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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6509734" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I suspect that I'm a power gamer when I'm playing (or running test games), and yeah, I like the loss of magic item shops. The low-magic option is one of my favorite things about 5E--it reminds me of AD&D, and in fact if 5E had been written with 3E/4E's apparent focus on magic items as integral to a PC's advancement, I wouldn't be playing 5E at all. What fun is it to play a roleplaying game where all your identity is wrapped up in your axe, of all things? What happens when you get attacked in the middle of the night, or poisoned and shanghaied off into slavery? Are you going to be totally bereft of awesome because your gear is gone, or are you going to pick up a couple of chipped flint daggers, kill both your guards, and lead a slave revolt because you still have Sharpshooter and Action Surge and 3 attacks per round!?! (ObTeaCup: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RdEtQL9EQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RdEtQL9EQ</a>)I ran a test combat last night with 3 6th level PCs with zero magic items against a Vampire (10,000 XP; CR 13). It was awesome and the PCs did surprisingly well, defeating the vampire at a cost of 30 HP and 5 ki points, although I made mistakes on both sides of the combat. (Forgot to use the Vampire's Legendary Resistances on the Vampire's part; forgot to exploit terrain/keep the range open on the PC's part.) In fact it went well enough that I now feel pretty okay about the fact that my real-life 3 6th level PCs are going up against a vampire tonight. It will be a Deadly-class fight but if they lose they will just get captured and used... The real-life PCs do in fact have some magic items but they sure didn't buy them from an optimization catalog, and the fact that 5E supports no-magic fights like the one I did last night also means that it supports random-magic fights like the ones my players are going to have. On the other hand, if 5E were built on the magic-mart expectation, Vampires would be built to require +2 magic items to damage them, and my 6th level PCs would have no hope at all of surviving until they found some more Magic Stuff. Boring.</blockquote>

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