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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7183701" data-attributes="member: 996"> It is a big step up - and a small but significant step back, especially in attitude. Adding the other published books wouldn't exactly break the system's back, but, understandable after having run 3.x, which got pretty crazy, pretty fast.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Interesting, what other games did these not-so-new newbs actually start with? Not unusual.  As long as you're not seeing problems within the party as a result (ie you don't have a big gap in resources among the PCs, or you do and nobody cares/everybody likes it that way), it really is just a simple matter of dialing up the difficulty until the party is challenged.  Fit the same amount of challenge into each day, even if you can't fit in the same number of encounters and short rests.  In theory, if you have 3-4 deadly encounters with a short rest after each one, things'll balance out about the same.  1-2 encounter days, even if you dial up the exp to be a full day's worth, are going to distort the balance between classes that recharge on short rests, or have most of their power in always-available features and those with more of their power concentrated in long-rest-recharge resources (mostly slots, obviously).  That's an issue for some tables, where intra-party imbalances are considered undesirable.   CR is not an exact science.  Given that your party is facing fewer encounters/day, and given what you know of their player-skill, party mix, and general effectiveness, you should feel free to buff the monster as much as seems necessary to bring it up to snuff, without boosting the exp its worth. Thing about magic items is PCs pick 'em up and that puts them ahead of the curve, of course.  The helper support casters are a better idea.  An item that acts as magical only for the BBEG, or that's diametrically opposed to the party in some way, so they'll consider destroying it a 'win,' could work - again, depends on your party's attitude... Good call, IMHO.  Get some variety that way.  I've found that a party of random-rolled characters (though none were random-in-order) did better at 1st level, which can be a bit of a pain in 5e, as it was back in the day, do a little better, because there's generally been one or two PCs that did particularly well, and helped carry the party through that 1st level.  As you level up, the discrepancy would eventually work itself out due to ASIs.   That should give you pretty capable, not too cookie-cutter characters.  Combined with fewer encounters/day, it shouldn't be surprising if they can handle a little more than expected from a 'standard' (array, 6-8 encounter/day) party. But it really depends a lot on your players and the mix of classes they chose.  And, of course, even more on you.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> If your party was dishing out high DPR and not facing any character deaths at 1st level, you have to expect them to be really hitting it out of the park by 5th.  5e characters start out pretty modest and rather fragile at 1st, and come into their own as they pick up sub-classes, their first ASI at 4th, and Extra Attack &  3rd level spells at 5th.  Using magic items to perk up a lagging PC is a valid tool - I haven't had to it break out, yet, as I have mostly been running low level and not using items, feats or MCing, at all.I'd be interested to hear more details on what you've run into, the breakdown of the party, etc... ?</blockquote>

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