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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Upper_Krust" data-source="post: 3634209" data-attributes="member: 326">Howdy mate! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Well, its basically down to mathmatics as far as I can tell.Its a 'versus' thing.On the one side you have:10 + 1/2 HD + Ability Score + Divine Rank + (possible feats/abilities)On the other you have2 + 1/2 HD (lets assume 'Good' saves) + Ability Score + Divine Rank + (possible feats/abilities) + Cloak of Resistance or similar item.At this stage so far so good. But lets look a little closer.A) Okay, we start of 8 points down but thats only a minor issue at this stage, which you could say feats will balance to an extent.B) How many times are your party going to face a monster with more Hit Dice than them. The answer is quite often, especially at epic levels, and that gap will widen (especially between the party and the BBEG for instance) the higher things go.e.g. Xixecal 72 HD vs. CR 36 (DC/Save difference 18), Iron Colossus 96 HD vs. CR 33 (DC/Save difference 32), Living Vault 96 HD vs. CR 33, etc. The HD to CR range is something like 1:1 up to 3:1 or more. Lets assume every adventure you will meet at least a few who fall somewhere in between 2:1.That means to level that gap PCs need a Cloak of Resistance (or similar item) giving a bonus equal to half their level.C) But there is also a potential disparity with regards Ability Scores, because its easier for monsters to have higher ability scores than PCs, added to which they only need one really high score to boost a potentially fatal DC, whereas PCs need to boost three ability scores - and chances are none of those scores will be the PCs main attribute anyway!Average monster ability score (for Charisma and scores which normally affect DCs) is something like 10 + 1/2 HD.This immediately brings us back to point #B in that monsters will typically have higher Hit Dice than PCs. But even disregarding that, the monster will almost certainly have higher ability scores than the PC in the key DC to Save confrontations.Its difficult to gauge the average PC ability scores but off the top of my head I'd say something like 12 + 1/8 HD.Which means at 40th-level a PC will have an average score of around 17, while the monster with 40 HD will have a score of about 30.So again you have a further discrepancy of roughly +1/4 to the DC per HD of the monster.So now that Cloak of Resistance must be approx. equal your PC level, just to keep you on a level playing field. D) Divine Rank is only a minor factor, but again it will almost certainly boost an enemy deity more than it will your PCs simply because chances are you will be putting multiple PCs against a more powerful Deity.So in virtually every epic adventure you will meet a handful of creatures who will force DCs that beat your Saves by a number roughly akin to your level.This means that by the book, you will always fail saves against these monsters on anything but a '20' from around Level 40...because even if you have the maximum possible Cloak of Resistance in the book, the DC will still beat your save by 20 (and thats not counting the 8 point headstart and possible divine rank discrepancy).So even forcing Cloaks of Resistance is ultimately futile.To postpone the inevitable you have to force Wardragon's Mega Cloaks that give all the different bonuses to saves. But even that only delays things for 40 more levels or so.</blockquote>

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