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Starting Treasure

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 108
By default, we tend to think of starting characters as inexperienced beginners who have scraped together a few coins to equip themselves with mundane items for a new life of adventure. By adjusting what beginning characters start with, you can use starting treasure to define the characters, making them part of the world they’re about to explore.

Starting with Magic Items

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 108
Giving each of the PCs a starting magic item makes them more robust and capable from the jump, and can be useful for smaller groups. Campaign concepts in which the characters already enjoy wealth, status, or recognition might also be reinforced with starting magic. For example, the PCs might be the younger generation of a land’s great trading houses. It makes narrative sense for their families to give them a leg up over other adventurers.

One option is to grant the players a collective budget of 1,500 gp per person, which they can use to buy any number of magic items. Leave them alone to agree on a distribution; they might get one mighty item, used by only one of them, or many lesser ones, so everybody gets something. The budget can only be spent on magic; they don’t get to keep leftover cash.

Keep a close eye on what the players purchase, and veto anything that might break the game from the beginning. Also be prepared to adjust encounter difficulties to account for the increased competence of magically equipped parties.

Be careful starting young or inexperienced players with magic items. Giving the stuff away can devalue the classic moment when a player finds her first piece of magical gear out in the wild.

Wealthy Characters

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 109
Princes, scions of mighty trading houses, and other characters of wealth and influence bring a ready supply of plot hooks to your game. But the modest starting budget given to player characters would seem to rule out certain background concepts. World logic says that their vast resources ought to include any piece of gear available for sale, but game balance requires that treasure must be earned in the course of play.

This can be addressed in the character’s background. Perhaps the character is proving a point to doubting elders, stealing away from familial duties to lead a footloose life, or has been banished from the fold, justly or not.

During play, you might also acknowledge the characters’ wealth in areas other than the equipment list. Ordinary citizens fawn over them. They have many contacts and enjoy access to the highest levels of society. Their non-combat garb might be expensively impressive—though of course, social rules forbid them to sell it to buy useful adventuring gear.

Alternatively, if other players consent, a player with a character concept that logically demands it might get a 10–20% bonus to their starting budget.