D&D 5E Wealth and Starting Magic Items for 5th Level Playtest Characters?

Scorch · Jan 16, 2013

Hello all,

Scorch here from the old Savage Sword of Meepo Story Hour (is that story hour still cached somewhere?). We are taking a break from our 4th Edition campaign to do some more Beta test playing.

We did our last Beta test on the rules from before the most recent play test package based on a little adventure I threw together for first level characters. The players used the pre-gens provided with one person making a monk from scratch.

For this weekend I have crafted a fifth level adventure for the group and they will be leveling up their characters.

My question for all of you is this:

What is an appropriate amount of magic items for fifth level characters to have starting out? One or two +1 items? One or two uncommon items?

Any help would be appreciated.

Ed

bogmad · Jan 16, 2013

Common? Uncommon? Is there such a thing for magic items in 5e?

But really it depends on what type of game/story you and your players are playing/telling. Magic items and loot are not built into the math of the system now so they should be just fine without any +1 widgets at all.

Li Shenron · Jan 16, 2013

Scorch said:
What is an appropriate amount of magic items for fifth level characters to have starting out?

The beauty of 5e is that there is no such thing as "appropriate amount of magic items" for whatever level of characters.

Give them what you want. Then gradually increase the difficulty of the encounters if the game feels too easy.

ZombieRoboNinja · Jan 16, 2013

Part of the goal of 5e seems to be to make magical items unique and special again. I'd say give them their choice of non-magical gear and a reasonable amount of potions, and then let them quest for (or happen upon) magical gear where it's most narratively interesting.

the Jester · Jan 16, 2013

What they said- there is no assumed wealth.

That said, I'd prolly start the party (assuming five pcs) with something like four potions of healing, one or two other potions or scrolls, a magic weapon (+1) or two and maybe a suit of +1 armor.

EDIT: Or maybe just normal starting gear.

MortalPlague · Jan 16, 2013

If possible, I'd put any magic items you want to hand out in the first encounter as loot. Depends how your adventure is put together, though, as to whether it could be appropriate or not.

They're more special if you give them out with some reverence in game, rather than picking them out of a book at character creation.

Jester David · Jan 17, 2013

I'd give them no items and see how that works.

GX.Sigma · Jan 17, 2013

Assuming you want to go by the book:

According to the Treasure section in the DM Guidelines, 12.5 gp per character level per encounter is a "middle of the road." So let me do some math here...

8.3 encounters between 1 and 2 (103.75)
11.6 encounters between 2 and 3 (290)
11.8 encounters between 3 and 4 (442.5)
11.9 encounters between 4 and 5 (595)

That's 1431.25 gold pieces per character, plus whatever they get at character creation. You could also roll 43 times on the magic item table, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Li Shenron · Jan 17, 2013

ZombieRoboNinja said:
I'd say give them their choice of non-magical gear and a reasonable amount of potions, and then let them quest for (or happen upon) magical gear where it's most narratively interesting.

This is even a better suggestion.

GX.Sigma said:
That's 1431.25 gold pieces per character, plus whatever they get at character creation.

With this number, I also think that you should just tell them "take whatever you want from the equipment list" (except for the 5000+ armors), as long as you're able to carry it around. Thus I wouldn't mind if someone even says "I own all the weapons in the table!"... who cares? They can only take 2-3 at a time in an adventure, and it won't be totally unreasonable to allow them to swap weapons when they're back to base, if it is normally not much more difficult to sell and buy a new one.

If the game is done right so as to support also the gamestyle of having ZERO magic items, then your PCs of level 5 should be good enough to fight level 5 monsters. I am not sure whether they should be treated as "Easy" encounters for XP purposes or something else, but at least they must be reasonable challenges without ANY magic item.

Kraydak · Jan 17, 2013

bogmad said:
Common? Uncommon? Is there such a thing for magic items in 5e?

But really it depends on what type of game/story you and your players are playing/telling. Magic items and loot are not built into the math of the system now so they should be just fine without any +1 widgets at all.

Yeah. Thing is, that is nonsense which polls well for some strange reason. What it means in practice is "magic items have a huge effect, but we aren't going to provide DMs with any guidance".