Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
hmmm? I sense a joke I missed here...
D&D 5E Magic Item Math of 5e
hmmm? I sense a joke I missed here...
AntiStateQuixote
Enemy of the State
Today is Good Friday. Easter Sunday is in two days.
aco175
Legend
I seem to be giving out too much magic to the party. They are almost 8th level and each character has 3-4 items and a few consumables. The problem is starting to be with attuned items and only having 3. The thing they do not have is magic armor but the fighters already have 19-20 ac with plate mail and such.
AaronOfBarbaria
Adventurer
How does it seem to be too much? What complaints are your players making regarding how much magical stuff their characters have?
Can you elaborate on the problem? If it is that the players are feeling they have to make hard choices between attuning to this item or that, that is a large part of why the attunement rule exists in the first place - so that there is actually a choice being made, rather than every item the party finds being an automatic boost to the party's capabilities.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
There may have indeed been a time when it was easier to weave magic than forge breastplates. I do however think a little bit of minor properties should be enough to make it interesting. It is also lighter and immune vs rust monster attacks.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Statistically, sure.
But then you play a character in a game where the DM rolls low on every table and you wind up with that one +1 sword for the party at level 20 because that's how chance works.
5e's assumptions say: this isn't a problem. Magic items are always extra sauce.
If you instead assume 5 items per PC over 20 levels, then clearly this IS a problem, and needs to be "fixed."
Magic in 5E is fairly easy to compensate for. The hardest part of magic item compensation in Pathfinder/3E was stat boosting combined with other magic items and easy customization of magic items. You almost always ended up with players boosting nearly every statistic as well as stacking every magic item that provided a beneficial modifier into a min-max nightmare that was extraordinarily difficult to deal with. You had wizards with 30 intelligent and a con and dex in the mid 20s due to stat boosting. I'm glad they cut down on that. In 5E, I've been able to hand out +3 swords (one of them vorpal) at 3rd level and still make the campaign challenging. I do enjoy the way 5E handled magic items. It was very well done. It's an easily customizable system with a power level that makes the player feel as though magic items give him a substantial power boost while not taxing the DM's ability to challenge the group.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
One of the thing I liked about 2nd ed, and I see returning in 5e, is the "a bit weird but useful" items that can almost a signature part of the character. I had a wild mage who for the later half of his career sported a Cloak of the Arachnid. Was it the "best" item for a wizard to have? Of course not! Was it useful and fun? Oh hell yes.
In 3e I can't see a wizard holding on to that item...
It's been far too long so I have not idea if it was a random roll or intentionally put there, but it was, in retrospective, a great item to have.
In 3e I can't see a wizard holding on to that item...
It's been far too long so I have not idea if it was a random roll or intentionally put there, but it was, in retrospective, a great item to have.
Thanks so much for the math to OP and the resurrection. This is a good baseline to operate off of.
What I tend to do is 1 tailored magic item at some point in the campaign for each player and the rest random. Seems to work out as the player is happy and randomness creates interesting situations.
What I tend to do is 1 tailored magic item at some point in the campaign for each player and the rest random. Seems to work out as the player is happy and randomness creates interesting situations.
Either PCs getting 5 items over 20 levels is a problem - because things will break and the DM will need to up the challenge of the game dramatically or PCs barely getting any items is a problem - because the game will be far too tough and the DM will need to downgrade the challenge of the game. You don't need to have a +X weapon to cause mathematical shifts in party effectiveness.
And if magic items are always extra sauce and the DMG identifies the typical campaign as getting 24 helpings of extra sauce, you'd think the DMG would call that out so no one got surprised...
Also, I'd note that you might expect about 1 in 10000 games to only find a single +1 weapon - and that's in the context that you might expect 2000 out of 10000 games to not only find +3 weapons, but belts of giant strength or books that further bend or break the expected values...
