D&D 5E Christmas Tree Enemies

[Zaran]

Give the NPCs the magical items you think they should have. They don't have to be more powerful than the PCs' magical items. They don't have to useful to the PCs. If you pit another adventuring party against them with similar experience then they should have a similar amount of magical items. In my opinion, major NPCs should be the main source for magical items with underlings not having any.

That being said there is no reason why a NPC has to have every slot filled with Magic items. During their life they may have encountered as many as your PCs but like the PCs had to share them with others and might not have been able to use the items found.

 

[vandaexpress]

Bosses only, pretty much, and I use them to reward the party, not to challenge them. I can get the challenge by manipulating creature stats, as others have indicated. I'm a big fan of disposable magic items now, though. Finally, there are a handful of items that grant unique capabilities to counter the party, if an enemy has done his research on party tactics and expects a confrontation, I may have him equip a magic item for that purpose. It feels less cheesy than handwaving and saying "Yeah this fighter rogue can catch your arrows for some reason" as opposed to giving him Gloves of Missile Snaring. Or have him carry a scroll of protection from energy (fire) or what have you.

I don't usually load up too many items on a creature either. As others have pointed out, it quickly overloads the party with tons of loot, making it harder for me to balance later encounters.

I do like to occasionally hand out a weapon that isn't the preferred weapon of a party member to see how the characters suddenly adapt their tactics to use it, for example my party's Greataxe Barbarian switches to his +1 spear when he needs to hit something with high AC, etc. When he throws it, sometimes I'll have an enemy pick it up and use it on the party as well.

 

[S'mon]

The leading PCs in my 5e game have gone from 1st to 5th over 14 sessions. In that time they've found a +1 dagger embedded in a zombie's chest (level 1 of 'Dyson's Delve') and captured a de-stasised Cleric of Thanatos in the 'Caverns of Thracia' who had a +1 war pick. Recently a PC was rewarded with a scroll of two spells. I think that's everything apart from the ubiquitous potions of healing. They do sometimes adventure with a dwarf adventurer NPC who wields a +1 warhammer.

Since I'm using published adventures it's probably more that (a) 5e advancement is quite rapid and (b) the adventures are not hugely generous with magic items.

 

[Sunseeker]

I like giving my players utility items, not power boosts. I try to replace "epic loot" with boons that will stick with a player well beyond the lifespan on a +1 sword.

 

[TerraDave]

I have found giving NPCs or monsters many magical items to keep up with players causes an increase in the issue - when they kill the critter, they get more items for themselves lol. Bad circular cycle.

And its not only you...it was realized pretty early in D&D history that you could not give NPCs the same amount of magic as PCs for just this reason.

A good example would be the G/D modules. There are certainly items and lots of treasure...but the giants are dangerous, cause, well, they are giants, and the drow have those infamous drow weapons, for just this reason.

Of course, it wasn't until 4E that the designers were really comfortable with the implications of this, beyond having weapons that decayed out of the drow homeland.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't find that this is needed in 5E at all. Of course some NPCs will have magical items but monster building to provide decent opposition to the PCs is so easy to do without having to do that. This was an issue in 3.X because NPCs were built the same as PCs and needed level appropriate gear in order to be "complete" for what they were supposed to represent.

I like the 5E NPC/monster creation method quite a bit because of this. Tough NPCs can still be tough without powerful items and that means more powerful treasure items can be discovered in ancient vaults & crypts and such. This is more fitting for the very rare and legendary items with lost formulae. The dirt cheapest legendary item takes about 5.5 YEARS working full days every day to craft. The idea that there are multiple NPCs running around with a few to a half dozen of these as part of their gear is a notion that I find to be kind of incredulous.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I've never really used Christmas tree NPCs. It leads too quickly to Christmas tree PCs. My usual design of opponents goes like this:
(1) Pick desired ability level of opponents
(2) Pick the treasure I want the PCs to be able to get
(3) Create the base opponents so that base abilities + (2)bonuses from treasure = (1) desired ability level

 

[Agamon]

NPCs don't need magic items, so no. I have given an NPC a cool weapon that the PCs would like to use, but not to buff him up so much as give something to the PCs.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Permanent magic items are very rare in my game, so no Christmas tree enemies for me. Even Potions etc are fairly uncommon for me. All magic items in 5e are pure "bonus", you can have very few items and the game works fine.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Permanent magic items are very rare in my game, so no Christmas tree enemies for me. Even Potions etc are fairly uncommon for me. All magic items in 5e are pure "bonus", you can have very few items and the game works fine.

But it works even better with them, which is why every edition has lots of them as do video game adventures and RPG. Having another way to reward players, to motivate players, to provide plot hooks and to customize characters is great.