My gaming group and I have been brainstorming on how to alleviate the need for the GM to manipulate the amount of gold pieces that a party has access to. The current system encourages the GM to restrain player creativity when it comes to earning money as it can be directly changed into magical item power which will upset the balance of the dice/game portion. While the Challenge Rating system can be adjusted by the GM, it is not an exact science so it forces the GM to control the wealth of the characters which can feel punitive as a player.
With the game expectations being calibrated around the Wealth by Level chart we decided to take the onus of adjudicating the system from the GM and place it on the players. The idea is that the Wealth by Level chart is used as a limit of "bound" magic items that a player can have at any one time. Binding a magic item to you would use up its market value in GP of your Wealth by Level GP pool and would allow you to use it. Items that are not bound to you do not function. It would take a night of rest in order to change what your bound items are.
Consumable items would only need to be allocated once, for example it would take 50 GP worth of your wealth by level to have a Potion of Cure Light Wounds slot, you could have as many potions as you could afford but would only take the one slot.
Items that have clear tiers to them could be paid for at a lesser tier, for example a Longsword +3 could be bound as a Longsword +1 and would only function as a Longsword +1 though it would still be a Longsword +3 for the purpose of destroying or damaging it.
Artifacts would be exempt from the Wealth by Level binding rules as they are generally more storyline based and cannot be created.
This would allow characters to have an appropriate amount of magical treasure and keep the Challenge Rating system relatively intact and allow a GM to be a bit freer with gold rewards. In addition it would lessen the penalty that characters take to their overall character power when they spend wealth on anything other than more magic items. This would encourage the spending of wealth on things in the game world, like caravans, castles, towns, and NPC's as the character would gain less utility by having more than their Wealth by Level in magic items on them.
This rule also means that magic items have less use to lower level people and instead are more the province of adventurers as you have to have levels in order to bind magic items. Really powerful magic items could only be used by high level people.
Characters would have to manage their Wealth by Level and would create some interesting choices on how to equip your character. It would end up being like encumbrance and help balance the mechanical side of the game without burdening the GM with the need to artificially limit the creativity of the players.
Thanks for reading the post and all feedback, suggestions, insight, sarcastic observations, insults or mockery are appreciated. Thanks!
As I understand it, the rule effectively says
"a character can only use X gp worth of items at a time, where X is equal to his expected wealth"
If that's the case, it reduces the power of over-geared parties to very slightly above the norm and enforce approximately equal shares of the loot. That might well be fine. You may also want to consider ruling that items priced above half your limit can't be bound. That should stop characters blowing their massive wealth on crafting something obscene like an item that grants wishes to equip between adventures.
One problem I have with this is characters can't pick up the awesome sword they just found and use it.
I recommend letting characters instantly unbind items without the need for an action and instantly bind items they have for double the usual cost.
That should fix let people be much more spontaneous and make the rule less obstructive, but not without cost.
It might be worth looking up Heroic Distinctions on these forums if you want to check out an alternative system. That one's designed to replace magic items completely, so you can get the same effects but only through levelling, not by buying them.
How does this system interact with cursed items?
@ Mortuum Cursed Items would also be exempt as once you attempted to bind the item it would become cursed to you. The cost to attempt to bind it would be the GP value of the item that the cursed item mimics. Once it became cursed to you it would no longer take up any portion of your Wealth by Level binding pool.
Hmm, I normally scatter the level 20 WBL around the game world and let my players find it and earn extra GP through Side Quests and Jobs.
Though I have been working on a campaign that doesn't use dungeons and focuses more on Sandbox Missions. Think FFXII's Hunts meets Fairy Tail's Job Board.
I normally let my players set the campaign pace so they can choose to take that month off to earn extra GP and Craft items or they can choose to progress the story and just buy(read: commission) or find what they need/want using whatever they get from their treasure piles.
What's the problem with just hiking up the power level of monsters when the PCs come up with a really successful power scheme? They'll have a good easy fights, but they'll quickly move on to bigger, badder things that challenge them just as much as before while still gaining the benefit of their good idea by gaining more experience than typical and levelling faster.
WBL should be a general guideline and nothing more.