Character growth in place of items

[Mouseferatu]

Okay, I know that we're all sick and tired of the whole "D&D is too magic item-dependent!!" argument. And I'm not here to reignite it. In many campaigns, I'm okay with the current levels; in most others, I have little trouble modifying the challenges to suit a lower level of magic.

That said, I just had an idea--possibly due to it being 1 in the morning--and I wanted to just toss it out. This an idea in its rawest form, and I don't pretend that I've given any in-depth thought to making sure it's balanced. I just want to see what everyone else thinks, how you'd go about changing/balancing/implementing such a thing.

Okay...

Reduce the amount of magic in a campaign by a substantial amount--like 75% or even more. Magic items become truly rare and special items.

Instead, characters are able to advance their own abilities at a much faster rate. Specifically, characters gain an ability boost and a feat at every level, to make up for the various stat boosts, bonuses, and the like that they aren't getting from magic anymore.

Again, not pretending it's a polished or final idea, just the nugget of a kernel of a seed. But I'd love to know what people think, and how they'd run with the basic concept.

 

[Kelleris]

Something similar I do is allow people to spend half of their starting gold on the utility items and have it simply be a permanent boost to the character, e.g. spending 4000 gold in this way to create a character with a +2 resistance bonus on all saves. The items don't take up a slot and aren't technically affected by dispel magic, so it's a bit of a power boost. Everything that actually has an interesting effect is still tied to a specific item, though. I just don't like all the generic utility items everyone buys, the cloaks of resistance, rings of protection, and +4 widgets of stat-boosting.