Post/Author/DateTime	Post
FenixNightShade 01-24-05, 01:03 AM	My DM had us roll up 1st level characters, then after 1st encounter, (and his disgust with how easily orcs manhandled us) he levelled us up to 5, after 2 more sessions, we are now 6, but noone in the party has any magic items, and we are all under 1000 gp (with no real expenditures... room and board, noone in the world seems to sell potions, scrolls or wands) Now I know that the DM can run a low magic setting, except our party consist of a monk, a ranger, a cleric/sorcerer and a wizard... (our barbarian and fighter decided to do other things than play with us, and our rogue can't ever seem to get out of trouble with his parents long enough to attend the weekly session) So I'm guessing it's not too low magic settings... He's kinda new to DMing, and so he's not quite got the CR system down yet, and then he equips his monsters with nerf bats so they don't kill us outright (Large Fire Elemental, he played it without the DR5/- and then grumbled when we waltzed through it at 5th level) We took down a single displacer beast, but then came up against a pyrohydra (CR6), without any ice spells or acid spells that do considerable damage, (not to mention a spare short sword of frost or something) we were forced to feed the ranger's animal companion to it and run (he's NE btw). I looked in the DMG and there's a table about wealth gain or something, but I can't quite figure out how much money (or i assume an equivilant amount of magic armor/weapons/scrolls/potions/wands/etc) we should have for our level. I mean i don't want to blow through hordes of dragons, but I don't want to have to fight a demon or 2 without an aligned weapon or something... I mean i guess it's eventually up to the DM what to do about this, but he seems frustrated by the fact that he can't come at us full force and we walk/crawl away slightly victorious (with the wizard on the stretcher or whatever) Help... Please.... :bow:
SmokeShadow 01-24-05, 01:16 AM	If you guys are being hit with CR 5s and 6s, then you should have the wealth the DMG stipulates (however, the DM has final say, and the flavour of his world might be that no one is extremely wealthy). If you are still fighting little guys, I'd just let your DM figure things out.
Telperion 01-24-05, 04:07 AM	Create: 1 fighter / wizard / spellsword. 1 cleric 1 barbiarian / fighter 1 druid Play to your hearts content without a great deal of trouble. Of course you'll have to heavily depend on one another, so a low magic item, low funds, campaign does require a great deal of teamwork. Especially the barbarian / fighter, who needs to be buffed, magicked and protected againts various nasties that aren't corporeal / easily reachable. I'm actually just about to enter into a Forgotten Realms campaign that is extremely low on magic items, extremely low on funds (no hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of treasure for us) and thus doesn't really allow PC magic item creation. Since it seems like we won't be able to buy any magical items what so ever, and I'm disinclined to believe that the DM is going to give us loads of magical items as treasure...well I'm in a similar situation with a campaign that starts at 3rd level. Good luck with your problem. We are all going with multiclassed characters that are half warriors and half full casters. Well, okay, I'm just doing a cleric, but I'll take the Warpriest PrC from Complete Divine as soon as I can :).
On_the_wings_of_TPK 01-24-05, 12:04 PM	Q: "How much wealth/magic Items should we have?" A: The exact amount of wealth/magic items that you have on you now. And not a cp more or less. Your DM will give you what is appropriate for his/her campaign and comfort level. As has already been pointed out you, maybe you're in a low magic world. You may not have come across the treasure yet. Do Fire Elementals or a Hydras really seem like creatures that carry a lot of liquid assets on them? DM: "You see a large multi-headed beast, heading towards town. It appears to be on its way to market, as it is carrying a shiny suit of armour, a very magical-ooking sword, and a staff with large green gem on it. You can also see its bulging money purse, from which you hear the distinct jingle of platinum pieces." Is that what you honestly expect?!? What I recommend is that you put the DMG down until you're ready to DM yourself, then go say "thank-you" to your friend who is putting more time and effort into this than you know. Seriously, s/he is working extremely hard just so that you and the rest of your party can a good time. Appreciate it. Cheers.
Power of the Horde 01-24-05, 12:10 PM	By the book, a 6th-level character should have about 13,000 gp. Likely mostly in equipment. It depends on the campaign, of course, and so can vary widely.
Gereli 01-24-05, 05:07 PM	Your DM will give you what is aporprait for his/her campiagn and comfort level. Assuming an arbitrarily experienced, wise, and just DM, this is certainly true. However, as a relatively quick review of these very forums demonstrates, the attitude of "the DM can do no wrong" is a pernicious one. It appears, based on the information that Power of the Horde so thoughtfully cited, that this party is substantially below the expected amount of wealth for characters with their amount of experience. There are numerous good reasons for this-- a low magic or low wealth campaign being the most obvious one. However, there are equally many, if not more, bad reasons for it. In the case of a new DM, I'm more inclined to suspect the bad reasons. This is not to slam the party or the DM-- we were all new players once. But if nobody took the time to tell us, or show us, how we were doing things "wrong", would we have ever gotten any better? At the very least, this poster should be aware (and should inform his DM) that the PCs are significantly underequipped by normal standards. Then, if the DM still wants to run the campaign with a dearth of wealth and magical items, it will be a conscious choice and not one born of ignorance.
FenixNightShade 01-24-05, 05:53 PM	Thank you for that information... In a previous campaign, this DM gave away magic items, but being new, gave mostly medium wondrous items and one +5 great sword (that needed pp placed into a slot in the hilt after each attack) and he felt that we were too powerful... I've tried to explain the magic items portion of the DMG to him (since I fill in as DM every so often) but I think his previous campaign may have scared him off from giving away too many items. So, yeah, I see that the DM should be able to challenge us even if we don't have magic items, though alot of the larger monsters have spell like abilities that are just about their only attack.
Gereli 01-25-05, 02:50 AM	and one +5 great sword (that needed pp placed into a slot in the hilt after each attack) A coin operated sword... ROFL. Assuming the touch of whimsy was appropriate to the mood of the campaign, your DM just scored major points with me. :D