D&D (2024) 2024 needs to end 2014's passive aggressive efforts to remove magic items & other elements from d&d

[tetrasodium]

No this arms race was a bane in 3E.

The only way NPCs could compete with monsters and heroes in 3E was by giving them loads of magic items. Even completely faceless mooks routinely sported +1 weapons once you reached the low high levels.

This meant it was impossible to keep heroes from looting lotsastuff. This allowed heroes to buy even more power, requiring the next set of NPCs to be decked out in even more gear.


---

That NPCs pose some threat to 5E heroes even without a single magic item is a great strength of the edition. That 5E have weaned players off looting every corpse, because regular mooks simply never have anything worth looting, is a great strength of the edition.

3.x monsters and NPCs didn't always need magic items. You could also give them templates and NPC or PC class levels & feats. 5e of course doesn't really have those options at all for whatever reason.

No?


While a wizard usually can only get saving throw bonuses from items, he doesn't need saving throw bonuses.

There is a caviat to this. One of the easiest ways to drag the excessive 6-8 medium to hard encounter adventuring day into a range that fits in to a reasonable playtime is to crank the heck out of encounter CRs. That causes melee to go from basically always hitting to still mostly hitting with what tend to be at will attacks. The casters are impacted very differently by an excess of energy and legendary resistance that is not simply bypassed by a +1 weapon obtained many levels ago. 5e magic item selection for casters is generally pretty poor at assisting with that.

 

[James Gasik]

Imagine an all-martial party. WotC likes to tell us that you aren't required to have any particular party composition to play the game. So we have, let's say, a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Rogue, and...I don't know, Monks are supposedly martials, right? Good enough.

Let's assume that neither Feats nor magic items are allowed- after all, these are optional elements, the game runs just fine without them!

Let's assume that each of these characters has a 10 stat somewhere. By the time the players are 9th level, the difference between their best save and their worst could be as much as 9 points (+9 vs. +0).

The party encounters, oh, say, a CR 10 Guardian Naga. It has three spells that target Wisdom (Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Geas) and one that targets Charisma (Banishment).

It's not a stretch to say that the worst Wisdom save in the party is +1, and the worst Charisma save is +0. The Naga's save DC is 16. So that's a success rate of 75-80% that one of the characters can instantly be removed from the fight (or mostly removed, in the case of that Wis save or do nothing on Bestow Curse). And while the party will likely kill the Naga quickly, as it's just one enemy, a few levels later, when you can fight the same Naga with other foes, nothing has changed about it's effectiveness against them!

This is a problem that simply gets worse as the game goes on, as enemy save DC's continue to scale, but your ability to save doesn't. And the game offers three potential solutions to this issue.

1) have an NPC spellcaster for things like Heroes' Feast, Bless, Resistance, what have you.
2) allow Resilient as a Feat so everyone can have a third proficient save.
3) add magic items to bolster bad saves.
4) have someone retire their character and reroll as a Cleric or something.

And given that 2-4 are not supposed to be required to play the game at all, this seems like there's a flaw in the game's design.

 

[tetrasodium]

Imagine an all-martial party. WotC likes to tell us that you aren't required to have any particular party composition to play the game. So we have, let's say, a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Rogue, and...I don't know, Monks are supposedly martials, right? Good enough.

Let's assume that neither Feats nor magic items are allowed- after all, these are optional elements, the game runs just fine without them!

Let's assume that each of these characters has a 10 stat somewhere. By the time the players are 9th level, the difference between their best save and their worst could be as much as 9 points (+9 vs. +0).

The party encounters, oh, say, a CR 10 Guardian Naga. It has three spells that target Wisdom (Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Geas) and one that targets Charisma (Banishment).

It's not a stretch to say that the worst Wisdom save in the party is +1, and the worst Charisma save is +0. The Naga's save DC is 16. So that's a success rate of 75-80% that one of the characters can instantly be removed from the fight (or mostly removed, in the case of that Wis save or do nothing on Bestow Curse). And while the party will likely kill the Naga quickly, as it's just one enemy, a few levels later, when you can fight the same Naga with other foes, nothing has changed about it's effectiveness against them!

This is a problem that simply gets worse as the game goes on, as enemy save DC's continue to scale, but your ability to save doesn't. And the game offers three potential solutions to this issue.

1) have an NPC spellcaster for things like Heroes' Feast, Bless, Resistance, what have you.
2) allow Resilient as a Feat so everyone can have a third proficient save.
3) add magic items to bolster bad saves.
4) have someone retire their character and reroll as a Cleric or something.

And given that 2-4 are not supposed to be required to play the game at all, this seems like there's a flaw in the game's design.

That's another area where body slots helped a lot in the way they allowed a GM to give out various +save & +power* items players could swap around from adventure to adventure without resulting in a PC wearing all +save items plus +power. Having too many saves now certainly doesn't help either


*whatever a particular class needs to feel like they are more powerful

 

[mamba]

If the game wants magic items to be option, then it should remove resistance to non-magical weapons as a core rule. As long as monsters that can only be hurt by magic weapons exist, then we're only kidding ourself if we saw we can play with no magic items.

If a DM does not hand out magic items, then they should use these creatures sparingly. Still no reason to either mandate them or ban them. Not sure why the rules need to prescribe this at all

 

[MichaelSomething]

Shouldn't terrible PC saves be a good thing for all those DMs who complain PC are unkillable? Just target their weak save!

 

[Minigiant]

Shouldn't terrible PC saves be a good thing for all those DMs who complain PC are unkillable? Just target their weak save!

It's two random and based on the whim of the d20.
That's why 4e and the 4e line of D&D gutted it.
5e rejected 4e design philosophy and copied 3e's without the logic behind it.

PCs have terrible saves and prone to unfun swingy random losses.
Magic Items and Feats used to handle that.

Weapons are bland, boring, and samey.
Magic Items and Feats used to handle that.

Monsters are weak and lack enemy countermeasures
Magic Items and Feats used to handle that.

PCs and Monsters are bland and have low support for different styles of characters
Magic Items and Feats used to handle that.

It's should be clear by now to everyone that 5e was designed as shelfware and it got surprisingly popular. Everything that was DM was rushed and WOTC admitted it.

Magic items strategy was DM side design.

 

[Horwath]

Imagine an all-martial party. WotC likes to tell us that you aren't required to have any particular party composition to play the game. So we have, let's say, a Fighter, a Barbarian, a Rogue, and...I don't know, Monks are supposedly martials, right? Good enough.

Let's assume that neither Feats nor magic items are allowed- after all, these are optional elements, the game runs just fine without them!

Let's assume that each of these characters has a 10 stat somewhere. By the time the players are 9th level, the difference between their best save and their worst could be as much as 9 points (+9 vs. +0).

The party encounters, oh, say, a CR 10 Guardian Naga. It has three spells that target Wisdom (Hold Person, Bestow Curse, Geas) and one that targets Charisma (Banishment).

It's not a stretch to say that the worst Wisdom save in the party is +1, and the worst Charisma save is +0. The Naga's save DC is 16. So that's a success rate of 75-80% that one of the characters can instantly be removed from the fight (or mostly removed, in the case of that Wis save or do nothing on Bestow Curse). And while the party will likely kill the Naga quickly, as it's just one enemy, a few levels later, when you can fight the same Naga with other foes, nothing has changed about it's effectiveness against them!

This is a problem that simply gets worse as the game goes on, as enemy save DC's continue to scale, but your ability to save doesn't. And the game offers three potential solutions to this issue.

1) have an NPC spellcaster for things like Heroes' Feast, Bless, Resistance, what have you.
2) allow Resilient as a Feat so everyone can have a third proficient save.
3) add magic items to bolster bad saves.
4) have someone retire their character and reroll as a Cleric or something.

And given that 2-4 are not supposed to be required to play the game at all, this seems like there's a flaw in the game's design.

bad saves are the problem really.

few solutions:

1. Add half(round up) prof bonus to non proficient saves, so there is some scaling.
+1 at lvl 1, +2 at lvl5, +3 at lvl 13.

2. buff resilient that it does not give +1 ASI, but proficiency in 3 saves.

3. If we have magic items; Cloak or resistance does not give bonus to all saves but proficiency in one or more saves. Can be shifted every long rest:
Cloak or resistance, requires attunement:
unommon: proficiency in one save
rare: proficiency in two saves
very rare: proficiency in 3 saves
legendary: proficiency in 4 saves

if cloak would give proficiency in more saves than you have non proficient, you can get expertise in that number of saves.

 

[James Gasik]

bad saves are the problem really.

few solutions:

1. Add half(round up) prof bonus to non proficient saves, so there is some scaling.
+1 at lvl 1, +2 at lvl5, +3 at lvl 13.

2. buff resilient that it does not give +1 ASI, but proficiency in 3 saves.

3. If we have magic items; Cloak or resistance does not give bonus to all saves but proficiency in one or more saves. Can be shifted every long rest:
Cloak or resistance, requires attunement:
unommon: proficiency in one save
rare: proficiency in two saves
very rare: proficiency in 3 saves
legendary: proficiency in 4 saves

if cloak would give proficiency in more saves than you have non proficient, you can get expertise in that number of saves.

All of these would be welcome additions to the game, as the current way of dealing with it is to use optional rules elements and/or optimize your party- the exact thing WotC claims we don't need to do.

Make sure every party has a Cleric and a Paladin, and avoid classes with lackluster save proficiency.

As an aside, this seems like it will continue to be a problem in 2024, since the only thing I've seen that addresses it is the buff to Indomitable.*

*I think the latest playtest packet offers Druids proficiency in the saves of their beast forms, though I may be mis-remembering that.

 

[nevin]

But I have no problem with them wanting that. We were discussing whether the game requires magic items.

One clear example is +1 swords. No, you don't have to hand these out to your martial characters. Not if you have a spellcaster capable of casting Magic Weapon, a spell I have never seen used... simply because I've never played in a truly magic poor campaign. But I know enough about the game to be able to say, with confidence, you can complete every official module even if you have zero magic items*. This separates 5E from the editions before it.

*) I'm sure there are some exceptions... but I would be very surprised if the scenario doesn't go to greath lengths to providing a special mcguffin that fixes the problem in those cases, as opposed to groups just concluding "my fighter can't do anything and defeat is inevitable".

that's fair. It's easy to forget all those spells that are there to make up for missing magic items.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's not a stretch to say that the worst Wisdom save in the party is +1, and the worst Charisma save is +0. The Naga's save DC is 16. So that's a success rate of 75-80% that one of the characters can instantly be removed from the fight (or mostly removed, in the case of that Wis save or do nothing on Bestow Curse). And while the party will likely kill the Naga quickly, as it's just one enemy, a few levels later, when you can fight the same Naga with other foes, nothing has changed about it's effectiveness against them!

This is a problem that simply gets worse as the game goes on, as enemy save DC's continue to scale, but your ability to save doesn't. And the game offers three potential solutions to this issue.

I understand your scenario here and understand your complaints about this situation... but I will tell you from my perspective why this complaint doesn't seem to hold much weight for me. Because it assumes that the game itself doesn't give the players/DM any choice in the matter. That they are just stuck having to face off against this naga again in a few levels and be just as bad at facing it as they were several months previous.

But that's not true. The DM has chosen to put their players up against this naga again. The DM has known going in that their players are going to have just as bad a time of it now (even at their higher level) as they did last time. And it seems to me that that's exactly the point. The DM wanting to throw a difficult encounter against the group, and where the party just happens to have that one achilles heel against them regardless of how strong they have gotten through the campaign.

D&D is not a game where there is a standardized "power level" for every single type of creature in the game, and as the PCs gain power, every creature's power begins to fall away equally. Like a naga that was a certain power level when the party was 3rd level needs to be demonstrably less powerful when the group is at 9th. That's not at all how this game has been designed. And we know this because the game is set up to allow us to build creatures at whatever power level we wish. Default kobolds from the MM are CR 1/8... but any DM out there can just build a kobold using the PC rules and thus throw out an 18th level Fighter kobold against the party if they want. So the party had a certain difficulty against kobolds at the beginning on the campaign, and had the same difficulty against some kobolds three years and 15 levels later. Or you have twelve different types of zombie, each of them at a different CR and the party will face those zombies over and over again, all of them always seeming to be a challenge. So we can't say there is or should be an expectation of monster power level depending on PC level. That just doesn't happen. Players can and will run up against all manner of power level for every single creature out there.

Thus to my mind... the fact that this particular naga does not get weaker against the party across the board (but rather only in certain ways) is nothing that seems wrong. Facing off against a monster that gains or loses differing levels of power in their abilities depending on which part of the monster's features we are talking about seems completely normal.