The Myth of the Necessity of Magic Items

[Emirikol]

We've been running a low magic campaign using 3.0/3.5 for about 5 years now. We've found that there is some kind of "myth" surrounding people's belief that magic items are necessary for the game.

The classes are supposedly balanced on their own without magic items. My own personal feeling is that magic items just create stuff-twinks and exponential power escalation. I've heard it argued that magic items are necessary to help fighters balance against wizards at upper levels. I don't buy it because there are also equal items for the wizard so how does that result in balance?

DR/magic is also not a necessary part of the game and can easily be substituted for normal stuff (like silver or whatever).

Magic items can be fun to find but I still think they just create greedy twink-like behavior. Like an overworked family who is living beyond their needs and addicted to painkillers at the same time...

Magic items are now so generic too as to be unnecessary. Wow, a +1 sword. Geez, that's original. I'll bet some wizard sat down and spent some x.p. to make it just so a fighter in his party could greedily gain some power escalation. Huuuummmmmmmmmm!

What do you think? Are magic items even necessary or are they just crack for the addicted?

jh

 

[diaglo]

We've been running a low magic campaign using 3.5 for about 5 years now.

d00d,

the revision wasn't out until aug 03.

 

[mhensley]

There probably isn't any problems at low levels, but I doubt that the CR system will work out for a high level party that doesn't have the magical gear that they are supposed to have.

 

[Emirikol]

Yea, fixed

jh

 

[Piratecat]

I think I prefer magic items over gross generalizations and emotionally loaded arguments.

...okay, got that off my chest. For me, magic items simply make the game more fun. The behavior you describe is not something I've seen.

 

[Emirikol]

There probably isn't any problems at low levels, but I doubt that the CR system will work out for a high level party that doesn't have the magical gear that they are supposed to have.

We're playing AOW 15th level right now and it's just fine.

jh

 

[Henry]

We're trying an experiment right now in low-magic D&D; spellcasters can still do their thing, but healing magic is almost nonexistant (house rule: healing magic doesn't exist and heal skill works a little better), and magic weapons don't exist. So far, no real problems, but most of the enemies have been humans and low-level undead. I think the biggest thing to watch is opponents that can only be defeated by huge attack bonuses and by magic spells; as long as a DM has a handle on the critical weaknesses of the party, one can run a game as high- or low- magic as wished; but then, this is no different from ANY DM-able Role Playing game that I know of.

 

[sukael]

We're playing AOW 15th level right now and it's just fine.

jh

How much houseruling has been needed to keep things working properly, though?

 

[DragonLancer]

I agree with the OP, it is a myth that all these items are needed. If you remove them but keep the monsters as they are, the higher level games should become a lot more fun and challenging.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Hmm... I think it depends on the party. A party with enough spellcasters can offset many problems - they can provide the needed bonus "on-the-fly", whether they're wizards or clerics.

The pure melee classes suffer the most, because inability to overcome damage reduction, lower attack bonus/damage bonus, worse saving throws and so on can really hurt, and incorporeal/regenerating stuff can become next to impossible - which is, of course, a non-issue, if the party caster has the means to help out.

With spellcasters less equipment means "need more time to regain spells". With melee characters less equipment means "cannot even touch that monster".