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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5854548" data-attributes="member: 3424">You know what? I'm just going to <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5846931-post77.html" target="_blank">repeat myself</a>:I think you are mixing up two or three different objectives. The first is the logical (perhaps simulationist?) objective that magic items make a character more powerful. All other things being equal, he will be able to take on all challenges more easily. If there is a "standard" level of difficulty, "normal" challenges would now be below that standard, while tougher challenges would now be at the standard.The second is the (perhaps gamist?) objective of ensuring there is an enjoyable level of challenge, making sure the game is neither too easy (and boring) or too hard (and frustrating). This is what generally causes the challenges faced by the PCs to scale with their level of power. The (perhaps narrative?) way to unify these two objectives is to describe the PCs as being able to handle the more powerful challenges because of their more powerful equipment.What might run counter to the narration is the perhaps third objective of simplicity. By stating the character power, magic item power and monster power relationship as something along the lines of "a 12th-level party with 12th-level gear can take on a 12th-level encounter at standard difficulty", it gives the impression that the gear becomes an integral part of character progression (although it's not, really). Perhaps what was missing is another statement along the lines of "a 12th-level party with no magic items can take on a 9th-level encounter at standard difficulty". Perhaps it might even be better to re-base the monster numbers, so that the former 9th-level monster becomes a 12th-level monster and the former 12th-level monster becomes a 15th-level monster, and the statements now become, "a 12th-level party with no magic items can take on a 12th-level encounter at standard difficulty. A 12th-level party with +3 magic items can take on a 15th-level encounter at standard difficulty".</blockquote>

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