Straight up this is more for me then for my players, but i think it could come up with some of them as well.

When starting a new campaign where the characters start at level 5, how many magic items / gold/ etc... would you allow a player to transfer over from previous campaigns/ starting fresh?  Of course you don't want your party to have that one guy with +2/+3 every at level 5, but you also probably want them wearing something more then their level 1 starter gear.  Similarly someone with 40,000 gold is probably going to buy their way through all humanoid issues, but someone with >10 gold can't really afford anything useful.

But the real question here, would you allow a player to start your campaign with like 10 spell scrolls (if they promised that 7-8 of them would be locked away till level 8, first chance they got)?

 See the Starting Equipment table on p.38 of the DMG.

In my honest opinion, as a GM, I would allow at level 5 starting, 1 to 2 magic items, depending on what they are and based on their rarity. I will normally allow 1 combat item (weapon, armor, etc) and one utility (Bag of Holding, Scrying Eye, Darkvision mask), but both need to be green in rarity.  They request a blue rarity, then I limit them to the one item, whether it be combat or utility.  I never allow an epic level or higher unless characters are at least level 12-15.

Gold can be an iffy subject.  If you are giving them starting equipment, level x 50 gold is a good safe bet.  If they are buying their gear, level x 100 gold.  

Bottom line is this.  If you feel they are steam rolling their way through monsters, add a couple more than the story calls for.

I am currently running my players through Tomb of Annihilation.  They were getting bored with combat cuz it was too easy.  So i flooded the streets of Omu with undead.  Still not hard enough.  I scared the crap out of them with Sorrowsworn and brought back the danger of death and they started having fun again.

None. 

I’d go with the current Adventure League rules on this one. At level 5, all characters can pick up a free +1weapon or shield or Rod of the Pact Keeper, or Wand of the War Mage, but they are capped at carrying 3 magic items of >common rarity, not counting consumables, and that +1 sword or whatever counts against those 3. And no legendary items.

My suggestion is you curate a list of acceptable items for navigating your world, tell them they can have a +1 something, and two things from this list, then you call it good. As for spell scrolls, I like giving them 100 gp/lvl and saying “buy what you want. If scrolls, buy scrolls. If potions, fine. If mundane stuff or a fine carriage to travel in, have at it.,” The AL players’ guide has a fair guide to the cost of consumables. As far as scrolls, Cantrips are 25, 1st lvl-75, 2nd 150, 3rd-300, 4th-500, 5th-1000. Potions have prescribed prices as well. 

Following the guidelines from the DMG (which someone collated into a table, see this post at rpg.stackexchange.com).

I'd start a level 5 character with: one uncommon permanent item and five common consumable items.

Starting Equipment, one Uncommon Magic item, one common magic item is what I use, but with the approval of the DM of what items you want.

I use a random table that gives a 90% chance of one uncommon item and 10% chance of one rare item (they roll 3 times and pick of the three) for levels 5-8.  I would also allow 2 common/uncommon consumables (usually potions of healing or potions of healing, greater) depending on level started and the nature of the campaign

Whatever you think is fun, just be aware of how it will impact encounters.

I love magic items. I homebrew heaps of them, with a focus on RP items, and my group are very high magic types. They love the idea of living in a crazy world where magic lies just around the corner. On the other hand, if you're running a gritty, low magic world, a +1 longsword might be the sort of thing that legends would be made of.

In my world, for what you're talking about, I'd probably go with 1 offensive magic item, 1 defensive magic item and 2 RP magic items chosen completely at random from my deck of homebrew stuff. Gold is more interesting. If the PC's are a random group who had never met before joining up I would say 20GP plus (1d4 times 10) and roll for each one. That way everyone has somewhere between 30-60GP. Do they pool their resources? Do they keep it all separate? Fun times.

Exactly my situation, as I will be running a 5th level-starting campaign quite soon.

I will probably give 1 rare item and 2 uncommon ones, all subject to my approval.

Quote from kcbcollier >>

I’d go with the current Adventure League rules on this one. At level 5, all characters can pick up a free +1weapon or shield or Rod of the Pact Keeper, or Wand of the War Mage, but they are capped at carrying 3 magic items of >common rarity, not counting consumables, and that +1 sword or whatever counts against those 3. And no legendary items.

 Legendary items at that level would be insane.

A lot of DMs absolutely despise magic items and letting their players have magic gear.

To me, that's a very strange stance to take.

Look at the whole "it should cost you a thousand gold pieces to have once chance of casting a single fifth-level spell one time" bit with scroll pricing.  Then think of how often spellcasters throw around fifth-level spells for free once they hit ninth level.  The game says a martial character is balanced around never having access to so much as a +1 weapon, which means it's 'balanced' around being entirely unable to touch most tier 3 or higher enemies...while the spellcasters are dealing 3dWhatever magic damage for freebies every turn with basic-ass cantrips.

5e is weirdly split between wanting the itemization of the game to be extremely low magic, with magical items and equipment being exceptionally scarce and enormously difficult to come by, while the characters have magic exploding from their ears.  It's boggling and makes absolutely no sense.

To answer the question, I've actually been working on a point system for magical gear, assigning each tier of magic item a point value (adjusted for some specific items, or items with specific properties) and then figuring out a budget for characters to determine their items with.  It's difficult to fine-tune properly, but the general idea is that Common items are worth one point (with the first one usually being free), Uncommon are worth two, Rare are worth four, Very Rare are worth six, and Legendary are worth ten to twelve.  Anything that grants flight is priced one tier higher than its rarity otherwise indicates, consumables are given three to the point (so spending two points on "Uncommon consumables" allows any choice of three such items).  

Then you simply assign a point total players can have and go from there.  Allow them a bonus point or two if they come up with interesting tales of the adventures their characters located their cool magical items in, and remind them that the system is experimental and final selection is subject to GM approval.

Try it out.  See what your players think.  Might be fun to see what they prioritize when you say "you can have one or two big items or a whole shitpile of little items, or a mix if you prefer".  

How magic is your campaign?

Here is a question though.  If the player wanted to come in with a boat load of spell scrolls (lets say like 12) but promised that most of them would be locked away till much later (8-9 scrolls locked away till 8th level) would you allow it?  They want to have the scrolls on hand for later when they pick up Ritual Caster so they can drop the like 300-600 gold into inscribing the spells into the book.

Would you allow for someone to plan ahead like (and technically be super OP because of it) if it meant they couldn't touch the scrolls till much later (and thus not/ much less OP)?

I would let them spend their “500 gp plus 1d10 × 25 gp” on any darned thing they wanted, and not a copper more. 

No.  Because that's blatant gamerism.  Unless there's a specific reason their character would have these scrolls they otherwise wouldn't touch, I would not allow them to arbitrarily preload their ritual book they technically don't even know they're getting in three more levels that way.

Admittedly, I'm also the sort who wouldn't make it impossible for them to find rituals to load their book with once they actually obtain the feat.  Some campaigns are more generous with that sort of thing than others.  Running a heavily modified Ghosts of Saltmarsh game myself, and this story is lousy with enemy wizards and their spellbooks.  Our bard took a level of wizard simply because he couldn't handle having four spellbooks full of spells he had no way of casting. 

Frankly, a DM who makes it excessively difficult for a player to utilize class features they paid for, like the Ritual Caster feat, is a DM who needs to examine why she's trying to be an ******* to her players and see if maybe she should avoid being an ******* to her players, instead.

I can see somebody hoarding scrolls “just in case,” but I also consider “Very Hard” as the base standard for encounters, so some of those scrolls would end up getting used (or at least attempted) way before the player intended. 😉

Dude, I'm running a campaign where the players rolled stats (the very last campaign I am ever allowing that for), and the average array is, like...80.  I've got a dorf cleric with an 87-point array.  It's beyond ridiculous.  Everybody got a noncombat/"bad" feat for starting because **** variant human forever, and there's six characters in the party.

I don't even bother with encounter math anymore.  I just threw a "double-Deadly" boss encounter at my players; they got the high initiative rolls and pastasauced it in two rounds without one single enemy landing a hit.  The only damage my players took was the bard Shattering his own lizard tank to get at the six duergar surrounding him, and the barbarian standing too close to lava and taking some ambient heat damage.

Sometimes you just gotta eyeball this shit and figure out where your party sits.  The game math is way too twitchy, and D&D doesn't really work with single lethal encounters anyways.  Players gots too many resources to novaburst their way out of any single given tough fight.

If they are going to be technically OP to the rest of the party, absolutely not.

It's one of the problems of not starting at Level 1 and ACTUALLY PLAYING the character.  Let's put a couple things together and see what comes of it.

1.  IIRC you want to scribe bard ritual spells which are also on the wizards spell list as well.

2.  The "budget" will be 635 gp. 500gp+average roll*25gp

3.  25 gp per 1st level spells, 100 for 2nd-3rd level spells, using XGE method of creating magic items during downtime method and the spell scroll rarity table in the DMG.

So that gets us 5 1st level spells for 125 gp, 4 2nd-3rd level spells for 400 gp, 9 total (PHB, XGE, SCAD, and EE as source material)  525 gp.  So it is doable, IF your DM allows you to make the scrolls, which since you suffered no consequence for in the first place, there is no reason for you to receive the discount for making them, you would pay full price for buying them, which puts you not getting them all.

However, even if the DM were to allow you to scribe them with no penalty other than using an ingame mechanic, you have forgotten one thing:  You don't have enough known spell slots or swap slots to do that.  You only have 8 total known spells at 5th level as a Bard, you start with 4, you can "scribe" and drop only one per level, so at 5th level you have "scribed" at best 4 ritual spells to scrolls which you have traded out.  When you hit 8th level you will have three more ritual spells to swap out.  So at 8th level your maximum "swap out" is 7 spells.

Really, if one wants to do this route, one should take the Ritual Caster Feat at 4th level, already have one's ritual book, and have two1st level ritual scrolls, which one can copy into the book "for free" and be happy about it.  The two Common Scrolls would count as the Uncommon item.  One would still get the 500gp+d10*25gp and starting equipment.  One can get the ASI at 8th to "catch up".  Now if one does not think it is "fair" to have to "catch up" in that manner, then perhaps everyone else does not think it is "fair" to "get ahead" in the manner proposed.

Oh, CR is virtually useless. Go to the encounter builder, make one encounter of 8 goblins and one encounter of 1 ogre. Roughly the same HP, exact same CR. Throw them at a level 1 party of four. Tell me that’s encounter balance. Luckily I used to 40k. I quickly math-hammered that it is all about action economy. The more attacks/HP the enemy side of the table has is mostly all that really matters. The only other relevant factor is how high the enemy AC is compared to the party’s average Attack Modifier. That’s why 1 roper is way worse than 4 CR3 NPCs. Roughly the same number of HP, higher AC, more attacks.