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Ok, I'll be honest...
This thread has become a childish and bashing debate on rules or guidelines.
The rules are ok (shallowsoul will disagree), but if you want to change them, propose something, discuss about the problem...and try to not insult, bash, troll someone who disagree with you.
For my part, I suggest you start a new thread in the suggestion forum, with an open mind and without the ''I'm god, so everyone should agree'' attitude. If you need help to being polite, I can create the thread. But for now, this conversation is going nowhere, just lock the thread...
Ok, I'll be honest...
This thread has become a childish and bashing debate on rules or guidelines.
The rules are ok (shallowsoul will disagree), but if you want to change them, propose something, discuss about the problem...and try to not insult, bash, troll someone who disagree with you.
For my part, I suggest you start a new thread in the suggestion forum, with an open mind and without the ''I'm god, so everyone should agree'' attitude. If you need help to being polite, I can create the thread. But for now, this conversation is going nowhere, just lock the thread...
It was easy to see that it would derail quickly. When pure conjecture is presented as fact, and a hard-line attitude is taken up toward any alternative viewpoints, then all the recipe needs is a pinch of snark to send it off the tracks.
Quite an interesting read though if you're a glutton for punishment.
I agree with that, the title, the way he started his thread and his attitude aren't the best. He asked for it. But adding oil to fire won't help...
(Sorry, not sure about what I said... linguistic barriers are harsh)
Mirona... this thread was already moved to the suggestion forum by the wise actions of our wonderful moderators.
The system works perfectly fine, as most will agree. Changing a minor thing here or there to suit your personal tastes is fine. This is what home brew is all about. I even explained why each of shallowsoul's points of contention with the system aren't accurate... but shallowsoul doesn't wish to hear any disagreement so as I said before: We are talking at a wall. Is my own opinion set in stone... no. I actually did hear one suggestion on here I might try as a small house rule, just to see if I like it. It wasn't any of shallowsoul's suggestions. No it was a change that kept the balance of why the system works in the first place intact.
And lets face the real truth. shallowsoul simply doesn't want ANY crafting to be allowed. If his entire list of changes were implemented at a table that table would have no crafters. So this is just his passive aggressive way of trying to ban them.
While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.
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While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.
That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
The Flurry ruling impacted PFS organized play, where GM fiat is supposed to be kept to a minimum, and houseruling isn't allowed.
Magic item creation is not allowed in PFS, therefore the impact of the item creation rules is only on home play. That is a big part of the difference in reaction.
Good point.
You have hit on a big point. If the magic item creation rules were so good and so stable then there would be no problem with them being allowed in PFS but the fact that they aren't should be evidence enough that the own devs don't trust the system in organized play.
Also a good point.
While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
Wraithstrike said it.
But I think you are confused shallowsoul if you think that a GM controlling time and money is part of the crafting system. These are things you have to keep control of to simply have a well paced and balanced adventure. They are part of a GMs responsibilities period, whether you have crafters or not. As for the GM needing to "control" custom items... yes this IS the design intent of the crafting system, It is a feature not a bug. It allows GMs the freedom to decide for themselves what they wish to deal with or not and price it as they see fit. There is even a big section of guidelines set up to help the new GMs find a good balance themselves.
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While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
Guys, campaigns are BROKEN. I, the DM, have to come up with encounters and loot! Even in adventure paths, my NPCs might have to answer questions that the author hadn't accounted for. There's nothing in the rules about how to answer my players' questions about where the nearest inn is -- it's all up to DM fiat.
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While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
Wraithstrike said it.
But I think you are confused shallowsoul if you think that a GM controlling time and money is part of the crafting system. These are things you have to keep control of to simply have a well paced and balanced adventure. They are part of a GMs responsibilities period, whether you have crafters or not. As for the GM needing to "control" custom items... yes this IS the design intent of the crafting system, It is a feature not a bug. It allows GMs the freedom to decide for themselves what they wish to deal with or not and price it as they see fit. There is even a big section of guidelines set up to help the new GMs find a good balance themselves.
Do you understand that a crafter can have way more money than he should? He gets to craft his stuff for half price and then he gets to charge his companions anything over 50% and under 100%.
Do you acknowledge this or are you going to remain in denial? The only way a DM is going to stop this is to step in and just say no which is GM fiat and is something that the rules do not rely on.
You can't Rule 0 everything that becomes a problem. If that is your attitude then you never need a second printing of anything.
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While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
I find it interesting that you think the GM doesn't keep AC under control.
GM's control a player's access to most equipment through multiple methods. However, even granting that the players have access to all crafting feats and a magic-mart of all possible items, and the gold/time to spend on them, and the splatbook rules to get more AC, the GM *still* controls the effects of AC by saying what monsters the PC faces.
The GM determines if monsters flank, have magic weapons, aid another, use brilliant energy, grapple, target touch AC, etc. All of that is under the GM's domain. It's the GM's job. Much like giving players gold and time to craft, and for non-standard items, giving editorial control over the item.
The beauty of the crafting system is it says 'you can make all these hundreds of items easily, or you can make something awesome and unique that you work with your GM to decide the details on'.
As long as the player is looking for 'awesome and unique' and not 'bypass sanity and ignore built in limitations', the system works AMAZINGLY well.
If you want a system that is ironclad and never needs oversight, then you should write that system up from scratch and present it for peer review, because it isn't something that will work with a couple of tweaks to the system. None of the suggestions I've seen have created an ironclad system, just a more fiddly one.
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Do you understand that a crafter can have way more money than he should? He gets to craft his stuff for half price and then he gets to charge his companions anything over 50% and under 100%.
Actually, by RAW, a crafter can never sell an item for over 50% of the cost. It's pretty solidly written in black and white that selling for over 50% is against the rules.
The rules:
Selling Treasure
In general, a character can sell something for half its listed price, including weapons, armor, gear, and magic items. This also includes character-created items.
Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself.
While I think the rules could be better, I would not say they are proven to be broken. I have never had an issue with them. As the GM I control the time and money available for crafting. I also control any custom items that are asked for.That is the main point.
You, the DM, have to keep it under control for it to work.
Do you have to step in to keep AC under control?
Wraithstrike said it.
But I think you are confused shallowsoul if you think that a GM controlling time and money is part of the crafting system. These are things you have to keep control of to simply have a well paced and balanced adventure. They are part of a GMs responsibilities period, whether you have crafters or not. As for the GM needing to "control" custom items... yes this IS the design intent of the crafting system, It is a feature not a bug. It allows GMs the freedom to decide for themselves what they wish to deal with or not and price it as they see fit. There is even a big section of guidelines set up to help the new GMs find a good balance themselves.
Do you understand that a crafter can have way more money than he should? He gets to craft his stuff for half price and then he gets to charge his companions anything over 50% and under 100%.
Do you acknowledge this or are you going to remain in denial? The only way a DM is going to stop this is to step in and just say no which is GM fiat and is something that the rules do not rely on.
You can't Rule 0 everything that becomes a problem. If that is your attitude then you never need a second printing of anything.
How do you figure a crafter has more money than he should? Most of the time: They get treasure... they sell the stuff they don't want (at half price)... they build stuff they DO want at half price. They can exceed WBL in certain cases, this was covered in the FAQ. This is just fine. Unless they are totally focused on crafting they will never reach double WBL. And if they are that focused so what? They will be weaker in combat as a result and will need the extra gear to keep up.
As for how much he decides to charge others... that is up to him. But for every extra bit of wealth he earns he just made his friends richer too. After all they just paid only 75% of what they would have paid for that same item. Both are richer now aren't they? In this way they can help boost the party above WBL too. But since it won't likely reach double WBL I fail to see it having such a game breaking impact on play.
Mirona... this thread was already moved to the suggestion forum by the wise actions of our wonderful moderators.
I know that, but this discussion became a flamewar, not a constructive discussion on what should we change to implant the crafting rules into PFS. (seem that is what Shallowsoul is looking for).
Please Shallow, even ''flawed statistic'' can be used... We don't need a full study with three test groups,a control group, a random selection etc. Just look a your thread... you're a minority.
Edit: ninja'ed for the selling thing at half-price.
How do you figure a crafter has more money than he should? Most of the time: They get treasure... they sell the stuff they don't want (at half price)... they build stuff they DO want at half price. They can exceed WBL in certain cases, this was covered in the FAQ. This is just fine. Unless they are totally...
You can put together a fairly compelling argument.
Let's imagine a robot GM who gives a party of 5 12th level PCs their WBL in stuff they can't use... let's say diminuitive +1 suits of hide armor.
One PC is a crafter with all crafting feats. The 5 PCs agree to sell off all the armor, split the money equally, and buy what they want.
The crafter tells the 4 PCs he'll make them anything they want for worth up to 72,000 gp for their share (54k), and they all excitedly place orders. Crafter then takes all his money and craft what he wants.
Before selling: Each PC has 108,000 gp in useless gear.
After selling: Each PC has 54,000 gp.
After crafting: 4 PCs each have About 72,000 gp in gear, putting them under wealth by level. The crafter has 54,000 gp (his share) plus 72k (his profit of 18k per party member). He crafts 252,000 gp worth of gear for himself.
The party starts with RAW WBL of 108,000 gold, the non-crafters end up with 72k and the crafter ends up with 252k. This is why if you are following pure RAW you shouldn't ignore things like 'can only sell for half price', because when you pick and choose RAW to ignore and setup ridiculous situations as starting points, things quickly get out of hand.
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You can put together a fairly compelling argument.Let's imagine a robot GM who gives a party of 5 12th level PCs their WBL in stuff they can't use... let's say diminuitive +1 suits of hide armor.
One PC is a crafter with all crafting feats. The 5 PCs agree to sell off all the armor, split the money equally, and buy what they want.
The crafter tells the 4 PCs he'll make them anything they want for worth up to 72,000 gp for their share (54k), and they all excitedly place orders. Crafter then takes all his money and craft what he wants.
Before selling: Each PC has 108,000 gp in useless gear.
After selling: Each PC has 54,000 gp.
After crafting: 4 PCs each have About 72,000 gp in gear, putting them under wealth by level. The crafter has 54,000 gp (his share) plus 72k (his profit of 18k per party member). He crafts 252,000 gp worth of gear for himself.
As long as we're cherry picking arguments, I can play too.
Let's imagine a robot GM who gives a party of 5 12th level PCs their WBL in stuff they can't use... let's say diminuitive +1 suits of hide armor.
One PC is a crafter with all crafting feats. The 5 PCs agree to sell off all the armor, split the money equally, and the crafting PC will make them items they want out of the proceeds.
Before selling: Each PC has 108,000 gp in useless gear.
After selling: Each PC has 54,000 gp.
After crafting: Each PC has 108,000 gp in gear they wanted.
How is that any less compelling an argument?
Lesson learned - if the crafting PC tries to give you a discount off market price but charges more than the crafting cost so he can pocket the rest - say no.
How do you figure a crafter has more money than he should? Most of the time: They get treasure... they sell the stuff they don't want (at half price)... they build stuff they DO want at half price. They can exceed WBL in certain cases, this was covered in the FAQ. This is just fine. Unless they are totally...You can put together a fairly compelling argument.
Let's imagine a robot GM who gives a party of 5 12th level PCs their WBL in stuff they can't use... let's say diminuitive +1 suits of hide armor.
One PC is a crafter with all crafting feats. The 5 PCs agree to sell off all the armor, split the money equally, and buy what they want.
The crafter tells the 4 PCs he'll make them anything they want for worth up to 72,000 gp for their share (54k), and they all excitedly place orders. Crafter then takes all his money and craft what he wants.
Before selling: Each PC has 108,000 gp in useless gear.
After selling: Each PC has 54,000 gp.
After crafting: 4 PCs each have About 72,000 gp in gear, putting them under wealth by level. The crafter has 54,000 gp (his share) plus 72k (his profit of 18k per party member). He crafts 252,000 gp worth of gear for himself.The party starts with RAW WBL of 108,000 gold, the non-crafters end up with 72k and the crafter ends up with 252k. This is why if you are following pure RAW you shouldn't ignore things like 'can only sell for half price', because when you pick and choose RAW to ignore and setup ridiculous situations as starting points, things quickly get out of hand.
The situation couldn't ever happen. Really.
You are trying to claim the a party that made it to 12th level while only ever finding +1 suits of diminutive armor? First the GM is being a prick here. Such that any amount of bad things are going to happen if the GM is being a tool. There is NOTHING that isn't broken if the GM wants to break it.|
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Do you understand that a crafter can have way more money than he should? He gets to craft his stuff for half price and then he gets to charge his companions anything over 50% and under 100%.
Actually, by RAW, a crafter can never sell an item for over 50% of the cost. It's pretty solidly written in black and white that selling for over 50% is against the rules.
The rules:
Selling Treasure
In general, a character can sell something for half its listed price, including weapons, armor, gear, and magic items. This also includes character-created items.Trade goods are the exception to the half-price rule. A trade good, in this sense, is a valuable good that can be easily exchanged almost as if it were cash itself.
Actually he can craft his companions items for 75% of the cost and still come out smelling like roses. I know he can't sell to shopkeepers for more than half price but nothing is stopping him from crafting and charging commission.
Actually he can craft his companions items for 75% of the cost and still come out smelling like roses. I know he can't sell to shopkeepers for more than half price but nothing is stopping him from crafting and charging commission.
And a party of four non-crafters could arbitrarily decide that the Fighter, taking more damage than anyone else, is entitled to 40% of all loot, rather than the expected 25%.
Oh no, WBL is unbalanced within the party! Whatever shall we do? We could tell them no, but that's DM fiat, so clearly players getting loot is broken. We could just let them deal with the consequences of that decision, and if they're not having fun as a result, step in and suggest they rebalance resources. Of course, that still requires the DM to do something not listed in the rules, so it's still broken.
Players can find a way to break WBL on an individual level, no matter what you do. The first game I played in did exactly that -- loot distribution was based on the first person to say "I loot this body!" Eventually, we realized on our own that our greed was making the game less fun for everyone, and we fixed the problem ourselves, without DM intervention.
Overall, it's still going to be reasonably balanced. Yes, one character will be stronger than that character should be, but the rest of the party is weaker to compensate. Personally, though, I've found that the party benefits most by being relatively well rounded equipment wise. That crafter that's way over his WBL isn't going to seem nearly as powerful as his undergeared allies die and he's left to face the baddies by himself.
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Or the companions can say no to 75% cost because they want it at 50% cost just like what he pays. Making arguments like this are arbitrary and not factual or within the rules. This is player fiat.
Your right, but it would be either buy it at 100% or have it made for 75%. Most people I know would rather pay 75%.
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Actually he can craft his companions items for 75% of the cost and still come out smelling like roses. I know he can't sell to shopkeepers for more than half price but nothing is stopping him from crafting and charging commission.And a party of four non-crafters could arbitrarily decide that the Fighter, taking more damage than anyone else, is entitled to 40% of all loot, rather than the expected 25%.
Oh no, WBL is unbalanced within the party! Whatever shall we do? We could tell them no, but that's DM fiat, so clearly players getting loot is broken. We could just let them deal with the consequences of that decision, and if they're not having fun as a result, step in and suggest they rebalance resources. Of course, that still requires the DM to do something not listed in the rules, so it's still broken.
Players can find a way to break WBL on an individual level, no matter what you do. The first game I played in did exactly that -- loot distribution was based on the first person to say "I loot this body!" Eventually, we realized on our own that our greed was making the game less fun for everyone, and we fixed the problem ourselves, without DM intervention.
Overall, it's still going to be reasonably balanced. Yes, one character will be stronger than that character should be, but the rest of the party is weaker to compensate. Personally, though, I've found that the party benefits most by being relatively well rounded equipment wise. That crafter that's way over his WBL isn't going to seem nearly as powerful as his undergeared allies die and he's left to face the baddies by himself.
And the rogue who is disarming traps, or the cleric who is healing, or the other spellcasting class who are buffing, attacking, playing utility, and crafting your stuff at bargain price.
Yes yes yes, we have danced to this tune before.
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And the rogue who is disarming traps, or the cleric who is healing, or the other spellcasting class who are buffing, attacking, playing utility, and crafting your stuff at bargain price.
Yes yes yes, we have danced to this tune before.
Then why not provide an actual response? The reason that wealth is unequally distributed doesn't make a difference in the world. Crafting (as a system) is no more to blame than the fact that as a role playing game, a player can say, "I give all of my money to John." Maybe we should have rules to prevent players from interacting with each other?
The point is that players can easily do something, even in the absence of crafting, that leads to some players being below WBL while others are above. This does not break crafting, nor does it necessarily break the game. By its nature it will tend to be somewhat self correcting, and even in the extreme cases, it's just not reasonable to add rules to fix it. That's what the DM is there for.
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In response to Aranna and Bill Dunn, I thought it was obvious that my position was one of ridiculousness. Given a ridiculous situation, it's possible to completely break WBL. It requires a capricious GM and complicit characters, but it can be done.
This is my thesis statement though... the crafting rules are purposely loose, allowing far more leeway than an ironclad and balanced set of rules should ever allow, because they presume an active and engaged GM exerting control (GM fiat).
I never quite understand the 'GM fiat is BAD' component of the gaming world. Bad GM fiat is bad, but good GM fiat is amazing. The entire purpose of the GM is to adjudicate things in a way that make the game more fun for everyone at the table.
GM's exert control in encounter design, off the cuff circumstance bonuses, NPC reactions, availability of time, resources, adventure hooks, etc. All of that is fiat. I wonder sometimes if there are players that would prefer a robot GM that would handle all the mechanics.
Given that a good GM makes all of these critical game decisions already, I fail to see how the rules saying the GM should also make these decisions with regard to custom spell research, custom magic item creation, and custom races is a 'bad thing'. I for one prefer a game in which the rules let me make these as long as the GM vets it, which is why I have a disconnect with shallowsoul... I don't foresee a crafting system that is both ironclad so that it no longer requires editorial control by the GM *and* allows you to make truly custom items. I feel that those two design choices are at odds with one another inherently, and you need to pick one or the other. I'm willing to be shown a system that proves me wrong, but one that just adds some arbitrary XP cost is not it.
In response to Aranna and Bill Dunn, I thought it was obvious that my position was one of ridiculousness. Given a ridiculous situation, it's possible to completely break WBL. It requires a capricious GM and complicit characters, but it can be done.
Fair enough. I thought you might be getting at that, but the case you constructed comes up fairly often in these sorts of arguments and really is a cherry pick, so I made sure that I aired a contrary argument.
I never quite understand the 'GM fiat is BAD' component of the gaming world. Bad GM fiat is bad, but good GM fiat is amazing. The entire purpose of the GM is to adjudicate things in a way that make the game more fun for everyone at the table.
GM's exert control in encounter design, off the cuff circumstance bonuses, NPC reactions, availability of time, resources, adventure hooks, etc. All of that is fiat. I wonder sometimes if there are players that would prefer a robot GM that would handle all the mechanics.
I agree, there are a lot of weird views against GM fiat. Shallowsoul isn't usually one to voice them based on his other threads, though. In other threads, he seems pretty much in GM authority's corner. This particular topic seems an odd windmill for him to tilt at, though the frequency with which he's been blasting GM fiat makes it clear it's a hot issue for him (misplaced as most of the rest of us involved in the thread believe it is).
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And the GM should be stepping in and saying, no, the rules state you can only sell items for 50% market value. The GM should not be letting the player do this. This is a case of a GM letting his players run rampant.Or the companions can say no to 75% cost because they want it at 50% cost just like what he pays. Making arguments like this are arbitrary and not factual or within the rules. This is player fiat.Your right, but it would be either buy it at 100% or have it made for 75%. Most people I know would rather pay 75%.
But he's not selling them. He is crafting for a fee.
I wonder if anyone has considered that being vastly above WBL isn't that big of a deal. I mean seriously, the game is already calibrated for up to like X0.5-x6 WBL or something like that. I mean, the WBL for a high fantasy game is x2 before crafting. It can go much, much higher without really straining the system.
This seems like whining that when a PC dies that the other PCs can have his loot. That's probably the #1 way for PCs to go way over WBL and doesn't have anything to do with crafting, time, or feats. It can be solved by almost nothing short of GM fiat or metagaming.
Example: Bob, Dave, Jill, and Jane are adventurers. During one of their adventures, Bob takes an arrow to the kn-- I mean head. Bob dies. Now Bob is carrying the following goodies: 34 flaming arrows, a bag of holding, a handy haversack, a +2 cloak of resistance, a +1 seeking bow, a +1 magical-beast bane longsword, and a belt of physical awesomeness +2.
Dave, Jill, and Jane go "Aww, Bob snuffed it... $_$" and loot his body. Jane is a wizard and couldn't care about most of the stuff, but takes his handy haversack. Jill is a barbarian and now just got a free +2 belt, a new sword, and a new bow, and a new cloak. Why? Because the other players either have equivalent things or don't care.
So what just happened? Well Bob snuffed it, and now Jill is about x2 WBL compared to what Bob was before (assuming they've all been getting a 1/4 share). Bob rerolls and introduces a new character at normal WBL (as is customary: "Character Wealth by Level can also be used to budget gear for characters starting above 1st level, such as a new character created to replace a dead one."-PRD), and now one of the PCs is greatly above WBL.
But it doesn't really matter.
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But he's not selling them. He is crafting for a fee.And the GM should be stepping in and saying, no, the rules state you can only sell items for 50% market value. The GM should not be letting the player do this. This is a case of a GM letting his players run rampant.Or the companions can say no to 75% cost because they want it at 50% cost just like what he pays. Making arguments like this are arbitrary and not factual or within the rules. This is player fiat.Your right, but it would be either buy it at 100% or have it made for 75%. Most people I know would rather pay 75%.Lol. What do you think selling consists of.
It's the transfer of property or services for a monetary value. Someone gets an item or service provided, the other person gets money.
Actually, the other PCs could be buying the materials, which is what the gold cost represents, and then hand over a gem for his services. Its not like the gold vanishes from your pocket and poof you have an item.
In response to Aranna and Bill Dunn, I thought it was obvious that my position was one of ridiculousness. Given a ridiculous situation, it's possible to completely break WBL. It requires a capricious GM and complicit characters, but it can be done.
This is my thesis statement though... the crafting rules are purposely loose, allowing far more leeway than an ironclad and balanced set of rules should ever allow, because they presume an active and engaged GM exerting control (GM fiat).
I never quite understand the 'GM fiat is BAD' component of the gaming world. Bad GM fiat is bad, but good GM fiat is amazing. The entire purpose of the GM is to adjudicate things in a way that make the game more fun for everyone at the table.
GM's exert control in encounter design, off the cuff circumstance bonuses, NPC reactions, availability of time, resources, adventure hooks, etc. All of that is fiat. I wonder sometimes if there are players that would prefer a robot GM that would handle all the mechanics.
Given that a good GM makes all of these critical game decisions already, I fail to see how the rules saying the GM should also make these decisions with regard to custom spell research, custom magic item creation, and custom races is a 'bad thing'. I for one prefer a game in which the rules let me make these as long as the GM vets it, which is why I have a disconnect with shallowsoul... I don't foresee a crafting system that is both ironclad so that it no longer requires editorial control by the GM *and* allows you to make truly custom items. I feel that those two design choices are at odds with one another inherently, and you need to pick one or the other. I'm willing to be shown a system that proves me wrong, but one that just adds some arbitrary XP cost is not it.
The whole game runs via GM control. I agree. Not just crafting.
You should have made this post not that other one.
And WBL is a tricky issue since it is merely a suggestion. The devs were basically saying you should be somewhere in the neighborhood of this much money at this level. Because they basically expect that when they set up APs. They know about crafting too and have said crafting should be allowed to exceed WBL. In a pure homebrew game WBL is often less than useless. Often GMs set their own pace on wealth. And WBL between party members is purely a player decision, and varies wildly depending on many factors from loot division to charging to craft items.
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Whoever posted the House Rule of Crafting at 100% cost but allowing slot items to be "salvaged" at 100% value towards crafting got my attention.
WBL is a fact, as is the need for crafting. Whether one buys something crafted by another or does it himself, it's built in certain equipment is desired and unless you're playing 4E, you aren't going to find your "wish list" while adventuring. However, over time, crafters can exceed WBL. In the absurd example which no GM should allow, a character created with 10,000gp of equipment could opt to take cash only, then take that 10,000 and craft 20,000gp worth of magic items, double what his WBL says he should have.
Which is why I was intrigued by the house rule. Crafting costs market price (full cost), but you can "salvage" for crafting purposes similar slot items at full market price rather than selling them at 1/2 cost. So, a +1 short sword would basically be melted down and its energies converted to cover the cost of a +1 greatsword (less the cost of the masterwork greatsword in the first place). It covers the intent (allow characters to craft what they want/need to be better equipped) but does not disrupt Wealth By Level.