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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 8035144" data-attributes="member: 3424">Actually, I thought 4E made it really easy to adjust for the presence or absence of magic items. I don't know why the 4E team didn't make it more explicit. Maybe they weren't confident enough of their own math, or they were too invested in the philosophy that 4E should be run without tweaks.Anyway, the basic assumption in 4E is that the PCs' attacks and defenses would increase at roughly 1 point per level. The increase isn't steady and you get occasional spikes and plateaus, but it generally isn't noticeable in actual play. Similarly, monsters' attacks and defenses would go up 1 point per level, and this is generally baked into the monster creation guidelines.Hence, if the game assumes a PC of level X would have +A weapons and armor, but the PC only has +B weapons and armor, treat the PC as level X - A + B when designing encounters. In the case of a no magic campaign, B = 0, and the formula just becomes X - A.I find this far superior to 5E's guidelines which effectively say: the encounters are balanced on the assumption that the PCs have no magic items. If you decide to give your 20th level paladin a holy avenger, plate mail +2, and a shield +2, you're on your own.</blockquote>