Being that the adventures in Dungeon are designed based on the assumption that the party will have as much magic as the DMG suggests I would go with what's there. At lower levels I don't think it matters so much, but about 5th or 6th is when you'll probably start noticing problems if the party isn't equiped well enough. A lot of it depends on the adventure too though. If your fighting a lot of things with damage reduction, not having the right level of magical weapons can be detrimental. Terrain might pose a problem as well, as an adventure that requires a lot of jumping arround long distances, say back and forth from cities hundreds of miles away from eachother, will get complicated for parties not wealthy enough to be buying scrolls of teleport.
Stick close to standard gold. You don't have to adhere to it penny per penny, but too little will leave them weak and bored, and too much will make them overpowered, and bored.
I tend to think the amount of gold per level in the DMG is just horrendously too much. A nice magic weapon, some cool armor, a wonderous item or two, maybe a ring, then a belt of different potions and such. That's fine.
The idea that people are going to wander around with the personal wealth of nations clanging around in their pockets is something I've always scratched my head about--but then again I almost never run published adventures so I don't have to powerscale things the way some folks do.
Then again, I've also seldom had bored players.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
|
Well by 6th level according to the new MIC you're gonna start to see Weapons +1 popping up in treasure. Armor/Shields +1 should appear around level 4. Remember no single item should be worth more than 1/4 of a PC's wealth and their consumables (potions and scrolls) shouldn't really be counted towards it either. Most of the minor useful Wonderous items could be bought about now like Boots of Striding and Springing, Eyes of the Eagle, Heward's Handy Haversack, Quivers of Elhonna, etc.