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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kupursk" data-source="post: 7560116" data-attributes="member: 6986037">It's true that 3e "assumed" large availability of magic items throughout the leveling, especially the "stacking bonuses" kind. It's definitely the core assumption when you look at high-CR monsters with ludicrous AC and to-hit (50+ in some cases). You just can't achieve anything near those numbers without stacking magic items.It's one of the things that always put me off from high-level games of 3e. I just don't like at all to run settings where magic is assumed and not-at-all special. I like gritty Sword & Sorcery a lot more. With time and experience I ended up pretty comfortable eyeballing the overpowered numbers and adjusting them on the fly for non-magic-item-dependent campaigns where just the core class values are assumed and every magic item is a nice extra.Eventually I ended up with a hybrid between 2e and 3e that I ran for most games. It had some of the options of 3e like feats and prestige classes but all the numbers were closer to 2e standards. Especially AC, hit and such, which were the ones who tended to go crazy at 3e's higher levels.2e was not at all like 3e, though.No magic bonus were assumed, and it kind of had "bounded accuracy" already, although it wasn't something mentioned clearly as a design goal as in 5e. Also having a cleric in the party was the usual, but never absolutely necessary. Even if you had one, until really higher levels his healing was much more limited than in later editions. I also played 2e with lots and lots of different groups and most of my experience was as I described... no unlimited magic healing assumed, no wands of cure (except the eventual odd find), etc. Most groups I played with back then was mostly like Saelorn also described.3e by "default" was indeed quite different. But you could run it more gritty and scarce of magic items up to a certain mid-level range without problems. At high levels you'd probably need to house-rule some stuff.</blockquote>

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