Level 1 character vs level 13 character

[ExLibrisMortis]

One of these choices results in a very useless party member, the other one in a very unpopular one; unless house-ruled somehow.

It's a fun ability, isn't it?

I houserule it to allow the player to use no more than 20% of WBL. It's a large reduction in WBL that doesn't totally preclude the acquisition of some critical items (e.g. flight). It's still not a brilliant deal, but it helps. A variant would be to allow only Ancestral Relic, which would be 50% of WBL, but spent on a single item, so you pay a lot of x1.5 cost modifiers for combined item and unusual slot modifiers. You'd end up with characters using only a +1 soulfire (as bracers of armour) phoenix (as phoenix cloak) vestments of warding (as cowl of warding), or something, for ~368 750 gp.