D&D 5E Magical Weapons and Armor Bonuses

[GravyFingerz]

I would like to take a moment to point out and appreciate the following:

In OD&D, before Supplement 1: Greyhawk hit the stores, the highest bonus you could get from a magical weapon or suit of magical armor was +3. When Supplement 1 dropped, that is when gamers started seeing +5 weapons and armor as the greatest magical enchantments.

The fact that in 5E, as far as we've seen, magical bonuses for weapons and armor are capped at +3, leads me to believe that this is a direct nod to OD&D, even if it has more to do with the flatter math of the edition. I've thought about importing later magical items under OD&D sensibilities (+3 holy avenger rather than +5), but that 5E already does it, makes me happy.

 

[Tovec]

As someone who has almost exclusively played 3e.. I don't think I ever saw a player with a +5 or even a +3 sword.. maybe the odd +2. NPCs? All the effin time, but those were written by WotC and in my group generally considered underpowered.

I haven't had a great chance to delve into the rules thus far but with all the hype of 'no more +5 swords' never really affected me one way or the other. They never came up and if we could have spent the first +1 on something else we would have but that's not how the game worked.

Anyway, I'm interested to see how it shakes out. It does strike me as a deliberate attempt to go retro in design.

 

[Nebulous]

This might be slightly off topic, or not, but i already look forward to designing my own custom magic items in 5e. I really liked the spell system of Dungeon Crawl Classics. I was tinkering with taking some of those complete spells and importing them into a 5e magic item with charges.