Do Characters Need Magic Items to Keep Up?

[CapnZapp]

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?

The thing is, you need the bonus, not the item.

That is, you can remove all magic items - PCs don't need their properties and powers. All that is just gravy.

But what the game requires, and what your PCs do need, is bonuses to attack/damage, AC, and Fort/Ref/Will. These correspond to weapons/implements, armor and neck items (amulets and cloaks).

So the easiest answer is "except for weapons, armor and amulets; you can remove all magic items".

A slightly more involved method would be to hand out the bonuses but not the items. The DMG2 contains a crude recommendation, but personally I prefer slightly more involved numbers, that also make the Expertise feats redundant:

*) Grant a total of +9 to attacks and damage over the thirty levels
*) Grant a total of +8 to AC over the thirty levels to everybody
*) Grant another +4 to AC to users of heavy armor (making the total AC bonus +12 over the thirty levels for these PCs)
*) Grant a total of +10 to Fort/Ref/Will over the thirty levels

This allows you to simplify the game significantly:
*) you do not need to hand out ANY magic items
*) masterwork armor is removed
*) expertise feats are removed (opening up a feat slot to all characters)
*) the Epic Fort/Ref/Will feats are removed (essentially, you get them for free - by getting decent defenses from the start, you will feel less forced to spend your precious feat slots on defense boosters)

Please note you can still offer magic items if you want. You simply remove the bonuses. (A Sword becomes +0 but retains its properties and powers)

This situation is desirable to some DMs: magic items are cool, but not required. Even if you lose your Flaming Sword or Cloak of Protection you will still remain effective in the game. Sure, you lose out on the odd property or power, but these are hardly essential.

Yes, this progression is slightly more involved than the one described by the DMG2, but it does away with several trouble spots WotC haven't bothered to fix too...

 

[CapnZapp]

Here's a small PDF I whipped up that gives you everything you need.

(Just remember to not give out masterwork armor and those feats now!)

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

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.



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

You're right; I like being dramatic. I did replace item bonuses with inherent bonuses in 3e, and it was a bit more involved than doing so in 4e. Still, I think a lot of us were disappointed to discover that enhancement bonuses still exist in 4e.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think 2,7,12,17,22 and 27 is a little bit badly implemented

the increase in power on 2,12 and 22 is too big (+2 to attack at a single level)
maybe even +3 because of the expertise feat you could take at this level

a much smoother curve would be achieved if you use 3,7,13,17,23,27
the gap at 11 and 21 may be smoothed by taking a paragon path and epic destiny.

and i would suggest those bonuses even in a campaign where you actually use magic items... maybe there you would shift it to 5,9,15,19,25,29 (and they won´t stack with magic items)

this would make magic items still useful because of the crits, but not necessary.

Just my 2cents

 

[keterys]

Hmm. (Edit: Misread the above, but playing around with a 'every 4 levels' bonus anyhow, since it helps catch up some drift and make up for lack of certain other items that add to damage and such)

If you ditch Expertise and all magic items, you could do the following:
1: +1d8 Crits
3: +1 Attack & Damage
5: +1 All Defenses, +2d8 Crits
7: +2 Attack & Damage, +1 Heavy Armor AC
9: +2 All Defenses, +3d8 Crits
11: +3 Attack & Damage, +2 Heavy Armor AC
etc, every 4 levels - works out pretty well it looks like.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You're right; I like being dramatic. I did replace item bonuses with inherent bonuses in 3e, and it was a bit more involved than doing so in 4e. Still, I think a lot of us were disappointed to discover that enhancement bonuses still exist in 4e.

I would have been disappointed if they removed them...

but as suggested above, i would have also given inherent bonuses which don´t stack with magic items...
also i would have removed increasing attributes or sticked to +1 to a single attribute and not expect it to be used on primary and secondary stat. In 3.5 it was a real choice how to use this single +1 bonus, because you always had to at least chose between con and primary attribute and for many chars it was an even harder choice. Now at least 1 of those bonuses has to be used on primary attribute to stay ahead of monsters...

This bonus alone requires masterwork armors.

And if you got rid off them, you could increase monsters defenses and attacks by only 21 over 29 levels. Which equals about 2 points of attack every 3 levels which reads:

+0
+1
+2
+2
+3
+4
+4

and on levels where attack doesn´t increase, you could increase damage for a very smooth progression. Maybe if you feel necessary, you could increase damage also on a +2/3 levels base, so you can rotate between

+1 att + 1 def
+1 att + 1 dam
+1 def + 1 dam

for an even smoother progression.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmm. Getting a +6 weapon at 29th seems awfully late, seems like you could probably shift things earlier, lessee...

the idea is, that you can get magic +6 weapons much earlier, but if you lose your main weapon etc. you still have a decent bonus left...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

and just one last thing: those inherent bonuses on general doesn´t do your players a favour: just use monsters of lower level which has the big advantage, that they have lesser hp. Because without the increased damage potential you have with magic weapons, combats will be quite a bit longer, which makes you use more at wills which prolong combat even more.

With the loss of magic item daily powers (1 at heroic, 2 at paragon and 3 on epic) you should consider 2 things:

1. Change all entries of retrain to gain one new power (so you will still have access to those lower level dailies and encounters which are often still great on higher levels)

2. recharge one of your dailies on milestones

 

[keterys]

the idea is, that you can get magic +6 weapons much earlier, but if you lose your main weapon etc. you still have a decent bonus left...

Yeah, I realized afterwards I skimmed too quickly, removed the reference from my post

 

[UngeheuerLich]

jap, your progression also seems to work quite well. Important thing is to have those bonuses always come at uneven levels to avoid +2 increments