How many people actually pay attention to whealt by level?

[King of Nowhere]

something that has been burning in the back of my brain, but exploded when seeing a thread on how many spells a wizard should have in their spellbook, and some arguments like "but if you give spells for free you put the wizard above wbl"

None of my tables has ever respected wbl, even close. with experienced groups, we've always been a lot above. in my campaigns, I play a high magic, renaissance/industrial tech world, and everyone is expected to be full of magic. in another campaign, the dm started by trying to follow wbl, then the party started to explore every plot hook the dm was dangling in front of us, which resulted in lots of sidequest, so the dm started handling out less xp to control the pace of progression, but still we got loot.
In addition to that, I just never cared to try and balance loot according to the tables, but i do balance according to what makes sense for the plot. Lardalia Ermenegigi is a 20th level rogue and head of the most powerful noble family in one of the most powerful empires on the world; she owns more land than you can see from the top of a mountain on a clear day. Obviously she's able to buy any magic item that is for sale on this world - and if the party manages to kill her, they can loot accordingly.
Conversely, with unexperienced parties, there is a scarcity of magic items simply because nobody is thinking of them. in my first party we were level 15 and we barely had any gear. I once had a railroading dm, when we quitted the campaign (at level 5) we had less gear than we started with at level 1!

So, my experience is that wbl only exhist in the dmg. nobody follows it. nobody cares.
It's not like following it actually improves the game in any way. Expected power level? what's that? my inexperienced party at level 17 could barely fight an iron golem - a cr 13 monster. My current high-op party at level 17 took down a group of 4 solars (technically a level 27 encounter) in half a round without breaking a sweat, then fought five level 30 encounters in a row and they were still in pretty good shape by the end. power level depends entirely upon optimization level and what's allowed at the table. in turn, this depends on the dm knowing their specific group - I know I can give 4 solars as an easy encounter to my high-op group, and I would never dare to do something similar to a group of rookies. So, following wbl does not make for a more predictable power level of the game.
Breaking wbl also improves balance a lot, because finally the martials are able to get all those abilities that they need - flight, see invisibility, etc. - without pestering their casters, and without mortgaging their primary weapon.
It also allows for more creativity; want that object that does something nice and situational and not particularly powerful? You can get it, without sacrificing your capacity to contribute.
conversely, with a low-op noob game, having low gear - provided you give adequate opponents - can be better because the players can barely remember what half their abilities actually do, much less how they interact with magic items.

In my experience, not only nobody follows wbl, but the game is also better for it.

So, I'm curious. Are there parties who actually track wbl and try to stick to it? dm who, if the party is above wbl, will send in a few big monsters without loot to give xp and put the party back on balance? Are there people who can say that trying to stick to wbl enhances their games?

[vasilidor]

Really it should be expected magic items by level by class. I see it as a sort of a base line, like if you are below this line you are going to have a hard time. Mind this is more true for non-caster classes than casting classes.
Fighters would not need so much magic to keep up with the casters if not for the bonkers abilities of monsters.
At low levels it is not as much of a problem, but past around level 7- it is a problem.
Take a fighter against a Nalfeshnee. Assuming the fighter is at level 14, but has no magic items, He is going to hit it no problem but do bupkis for damage. Assuming a strength of about 18 after leveling, and weapon specialization and greater weapon specialization with a long sword he will do about 0 damage after he failed his will save to be dazed. even if he does make the will save his average damage will be about 3 on a hit. and he will do so on a 6 or better as I am assuming he could get a master work weapon.
If he has power attack he can take up to a -14 to hit to gat a +14 to damage. Assuming the player knows the AC of the monster, they are going to try and take a -5 to hit to get a +5 to damage. They are hitting far less often, but are actually able to do damage on a hit. Chances are they will still die. Even if they have plate mail and a large shield with a +1 from dexterity and the dodge feat. the creature only misses the fighter on a 1 and is doing an average of 30 points of damage a round. The fighter probably has about 110 HP.
If the fighter was part of a party, none with magic items, assuming the standard cleric, mage, thief, fighter grouping that the designers seemed to have based the game on, someone is dying in this encounter most likely. The odds of one or more characters failing the will save is near 100%, especially if we assume standard point buy or standard array for characters was used in creation.

What this combat would look like: round 1 it activates its smite ability. someone, probably Rogue or fighter, very probably both, fails their will save and are stunned. It then rips into the mage in round 2. The mage probably having around 37 HP dies very fast unless they can remove the Nalfeshnee with one or two spells (or the cleric can). The Nalfeshnee most probably saves against any will save either caster can bring to bare. On round 3 it starts into the cleric, cleric dies probably around round 5, with a strong possibility that the Smite ability it used to daze the fighter and rogue wearing off around here, so it uses Smite once again on round 6. Cue the rogue being torn to shreds.

This is the most likely outcome unless the party already knew it was there and had cast spells before hand to help even out the odds. The cleric and wizard sacrificing spell slots to replace not having magic items.
If the wizard and cleric had only prepped healing and blasting magic, as I have known some players to do, they all very dead.

[zlefin]

For me, it's not something I'd pay a lot of attention too; but I would pay a little attention. Having fun is the main thing, so if everyone's having fun, it's all fine. If there's a problem, then WBL is one of many diagnostic tools to help assess.

It's generally more about the basic numbers than anything else. A party substantially below WBL can have martial types underperform. It can also be low on saves or AC compared to the baseline. If a party seems weak, low wbl can be a reason; if a party seems too strong (and they want things toned down) high wbl can be a reason.

Since most costs tend to use square function scaling, being behind/ahead doesn't have quite so dramatic an effect, unless the difference is very large.

As with many tools in the game; it's a useful starting point for the inexperienced DM or the DM who can't adapt well and discuss things with the players.

It's wrong to think that just because a certain path worked out for your group, that it'd work fine for every other group.

[vasilidor]

What I posted earlier is the dread every player has when playing 3.5 and the DM says "No magic Items" or "Low magic Campaign." If the players are close to wealth by level and are smart in what they buy they could easily turn that encounter into an easy breeze. Just getting a +3 cloak of resistance on the players can make a huge difference in the outcome of the fight. If a character is lagging in one way or another a good way to boost them up is drop a magic item meant for them. Or if you want to stick them with low to no magic and stay with low to no magic, stick with monsters whose CR is around 2/3rds of the party, and exclude some monster types altogether unless someone has class features or feats meant to directly counter them, and then generally only as a means of making that character shine.

[ericgrau]

WBL is supposed to be for new characters not to control party treasure. Party treasure is supposed to go by the treasure tables which could end up being lower or higher than WBL depending on luck and circumstances.

[RandomPeasant]

WBL is a broken system. You can't really ignore it, because going too low or too high can cause problems. At very low wealth, Fighters get kicked even harder in the teeth than normally, while Wizards don't really care (Vow of Poverty is even a semi-viable build for Druids!). At very high wealth, it becomes easy to blow through encounters simply by throwing gold at them, trivializing characters. And that means that adventures like "defeat the necromancers in the onyx mine" or "explore the monster-filled wilderness" are inherently problematic. And it makes spells like wall of salt or fabricate inherently abusable. So what you need to do is reform how magic items work as a whole. Or, like any other problem, you just mind caulk around it and the DM fuzz things so that people don't notice there's a problem.

[pabelfly]

I just do milestone-based experience and gold. Seems to work without issue for my group at the moment, and it reduces time I spend doing DM prep on unnecessary stuff, which I'm a fan of.

[Dimers]

Like the tier system, a WBL guideline does nothing active to improve the game. What it does is show you something to pay attention to consciously instead of making assumptions about how the game "should" work. How does wealth impact a game? That can vary a lot based on kind and distribution.

Kinds: If your gameworld doesn't have diamonds readily available, death isn't something you're going to bounce back from. If there are lots of magic weapons and armor, warriors will be more effective (but monks won't). If every second magic item that appears only provides a skill bonus, certain encounters will be trivialized and others will be unaffected. If PC wealth is given heavily in lands, luxuries, business opportunities, and other non-adventuring goods, players will need to optimize harder to handle supposedly level-appropriate fights and dungeoncrawls.

Distributions: Every party divvies up loot differently. Sometimes a frontliner gets the lion's share; sometimes the deciding factor is "hey, who can use this?"; some parties insist on an even split, down to the copper; sometimes there's a common fund to pay to fix problems like death or petrification no matter which member they happen to; in a few groups, a rogue can actually get away with tucking away extra wealth without other characters' knowledge. No matter what the situation, how wealth is distributed will affect which builds benefit and which builds lag. Even with theoretically equal distribution, some characters can craft themselves magic items and some can't.

One time I played in a campaign where new PCs came in a handful of levels lower than existing ones, which was problematic enough. But on top of that, the old PCs had gotten rich from adventuring, and the new ones got NPC WBL. They were basically worthless, barely able to contribute to the same challenges at all. (Three of the high-level ones were a cleric, a sorcerer and a psion ... and the DM believed that one of the newbies could build an effective martial tank for that party's fights.)

[Rleonardh]

Is it a wbl problem or more of ac and Bab of monsters just being to high in 3.5e.

Now to the question of do I as dm follow it?
I do try to be within the range of the wbl but at times I blow way past it.

[vasilidor]

I think part of the problem with wealth by level is how it was derived as necessary due to hold over design elements from 1st and 2nd edition where if you did not have a magic sword, you may as well just go home. Your character could not contribute.
In the example I gave earlier, the fighter needs about another +5 to hit and damage in order to be effective against the monster. How he gets it is up in the air. And about another +3 to 4 to his will save somehow to be able to have a meaningful chance of not being daze locked. Same goes for the rogue in the example of him being in part of a party.
Then you get into the issue of some monsters could not be engaged without some way of getting your character to them because they are flying and have a spell going that nullifies archery such as wind wall or worse.

[sleepyphoenixx]

It's a useful guideline. Not something i follow slavishly, but i keep an eye on it and adjust treasure if my players are significantly below or above (~30-40% deviation or more).

Being above WBL isn't really an issue unless players go out of their way to abuse it - as someone already mentioned they tend to spend extra on more situational items or less optimal ones so it doesn't have too much impact on balance in my experience.

Being significantly below WBL has a huge impact on anyone who isn't a full caster though so it's definitely something to avoid.
It's also why my games tend to have semi-regular shopping opportunities so the players can actually use the wealth they get.

[Mechalich]

I think part of the problem with wealth by level is how it was derived as necessary due to hold over design elements from 1st and 2nd edition where if you did not have a magic sword, you may as well just go home. Your character could not contribute.
In the example I gave earlier, the fighter needs about another +5 to hit and damage in order to be effective against the monster. How he gets it is up in the air. And about another +3 to 4 to his will save somehow to be able to have a meaningful chance of not being daze locked. Same goes for the rogue in the example of him being in part of a party.
Then you get into the issue of some monsters could not be engaged without some way of getting your character to them because they are flying and have a spell going that nullifies archery such as wind wall or worse.

It's even somewhat more fundamental than that.

D&D is a game about adventuring. Adventuring is best described as: 'Go places, kill things, haul away everything valuable that's not nailed down.' The acquisition of wealth is just assumed to be part of the base set of goals for D&D characters. After all, no character starts out with more than enough money to buy basic gear. Earlier edition DMGs had specific instructions that PCs who start wealth are not to be allowed. Greed is a fairly universal human motivation, so, so far so good. The problem is that successful adventurers tend to become astonishingly wealthy - by local economic standards - very quickly. Unfortunately, if that happens the proper in-character action is for the now financially secure PCs to retire from adventuring. This means the game ends and that's bad. Consequently, the game needed ways to divest characters of the massive monetary gains they were presumed to obtain and Gygax and co. arrived at the solution of pricing level appropriate magic items in line with level appropriate treasure totals. This created an inducement to direct all in-game wealth towards the acquisition of gear and never towards doing something else with it. And this sort of setup is actually fairly common. Basically all video game RPGs work this way. Usually it simply isn't possible to buy anything other than gear/consumables.

There are two major problems with doing this. First, it turns gear into a major component of the overall character power level evaluation, which may not be desirable or thematically appropriate (for example, Starfinder's take on this issue in a space-based setting fell flat). Second, it creates world-building distortions because of the way it converts wealth into personal power that most games don't bother to consider at all.

The D&D specific problem is, as usual, its absurd power-scaling. At level 1 it absolutely makes sense for gear to matter. The difference between a sword and a longspear or leather armor and chainmail is very significant at that scale. At 20th level it's pointless.

[Gruftzwerg]

It is situational.

For forum showcase and contest purposes you should follow em as strict as possible for given reasons.
But in actual play it is totally different from table to table or campaign to campaign.

WBL can also be used as tool for party balance. Giving the struggling players access to more specific stuff for them can often help them to not get overshadowed to hard.

It's really more about your intention. For theoretical exercises you should try to stick to it. For actual play, decide what fits the situation best.

[Maat Mons]

I've definitely had campaigns that deviated substantially from wealth-by-level.

My current DM has a tendency to go through several character levels either not giving us any significant quantity of money, or not allowing us to spend our money anywhere. But even he occasionally notices the effects of this and makes a point of dropping a bunch of treasure on us, putting us in a position where we can actually buy what we want, or both.

I once had a DM who would throw Mordenkainen's Disjunction at us when he felt we were getting too well-equipped.

Don't be like either of those guys. Give your players opportunities to acquire the things they need, and don't break their toys. If things have gotten so bad on the gear front that you need a big in-game event to get things back on track, you went too long without paying attention to this.

You don't have to stick to the exact numbers presented in the DMG, but too little or too much wealth can negatively effect the game.

[Fizban]

Everyone should pay attention to their party's stuff. You should know what they have, what they need, and what you're giving them. If you don't check their gear vs WBL and your game still works fine, then fine, but it is something that should be checked if there are problems, can aid in preventing problems, and it's entirely possible that even if a game is working fine without such guidelines it could work even better with some acknowledgement.

A character's gear is not recorded total lifetime treasures acquired. It is not cash or market value of current assets. The value of a character's useful gear is the value of their useful gear. The system overall expects a certain amount of flat bonuses and effects that can be tailored to a particular game outside of the leveling and character mechanics. If the party has been finding expensive trash items, they are under-geared until they can convert that into useful gear. If they have more weapons than weapon-wielders (cloaks for cloak-wearers, etc), those extra items have diminishing value until they can be converted into something useful. And if an adventure happens to be particularly weak to a certain item (Bane, it's usually Bane, or some sort of immunuity), the party can even be over-geared while under "wealth." Often complaints about WBL, as with many guidelines, come down to a failure to understand the point and context of a guideline while instead treating a tiny portion of it as a rule.

It's not like following it actually improves the game in any way. . .
In my experience, not only nobody follows [blank], but the game is also better for it.

Edited into form statement. You can replace [blank] with any sacred cow and have a true statement for any number of groups. Pick whatever metric you don't like about the game and tear it down or even turn it inside out to make your game better. If that's WBL, great. It could also be the CR system, the XP system, the skill system, the feat system, multiclassing penalties, prestige classes, the accepted body of published game elements, the idea that people can write their own game elements, entire concepts of adventure design, of party dynamics, of narrative structure or causality, of literally anything in the game. Any aspect of the game can be harmful for a given group, so for any [blank] there can be a someone that says following [blank] is bad and the game is better without it.


As for me, I have previously kept a meticulous spreadsheet of all items acquired, sold, and assigned- which did keep me fully aware of the giant pile of consumables none of them ever remembered, the unclaimed heal-bot's treasure starve, and the fact that since most of the characters entered at higher levels the party could easily "afford" to lose the giant pile of loot which was being carried by the character whose player left (since they were already a little over gear). I don't intend to do so again since it was a lot of work and it seems better to audit/adjust the treasure before it's found and then check up with the characters less often . I would rather keep a lid on WBL than end up with an over-geared party that needs overpowered foes or a sudden loss of treasure to compensate.

[King of Nowhere]

It's even somewhat more fundamental than that.

D&D is a game about adventuring. Adventuring is best described as: 'Go places, kill things, haul away everything valuable that's not nailed down.' The acquisition of wealth is just assumed to be part of the base set of goals for D&D characters. After all, no character starts out with more than enough money to buy basic gear. Earlier edition DMGs had specific instructions that PCs who start wealth are not to be allowed. Greed is a fairly universal human motivation, so, so far so good. The problem is that successful adventurers tend to become astonishingly wealthy - by local economic standards - very quickly. Unfortunately, if that happens the proper in-character action is for the now financially secure PCs to retire from adventuring. This means the game ends and that's bad.

this seems more of a failure for the player to come up with decent motivations for his character. and really, magic items don't fix that. "you can retire and live the rest of your life in luxury... or you can spend all your money on this item that will give you a % increase in accuracy."
if your character is the kind of guy who would retire to live in luxury, he would still do it.

Is it a wbl problem or more of ac and Bab of monsters just being to high in 3.5e.

I find them way too low. all the martial characters in my party are able to take down monsters from the manual depressingly easily. while the monster itself struggles to hit, and even when it hits, it does not deal any significant damage. conversely, i do find spell resistance too high. the party martials can one-shot enemies, or at most finish them in the second round, with basically no risk of failure. Conversely, the party casters fail to affect them 50% of the times. the wizard can still use a quickened true casting, but cleric and druid not so much.

I think part of the problem with wealth by level is how it was derived as necessary due to hold over design elements from 1st and 2nd edition where if you did not have a magic sword, you may as well just go home. Your character could not contribute.
In the example I gave earlier, the fighter needs about another +5 to hit and damage in order to be effective against the monster. How he gets it is up in the air. And about another +3 to 4 to his will save somehow to be able to have a meaningful chance of not being daze locked. Same goes for the rogue in the example of him being in part of a party.
Then you get into the issue of some monsters could not be engaged without some way of getting your character to them because they are flying and have a spell going that nullifies archery such as wind wall or worse.

It's generally more about the basic numbers than anything else. A party substantially below WBL can have martial types underperform. It can also be low on saves or AC compared to the baseline. If a party seems weak, low wbl can be a reason; if a party seems too strong (and they want things toned down) high wbl can be a reason.

Really it should be expected magic items by level by class. I see it as a sort of a base line, like if you are below this line you are going to have a hard time. Mind this is more true for non-caster classes than casting classes.

But that's the core point of my argument against wbl: if you use wbl solely to control the party's power, it does not work. Because the party's power depends as much on the optimization level as it depends on wealth. as a dm, you are already adjusting the power level to the optimization of the party. you do not prepare your adventures by looking at the manual and saying "my party is level 13, so I'll give them four ecl 13 encounters for the day, and that will be balanced - but only as long as they are following wbl!".
you do not do that, because it fails to account for the optimization of the party and resourcefulness of the players. an optimized party will destroy any level-appropriate encounter. smart players will find ways around obstacles. for my party, I would know level+5 is where I can start looking for monsters that aren't total pushovers. I already have to throw out all the CR and expected power system and make adjustments on the fly, based on what I know the party is capable of. And I basically use their previous encounters to figure out their power level. For a party of noobs, I'd have to underlevel encounters instead.
And since I'm already adjusting the difficulty level based solely on the party's demonstrated power, and not on any projection of what they should be able to do based on their level, then accounting for wbl is pointless. so my party is not only highly optimized, it's also overequipped; ok, instead of giving them level+5 monsters, I'll give them level+10 monsters. I will build npc opponents using their level of optimization and wealth as a baseline. I know my players have AC in the 50 range, this monster has +45 to hit, seems about right.

to control the power level of the campaign, I have a list of tricks, builds and powers - drawn while consulting with the players - that details what is the acceptable optimization level, and what is too strong. and that is the only thing I found to work.

Edited into form statement. You can replace [blank] with any sacred cow and have a true statement for any number of groups. Pick whatever metric you don't like about the game and tear it down or even turn it inside out to make your game better.

that's good wisdom.
it's also something that we all know already, but it's good to remember that every once in a while.
and it helps put the answer in context. because this is less about tearing down a sacred cow, and more about curiosity on how other gaming groups work.
So, let's start back on my basic premise on why I never bother to care for cr or wbl or any of those tables that the dmg is so fond of

Originally posted by myself earlier in this post
you do not prepare your adventures by looking at the manual and saying "my party is level 13, so I'll give them four ecl 13 encounters for the day, and that will be balanced - but only as long as they are following wbl!". you do not do that, because it fails to account for the optimization of the party and resourcefulness of the players.

Is there someone instead who actually prepares adventures this way? who takes all the tables and guidelines on the dmg and crunches them and produces some actual balance? A balance that can be applied to different groups of different players playing at different levels of optimization?
if so, how do you make it work - because if I tried to apply that system, I'd produce terrible encounters.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I find them way too low. all the martial characters in my party are able to take down monsters from the manual depressingly easily. while the monster itself struggles to hit, and even when it hits, it does not deal any significant damage. conversely, i do find spell resistance too high. the party martials can one-shot enemies, or at most finish them in the second round, with basically no risk of failure. Conversely, the party casters fail to affect them 50% of the times. the wizard can still use a quickened true casting, but cleric and druid not so much.

You're comparing optimized melee (who presumably spend most of their resources on hitting better and harder) against baseline caster level. No wonder they fail to overcome SR.
There are plenty of options to get better at penetrating SR - not least of which Assay Spell Resistance, which is also a cleric spell - and spells that don't even allow it.

If your caster players pick spells with SR but don't improve their ability to make SR checks they have only themselves to blame. The options are there.

[King of Nowhere]

You're comparing optimized melee (who presumably spend most of their resources on hitting better and harder) against baseline caster level. No wonder they fail to overcome SR.
There are plenty of options to get better at penetrating SR - not least of which Assay Spell Resistance, which is also a cleric spell - and spells that don't even allow it.

If your caster players pick spells with SR but don't improve their ability to make SR checks they have only themselves to blame. The options are there.

we weren't aware that ASR is a cleric's spell too.
most other ways to overcome SR rely on heavily pumping caster level, which is severely restricted at my table.
the casters are pretty well optimized too; the druid can spam maximized firestorms and quickened maximized firestorms. the cleric is perhaps the least optimized, but a cleric does not need a lot of optimization to play support. he still can shoot implosions with DC 30+.
it's just that we were missing one single detail on a spell designed specifically for a situation.

I solved this problem at the table by giving all monsters +5 AC and -5 SR, anyway.

[sleepyphoenixx]

most other ways to overcome SR rely on heavily pumping caster level, which is severely restricted at my table.

There are plenty of other ways to boost SR penetration. Starting with feats like (Greater) Spell Penetration and the Robe of the Archmagi in core.
The MIC also has a few (Third Eye:Penetrate, Tomebound Eye of Boccob, Vest of the Archmagi or the Shattermantle weapon ability).
It's just that usually nobody uses them because pumping CL beats SR and does a ton of other good things too.

But if you restrict CL boosting those options still exist. The list is hardly exhaustive either, there's plenty of options.
And all the optimized metamagic reduction or high DCs won't help you if you didn't put anything in beating SR, as your players found out.
So if they want to use SR:yes spells they need to invest at least a little into it, much like the melee guys invest in things that increase their to-hit.

It's good if things worked out for you but there really is no need for monster SR to be nerfed.

[icefractal]

Well, I've more often than not seen it used for starting gear. Like, if the campaign is starting at 10th level, it's likely we'd start with gear equal to standard WBL for 10th level.

Beyond that ... to a certain extent, which varies by campaign. Here's the different varieties I've seen:

1) Standard Treasure
The combination of loot from foes and other rewards is standard for the CRs you're facing. So in general this follows WBL, but the control is on the input side, so if you miss loot you could be under WBL, and if you manage to get extra gold, or do cost-saving things like magic item creation, you could be over WBL.
Used to be the norm, less so now, but still used in things like published APs.

2) Virtual WBL
For when the GM doesn't feel like loot / money being a focus of the campaign. Loot given out during gameplay will be minimal, but characters have the effects of "virtual" items up to what they could afford with their WBL.

3) Not Applicable
For example, one of the games we're playing is modified E6, so having reached 6th level and then progressed considerably from there, there's no more "by level" for the wealth to correspond to.

4) Rewards Only
Not common, but there have been some campaigns where the PCs act on behalf of an organization and all their gear comes from that organization, at the organization's discretion - loot is minimal and/or discouraged. This has only happened a couple times and the campaigns didn't last long, so I don't have much data for how well it works in practice.

5) Nonstandard Treasure
Loot is just whatever gear made sense for the foes to have, rewards are based on the setting, with no particular adjustment toward WBL. When this is generous, it works fine, because having extra gear doesn't break anything until it's a lot extra, IME. Like, twice WBL is no big difference. Having too little gear can break things, but is fine as long as players know that's going to be the case and build accordingly.


That last point is important, I think -
If the players (and GM) are moderately mechanics-savvy and told about the campaign parameters in advance, almost anything can work and have reasonable intra-party balance.
No gear. 10x the normal gear. One encounter a day. Dozens of encounters a day. Atypical foe distributions like "almost entirely classed NPCs" or "mostly undead and oozes". House rules like "restricted healing" or "magic recharges quickly" or "magic has backlash" or "feats can be learned in play".
They all work fine if everyone builds accordingly, and the GM keeps the modified strength of foes in mind when creating the scenarios.

People will say those are inherently imbalanced, but what they really mean is:
"I can't just assume any standard build will be viable" - It's better to build with the campaign in mind anyway, IME.
"We'll have to have a session 0 and intentionally balance our characters" - You already do if you want a balanced party in 3.x; it doesn't happen automatically.
"The GM can't just use stock foes of CR X and trust they'll be fine" - See previous answer, that's already not something you can rely on in 3.x.

[zlefin]

If that was your core point, then you did not explain it clearly in the first place.
op said: "But that's the core point of my argument against wbl: if you use wbl solely to control the party's power, it does not work. "

It's also a rather poor response to our posts, as it simply ignores what we actually said to replace it with a strawman version of it. Please read the actual arguments that were made more carefully; the point was not to use WBL solely as hte one and only tool for balancing party power; nobody said that. The point was to use WBL as one of SEVERAL possible tools for balancing party power, and for detecting what is causing imbalances when they occur.

Please don't strawman, please read carefully the arguments actually stated.

[Thurbane]

How many people actually pay attention to whealt by level?

In my experience?

IRL at actual tables: not much.

On optimization forums: A LOT!

[Endarire]

WBL has mattered as a starting point. For example, if you start as an ECL 11 character in 3.5, expect to start with 66,000G worth of stuff. Beyond that it's rarely mattered.

[Faily]

WBL are guidelines. They approximately cover at what point PCs go up against enemies with certain resistances, defenses, or special abilities, and what sort of gear they should have access to in order to handle such threats. Whether that be magic weapons, diamond dust for restoration, or cloaks of resistance.

I don't think any table I play with really follow it strictly. Even when we play the offical APs, I don't think even those stay within WBL, but I admit I haven't done the math to check.

[Rleonardh]

I will at least tell you the ways I use it.

Creation of level 6+ character
In one shots or short campaign settings or adventure books.

In long term campaigns I completely ignore it, love when players decide to build fleets or forts, help a town or other "money sinks" as it allows them to really get into the world around them than simple you gotta stop the world from ending.

Best one I was actually a player in, was a setting where ancient vampire lords awoke to once again take domain over the material world. Each one had a special power, every time they killed one of them the other vampires gained that power, there where 5 of them. If all vampires were truly killed it would open a portal that not even the gods could close to the abyss, so we had to kill 4 and figure out how to entomb the last one where it could never arise again. Never got to the end of that one as the dm passed away and we drifted away.

[Akal Saris]

I've seen WBL used often for new characters in existing campaigns, as the guidelines that organized play used to use, and presumably as guidelines for treasure in published modules (I am dubious about the last point!).

Other than those cases, no, but I'm not sure that it's better for the game. After all, I've been in a game where my level 11 ranger had a masterwork bow as his most valuable item, trying to stay relevant in a party with a druid, a wizard, and a cleric. As a DM, I rarely care at all about WBL.

[Fizban]

Also, the intent of the game is that you shouldn't need to strictly enforce a WBL cap -because WBL is just an average of their treasure results. If you're using level appropriate monsters with standard treasure, then you should on average end up close enough to the expected treasure, because you're already following expectations. The game said roll X (the average is [something]), and you're rolling X.

A potential problem is when people use tons of classed NPCs, who have triple or more the expected amount of treasure, or lots of other increased treasure monsters, without enough no-treasure monsters (or money sinks) to compensate. And wouldn't you know it, the higher a power level you want, the more people lean on only the most powerful (and highest treasure) monsters and their own char-op NPCs, while ignoring the "boring" and "easy" mindless and brute monsters that have low or no treasure.

If you're running a module, it should already have appropriate treasure. If you assign treasure based on number of encounters rather than monster treasure entries, that should also end up appropriate over time. And now I could swear I've had this conversation before.

I would be interested to see the math on whether treasure is also "self-correcting" like XP- presumably not, since that comes from a formula that includes your level, while treasure is just treasure and as noted can be completely divorced from the CR of a monster even in its own entry.

[Troacctid]

As someone who has spent an unreasonable amount of time researching and cataloguing the best and most efficient ways to spend gold, I would feel remiss if I didn't follow through and hew closely to WBL in my games.

Here is my strategy. Look at the XP gained as a fraction of the amount needed to gain a level. Then take that same fraction of the expected WBL increase for that level, and give them that much gold per person. For example, from 8th to 9th level, a PC needs 8,000 XP and is expected to earn 9,000 gp. So if the level 8 party gets 4,000 XP in one session, they also get 4,500 gp each. Easy.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Here is my strategy. Look at the XP gained as a fraction of the amount needed to gain a level. Then take that same fraction of the expected WBL increase for that level, and give them that much gold per person. For example, from 8th to 9th level, a PC needs 8,000 XP and is expected to earn 9,000 gp. So if the level 8 party gets 4,000 XP in one session, they also get 4,500 gp each. Easy.

A character going from 8th level to 9th is expected to earn 11,331 gp, not 9,000 (as per the "wealth comparisons" table on DMG p. 54).
The excess ~25% you earn over the expected 9k WBL gain is the assumed costs for consumables and other one-time expenses.

[Crake]

Personally, I use pathfinder's automatic bonus progression starting from level 1, and my players assume no magic items at all will come their way. I'm quite happy to hand out all sorts of exotic, but otherwise mundane items, in fact I have a whole spreadsheet/loot table that includes all the various exotic materials and armor/weapon types for various cultural settings, and I also include a variety of firearm levels as well.

But this way, magic items actually become exciting and valuable, or even the source of a quest to forge or find, and it also allows me to throw as much, or as little gold at my players depending on the type of campaign I'm running, without fear of it ruining things, while still letting them spend it on all sorts of non-mechanical goodies, like buying land, or a ship, building a dojo and so on. Sure, it doesn't let every character shore up all their weaknesses, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a team game after all, the players are supposed to cover each other, not cover themselves with magic items.