Yep, I mentioned this effect in another thread.
Have you noticed, also, that the "Magic Item Rarity" table lists levels of character for which the different "rarities" of item are "appropriate"? Does this mean that, if you roll 71+ for the items of a 3rd level party tackling a "tough" encounter, you have to ignore any possible "Rare" items, because those are for characters of level 5 and above (according to the "Magic Item Rarity" table)?
The whole distribution system seems to be poorly thought through, to me.
At first glance I thought they were mutually exclusive methods for placing magic items, but the text doesn't imply that at all. Maybe they are meant to be used together.
I disagree even more with the idea of restricting PCs' access to magic items based on their character level, than I do with the idea of placing magic items based on the relative rather than absolute difficulty of the associated encounter, so I wouldn't like that at all.
My main preference is to have treasure and magic items associated with creatures, not the party level.
Just like in 1e and 2e, each monster static bar will have treasure line with corresponding tables in DM, I would also like the tables to have a scale from low magic to high magic.
Linking magic items for character levels stinks from linking character progression to having magic items and that defeat the entire "bounded accuracy" and "magic items as reward and not entitlement" arguments.
Warder
Yeah, I definitely don't like associating magic items with the party level.
The problem with associating treasure with relative difficulty, rather than absolute difficulty, is a little more subtle.
As the text implies, it allows you to offer basic, localized risk vs. reward choices, at the level of individual, one-time encounters. But it doesn't work if you're trying to build a sandbox area with consistent challenge difficulty and corresponding treasure in different areas, with the players having the freedom to go back and forth between encounter areas at different character levels.
For that you need some sort of objective link between treasure and challenge. So monsters with treasure types. Although I would rather the association be even more general, as dungeon levels, to move away from the idea that treasure has to be wedded to an encounter. (The MMO idea of monsters "dropping" loot).
I dislike associating magic with difficulty. Magic items are made by people for other people. They get lost or thrown away or fall into the hands of creatures when adventurers die or in raids and such.
I agree with your distaste for mob drops, but I like there to be a consistent relationship between the danger of the area and the value of the loot likely to be found, because it's fair but more importantly because it allows the players to make risk vs. reward decisions about which areas they choose to explore. The relationship doesn't have to be entirely based on game factors. It should make sense as well. That's why I say associate both the treasure and the monsters to a dungeon difficulty level, and let the DM place both together in a way that makes sense. Some monsters should be lucrative, relative to their difficulty, and some should be poor, based on story factors.
I guess you could just reverse the way of determining items changing from character level to monster level.
Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. I would prefer a more radical change to the system, but if they're set on determing magic items by relative difficulty+ignoring results above level, this would be a much better way of doing it.
