and the protagonists are usually incredibly money-grubbing). Even then it is usually either to showcase how the protagonists loot differs from regular dungeon loot or when it is about special, plot relevant items. Or to establish it once to then let it shift into background.


The other way around. Loot budgets are slightly higher than what you need to reach guideline wealth, to account for consumables, old stuff sold at half value, etc.Well, that is exactly what i wrote : WBL = expected loot - 15% of expected loot.

[KorvinStarmast]

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.


But the aggressive mundanity of striking up a conversation with Bill the Baker over his rather average lemon pastries and attempting to haggle him down from his 2 silver/per price? Get outta here with that.
I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.

[Tyndmyr]

That's one interpretation, which may certainly be valid. However, is it really _wealth_, if you cannot use it in any way? Maybe the correct term would be "resources acquired per level", or something like that?

Resources are wealth, so there is no distinction between those.


UPD: I looked at the Pathfinder rules (which is the system I play), and it says:

Note that it does not say "expected to get", but "expected to have".

Expected is not guaranteed. If the players decide to spend every copper they have, the rules do not guarantee that replacement wealth will be dropped by the next goblin they encounter.

WBL is mostly for things like "we're starting play at level five, how much gear should we have?"

[King of Nowhere]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC.

I thought I already made that argument, but I didn't.
the thing is, it does not matter that there is no magic mart. i had one campaign where there was no magic mart, and that's exactly where I got the idea that it's not worth roleplaying those interactions.
so, the first time we got some magic item, we went around the city to look for a buyer. we could find some specialized shops that would take some. so now we knew there were some merchants that could deal in magic items. as we leveled up and we kept getting loot, we kept expanding our contacts. other adventuring teams, mage guilds, armies, nobles. as we got teleportation, it became a lot easier. We basically scoured the continent for anyone who could trade in magic items. all well and good.
we did roleplay those parts, and it was interesting.
however, once we had those contacts established, we gradually had less reason to keep roleplaying the selling of stuff. we already had a long list of contacts to trade. it was just a matter of spending a few days of downtime teleporting around. so the activity gradually went from "day 1, I use one teleport to go to city X, sell A B and C item to that rich collector, then use another teleport to go to city Y and sell D and E to the crafting guild, then I go to city Z to that wizard to collect the item that we commissioned last time. I keep one teleport in reserve in case one misfires. Day 2, [...]" to "we spend 2 days teleporting around and selling the stuff" to "we got loot for 50k gp".
So, I'm not saying there's never any point roleplaying the trading of stuff. I'm saying that there's rarely a point in doing it after the first few times where you establish contacts. And even then, if there are contacts to be found and the whole business can be reduced to "I spend some time and make some gather information checks", you may just want to skip it anyway.

P.S. when there is a magicmart, it does not mean there's no potential for roleplaying. A guild that controls magic item trade, and is clearly powerful enough to avoid being robbed - despite clearly having loot for millions, enough to attract the highest level robbers? A guild that has a near monopoly on a very important resource, needed for war among others? Seems to me there's plenty of plot hooks there.

[False God]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.
An approach I also prefer. I don't tend to have the problem in my own games, though I certainly have people make attempts. There are NPCs and related shops where you can pick up mundane goods, the hunting outfitter, the local clothier, open the book, check the price, buy it or don't and then move on. That's my approach to "shopping". Then there are "merchants that matter"; the high end merchants, the strange shops that will only accept trades of other unique items.


I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.
I agree with this approach as well. Trade, meaningful trade is important for both making the world feel real and as a problem to resolve situations. But it must be meaningful. A sack of beans for a stack of pancakes is not something I will tolerate players wasting table time on just because they don't want to pay for breakfast.

For as wealthy as PCs can get, players can be impressively miserly.

Fortunately, these are problems I tend to run into playing at other tables, rather than running my own.

[gbaji]

..., fasten then zip, ...

Ok. Let's talk socks...

[Quertus]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.


I thought I already made that argument, but I didn't.
the thing is, it does not matter that there is no magic mart. i had one campaign where there was no magic mart, and that's exactly where I got the idea that it's not worth roleplaying those interactions.
so, the first time we got some magic item, we went around the city to look for a buyer. we could find some specialized shops that would take some. so now we knew there were some merchants that could deal in magic items. as we leveled up and we kept getting loot, we kept expanding our contacts. other adventuring teams, mage guilds, armies, nobles. as we got teleportation, it became a lot easier. We basically scoured the continent for anyone who could trade in magic items. all well and good.
we did roleplay those parts, and it was interesting.
however, once we had those contacts established, we gradually had less reason to keep roleplaying the selling of stuff. we already had a long list of contacts to trade. it was just a matter of spending a few days of downtime teleporting around. so the activity gradually went from "day 1, I use one teleport to go to city X, sell A B and C item to that rich collector, then use another teleport to go to city Y and sell D and E to the crafting guild, then I go to city Z to that wizard to collect the item that we commissioned last time. I keep one teleport in reserve in case one misfires. Day 2, [...]" to "we spend 2 days teleporting around and selling the stuff" to "we got loot for 50k gp".
So, I'm not saying there's never any point roleplaying the trading of stuff. I'm saying that there's rarely a point in doing it after the first few times where you establish contacts. And even then, if there are contacts to be found and the whole business can be reduced to "I spend some time and make some gather information checks", you may just want to skip it anyway.

P.S. when there is a magicmart, it does not mean there's no potential for roleplaying. A guild that controls magic item trade, and is clearly powerful enough to avoid being robbed - despite clearly having loot for millions, enough to attract the highest level robbers? A guild that has a near monopoly on a very important resource, needed for war among others? Seems to me there's plenty of plot hooks there.

Ah. Hmmm...

Well, to generalize, the right GM, with the right group, could have fun with or find value in most things. Er, that is, for most things, there is a theoretical "right GM with the right group" that could have fun with and find value in it.

And, yes, "people with power" are certainly a game element potentially worth interacting with. Similarly, yes, "it's just a magic-mart" can still have people worth roleplaying out a discussion with.

Haggling over purchases? Nah, I've not seen value in taking up more than a few seconds of table time with that. Roleplaying with a powerless, not-connected-to-the-Plot street urchin? So long as Spotlight Sharing isn't being trampled, knock yourself out (if the whole party's into it, we can make it the entire session). Doing something of clear value (a category into which most interactions with powerful beings generally qualifies)? Again, a nod to Spotlight Sharing, but hard to argue against the worth of spending table time taking such actions.

The initial wording was easy to read as "spend lots of time roleplaying through shopping, for no net functional difference from just doing the math", where the "missed opportunity" could be read as "roleplaying through it", rather than changing the expected gameplay from (what to my mind is) a 3e style to a 2e style.

So, with this added clarification, yeah, I can see having fun with using items as an excuse to interact with beings of power. My tables tend to prefer to use things like favors or political leverage or contacts or mutually beneficial societal changes in such interactions, with items either a non-issue or almost an afterthought, but I can imagine it being fun with items taking primacy in such discussions, too.

[Rynjin]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem.

Call a spade a spade, it's not anyone else's problem but yours.

[Tyndmyr]

Ah. Hmmm...

Well, to generalize, the right GM, with the right group, could have fun with or find value in most things. Er, that is, for most things, there is a theoretical "right GM with the right group" that could have fun with and find value in it.

Ultimately, every game thrives on novelty. If the experience every week is the exact same, it'll get stale. So, an interesting encounter with an unusual shopkeeper is probably quite fun the first time. It just can't last with repetition.

Generally after establishing a character and the players meeting him, I'll only RP out a whole encounter if there's something of some relevance beyond the transaction itself. The local guy who deals in slightly shady magical items, doesn't really blink at cursed stuff, and has a suspiciously large number of morally ambiguous side jobs he needs doing? Yeah, he's worth RPing. Restocking the party on rope? No.

But even the former guy will become familiar, and thus the party will spend less time on the social encounter in subsequent visits than they will the first time. If the PCs say "I try to haggle him down" and reach for the dice, that's a pretty good clue not to draw the encounter out any longer. Abstract away the parts not important to the story.

Same goes for travelling. Travels *can* be interesting, but rolling for random encounters for the fifth time in a row gets tedious. Eventually players want to get to where they want to be, and progress the story.

[AMFV]

I mean Soldiers get paid, in the real world. Hell, if a soldier dies in combat his spouse not only collects his pay for that day, but also gets quite a bit of extra pay after that. Does that diminish their sacrifice?

Edit: Also your proposition assumes that the DM strictly ties the party to WBL, which is not even really good practice, and doesn't count things like charitable donations against their WBL.

[Jay R]

First, let's deal with the obvious: Yes, if you give away money, you have less money. That's what it means.

Second, I don't track WBL at that level, and I don't see why anybody would. Does anybody use WBL that way? I certainly don't track how many potions and scrolls they used up, or what they spent on spell components, food, etc. That "reduces" their wealth exactly as much as giving it away does.

For that matter, selling at half value to buy other things reduces the wealth of the party. Do DMs track that? I don't.

So unless the DM is tracking party wealth at a ridiculously precise level, the re-balancing you're talking about just doesn't happen.