About the myth or fact (?) of needing magical items

[The Shaman]

What about when the wizard is flying (60' movement) fireballing from the sky invisible with protection from arrows? What do the PCs do then? What do NPCs do when the PC does this?

Assuming there is more than one spellcaster in the encounter, I'd respond with dispel magic, protection from fire, true seeing...

If not? Run. Take cover until the spells wear off. Track the now magic-deprived mage. Beat him like a red-headed stepchild.

 

[MacMathan]

...It's about PC capabilities. It sucks playing a PC with a crappy AC score or a lame saving throw. The former is worse, as it affects RP and not just metagaming. PCs don't learn to dodge or parry, even with magical items - they let the magical items do the work for them. Without magic items, they're just meatshields, without the shield - they have to stand there and take hits. I don't know why a trained warrior would allow that, but that's how DnD works. You can't have a cool combat scene like Bronn vs the older guy in George R R Martin's work...

For better or worse increased hitpoints is how most advances in dodging or parrying are show in DnD. It is not that the 13th level fighter can now take an order of magnitude more actual physical damage then when he was 1st level, it is that he is now more skilled in making most blows not be critical or damaging in an overall percentage sort of way through the use of fighting skill.

It is part of the abstract assumptions of round to round combat. Some systems like Star Wars have broken this into WP/VP for greater clarity. The problem with the paradigm in DnD is that it breaks down in other parts of the rules, is a bit anti-intuitive and requires creative description to match how the fights look in movies or books.

 

[MacMathan]

The 17th level fighter is going to have a hard time against invisible, flying opponents. His Will save is going to be very low, so low he's going to have a hard time saving against Charm Person. Those are two problems that spring to mind right away. (Although I guess potions of fly and see invisibility could be carried by the dozen.)


I think you can run a game with few magic items, but there are a lot of things to take in consideration. You can have a great game doing that, though.

That is the key of it, many people talk about running low magic items and then stop there without examining what else needs to be changed. If the characters are going to be less "magical" then their foes will also need to be. Less invisible, ethereal, flying etc. sort of opponents.

The fighter without the gear needs to be in a campaign that has been modified for him not to need it to have fun.

A few years back I ran in a low magic item campaign that was historically based, thus most of the opponents were humans or things with few supernatural powers that would require the melee types to have such special gear.

 

[MacMathan]

With regards to improved invis./flying mages etc, these spells have very little place in anything considered low magic, IMO, the same with scry/teleport etc. These are "high-magic" tactics and thus take a good amount of magic to counter. Magic begins to dominate battlefield tactics, much like technology, as levels increase without some changes to the default structure.

As far as fighting being based on skill, one option I have seen is the opposed check rather than to hit AC. I think it was adapted from Paladium by the DM, I am not sure on that. Anyhow armor was DR and each attack could be opposed by parrying or dodging etc. I think he was using some version of VP/WP as I remember it too.

 

[boredgremlin]

Hmm sounds like either palladium or a modified version of grim and gritties rules. Both are great for low magic games. Lol just dont touch anything else by palladium. Or you wind up taking 500 points of damage with a single hit from a spell or magic sword.

 

[Hussar]

I'm stumped. Everyone's agreeing with me, but saying I'm wrong. :x

Look, I've said it all the way along. If you play a DnD campaign with very restricted magic items, you need to modify the spell casting classes as well. If you don't, then the primary spellcasters are going to completely dominate the battlefield, even with very minor magics. Heck, a hold person on the fighter has got a decent chance of success at any fighter level, if he doesn't have any items to help him. How would you like to have to run in terror from a 5th level evil cleric at 15th level?

DnD is built around certain basic assumptions. One of those assumptions is that the party will have certain items at certain levels. These aren't exactly long stretches either. They're not wild stabs in the dark. Many campaigns did and do follow that mould. A fighter with a +3 sword at 9th level isn't all that out of line. If you change those assumptions, you have to deal with ALL of the things those assumptions affected.

 

[S'mon]

You're right, Hussar, maybe exaggerating slightly (a Ftr-15 who wins INIT can charge and kill a Clr-5 with one blow, or he's a pretty crappy Ftr-15).

To me the biggest change in 3e was that the non-warrior classes were greatly boosted in combat, with better combat stats, better defensive spells, and rules changes like 5' steps & no full attacks on a charge, these changes eliminated 1e's mutual vulnerability where a fighter could kill a mage as easily as a mage could kill a fighter. This means that lower-magic 3e needs to nerf the spellcasters as well as reducing magic items. Personally I take a minimalist approach to lowering magic level, eg I make divine casters spontaneous, wizards pay for all their spells, a few spells are nerfed, but the basic game doesn't change much.

 

[FireLance]

I've always wondered why DMs who run low-magic campaigns don't just give the players items that are non-magical, but provide all the necessary bonuses because they are very well made. After all, what is the difference between a magical +3 longsword and a non-magical longsword made by a master craftsman that grants the user a +3 enhancement bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls, and costs 18315 gp? That way, the PCs will be closer to baseline D&D assumptions and they can spend less time and effort in adjusting the challenges.

 

[corcio]

see what i do is i just go ahead and run an adventure normaly
then when the characters happen upon a magicians horde, a magic using creature, or somethiing that quite obviously is magical...come on if theyre fighting some kind of "magical" beast then i would assume the magical beast has some sort of magic around it......item or something....like a dragon...come on.. a dragon is magical so im sure it will ahve some magical items to lay on...LOOT THE CORPSE AND TAKE EVERYTHING MUAHAHHAHAHAHA
so there
boom you have magic item
SUCK IT BLUE
now that doesnt mean that the characters automatically can use it....they might have a sword and have no idea that they have to dip it in chocolate for it to activvate its magical properties

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It's because again and again I do hear (on these forums) that the D&D game cannot be played without magical items. So, I must use a confrontational tone to tell that indeed it's possible. (In addition, with a confrontational tone, I may expect twice as much responses as without )

Right, the sort of campaign with very few magical items in it, and no care for CRs and such, cannot be applied to every game, and likewise for my use of monsters from a restricted list.

By the way, I don't like the idea of a band of grimlocks, all of them being 6th level fighters. It reminds me of a campaign when our DM increased the level of random encounters brigands as we got levels. This infuriated me and broke my suspension of disbelief. Okay to have foes that would be a challenge, not foes who get levels just because a single party of 4 PCs in a whole world are more powerful. Hence, when playing a very few magical items game, I don't need (what I consider) such a nonsense.

You don't suppose, perhaps, that the beholder brought them on board because they were proficient fighters, rather that just the usual rabble you find among grimlocks? Wouldn't it make sense for a beholder to want to find the best minions he could? He's powerful enough to control them, so why would he take just any old grimlock? The reason why the beholder has grimlocks with class levels is because he doesn't want his minions to suck, so he found the strongest grimlocks he could.

I would rather say it's nonsense that every grimlock in the friggin' universe is identical right down to their ability scores. I'd also say it's nonsense that a beholder wanting some minions has to go find something more powerful than grimlocks, because grimlocks aren't allowed to have character levels to represent years of fighting with their enemies because that would break suspension of disbelief in some way. Because everyone knows that it's impossible for creatures who don't appear in the Player's Handbook to ever improve their abilities. God forbid they should get XP for killing things like everyone else. And God forbid that some powerful creature might notice that they're the cream of the crop for their species and hire them on based on their ability to fight.