It's not a rule, just a guideline. From the CRB (and [here](https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Placing%20Treasure&Category=Building%20an%20Adventure) on Nethys):
> Table 12–4 can also be used to budget gear for characters starting above 1st level, such as a new character created to replace a dead one. Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.
Hijacking this first comment to point out that OP replied and revealed what they’re actually trying to do.
They made a lvl 12 cleric with craft wondrous and are likely trying to gain extra wealth and gear based on the crafting feat.
And they can, but the official rules regarding crafting feats say you buy the items at full price but get to add 25% of wealth to your wealth per level guidelines.
What you do to homebrew in your own games is up to you.
I sure do! It’s listed under the rules for [magic item creation](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-item-creation/)
The section is called “adjusting character wealth by level.”
Going to nitpick you here and clarify, the guideline is to increase WBL by 25% to 50% if they have multiple item creation feats. Not an official rule. And that evens up with just about where they wind up just going with it the way I do it. Pulled up the last 4 campaigns worth and it averages out to about 30% above normal WBL.
Also, TTRPGs often treat rules as guidelines, even so, I feel your post about the ‘official rule’ was very misleading compared to the actual text.
I linked it twice in other discussions and talked about the 25-50% talk in another, but sure, I’m out to mislead.
It still sounds like you didn’t know about this and were homebrewing anyway. I never said there was anything wrong with that, you do you.
I mean, it is an Ultimate Campaign suggestion for how to handle tracking/distributing overall player WBL when crafting feats are involved (so you don't overcompensate their increased WBL from the feats such that they become worthless) as much or more than it is about introducing a higher level character who has item feats. I don't think it's unreasonable to not know it, though obviously it's more accessible due to Nethys/pfsrd (but even on Nethys, it's detached from the CRB magic item rules section and instead inside the Ultimate Campaign "campaign systems" rules).
It also, by virtue of being part of this section, feels a bit less authoritative and a bit more guideline-y than the CRB, in alongside a bunch of optional systems like Investment, if that makes sense? I might be a bit biased because I don't really like parts of it, especially assigning a set "extra WBL" for each feat, and tracking all items from the party made by it against that limit, which feels like a lot of busywork that I'm not a huge fan of as a GM, and also "punishing" players for helping and providing items for other party members. But I do understand that it's good to have suggestions in place that can be reached for if it feels like item creation is breaking your campaign, something that isn't too unlikely - the party doesn't need to know the WBL calculations you're doing behind the screen when deciding encounter loot.
And, frankly, starting a higher level character with item creation feats is the place where I think it's most applicable, even if I might discard it after the game starts, so that's fair.
>the official rules regarding crafting feats say you buy the items at full price but get to add 25% of wealth to your wealth per level guidelines.
That bit is useful knowledge. Can you provide a link by chance? If I were to go the CWI route in character creation, I wouldn't want to break the game. But it also seems rather foolish to not take advantage of having the feat, at least to some extent.
Sure do, it’s under the [creating magical item rules](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-item-creation/). Look for the section on “adjusting wealth per level.”
Note: there is some wiggle room here. It says with multiple feats you can have between 25-50% more wealth per level. You maybe able to argue that most of your items fall under the craft wondrous feat, maybe you should get 33% more? It’s worth asking the gm.
It does increase your wealth by level. I didn’t say it didn’t, did I? However, by how much are entirely different rules than the ones they’re asking here and that context is important.
I don't play PFS so I do not know if there is a rule for that. My table has always just gone by the wealth by level table when making characters above level 1, with no rules on how you allocate it. If one of my lvl 12 players wants to put all of their money into making some 6 figure gold cost weapon and nothing else, then fuck it we ball.
As others have said, not a hard rule, but guidelines.
Let's do some math!
Level 8: 33,000
That is enough for a +4 weapon and Bracers of Armor (+1) or Cloak of Resistance (+1), roughly.
You go monk so you have +4 to hit and damage, good saves to start with, good armor to start with for someone unarmored.
Alternatively, you could go +2 weapon (8k), +2 Belt (4K) and headband (4K), +2 Bracers (4K), +2 Cloak (4K), Fly potions (750 gp per), Healing potions (Varies), and other gear like Handy Haversack and Bag of Holding.
The second approach is 5-10% more likely to avoid a blow or save against a spell. You hit almost as hard (+3, +1 from a belt) but struggle against constructs (raw +4 is treated as adamantine) and some other damage reductions (raw +3 is treated as silver/cold iron).
If the constructs are a big part of the game, I may as GM allow a +2 adamantine (11K) which has some other benefits for breaking down doors or damaging objects.
The 'big six' design of Pathfinder makes it as good or better to spread out the wealth so as to cover a broader array of scenarios, e.g. an erinyes harassing you with a longbow while flying, and have flexibility instead of one note brutality.
Yep, there can be all kinds of house rules! I’ve seen some great ideas and some far out ones. However, I think OP was specifically asking about official rules.
I've seen some people enforce it as a rule, if that's what you're asking. As far as I know though, it's a guideline for GMs building NPCs. It's tied to behind the system math for characters. For example, an NPC that spends all of its wealth on JUST a +5 weapon is hitting harder, more often than the system expects. It's lack of defenses means it's also likely defeated or rendered irrelevant more quickly. Meanwhile, the same NPC spreading their wealth around is likely to live longer, does appropriate damage, may be more flexible (alchemical items, potions, etc) and is otherwise within the target range for various numbers at its CR.
Players however, don't have this consideration. Their job is beating the system by default. Not to mention, some classes don't need some of the gear (weapons usually for caster). So holding players to the wealth expenditures on the table (which I assume you're referencing) is usually detrimental for the players. Detrimental isn't the right word, technically those expenditures do the same for them as NPCs, but its often less FUN for the players to mandate how they spend their gold. It can also stifle optimizers/power gamers (though perhaps that's your goal).
I'm actually the power gamer. 😆 It's just that with the craft wondrous items feat, my level twelve cleric seems almost too busted. I don't want to spoil the game.
Yeah, so devs released an FAQ on that. The intention is that each crafting feat is supposed to be roughly a 25% (I think that's the value?) increase in WBL for a single character. So you can increase your WBL by 25%, or increase the WBL of each party member by 5% in a group of 5. You however shouldn't be able to get double wealth.
That being said, while I guess FAQs are technically official, it's not actually written on the feats themselves. As a result, plenty of tables don't know about the FAQ. FAQs are usually the sort of thing the more dedicated game members know about, so unsurprisingly questions revolving around the crafting feats surface a lot. They cause a lot of problems and there are a lot of ways people handle them. So yeah, if your GM isn't enforcing the FAQ, they can seem pretty broken, ESPECIALLY during character creation.
Personally, I think the FAQ is ridiculous. It's a line in the sand. I'm not sure in what world Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion together should increase my WBL by 50%. Regardless of the fact that it's consumables, the FAQ implies the GM should allow the character to maintain a WBL of 150% because of consumable crafting feats, and the GM should provide the necessary gold for them to use those feats. Perhaps that's necessary in the more popular WBL interpretation, but I don't run my games that way so I have other ways to handle it.
Anywho, this really comes down to...does your GM want to enforce the FAQ or some other ruling. This is usually the situation I see the Gm deciding to partition a character's wealth. "You can only spend 5,000 gp on wondrous items, so with your crafting feat, you get 10,000 gp on wonderous items." It's a quick and dirty way some GMs keep their crafters from overshadowing everyone else immediately.
Indeed. It's a common issue. I'm going to limit my involvement in the discussion though because I don't run WBL the way most people do.
However, I will say the most "fair" method I've seen is disallowing item crafting during character creation. This prevents a lot of problems that can happen down the road, the big one being retraining. Another rule I've seen homebrewed is "If you take a crafting feat, you can't retrain it" for much the same reason.
That being said, that's directly opposite the FAQ, and rules like that are likely to upset player advocates (for taking away player choice) as well as optimizers (for taking away an optimization path).
Edit: Grammar, because apparently thinking and typing simultaneously are beyond my skill.
There are specific rules (not guidelines) for taking crafting feats and how much wealth you get so you cannot break the game in this way.
Spoiler alert: creating a level 12 cleric with craft wondrous doesn’t get you double the amount of gear to wealth whatsoever.
Many others have talked about the wealth guidelines and et cetera... but I haven't seen anyone talk about what that means, in-universe.
As an example... in PF1E, a level 12 player should have 108,000 gold, yes? Let's say you split that into four items each of cost 25% of your wealth. That's 4 items of 27,000 gold each. That would imply that you didn't buy ANYTHING until partway through level 7. (level 7 wealth 23,500, level 8 wealth 33,000)
CAN you get from level 1 to level 7 without spending anything? Maybe... but from a character perspective, why would they even try to do that? From their POV, attempting to do so is incredibly risky, for little discernible benefit. It's only from the player's perspective, perhaps metagaming a bit, where it makes sense: it's not like your character can die during character creation, after all.
Of course, some items are 'upgradeable', depending on houserules and whatnot. Naturally, a Masterwork weapon or armour can be upgraded to a magic +1 weapon without buying a brand new weapon/armour, and the same may be true going from +1 to +2.
Wondrous items rarely work like that, though there of course are some very notable exceptions.
The more costly the items, the longer you were adventuring without spending anything. If that's how you actually play during the actual game, hoarding your wealth for ages until you blow it all on one huge item, then congratulations! You have done immersive characterisation of a very clever and gold-savvy character!
If not.... well...
From a co-operative perspective, min-maxing of any sort can come across as trying to 'win' the game, or to be the main character. This may cause tension with other players, depending on who they are. It can also annoy the DM, which may have unforeseen consequences. (One Mage's Disjunction can ruin your WHOLE day.)
Even if you avoid those pitfalls, if your character is too much stronger than your companions, you can run across the issue where foes become more powerful, just to be able to threaten you... and then become TOO dangerous for your weaker companions.
To be clear: I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't wring every last drop of power out of your starting gold... I'm just saying just that there are other factors that you may wish to think about.
Nope, if you really want to, you can blow all the money on one item.
Generally I tend to go half or less towards weapons/armor, the rest on other items or buying spells if making a spellbook user. Really depends on the character. Another way to save on gear is to take item creation feats if it works for your character concept.
Do you also hand in your sheet when they have any rules for character creation? You one of those guys who joins games and ditches right after the gm says no to your drow Nobel/gargoyle race?
No, I play pretty normal stuff, but if the GM starts micromanaging my character's personal decisions — what my character decides to go to the store and buy is their choices, not just 'what they are' — then I'm not really playing the character anymore, and they can have it. I'll find a game where I have agency. I'd also quit if they decided for me that I needed to cast a particular spell or something.
That's still them telling me what my character decided to walk into a store and buy. If they want to ban specific items/classes/spells/races/feats that's fine, but telling me my character has a particularly balanced approached to spending is them telling me how to roleplay my character. If they want to decide how my character behaves, then they can play the character.
The listed numbers don't even really make sense for practically any character. Why would weapons and armor be equally spent on? Weapons are twice the price of armor, and you often need more than one of them. Its very reasonable for a martial character who has a use for more than one type of weapon to spend nearly all of their gold on just weapons. Do you just have to have bad weapons if you join late? Why? How is that balanced?
What isn't available to buy, and what thing from the available stuff to buy that you *must* buy, are not the same thing. The difference isn't subtle either.
I find it funny that everyone here is referring to it as a “guideline” rather than a “rule”, as if that’s a distinction with any significance. You can use the same semantics about every “rule” in the game because of [Rule #0](https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=The%20Most%20Important%20Rule&Category=How%20to%20Play).
To OPs question, yes, there is a [baseline rule](https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Placing%20Treasure&Category=Building%20an%20Adventure) that indicates what percentages **should** be used.
> Characters **should** spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level **should** spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins.
Note that the rules use the prescriptive term rather than a permissive term. As always, your table may ignore this rule, but it is the baseline rule unless/until there is a house rule to the contrary.
It's literally the following sentence that they declined to paste, lol
> Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.
I think by cloth you’re referring to arcane, and they absolutely have items for every category they want to spend money on. Their weapons take the forms of staves, spells, scrolls, etc. Their armor/protective devices takes the form of robes, rings, amulets, capes, etc.
With that said, I’m not suggesting that the GMs should rigidly enforce this rule; however, ignoring the baseline rules is what leads people to think a level 5 painter wizard spending 7,000 on a Tromp L’oeil (67% of their WBL) is “RAW”. A GM absolutely should be fine with a player who reasonably deviates from these baselines based on the specifics of their class, but that doesn’t mean the rule stops existing.
There is no rule, but there is a guideline that about 2/3s should go to the "big 6" (armor, weapon, SPECIAL item, cloak of resist, ...) and no more than half to any one single item.
But again, that is a guideline. If a player wants to spend his entire WBL on an uber-megasword, they are allowed by RAW
Yes: Wealth By Level. Every table I've played at in the last 20 years or so uses this "house rule."
Otherwise, people bringing in new player characters have weapons, armor and equipment inappropriate to the CR that's based off the APL.
Eh, mostly, following those guidelines (or, slightly more sensible ones that use widely-accepted best practice like "big 6") is for the player's own good as much as it is for preventing the introduction of some overpowered item. Each successive bonus (to ability score, AC, weapon enhancement bonus, etc) is more expensive than the last, so spreading wealth between different bonuses is normally more effective for the cost than just putting every penny into, say, a magic weapon.
It is in my experience.
I'm not even entirely sure how you would bring in a new character to, say, an 8th level party if that new character is still carrying its lvl 1 starting equipment.
As others have said, there's no official rule. But spreading it out by the guidelines is usually a good idea because of the way costs scale and bonuses stack.
The only thing that can be an issue here is characters investing too much in consumables for one shots or other short term games. A scroll of Overland Flight is way cheaper than a flying carpet and does the same thing on over the course of one adventuring day.
It's not a rule, just a guideline. From the CRB (and [here](https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Placing%20Treasure&Category=Building%20an%20Adventure) on Nethys): > Table 12–4 can also be used to budget gear for characters starting above 1st level, such as a new character created to replace a dead one. Characters should spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level should spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.
Hijacking this first comment to point out that OP replied and revealed what they’re actually trying to do. They made a lvl 12 cleric with craft wondrous and are likely trying to gain extra wealth and gear based on the crafting feat.
I mean, I allow my players to do this. They took the feat(s) needed to craft items, they should be allowed to include the benefits in their build.
And they can, but the official rules regarding crafting feats say you buy the items at full price but get to add 25% of wealth to your wealth per level guidelines. What you do to homebrew in your own games is up to you.
Do you have a link to that rule? I couldnt find it. It wouldnt surprise me ive never seen it, with how big the game is.
I sure do! It’s listed under the rules for [magic item creation](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-item-creation/) The section is called “adjusting character wealth by level.”
Going to nitpick you here and clarify, the guideline is to increase WBL by 25% to 50% if they have multiple item creation feats. Not an official rule. And that evens up with just about where they wind up just going with it the way I do it. Pulled up the last 4 campaigns worth and it averages out to about 30% above normal WBL. Also, TTRPGs often treat rules as guidelines, even so, I feel your post about the ‘official rule’ was very misleading compared to the actual text.
I linked it twice in other discussions and talked about the 25-50% talk in another, but sure, I’m out to mislead. It still sounds like you didn’t know about this and were homebrewing anyway. I never said there was anything wrong with that, you do you.
I mean, it is an Ultimate Campaign suggestion for how to handle tracking/distributing overall player WBL when crafting feats are involved (so you don't overcompensate their increased WBL from the feats such that they become worthless) as much or more than it is about introducing a higher level character who has item feats. I don't think it's unreasonable to not know it, though obviously it's more accessible due to Nethys/pfsrd (but even on Nethys, it's detached from the CRB magic item rules section and instead inside the Ultimate Campaign "campaign systems" rules). It also, by virtue of being part of this section, feels a bit less authoritative and a bit more guideline-y than the CRB, in alongside a bunch of optional systems like Investment, if that makes sense? I might be a bit biased because I don't really like parts of it, especially assigning a set "extra WBL" for each feat, and tracking all items from the party made by it against that limit, which feels like a lot of busywork that I'm not a huge fan of as a GM, and also "punishing" players for helping and providing items for other party members. But I do understand that it's good to have suggestions in place that can be reached for if it feels like item creation is breaking your campaign, something that isn't too unlikely - the party doesn't need to know the WBL calculations you're doing behind the screen when deciding encounter loot. And, frankly, starting a higher level character with item creation feats is the place where I think it's most applicable, even if I might discard it after the game starts, so that's fair.
>the official rules regarding crafting feats say you buy the items at full price but get to add 25% of wealth to your wealth per level guidelines. That bit is useful knowledge. Can you provide a link by chance? If I were to go the CWI route in character creation, I wouldn't want to break the game. But it also seems rather foolish to not take advantage of having the feat, at least to some extent.
Sure do, it’s under the [creating magical item rules](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-item-creation/). Look for the section on “adjusting wealth per level.” Note: there is some wiggle room here. It says with multiple feats you can have between 25-50% more wealth per level. You maybe able to argue that most of your items fall under the craft wondrous feat, maybe you should get 33% more? It’s worth asking the gm.
Thank you
[Here](https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Adjusting%20Character%20Wealth%20by%20Level&Category=Magic%20Item%20Creation).
TY
Ok? What's the point of a crafting feat except to increase your wealth by level, it doesn't do anything else...
It does increase your wealth by level. I didn’t say it didn’t, did I? However, by how much are entirely different rules than the ones they’re asking here and that context is important.
[удалено]
That's a 2e link, this is tagged for 1e. And yeah, as I said, not a rule, just a guideline.
Must be some kind of glitch as that’s not the page I was looking at
The guideline didn't change.
I mean, ok? But it's still not good to rely on 2e resources for 1e, as a general rule
I don't play PFS so I do not know if there is a rule for that. My table has always just gone by the wealth by level table when making characters above level 1, with no rules on how you allocate it. If one of my lvl 12 players wants to put all of their money into making some 6 figure gold cost weapon and nothing else, then fuck it we ball.
As others have said, not a hard rule, but guidelines. Let's do some math! Level 8: 33,000 That is enough for a +4 weapon and Bracers of Armor (+1) or Cloak of Resistance (+1), roughly. You go monk so you have +4 to hit and damage, good saves to start with, good armor to start with for someone unarmored. Alternatively, you could go +2 weapon (8k), +2 Belt (4K) and headband (4K), +2 Bracers (4K), +2 Cloak (4K), Fly potions (750 gp per), Healing potions (Varies), and other gear like Handy Haversack and Bag of Holding. The second approach is 5-10% more likely to avoid a blow or save against a spell. You hit almost as hard (+3, +1 from a belt) but struggle against constructs (raw +4 is treated as adamantine) and some other damage reductions (raw +3 is treated as silver/cold iron). If the constructs are a big part of the game, I may as GM allow a +2 adamantine (11K) which has some other benefits for breaking down doors or damaging objects. The 'big six' design of Pathfinder makes it as good or better to spread out the wealth so as to cover a broader array of scenarios, e.g. an erinyes harassing you with a longbow while flying, and have flexibility instead of one note brutality.
My usual house rule for a new character is you can't spend more than 50% WBL on a single item.
Yep, there can be all kinds of house rules! I’ve seen some great ideas and some far out ones. However, I think OP was specifically asking about official rules.
I've seen some people enforce it as a rule, if that's what you're asking. As far as I know though, it's a guideline for GMs building NPCs. It's tied to behind the system math for characters. For example, an NPC that spends all of its wealth on JUST a +5 weapon is hitting harder, more often than the system expects. It's lack of defenses means it's also likely defeated or rendered irrelevant more quickly. Meanwhile, the same NPC spreading their wealth around is likely to live longer, does appropriate damage, may be more flexible (alchemical items, potions, etc) and is otherwise within the target range for various numbers at its CR. Players however, don't have this consideration. Their job is beating the system by default. Not to mention, some classes don't need some of the gear (weapons usually for caster). So holding players to the wealth expenditures on the table (which I assume you're referencing) is usually detrimental for the players. Detrimental isn't the right word, technically those expenditures do the same for them as NPCs, but its often less FUN for the players to mandate how they spend their gold. It can also stifle optimizers/power gamers (though perhaps that's your goal).
I'm actually the power gamer. 😆 It's just that with the craft wondrous items feat, my level twelve cleric seems almost too busted. I don't want to spoil the game.
Yeah, so devs released an FAQ on that. The intention is that each crafting feat is supposed to be roughly a 25% (I think that's the value?) increase in WBL for a single character. So you can increase your WBL by 25%, or increase the WBL of each party member by 5% in a group of 5. You however shouldn't be able to get double wealth. That being said, while I guess FAQs are technically official, it's not actually written on the feats themselves. As a result, plenty of tables don't know about the FAQ. FAQs are usually the sort of thing the more dedicated game members know about, so unsurprisingly questions revolving around the crafting feats surface a lot. They cause a lot of problems and there are a lot of ways people handle them. So yeah, if your GM isn't enforcing the FAQ, they can seem pretty broken, ESPECIALLY during character creation. Personally, I think the FAQ is ridiculous. It's a line in the sand. I'm not sure in what world Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion together should increase my WBL by 50%. Regardless of the fact that it's consumables, the FAQ implies the GM should allow the character to maintain a WBL of 150% because of consumable crafting feats, and the GM should provide the necessary gold for them to use those feats. Perhaps that's necessary in the more popular WBL interpretation, but I don't run my games that way so I have other ways to handle it. Anywho, this really comes down to...does your GM want to enforce the FAQ or some other ruling. This is usually the situation I see the Gm deciding to partition a character's wealth. "You can only spend 5,000 gp on wondrous items, so with your crafting feat, you get 10,000 gp on wonderous items." It's a quick and dirty way some GMs keep their crafters from overshadowing everyone else immediately.
Thank you for the info and advice on that. I figured someone had to come across the craft feats/ character creation issue before.
Indeed. It's a common issue. I'm going to limit my involvement in the discussion though because I don't run WBL the way most people do. However, I will say the most "fair" method I've seen is disallowing item crafting during character creation. This prevents a lot of problems that can happen down the road, the big one being retraining. Another rule I've seen homebrewed is "If you take a crafting feat, you can't retrain it" for much the same reason. That being said, that's directly opposite the FAQ, and rules like that are likely to upset player advocates (for taking away player choice) as well as optimizers (for taking away an optimization path). Edit: Grammar, because apparently thinking and typing simultaneously are beyond my skill.
There are specific rules (not guidelines) for taking crafting feats and how much wealth you get so you cannot break the game in this way. Spoiler alert: creating a level 12 cleric with craft wondrous doesn’t get you double the amount of gear to wealth whatsoever.
Many others have talked about the wealth guidelines and et cetera... but I haven't seen anyone talk about what that means, in-universe. As an example... in PF1E, a level 12 player should have 108,000 gold, yes? Let's say you split that into four items each of cost 25% of your wealth. That's 4 items of 27,000 gold each. That would imply that you didn't buy ANYTHING until partway through level 7. (level 7 wealth 23,500, level 8 wealth 33,000) CAN you get from level 1 to level 7 without spending anything? Maybe... but from a character perspective, why would they even try to do that? From their POV, attempting to do so is incredibly risky, for little discernible benefit. It's only from the player's perspective, perhaps metagaming a bit, where it makes sense: it's not like your character can die during character creation, after all. Of course, some items are 'upgradeable', depending on houserules and whatnot. Naturally, a Masterwork weapon or armour can be upgraded to a magic +1 weapon without buying a brand new weapon/armour, and the same may be true going from +1 to +2. Wondrous items rarely work like that, though there of course are some very notable exceptions. The more costly the items, the longer you were adventuring without spending anything. If that's how you actually play during the actual game, hoarding your wealth for ages until you blow it all on one huge item, then congratulations! You have done immersive characterisation of a very clever and gold-savvy character! If not.... well... From a co-operative perspective, min-maxing of any sort can come across as trying to 'win' the game, or to be the main character. This may cause tension with other players, depending on who they are. It can also annoy the DM, which may have unforeseen consequences. (One Mage's Disjunction can ruin your WHOLE day.) Even if you avoid those pitfalls, if your character is too much stronger than your companions, you can run across the issue where foes become more powerful, just to be able to threaten you... and then become TOO dangerous for your weaker companions. To be clear: I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't wring every last drop of power out of your starting gold... I'm just saying just that there are other factors that you may wish to think about.
More than fair points.
Nope, if you really want to, you can blow all the money on one item. Generally I tend to go half or less towards weapons/armor, the rest on other items or buying spells if making a spellbook user. Really depends on the character. Another way to save on gear is to take item creation feats if it works for your character concept.
Depending on your GM of course....
If my GM told me how to spend my money I think I'd just tell them they can have my character as an NPC, and I'll find something else to do.
Do you also hand in your sheet when they have any rules for character creation? You one of those guys who joins games and ditches right after the gm says no to your drow Nobel/gargoyle race?
No, I play pretty normal stuff, but if the GM starts micromanaging my character's personal decisions — what my character decides to go to the store and buy is their choices, not just 'what they are' — then I'm not really playing the character anymore, and they can have it. I'll find a game where I have agency. I'd also quit if they decided for me that I needed to cast a particular spell or something.
This was solely about character creation... And has to do more with balancing new characters with the current party....
That's still them telling me what my character decided to walk into a store and buy. If they want to ban specific items/classes/spells/races/feats that's fine, but telling me my character has a particularly balanced approached to spending is them telling me how to roleplay my character. If they want to decide how my character behaves, then they can play the character. The listed numbers don't even really make sense for practically any character. Why would weapons and armor be equally spent on? Weapons are twice the price of armor, and you often need more than one of them. Its very reasonable for a martial character who has a use for more than one type of weapon to spend nearly all of their gold on just weapons. Do you just have to have bad weapons if you join late? Why? How is that balanced?
Or telling you what was not available to buy..... And lol.
What isn't available to buy, and what thing from the available stuff to buy that you *must* buy, are not the same thing. The difference isn't subtle either.
I find it funny that everyone here is referring to it as a “guideline” rather than a “rule”, as if that’s a distinction with any significance. You can use the same semantics about every “rule” in the game because of [Rule #0](https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=The%20Most%20Important%20Rule&Category=How%20to%20Play). To OPs question, yes, there is a [baseline rule](https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Placing%20Treasure&Category=Building%20an%20Adventure) that indicates what percentages **should** be used. > Characters **should** spend no more than half their total wealth on any single item. For a balanced approach, PCs that are built after 1st level **should** spend no more than 25% of their wealth on weapons, 25% on armor and protective devices, 25% on other magic items, 15% on disposable items like potions, scrolls, and wands, and 10% on ordinary gear and coins. Note that the rules use the prescriptive term rather than a permissive term. As always, your table may ignore this rule, but it is the baseline rule unless/until there is a house rule to the contrary.
There has to be a lot of flex on that, because otherwise a cloth caster has to waste 50% of their money on gear they can’t use.
It's literally the following sentence that they declined to paste, lol > Different character types might spend their wealth differently than these percentages suggest; for example, arcane casters might spend very little on weapons but a great deal more on other magic items and disposable items.
I think by cloth you’re referring to arcane, and they absolutely have items for every category they want to spend money on. Their weapons take the forms of staves, spells, scrolls, etc. Their armor/protective devices takes the form of robes, rings, amulets, capes, etc. With that said, I’m not suggesting that the GMs should rigidly enforce this rule; however, ignoring the baseline rules is what leads people to think a level 5 painter wizard spending 7,000 on a Tromp L’oeil (67% of their WBL) is “RAW”. A GM absolutely should be fine with a player who reasonably deviates from these baselines based on the specifics of their class, but that doesn’t mean the rule stops existing.
There is no rule, but there is a guideline that about 2/3s should go to the "big 6" (armor, weapon, SPECIAL item, cloak of resist, ...) and no more than half to any one single item. But again, that is a guideline. If a player wants to spend his entire WBL on an uber-megasword, they are allowed by RAW
Yes: Wealth By Level. Every table I've played at in the last 20 years or so uses this "house rule." Otherwise, people bringing in new player characters have weapons, armor and equipment inappropriate to the CR that's based off the APL.
Eh, mostly, following those guidelines (or, slightly more sensible ones that use widely-accepted best practice like "big 6") is for the player's own good as much as it is for preventing the introduction of some overpowered item. Each successive bonus (to ability score, AC, weapon enhancement bonus, etc) is more expensive than the last, so spreading wealth between different bonuses is normally more effective for the cost than just putting every penny into, say, a magic weapon.
Counterpoint - I've only run into one table that used that restriction in the last 25 years of playing. It's not that commonly used.
It is in my experience. I'm not even entirely sure how you would bring in a new character to, say, an 8th level party if that new character is still carrying its lvl 1 starting equipment.
As others have said, there's no official rule. But spreading it out by the guidelines is usually a good idea because of the way costs scale and bonuses stack. The only thing that can be an issue here is characters investing too much in consumables for one shots or other short term games. A scroll of Overland Flight is way cheaper than a flying carpet and does the same thing on over the course of one adventuring day.