D&D 5E Which classes shine/suffer in campaigns highly restricting found magic items?

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I’m winding down a campaign that started at 1st level and has now reached 14th, the end might be 16th level PCs. I realize I was quite free with giving out magic item rewards. They players had fun playing out wild item reward wishes. Lotsa legendary items, the players have had a blast.

I’m considering trying the reverse, a 5e campaign restricting non-consumable magic item rewards, but not wholesale nonexistence. There isn’t a magic mart, they get what they loot off baddies and out of treasure hordes. There have been lotsa ancient ruins of lost empires and such.

Are there classes that some of you have found, say in levels 1st-12th, end up a top tier class in a very-low available magic item campaign? And other classes become a low performance class with this campaign? Or do nearly all classes work out with no difference? My players sometimes ask for my guidance in choices to fit what the campaign theme will be.

What might some adventure planning considerations?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Given that the baseline assumption of the 5e CR system is no magic items, then theoretically no classes should suffer.

But, if I had to pick, I'd say the martial classes will have the toughest time of it, at least at first. Spellcasters can overcome monster resistance/immunity to non-magical weapons by using attack spells right from level 1. Martial characters will need to wait for any subclass magical kickers to come into play to overcome said resistance/immunity. But, then again, it takes a cooperative party to succeed and sometimes your character is just not in the spotlight or not as effective against a particular challenge. As long as you, as DM, are aware of this when planning encounters, you can make sure that every PC gets their chance to shine rather than just throwing monsters at them that will frustrate the martials for several levels. You can just let the players know that magic items will be rare and then they can plan their choices accordingly.

That said, we're running a campaign where permanent magic items are rare. Potions, scrolls, and other single use magic items we're inventing on the fly are not so rare. We've told players that their characters each start with one extra mundane item (could be armor, could be a weapon, could be some other adventuring item). That mundane item will gain magical properties at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th level (if the PC survives that is) and must be attuned. So far, only two PCs in the pool of characters (we have 13 players who have created 3 characters each - but only up to 6 players play at any given session) have made it to 4th level. The 4th level Beastmaster Ranger has a sharktooth necklace that now grants advantage on initiative rolls. The 4th level Phantom Rogue has an heirloom shortsword that now grants advantage on climb checks (for those really long rope climbs... I kid) or other physical checks while climbing - of course the weapon is now also considered magical for overcoming weapon damage resistance/immunity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's going to impact martials pretty hard as you get to higher levels, because whilst the game claims there's no built-in assumption of magic items, they're going to fall behind casters a lot more without them. And they're already behind casters.

Overcoming resistances is one part of things, but missing a +1-3 bonus and potential rider effects on hit (i.e. extra damage, special effects and so on) are going to be an issue too, because whatever they say, it helped those classes keep up, as does magic armour and so on.

The whole "cooperative party" thing is a bit of a smokescreen here I'm afraid, because we're not talking about sometimes one character being more important, we're talking about some of the weaker classes being consistently made weaker still, and there being no situations at all, where they become stronger because of this - absolutely zero.

Overall the impact will be casters as going to be stronger, anyone relying on melee weaker than you've previously seen (as they'll end up less effective on multiple fronts). The difference won't be felt immediately at least. 1-5 shouldn't feel much different.

 

[tetrasodium]

It depends on how "highly restricted" you are going

Casters other than warlock suffer, wizards especially. After martials get +2 or +2 equivalent weapons they go from having more hp & generally better defense with roughly equal or better damage to dealing more damage This is largely because +x mods & +str/+dex is multiplied for each attack & resistant to nonmagical b/p/s has zero effect while +X wands rarely if ever multiply while +int/+wis/+cha is rarely a thing like with weapons. All of that gets topped off by energy or magic resist/immune is so overused it might as well be standard after a certain point. Wizards have the extra hurdle of needing to find spell books/spell scrolls & have enough gold to scribe spells which will be difficult if they can't find enough of one or both. The costs of even a moderate amount of spell scribing are significant enough that martials are soon likely to find a magic weapon affordable if gold is being split even.

Martials will be on similar footing to casters other than warlock if they do not have any magic weapons, but even a +0 magic weapon will bypass resistant to nonmagic b/p/s letting them pull even or slightly ahead depending on how nice it is.

edit: warlock of course has the benefits of both and drawbacks of neither putting it close to invoking this

 

[Charlaquin]

Given that the baseline assumption of the 5e CR system is no magic items, then theoretically no classes should suffer.

This is partially true, but there is a bit more nuance than that. Assuming characters start with a +3 in their primary ability, increase their primary ability at 4th and 8th level, and receive +1, +2, and +3 magic weapons at levels 5, 11, and 16 respectively they maintain a consistent 65% accuracy against monsters of average AC for CR equal to their level. If any of those benchmarks aren’t met, characters will most likely do fine. You don’t exactly need 65% accuracy against same-level opponents to be successful. But the further you stray from that baseline, the more you’ll struggle against monsters with higher than average AC for their CR.

Another thing to consider is that without magical weapons, the party will likely struggle against opponents that have resistance or immunity to nonmagical weapon damage. So, you might want a monk or something in the party to deal with that.

 

[Zardnaar]

For some reason resitance and immunity to non magical stuff was put in but SR is only advantage on saves.

Personally I would use a flat number 6,11,16 and that's the number you need to roll on a d20 to beat SR.

 

[Raith5]

I played a ranger and barbarian in Decent to Avernus. I did not get magic weapons until 9th or 10th level (I think one of the other members got a magic item about 7th level) and still have not got any magic armor yet and we are 13th level. We had silvered weapons about 5th level so were ok with Devils etc.

Low magic does impact martial types more than casters. It is a big annoying ("please give me a toy"!) but not a game breaking problem. If anything I think magic armour could be more of a problem. I know I certainly would love to increase my AC by a bit.

 

[cbwjm]

Depends a lot on your party set up and the adventures you're playing. Going up against a lot of resistant/immune enemies then you'll be wanting a caster to cast magic weapon on your sword. Playing a game where your up against more mundane enemies with no resistances then it isn't going to be much of an issue.

 

[jayoungr]

What might some adventure planning considerations?

I've been running a no-magic-items campaign for a while now. The main thing was that I promised my players that I wouldn't throw any monsters at them that had were immune to damage from non-magical items. Since there are plenty of choices that don't fit that category, I haven't had a problem with it.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm going to postulate that martial classes would have the hardest time of it. However, there's a caveat to my saying this: I've been tinkering with the idea of bolstering the rogue by increasing their cash-on-hand via letting them conduct heists as a downtime activity - an idea I got from The Rogue's Guide to Capers (affiliate link) - and that requires magic-marts for them to spend their ill-gotten goods on (I'm looking at limiting those shops to consumable items only, priced as per the Sane Magical Prices guide, but it still looks like it works best at lower levels).