Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ace" data-source="post: 2504252" data-attributes="member: 944">No offense BU but there is a default needed amount of magic items built into the system as it is written. Without the items listed you can't safely use many DR encounters, flying encounters, encounters with many kinds of magic in them (default low saves lag way way behind spells-- I  mean do you really want your 20th leve; fighter to be easily dominated by a 7th level wizard?) and in addition fighters and the like get hit more than twice as often. lets say you have a high level fighter who normally have plate +3 heavy shield +3 amulet of natural armor +3 ring of deflection +3  plus a Dodge feat and a +1 dex bonus  his base AC is 32A low magic fighter with a Plate, a +3 heavy shield,a  dodge feat and a +1 dex bonus has a base AC of 25 -- This means in melee he takes 35% more hits -- it is the same effect as dropping him from a d10 to about a d6 for HP even against normal opponentsAlso Wizards are staggeringly powerfull without an appropriate amount of PC magic Lets say you have a party of 4 blog standard guys each 12 level -- each has two magic items Fighter has +2 silver longsword and a +3 shield Rogue has +2  studded leather and Elven boots Wizard  (who is 11th ) has piles of scrolls he made  and a +2 natural armor amulet and a wand of magic misisles (l9) with 30 charges Cleric (who is also 11th) has a bunch of potions (he made), +2 Chain  and his mace of disruption  This seem like a fairly equipped party but its not.  Both the fighter and rogue can be easily taken down with any will related effect, say Dominate -- The cleric has a good chance if he can buff -- and the wizard --well he needs a few rounds to buff but is otherwise OK What happens without items is the non spell users are hosed badly and the spell casters are either hammered flat or if they pick spells wisely and a have some time to buff will be about the same except for an increased  amount of resource use.What low magic item games do (without comensatory rules mods) is grossly nerf fighters and make the party casters need to recharge resources more which leads to a lot more -- stop, rest and a lot less ---fight on! They also put heavy limits on the DM's monster pallate. There are a lot of cool monsters that would be challenging for say a level 12 party that can and will TPK an under equipped party at level 20. This is why rules modiications are essential if you reduce items. WOTC shows this with the vow of poverty feat. It seems gawdawful powerfull but its not compared to a well equiped parties resources  To make low item D&D balance even against mostly human opponents you need  the following extra feats, extra skill points, better stat rolls (no 25 point buy), better hp roll method Optionally  a few stat points on level up better saves for weak saves and most importantly a level based AC bonus that stacks with armor I also allow feats in a low item game that I might not allow in a regular game as too strong as well as use stuff like combat styles to balance out With these mods and a little care in the monster selectionlow item D&D can balance out at similar power levels to regular D&D</blockquote>

Verification