Mercurius
Legend
One of the ongoing concerns in every edition is the balance of class power, especially at higher levels. There is no way around the fact that a 20th level wizard is simply more powerful than a 20th level fighter.
5E ameliorates this somewhat. But with the “game-changing” 9th level spells, it seems inevitable that there will be a gap, at least not without messing with spell casting tropes. And of course, the gap is only widest at 20th...it starts well before then.
But is this really a problem? It certainly jives conceptually, but also with fantasy tradition. Of course D&D assumes some degree of balance, and the designers want players to feel happy about playing characters that they want to play, not just for munchkinism.
There is some balance in that non-spellcasters tend to be more powerful—or at least less vulnerable—at lower levels. But somewhere between 5th and 15th level, the tables are turned and martial players watch wistfully as wizards stop time and level armies with meteor swarms.
But we WANT to be able to do that. We want super powerful wizards capable of facing ancient dragons or destroying armies. But we also want our martial characters to remain relevant—not just in terms of role-play, but combat.
So I have one idea. I haven’t really thought it out, so don’t know how well it would actually play at the table, which is partially why I’m bringing it to the collective wisdom of ENWorld. It is this: what if spellcasters were unable to use magic items? The basic setting-specific rationale would be that there is a kind of interference or “shorting out.” A spellcaster’s magic comes from within and thus could not augment their own magic with s external items.
So my question: how would that impact balance and game play? Is it over-compensating too much?
An alternate would be that some magic items would still work, but they are rare and there is a cost of some kind. Or maybe a spell-caster could use magic items, but not stacking in any way with their own magic.
Again, I haven’t thought this through in a meaningful way, but wanted to explore the idea a bit.
5E ameliorates this somewhat. But with the “game-changing” 9th level spells, it seems inevitable that there will be a gap, at least not without messing with spell casting tropes. And of course, the gap is only widest at 20th...it starts well before then.
But is this really a problem? It certainly jives conceptually, but also with fantasy tradition. Of course D&D assumes some degree of balance, and the designers want players to feel happy about playing characters that they want to play, not just for munchkinism.
There is some balance in that non-spellcasters tend to be more powerful—or at least less vulnerable—at lower levels. But somewhere between 5th and 15th level, the tables are turned and martial players watch wistfully as wizards stop time and level armies with meteor swarms.
But we WANT to be able to do that. We want super powerful wizards capable of facing ancient dragons or destroying armies. But we also want our martial characters to remain relevant—not just in terms of role-play, but combat.
So I have one idea. I haven’t really thought it out, so don’t know how well it would actually play at the table, which is partially why I’m bringing it to the collective wisdom of ENWorld. It is this: what if spellcasters were unable to use magic items? The basic setting-specific rationale would be that there is a kind of interference or “shorting out.” A spellcaster’s magic comes from within and thus could not augment their own magic with s external items.
So my question: how would that impact balance and game play? Is it over-compensating too much?
An alternate would be that some magic items would still work, but they are rare and there is a cost of some kind. Or maybe a spell-caster could use magic items, but not stacking in any way with their own magic.
Again, I haven’t thought this through in a meaningful way, but wanted to explore the idea a bit.
