I wouldn't say we have "too much" money. It's not like you can go choose minor artifacts and add them to your character sheet; and it's not like you can get more than one +10 weapon on any character.
What we have in terms of magic items is:
-A "selection" of
real magic items (200k [x1], 100k [x2]; 50k [x5]; 20k [x10]); worth at most 850 gp; and only 1/2 of that is able to be worth over 100k.
-As many "wooden nickels" as you want. At around level 11, any item worth 15k gp is actually what the "noobs" use. Seriously. The stuff worth more than 15k cannot be ever obtained easily.
The good stuff, and why you can't buy it with goldYou can't wish for the good stuff, and no one will make it for love or gold alone. Wizards only really make one item per level that is equal to their caster level, which means that they will be very picky about what it is that they make.
The upshoot of this is that "good stuff" you need to adventure for, and then either trade what you find for stuff that you want, or trade it for currency like
trapped souls and the like.
Also, at 20th level you need to get lots of use out of your "big ticket" items, if not they're actually a waste of resources. That's why I went "luls, +6 to all stats belt plz". It saves me not 1, but 5 slots; and costs less than 6, +6 stat items (in terms of both 20k item slots; and in terms of how it allows me to wear a lot more variety of magical items).
Don't sweat the small stuff; grab it allI'd say to pick up every single "low level" magic item that you see and think of a situation where you might want to use it. You might have made a very sound tactical decision.
Myself, I grabbed some stuff to let me fly in "combat-time" (wands really, several); and in "normal time" (carpet of flying). Stuff to carry supplies and equipment (bags of holding; heward's handy haversack; vest [aka belt] of many pockets); some more random travel things (folding boat; a dozen sets of magical oars; and a bunch of
Permantly Shrink Item'd stone destriders with horseshoes of the zephyr. Plus about a dozen or so other random items.
I expect to never use either thing, but given this character's backstory.... well, it never hurts to be prepared. Who knows, maybe I get to stuff a monster with tiny flying stone warhorses, and then jump into the monster's mouth as well, and have all the horses
suddenly expand, dealing silly damage... err, I mean exploding the monster from the inside.... that's an idea that I came up with just now actually. I think that I figured out an other way to kill the Tarrasque... maybe).
Remember, we're in the 20th level game here; it's not just about "bigger numbers"; it's seriously also about "playing a game that you never thought of at level 1". You should not only plan for the unexpected, but the
impossible.
What level 20 Play "could" look like:On the topic of high level play, I found something semi-relevant.
Could look like this (skip to 0:45)
this. However, this fight looks more like level 10 D&D gameplay. Seriously, melee attacking only adjacent opponents while moving, and slipper of spider climbing (4,800 gp) aren't quite 20th level play.
If the character flew, and was fighting things that were able to kill him by touching him (like, actual Shadows with Strength damage), then the danger/power level is closer to 20th level encounters.
Seriously, high level D&D combat makes
anime look
mundane and simple. We're talking The Paladins of Charlemagne, Stories of Amber, Cu Cullain, Rostram, Beowulf and Volsung saga levels of badass and danger.
A single fighter against 100 shadows, that's about a 20th level fight (really, a CR 16 fight :S ). A touch AC of 23+, or immunity to ability damage would be two things that would allow a fighter to deal with that sort of fight.
On coated natural weapons:Just a thought; but if you ever meet any creautre that is weak to any specific one of your attacks; then all of your
other attacks will be for naught.
Unless there are some really hot spells that you want to load into your weapons; metalline is a weapon property that you might want to think about. It's a +1 property that makes any weapon count as any other metal.
We probably won't be facing demodands or vampires, so the lack of
wood weapons probably isn't a big deal. We can probably just say "lalalala! we steal a tree and carry it with us, then cast GMW to make it a +5 Tree; the dragon can now fuck up some demodands"... having wooden
teeth is probably a bad idea.
Crit Immunity:The fact that everyone here seems to be grabbing crit/precision damage immunity at 35k is probably a good thing. I'm probably going to do something similar.
Other gear/feat choices.I've also got the feeling that just wearing a plain old "ring of invisibility" might be a good idea for what to wear most of the time. The +40 to hide is handy, and I think that I've got a feat slot empty to put in the one feat that all monsters hate when rogues (or other creatures with 30+ hide modifiers) have. Darkstalker. Yes, the bane of minotaurs, beholders and dragons alike, Darkstalker (or it's equivalent).
.... I just wrote an article for this game. D:
Kong is gonna have my head for this.