Equipment Value affecting Party Level

[devilish]

Also remember that a monster's CR is against a party of 4 characters.
So the cleric of 12th level, without equipment as a 9.6 level character
would be highly challenged by a 9th level creature.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

80-20 sounds about right. Remember the multiplicative nature of CR. If four 10th level PCs can handle Monster X with no magical equipment, the same characters can handle two Monster X's simultaneously with their magical equipment with roughly the same difficulty. At 20th level the equipmentless party can take on one Monster Y; the same party with equipment can handle four Monster Y's at a time.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

My Clr 12, for example, would be in a world of hurt without equipment. Turning CR-appropriate UD, for instance, would be practically impossible.

Since the party is up against one-half to one third the "normal" number of critters at a time, does the cleric actually ever need to turn? When it comes to single powerful undead, they are likely to have 2-4 HD fewer than in a normal campaign. Do your clerics habitually have +12 to their turning checks from magic?

Yes, the DM should be careful about placing highly magical critters in a low magic campaign world. It should be obvious that very magical critters would not fit in such a campaign world very well.

I do not see that DR 30/magic should be a problem. A little multiclassing will make this kind of DR irrelevant.

BTW, single-classed clerics and druids will absolutely rock in a low magic world. You might want to keep that in mind when you place those very rare magic items.

 

[Doomhawk]

The .8 figure sounds about right, although you also have to use a little common sense in some cases. For instance, I was playing in a low-magic game a few months ago, we were all 5th level I believe, and had only a few thousand gp worth of items between the six of us. We then fight a Flesh Golem. Well, the DM had told me at the start of this campaign that since magic is so rare, he'd allow any magic weapon to penetrate any and all DR. So of course, I cast Magic Weapon on the fighter's axe, thinking it will allow him to hurt the golem. But nope. The guy expected us to have adamantine weapons, even though we couldn't have afforded them if we'd tried. It turned into nearly a TPK, since we basically couldn't damage the thing. So the point of this roundabout anecdote is that some monsters and challenges are MUCH harder without magic, whereas most are only moderately more difficult. As long as you're careful of the first set, things should go fine.

 

[devilish]

The .8 figure sounds about right, although you also have to use a little common sense in some cases. For instance, I was playing in a low-magic game a few months ago, we were all 5th level I believe, and had only a few thousand gp worth of items between the six of us. We then fight a Flesh Golem. Well, the DM had told me at the start of this campaign that since magic is so rare, he'd allow any magic weapon to penetrate any and all DR. So of course, I cast Magic Weapon on the fighter's axe, thinking it will allow him to hurt the golem. But nope. The guy expected us to have adamantine weapons, even though we couldn't have afforded them if we'd tried. It turned into nearly a TPK, since we basically couldn't damage the thing. So the point of this roundabout anecdote is that some monsters and challenges are MUCH harder without magic, whereas most are only moderately more difficult. As long as you're careful of the first set, things should go fine.

Running the numbers through U_K's calcs, this was a difficult
encounter --- party has a 66% chance of victory and expected to
use 75% of the resources. It's classified as a
Henchman/Difficult scenario, a pre-BBEG/Nemesis encounter.
"It should be noted that these opponents are virtually equal to the PCs in Power. As such PC casualties are a definite possibilty."

Sorry --- geeking out.

 

[dcollins]

I, too, would be surprised if the "fractional CR for no equipment" doesn't change with level. Sure, levels 1 - 8 might be 80%...but levels 12 thru 15?

Well, when I started out, I thought there would be fixed number to subtract when magic items were removed. Then I ran the simulation and was surprised to find an approximately linear relationship.