After hours of mad tinkering I've finally come up with a wealth-alternative system that does not deprive PCs of the versatility that comes with wealth/magical items!

Here's the scoop: At each level after 1st, characters receive 1 or more Hero Points that can be used to enhance their adventuring abilities. These abilities are spell-like and exactly mimick the basic magical items in the DMG. I feel that the Hero Point progression is much more balanced than the wealth-by-level chart in the DMG; low-level characters can attain relatively better spell-like abilities than other characters can buy magic items. Further, the Hero points do not sky rocket exponentially as the wealth-by-level chart does; therefore high level characters do not have quite the same ground-breaking powers that normal high level PCs do:

Bonus Total
Hero Hero
Level Points Points
2 1 1
3 2 3
4 3 6
5 4 10
6 6 16
7 8 24
8 10 34
9 12 46
10 15 61
11 18 79
12 21 100
13 24 124
14 28 152
15 32 184
16 36 220
17 40 260
18 45 305
19 50 355
20 55 410

Chakra abilities cost the equivalent of their identical magical item counterparts in Hero points, divided by 1000. Hence, a 2nd level character could use his Hero point to grant himself a +1 magical bonus on the shield that he carries.

Level Max Bonus per Chakra*
1-4 +1
5-8 +2
9-12 +3
13-16 +4
17-20 +5
*A PC may have special abilities with this bonus-equivalent in addition to the listed ‘raw bonus’.

Chakras
Hands: AB/damage, spells
Fingers: Deflection AC, skills, feats, class abilities
Soul: Armor AC, SR, DR
Shoulders: Charisma
Hands: Dexterity
Waist: Strength
Throat: Natural AC, unarmed AB/damage, constitution, wisdom
Brow: Intelligence
Arms: Shield AC

As always negative and positive input is welcome.

I'm hoping that the reason nobody has commented on this thread is because of it's illegibility, so:

Bonus Total
Hero Hero
Level Points Points
2 1 1
3 2 3
4 3 6
5 4 10
6 6 16
7 8 24
8 10 34
9 12 46
10 15 61
11 18 79
12 21 100
13 24 124
14 28 152
15 32 184
16 36 220
17 40 260
18 45 305
19 50 355
20 55 410

Chakra abilities cost the equivalent of their identical magical item counterparts in Hero points, divided by 1000. Hence, a 2nd level character could use his Hero point to grant himself a +1 magical bonus on the shield that he carries.

Level Max Bonus per Chakra*
1-4 +1
5-8 +2
9-12 +3
13-16 +4
17-20 +5
*A PC may have special abilities with this bonus-equivalent in addition to the listed ‘raw bonus’.

Chakras
Hands: AB/damage, spells
Fingers: Deflection AC, skills, feats, class abilities
Soul: Armor AC, SR, DR
Shoulders: Charisma
Hands: Dexterity
Waist: Strength
Throat: Natural AC, unarmed AB/damage, constitution, wisdom
Brow: Intelligence
Arms: Shield AC

Nevermind, I guess it's impossible to have more than 1 space between any two texts on this messageboard.

Happy Gaming.

Hardly.

Took me forever to find this thread, but I can definitely have use for this in my Vedic Fantasy game. Lemme give this a whirl and I will get back to you!

This becomes especially useful as I have one of the characters who is playing an exalted priest of Brahma & Saraswati with Vow of Poverty.

This Hero Points system would allow him to essentially "unlock" a specific soul meld or two and turn his accrued Hero Points into something he could actually use.

Since we are dabbling with Incarnum in my game as well, this becomes especially useful. Thank you for posting this!

never came across this before, but it seems a good idea. Not sure how the points pan out, but my gut says "about right."

Definitely a workable way of doing it I think.

ZOMG Tequila was this written under your alt's or was I just being dense?

Totally didn't realize this was you until now. Great content!