Do Characters Need Magic Items to Keep Up?

[Garthanos]

There is a button on character builder .... on the Details panel, called inherent bonus's. Grants bonus's to attacks damage and defense based on the DMG2 page 138 description of removing magic items from your campaign....
Also makes un-enchanted masterwork items available for purchase at the appropriate levels.

This has become a properly supported option it seems.

 

[Kel]

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'

That's certainly a good indication that the system assumes that characters will be constantly getting level-appropriate magic items.

Thanks.

 

[chitzk0i]

Yeah, that was a big fat lie.

PCs still use magic items and they are still important. However, previous editions' magic items made up so much more of what your character could do. Magic items had all kinds of weird, off-the-wall, powerful things they could do which were often invaluable. If you didn't have stat boosters, protection items, a flying item, and if your weapons wasn't keen, frost, shock, and holy, you were doing jack.

Can't say for sure because I've never just dropped magical items; I drop enhancement bonuses and replace them with extra level bonuses.

Did you ever try to do that in 3e? It took a heck of a lot more work than just handing out enhancement bonuses.

 

[keterys]

I think reducing the levels of foes to be a lot more work for the DM.

It's not so bad really. I actually run monsters with changed levels all the time in one game. If you've only got one creature to change the level of, it's easy to track that one - like last session I wanted a Death Knight so just opened the book to Death Knight and ran it from there, factoring in the -5 levels in my head.

If you've got several, the DDI monster builder or Asmor monster creator can be helpful methods for autodoing the stats then letting you print them. Or just write down the differences beforehand.

-4 attack, def, -2 damage, done.

 

[Turtlejay]

The bonuses to hit and damge are easy to work around, but having some experience playing in a low/no magic campaign, I can tell you that it is the *options* that I missed. Not the Iron Armbands of Power, but the Cloak of the Mountebank. If you remove magic items completely, you are not ruining the game or its balance (aside from crits. for sure crit damage bonuses will need to be worked in somehow), you are just taking away options from your players.

Jay

 

[ValhallaGH]

Quick Math:
Monster AC, Level 11:
~25 (may be as much as 29 without being Elite / Solo).
Monster Attack, Level 11:
~+16 / +14 non-AC

PC Attack bonus, Level 11:
+5 (level) +2 (Proficiency) +4 (19 key ability) = +11.
PC AC, Level 11:
+5 (level) +6 (Armor / ability) = 21.

That means the PCs need a 14+ to hit a normal monster of their level. 18+ for a high AC monster of their level.
So their odds are only 35% / 15%. Maybe as high as 55% / 35% with Combat Advantage and a power bonus. Those are losing odds.

Worse, the monsters will hit the PCs on a 5+, 80% of the time.

So, not only will the party not be doing nearly as much damage, they will be taking significantly more damage as they will get hit practically all the time.

I hope this was helpful.


Note: the PC values are approximations based upon effective but not optimal builds. However, the variation is no more than 4 in either direction.

 

[keterys]

If you subtract the expected enhancement bonus of their item from the monster level, though, it's not too bad.

L11 PC: +13 attack and AC 22
vs. (level 8 monster) w/ +13 attack and AC 22

 

[Elric]

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'

These sorts of recommendations have the crucial problem that they're missing Masterwork Armor bonuses to AC (assuming the DM doesn't hand out masterwork armor without any enhancement bonuses when the players would normally get MW armor of each type).

For characters wearing heavy armor, this is a loss of +6 AC over 29 levels (+2 for light armor characters)! So you need a stronger fix than this. Using lower levels of monsters carries the same problem- characters in heavy armor are much too easy to hit vs AC.

 

[keterys]

It actually talks about giving out masterwork armor in the same sidebar, actually.

So, it does assume you'll still find some Wyvernscale or whatever.

 

[DracoSuave]

The game doesn't assume they get items of approximate level, it assumes you're giving them items of -higher- level while money rounds out the rest.