D&D 5E How much power do magic items give?

Xeviat · Jun 2, 2019

Xaelvaen said:
I had never thought of using the DMG on monster balance to figure out the impact of magic items, but it is a pretty genuine idea to help feel out the level of power to throw at parties. We've recently been experimenting with an XP rule from a different game, where the difficulty of the encounter matters more than the monsters within it. The easier a party overcomes the challenge, regardless of what methods they use, the less XP they receive.

The idea of being able to quantify magic item impacts on effective level, especially temporary ones, would help us immensely in this endeavor - thanks for the inspiration, @Xeviat.

I'm starting on a big project to rewrite the Monster Manual and make it more like 4E, so I'm going to be doing a lot of testing. While I'm at it, I figured I'd might as well take a look at the PC balance. It's all just guidelines.

And yeah, not all magic items are created equal, but it's a starting point, rather than just saying "eh whatever rebalance the encounters yourself" without having a direction in mind.

ccs · Jun 2, 2019

Please just say what you actually mean.

You say magic items.
But what you really mean is magic weapons.... Maybe with a passing consideration of magic armor.

And, whatever their rarity, there is no math that can account for the effects/power of many of the assorted non-weapon items. Yet many boost power/increase options.

Harzel · Jun 2, 2019

Xaelvaen said:
I had never thought of using the DMG on monster balance to figure out the impact of magic items, but it is a pretty genuine idea to help feel out the level of power to throw at parties. We've recently been experimenting with an XP rule from a different game, where the difficulty of the encounter matters more than the monsters within it. The easier a party overcomes the challenge, regardless of what methods they use, the less XP they receive.

With apologies for being off topic, this sort of sounds like clever play is punished. Of course, you probably didn't intend those two sentences as a complete description, so I may be opining on the basis of incomplete information.

Tony Vargas · Jun 2, 2019

Harzel said:
With apologies for being off topic, this sort of sounds like clever play is punished.

Just re-defined. Like how diving & flopping to draw a penalty is smart play for a footballer.

Xaelvaen · Jun 2, 2019

Harzel said:
With apologies for being off topic, this sort of sounds like clever play is punished. Of course, you probably didn't intend those two sentences as a complete description, so I may be opining on the basis of incomplete information.

My group has been together for 20+ years now, so we play a bunch of different games, genres - hell, we even make our own. Right now we're using a repurposed version of Talislanta. In the long of it, we've just come to like the actual difficulty and tax on the characters determining the 'growth' as opposed to hard, itemized values. I'd in no way recommend it for everyone.

I'll give you the rundown of our decision.
If a fight is easier than intended, you scale down the XP based on expected resource consumption.
Clever play doesn't become penalized, but rather the reward becomes the resources saved.
We play very critical Dungeons and Dragons, and if characters aren't threatened constantly, it's often seen as a waste of time - it's just the way we play. Therefore, we drive our XP to be based on actual difficulty, not proposed difficulty. We all started with 2E (and a couple in my group with 1E), so with rare exception, we try to emulate this difficulty, and slow down the advancement scheme - this is the most 'feels'-oriented way to do it, for us.

Xeviat · Jun 2, 2019

ccs said:
Please just say what you actually mean.

You say magic items.
But what you really mean is magic weapons.... Maybe with a passing consideration of magic armor.

And, whatever their rarity, there is no math that can account for the effects/power of many of the assorted non-weapon items. Yet many boost power/increase options.

No. I'm trusting that the designers felt the value of various items within the tiers of items were somewhat balanced against each other. It's a long distance eyeballing saying: hey when your characters have 4 uncommon items or 2 rare items, they're about a level more powerful so go ahead and throw higher level challenges at them.

That's why I did it across the item tiers and not just looking at the enhancement bonuses.

muppetmuppet · Jun 3, 2019

When you say rewrite the monsters to 4e, do you mean give them one two or 3 "powers" instead of a spell list so they are easier to run? if so it has been done by a guy who wanted monster stats on one sheet of paper with no need to look other stuff up.

Xeviat · Jun 13, 2019

muppetmuppet said:
When you say rewrite the monsters to 4e, do you mean give them one two or 3 "powers" instead of a spell list so they are easier to run? if so it has been done by a guy who wanted monster stats on one sheet of paper with no need to look other stuff up.

I more mean presenting monsters as minions, standard, elite, and solo, and retooling them for 4 vs 4 baselines. And, yes, giving out more "powers".