If we assume the old 3E rule of 13-15 encounters per level, that's 6-7 magic items gained per level, minimum -- actually more when you take into account that those 13-15 encounters are probably a mix of easy, moderate, and tough encounters.
The lack of level raised my eyebrows, too. Let's do some math and see how it actually works out. (tl;dr: it looks really good!)
Dividing the character advancement table (Character Creation p4) by the encounter budget table (DM Guidelines p11) gives us this expected number of encounters, assuming you only get XP for killing things:
Code:
Level Easy Average Tough
1 16.3 10.0 6.5
2 16.8 9.8 6.5
3 12.1 7.4 4.9
4 18.9 11.3 7.5
Wow, that's all over the map. Well, let's assume 10 average encounters per level. That yields this treasure:
Code:
Roll Occurs in Yielding each time Total haul
01-25: 2.5 encounters -
26-50: 2.5 encounters 1 common 2.5 common
51-70: 2 encounters 1.5 common 3 common
71-90: 2 encounters 1.5 common 3 common
0.5 uncommon 1 uncommon
91-96: 0.7 encounters 1.5 common 1.05 common
1.5 uncommon 1.05 uncommon
0.5 rare 0.35 rare
97-99: 0.3 encounters 1.5 common 0.45 common
1.5 uncommon 0.45 uncommon
100: 0.1 encounters 1.5 common 0.15 common
1.5 uncommon 0.15 uncommon
1.5 rare 0.15 rare
1 very rare 0.1 very rare
0.5 legendary 0.05 legendary
(It looks like there's an item missing from the 97-99 line, actually, but we'll go with what it says.)
So, over the course of a level, you're going to get, and assuming a four-person party:
- 10.15 common items (2.5 per person)
- 2.65 uncommon items (0.66 per person)
- 0.5 rare items (0.125 per person)
- 0.1 very rare items (0.025 per person)
- 0.05 legendary items (0.0125 per person)
Or, to put it another way, by the end of your first ten levels, your average PC will have found:
- 25 common items
- 6 or 7 uncommon items
- 1 rare item
- 1 very rare item in the entire party
- and maybe, maybe, if you're lucky, one legendary item in the entire party
I'm liking that distribution a lot, actually. Given that the common items so far are potions, that means you're getting less than one permanent item per level. Compare that to 4e, where each person is expected to find eight permanent items per level. Yep, I'm liking it.