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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6321026" data-attributes="member: 5143">Wow...you managed to post a message that was nothing but quoting what I've already read back to me while simultaneously calling me bizarrely angry.  That may go down in history as the least helpful post ever.Here's why it isn't "bizarrely angry":  Let's say I've got 20th level PCs in 3.5e, I decided to play a game with no magic items or casters at all.I say, alright, they are level 20, they can beat a CR 20 creature: A Pit Fiend.  The book says CR 20 creatures should take about 20% of the party's resources.Let's say the Fighter in the group started with an 18 Strength and bumped it every chance he got.  He has 23 Strength at this level and +2 due to feats.  So, he has +28 to hit.  He does 2d6+10 points of damage with his attacks.  The Pit Fiend has 225 hitpoints.  The fighter does 12.75 damage per round against it.  That means it takes 17.64 rounds for the Fighter to do enough damage to kill it.  That's assuming he can find some way to stop the DR 15...which he likely can't and will reduce the damage to about 3 points of damage per round.Let's assume that the Fighter can somehow get AC 25 due to feats and stuff without any magic items.  That's likely a bit high.  That means the Pit Fiend hits on a 2 with all his attacks.  That's 99.75 points of damage per round(without crits or worrying about the poison, it'd be more).  So, it'd take the Pit Fiend about 3 rounds to kill the Fighter.So, assuming the rest of the party performs about as well as the fighter does(which, if I'm not allowing spellcasters is extremely unlikely), that means the party can beat the Pit Fiend in about 4.25 rounds(assuming a party of 4 all hammering on it).  However, one of them dies in round 3.  Once again, assuming they can bypass the DR.  Otherwise, they all die before they kill the Pit Fiend.I don't feel like doing the math for a party with the magic items that they could purchase with the wealth guidelines for their level, but let's just say they are able to defeat the Pit Fiend while taking nearly no damage cause that's very likely what happens.The problem is that the DMG and the game doesn't tell me what to do or how to adjust for not using magic items or using less magic items.  It has just as vague or non-existent guidelines on how NOT to hand out that much gold and magic items.  It just says "You MUST give out those magic items, that's how D&D works".The game only gives me two choices: Have a party filled with super powered PCs or guess randomly what kind of monsters they can handle now.I'm saying that 5e will likely include better guidelines on scaling up when PCs have magic items than that.</blockquote>

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