[Steve Plambeck]

As a player, I had a wizard (starting 32 point wizard, and a commoner) who rose to become a "special assistant" to the Court Wizard of one of the larger, richer, and more powerful military empires in our highly detailed and developed campaign world. My wizard reported to the Court Wizard, who reported to the Emperor himself, which was pretty heady stuff. Whenever a sensitive, dirty job came up that involved magic (read "suicide mission"), the Court Wizard stayed safely at home in the palace of course, and my wizard was sent out to handle it.

For these missions I had at my disposal.... a detail of 4 or 5 army regulars (34 point NPCs) who could be trusted and... my own staff. The rest of this special ops team had regular chain mail and halberds. That and leather armor was all my wizard got. Best army in the world, richest emperor, and my wizard was sent on long, dangerous quests of political import armed with his (pre-mana) staff and some standard musclemen. Other players of course had their own PCs that figured into these adventures, some as friends and some as adversaries. But nobody in our world sold enchanted items, and the GM didn't leave too many lying around.

After a couple years of this, my wizard saved up enough of his own pay to get a +1 or +2 fine silver saber, buying it at the standard ITL price. The squad was still in the same chain male armed with the same halberds. The army had thousands of those guys, so when I got home having lost one or two I just got identical replacements for the next mission - LOL

I don't think it would have been nearly as much fun if everyone had been packing enchanted armor, fine weapons and all that.