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I have this nice second-level ranger character.
I have plans for what she'll be doing when she reaches level thirteen, presuming I take the shortest route there possible.
In a word: sheesh.
I have plans for what she'll be doing when she reaches level thirteen, presuming I take the shortest route there possible.
In a word: sheesh.
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This means that, come about fifth level, when I should be able to cast those nifty 3rd level spells, and the module assumes I CAN. I can't, because I'm only mid 4th, if that high.
Two thoughts:
1. The way the expected gold awards are set up, even if you dump *all* of your money into magic item creation, at lower levels you're only spending ~8% of your earned experience, and at mid-levels you're only spending ~15% of incoming XP. Even at 20th level, money is still the binding factor; you're earning ~8 gold per XP, which still isn't enough to cover the 12.5 gold per XP spent during item creation.
I haven't actually done the mathematical progression out, but a quick estimate says that one shouldn't end up falling a full level behind until about lvl 14-15 or so.
(This can, of course, be worked around by creating magical items and selling them for a profit to fund more item creation, but then you're effectively converting XP into gold to enable converting XP into items, which is, well, inefficient. ;)
2. It is true that even if you only spend ~5% of your XP on magic items, sometimes you'll fall on the low side of a level break while the rest of the party falls on the high side. However, the power-gain from getting that many magical items at half-price is *substantial* - while your individual "maximum applied power" will be lower (ie, you don't have access to that new level of spells), you'll have a much higher versatility (for items which let you do new things, or expand your options like scrolls), staying power (for items that give you more "charges", such as scrolls and wands), and/or baseline power (for items that bump up your basic stats/AC/skills/etc).
It is in some ways a similar sort of tradeoff that a spellcaster makes when multiclassing - they lose that "peak of power", since they can't access the most powerful spells possible for their character level, but gain in versatility and/or staying power.