Doing away with stat boosting items

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

That should work. Whether the stats are inherent or come from items doesn't matter provided they are high enough.

Wouldn't that be a problem at low levels when NPCs, monsters and nearly everything else have few hit points?

 

[EricNoah]

I limit it to one stat booster per PC, and they don't go higher than +4. And mental boosters are more rare than physical boosters. I just find them cheesy.

 

[Gilladian]

I have to admit that I rarely have a game go past 8th level, and have never had one go past 12th, but I have almost never given a stat boost item to any character, my players rarely if ever use buffing spells, and we've never felt the lack of it. I don't quite understand why people claim these things are "required" for 3E.

My games are slightly lower magic than book, but certainly not magic-poor. And I run fairly straight Dungeon adventures, so my PCs are facing normal challenges.

I think you'll find you may have overpowered your group just a bit at lower levels.

 

[Polydamas]

In our 15th level campaign (I'm a player) not a single character has a stat boost item. None of our spell casters use ability buffs that I've noticed. We seem to do just find. The wealth that would be used for boost items goes to other useful items instead.

None of the humanoid foes we fight have stat boosting item either...seems to make for a level playing field.

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

I'm doing this in my current game

In an effort to move emphasis from magic items to characters, and with the help of ENWorld posters, I developed the following system to replace stat boosting magic items, both of the gauntlets of ogre power and tome variety. Stat boosting spells like bull's strength are allowed, but the overlap with the 'natural' enhancement bonus just as they would with magic items. Campaign is at sixth level so I can't actually vouch for its success, but I'm very confident.

Level	Total 	+Enh at	Level 	Inherent 
	Enhance	Level	Bonus	Bonus
	Bonus			
1				
2				
3				
4			1	
5				
6				
7	1	1		
8	2	1	1	
9	3	1		
10	4	1		
11	5	1		
12	6	1	1	
13	6			
14	7	1		
15	8	1		1
16	9	1	1	1
17	11	2		1
18	13	2		1
19	?	?		1
20	?	?	1

Max Enhancement on a single attribute of '+3' through 11th
Max Enhancement on a single attribute of '+4' from 12th to 13th
Max Enhancement on a single attribute of '+5' from 14th to 14th
Max Enhancement on a single attribute of '+6' from 15th - 20th

So, at 7th level the characters get their first enhancement point. Also, they get inherent points at 4,8,12... as normal and to represent the tomes/manuals, give out another inherent point at 15,16,17,18 and 19th level.

Rationale: I used the Bastion of Broken Souls WoTC module and my own experience with PC's up to 12th level as a starting point. I gave the majority of consideration to the no-magic-item-greater than 25% of wealth standard. I left 19 and 20 blank because I didn't know what to do and no campaign I play will ever get that high.