Do Characters Need Magic Items to Keep Up?

[Kel]

Starting a paragon-tier campaign soon, beginning at 11th level.

In your experience, do characters need to have magic items that are about their level in order to remain competitive against monsters of their level? For instance, magic items in the 11th-15th level range have a +3 bonus. Are my players going to be shafted if, as a general rule, they do not have weapons, armor, and neck-slot items that have a bonus of about +3?

As an aside, I thought one of the promises of 4E was that, with the constantly increasing defenses and attack bonuses of characters, there would be less reliance on magic items. The opposite seems to be true, however, especially with the whole "magic item level" thing. Now that magic items have levels, I think players typically feel like they are underpowered if they don't have items that approximate their characters' level.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, underpowered vs what is the question...

Normally a level + 0 encounter, especially beyond heroic tier is going to be fairly easy for the players to defeat. If they lack ANY magic items, then yeah it will be somewhat harder, but probably not as hard as a level + 3 encounter usually is (which generally is fairly difficult but it depends on the group, etc). So if you simply want to play without magic items and no other changes to the rules, then you may need to present the party with slightly easier challenges and maybe use more monsters of a bit less level for bigger threats so the players aren't spending all their time trying to hit and failing.

Or you can just go ahead and give every PC a +1 to-hit and damage at levels 5,10,15,20,25,30 and likewise to AC and other defenses. You may want to give the AC/Def bonus starting at level 1 instead of 5 because PC defenses tend to lag some at high levels. Basically you're just giving them the essential bonuses the game assumes they're likely to have.

4e DID succeed in making items fairly optional. Item powers really aren't vital to character power. Item pluses are still moderately important simply because the game has to assume SOMETHING in terms of scaling. Maybe ideally they'd have removed pluses entirely but ah well.

 

[Garthanos]

The game presumes they will have advancement of ability in one form or another... including magic items... not taking those in to account if they are at all consequential would have been negligence... making them so inadequate that they werent of consequence wouldnt have been very D&D like.

That said it is trivial to scale back monsters (taking the same monsters you have and dropping there level by a few... )

There are some very cool other options called Alternate Rewards. Including boons and masters training. Essentially these take up the slot of the "consequential.... thing" in place of magic items.

 

[Garthanos]

Alternate rewards need some fleshing out I think... especially the non-divine boon style ones.....

 

[Fanaelialae]

4e lessened the reliance on magic items but didn't eliminate it completely.

There are now only 3 item types that grant important bonuses (weapon/implement, armor and neck). In earlier editions, you could get important bonuses from a great many types of items (weapons, armor, shields, cloaks, rings, belts, crowns, ioun stones, etc.). As such, the reliance on magical items has lessened (because instead of between a half-dozen and a dozen items, you now only need 3).

I would recommend either giving the paragon-level characters level appropriate gear for weapon, armor and neck, or granting them a level bonus to replace those bonuses as AbdulAlhazred suggested. The rest of the gear is relatively unimportant. Denying +3 to hit, AC and non-AC defenses will be noticeable, though it certainly won't guarantee a TPK outright. Don't be surprised if there's grind though (since if the PCs aren't hitting the monsters they aren't killing them).

In case you missed it, the designers' recommendations for starting with high level characters are on page 143 of the DMG. (Each character gets to select a level +1 item, a level item, a level -1 item, and gold equal to the value of a level -1 item).

 

[keterys]

Also, DMG2 has recommendations for playing without magic items. It has a big disclaimer of 'Make sure your players actually want to do this' followed by some rules... they're something like (but maybe not exactly) 'At 2,7,12,17,22,27 increase attack and damage by 1' and 'At 4,9,14,19,24,29 increase all defenses by 1'

I don't know if it says anything about crits, but I'd recommend giving more damage on crits. If it doesn't say, I'd actually recommend 'At 1,6,11,16,21,26 increase critical bonus damage by +1d8'

 

[KarinsDad]

One of the simplest solutions is to balance the foes with the PCs.

At level 1, n-1 through n+3 foes might be reasonable.

At level 21, n-5 through n-1 foes might be reasonable.

Nothing in the rules state that you have to set up encounters as per the DMG if you are not handing out magic treasure parcels as per the DMG.

 

[keterys]

It is probably fair and decent to reduce the encounter level of enemies, it is true, but you'll end up in an odd situation of being unable to use the really high level stuff or wanting to delevel it a lot. If you're comfortable with that, it does work.

For instance, the end fight could just be against a level 28 version of Orcus instead of 33.

 

[KarinsDad]

For instance, the end fight could just be against a level 28 version of Orcus instead of 33.

I think reducing the levels of foes to be a lot more work for the DM than to just pick lower level foes. There are probably a few foes like Orcus where it's the "name brand" foe where reducing the level would be better, just so that the players can say "We ruled Orcus", but as a general rule, lowering levels is just too much hassle compared to selecting lower level foes where all the work is already done.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

As an aside, I thought one of the promises of 4E was that, with the constantly increasing defenses and attack bonuses of characters, there would be less reliance on magic items.

Yeah, that was a big fat lie.

In your experience, do characters need to have magic items that are about their level in order to remain competitive against monsters of their level?

Unless you compensate somehow, yes, fights will be harder than they're supposed to be. Especially since the game's math is already faulty -- monster stats scale faster than PC stats -- you might have regular TPKs by epic levels. Can't say for sure because I've never just dropped magical items; I drop enhancement bonuses and replace them with extra level bonuses.