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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 6486221" data-attributes="member: 3424">All this means is that in 5e, once you hand out your first magic item to the PCs, the suggested encounter guidelines become that little bit less useful. The more magic items you hand out, the less and less useful they become. It is the reverse of the problem you would encounter if you decide not to hand out magic items in 4e: instead of the PCs finding it harder to &quot;keep up&quot; with the monsters, the monsters now find it harder to &quot;keep up&quot; with the PCs.The difference between 4e and 5e is that in 4e, a DM can easily adjust for PCs not having the magic items the game assumes they do by using monsters of lower CR. If the PCs don't have any magic items, and the game assumes that they have +3 magic items, the DM just needs to use monsters with CR 3 less than party level. Since the monsters' AC, defenses and attack bonuses increase by about one point per level, a fight between a level 15 party that has no magic items and CR 12 monsters should play out similarly to a fight between a level 15 party with +3 magic items and CR 15 monsters.5e, on the other hand, does not provide any guidelines on how to adjust encounter difficulty for magic items. So, assuming a CR 17, 18,000 xp Adult Red Dragon is a Medium difficulty, moderately challenging encounter for a party of four 17th-level PCs with no magic items, how would it change if the PCs have, between them, 9 uncommon, 4 or 5 rare, 3 very rare and 1 legendary permanent magic items?&nbsp; Would the encounter difficulty remain Moderate, or would it now be Easy?&nbsp; If the encounter difficulty does change, and the DM wanted to adjust the encounter difficulty to make it Moderate again, how much more xp worth of monsters should he add?&nbsp; Would another Adult Red Dragon be enough? Would it be too much? It really isn't clear to me.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 6486221, member: 3424"] All this means is that in 5e, once you hand out your first magic item to the PCs, the suggested encounter guidelines become that little bit less useful. The more magic items you hand out, the less and less useful they become. It is the reverse of the problem you would encounter if you decide not to hand out magic items in 4e: instead of the PCs finding it harder to "keep up" with the monsters, the monsters now find it harder to "keep up" with the PCs. The difference between 4e and 5e is that in 4e, a DM can easily adjust for PCs not having the magic items the game assumes they do by using monsters of lower CR. If the PCs don't have any magic items, and the game assumes that they have +3 magic items, the DM just needs to use monsters with CR 3 less than party level. Since the monsters' AC, defenses and attack bonuses increase by about one point per level, a fight between a level 15 party that has no magic items and CR 12 monsters should play out similarly to a fight between a level 15 party with +3 magic items and CR 15 monsters. 5e, on the other hand, does not provide any guidelines on how to adjust encounter difficulty for magic items. So, assuming a CR 17, 18,000 xp Adult Red Dragon is a Medium difficulty, moderately challenging encounter for a party of four 17th-level PCs with no magic items, how would it change if the PCs have, between them, 9 uncommon, 4 or 5 rare, 3 very rare and 1 legendary permanent magic items? Would the encounter difficulty remain Moderate, or would it now be Easy? If the encounter difficulty does change, and the DM wanted to adjust the encounter difficulty to make it Moderate again, how much more xp worth of monsters should he add? Would another Adult Red Dragon be enough? Would it be too much? It really isn't clear to me. [/QUOTE]

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