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Tormsskull
2008-09-09, 10:14 PM
Hi all,

I have never been a fan of the WBL system but I wonder how exactly most people use it. So out of curiosity,


Do you use WBL (i.e. do you make sure the characters are close to the WBL at each interval)?
If a player uses his/her wealth to purchase consumable items (scrolls/potions/etc) do you bring them back up to the full WBL each level, or do you subtract out the consumables they have used)?
If you use WBL, how do you make sure that each character gets a fair share of the treasure?


Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Vortling
2008-09-09, 10:24 PM
I tend to skip it. I make sure that given classes aren't falling behind with appropriate additions (ie, magic weapons for martial characters and such) but generally I don't give out nearly as much wealth as I should. I compensate by making encounters appropriate for the group I DM. It does help that all my players optimize to the same level.

Reinboom
2008-09-09, 10:27 PM
1. Not really, only to start the campaign.
2. If I was to actively keep up with it, I consumables only effect WBL while they still exist on the character. That is, the moment they are gone, they are no longer part of the character's wealth. (Obviously)
3. By giving that specific character a 'deal' with something they are after, basically subtracting their consumables' costs over time from their permanent costs (or other consumables costs if they buy a lot, like a potion brewer given a discount to her regular customer). Thus making it nonobvious IC.

Thurbane
2008-09-09, 10:36 PM
1. Only when generating PCs above 1st level, and usually only then for pregenerated modules/adventures.
2. Never really woriied about this.
3. I never interfere with players distributing wealth, I leave it all up to them.

FMArthur
2008-09-09, 10:38 PM
I just make sure to give out an amount of gp (through enemies and 'hidden' treasure) by each level that is close to the difference between the next level's WBL and the the current one's. I don't 'bring a player back up' to WBL, because that wealth includes wealth they've spent. It's absolutely silly otherwise; if you do, you're either mistaking the chart's numbers as being cumulative all the way up to your level (each level's wealth actually includes the previous level's), or effectively negating the cost of all consumables for no real reason. :smallconfused:
Fair shares are sorted out by the party, which is part of the reason why I don't DM evil campaigns. They usually either divide it equally or get convinced by the Rogue to pool their resources.

Xyk
2008-09-09, 10:39 PM
I also only give wealth by level when making characters above 1st level, and I might check back after a while to see if I'm more or less on track.

I also just give out whatever a monster had on it and let the players divide.

Toliudar
2008-09-09, 11:31 PM
I tend to either start a campaign with an amount of gold for each character, or a smaller amount plus one or two plot-relevant magic items that I give to each player. Because my group is much more motivated by roleplay and, er, mayhem, they rarely manage to accumulate anything approximating WBL, so I occasionally sweeten rewards to try to keep it more balanced. This also gives me an opportunity to skew the distribution of major magic towards those players who are less good at optimizing, to increase the odds of everyone contributing well.

Kizara
2008-09-09, 11:43 PM
It's a mildly useful guideline, but not one that I feel beholden too.

It varies each campaign, but I generally give out 1.5xish what is recommended, because I love having my PCs having lots of toys. It gives me so many more options as a DM to be creative in challanging them.

I'm the sort of DM that see things like Teleport, Planeshift and Bags of Holding as great additions to character reasources and campaigns.

bosssmiley
2008-09-10, 05:01 AM
I use WBL as a benchmark for equipping NPCs...and that's about it.

As I use the Tome series (link in sig.) WBL is effectively meaningless after about 11th level (the planar binding Efreeti threshold :smallwink: ). Between The Dungeonomicon's wish economy and The Book of Gears scale-by-level magic item variant WBL beancounting is no big deal for PCs.

Hal
2008-09-10, 07:48 AM
I'm in the camp of "for character creation, then ignore."

I like handing out toys to my players. Honestly, I've never found the game to be much fun when you're struggling for wealth. To be fair, though, my only experience DMing was with a 3 man party (Bard, Cleric, Fighter), so they really needed the boost of magic items.

I tend to split their treasure into 3 categories: Stuff the monster/NPC was using that they might find useful or can sell; stuff I think might be interesting that they can either use or not; and straight up wealth so they can buy whatever toy it is they've been lusting after.

The second category is the most interesting to me. It's usually either stuff they wouldn't think to buy on their own, like flasks of alchemist's fire, or stuff that has little actual function but could be used for trade or in non-combat encounters. For example, I had them find an enchanted flask that keeps whatever it holds ice cold. It's an item that makes perfect sense in a world full of magic, but it has no obvious in game use. However, they could always end up selling it for cash or trading it to an NPC in exchange for something. Stuff like that doesn't really fall into a typical "wealth" measure, so I just go with what feels right. If they're too loaded with stuff, I just cut them off for a while until it evens back out.

Zen Master
2008-09-10, 07:55 AM
I've never bothered with WBL. Of course, being significant off the chart one way or the other impacts rather unfairly on characters such as artificers.

But basically, I announce beforehand that this campaign is powerlevel X, wealth level Y - and if someone choses to make an artificer (or other very geardependant character) in a low power campaign, that's an informed decision, and not my problem.

I patently refuse to compensate for peoples perceived powerlevels tho - you make the choice, you deal with it.

Another thing - when I've checked WBL up against the players in my campaign, they have usually been surprisingly close to the expected level. I don't even have a rule of thumb, but apparently it works out ok anyhow.

Zeta Kai
2008-09-10, 08:05 AM
I find that WBL is a semi-useful guideline for factoring a character's relative power, but it's far too simplistic to accurately judge results in actually gameplay, & far too much trouble for a DM to calculate each PC's total item value. The fundamental issue with 3.X is that it is highly dependent on a character's magical & mundane items for advancement, so a "naked" character is at a huge disadvantage, & "naked" builds are infeasible. This creates a lot of work, both for the players & the DM. The WBL chart is an attempt at a benchmark, but it cannot account for the inherent imbalance in magic item values (IE the power difference between 1 extremely useful expensive item & 100 less useful cheap items). This is just another one of the crippling balance issues that plague 3.X, along with the CR "system" & inter-class comparrison issues.

Jayabalard
2008-09-10, 08:19 AM
Hi all,

I have never been a fan of the WBL system but I wonder how exactly most people use it. So out of curiosity,
No, I don't use WBL;

I try to make sure that the party gets enough treasure to cover consumables used. If they can't turn at least some profit by adventuring then it wouldn't make much sense for them to keep doing it.

Splitting treasure is for the players to decide; I encourage them to have a party contract or something that goes into detail as far as how treasure is distributed. Since there aren't magic-marts all over the place, they tend to give them out in such a manner that they are all used by someone who gains a benefit from them, so each time they divvy up treasure someone usually comes out quite a bit ahead.

Mastikator
2008-09-10, 08:25 AM
Frankly, I find the idea of WBL to be offensive to my common sense. I use Wealth by Campaign, which is something I just made up, which states that wealth is merely how much money you have, which isn't linked to how much experience you have in life (though it is liked to what kind of experience, as well as social roles, etc).

You don't arbitrarily lose money if you are level drained.

And you don't spontaneously gain a level in aristocrat if you inherit money from your dead grandpa.

If the rules disagree with common sense then the rules are wrong and don't need to be followed.

Telonius
2008-09-10, 08:34 AM
I generally don't adhere to it too strictly. About every five or six levels, I ask the players to give me an inventory, just to see if I'm way above or below.

Curmudgeon
2008-09-10, 12:48 PM
Only when equipping characters above 1st level, and then with the following house rules:
+1% for each skill rank in Sleight of Hand to represent opportunities for increasing wealth. Lawful-aligned characters can't use this.
Prices paid are reduced by 10% if their constant Diplomacy modifier (i.e., no temporary bonuses) is 25 or more, and by 5% if it's 15-24, to represent Haggling (Diplomacy skill use in Complete Adventurer).

DeathQuaker
2008-09-10, 03:39 PM
Hi all,
Do you use WBL (i.e. do you make sure the characters are close to the WBL at each interval)?

Like many others, I use it at character creation for campaigns that do not begin at level 1.

Otherwise, I use it as a very rough guideline for about how much treasure the party should receive by the time they reach their next level--but I don't go and count the value of their gear to the copper piece. Just a rough guess. If it seems a little over or under, I'm not going to sweat it.

The only other thing to keep in mind is that especially at high levels, powerful monsters/encounters are often designed assuming that PCs are equipped with a certain amount/kind of gear (i.e., the designers considered WBL when assigning CRs). Therefore, sometimes it's important to think about what gear the party has before I throw a particular creature at them--not necessarily pure wealth level (though that can be part of it) but what in particular they have, to make sure the creature is not either too easy or too hard for them, even if the suggested CR is otherwise.



If a player uses his/her wealth to purchase consumable items (scrolls/potions/etc) do you bring them back up to the full WBL each level, or do you subtract out the consumables they have used)?

No. Wealth's gonna be fluid in the game; I've got more important things to do than breathe over the players while reading their character sheets to tally the precise value of their gear. (And that might sound snarky... not intended/directed towards you; just stating something.)



If you use WBL, how do you make sure that each character gets a fair share of the treasure?

Generally in determining "fair shares" I will make sure there are items that are going to be useful for everyone rather than count GP value.... if there's something especially sweet for the rogue in one treasure pile, I'll make sure the next treasure pile has something that would really work well for the paladin that the rogue wouldn't want. I generally determine its value in terms of utility to the party than WBL purely (though I will, say, check WBL to determine if maybe I should be giving them a +1 or +2 version of the item I want them to have).

Also, I find my players do a fine job of determining what works best for them--if it means giving the paladin who's poor at melee the lion's share of the treasure so he can hit things better, they're fine with it because ultimately what is benefiting one is benefiting all anyway, because it helps them all devise group tactics better (that's what they tell me, anyway :smallsmile:).

So again, in short it's good for a loose guideline but sticking to it closely is infeasible, and there are also other ways of determining gear value.

Lord Tataraus
2008-09-10, 03:56 PM
Yeah...I'm with the "WBL at starting with characters over lvl1 then ignore" people.

I usually tend to starve the players of equipment right up to the point where they are about to complain and then dump a bunch of cool stuff on them. I just have good timing I guess :smalltongue:

Philistine
2008-09-10, 04:56 PM
Frankly, I find the idea of WBL to be offensive to my common sense. I use Wealth by Campaign, which is something I just made up, which states that wealth is merely how much money you have, which isn't linked to how much experience you have in life (though it is liked to what kind of experience, as well as social roles, etc).

You don't arbitrarily lose money if you are level drained.

And you don't spontaneously gain a level in aristocrat if you inherit money from your dead grandpa.

If the rules disagree with common sense then the rules are wrong and don't need to be followed.Speaking of things being offensive to common sense - strawman much? Or are you seriously claiming that anyone has ever played the game with the bizarre houserule variant of WBL you described?


Character Wealth by Level is based on average treasures found in average encounters compared with the experience points earned in those encounters. By RAW, WBL is explicitly nothing more or less than a guideline for balancing encounters. Not a straitjacket, not "your players must have this much money/gear, otherwise You're Doin' It Wrong." WBL is not a rule, it's a suggestion.

its_all_ogre
2008-09-10, 05:09 PM
1 i use it when creating new characters at levels above one

3 i do not get involved with treasure splitting at all, they deal with that. often this lead to comic effect.

2 i occasionally check all character sheets, find that one person has 20k worth of gear and one has 4k. the next few encounters will have stuff for the 4k character. i do not replace consumables they use up.

at one point the 6 players had 60k worth between them, 4 of them had 4-8k and two had 20k each....
this was mostly because they were offered rewards of the 'ask for what you want and i'll see what we can do'
the two with more cash asked for more valuable stuff, simple as

monty
2008-09-10, 05:22 PM
1. Only at creation, and sometimes not even then, depending on the campaign plot. I tend to go over WBL, actually (but not too much), because I feel that having lots of awesome equipment makes it feel more heroic.
2. Generally, no. See following answer, and you spend your income however you like.
3. My group usually does a pretty good job of splitting up loot on their own.

Justin_Bacon
2008-09-10, 07:55 PM
Do you use WBL (i.e. do you make sure the characters are close to the WBL at each interval)?

I will occasionally spot-check the resources the PCs have to see where they're at. But I tend to balance from the other direction: If the PCs have non-standard wealth or non-optimized builds or whatever, I'll adjust the challenges they're facing.


If a player uses his/her wealth to purchase consumable items (scrolls/potions/etc) do you bring them back up to the full WBL each level, or do you subtract out the consumables they have used)?

The WBL table assumes that the PCs are spending some of their treasure on consumables. So, no, I wouldn't keep track of what consumables they've used and add those onto the party's total wealth.


If you use WBL, how do you make sure that each character gets a fair share of the treasure?

I don't. How the party chooses to divide and use their resources is up to them.

Basically, I think it's a useful (but not perfect) guideline. It shouldn't be treated as a strait-jacket.


Frankly, I find the idea of WBL to be offensive to my common sense. I use Wealth by Campaign, which is something I just made up, which states that wealth is merely how much money you have, which isn't linked to how much experience you have in life (though it is liked to what kind of experience, as well as social roles, etc).

You don't arbitrarily lose money if you are level drained.

And you don't spontaneously gain a level in aristocrat if you inherit money from your dead grandpa.

If the rules disagree with common sense then the rules are wrong and don't need to be followed.

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/9/10/wealthbylevel128655683201589927.jpg

monty
2008-09-10, 08:02 PM
http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/9/10/wealthbylevel128655683201589927.jpg

Win. Very win.

TempusCCK
2008-09-10, 09:12 PM
I hate it, it completely doesn't take into account that a Wizard/Cleric can do exactly a million things with no problem that anyone cannot do without magic items.

The system can be easily balanced if you just give more WBL to Rogues, Fighters, Rangers, and Paladins so that they can pay for the things they need.